Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  Apparently undeterred by the gun in its holster on the waistband of her skirt, he leaned toward her, close enough so Regan could smell the coffee and Juicy Fruit on his breath. Close enough to make her muscles tense. Too close for comfort.

  “You sure do smell good, chère.”

  “Detective.” She cut the engine and climbed out of the driver’s seat. “And I’m not wearing perfume.”

  His warm blue gaze fastened on hers over the roof of the car. Regan’s stomach fluttered. Telling herself that’s what she got for skipping breakfast, she ignored it.

  “I know.” His grin was slow and sexy and had undoubtedly seduced legions of southern belles. “Detective, chère.”

  Steeling herself against that bone-melting smile, she turned and began walking across the garage with long, determined strides, heels tapping on the concrete floor.

  For Finn’s sake, she’d listen to whatever Nate Callahan had to say, which she suspected wasn’t nearly as personal or intriguing as he’d tried to make it sound. Then, before the sun sank into the Pacific, she’d send the man home and get back to chasing the bad guys.

  5

  She was really something. Oh, not his type, of course, Nate had been telling himself from the moment he’d walked into the squad room and spotted her sitting behind her desk, her forehead furrowed in concentration as she typed away at blinding speed. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he liked her, which was unusual, since he tended to like most everyone he met. Especially females.

  She was tall and willowy, but not at all skinny. Her arms, revealed by the short-sleeved blouse she’d covered up with her jacket, were firm in a way that suggested she worked out regularly. Her hands were slender, her long fingers with their unpolished nails looking far more suited to playing the harp in some southern drawing room than pulling a trigger.

  Her lips, which were neither too thin nor kewpie-doll full, but just right, were unpainted. Her hair was styled in a short, thick cut in order, he imagined, to appear more cop than woman. But it wasn’t working, because he figured most men—himself included—would be tempted to run their hands through those glossy strands.

  The discreet pearl earrings were all wrong. Nate mentally exchanged them for gleaming hoops that would bring out the gold in her whiskey-hued eyes. She’d unbuttoned only the top button on her blouse, and in his mind, Nate unbuttoned another. Then one more.

  What was she wearing beneath that unadorned blouse? Something cotton and practical? Or a bit of feminine fluff and lace? The mixing of the tailored charcoal wool suit and silk blouse suggested she was a woman of contrasts.

  Her skirt was slim, ending at her knees when she was standing, but revealing an enticing flash of firm, stocking-clad thigh when she crossed her legs.

  Like the earrings, the neat and tidy suit was all wrong for her. She was a woman born to wear rich jewel tones. Nate had no trouble imagining the smooth flesh of her breasts framed by emerald silk.

  He listened as the defense attorney battered away at her for an hour, the woman’s voice rising to stridency as she paced the floor in front of the witness stand, challenging everything about the investigation, attacking the chain of evidence, the veracity of the witness reports, Detective Regan Hart’s possible personal prejudice.

  “I do have a personal prejudice,” Regan agreed.

  At the table, the teenage defendant, wearing a suit so new Nate was surprised it didn’t still have the price tag hanging from the sleeve, smirked.

  “I’m prejudiced against the idea that a human life in some L.A. zip codes is worth less than one in a more affluent neighborhood; and that if several hundred American soldiers were killed in an overseas mission, politicians all over this country would be clamoring for a change in policy, yet when hundreds of citizens die every year in areas of this city that a politician never ventures into without police guard, and then only at election time—”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” The defense attorney popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

  Regan didn’t spare her a glance, just kept her gaze directed on the jury as she finished her declaration. “There appears to be a business-as-usual attitude toward murder. And I hope I’ll always be prejudiced against the cold-blooded murder of a child.”

  “Objection,” the attorney repeated with more strength.

  “Sustained,” the judge agreed. “Witness will keep her answers to the questions and refrain from making any speeches.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor.” She turned back to the attorney. “Could you repeat the question?”

  There was a ripple of laughter among the spectators. The judge frowned, and the bailiff warned everyone to be quiet.

  The attorney, who looked angry enough to chew nails and spit out staples, tried again. “Do you have any personal prejudice against my client’s race or socioeconomic status?”

  Her expression didn’t change, but watching her closely as he was, Nate saw the flash of irritation. “No.”

  The two women’s eyes held, and Nate doubted there was a person in the room who couldn’t hear the clash of swords.

  “So,” the attorney began again, “let’s walk through what you did when you arrived on the scene. Step by step.”

  “If we’re going to do that, we’re breaking for lunch,” the judge decreed. “Court’s adjourned until one-thirty.”

  He slammed down his wooden gavel, signaling the midday recess. While Regan locked herself away with the DA, planning strategy, Nate went next door to a bar and grill, ate an order of wings, and watched a lissome blond on the bar television breathlessly report the latest in the case that seemed to have captured the city’s attention. Although the DA had apparently fought it, television cameras had been brought into the courtroom, the better, he thought, for the defense attorney, who appeared prone to dramatics.

  “Good-looking broad,” the bartender said, watching a replay of Regan’s testimony while spritzing seltzer into glasses for the lunch crowd. “For a cop.”

