Brazen Virtue (18 page)

“No, it was just a voice. I could hardly hear it over Roxanne’s. Look, I don’t even know what she looked like. I don’t want to know. Let’s be honest about this, she was nothing more to me than, well, a clerk at the supermarket. She was just somebody I called a few times a week so I could forget about work.” Distancing himself that far eased his mind. He was an ordinary man, he reminded himself, even honest. To a point. Nobody wanted their accountants to treat honesty like a religion. “I think she probably had a boyfriend who was jealous. That’s what I think.”

“Did she use a name?” Ben asked.

“No. Just mine. She just called out my name. Please, there’s nothing more I can tell you. I did everything I could. I didn’t have to call in, you know,” he added, his tone altering with the beginnings of self-righteousness. “I didn’t have to get involved.”

“We appreciate your cooperation.” Ben pulled himself out of the chair. “You’re going to have to come in and sign a statement.”

“Detective, if I so much as move out of this chair until midnight tomorrow, I could be responsible for a dozen fines.”

“File early,” the parakeet advised. “Cover your ass.”

“Come down the morning of the sixteenth. Ask for me or Detective Paris. We’ll do our best to keep your name out of it.”

“Thank you. You can use this door.” He gestured to
the side door, then pulled his calculator forward. As far as he was concerned, he’d done his duty, and more.

“Is it too late to file an extension?” Ben asked as he started out.

“It’s never too late.” Markowitz began to push buttons.

G
RACE WASN’T SURE WHY
she’d taken Ed’s advice and waited in his house. Maybe because it was easier for her to think there, without her sister’s things around her. She needed to keep busy. Her mind always worked better when her hands were occupied. So she made herself at home while she thought through her options.

It still seemed best to her to talk personally to the manager of Fantasy. Interviewing was one thing Grace excelled at. With a little prodding, a little pushing, she might be able to get her hands on a client list. Then she’d work down it, name by name. If her sister’s killer was on it, she’d find him.

Then what?

Then she’d play it by ear. That was the way she wrote. That was the way she lived. Both had been a success so far.

Revenge was part of the motivation. She’d never felt the emotion before, but found it a satisfying one. It strengthened. To follow through meant staying in Washington. She could work here as well as anywhere. And New York would still be there when she was finished.

If she left now, it would be like leaving a book undone and handing it to an editor. No one was going to write the last chapter but G. B. McCabe.

It couldn’t be that hard. Grace had always felt that police work took good timing, tenacity, and thoroughness. And a pinch of luck. That’s what writing took as well. Anyone who had plotted out and solved as many murders as she had should be able to corner one killer.

She needed the client list, the police reports, and time to think. All she had to do was get around the very sturdy frame of Detective Ed Jackson.

Even as she was working out her strategy, she heard the front door open. He wouldn’t be easy to con, she thought as she checked her face in his bathroom mirror. And harder yet because she liked him. Rubbing a smudge off her nose, she started downstairs.

“So you’re home.” She paused at the bottom of the steps and smiled at him. “How was your day?”

“Okay.” He shifted a bag of groceries to his other arm. She was wearing the same snug jeans and baggy sweater she’d had on that morning, but now they were streaked with white. “What the hell have you been doing?”

“Wallpapering your bathroom.” She moved to him and took the bag. “It looks great. You’ve got an eye for color.”

“You wallpapered my bathroom?”

“Don’t look stricken. I didn’t mess it up. The wallpaper, that is. The bathroom’s a wreck. I figured it was only fair you clean it up.” She gave him an easy smile. “You had half a roll left over.”

“Yeah. Ah, Grace, I appreciate it, but wallpapering takes a certain skill.” He should know, he’d been reading up on it for a week.

“You pop a line, you measure, you slap on the paste and go for it. You had a couple of how- to books hanging around.” She poked into the bag but didn’t see anything exciting.
“Go on up and take a look. By the way, I ate the rest of your strawberries.”

“That’s okay.” He was too busy calculating just how much the wallpaper and paste had cost him.

“Oh, and mineral water’s okay, but you could use some sodas.”

