The Switch

by Sandra Brown

  He popped back out. She peeled off her short nightgown, dressed in record time, and was working her feet into a pair of sneakers when the doorbell pealed. Passing the guest room, she noticed that the door was opened a crack. She ran her fingers through her hair as she crossed the living room and reached for the deadbolt lock just as the bell sounded a second time.

  "Sorry," she said breathlessly as she pulled open the door. "Ms. Lloyd?"

  The federal officer's eyes dropped to the Tweety Bird on her T-shirt. Self-consciously she smoothed her hand over it. "You're half an hour early."

  "We apologize. Traffic wasn't as heavy as we anticipated. I'm Special Agent Hank Tobias. This is Agent Patterson." In sync, they proffered their IDs.

  She stepped aside and motioned them in. "Have a seat." Tobias sat down where she'd indicated. Her dishabille hadn't escaped him. "Did we get you up?"

  "I confess. I didn't fall asleep until after three. Since my sister's murder, my nights haven't been very restful."

  "I can understand why," Patterson said somberly. "Condolences."

  "Thank you."

  "Don't you have friends or family staying with you?"

  She thought about Chief hiding in the guest room. He was neither friend nor family, so she wasn't exactly lying when she said, "I've had friends offer to stay with me, but I value my privacy."

  "Probably a wise choice." Tobias smiled, but he didn't impress her as someone who made a habit of it. "Grieving is a very private thing."

  "Would you like coffee? I know I could use some." "Sounds good to me. Mr. Patterson?"

  "I'd love some. Nice of you to offer."

  "It won't take a minute to put on. Then we'll get down to business. I'm anxious to hear what you have to tell me."

  "Likewise," Tobias said.

  She left them in the living room and went into the kitchen. Up till then, she had forgotten about the mess. The room could have been declared a disaster area. The floor was still spattered with broken glass, spilled wine, and blood, both hers and Chief's. Bloody dish towels littered the dining table.

  Walking across the floor even with shoes on was a safety hazard. Glass crunched beneath the rubber soles of her sneakers. She took the broom and dustpan from the pantry and was about to clear herself a path when Tobias and Patterson wandered in.

  "What happened here?" Tobias asked.

  She couldn't tell the truth without alerting them to Chief's presence. "I, uh, had a little accident last night."

  Tobias, obviously a man accustomed to getting all the facts, continued looking at her.

  "The lights flickered out during the thunderstorm," she said, improvising. "The sudden darkness startled me. I dropped a bottle of wine. Stepped on the broken glass." She finished with a self-deprecating shrug. "I was too tired to clean up last night."

  Tobias was staring at the blood spots on the floor and the stained kitchen towels. "You cut your feet?"

  "My heel came down on a piece of glass."

  "Did you go to the hospital?"

  "Hospital? No, no, it wasn't that serious. Just a sliver, really."

  "And it bled that much?"

  She cut her eyes from him to Patterson and then back to Tobias. Laughing nervously, she replied, "You know how tiny punctures like that can be sometimes. I thought it would never stop bleeding."

  "You should be more careful, Melina."

  "Right. I agree. I should definitely, be more careful." Quickly turning toward the counter, she pulled the coffeemaker from the appliance garage built into the cabinetry.

  "Did you get breakfast on your flight down from D.C. this morning, Agent Patterson?"

  "Juice, coffee, and a muffin, if you want to call that breakfast."

  Over her shoulder she smiled at them disarmingly. That's why neither expected what came next.

  The floral arrangement on the counter had peaked days ago. Last night Jem had moved it into the kitchen for disposal. The flowers were wilted, dark, and dry. The water in the bottom of the vase was viscous and had begun to give off an unpleasant odor.

  She reached for it now and, with the sympathy card still attached by a thin pink ribbon, turned and swung the heavy glass vase, flowers and all, at Tobias's head. It caught him on the temple and split the skin on impact.

  "Bloody- hell!" He roared in pain and careened backward into the kitchen table, knocking a wooden bowl of fruit to the floor. Oranges and apples bounced amid the broken glass, now also strewn with dying flowers and splashed with stagnant water.

