As it had turned out, however, there hadn’t been time. Charlie had been foaming at the mouth by the time they had raced in ten minutes late, and he had refused to let them say a word.
Amanda heard the whispers and the startled exclamations around her as Rhonda told someone of yesterday’s events, and word of it spread across the stage faster than a grass fire across an arid prairie. She stood silently in the midst of the subdued, horrified babble, staring out at that big shadow bent over Charlie’s table. For too brief a moment while they had rehearsed, she had been able to put Maryanne’s murder in the back of her mind. She didn’t particularly like herself for that pretend-it-didn’t-happen-and-maybe-it-will-go-away attitude, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She had never been in a position like this before, and frankly, it shook her right down to the ground. She didn’t honestly know what she was supposed to think or feel or do, but somehow, this whole situation was getting mixed up in her mind with Teddy, and she was beginning to feel more than a little out of control.
Conversations dwindled away one by one as the three shadows in the lounge detached themselves from the table and headed for the stage. By the time Charlie led the way up the steps from the orchestra pit, the dancers had fallen silent. They eyed the two big cops accompanying him warily.
“I take it you’ve heard the news,” Charlie said, and he shot an accusing glance at Rhonda and Amanda. “Good of you to let me know, ladies.”
“Hey, we tried, Charlie,” Rhonda protested with some heat. “If you recall, you didn’t have time to listen.”
“Yeah. I know, Rhonda,” he admitted and rolled his shoulders in a quick, guilty movement. “I’m sorry.” The glance he directed at Amanda was curiously tender. “You okay?”
His unexpected concern was nearly Amanda’s undoing. “Umm,” she replied and turned her head away, hoping he’d accept that as an affirmative and not ask her to elaborate. She felt very fragile all of a sudden and was afraid it wouldn’t take much to make her lose her grip entirely. Her chin and bottom lip wobbled precariously, and she compressed her lips in a tight line, ordering herself not to cry. She stared blindly into the wings until she regained control of herself. “I’m fine,” she finally managed to reply in a croaky little voice. Her eyes were caught by MacLaughlin’s, and for a fleeting instant, they stared at each other.
It was yesterday all over again. Amanda hadn’t the first idea what MacLaughlin was thinking, but once again she felt at a distinct disadvantage, as though whatever it was, it was not exactly flattering to her. She shrugged and looked away. Why did she care? Let him examine her like a virulent disease on a slide; she was hardly going to lose any sleep worrying about his opinion of her. And perhaps she was overreacting anyway; it was difficult to read his expression.
Amanda nearly snorted. Difficult? God, that was rich: it was downright impossible. She had never encountered anyone quite so adept at disguising his every thought, which accounted in part for his ability to unnerve her. Usually she could get an inkling of what someone thought by observing that person’s facial reactions, but MacLaughlin’s face didn’t give away clue one. The man was a study in Olympian detachment. His eyes were cool and shuttered, and on a face where flesh bonded leanly to muscle and bone, no tiny movements marred the creased skin near the corner of his gray eyes; no muscles clenched along his strong jaw. His mouth was relaxed and so were his thick, sandy eyebrows.
Never before had such a lack of expression on a man’s face possessed the ability to make her feel so small and insignificant.
Amanda had always prided herself on her own self-discipline. It was a necessary part of dance, but not something easily attained, for all its necessity. She had worked hard to achieve a level of self-regimentation, but as she studied MacLaughlin’s noncommittal, blank expression, it occurred to her for the first time that self-discipline wasn’t necessarily the same thing as self-control. Amanda could force herself to complete any task, no matter how unpleasant it might be. But she had never possessed the ability to disguise the effect that unpleasantness might have on her. MacLaughlin, on the other hand, would also deal with unpleasantness. But his cold, cynical eyes said he’d damn well control his responses to it, as well. No one would ever know, from looking at him, exactly what—if, indeed, anything—it had cost him.
Well, goody for you, she thought with forced cockiness. Big deal. So she was plagued with insecurities at the moment. So the current situation was rapidly turning her into a nervous wreck. At least her reactions were human. MacLaughlin, on the other hand, reminded her of a sci-fi movie and roid—the looks of a human, the emotions of a robot. She glanced at him again, and although she tried to match his lack of expression, she was afraid she might be less than successful. She had often been advised not to depend on her poker-playing abilities to earn a living.
She was right; her attempt was less than successful. Amanda had a whole battery of social defenses, but still her face was expressive. She might find it impossible to read Tristan’s reactions, but he had no such problem reading hers. Her disdain for him was clear as crystal upon her face, and it annoyed him. It antagonized him. Bloody hell—it aroused him. God, he’d love to…abruptly, he turned away. In a low voice, he began to address the gathering, and the dancers huddled around him to listen. Within minutes he had the names of everyone in the troupe and was beginning to sort them out in his mind.
Amanda was left alone by the other dancers as they milled about, covertly or openly observing the two policemen at work. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone anyway, but as she sat on the floor, she felt isolated—a feeling that was reinforced by the glances that were cast her way as the rest of the troupe gave her a wide berth. She wished she knew if it were consideration that held them apart, or if they simply wanted to avoid the identifier of Maryanne’s body. For the past three years this group had been more of a family to her than her own family had ever been, but right this minute, she felt like a disinherited stepchild.
