Night Whispers

by Judith McNaught

  She glared at him in mock affront; then she looked at Sloan. “Do you want me to take him down for that, or are you going to do it?”

  Before Sloan could reply, Noah plopped a tomato from Sloan’s pile onto the cutting board in front of Courtney and handed her a knife. “Sloan was just telling me her philosophy about cooking. Let me share it with you.”

  Courtney picked up the knife and made a halfhearted attempt to saw on the tomato. “Eeeeuw, this is disgusting,” she said. “I am never going to get on the Sally show. This house is beginning to feel like real people live here.”

  Douglas walked in soon after, when the chopped onion was sautéing and all the preparation work was done. “By any chance,” he asked Sloan, “is there enough for an extra person?”

  “More than enough,” she said.

  Courtney was irate. “You can’t eat because you didn’t do any work.”

  “But—there’s nothing left to do,” Douglas replied, innocently looking around.

  Noah gave him a knowing look. “Nice timing.”

  “I thought so,” Douglas shamelessly replied, and settled into a chair at the kitchen table.

  34

  “It’s after midnight,” Sloan said as she strolled along the beach toward Carter’s house, her hand held in Noah’s warm clasp, his long fingers entwined with hers. Her senses were alive to his touch, his nearness, even the sound of his deep, rich voice.

  “I had fun,” he said.

  “I’m glad.”

  “You make everything seem like fun.”

  “Thank you.”

  Quietly, and without emphasis, he added, “I’m crazy about you.”

  Sloan’s heart slammed into her ribs. I love you, she thought. “Thank you,” she whispered, because she couldn’t tell him the truth.

  He slanted her a sidewise smile. “Is that all?” he asked, sounding a little disappointed.

  Sloan stopped. “No, it isn’t,” she said softly, and leaning up on her toes, she told him with her kiss what she dared not tell him with words. His arms closed around her, kissing her back, his body hardening quickly against hers.

  He loved her, too, she thought.

  They were partway across the back lawn, near Carter’s putting green when Sloan belatedly remembered the infrared beams and her hand flew to her throat. “I forgot about those things!”

  “What things?”

  She laughed at her nervous fright. “The infrared beams—If the security system had been on, we’d have tripped the beams when we started across the lawn. Dishler must have seen me go out and bypassed the beams so they wouldn’t be activated when the security system was armed.”

  “Either that,” Noah joked, “or the cops are pulling up to the front door right now.”

  “No,” Sloan reassured him. “Paris told me that when the alarm is tripped, all the house lights go on and the sirens go off.”

  “What?” he joked. “Haven’t you ever heard of a silent alarm that goes straight to the police station?”

  Not only had Sloan heard of that, she could have told him how to wire and install one. Rather than add one more thing to the list of items he was going to feel deceived about later, she said brightly, “I know all about that stuff.”

  He tightened his hand in a playful squeeze. “I’ll just bet you do,” he said, and Sloan was immediately wary.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Simple logic and brilliant insight. Combined, they lead me to conclude that a woman who learns self-defense to protect herself when she’s walking on the street would undoubtedly have a very good security system to protect herself when she sleeps. Am I right?” he said with smug superiority.

  “I can’t deny—” Sloan began, just as a shadowy figure on an upstairs balcony called softly, “Hi, you two!”

  It was Paris, wearing a robe, standing at the railing.

  “How are you feeling?” Sloan asked.

  “Much better. I slept all day, though, and now I’m wide awake. Paul and Father both came in around eleven, but they went straight to bed. I was thinking of going down to the kitchen and making some hot chocolate. Do you want some?”

  Sloan said yes; she would have said yes if she was falling asleep on her feet, but Noah shook his head and stopped at the back door. “I’m a little tired, and I couldn’t ingest another molecule of anything.” He wasn’t too tired to give her a long and very thorough kiss good-night, or to continue to hold her in his arms afterward, which gave Sloan the thrilling feeling that he didn’t like to leave her. Leaning forward, he unlocked the back door with the key she gave him and swung it open. “I’ll call you in the—”

  Paris’s scream cut him off. “Great-grandmother!— No—Help me!”

