“After yesterday, it might be my mother,” she said, eyeing the sheet.
Without another word, he headed into the living room and pulled his suit pants on beneath the sheet. Then he tossed it onto the couch, reaching for his shirt as the someone knocked again.
Nervously, Beth led the way through her office and checked the peephole. “It’s just my neighbor from across the hall.”
When she opened the door, Marlon Birch gave her the slow smile he figured was a turn-on. Then he caught sight of Cole in the apartment doorway and the smile vanished. “Oh, this isn’t your other friend. What’s-his-name.’’
“No, it’s not,” Beth said, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how the remark annoyed her.
“Well, sorry, didn’t know you had company. But I’m out of coffee.”
“Sure, no problem.” She introduced the two men and started for the kitchen while they stood sizing each other up—Cole in bare feet and still buttoning his shirt, Marlon wearing only a pair of low-slung denim cutoffs.
Grabbing the can of coffee from the counter, she checked that she had an unopened one in the cupboard, then hurried back to her office.
“I really will go shopping one of these days,” Marlon said, taking the can.
“I think I’ve heard that before.”
He grinned, shot Cole a final, appraising look, and turned toward his own apartment
“What does he do when he’s dressed?” Cole said as she closed the door.
“He plays guitar in a band. And he usually sleeps days and works nights, so I don’t see a lot of him.”
“But he’s an all-right guy?”
“Well…actually, he’s pretty obnoxious. He figures he’s God’s gift to women.”
“Oh? Has he ever asked you out or anything?”
“More like ‘anything.’ And he was pretty insistent about it—and pretty incensed when I made it clear I wasn’t interested. I don’t think his ego takes kindly to being turned down.”
“You seem on friendly enough terms now.” She shrugged. “He stayed angry for a while, but he runs out of things a lot. And I’d rather be friends with my neighbors. As long as he doesn’t try to get too friendly again.”
THE ENTIRE WAY UP Duplex Avenue, Cole kept glancing in the rearview mirror.
The fact that he obviously thought someone might be following them had Beth’s anxiety level sky-high. Then he caught her watching him and smiled. It was nothing more than a friendly smile, but it made her feel less nervous. It also made her suddenly warm—a fact she did her best to ignore.
“We should get to Abbot’s in good time,” he said, glancing at his watch.
“I had my doubts when you took so long in the shower,” she told him.
That made him smile again. This time, she looked away. His smiles not only made her warm, they also did something funny to her insides. The man had an animal magnetism that she seemed to be growing less and less able to ignore.
Or maybe she was completely misreading her reactions. After all, she might not be certain that Brian was her Mr. Forever, but she was pretty sure she loved him. So maybe the pull she felt toward Cole was simply a function of the fact that he made her feel protected.
After all, last night, when she’d been so upset and frightened, his holding her had made all the difference in the world. Snuggled against him, she’d felt as if nothing could harm her.
But that was hardly the same as being attracted to him, and confusing the two would be a dumb, dumb thing to do. Which meant the only smart thing was to keep in mind that theirs was a business relationship—and to be careful she didn’t let it become anything more.
Just as she finished sorting that issue out in her head, he glanced at her and smiled once more. Not merely with his mouth, but with his eyes, and with those little laugh lines, and with the angle of his jaw.
Her heart skipped a beat. At the moment, he was making her feel anything but safe.
“This is the street,” he said, flicking on his turn signal.
Roselawn was one of the more modest streets in the tony district of North Toronto. Still, the mostly brick houses were attractive and well kept. As Cole swung the Mustang into the driveway of one of them, she took a deep breath.
He cut the ignition and glanced at her. ‘‘Ready?”
“I guess. But what about last night? Do we tell him about the shooter?”
“No. We’re on a fact-finding mission, so it’s better not to say anything that might get us off track. Especially not when he’s got a plane to catch.” Reaching over, Cole gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’ll do fine.”
She felt a tiny flutter near her heart It made her wonder why she never felt anything like that at Brian’s touch—and made her afraid that, deep down, she knew exactly why.
Chapter Seven
Practically the first thing Frank Abbot said to Beth was that he’d questioned her while he was actively investigating Larisa’s murder. She didn’t recall him, but that was hardly surprising. He’d have been about forty then, and now he was in his early sixties.
A large man, with only a gray fringe of hair, he had piercing blue eyes that both belied his age and made her feel more than a little intimidated. Still, she’d managed to get through her story.
“I guess that’s everything,” she concluded.
Except, of course, that the murderer had been wearing her father’s face. But she had no intention of telling Abbot that. As planned, she’d simply said she hadn’t recalled the killer’s face.
When she glanced at Cole, his nod of approval made her feel slightly less nervous.
“What do you think?” he asked Frank. “Does what she’s recalled mesh with the facts?”
“Perfectly.”
The word made her stomach lurch. If everything else she’d remembered was right…But no, her father just couldn’t have been the killer. Whatever else was right, that part had to be wrong.
“The victim and the murderer were standing precisely where she remembers seeing them,” Frank explained. “Plus, the killer was wearing sneakers and a white terry-cloth robe.”
