Night Whispers

by Judith McNaught

  Cagle was already on his feet, pulling on his jacket. “Where was it?”

  “You aren’t going to believe how dumb this broad is,” Flynn said, shaking his head. “She had it stashed under her mattress. Like, we’d never think to look there.”

  42

  Sloan was in the dining room with Paris, trying to write out a longhand report on the events of the night before, which struck her as an absurd waste of time, while Paris answered constant telephone calls from horrified family friends. Lieutenant Fineman was hovering in the hallway talking quietly to someone from the crime investigation team. The front doorbell rang, and Sloan glanced up as Nordstrom walked down the hall to answer it. When she looked up a moment later, Detectives Cagle and Flynn were walking swiftly into the dining room.

  Sloan saw the cold, determined expressions on their faces, and the ballpoint pen slid from her fingers.

  “Sloan Reynolds,” Flynn said, pulling her out of the chair and shoving her to the wall. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Edith Reynolds.” He yanked her arms behind her and cuffed her. “You have the right to remain silent—”

  “No!” Paris screamed, bracing her hands on the table and swaying as if she were about to faint. “No—”

  “It’s a mistake,” Sloan promised over her shoulder as she was rushed outside. “It’s a mistake. It will be all right.” Two police cruisers were waiting in the driveway, engines running, and Sloan was shoved into the backseat of one of them.

  The press were staked out at the street, and a commotion went up when they realized the police were taking someone from the house. As the car passed through the gates, cameras were aimed at her in the backseat and Minicams were shoved at the car windows.

  In the front seat, Andy Cagle turned around and eyed her as if she were some sort of deadly bacteria. “Interested in talking, or would you prefer to wait until after we book you?”

  The phrase You’re making a mistake leapt to Sloan’s lips, but she bit it back because it was just too trite to be uttered. She’d heard it hundreds of times from every guilty creep who’d ever been brought in for questioning or to be booked, and she couldn’t bear to hear herself say it.

  They drove past Noah’s house, and she saw the fountain splashing over the sailfish behind his gates. She wondered how long it would be before he heard the news.

  Paul had left the house on some sort of urgent errand and had said only that he’d be back “later.” Cagle and Flynn obviously didn’t plan to question her before they booked her, so Paul wouldn’t get to her before she was processed through the system, and that made her furious. She did not relish being fingerprinted and photographed with a number in front of her chest one damned bit! That hadn’t been part of the deal when she agreed to come to Palm Beach.

  What she couldn’t understand was why they didn’t seem to think they needed to question her. She forgot Cagle had asked her a question until he reminded her: “Does your silence mean you’d prefer to talk after you’re booked?”

  “No,” Sloan said as calmly as she could. “My silence means I’m waiting for some explanation about why you don’t seem to think you need proof.”

  Flynn looked over his shoulder while he waited for two trucks to respond to his siren and clear out of his path. “Now, what makes you think we’d do a nasty thing like arresting you without any proof?”

  The gleeful arrogance in his tone caused Sloan to enjoy a brief fantasy about doubling up her fist. “You can’t have any proof because I didn’t commit the crime.”

  “Let’s save this little chat for a few minutes until we can do it face-to-face,” he responded, stepping on the accelerator and swerving around the trucks.

  The front entrance of the police station was surrounded by a mob of television crews, newspaper reporters, and photographers, and Sloan was certain that was precisely why she was taken in through the front of the building instead of another entrance: Flynn and Cagle were parading their prize in handcuffs for the mob to photograph and film.

  Sloan had a fleeting thought of her mother seeing this on the evening news, and that made her feel worse than anything else . . . until Flynn and Cagle put her into a room with a two-way glass window and shoved a plastic bag with her gun in it across the table at her. “Recognize this?” After she got over the shock of seeing it, Sloan was almost relieved that her gun was all they were hanging their arrest on. She opened her mouth to say that it was hers and she had a permit to carry it, but before she could, Flynn robbed her of the ability to speak: “Guess where we found it—under your mattress! Now, how do you suppose it got there?”