  Nate agreed.

  “She comes in here every once in a while. Doesn’t talk much, just orders a Coke, or maybe a glass of white wine at the end of the day. I figure she might be a former waitress, ’cause she tips real good.”

  Nate took a drink from his pilsner glass of draft. “What’s the prevailing opinion on this case?”

  “The evidence against the gangbanger is rock solid, but his mother has gotten her kid his own private dream team, so who knows how the jury’s going to vote.” He shrugged. “Folks seem to respond to star power.”

  Watching the jury as the questioning resumed after lunch, Nate worried about that. Unlike the defense, Detective Regan Hart’s tone remained cool, matter-of-fact, and, like the rest of her, almost too much in control. While he wasn’t any expert, he wondered if she might not be better off appealing as much to the jury members’ emotions as to their heads. She was beginning to remind Nate more and more of Finn. What would it take, he wondered, to make the woman relax?

  As she stepped down from the witness stand, Nate found himself wondering how cool and collected the detective would be when she learned his reason for coming here to L.A.

  It was over. Despite some initial discomfort caused by Nate Callahan watching her so intently, Regan had managed to stay calm, cool, and professional. She hadn’t let them see her sweat, and by the time she’d finished her testimony, everyone knew that the baby-faced defendant was guilty as sin. Regan knew it, the defense team knew it, the judge knew it, and you didn’t have to be a psychic to sense that the majority of the jury members, who’d remained engaged but could no longer look the kid in the eye, had known it, too.

  Which was why, of course, the defense attorney had suddenly asked for a recess minutes before the case closed. The deal was swiftly cut by those Great Compromisers, the lawyers on both sides.

  Nate Callahan was waiting for her outside the courtroom. “Good job. You sure as hell impressed me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Callahan, but impressing you is not high on my list of p
riorities.”

  “It’s Nate,” he said easily, falling into step beside her, adjusting his long-legged stride to hers. “You don’t seem real pleased with the outcome.”

  She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. “Why should I be pleased?”

  “He’s goin’ to prison.”

  “For second-degree murder.” She shook her head, still fuming. “What the hell does that mean? How can eight-year-old Ramon Consuelo be second-degree dead?” She raked a hand through her hair. “He’s one hundred percent dead, dammit.” She would have much preferred a slam-dunk win over a lousy, convenient plea bargain.

  “You did your best,” he said mildly. “Which Mrs. Consuelo seemed to appreciate.”

  “He was her last living child.” Regan wondered how any woman survived the pain. “Her seven-year-old daughter was killed six years ago by a hit-and-run drunk driver who swerved into a group of kids waiting for the school bus. She lost a two-year-old daughter to AIDs back in the nineties. She hadn’t even realized her drug abuser husband had passed the virus on to her until the baby was born HIV-positive. She’s still alive; the baby isn’t. Ramon was her last child and her only son.” She blew out a long, slow breath. “And now she doesn’t have him, either.”

  “It must be hard,” he said. “Doin’ what you do, caring like you do.”

  “Some days are harder than others.” As were the nights when her sleep was haunted by those whose deaths she hadn’t managed to avenge. “What time is your flight?”

  “It’s a while yet. We can talk over supper.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “Sure.” He reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a ballpoint.

  Regan ignored it. “Then write this down. I’m not having dinner with you.”

  Her hard stare seemed to deflect right off him. “You have to eat to keep your strength up for playing cops and robbers.”

  “I don’t consider my job playing.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be taken literally, detective. Anyone watching you in court today could tell you take your work real seriously.”

  “It’s become almost a cliché,” she murmured. “But there’s a reason the idea of homicide detectives being the ones who speak for the dead is always showing up in books and movies. Because it’s the truth.” She slanted him a look. “But I suppose, being Finn’s brother, you already know that.”

  “Mais yeah. Finn can be a serious one, he. But he’s loosened up some since he got married.”

  “I heard about that.” Regan had been amazed that the most serious man she’d ever met had married one of Hollywood’s highest profile actresses. And not just any actress, but the new Bond Girl, for heaven’s sake. You couldn’t turn on a television these days without seeing some promo for the movie.

  “He and Julia didn’t hit it off right away, but they’re sure happy now.”

  “That’s nice.” She meant it. Having had a front-row seat for the horrific things people who’d once been in love could do to one another, Regan had become a conscientious objector in the war between the sexes.

  “It’ll take a while to tell you my story,” he said. “So, how about getting a couple burgers and going out to the beach? I’ve never been to the Pacific Ocean, but I hear it’s real pretty.”

  That smooth-talking southern steamroller might work back home in Louisiana, but it wasn’t working on Regan. “Look, Mr. Callahan—”

  “Nate,” he reminded her with a quick smile.

  She waved his correction away with an impatient hand. “Why don’t you tell me—as succinctly as possible—why you’ve come here, so I can get back to work, and you can go back to Big Bayou.”

  “It’s Blue Bayou, like the old Orbison song. It was originally named Bayou Bleu, after all the herons that nest there, but over the years it’s become Anglicized.”