“You knew that?” Beth whispered.
“Uh-huh. We found bloodstained fiber evidence from the robe. But only in the area where the stabbing actually took place—even though, afterward, the killer went down the hall to shower. So the logical explanation was that he’d removed the robe before walking away from the body. And your recollection confirms that.”
“You’re saying he,” Cole said. “Is there any chance the killer was a woman?”
Beth glanced at him, curious about why he’d asked that.
“It’s possible,” Frank told him. “As a matter of fact, one of the people we questioned was a woman.”
“Really?” Cole’s expression was suddenly very strange. He looked as if he half wanted Frank to tell him all about the female suspect and half didn’t want to hear another word. So what was the story?
“Mrs. Niebuhr was short and slight,” Frank was saying. “About five foot two?” he asked Beth.
She shook her head. “I remember her as shorter than my mother, but I was only eight All adults seemed tall to me.”
“Well, she was…I guess petite’s the word,” Frank said, focusing on Cole again. “So the killer certainly could have been a woman. The stab wounds didn’t indicate a particularly strong individual. But we ruled out our female suspect. And now, of course, it’s a man Beth remembers seeing.
“What we did know, from the angles of the wounds, was that the killer was right-handed and somewhere between about five foot seven and five-eleven. As far as physical description goes, that’s all we had.
“At any rate, getting back to the bathrobe, we were never sure exactly what he’d done with it, but Beth’s remembering the garbage bag gives me that piece of the puzzle.
“As for knowing he was wearing sneakers, he tracked blood with them. Men’s size nine. I suppose he eventually put them in the bag, too, because there was no ev
idence he was wearing them when he left the house.”
“Do you know what he was wearing?” Cole asked.
“We assumed the clothes he’d arrived in. As for shoes, I don’t know for sure, but I always had a feeling he brought extra ones with him.”
“So he just walked out of the house carrying a garbage bag? And on a street like Tranby nobody noticed?”
Frank shook his head. “I don’t think he was carrying the bag when he left. I mean, not that anybody would have seen. A sports bag of Dr. Niebuhr’s was missing, and we figure he used it to take the evidence away in.”
“So, when you add everything up…Frank, you didn’t really believe the unknown-intruder theory at all, did you? I mean, when you figure a killer’s done something as premeditated as bringing along an extra pair of shoes and a bathrobe, he—”
“No, that he didn’t bring with him. Dr. Niebuhr owned a white terry-cloth robe that was also missing after the murder.”
“Oh, Lord,’’ Beth murmured, feeling decidedly queasy. “He killed Larisa wearing Mark’s robe? That’s—I can’t even think of a word for what that is.”
“Macabre always seemed an appropriate one to me,” Frank offered.
Cole shot her a sympathetic glance. “Are you okay with this?”
She hesitated. He was offering her the out he’d promised. But she’d hung in this far, and surely things couldn’t get any worse. “I’m fine,” she said.
Cole’s gaze lingered on her for another second, then he looked at Frank once more. “What about the drains? Any useful evidence from his shower?”
“Uh-uh. We were hoping for hair, of course, but the guy was either really careful or really lucky.”
“Or bald.”
Frank barked a laugh. “Yeah, we thought of that, too. At any rate, the only hair we found had come from the Niebuhrs.
“But look,” he said to Beth. “Before we get into any more of this, let me ask you about something else. I got on the Internet last night and did some research on recovered memories. And a lot of experts figure that facts people have picked up over the years get all mixed up with what they ultimately recall.
“So, with your mother knowing details the general public didn’t, and your uncle knowing even more of them, how much had you been told before that memory finally surfaced?”
She slowly shook her head. “I really didn’t know anything more than I’d read in those newspaper articles. After I decided I wanted to make myself remember, I did try talking to my mother. But she just got upset. And my uncle…Well, he’d never talked to me about the murder and I’d never asked him to.”
“You mean, over the years, you all…acted like it had never happened?”
“No. We just never really talked about it. But on the anniversary of Larisa’s death, we always take flowers to her grave, and—”
“The anniversary of her death. July 27. That’s tomorrow.”
Beth nodded, wondering if she’d find tomorrow’s visit to the cemetery even more difficult than usual.
“Okay, then,” Frank continued, “can you remember anything about what the killer looked like?”
“No,” she said, not meeting either Frank’s gaze or Cole’s.
“Well, do you have any sense of whether you’d seen him before that day?”
“No.”
“Might she have?” Cole said.
Frank shrugged. “Maybe. You were right about my never really believing the unknown-intruder theory. That was just a public relations ploy.
‘‘The case was dragging on and we hadn’t laid any charges. Hell, we didn’t even have the murder weapon. The killer took that with him, too. So PR put out the unknown-intruder story because the public was demanding to know why we weren’t getting anywhere.
“But to answer your question, if the killer did know Mrs. Niebuhr, it’s possible Beth had seen him before. She spent a fair amount of time at the Nie-buhrs’ house.”
