Brazen Virtue

by Nora Roberts

  When she felt him push inside her, she started to scream.

  “Stop it.” The passion was exploding in his head, but not the way he’d wanted. Her screaming was tearing into him, spoiling it. It couldn’t be spoiled. He’d waited too long, wanted too long. “I said stop it!” He thrust harder, wanting the magnificence of all her promises. But she wouldn’t stop screaming. She scratched, but the pain only inflamed his need, and fury. She’d lied. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She was a liar and a whore, and still he wanted her.

  Flinging a hand out, she shoved, knocking over the table. The phone fell on the floor beside her head.

  And he took the cord and wrapped it around her throat, pulling hard until the screaming stopped.

  SO YOUR PARTNER’S MARRIED to a psychiatrist.” Grace rolled down the window as she lit a cigarette. The dinner had relaxed her. Ed had relaxed her, she corrected. He was so easy to talk to and had such a sweet, funny way of looking at life.

  “They met on a case we were working on a few months ago.” Ed reminded himself to come to a complete stop at the intersection. After all, Grace wasn’t Ben. She wasn’t like anyone else. “You’d probably be interested since it was a serial killer.”

  “Really?” She never questioned her fascination with murder. “I get it, the shrink was called in to do a psychiatric profile.”

  “You got it.”

  “Is she any good?”

  “The best.”

  Grace nodded, thinking of Kathleen. “I’d like to talk to her. Maybe we could have a dinner party or something. Kathleen doesn’t socialize enough.”

  “You’re worried about her.”

  Grace let out a little sigh as they turned a corner. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to spoil your evening, but I guess I wasn’t the best company.”

  “I wasn’t complaining.”

  “That’s because you’re too polite.” When he pulled into the drive, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Why don’t you come in for coffee—no, you don’t drink coffee, it’s tea. I’ll brew you some tea and make it up to you.”

  She was already out of the car before he could get out and open the door for her. “You don’t have to make anything up to me.”

  “I’d like the company. Kath’s probably in bed by now and I’ll just stew.” She dug in her bag for her key. “And we can talk about when you’re going to give me that tour of the station. Damn, I know it’s in here somewhere. I’d have an easier time if Kath had remembered to leave the porch light on. Here.” She unlocked the door, then dropped the keys carelessly into her pocket. “Why don’t you sit in the living room and turn on the stereo or something while I get the tea?”

  She shed her coat as she walked, tossing it negligently at a chair. Ed picked it up as it slid to the floor and folded it. It smelled like her, he thought. Then, telling himself he was foolish, he laid it over the back of the chair. He crossed to a window to study the trim work. It was a habit he’d gotten into since he’d bought his house. Running a finger along it, he tried to imagine it at his own window.

  He heard Grace call her sister’s name, like a question, then call it again and again and again.

  He found her kneeling beside her sister’s body, pulling at it, shouting at it. When he gathered her up, she tore at him like a tiger.

  “Let me go. Goddamn it, let me go. It’s Kathy.”

  “Go in the other room, Grace.”

  “No. It’s Kathy. Oh God, let me go. She needs me.”

  “Do it.” With his hands firm at her shoulders, he shielded her from the body with his own and gave her two hard shakes. “Go in the other room now. I’ll take care of her.”

  “But I need—”

  “I want you to listen to me.” He kept his gaze hard into her eyes, recognizing shock. But he couldn’t cosset or soothe or tuck a nice warm blanket around her. “Go in the other room. Call 911. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.” She nodded and stumbled back. “Yes, of course. 911.” He watched her run out, then turned back to the body.

  Number 911 wasn’t going to help Kathleen Breezewood. Ed crouched down beside her and became a cop.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS LIKE A scene out of one of her books. After the murder came the police. Some of them would be weary, some tight-lipped, some cynical. It depended on the mood of the story. Sometimes it depended on the personality of the victim. It depended, always, on her imagination.

