Martha stared at him a moment, then started laughing. Quickly the laugh turned into a hoarse cough that ended in a sputter, and her gaze narrowed. “Did she tell you that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well, there’s family, and then there’s family. And there’s involved and involved. You’d have to ask her to be more specific.”
When they started to turn onto Oglethorpe Avenue toward the bed-and-breakfast, she pulled free, swayed and leaned against the stop sign for support. “Thanks for the escort, Detective, but I’m going that way.” She nodded toward the couples dancing in the street and, on the edges, the folding chairs that flanked them. Robbie and Anamaria were out there; so were Russ and Jamie and Sarah and Jack Greyson.
And Sophy. With Joe Saldana.
He wasn’t surprised, and sure as hell not jealous. Mostly…relieved.
“No, you’re not.” Tommy whistled sharply, catching the attention of two officers across the street. When he beckoned, Pete Petrovski jogged over to join them. “Give her a ride, will you? She’s got two choices—the Jasmine or the jail until she sobers up. No place else.”
Pete nodded. “This way, ma’am—”
Martha clasped both hands around the stop sign post and glared at Tommy. “You don’t want to arrest me. For Ellie’s sake.”
He doubted Ellie could care less whether Martha spent a few hours in a cell. Unless she meant she would somehow make Ellie regret it.
And then he would have to make Martha regret ever coming to Copper Lake.
“It’s your choice,” he said with a shrug. “Sober up in a cell or in your luxury room at the Jasmine.”
She straightened the best she could, drawing her shoulders back and leveling a disagreeable gaze on him. “I choose the Jasmine.”
“I thought you would.” He nodded to Petrovski, and the younger officer took Martha’s arm and led her across the street to his patrol unit.
Tommy watched until the taillights disappeared in the night, then walked half a block north before turning down the alley. He didn’t kid himself that he was going straight to his car, that he would resist the temptation to go into the deli. He needed to check on Ellie.
Needed to see that she was all right.
Needed to let her know that he was there if she needed him.
Yeah, right.
He reached the gravel parking lot behind the deli, barely large enough for five vehicles, and stopped. Ellie’s usual space, the one directly underneath the only light, was empty. She was already gone.
A drive past her house proved a waste of time. No car in the driveway, no lights on besides the porch light. Her best friends in town were Anamaria and Jamie, who were both still at the festival, so she couldn’t have gone to see them, and she for damn sure hadn’t gone looking for him.
She probably was fine, just as she’d said.
Though he’d never felt less fine himself as he drove home to spend the rest of the night alone.
The pounding in Ellie’s head woke her from a sound, if restless, sleep. She tried to roll over in the bed and practically fell to the floor, shoving one hand out to catch herself. Puzzled, she opened one eye, squinting, then the other.
She was on the sofa in her office and, judging by the dim light leaking in around the blinds at the window, had spent the night there. Her mouth was dry and her tongue felt twice its size. Her body ached as if she’d lain in the same position all night, and her head was throbbing, pounding.
No, the pounding came from elsewhere, loud enough to make her wince, distant enough that telling where it originated was impossible.
“All right,” she said impatiently, but the words came out as little more than a mumble. Even that small movement of her jaw forming two indistinct syllables was enough to make her stomach turn, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself to slowly sit up.
The room danced before her, the distortion reminding her of a fun-house mirror. What had she done last night? She’d worked at the booth in the square, pretended to have a good time, had a run-in with Martha, seen Tommy and then…
She couldn’t remember. But her mouth tasted like sweat socks, and she still wore her wench’s costume, even the curly red wig. Had she gotten drunk? Was this misery a hangover?
Gritting her teeth, she pushed to her feet and swayed unsteadily. “Dear God, make this go away and I won’t do it again, I promise,” she whispered, but once again the words lacked voice.
Pulling the wig off and clutching it by a handful of curls, she stepped out into the restaurant. Sunday was the one day the deli was closed, and it seemed strange to have the sun up and the kitchen empty. Strange for her to be there. Stranger still because she was supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else, something important. She just couldn’t remember what.
