“Hey there, Boss,” Thomas greeted Oliver with a smile. He motioned to the backseat, where Nigel Marks sat with a laptop on his lap and a phone to his ear. He looked up and gave a quick wave before turning his attention back to his work. “He had an emergency call that couldn’t wait,” Thomas explained.
Oliver motioned through the gatehouse window for George to open the gate. George didn’t hesitate, and Thomas moved the SUV the rest of the way up the drive, parking in front of one of the garage doors. Grant Blakely arrived next, driving Nigel’s high-end rental. He was already grinning as he paused next to Oliver.
“This assignment may not completely suck after all, especially if we get to play with his toys,” he said as soon as the window was down. He petted the dashboard.
Oliver chuckled. He missed working with his old team of Jonathan and Mark, but he had grown fond of Grant. The thirty-four-year-old was the epitome of intimidating without even trying. Tall, wide and thick with muscles, the dark-skinned bodyguard never looked as if he couldn’t win in a fight.
“Just wait until you see the house,” Oliver said. “Any problems getting here?”
“No, sir. It’s about a thirty-minute commute with no traffic. How about on your end? Did you deal with the private eye?”
“The threat wasn’t as threatening as we thought, but just to make sure, I’m going to ask a few more questions after my shift.” Grant nodded, and Oliver once again told George to open the gate.
“The man driving Nigel is Thomas, and the one in the Audi is Grant,” Oliver explained to George. “You have all our numbers. Don’t hesitate to use them if you need to. At all times there will be two of us with Nigel.”
George took the three cards with their numbers and put them in his pocket. Although he said he understood, Oliver could tell his attention had moved toward the cars, where his true boss had just exited.
Nigel Marks was over six foot, of average size and dressed in a proper suit. His salt-and-pepper hair was cropped close to his head, with a pair of reading glasses resting on top. The file Oliver had been given said Nigel was fifty-three, though he looked years younger. The file also said he was an avid runner, competing in marathons and triathlons in his spare time. That would account for the toned body his suit did little to hide. As Oliver approached, Nigel ended his call and extended his hand.
“Sorry about that,” Nigel said with a smile. “This merger has made everyone forget how to do their jobs. You must be Mr. Quinn.”
Oliver shook. “Call me Oliver.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Oliver. Nikki spoke very highly of you and your team. Hopefully you won’t get too bored on this job.”
“It’s a good sign when a job stays boring,” Oliver replied.
Nigel seemed to consider this and laughed. “I suppose you’re right. Well...” Nigel waved to his house as Grant and Thomas joined them. “As I told Nikki, feel free to treat this as your home while here. There are no off-limits areas, but I do ask my office be left alone unless I’m with you. I have a feeling that my free time will be spent in there.” He paused as his phone rang. His pleasant mood seemed to slide away in an instant. Replacing it was the look of a tired man. “My work is never done.”
* * *
DARLING FELT AS if she was frozen yet couldn’t stop everything around her from moving. It wasn’t until her vision started to tunnel that she realized she was about to pass out. With a quick dose of good sense, she backed out of the bathroom and crouched, flinging her head down between her legs. In the moment she couldn’t remember why that stopped a person from fainting, but she knew she needed to try it nonetheless.
So there she was, crouched just outside of room 212’s bathroom and its body in the tub, trying to calm her stampeding heartbeat and erratic breathing.
This case was nothing but bad, bad luck.
A car door shut in the parking lot some time later. Whether it was seconds or minutes, she wasn’t sure. The room hadn’t been the only aspect of her reality that had warped when she had seen the body. However, instead of sending her into a bigger fit of worries, the sound of the outside world started to make her focus.
She took two deep breaths and slowly righted herself. The camera around her neck slapped against her chest, reminding her of the reason she had been there in the first place.
Nigel Marks and his mistress had been in this room the night before. He had gone, but his mistress hadn’t checked out. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess it was her unfortunate fate that she was the one wrapped up in the tub. Darling knew she had to call the police, just as she knew that once she left the room, she’d never be allowed back in.
At the moment, it was a thought that didn’t sit right with her. So, blaming the impulse on her desire to solve mysteries, even ones seemingly cut and dried, she took her camera from her neck and walked back to the bathroom doorway. With hands she let shake, she snapped a few pictures of the bathroom and its deceased guest before she turned back and took a few of the bedroom. Another car door slammed shut in the distance. She glanced once more toward the bathroom.
Darling felt a mixture of anger and sadness pull at her heart. Nigel Marks might be a powerful man in the business world, but by killing this woman, he had unwittingly stepped inside Darling’s domain.
Darling hurried to the main office and was thankful that Dan was still alone. He didn’t look up when she came in, he just raised his hands.
“I know nothing,” he said, still in a bubble of humor. It was a bubble she was about to pop.
“Dan, you need to call the police. There’s a dead body in room 212.”