  While Tobias struggled to regain his balance, Patterson lunged for her. She dodged and tried to leap over Tobias to escape through the door, but his hand shot out and caught her ankle. As she pitched forward, her collarbone landed hard against the doorjamb, and she cried out.

  Chief, appearing suddenly, shoved her aside as he barged into the kitchen, clutching a golf putter. The two men were stunned to see him, and he used that to his advantage. Putting his entire weight behind the lateral swing, he whacked Patterson in the ribs with the golf club. Patterson bent over double. Chief hit him hard again on the back of his head. He went down with a grunt.

  But his back served as a trampoline for Tobias, who launched himself at Chief.

  "Melina, get out!"

  Chief's warning had barely cleared his lips when Tobias grabbed him and practically threw him, face first, into the wall. He dropped the golf club and should have been knocked out, but miraculously he had enough fight left in him to jam his elbow into Tobias's Adam's apple. The other man stumbled backward, then lowered his head and charged, sending Chief reeling through the door and into the hallway, where he somersaulted backward. Tobias slammed the door shut, then wheeled around and reached for her with one hand while yanking a handgun from a concealed holster with the other.

  He'd been quick, but not so quick that Melina couldn't react. She had retrieved the golf putter. Before his hand had completely cleared his jacket, she struck his wrist hard enough to crack bone.

  Chief came crashing back in. He executed a karate chop to the back of Tobias's neck. His benumbed hand dropped the pistol, his eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he went down like a sack of cement.

  Patterson was still out cold.

  Chief braced his hands on his knees and hung his head between his shoulders. His breathing was labored and loud. He coughed and wiped his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. "I hope to hell you have a real good reason."

  "They weren't FBI."

  "You know this with some degree of certainty?"

  "He called me Melina."

  "He called you Melina."

  "Isn't that a little out of character for a hard-ass, button-down FBI agent?"

  "Maybe. But it's not what I'd call a real good reason for assaulting a federal officer, Melina."

  "That's not all. I was told last night that Patterson was from the Dallas office. When I asked about his flight from D.C. this morning—"

  "I heard."

  "Why would an FBI agent lie?"

  "Fuck," he said, which seemed to sum up his feelings on the entire matter, especially his nose, which continued to drip blood. "I give up. Why?"

  "I don't know."

  Now that the fight was over, her survival instinct had ebbed and common sense was reasserting itself. Maybe her imagination was working overtime. Given the events of the week, she might have overreacted, might have been looking for bogeymen so hard she hadn't recognized the good guys. Not only would she be in trouble, she'd dragged Chief into it with her.

  "I could be wrong," she said apprehensively.

  He considered that, then knelt down beside Tobias and fished the small black wallet from his pocket. He looked at it, then flipped it up toward Melina. "Looks real."

  The photo ID appeared to be the genuine article. She covered her mouth and whispered, "Oh, shit."

  Chief came to his feet and for a long moment they stared hard into each other's eyes.

  At last he said, "I'm not buying it."

  "
Neither am I," she agreed on a soft expulsion of breath. He hitched his head in the direction of the bedrooms. "Get your keys."

  CHAPTER 21

  Holy... !

  The unfinished exclamation came from FBI Agent Patterson when he joined Special Agent Hank Tobias in Melina Lloyd's kitchen.

  For a time both men silently surveyed the damage. Eventually Patterson turned to the agent from the Washington office for his more experienced opinion. "Any ideas?"

  Tobias nudged a dead flower petal with the toe of his shoe. "Beyond the obvious that some kind of altercation took place, I haven't the foggiest."

  When Melina Lloyd had failed to answer her doorbell, Tobias had tested the front door and found it unlocked. He opened it and called out her name. His voice was absorbed by the hollow silence of an empty house.

  Had she intentionally stood him up? That could indicate she had something to hide. Reluctance to be questioned usually signified criminal involvement on some level. Or, if she'd had no choice but to leave her house unattended and unlocked, that could mean any number of things. None he could think of were good. Or—and this possibility filled him with dread—she had met with a fate similar to her sister's and was unable to respond.