The pounding was an insistent knock at the back door. She headed into the kitchen, the sound growing louder and more difficult to bear with each step. At last her fingers, stiff as if she’d slept with them knotted all night, twisted the lock, and she pulled the door open.
Tommy stood on the stoop, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his jaw unshaven and his hair on end. A few feet behind him was Kiki Isaacs, fellow detective and best friend to Sophy Marchand. Ellie never had cared much for Kiki, and certainly didn’t want to see her when she was feeling so whipped.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tommy demanded. “I’ve been knocking for nearly ten minutes.”
She leaned against the doorjamb for support. “I have a headache.” The words came out this time, though hoarse and raspy.
“A hangover is more like it,” Kiki muttered.
“We need to talk to you.” Tommy moved forward a step. He looked more serious than Ellie had ever seen him, and worried, too.
She glanced past him to what she could see of the parking lot. The Charger was there, parked at the foot of the steps, and a police car was behind it. When she looked back at him, she noticed the badge clipped to his belt.
Kiki, the Charger, the badge—he was working. This was an official police visit. Something had happened. Something bad that somehow involved her. But what? She hadn’t gone anywhere in the last eighteen hours. Hadn’t done anything.
Didn’t remember anything of the last nine hours.
Numbly she stepped back, moving into the kitchen, stopping to lean against a stainless-steel counter. Tommy rested his hands on the same counter from the other side, and Kiki took up position at the end, between them and the door.
“Did you spend the night here?” Tommy asked.
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?” Kiki sounded scornful. “You don’t know?”
Ellie looked at her a moment, then turned her attention back to Tommy. “Why? What’s going on?”
“After I saw you last night, where did you go?”
Her eyes closed briefly as she tried to remember. She’d been on her way from the booth into the restaurant when Martha had called her into the side yard. They’d talked, Martha had slapped her and Tommy had stepped out of the shadows. Where had she gone?
“I came in here,” she said, opening her eyes again. She’d walked through the kitchen, exchanged smiles with the staff, gone to the bar, talked to Deryl. What’s hot? she’d asked him, and he’d replied, The cider.
She hadn’t ordered cider, she was sure of that. Even fermented apple juice couldn’t match the bad taste in her mouth or cause the throb in her temples.
“Did you go anywhere else?”
I’ll be over there, she’d told Deryl. A table in the bar? A booth? With a drink much more potent than cider. After all, she couldn’t have a hangover without a stiff drink first.
But she couldn’t remember. Not leaving the bar, not sitting down, not taking a drink. Not going to her office or passing out on the couch. Her memory jumped from I’ll be over there to Tommy’s relentless pounding on the door just moments ago.
Had she gone anywhere?
“I don’t—I don’t remember. What is th
is about?”
“Those are the same clothes you had on last night,” Kiki said.
Ellie glanced down. The blouse Anamaria had loaned her was wrinkled and smelled faintly of fried onions, stale smoke and liquor. The scarf around her waist was twisted, and the black skirt looked, well, as if she’d slept in it. Her makeup was surely worn off or smudged, her cheek was tender and her hair was flat and limp after so many hours under the wig. Self-consciously she ran her fingers through it, then wiped under each eye with her fingertip. She needed a hot shower, a glass of cold water, a handful of aspirins and clean clothes, not in that order.
Then she needed to get on the road. That was the something important she’d forgotten: to put as many miles between her and Copper Lake as she could before anyone realized she was gone. She hadn’t even made it out of the damned restaurant. Now she was about eight hours behind schedule.
“No, this is my regular Sunday outfit,” she said sarcastically to Kiki. Straightening her shoulders, Ellie started to fold her arms across her middle, realized she was still clenching the wig in her left hand and dropped it on the counter. Both Tommy’s and Kiki’s gazes went to it, then to each other, and Tommy’s expression turned even more somber.