  She’d hidden the weapon in a much less obvious place than under a mattress, and she’d checked that morning to make certain it was still where she’d left it. “I don’t”—she leaned forward, gazing at her own nine millimeter Glock—“know how it got there,” she said honestly. “That isn’t where I had it hidden.”

  Flynn turned all warm and friendly. “Now you’re doing this the right way.” Sliding his chair forward, he glanced at Cagle. “Why don’t you get Miss Reynolds a glass of water.”

  “I don’t want a glass of water,” Sloan informed Flynn, but Cagle ignored her and left the room. “I want answers! You found that under my mattress?”

  Flynn gave a shout of laughter. “You’re something else, lady. This is a first. Let me explain how this works, Miss Reynolds. We ask the questions. You give the answers.”

  Sloan’s mind was whirling with shock and alarm as she reached an unthinkable conclusion. Ignoring his lecture on protocol, she said, “How many rounds were in the magazine?”

  “Nine. One round is missing. Isn’t that a coincidence? And you want to hear another coincidence? I think ballistics is going to tell us that the slug that killed Mrs. Reynolds came from this gun.”

  Sloan stared at him, chills beginning to slither up her spine. This morning she’d checked to make certain the weapon was still where she’d hidden it, but she hadn’t seen any reason to check the magazine to see if it was still full. “Oh, my God!” she whispered.

  Andy Cagle slid into the chair at his desk and reached for the DBT data on Sloan Reynolds. Something was bothering him about the way she’d reacted to seeing the gun—no, something about the way she was reacting to the whole ordeal of being brought into a police station for booking. He began scanning the file.

  “Nice work, Andy,” Captain Hocklin said as he strolled back into the building after having made a brief statement to the press announcing the arrest of Sloan Reynolds for the murder of Edith Reynolds. He patted Andy’s shoulder to show his appreciation; then he stopped when Cagle looked up at him, his expression dazed and alarmed. “What the hell’s the matter?” Hocklin said, instantly anticipating the worst because Cagle never looked alarmed about anything.

  “She’s a cop,” Cagle said.

  “What?”

  Cagle held up the thirty-five pages of information on Sloan Reynolds. “She’s a cop,” he repeated.

  Hocklin’s first thought was that if he had to tell the media he’d made a mistake today, he was going to look like a world-class ass; then he relaxed a little. “So what— cops don’t make much dough, and she wanted her fair share from the old lady.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did she deny the Glock was hers?”

  “No. She denied having hidden it under the mattress. Anyway, it’s registered to her. Look, right here—” He pointed to the DBT report.

  Hocklin ignored it. “She had motive, means, and opportunity. Book her.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I gave you an order.”

  “But we could be making a mistake.”

  “Book her, and if we’re wrong, we’ll apologize.”

  Cagle glowered at Hocklin’s back as the captain walked away; then he heaved himself out of his chair. He walked into the room where Flynn was trying to question Sloan Reynolds. “Excuse me,” he said automatically to her; then he looked at Flynn. “I need to talk to you out the
re.” He jerked his head toward the door.

  Flynn looked puzzled, but Sloan wasn’t. She knew the moment Cagle looked at her and said “Excuse me” that he’d found out her secret. Based on the sheaf of papers in his hand with data printed from top to bottom, she assumed he’d finally bothered to run her through DBT, because she wouldn’t have turned up in the ROC files when he checked with them. Now that they knew, she was still in something of a predicament because she couldn’t tell them why she’d lied about being an interior designer, and she couldn’t tell them she was working for the FBI.

  She expected Flynn and Cagle to walk back in and start treating her more like a puzzling enigma than a murderer. In that she was wrong.

  “Miss Reynolds,” Flynn said flatly, “will you come with me, please?”

  Sloan stood up. She couldn’t believe they were going to release her this easily. “Why?”

  “You already know the procedure. You’ve been through it before, only on the other side.”

  “You’re actually going to book me?” she burst out angrily. “Without asking for any explanations?”