Beth held her breath, waiting to see where Frank would go from there. When he said nothing more, she exhaled slowly, telling herself if he’d suspected her father, that had been the perfect time to say so.
Deep down, though, she knew his silence might not mean a thing.
Finally, he glanced at Cole and said, “Why don’t I run through some of the facts that might help you?’’
“Great.”
“Well, you probably read in one of those articles that a screen had been removed from an open kitchen window. But the dust on the ledge wasn’t disturbed, which meant the killer was just trying to mislead us and actually came in through a door.”
“But all the doors were locked,” Beth said.
Cole looked at her.
“I’ve always remembered everything that happened before the murder,” she reminded him. “And Larisa and I checked all the doors before we went up to the attic.”
Frank nodded. “According to Niebuhr, his wife was pretty obsessive about keeping the doors locked. And there was no sign of forced entry. So, assuming they all were locked, the killer had a key.”
“And who had keys?” Cole asked.
“That was our problem. Basically, only the Nie-buhrs. They’d given a front door key to Angela Gregory, but that was it.
“Your mother had misplaced hers,” he added to Beth. “It didn’t turn up until weeks after the murder, which is why she couldn’t just unlock the front door when she got there and nobody answered.”
“But she found the back door unlocked because the killer left through it,” Beth said, thinking she must have those articles memorized word for word.
“Right,” Frank agreed. “At any rate, the question of who could have gotten his hands on a key was an important one. So after we ruled out the husband as a suspect, we—”
“What? My uncle was one of your suspects?”
Frank quickly shook his head. “Not really. We were able to eliminate him right away. He was in his office all morning. His secretary confirmed that.
“So then we checked out the locksmith who’d installed the locks. The Niebuhrs had new ones installed when they bought the house. At any rate, the locksmith came up clean, so we started questioning other people who might have gotten access to a key. By the time we were done, we’d questioned several people who’d known the victim—and who might have had a motive to murder her. But we never came up with solid evidence pointing to anyone we suspected.”
“And who were your suspects?” Cole asked.
Frank looked at Beth once more. This time, his gaze made her hands grow clammy and started cold sweat trickling down between her breasts.
He was going to say that her father had been one of them. And would that mean her recollection hadn’t confused his face with the killer’s?
“Beth?” Cole said. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Do you want to wait outside?”
The trickle of sweat had become a stream. Cole knew what Frank was about to tell them as well as she did.
“No, I’m all right,” she said, forcing the words out. “Whoever the suspects were, I want to know.”
“Well,” Frank said slowly, “it’s not so much who the suspects were that might bother you.”
“What, then?”
He glanced at Cole.
“If she didn’t want to hear, she’d leave,” he said.
She held her breath, waiting for Frank to go on. She didn’t want to hear, yet she had to.
LOOKING RELUCTANT, ABBOT finally clasped his hands on his desk and leaned forward.
Cole glanced at Beth, wondering if he should have tried to press her into leaving. He didn’t know what was coming, but Abbot seemed damned uneasy about the prospect of telling them.
“Well, Beth,” he said, “the thing is that your aunt had numerous…involvements. Quite frequently, she’d have a male visitor while Dr. Niebuhr was at his office.”
“What?” she whispered. “You mean she was having affairs?”
Abbot cleared his throat. “I guess that depends on how you define �
��affair.’ According to the neighbors, Mrs. Niebuhr would sometimes have more than one man visiting her within brief spans of time. In any event, we were able to identify all but one of the men she’d been seeing before her death, and these men were our prime suspects in the case.”
Beth simply stared across Abbot’s desk as if she couldn’t believe what the man had said. When she finally looked at Cole, his heart went out to her. Given the way she talked about Larisa, she’d obviously idolized her. And learning her idol hadn’t been Snow White had clearly shaken her.
“Did Mark know?” she finally asked. “About the men?”
“Only after we told him,” Abbot said “Once we’d established that your aunt had been intimate with them, we had to talk to Dr. Niebuhr and see if there was anything useful he could tell us.
“I’d assumed he must have had at least some idea of what she’d been up to, but he was completely shocked. In fact, she’d actually told him about two of the men coming to the house, and he thought their visits were perfectly innocent.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Cole said.
Abbot shrugged. “I guess Mrs. Niebuhr was pretty convincing. She claimed she was having problems with her back, which explained one of the guys. He was a massage therapist. The other one she told Nie-buhr about was a Spanish teacher—supposedly giving her private lessons.”
“And they were two out of how many?” Cole said.
“During the year before her death, there were at least three others’ Two, we were able to identify and question. And, as I said, there was one we couldn’t ID. One of the neighbors had seen him a couple of times. Three, to be precise. But her description was too generic to be much help. You know the kind—average height and weight, brown hair, somewhere in his thirties.”
Cole nodded. The description might be generic, but it would have fit Glen Gregory.
“The neighbor had never gotten a good enough look at the guy to help a police artist,” Abbot continued. “And the only unusual thing she noticed about him—which really wasn’t too unusual in the seventies—was that he had a ponytail. And that all three times she saw him he was wearing a hat of some sort.
The Missing Hour Page 8