  Silently, using hand signals, he and Patterson went in. Splitting up, Tobias took the side of the house that included the living area, dining room, and kitchen. Patterson crept down the hallway. Soon they were calling out to each other that the house was empty. Tobias had replaced his handgun in his shoulder holster and stood just inside the kitchen door, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened while he waited for Patterson to rejoin him.

  Now he raised his chin toward the other side of the house. "What does it look like back there?"

  "Two bedrooms. Both slept in. A bathroom with a bloody handprint and kitchen towel in it. Bandages. Spots of dried blood on the carpet and on the pillowcase in what appears to be the guest room. A baggie filled with water."

  "Water?"

  "Could be a makeshift ice pack."

  "Makes sense. If somebody got hit on the head with that vase."

  Patterson nodded. "That's about it. The closet door was open, but nothing had been disturbed in it or in the bureau drawers. Jewelry box was full. No sign of theft. No sign of struggle except in here."

  As Tobias mentally sifted through the facts of Patterson's verbal report, he unconsciously smoothed his hand over his expensive silk necktie. Silver in color, it perfectly matched his shirt, which matched the chalk stripe in his navy blue suit. He didn't have a hobby other than daily gym workouts. He didn't take vacations to exciting destinations. He didn't own a boat or a pair of snow skis or a set of golf clubs. He drove a company car, and it was his only vehicle. He lived alone in a small apartment, using the second bedroom as an extra closet. Clothes were his one indulgence, and he wore them like a model.

  "So all the action took place in here," he mused out loud.

  "Unless I missed something."

  "I'll take a look," Tobias said.

  "I won't be offended."

  But instead of moving in the direction of the bedrooms, Tobias gingerly stepped to the other side of the kitchen, moving along the perimeter of the room so as not to disturb anything that might later become evidence—to what crime, he didn't yet know He covered the back doorknob with a handkerchief and opened it.

  "Garage is empty. Where's her car?" he asked rhetorically. "Want me to call DPD?"

  "I'd say so."

  "And report what?"

  "Damned if I know. No sign of B and E. No corpse." "Abduction?"

  "Possibly," Tobias agreed absently.

  Patterson placed the call.

  The senior agent left the kitchen, moved through the undisturbed living room, and down the hallway. He came first to the guest bedroom and studied the bed, where someone had recently slept. As Patterson had noted, there was a smudged bloodstain on the pillowcase. And something else. Tobias leaned in for a closer look. He determined what it was and added it to his database of information, but left it untouched for later collection and cataloguing by DPD.

  He went from there into the master bedroom and stood beside the woman's bed. The nightgown appeared to have been thoughtlessly removed, not ripped off in a violent struggle. Only one of the pillows on the bed bore the imprint of a head. She had slept alone.

  He noticed the framed snapshot on the nightstand and was looking at it when Patterson rejoined him. "On their way." Then, noticing what held Tobias's attention, he said, "I saw that earlier. Amazing, isn't it?"

  Tobias had learned that the Lloyd sisters were twins. Lawson had told him in their meeting earlier that morning."By all accounts they were interchangeable," the detective had said. "I couldn't have told them apart. Except that Gillian was dead."

  At Tobias's request the homicide detective had also provided them with some background information. "Both were successful in their chosen careers. Both single. Neither has ever been married. Although Gillian was engaged."

  "What about him?"

  "Asshole," Lawson said laconically.

  "Can you be more specific?"

  "Class-A asshole."

  If everything Lawson subsequently told them about Jem Hennings was true, the description fit. Tobias had said, "I'm sure you checked out his alibi."

  "He was cleared. Plus he had no motive that we could see. Seemed sincerely shaken."

  "And Melina?" Tobias probed.

  "In what respect?"

  "Did she have a motive?"

  The detective firmly shook his head. "Not even a life insurance policy. The twins had agreed to make their favorite charity their beneficiaries. After funeral costs and all her outstanding bills are paid, everything in Gillian's estate goes to it."

  "Melina seemed okay with that?"