  The action could take place in an alley or in a drawing room. Atmosphere was always an intricate part of any scene. In the book she was writing, she’d plotted out a murder in the Secretary of State’s library. She’d enjoyed the prospect of bringing in Secret Service, politics, and espionage as well as police.

  That would be a matter of poison and drinking out of the wrong glass. Murder was always more interesting when it was a bit confusing. She was delighted with her plot line so far because she hadn’t quite made up her mind who the murderer was. It had always fascinated her to figure it out and surprise herself.

  The bad guy always tripped up in the end.

  Grace sat on the sofa, silent and staring. For some reason, she couldn’t get beyond that thought. The self-defense mechanism of the mind had turned hysteria into numbing shock so that even her shudders seemed to be pulsing through someone else’s body. A good murder had more punch if the victim left someone behind to be stunned or devastated. It was almost a foolproof device to draw the reader in if done right. She’d always had a talent for painting emotions: grief, fury, heartache. Once she understood her characters, she could feel them too. For hours and days at a time, she could work, feeding off the emotions, reveling in them, delighting in both the light and the dark sides of human nature. Then she could switch them off as carelessly as she switched off her machine, and go on with her own life.

  It was only a story, after all, and justice would win out in the final chapter.

  She recognized the professions of the men who came and went through her sister’s house—the coroner, the forensic team, the police photographer.

  Once, she’d used a police photographer as the protagonist in a novel, painting the stark and gritty details of death with a kind of relish. She knew the procedure, had depicted it again and again without a blink or a shudder. The sights and smells of murder weren’t strangers, not to her imagination. Even now, she almost believed if she squeezed her eyes tight they would all fade and reassemble into characters she could control, characters that were only real in her mind, characters that could be created or destroyed by the press of a button.

  But not her sister. Not Kathy.

  She’d change the plot, Grace told herself as she brought her legs up to curl under her. She’d do rewrites, delete the murder scene, restructure the characters. She’d change it all until everything worked out exactly as she wanted. All she had to do was concentrate. She closed her eyes and, wrapping her arms tight over her breasts, struggled to make it all play.

  “She didn’t go easy,” Ben murmured as he watched the coroner examine the body of Kathleen McCabe Breezewood. “I think we’re going to find that some of the blood belongs to him. We may get some prints off the phone cord.”

  “How long?” Ed noted down the details in his book while he fought to keep his mind off Grace. He couldn’t afford to think of her now. He could miss something, something vital, if he thought of the way she was sitting in the other room like a broken doll.

  The coroner tapped a fist against his chest. The chili and onions he’d had for dinner kept coming back on him. “No more than two hours, probably less.” He took a look at his watch. “At this point, I’d put the time between nine and eleven. Should be able to hone it when I get her in.” He signaled to two men. Even as he rose, the body was being transferred into a thick black plastic bag. Very tidy. Very final.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Ben lit a cigarette as he studied the chalk outline on the rug. “From the looks of the room, he surprised her in here. Back door was forced. Didn’t take
much, so I’m not surprised if she didn’t hear.”

  “It’s a quiet neighborhood,” Ed murmured. “You don’t even have to lock your car.”

  “It’s harder when it hits close to home, I know.” Ben waited, but received no response. “We’re going to have to talk to the sister.”

  “Yeah.” Ed tucked his notebook back into his pocket. “You guys want to give me a couple of minutes before you carry that out?” He nodded to the coroner as he started out. He hadn’t been able to prevent Grace from finding the body, but he could prevent her from being a part of what happened now.

  He found her where he’d left her, sitting huddled on the sofa. Her eyes were closed so that he thought, hoped, she was asleep. Then she was looking up at him. Her eyes were huge and completely dry. He recognized the dull sheen of shock too well.

  “I can’t make it play.” Her voice was steady, but so quiet it barely carried beyond her lips. “I keep trying to restructure the scene. I came back early. I didn’t go out at all. Kath decided to tag along for the evening. Nothing works.”

  “Grace, let’s go to the kitchen. We’ll have that tea and talk.”

  She accepted the hand he held out but didn’t rise. “Nothing works because it’s too late to change it.”