  “How interesting.” She didn’t care about how the damn backwater town had gotten its name. She also wasn’t sure this man knew the meaning of succinct. “Now, if we could just get down to business?”

  “You know, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to take a little break and clear your head.” He skimmed a hand over her shoulder, which stiffened at his touch. “You seem a little tense, detective.”

  “What I am, is losing patience.” The roughened tip of his fingers brushed against her neck, causing a spurt of her pulse. “And I don’t know how things are done down in the bayou, but touching an armed woman without asking permission could get you shot here in the city.”

  “You thinking of shooting me?”

  “The idea is becoming more appealing by the moment.”

  Because that lightly stroking touch stimulated hormones she’d thought she’d locked away in cold storage, Regan pulled away just as a detective she’d once worked with walked by. Her week with the man had been spent dodging clumsy passes, and the smile he gave her was close to a smirk, suggesting he believed more was going on here than a frustrating conversation.

  “Look.” Nate dipped his hands into his front pockets. “We’re wasting a lot of that time you said you don’t have, standing around this parking garage arguing. So, how about we just stop somewhere, pick up some supper, and drive to the beach, where I’ll tell you a little story, then you can drop me off at LAX and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Regan sighed in frustration. Since he was turning out to be as stubborn as his eldest brother, they’d undoubtedly get things over with a lot faster if she just agreed to dinner.

  Nate didn’t appear the least bit surprised by her caving in, which only heightened Regan’s irritation as she drove the two blocks to the Code Ten, a local cop bar and grill named for the police off-duty lunch code. After another brief argument, which she won, they each paid for their own burgers, then headed toward the coast.

  6

  This is real nice,” Nate said a few minutes later as they sat on a bench on the Santa Monica pier. The air was cool and crisp, and scented with salt and faraway places. “And worth the trip.”

  “Which was about?” She took a waxed wrapped burger from the bag and nearly moaned at the scent of grilled meat and melted cheese. She’d become so used to skipping meals, she’d learned not to notice hunger pangs. Now Regan realized she was starving.

  “Like I said, it’s a little hard to explain. See, my daddy was sheriff of Blue Bayou when he was killed in the line of duty.”

  She’d just taken a bite, and had a hard time swallowing. Having attended more funerals than she would have liked, Regan knew how hard the loss of a cop killed in the line of duty could be on a community. She also knew how hard not having a father could be on a child.

  “That’s rough.”

  She’d been the only kid she knew whose dad had died. Oh, there’d been lots of divorced dads who only saw their sons and daughters on weekends, some that had taken off to parts unknown, and a couple of kids whose mothers had never married their fathers. But to have a parent, even one your mother had divorced, die? That definitely made you stand out. Different.

  “Yeah, it was hard. But like I said, it was a long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Nineteen years this May.” The way he didn’t have to pause and think suggested the memory was still fresh in his mind.

  “And you were?”

  “Twelve.” His expression was uncharacteristically sober. “Anyway, I was emptyin’ out a storage room in the sheriff’s office before doing some remodeling—I’m a contractor—”

  “I thought you were a politician.”

  “Bein’ mayor’s a volunteer position. Contracting pays the bills—at least most months. Anyway, I was goin’ through some old evidence envelopes when I came across something that belongs to you.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  She’d been to Louisiana twice in her life. Once was five years ago, when she’d given a workshop about protecting crime scenes at a cop convention in New Orleans; the other was last month, when she’d flown to Shreveport to bring back a robbe
ry/murder suspect.

  “Your mother was Karen Hart, right?”

  “I suppose you learned that from Finn.”

  “I did,” he said on a smooth, genial tone that probably made him a dandy politician back home. “He was going on the information I gave him from an old police file. It’s one of those funny coincidences, seein’ as how you two worked together and all.”

  He’d just piqued her curiosity again. “What police file?”

  “The one I got your maman’s name from.”

  “Look, Finn Callahan’s a crackerjack detective. In fact, he’s the best I’ve ever met. But even he can screw up occasionally. My mother was a partner in a law firm. She was not the type of person to end up in a police file.”

  “How old are you, detective?”

  “I fail to see how my age is relevant to this conversation.”

  “According to this file, your mother had a sister. One who died and left behind a toddler who’d be thirty-three years old.”

  Regan took a sip of coffee she had no business drinking this late in the day. The caffeine would mean another sleepless night. “News flash, Callahan, I’m not the only thirty-three-year-old woman in the world. Besides, my mother was an only child.”

  He pulled a sheaf of papers from the manila envelope he’d been carrying when he came into the station. “Karen Hart’s listed as Linda Dale’s only living relative. Except for a girl baby named on her birth certificate as Regan Dale.”

  Regan hated her hesitation in taking the envelope from his hand. Shaking off an uneasy sense of foreboding, she forced her shoulders to relax as she skimmed over what appeared to be a valid police report from Blue Bayou Parish, Louisiana. Then she looked at the copy of the birth certificate. Linda Dale, whoever she was, had been twenty-five years old when she’d given birth to a seven-pound, three-ounce daughter. The father was listed as unknown.

  “I’ve never heard the name Linda Dale. Or Regan Dale. My name is Hart. It’s always been Hart.”