He started upstairs, half-afraid to look. “I don’t drink them.”

“I do, but I had a beer instead. Oh, I almost forgot, your mother called.”

He paused halfway up. “She did?”

“Yeah. She’s a nice lady. And she was just delighted when I answered. I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I said we were lovers and that we were thinking about making it official before the baby comes.”

Because she was smiling up at him in a way that left him uncertain whether she was stringing him along, he simply shook his head. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Grace.”

“Anytime. Your sister’s got a new boyfriend. He’s a lawyer. A corporate lawyer. He owns his own house and has a time-sharing condo in a place called Ocean City. It looks promising.”

“Jesus,” was all he managed.

“And your mother’s blood pressure is one-twenty over eighty. Want me to fix you a drink?”

“Yeah, you do that.”

She was humming when she walked into the kitchen. Ed really was adorable. She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the bag. He also had taste, she decided as she read the label. Then she took out what appeared to be a clump of asparagus. She sniffed it, then wrinkled her nose. Taste, yes, but she wasn’t at all sure what kind.

She found cauliflower, scallions, and snow peas. The only thing that managed to make her feel relieved was a bag of seedless grapes. Grace didn’t hesitate before diving in.

“It looks great.”

She swallowed a grape and turned to see him in the doorway.

“The bathroom. It looks great.”

“I’m very handy.” She held up the asparagus. “What do you do with this?”

“I cook it.”

She set it down again. “I was afraid of that. I didn’t ask what you wanted to drink.”

“I’ll get it. Did you rest?”

“I’m feeling fine.” She watched him pull a bottle of apple juice out of the refrigerator. It made her lips purse. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while wallpapering your bathroom and chatting with your mother.”

“What kind of thinking?” He poured a tumbler of apple juice, then reached in a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of vodka. He poured two shots into the juice.

“That’s a hell of a way to get your vitamin A.”

“Want one?”

“I’ll pass. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that I should take over Kathy’s lease for a while. Stick around.”

Ed set his glass down. He wanted her to stay, just as the cop in him knew she’d be better off gone. “Why?”

“I still have lawyers and insurance to deal with.” Which she could do just as easily from New York. And he knew it. She could tell from his expression that he saw right through her. She’d been foolish to try to circle him. In any case, she didn’t find it easy to be dishonest with him. That was odd in itself. Grace never minded shading the truth. “All right, that’s not it. I can’t leave here without knowing everything. Kathy and I weren’t close. It’s never been easy for me to admit that, but it’s true. Staying here, trying to find who did this to her, is something I have to do for both of us. I can’t put this behind me, Ed, not completely behind me until I have all the answers.”

He wished, for both their sakes, that he didn’t understand. “Finding your sister’s killer isn’t your job, it’s mine.”

“Your job, yes. For me it’s a need. Can you understand that?”

“It isn’t a matter of what I understand, but what I know.”

She crumpled the empty grocery bag before he could take it from her and fold it for storage. “Which is?”

“Civilians can’t be involved in investigations, Grace. They screw things up. And they get hurt.”

She touched her tongue to her top lip as she stepped toward him. “Which bothers you the most?”

She had incredible eyes. The kind a man could stare into for hours. They were looking into his now, waiting, questioning. Half-fascinated, half-wary, he ran his thumb along her cheekbone. “I don’t know.” Then, because he needed to, because her lips had curved just a little, he lowered his mouth to hers.

She tasted exactly the way he wanted her to. She felt, as he spread his fingers over her face, exactly the way he wanted her to. It was foolish, he knew. She was New York, bright lights, and fast parties. He was small town, and he never knew when he’d have blood on his hands again. But she felt just right.

Her eyes opened slowly when their lips parted. She let out a long breath before she smiled. “You know, you make a big impression whenever you do that. Maybe you could make it more of a habit.” Pressing against him, she nibbled her way to his mouth. When she felt his hands move to her hips, then tense, she sighed. It had been a long time, much too long, since she’d been tempted to let herself go. She wound her arms around his neck and felt, with great satisfaction, his heart thud along with hers. “Are you going to take me to bed, or what?”