  Sloan whirled and raced through the doorway and down the back hall in the general direction of Paris’s scream, with Noah right behind her. Beyond the kitchen was a cozy study where Edith had been watching television earlier, and the scene that greeted Sloan struck terror in her heart. Edith was lying slumped over on the sofa with Paris bending over her, trying to turn her over. “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Paris was moaning. “A heart attack. No one here with her . . .”

  “Call nine-one-one,” Sloan ordered her sister, taking over. Sloan gently rolled the elderly woman onto her back. “We’ll start CPR and—” Sloan broke off when she saw the gunshot wound in her great-grandmother’s chest. She sprang to her feet. “Get Paul!” Sloan shouted over her shoulder, already running. “Don’t touch anything! Turn on the house lights—”

  For a split second Noah thought she was running for a telephone, but there was one on the desk, and then he heard the back door crash open against the house.

  “Call nine-one-one!” he shouted at Paris, charging out of the room in pursuit of Sloan. He couldn’t believe the impulsive little fool was actually outside looking for a murderer.

  He ran out the back door, his gaze flying over the deserted lawn; then he turned right, running along the back of the house because that seemed like the most logical route. He rounded the corner just as she dodged into the shadows up ahead. When he saw her again, she was flattened against the side of the house at the very front, looking around the corner. “Sloan!” he shouted, but she was already on the run, streaking across the front lawn, dodging shrubbery and jumping over obstacles as if they were hurdles in a footrace. He ran after her, gaining on her, too furious and frightened for her to appreciate the efficiency and agility of her movements—or to register why what she was doing looked uncannily familiar.

  She stopped near the front gates. Her head drooped forward in defeat, and her shoulders began to heave with silent weeping. Noah caught up to her, grabbed her arms, and spun her around. “What the hell—”

  “She’s dead,” she sobbed. “She’s dead—” The tears streaming down her cheeks doused his wrath over her recklessness, and Noah pulled her against him, wrapping his arms tightly around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  In the distance, sirens were wailing, moving closer, and Noah noticed the electric gates beginning to open. He moved Sloan out of the driveway as two police cruisers arrived from opposite directions, sirens wailing, light bars flashing.

  35

  The Palm Beach Police Department was not only efficient, it also knew how to deal with its wealthy, prominent citizens without ruffling their feathers, Sloan noticed dully.

  Within minutes after the first patrol officers arrived at the scene, they’d sized up the situation, rounded up the occupants of the house so that evidence wouldn’t be disturbed, and notified the Palm Beach County medical examiner. The Palm Beach PD crime scene team had arrived soon after, secured the area, and began dusting for fingerprints. In the meantime, two detectives began the process of interviewing everyone in the house.

  The cook, housekeeper, butler, and caretaker were kept waiting in the dining room. Family members and friends were placed in the living room so that they would have privacy and comfort. Since Gary Dishler ranked bet
ween the two groups, Carter was asked to determine where he should be kept waiting, and he chose the living room.

  Captain Walter Hocklin had been summoned from his bed to personally make certain that Carter Reynolds and his family were not subjected to any sort of unnecessary inconvenience by Detectives Dennis Flynn and Andy Cagle, or the other police officers who were stationed inside and outside.

  In the study where Edith’s body lay, camera flashes went off again and again as the medical examiner photographed the body before it was moved. Sloan flinched inwardly each time she saw the camera flash reflected in the hallway mirror outside the living room, and she prayed Paris didn’t notice or realize what they were doing.

  As she sat in the living room with Noah, Carter, and the others, Sloan was a mass of bewildered futility and angry disbelief. Detectives Flynn and Cagle had finished interviewing everyone individually, but after conferring with the team in the study, they said they needed to clarify and confirm some of their information.