The pure self-indulgent melodrama of the thought stiffened her spine.
You can’t have it both ways, Amanda Rose, she lectured herself with determined sternness. Either you want comfort or you want privacy. But for God’s sake, don’t go throwing yourself a one-woman pity party just because life refuses to be perfect and give you both.
Besides, for the life of her, she couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or hurt by the distance the other dancers were keeping. In her present state of mind, it felt like a no-win situation, where kind word or cruel, she was going to burst into embarrassing tears at any moment.
One of the first things Lieutenant MacLaughlin requested was for anyone who knew both of the previous victims to come forward. Amanda exchanged relieved glances with Rhonda across the stage when Pete Schriber approached the large cop. At least they wouldn’t have that on their conscience.
A hand squeezed Amanda’s shoulder and she jumped, her head snapping around. June, the newest dancer in the troupe, stood over her, smiling at her sympathetically. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to identify Maryanne,” she whispered, bending down. “You’ve always been so nice to me, helpin’ me with my steps when I’ve been so klutzy and all.”
Quick tears of gratitude rose in Amanda’s eyes, and she smiled tremulously as she reached up and gave June’s hand on her shoulder a quick squeeze in return. “Thanks,” she whispered in reply, and she smiled to herself as the dancer moved away. June was so sweet. She was a Georgia transplant and was actually a very good dancer—not nearly as clumsy as she made herself out to be. She was just easily rattled by Charlie’s less-than-lovable Nazi impersonation. Amanda had invited her over to her apartment a few times, and they had moved out the furniture and gone over the routines in Amanda’s converted studio. There, June danced beautifully. During actual performances, she also danced beautifully. It was only when Charlie began one of his harangues that she stiffened up and made mistakes. Her gesture and words warmed Amanda, restoring a little of her battered confidence.
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br /> Several other dancers drifted past Amanda after that, pausing just long enough to whisper words of encouragement or to touch her lightly and smile before moving along once again. Even Randy, who was the one dancer she simply could not warm up to, stopped long enough to say something encouraging, and for once he even kept his busy hands to himself. The troupe’s quiet show of support helped steady her nerves, and she was feeling almost normal, nearly in control of her emotions for the first time in more than twenty-four hours, when she glanced up and found Lieutenant MacLaughlin’s eyes on her.
There was no sympathy or encouragement there, only an opaque silver gaze, coolly assessing her, and Amanda’s stomach clenched. Bitter resentment clamped her throat closed when he raised one large hand and arrogantly crooked his finger at her, indicating her presence was required. Whipping the towel from around her neck, Amanda surged to her feet.
As she was making her way across the stage, she was halted mid-stride when a hand reached out of nowhere and brought her up short. It clamped around the back of her neck and whirled her in a half circle. She bumped up against a strong male body, and the sheer unexpectedness of it made her eyes widen in surprise. Backing away a step, she looked up into the admiring gaze of one of the male dancers.
“Jeez, David,” Amanda breathed. “You scared ten years off my life.”
“Sorry, sugar,” he murmured. “I just wanted to let you know I think you’re one gutsy lady.”
“Aw, me.” Gratitude made her shoulders slump for just an instant and she rested her forehead against his chin. Then she raised her head and tilted it back to look at him, a slight smile on her lips. “Thank you.”
He grinned and kissed her on the forehead, running his hands down her bare arms from her shoulders to her fingertips. He held her hands wide of her body and squeezed them in friendly salutation before he stepped back and released her.
Tristan, watching from across the stage, had half risen from his chair when the muscular dancer first grabbed Amanda around the neck. Given his reason for being here, he had automatically assumed the gesture to be a prelude to violence, although serial killers generally displayed more wile than to fly off the handle within sight of several policemen. Still, stranger things had been known to happen. Watching the two dancers, male and female, however, his hand slid away from the shoulder holster inside his jacket and, disgruntled, he dropped back into his chair. The man was obviously one of Miss Charles’s lovers. Undoubtedly, just one of many.
He didn’t know why the thought should bother him. It had nothing to do with him.
The slight smile that David’s words had brought to Amanda’s eyes was nowhere to be seen when she stopped in front of the chair he straddled. She regarded him without favor and her voice was ironic when she drawled, “You beckoned?”
“Aye,” he replied, and his voice was just as cool as hers. “That mon at the table over there is Sergeant Johnson. He’s here to take your fingerprints.” Tristan waved his hand in Sergeant Johnson’s direction and glanced back down at the papers in his hand, dismissing her.
He’d had Joe call the forensics man earlier to request he meet them here in order to speed up the elimination process. They had dusted Miss Farrel’s apartment on the off chance the killer might have been there, even though her body had been found by the golf course, miles away. But it was senseless to check the extensive files of known felons against the two or three good sets of latents they’d managed to lift from various surfaces in her apartment before verifying the prints weren’t simply those of a regular visitor of Maryanne Farrel’s. Working together and living in the same complex, Miss Charles and Miss Smith were obvious candidates for immediate elimination. But they were by no means the only candidates. He and Detective Cash were also checking with each dancer they questioned, trying to weed out anyone who had recently visited Farrel’s apartment.