“What’s that?” Kiki gestured toward the skirt, and Ellie looked down.
The fabric was cheap, and so was the dye job, the black faded except for a large spot near the hem. “I don’t know. It was busy in the booth last night. I must have spilled something.”
“What, do you think?” Kiki asked, her tone suspicious and sarcastic and obnoxious all at once. “Let’s see…it doesn’t look like oil or mustard. Or cider or tea or cocoa or pop. What else did you have in there that you could have spilled?”
“I—I don’t know.” Ellie rubbed her forehead, wishing the dull throb that had settled there would go away, wishing she could think more clearly. Then she looked past Tommy, out the window behind him, and saw her car, and in the instant it took the sight to sink in, everything inside her went numb.
She was virtually always the last one out of the deli after closing. Though she wasn’t afraid of the dark, not anymore, she saw no reason to tempt fate. That was why she always parked in the same space, the one best lit by the streetlamp overhead.
But her car wasn’t in that space this morning. Instead, it was pulled carelessly across the two spaces next to her slot.
And there was a dent in the front end. A big one. Marked with something in a dark crimsony shade, like paint or…or…
Horror growing, she glanced at the stain on her skirt again. She gathered a handful of fabric, lifting the hem higher. Whatever had soaked into the material had left it heavy and stiff. Dear God, it wasn’t—it couldn’t be—
Tommy’s voice, sounding far away but still ominous, cut through the buzzing in her ears and fed the panic rising inside her. “Martha Dempsey died last night. It looks like a hit-and-run. Her body was found in the eleven-hundred block of Cypress Creek Road.”
The blood drained from Ellie’s face, and her hands, her legs, her entire body began to tremble. Oh God, Martha was dead. Her mother. The woman she should have loved best but instead had hated most. Killed. Just down the street from Ellie’s house. And there was a dent in Ellie’s car, and blood on Ellie’s skirt.
Whirling around, she reached the trash can just in time to empty her stomach.
Chapter 5
Tommy dampened a paper towel in the sink, squeezed it, then walked around the island, offering it to Ellie when the retching stopped. She was as pale as the ghosts that had flitted around the square the night before, her brown eyes looking huge and confused and…Was that guilt?
Absolutely not. Whatever had happened to Martha Dempsey, Ellie hadn’t been responsible.
Even if she had told the woman I wish to God you were dead a few hours earlier.
She accepted the paper towel, wiped her face, then tossed it into the trash can. Her hands were still shaking, and her pulse beat heavily at the base of her throat. “I—I live in the twelve-hundred block of Cypress Creek.”
He knew that. Kiki knew it. Presumably Martha Dempsey had known it. Had she gone looking for Ellie to continue the conversation he had interrupted outside? There were no sidewalks in that part of town; the only choices for walking were the uneven grassy shoulder and the street itself. She had likely taken the easier path. And someone had struck her as she staggered in the traffic lane.
Someone, but not Ellie.
Though her car had a dent in it.
Though the dent appeared to have blood on it.
Though her skirt also appeared to be bloodstained.
Not Ellie, he thought again fiercely.
“Someone hit her?” Her voice was weak, unsteady. “Who?”
“If the driver had stuck around to tell us, we’d call it a hit-and-stay instead of a hit-and-run.” Kiki all but sneered. “Do you have any clothes here? We’re gonna need that outfit.”
“I don’t….” Ellie shook her head longer than necessary, as if she didn’t realize she was doing it.
She was in a hell of a state. Hungover? Probably. Tommy could smell the alcohol on her. Sleeping in her office, still wearing the same clothes…She wasn’t a drinker; he’d never seen her take anything more than a celebratory sip or two of wine. But she’d been pretty stressed lately—ever since Martha Dempsey had come to town—and one or two drinks would have a more extreme effect on her than on a woman who was accustomed to liquor.
“We’re gonna need your car, too,” Kiki went on. “When did you get that dent?”
“I—I don’t know. It wasn’t there the last time I drove it. Someone must have banged into it in the parking lot last night.”