  The detectives referred to their notes while Captain Hocklin settled into a chair and courteously explained to his audience why this was necessary: “I know you’re all tired and upset,” he said, but he addressed his remarks mostly to Carter and Paris. “Before we start bothering you with more questions, I’ll tell you what little we know at this point. Most important to you will be the knowledge that Mrs. Reynolds did not suffer. The bullet pierced her heart and she died instantly.

  “There’s evidence of forced entry—a window in the room where she was found was broken and unlocked. Without your help, we can’t tell what was taken, but drawers were ransacked. We have no idea how long the killer was in the house or whether he was in other parts of it. In the morning, we’ll need you to look around and tell us what, if anything, is missing.”

  He paused, and Carter nodded curtly.

  “We’re going to do everything possible to get this ordeal over with as quickly and smoothly as possible. We’re dusting for fingerprints in the bedrooms your family and guests are using right now, so you can sleep there tonight. Do not touch anything anywhere else. We’re going to work straight through the night, and we hope to be out of here sometime tomorrow. The local press has already picked up the story, and so it will probably be national news by tomorrow. Your gates at the front of the house will keep them at a distance. Unfortunately your property is also accessible from the beach. We’ve put up crime-scene tape back there, and I’ll place a man there tonight and tomorrow to keep people out. You really ought to hire a couple of security guards and post them back there for a few days after we’re gone. Otherwise you’ll be plagued to death with curiosity seekers and press.”

  “Gary will make the arrangements first thing in the morning,” Carter said, and Gary nodded to confirm it.

  “You’ll be glad you did it. Now then, we’ve nearly finished interviewing your live-in staff, and I’d like to get them out of here until we’re through tomorrow. Could you send them to a local motel, but keep them accessible for more questions?”

  Carter glanced at Gary, who nodded and said, “I’ll handle it.”

  “I understand you also employ two maids who live elsewhere. We’ll be interviewing them tomorrow as soon as they arrive for work. After that, I’d like you to send them home.” Satisfied that all that was out of the way, Hocklin got down to the business at hand: “I’m sorry to have to put you through more questions at this time, but it’s imperative we get as much information as possible from you now, because your memories will be clearest. Detectives Flynn and Cagle have already talked to you individually, but it’s helpful to gather you together as a group. Sometimes one member may say something that triggers another person’s memory. Detective Flynn—” he said, nodding to the detective seated on his right.

  Dennis Flynn was in his late forties, pudgy in build, average in height, with a round, jolly face that belonged on either an Irish priest or an Irish con artist. And yet, there was something about him that inspired confidence—and confidences, which Sloan assumed was probably why he’d been called out on this job.

  Andy Cagle was his opposite. In his late twenties, Cagle was tall and thin, with a narrow face dominated by a pair of thick, studious-looking glasses that he was constantly pushing back up onto the bridge of his nose. There was a self-conscious awkwardness in everything he did. He actually apologized to Sloan three times for having to bother her with questions about her name and address and where she’d been that night. He looked like the sort of reticent, naïve boy-man who would rather apologize than disagree and who wouldn’t know a lie if he was introduced to it by name. Sloan suspected he was actually the keener and more formidable of the two detectives.

  Since Paul had instructed her to stick with their cover story, half of what Sloan told Detective Cagle had been a lie, but under the circumstances it made little difference whether she was an interior designer on vacation or a police detective working with the FBI: Edith Reynolds was dead either way. If Sloan had stayed home, Edith might still be alive. Sloan’s only feeble consolation, and one she clung to, was that her great-grandmother had not suffered.

  “Mr. Reynolds,” Flynn began, “you said you got home around eleven P.M.?”

  Sloan watched Carter’s hand shake as he raked his hair back off his forehead. He was white-faced with shock, and her heart softened just a little toward him. Edith couldn’t have been easy to live with, but he was clearly overwrought by the way she’d died. He nodded in answer to Flynn’s question and cleared his throat. “That’s right. I played poker with a group of friends until ten-forty-five. I drove straight home; that takes about fifteen minutes. I parked my car in the garage; then I went up to bed.”