  “I’m sorry, Grace. Why don’t you come with me now?”

  “They haven’t taken her away yet, have they? I should see her, before—”

  “Not now.”

  “I have to wait until they take her. I know I can’t go with her, but I have to wait until they take her. She’s my sister.” She rose then, but only to go to the hall and wait.

  “Let her be,” Ben advised when Ed started forward. “She needs this.”

  Ed thrust his own hands into his pockets. “Nobody needs this.”

  He’d seen others say good-bye to someone they loved this way. Even after all the scenes, all the victims, all the investigations, he couldn’t feel nothing. But he’d taught himself to feel as little as possible.

  Grace stood, hands cold and clasped, as they carried Kathleen out. She didn’t weep. She dug deep for feeling, but found nothing. She wanted the grief, needed it, but it seemed to have crept off into some corner and curled into itself, leaving her empty. When Ed’s hand fell on her shoulder, she didn’t jerk or shiver, but took a long breath.

  “You have to ask me questions now?”

  “If you’re up to it.”

  “Yes.” She cleared her throat. Her voice should be stronger. She’d always been the strong one. “I’ll make the tea.”

  In the kitchen, she set the kettle on, then fussed with cups and saucers. “Kath always keeps everything so neat. All I have to do is remember where my mother kept things, and …” She trailed off. Her mother. She’d have to call and tell her parents.

  I’m sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t here. I couldn’t stop it.

  Not now, she told herself as she fumbled with tea bags. She couldn’t think of it now. “I don’t imagine you want sugar.”

  “No.” Ed shifted uncomfortably and wished she’d sit down. Her movements were steady enough, but there wasn’t a breath of color in her face. There hadn’t been since he’d found her bent over her sister’s body.

  “How about you? You’re Detective Paris, aren’t you? Ed’s partner?”

  “Ben.” He put his hand on the back of a chair to pull it from the table. “I’ll take two teaspoons of sugar.” Like Ed, he noted her lack of color, but he also recognized her determination to see this through. She wasn’t so much fragile as brittle, he thought, like a piece of glass that would snap rather than shatter.

  As she set the cups on the table, she glanced at the back door. “He came in through here, didn’t he?”

  “That’s the way it looks.” Ben took out his own pad and set it next to his saucer. She was holding off the grief, and as a cop, he had to take advantage of it. “I’m sorry we have to go into this.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She lifted her tea and sipped. She felt the heat of the liquid in her mouth but tasted nothing. “There isn’t anything I can tell you, really. Kath was in her office when I left. She was going to work. That was, I don’t know, six-thirty. When we got back, I thought she’d gone to bed. She hadn’t left the porch light on.” Details, she thought as she fought back another brush with hysteria. The police needed details, just as any good novel did. “I started to go into the kitchen and I noticed her door, her office door, was open and the light was on. So I went in.” She picked up her tea again and carefully shut her mind to what happened next.

  Since Ed had been there, Ben didn’t have to push. They all knew what had happened next. So he’d go back. “Was she seeing anyone?”

  “No.” Grace relaxed a little. They would talk about other things, logical things, and not the impossible scene beyond the office door. “She’d just gone through a nasty divorce and wasn’t over it. She worked, she didn’t socialize. Kathy’s mind was fixed on making enough money to go to court and win back custody of her son.”

  Kevin. Dear God, Kevin. Grace picked up her cup in both hands and drank again.

  “Her husband was Jonathan Breezewood the third, of Palm Springs. Old money, old lineage, nasty temper.” Her eyes hardened as she looked at the back door again. “Maybe, just maybe you’ll find he took a trip east.”

  “Do you have any reason to think the ex-husband would want to murder your sister?”

  She looked up at Ed then. “They didn’t part amicably. He’d been cheating on her for years and she’d hired a lawyer and a detective. He might have found out. Breezewood is the kind of name that doesn’t tolerate any grime attached to it.”

  “Do you know if he ever threatened your sister?” Ben sampled the tea even as he thought longingly of the coffeepot.