Dan laughed, thinking it was a joke until he finally met her eyes. Darling figured she must have looked as serious as the situation was. She watched his face and mood sober.
“Where?” was all he could manage.
“Wrapped up in a shower curtain in the tub.”
His lips thinned, and his brows pulled together. “You better give me the key and leave, then,” he said after a moment. He pulled the only landline phone the office had from the second shelf of his desk. Darling felt a quick wave of fondness for the man. He was always trying to cover for her.
“I don’t want you to lie about how you found the body,” Darling said. “I’ll tell the deputy the door was already open.” She handed the key back to him. “We don’t have to tell anyone about the key. Though I don’t think they’ll care either way.” It seemed obvious to her what had happened.
Dan nodded and pocketed the key.
“Then you call them,” he said, already shrugging into his coat. “I want to go see it for myself.”
Darling sat behind the front desk with a very loud, long sigh and did as she was told. Deputy Derrick wouldn’t be happy she had managed to get into this mess, but at least this time she wasn’t guilty. Not that she would have admitted she had been guilty that morning. Instead of dialing 9-1-1, she called the man directly. In a small town like Mulligan, where the members of police force could be counted on two hands, Derrick had the dual duty of being their trusty investigator as well as deputy. Instead of puttering around with someone else in the bull pen, Darling went straight to the source.
“Deputy Derrick,” he answered on the second ring.
“Derrick, it’s Darling. I hope you’re not busy right now.”
She heard him snort. “Is that your way of trying to ask me out? We both know how well that works,” he said, all humor.
“Well, not quite.”
“Where are you calling from?” he asked after a pause. She knew him well enough to recognize something close to suspicious concern creeping into his tone.
“The Mulligan Motel,” she paused for a moment and then dove in. “There’s a body in room 212, wrapped up in the tub.”
“A body?”
She nodded. Then, realizin
g he couldn’t see her, she said, “And Derrick? The last person seen leaving the room was Nigel Marks.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Stay there and tell Dan don’t let anyone else in that room,” he finally said. “And I mean it, Darling. No one else goes in there.”
Darling agreed to his no-tampering-with-a-crime-scene rule. Suddenly her morning indiscretion didn’t seem as bad. She even bet Oliver’s need to question her would disappear when he found out.
Oliver.
She pulled his card out of her back pocket and looked at his number.
If Nigel did kill whoever it was in the tub, where did that leave Oliver?
Chapter Three
Oliver didn’t answer when Darling called him.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt she owed it to him to give him a heads-up that the man he had promised to guard was about to need a lot more protection than he could offer. Oliver had said she wasn’t a threat, vouching for a woman he no longer knew. Plus, it was no fun to be blindsided. She knew that from experience.
“This is Oliver Quinn. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible,” his voice mail recording answered. Darling felt her face heat up after the beep to leave a message came and went. She realized then that giving him a heads-up might also give Nigel one before the cops were even able to see the body in the tub. She didn’t want to be the one responsible for giving the number one suspect time to lawyer up or possibly run. Although he probably had already done one or the other. It wasn’t as if the body could have gone unnoticed for too long.
“Um, hi, it’s Darling,” she floundered. “I need you to call me as soon as you get this. Something’s happened. Thanks.” She let out a long sigh as she ended the call. She liked to believe she was a very confident and sure woman, but mix any part of Oliver into her life and she suddenly felt off her game.
Darling went back up to the second floor to find Dan, trying to push thoughts of her ex clear out of her head. She had walked into the crime scene that, most likely, her current client’s husband had created. That gave her a new set of problems and concerns without adding the complication of the man from her past.
“I talked to Deputy Derrick,” Darling told Dan, who was standing in the doorway to room 212. “He said no one else needs to go in there until they get here.”
Dan didn’t answer right away. His eyes were stuck on a point somewhere in the main room. She wondered if he had peeked in the bathroom yet. When he met her gaze, she knew he had. He looked haunted.
“Do you think he really did it?” he asked. “Nigel. Do you think he really killed her?”
Darling shrugged. “I can’t say for certain, but I can make the leap and say I think there’s a pretty good chance he did. You said yourself that he stayed the night here.”
Dan nodded, but there was no enthusiasm in it.
“Do you want me to wait in the lobby and send the cops up when they get here?” she asked when it was clear Dan wasn’t going to talk. He nodded again and returned to staring into room 212. She patted him on the shoulder and made the walk back, thinking a dead body in your hotel couldn’t be good for business.
Darling sat behind the desk again but didn’t let her mind wander. Instead she thought about Elizabeth Marks, the only other woman who knew about her husband’s affair. Or, at least, she had thought so. If Nigel went to jail for murdering his mistress, she’d be in the clear to take what was hers, and possibly his, and leave without any strings attached.
A coldness seeped into Darling’s heart.