  The two detectives looked at each other. Cagle shoved his glasses up on his nose and managed to look both sheepish and angry. “We’ll ask you for explanations later. But if I were in your place when we start asking, I’d tell us to shove the questions up Captain Hocklin’s ass, and then I’d demand that we contact your attorney.”

  Sloan had her answer: Hocklin wanted her booked, regardless. Hocklin, she realized bitterly, had probably already announced it to the flock of reporters outside.

  She went with them, refusing to give them the satisfaction of uttering a word. She knew what hotel the attorney was staying in, and if he wasn’t there, she knew she could call Noah and Noah would find him. There wasn’t much point in contacting Paul, since he’d probably expect her to sit around in jail until he got the thirty-six hours he said he needed.

  43

  Jack Robbins leaned back in his chair, watching his computer download files from Data Base Technologies, but his thoughts kept returning to the newspaper clipping and the male face that seemed distantly familiar.

  He shook his head as if that would dislodge the unsettling thought. Leaning forward, he typed in a query for “Reynolds, Sloan.” On the bottom of his computer screen the words “Now Online” were flashing, followed by the names of the entities who were currently searching DBT’s database.

  When he typed in her name, he didn’t expect to turn up anything extraordinary, and he wasn’t curious about the details of the woman’s personal life. He was simply doing the job he was paid a great deal of money to perform—which was to insulate Noah from potential problems of any nature. In Jack’s mind, the possibility that the woman who made Noah’s face and voice soften might also become a suspect in a murder case constituted A Very Big Potential Problem.

  DBT came up with seven matches for the name “Sloan Reynolds” and provided the social security number and city of residence for each name. Only one of the matches lived in Florida—Bell Harbor, Florida. He chose that one. She was going to be easy to single out, he realized with relief. When the download was complete, he went off-line and pulled up her file on his computer disk.

  The first section of information provided all her addresses for the last ten years, the taxable value of every home she’d lived in, and the names of whomever she’d paid a mortgage payment to or made a rent payment to. She owned a very modest house, Jack noted.

  The next section listed the names of anyone who had ever lived with her at any address, or even received mail at her address. Evidently, she’d never had a live-in boyfriend, not for even a month.

  He held down the “page down” key a split second too long, and his computer jumped to a later section that listed the names and phone numbers of all her neighbors at all her addresses. Instead of returning to where he’d left off, he scrolled backward from that point. She didn’t have a car, which struck him as odd, but she owned an inexpensive boat. She’d never had a lien, judgment, or bankruptcy, either. She’d never been involved in a criminal, a civil, or even a motor vehicle problem.

  She was incredibly clean, Jack thought as his scrolling took him back into the first section. She was a saint. She was . . . He stood clear up out of his chair, staring at the screen on his laptop. . . .

  . . . She was a cop!

  She was a detective on the force of the Bell Harbor Police Department! She was no interior designer; she was a cop. And for some reason, she didn’t want Noah to know it.

  Jack slapped a floppy disk into the laptop and transferred her file to it. While that was happening, he picked up the telephone and called local telephone information for Bell Harbor. He asked the operator for the number of the Bell Harbor Police Department; then he dialed that number.

  “Detective Sloan Reynolds, please,” he said to the man who answered.

  “She’s on vacation until next week. Can anyone else help you?”

  Jack hung up and headed for Noah’s office, the floppy disk in his hand. He reached Noah’s office doorway at the same time Mrs. Snowden did, and the unflappable Mrs. Snowden, who appeared to be shaken up for the first time since Jack had known her, rushed forward and cut him off.

  “Mr. Maitland,” she burst out.

  Noah was on the telephone with the head of an aeronautics company in France, and he frowned at her and then at the two flashing lights on two other phone lines. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but Paris Reynolds is on line two. It’s her second call. You were on the phone when she called the last time, but now she says it’s urgent.”

  Noah said an abrupt good-bye to the French industrialist and lunged for line two, but Jack stopped him. “Don’t take that call yet, Noah! I have something to tell you.”