  "I never asked but felt I didn't have to. They donated the inheritance from their parents a few years ago. Wasn't a huge amount, but it was a nice piece of change. Neither touched a cent of it."

  At the conclusion of the meeting, Lawson had said, "If my opinion means anything to you, Melina Lloyd's clean as a whistle."

  "Wasn't she the last person to see Gillian alive?" Patterson asked.

  "Right," the detective said. "Besides the killer. Which wasn't her. If you're looking for a conspiracy, I'd bet my left nut that she's not involved."

  Tobias had come away from the meeting with a distinct impression of Melina Lloyd and her late twin. Apparently they'd shared the same values. And, as this photograph attested, the physical resemblance was almost eerie. "Lawson wasn't exaggerating," he remarked as he reached into his jacket for his cell phone.

  "You calling Lawson?"

  "His case is closed, but, as a courtesy..." He dialed. "While I'm talking to him, call DMV and get her car tag number. Let's see if we can locate it. It might be parked at the local supermarket where she's gone to pick up some solvent that works on bloodstained carpet."

  "Is that what you think?" Patterson asked. "That she made a mess and it caused her to forget her appointment with us?"

  Tobias thought about the murder and kidnapping cases that had triggered his search for a pattern. Women had been viciously slain by strangers with no apparent motive, their murderers committing suicide before they could even be questioned. Babies had disappeared without a trace. The common denominator: infertility clinics where alternative methods of conception were performed on a routine basis. Frightening implications.

  Solemnly, Tobias answered Patterson's question. "No. That's not what I think."

  Supremely irritated, Jem Hennings rapidly tapped his pen against his desk pad. The market was open, trading was brisk, and what was he doing? Wasting his valuable, revenue-producing time on damage control.

  Over the last few days, bad news had been breaking over him like cresting ocean waves. Since Gillian's body had been discovered, he felt as though he'd been holding his breath. It was becoming increasingly difficult to come up for air, and now he felt his lungs were about to burst.r />
  "Okay, what went wrong?" he asked into his cell phone."He was there."

  "Who?"

  "The astronaut."

  Jem's pen stopped his rapid tattoo. "Christopher Hart was with Melina? Inside her house?"

  Hart had given these bozos the slip last night after they had bungled taking him out for good. It was supposed to have looked like the work of tree huggers with a grudge against the space program for getting funds that would be better spent on conserving planet Earth. Jem had composed the letter that was to have been attached to Hart's body when it was found floating in the Trinity with a bullet in the head.

  But Hart had been lucky. When passersby became witnesses, the "tree huggers" in ski masks had fled. When they returned later in another vehicle and without their masks, Hart was nowhere to be found.

  Jem had had people looking all over Dallas for him, from the parking lot of the bar where he'd left his car overnight, to The Mansion, and at all points in between. After reporting all that bad news to Brother Gabriel, he'd spent a sleepless night.

  Meanwhile, Hart had been playing cozy with Melina.

  Resentment for Hart burned deep and hot inside him. Last night, Melina had shooed him out of her house, pleading exhaustion and a desire to be alone. Apparently her aversion for company hadn't extended to Christopher Hart, Jem thought bitterly. That was reason enough to hate him.

  But Jem's hatred went beyond jealousy. Hart was making him look bad in Brother Gabriel's eyes. Because of Hart, he was at risk of losing Brother Gabriel's trust and respect. That was reason enough to kill him.

  Forgetting the stock market and the potential income he was losing for his clients and himself, ignoring the call notes that were continually being thrust beneath his nose by a persistent secretary, and pretending not to see the blinking icon on his computer screen indicating that he had E-mail, he

  growled into his telephone receiver, "Starting at the beginning and tell me what happened."

  It was worse than he had expected. "Melina saw through you?"

  "Either that or she doesn't care for the FBI."

  The thug had been recruited for service by Brother Gabriel himself, who'd baptized him and enrolled him in the elite army, renaming him Joshua after the Old Testament warrior. Jem didn't know his real name. No one did. The man had lived under so many aliases that even he had probably forgotten which name was authentic.