“Banged into it, huh?” Skepticism underlay Kiki’s tone. “Banged into it hard enough to spin it around and knock it out of its parking space, and nobody saw or heard or noticed?”
“The car was fine last time I drove it,” Ellie insisted.
“When was that?”
She rubbed her forehead again. “I don’t—Yesterday after-Yesterday afternoon, I think. I went home between, I don’t know, two and three. Then I came straight back here, and…”
“And?” Kiki prodded. “You didn’t go anywhere else?”
“No.” Ellie sounded sure—or was it desperate? Then her voice softened. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”
Tommy extended his hand, palm out, in Ellie’s direction. “Don’t say anything else.”
Predictably Kiki puffed up, scowling at him. “Hey, Maricci, this is an investigation into a suspicious death. If she’s got nothing to hide, then she should want to answer our questions.”
Ellie’s gaze shifted rapidly between the two of them, back and forth. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but apparently she decided to take his advice. She kept her mouth shut.
“Do you have anything to hide, Ellie?” Kiki asked pointedly.
Arms folded over her chest, Ellie didn’t say anything, but lowered her gaze to the floor.
“I’d like to speak with you outside, Detective.” Kiki’s voice had turned cold as ice, colder, even, than Ellie’s had been the night before when she’d wished Martha dead.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” he replied.
“You’ll come now.” Kiki went to the back door and yelled, “Petrovski, get in here!” When Pete trotted up the steps and into the kitchen, she stabbed a finger in Ellie’s direction. “Watch her. Don’t let her leave your sight.”
“Sure thing, Kik—uh, Detective.”
One brow arched, Kiki looked at Tommy, then jerked her head toward the door. Ignoring her, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and held it out to Ellie. “Call Robbie and tell him to get over here now.”
Looking sick, she took the phone and fumbled it open.
Tommy followed Kiki outside, closed the door and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, rocking back on his heels. She stalked down the steps to the gravel lot, paced to the rear of the Charger, th
en spun around and came back. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
He took the steps slowly, stopping a half-dozen feet from her. “Watch the attitude, Isaacs. I’m still your supervisor.”
She snorted. “And what are you teaching me? How to screw up an investigation? All the evidence points to Ellie, and everyone knows how you feel about her. Telling her not to say anything? Advising her to call a lawyer? Damn! You shouldn’t even be working this case.”
He wouldn’t defend what he’d done. If they’d switched places and she was telling someone not to answer his questions, he’d be pissed, too. One call to the lieutenant who headed the detective division or to the chief, and he’d be yanked off this case faster than Kiki could open her mouth.
And that would be fine with him. It would save him the effort of informing the L.T. that he wanted off.
“Damn it, Tommy, she’s a suspect!”
“Ellie didn’t kill thatwoman. Not on purpose, not by accident.”
“You sure of that? She knew the woman, but they weren’t friendly. She lied about leaving the deli last night. Her car has a nice Martha Dempsey—size dent with blood on it. Her dress has what looks like a bloodstain. All she says is ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t think so.’ And then there’s the wig.”
Seeing in his mind the tangle of new-penny-copper curls on the stainless counter, Tommy scowled. In the time it had taken to drive from the accident scene—crime scene?—to the deli, he’d tried to remember if he’d seen anyone else last night with a curly red wig. On or off duty, he was pretty observant, and the answer, regretfully, was no. Ellie’s was the only synthetic red hair he’d seen in a while.
Except for the single strand that the crime scene tech had lifted from Martha Dempsey’s body.
That didn’t mean it had come from Ellie’s wig. Or that it had fallen there after Martha was run down. It didn’t even mean it had gotten there through any doing of Ellie’s. The hair had been on Martha’s sweatshirt. Maybe when she’d slapped Ellie last night, the hair had caught on her hand, then fallen, landing on the shirt. Maybe she’d swiped her hand across her shirt, depositing it then.
Passion to Die for Page 8