  “Not that she told me, but she was frightened of him. She didn’t initially fight for Kevin because of his temper and the power his family wields. She told me he’d put one of the gardeners in the hospital once because of an argument over a rosebush.”

  “Grace.” Ed laid a hand over hers. “Have you noticed anyone around the neighborhood who made you uneasy? Has anyone come to the door, delivering, soliciting?”

  “No. Well, there was the man who delivered my trunk, but he was harmless. I was alone with him in the house for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “What was the company’s name?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know …” She rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Details always came easily to her, but thinking now was like fighting through a fog. “Quik and Easy. No ‘c’ in quick. The guy’s name was, um, Jimbo. Yeah, Jimbo. He had it stitched over the pocket of his shirt. Sounded like Oklahoma.”

  “Your sister was a teacher?” Ben prompted.

  “That’s right.”

  “Any problems with the other staff?”

  “Most of them are nuns. You have a hard time arguing with nuns.”

  “Yeah. How about the students?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything. The fact is, she never did.” It was that thought that had her stomach churning again. “The first night I came into town, we talked, had a little too much wine. That’s when she told me about Jonathan. But since then, and for most of our lives, she closed off. I can tell you that Kathleen didn’t make enemies, and she didn’t make friends either, not close ones. For the past few years, her life has been wrapped up in her family. She hasn’t been back in D.C. long enough to make any ties, to meet anyone who would want—who could do this to her. It was Jonathan, or it was a stranger.”

  Ben said nothing for a moment. Whoever had broken in hadn’t come to rob, but to rape. There was a feel to a robbery attempt, a feel to a rape. Every room but the office was as neat as a pin. There was a smell of violation in this house.

  “Grace.” Ed had already come to the same conclusion as his partner, but had taken it one step further. Whoever had broken in had come for the woman he’d gotten, or for the one sitting next to him. “Is there
anyone who has a grudge against you?” At her blank look, he continued. “Is there anyone you’ve been involved with recently who might want to hurt you?”

  “No. I haven’t had time to get involved enough for that.” But just the question was sufficient to start the panic. Had she been the cause? Was she the reason? “I’ve just come off a tour. I don’t know anyone who would do this. Not anyone.”

  Ben picked up the next stage. “Who knew you were here?”

  “My editor, publisher, publicist. Anyone who wanted to. I’ve just done twelve cities with plenty of PR. If anyone had wanted to get to me, they could have done so a dozen times, in hotel rooms, on the subway, in my own apartment. It’s Kathleen who’s dead. I wasn’t even here.” She took a moment to calm down. “He raped her, didn’t he?” Then she shook her head before Ed could answer. “No, no, I don’t want to focus on that right now. I can’t really focus on anything.” She got up and found a small bottle of brandy in the cupboard beside the window. Taking a tumbler, she poured it half full. “Is there more?”

  Ed wanted to take her hand, to stroke her hair and tell her not to think anymore. But he was a cop with a job to do.

  “Grace, do you know why your sister had two phone lines in her office?”

  “Yes.” Grace took a quick slug of the brandy, waited for the punch, then took another. “There’s no way to keep this confidential, is there?”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “Kathleen would hate the publicity.” With the tumbler cupped in her hands, she sat again. “She always wanted her privacy. Look, I don’t think the extra phone line really applies to all of this.”

  “We need everything.” Ed waited until she drank again. “It’s not going to hurt her now.”

  “No.” The brandy wasn’t helping, she realized, but she couldn’t think of a medicine for her sickness, and the brandy seemed the best she could come up with. “I told you she’d hired a lawyer and so forth. She needed a good one to fight Jonathan, and good lawyers aren’t easily had on a teacher’s salary. She wouldn’t take money from me. Kathy had a lot of pride, and to be frank, she always resented—never mind.” She took a long breath. The brandy had headed straight for her stomach and was turning it over. Regardless, she drank again. “The other line was for business. She was moonlighting. For a company called Fantasy, Incorporated.”