  Noah paused, his arm outstretched toward the phone. “What the hell is it? Didn’t you—”

  “She’s a cop, Noah.”

  In all the years he’d worked for Noah Maitland, Jack had never seen him immobilized by any emotion or any event. The worse the pressure, the greater the disaster, the more energized he became until it was dealt with. Now, however, Noah stared at him as if unable to absorb what Jack had just told him. “You’re out of your mind,” he said finally, reaching for the flashing button on the telephone again. “Sloan is afraid of guns.”

  “Listen to me, Noah,” Jack said sharply. “She’s a detective with the Bell Harbor police force. I don’t know what she’s doing here, but she’s obviously under cover.”

  A sudden collage of images flashed through Noah’s mind—Sloan in the backyard with Carter, tossing him on the ground. Sloan showing Courtney some self-defense moves. Sloan, chasing down a killer, dodging obstacles and leaping hedges like a graceful gazelle. No . . . Like a cop!

  He reached for the phone, slowly this time, and picked up Paris’s call. He listened for a moment. “How long ago did they take her in? All right, calm down. Your father is upset, and he’s not thinking clearly. I’ll handle it and call you back.” He hung up the phone and looked at Jack, his expression completely blank. “Why would she lie to me?”

  Before Jack could begin to speculate, Mrs. Snowden reappeared in the doorway. “Ross Halperin is on the phone, and he says it’s an emergency.”

  Courtney collided with her as she raced into Noah’s office. “Sloan’s been arrested!” Courtney cried, lunging for the television set and turning it on.

  “I’ll take Halperin’s call,” Jack said, reaching for the phone to talk to Noah’s chief counsel. When he hung up, he looked at Noah and hid his wrath behind a flat, terse voice. “The FBI got a search warrant. At this moment, they, along with the Coast Guard and the ATF, are swarming all over your boats looking for a stash of illegal automatic weapons.”

  Noah slowly stood up. “What? Why in hell would she lie to me?”

  Courtney was standing in front of the television set, swearing at the commercial that was interrupting the cable newscast. “Noah, look, dammit—” she said, pointing,
but the news story that came on wasn’t about Sloan.

  “It’s been a tough day for the rich and famous in Palm Beach, Florida,” the newscaster announced. “Within the hour, two yachts belonging to tycoon-socialite Noah Maitland have been impounded and boarded by the FBI, Coast Guard, and ATF. We have footage.”

  Jack recognized the profile of the FBI agent standing at the Apparition’s stern at the same time Noah did.

  “Richardson!” The name exploded from Noah like a curse.

  “Your girlfriend’s a cop, Noah,” Jack said flatly, “and her ‘boyfriend’ is FBI.”

  “Courtney!” Noah snapped. “Get out of here.”

  She took one look at Noah’s face and started backing out of his office. Despite her flippant, disrespectful digs about her brother’s business dealings, Courtney had never really believed Noah did anything wrong. “Sloan’s a cop?” she said, looking dazed. “And Paul’s an FBI agent? And they both wanted to take the yachts away from you? But why?”

  He turned and looked at her, a muscle ticking in his clenched jaw. Mrs. Snowden drew her the rest of the way out of Noah’s office and hesitantly said as she closed the door, “Mr. Maitland—Sloan Reynolds is on the phone.”

  Standing behind his desk, his gaze riveted on CNN’s coverage of the takeover of his property, Noah reached out and pressed the speaker button on the telephone. Sloan sounded calm but a little shaken. “Noah, Mr. Kirsh isn’t in his room at the hotel. I’ve been arrested.”

  “Have you now?” Noah said silkily. “Do you only get one phone call?”

  “Yes-”

  “That’s too damned bad, Detective Reynolds, because you just wasted it.” Reaching out, he disconnected the call.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, Noah watched the invasion of his personal property. He remembered Sloan’s reaction to the weapons she’d seen on board, the questions she’d asked him about them. And then she’d gone to his stateroom with him to make love. They’d made love for hours that night—after she’d pried enough information out of him so that her coconspirator could bluff a federal judge into issuing a search warrant.