He burrowed his lips into her neck, wanting more. It would be easy, so easy, to pick her up, to take her to his bed and just let it happen. As it had happened before. Something told him that with her it shouldn’t be easy. With her
it shouldn’t be a casual tumble onto the sheets without a thought to tomorrow. He pressed his lips to her brow before he released her.

“I’m going to feed you.”

“Oh.” Grace took a step back. She didn’t often offer herself to a man. It took more than a sexual pull, it took affection and a feeling of trust. And to the best of her recollection, she’d never been rejected. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.” Turning around, she picked up the cauliflower. It might give her momentary satisfaction to throw it at him, but she decided against it. “If you’re not attracted, then—”

It was the second time he’d whirled her around. This time she discovered that colliding with his chest was something like ramming into a stone wall. She might have sworn at him if he hadn’t already occupied her mouth.

This time he wasn’t gentle. It didn’t surprise her to feel the licks of passion or the underlying knots of tension. It made her happy. Then, in seconds, she felt nothing but his mouth, his hands, and her own explosive response.

He wanted her so much he’d have found it exciting to take her there, as they stood in the kitchen. But he wanted more than excitement. He wanted more than the flash of the moment. And he needed time to figure out just what it was he did want.

“You think I’m unattracted to you?”

Grace went from her toes to the flat of her feet on a quick whoosh of breath. “I could be wrong.” She cleared her throat, then rubbed her fingertip over her lips as they vibrated from his. “Am I still standing up?”

“Looks like it.”

“Good. Okay. After we open a window and get rid of some of the heat in here, what are you going to feed me?”

He smiled and touched her hair. “Stuffed artichoke bottoms Bordelaise.”

“Uh-huh,” she said after a long pause. “You’re not making that up, are you?”

“It only takes about a half hour.”

“Can’t wait.” As he began to gather ingredients, she took a chair. “Ed?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you planning on maybe having a long-term relationship?”

He glanced over his shoulder as he rinsed vegetables under a cold spray. “I’ve been giving it some thought.”

“Well, if it works out, I’d like to make a deal. Any night we have artichokes, we have pizza the next.”

“Whole-wheat crust.”

She got up to find a corkscrew. “We’ll talk about it.”

B
EN SHIFTED IN THE
passenger’s seat and watched for the light to turn. Beside him, Tess drummed her fingers against the wheel. She knew she was right, but the problem was, she no longer had just her own feelings to consider.

“I could have driven in alone,” she began. “You’re not going to have a car.”

“Ed’ll drop me off.”

The light switched to green. Tess moved along with the sluggish morning traffic. “I’m sorry you’re upset about this. Try to understand, it isn’t something I’m doing on impulse.”

Annoyed, he turned the radio to another station. “I didn’t have any say about your involvement in the other case. Apparently I don’t have much say this time around either.”

“You know that’s not true. What you feel means a lot.”

“Then drop me off and go to your office. Leave this alone.”

She was silent for a full thirty seconds. “All right.”

“All right?” He stopped as he was about to punch in the car lighter. “Just like that?”

“Yes.” She tightened a loose pin in her hair with a casual gesture, then made the turn to the station.

“No argument?”

“We argued last night. There’s no need to go into it again.” Tess swung into the parking lot and pulled up. “I’ll see you tonight.” Leaning over, she kissed him.

He caught her chin in his hand before she drew away. “You’re using that reverse psychology shit on me, aren’t you?”

Her eyes, violet and clear, smiled at him. “Absolutely not.”

“I hate it when you do that.” He flopped back on the seat to rub his hands over his face. “You know how I feel about you being involved with this part of my life.”

“You know how I feel about being excluded from any part of your life. Ben …”

She lifted her hand to brush at his hair. A year ago she hadn’t even known him. Now he was the focal point of her life. Her husband, the father of the child she was just beginning to suspect she was carrying. But she was still a doctor. She’d sworn an oath. And she couldn’t forget the way Grace’s fingers had trembled on a cup of coffee.

“I may be able to help, to let you understand his mind. I did it before.”