She pulled her phone out and went to her email. Searching through discount offers and social media updates, she found the itinerary Elizabeth had sent to her after she had signed on to the case. During the duration of Nigel’s work trip, Elizabeth would be with her mother in the Bahamas. She claimed that if she were far away with no chance of accidentally spotting Nigel and his mistress, he might get careless. It would be easier to catch him, she had said with vigor. If the schedule Darling was looking at was correct, the two women would have left for the trip on Sunday, two days ago. That meant Elizabeth wasn’t even in the country when the woman had checked in.
Plus, why would you hire a private investigator if you were just going to kill the problem?
All at once, Darling realized there was an easy way to figure out who the mistress was.
Jumping up, she hurried to look out the door to make sure no one was coming. Derrick had been at the police station when she had called, which meant she had very little time left before he arrived. She ran back behind the front desk and pulled a big leather-bound registry book out. Dan hated leaving it on the desktop because he claimed it got in the way of his crosswords. He only pulled it out when a new guest had already handed over the money. It was also the only way he kept tabs on the people who checked in and out. Darling could have slapped herself. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of looking at the registry as soon as she had come in.
She flipped through a few pages until she found the entries from the night before. Three people had checked in. All were after 6:00 p.m., and none of them were Nigel Marks. A car door shut in the parking lot, and for the second time that day, Darling took a picture of something she probably shouldn’t have. This time it was with her phone, but that reminded her she needed to hide her camera or else Derrick would take it from her. He was always suspicious of her, which, she guessed, was deserved in this case. She grabbed the camera, put it in the bottom drawer of the desk and replaced the registry seconds before Deputy Derrick came into the office.
“Two times in one day, huh?” she greeted him. Derrick didn’t think it was funny. She sobered. “Sorry, it’s been a weird day.”
Whatever he had been about to say, he must have changed his mind. His face softened.
“What room?” he asked.
“Room 212. Dan is waiting outside. I told him not to go back in, like you said.”
Derrick nodded. Behind his knitted brows, he was probably running through police procedures.
“You okay?” he asked when she kept staring. “I mean, like emotionally,” he tacked on. He had never been that great at talking about feelings, so the question surprised her.
“Yeah, I didn’t really see much.”
He nodded and turned for the door that led to the stairs outside. He paused long enough to add, “And Darling, don’t leave. I have a lot of questions for you.”
“I know.”
* * *
“I NEED YOU to call me as soon as you get this. Something’s happened. Thanks.” Oliver hadn’t recognized the number, but he sure did recognize the voice and the oddness behind it as he listened to Darling’s message. He didn’t have long to think about it, though, before his phone rang again.
This time it was George.
“Oliver, the police are here,” he started. “They want to know if they can come in.”
“The police?”
“Yeah, they say they need to talk to Mr. Marks.”
Oliver looked up as if he could see his client through the ceiling.
“Let them in,” he answered, ending the call.
He left his spot in the kitchen next to the back entrance and walked down the long hallway to the front. Grant, off duty until seven that night, was sitting in the dining room, reading one of the many books he had brought with him. He looked up as Oliver opened the front door.
“Something is up,” Oliver said over his shoulder. A police cruiser was parking next to his rental SUV. Two male cops got out. “I need you on duty right now,” he added, seeing their facial expressions. This wasn’t a courtesy visit.
“Good afternoon, officers,” Oliver said when they were a few feet away.
“Afternoon,” the first one responded. He was in his upper fifties and had almost no
hair left on his head. He was built strong but didn’t look intimidating with his short height. “I’m Officer Barker and this is my partner, Officer Clay.” He motioned to the much younger black man next to him, whose lack of hair looked more intentional than his partner’s. “You must be one of Mr. Marks’s bodyguards.”
“Yes, sir. How can I help you?”
Officer Barker looked considerably more uncomfortable than Officer Clay. They shared a glance before Barker straightened his back and answered.
“We need to talk to Mr. Marks,” he said. “Now.”
“Okay,” Oliver said. He turned to nod at Grant, who had been hanging back in the dining room to listen. “Can I ask what about?” Oliver ventured as Grant walked out of the room, heading for the stairs.
Again Oliver caught the feeling of unease that passed between the officers.
“Something’s happened,” Officer Clay answered. Oliver instantly recalled Darling’s voice mail. “We shouldn’t say anything more until we’ve talked to Mr. Marks.”
Oliver wanted to push for more answers but had to remind himself that he was the bodyguard, not Nigel’s personal assistant. He let the officers stand in silence until the man of the hour made his grand appearance.
“Officers,” Nigel said, a question already in his tone. “What can I do for you?”
“We’ll give you some privacy,” Oliver said, falling back into the house with Grant but maintaining a sight line. Nigel didn’t seem to notice, and as soon as they were out of earshot, the officers began to talk in lowered voices.
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked. He had come down the stairs with Nigel, face filled with curiosity. Not that Oliver could blame him.
“The cops are here,” Grant answered. He turned to Oliver. “Do you know what’s going on?”
Oliver watched as Nigel’s entire body visibly tensed.
Private Bodyguard Page 3