Tristan was aware that Amanda hadn’t moved away, but he studiously ignored her until the sheer horror of her hoarsely whispered “My God!” snapped his head up. She was staring at him incredulously, her eyes a violet-hued smudge in her white face. “You can’t seriously believe I had anything to do with Maryanne’s death,” she said hoarsely. She swayed weakly in front of him. “You can’t.”
Tristan swore violently and surged to his feet. He whirled his chair around and shoved Amanda into it, pushing her head down between her knees. The back of her neck was as cold as ice, and squatting in front of her, Tristan pulled off his own warm wool Donegal tweed jacket and dropped it over her shoulders. He tugged it closed around her and bracketed her thighs with his forearms, lending some much-needed body heat. Chagrin over his failure to prepare her adequately made his voice brusque as he slowly detailed the need for her prints.
The warmth of his jacket and of his big hands splayed over her hips began to seep through the cold layer of shock mantling Amanda. One small corner of her mind registered surprise that so much heat and scent could come out of a man she wasn’t a hundred percent convinced was entirely human, but all she heard was the impersonal coolness of his burred voice as it spoke close to her ear. Slowly, Amanda raised her head. She braced her elbows on her knees and shoveled unsteady hands through her hair to hold it off her forehead. The action brought her face close to Tristan’s.
“You bastard,” she said wearily. “You could have said that straight out and spared me this.” Her hands flopped away from her hair and rested limply in her lap as she straightened in the chair. “You know what I think, Lieutenant MacLaughlin? I think you get a real kick out of terrorizing me.”
Tristan’s fingers momentarily clenched around her hips, squeezing them, his thumbs digging painfully into the high arch of her pelvic bones. But almost instantaneously his hands loosened and slid away as he rocked back on his heels and stood up, making Amanda decide that the action wasn’t in reaction to her words so much as an involuntary push off as he had risen to his feet. His face was as militarily stern and noncommittal as ever as he looked down his nose at her from his great height. Shaken and angry and unwilling to grant him even so slight a psychological edge over her, Amanda also rose to her feet. She shrugged out of his warm jacket, regretting the loss of its warmth but unwilling to accept even secondhand body heat from him at this point. Silently, she held it out to him.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Tristan said stiffly as he took his jacket back, slinging it over his shoulder with a crooked finger. His level eyes regarded her impassively from behind the slightly smudged lenses of his dark-rimmed glasses. “It was insensitive of me not to explain the reason we needed the prints, but it certainly was not my intention to be scarin’ you, lass.”
Amanda’s chin tilted up. “My mistake,” she said with patent disbelief. She longed to tell him to keep his distance, that she would deal exclusively with Detective Cash in the future, but she didn’t want to give the man the opportunity to tell her the choice was not hers to make. So she held his gaze for a moment longer to let him know he couldn’t intimidate her, then she turned away.
Even after he could no longer see them, Tristan thought about her eyes, so big and round and such an incredible color, willing him to drop dead. He felt a tug of regret as he watched her cross to the table where Sergeant Johnson had set up his forensic paraphernalia, but he shrugged it aside irritably. Stonily, he turned his attention back to the next job on his list.
Life was just full of regrets. But there was sure as hell always work to be done.
Chapter
5
Amanda found herself temporarily alone in the middle of what Pete Schriber claimed was the party to end all parties. It was four o’clock in the morning, and she was tired, but not so tired that she was willing to forgo the company of her fellow dancers. Not yet, at any rate.
Pete had said his impromptu party was to be, in part, a wake for Maryanne. But primarily, he had claimed, it was a celebration of life for the rest of them. It was his personally held conviction that those who have departed should be commemorated wi
th a toast and a fond remembrance. But he also felt that to be among the living in the midst of death was in itself a cause for celebration. And so, earlier in the evening, when the police had finally run out of questions and had packed up their paraphernalia and left, Pete had proposed a party that would honor the dead and fete the living, to be held in his current lover’s little rental house following the culmination of the midnight show.
Sitting momentarily alone in the midst of his party, Amanda experienced a vivid sense of déjà vu. This was so reminiscent of her early years in New York—years when time was of the essence, when every waking moment was spent rushing from a job that was consequential only because it paid the rent, to dance classes, to open gypsy auditions for that coveted position in the chorus line, or—less often—to singing lessons, which had never truly paid off, due to a voice that would never be more than adequate and a decided lack of interest, as well.
And as the days had drawn to a close, back then, there had been parties like this, with their plastic cups of beer or wine, their thin, hazy layers of smoke, a portion of which was suspiciously acrid, and the same ever-present groups hovering in corners or perpetually slipping in and out of bathrooms to indulge in controlled substances from a mirrored surface. They’d been all but indistinguishable from this party, with the same exotic fashions, the same loud voices, whispered conversations, boisterous laughter. Sleep in those days had been a negligible thing, but she had been eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old back then, and it hadn’t seemed to matter.
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