  “Now, think carefully. When you drove up to the house, did you notice any vehicles parked on the street or notice anything suspicious at all?”

  “You asked me that earlier, and I’ve been trying to think. It seems to me I saw a white van parked down the street.”

  “What did you notice about it?”

  “Only that I’d seen a van like that there before one day this week.”

  Flynn nodded and made another note in his pad.

  “You said you drove into the garage. There are four rear entrances into the house—one enters the kitchen from the garage and one enters the kitchen from the back lawn. The other two also open into the backyard but from different rooms. After you parked in the garage, which entrance did you use?”

  Carter looked at him as if he were an imbecile. “I used the door in the garage that opens into the kitchen, of course.”

  Unruffled by Carter’s attitude, Detective Flynn made a note on his pad.

  “Did you pass by the room where the victim was found on your way to your bedroom or hear any sounds in there?”

  “No. I walked out of the kitchen and toward the staircase, then upstairs.”

  “Was it customary for Mrs. Reynolds to be alone in that room, with the door closed, in the evening?”

  “Not with the door closed, but she liked that room in the evening because it looks out on the lawn, and it has a television set with a very large screen. She didn’t like the solarium at night because she had to turn on so many lights in order to make it pleasant.” Carter was sitting with his forearms propped on his knees, his hands folded, but now he put his head in his hands as if he couldn’t bear the memory of what she had been like only a few hours before.

  “Would you say it was customary for her to sit in there then, with the drapes open?”

  He nodded.

  “So if someone were watching the house from the beach, they would be able to ascertain that?”

  His head jerked up. “Are you suggesting some psychopath has been lurking around here, night after night, waiting for a chance to murder her?”

  “It’s possible. Was Mrs. Reynolds handicapped in any way?

  “She was ninety-five years old. That’s a handicap in itself.”

  “But she was able to walk?”

  Carter nodded. “She g
ot around extremely well for her age.”

  “How was her eyesight?”

  “She needed thick glasses to read, but she’s needed those for as long as I can remember.”

  “Was she hard-of-hearing?”

  He swallowed audibly. “Only when she wanted to be. Why are you asking all this?”

  “It’s standard.”

  Flynn was lying, and Sloan knew it. Alarm bells had started ringing in her head as soon as Hocklin mentioned a broken window in the study. Edith should have been able to hear or see something that would have alerted her that someone was breaking in, and she’d have tried to flee. But she hadn’t. When Sloan found her, she’d been lying facedown on the sofa. On the other hand, Sloan knew her joints were stiff and sometimes it took her a long time to stand up. Maybe she’d tried but couldn’t do it in time. Either way Flynn and Cagle should know about her limitation. “Mrs. Reynolds had arthritis,” Sloan said carefully, drawing Flynn and Cagle’s instant attention. “I know that’s not exactly a handicap, but it bothered her badly at times and made it especially hard for her to stand up if she felt stiff.”

  “I’m glad you thought to mention that, Miss Reynolds,” Hocklin said quickly. “It could be helpful. Thank you.”

  She glanced at Paul, who was seated across from her on a sofa with Noah, to see how Paul was reacting to her having provided information the detectives hadn’t thought to ask for. Paul was watching Paris, his expression as unreadable as it was intent.

  Noah caught her eye and gave her a smile of quiet encouragement and support, and she wished devoutly that she could put her head on his broad shoulder and weep. She was a cop, and yet she hadn’t been able to prevent a member of her own family from being murdered. She was a cop, schooled to notice anything suspicious off duty or on, and yet she’d quite possibly strolled within a few yards of Edith’s murderer when she left the house for the beach, and she hadn’t noticed anything.

  “Miss Reynolds,” Flynn said, looking at Paris after reviewing his notes. “You said you took some migraine medication in the afternoon and woke up around ten. Do you know what woke you up?”