Dead Shot (8 page)

She met his eyes. Said softly, “So are these the ‘circumstances’ that brought you to town?”

He admitted it. “More or less. Got no family back East. Nancy’s was here.”

Simple explanation. Cut-and-dried. As if he hadn’t talked his ass off getting Nancy to Nashville. Not to mention getting her to stay.

The coffee was almost done. Thank God. Gave him something else to talk about. “Grab a couple of cups from above the sink,” he said, and dove into the fridge for milk in case she wanted some.

He turned to find her on tiptoes, reaching for the mugs. “Hey, short stack. I got it.” He leaned over her shoulder to grab a couple, and she pivoted at the same time, turning away from the cupboard. And just like that, they were face-to-face. Her arms were braced on the counter behind her, arching her back and pushing her breasts against his chest. He smelled the spicy scent of her hair. Was suddenly keenly aware of how tiny she was. A small, fragile, female thing.

He scolded himself. That was the trick of the photographs. To make her appear vulnerable. Like she needed help. From what he’d seen so far, appearances were definitely deceiving.

He stepped back, thrust a mug at her, using it like a shield as much as anything else. She poured herself a cup, and he watched her ruin it with milk and sugar. Sipped his own black. Fifteen minutes more or less until he had to face Nancy and her big belly.

“So how come you and all your exes are so chummy?” Gillian asked.

Did she have a couple of hours? Could she spell s-i-c-k? Because it definitely bordered on the pathological. “Burke lives a couple blocks away.” He stuck to the facts. “This was his house when he and Gloria first got married. He kept it, rented it out. When Nancy and I separated, I moved in here. Supposed to be temporary, but . . .” He shrugged.

Silence while she sipped at the coffee. “I don’t suppose you have any Oreos? Health maniac like you?”

He opened a cabinet and tossed a package of cookies at her.

“See”—she grinned—“I knew you had a weakness.” She bit into a cookie. “Somewhere.” Carefully, she separated the top half from the rest. Scraped her teeth against the white icing.

He repressed a smile. She could have been sixteen. Small and delicate and young.

No. Somehow he doubted she’d ever been young.

Still, he couldn’t help wondering about the teenage Gillian. The file he’d read had been full of her childhood.

Or at least the part connected with her mother’s death. Not much on the intervening years.

He had known some of the back story on Holland Gray and her beautiful daughter. Not that the mother was a slouch in the beauty department. On cover after cover of
Vogue, Cosmo, Elle,
Holland embodied 1980s glamour. Even after her child was born, she continued to wear the supermodel crown. So there’d been great upheaval in the celebrity world—and among those who pay attention to it—when Holland abruptly withdrew to Nashville. And when she was killed, the coverage bordered on frenzy, if the mountains of articles were any indication.

One cover had stood out. He’d been fourteen when Holland Gray had died. His mother had subscribed to
People,
so he didn’t know whether he remembered the cover or not. But it struck him when he saw it in the file. The orphaned Gillian, then a blond wisp of a child, innocent, trusting, hair like angel dust against the setting sun, eyes closed in sleep in a chair on her dead mother’s front porch.

It had hit him then, just as it hit him now.

The first dead Gillian.

The first dead shot.

There had been many since. Many dead children, teenagers, women, all of them her. The media fury after her mother’s death eventually died away, but her own work had made her famous again. Or infamous if you read the tabloids.

The Diva of Death they called her.

She caught him staring at her. “Sorry.” She pushed the cookies toward him. “Did you want one?”

He shook his head. “No. Thanks.”

She finished the cream, polished off the plain half. “Something on your mind, Ray?”

He nodded slowly, still thinking about that beautiful, lost child. “Your . . . work. The photographs. Why do you do them?”

Carefully, she wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Why do you think?”

“Therapy?”

She laughed. “That’s right.” She leaned back, crossed her arms, and studied him. An ugly gleam reflected in her eyes. “We’ve all got issues, don’t we, Ray? Murder is mine.”

“Because of your mother?”

She stiffened. “So . . . you think you know all about that.”

“I read your file.”

She nodded sagely. “Ah. My file. I see. Or do you mean
People,
the
Star,
and the
Enquirer
?”

“Those, too.” He shrugged. “Enlighten me. How does it help, burying yourself in all that gore?”

“I told you. It’s the truth. We’re one of the few species that murders its own. We not only do it, we glorify it. On TV, in the movies. Only it’s not glorifying. It’s ugly. Horrorfilled.”

“And you shove our faces in it.”

“You bet I do.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Gillian slid a second cookie out of the package. “So, Ray, tell me . . . who’s the girlfriend?”

He gave her a swift look. “Excuse me?”

“The girlfriend. In the hockey pic on the place of honor on your shelf.”

He paused, silently debating whether or not to answer.

It wasn’t any of her business. But saying so made more of a big deal out of it, and it wasn’t. Not anymore. “That’s Nancy.”

She seemed to consider that. “Been divorced long?”

“Three years.”

She bit into the cookie. “So . . . still carrying a torch?”

He scowled. “I keep the picture because of the trophy. Division championship. It’s the only one I have.” Hockey had been his ticket to college. It had led him to Birmingham, and the University of Alabama Chargers had led him to a burger joint on the edge of campus. Nancy had been behind the counter. Nancy with her ready hands and her eager mouth, and her Nashville family. Hockey had been the beginning and end of everything.

Gillian winked. “Ah, yeah sure, the trophy.”

The doorbell rang, and he immediately tensed. His ex-wife had been quicker than he’d expected.

But it wasn’t Nancy at the door.

“Where is he?” Peter Coombs asked. Instead of a shirt, he wore a pajama top stuffed into his pants. Shorter than Ray, he was a slight man, sandy-haired and sandy-eyed. Made the most unremarkable impression a man could make. But he was a fifth-grade teacher, not a cop, and that was the main attraction.

Ray stepped aside so Peter could see Burke slumped in the easy chair.

“Where’s Nancy?” Ray asked.

“It’s late,” Peter said curtly, as if that was all the explanation Ray needed. But of course, it wasn’t, because he added, “And she’s pregnant.”

Ray nodded. Didn’t know if he was relieved or annoyed that she hadn’t come. Relieved, he decided.

Together, he and Ray managed to heft Burke’s weight out of the house and down to the curb where Peter had parked his car. Burke mumbled and swore, farted once, but didn’t completely wake up.

“He’s getting worse,” Ray said when they’d laid Burke in the backseat. “He needs someone looking out for him.”

“Nancy’s got her hands full with little Carson,” Peter objected before her name had even been mentioned. “And now with the two new ones coming—”

“Okay, okay.” Ray put up his hands in stop mode. He didn’t need an inventory. “Whatever. It’s just one of these days you’ll be picking him up at the morgue.”

“I’ll talk to Jim,” Peter said.

He was the only one who called him “Jim.” “Yeah, you do that.”

He watched Peter drive off. The husband of his wife. The father of his wife’s children. Could his life get any weirder?

Then he turned back to the house and saw Gillian Gray at the door.

13

From the doorway, Gillian watched Ray and the man she’d gathered was Nancy’s husband stuff that confused bloated old man into the backseat of the husband’s car. Finished, Ray closed the door, then stood sentry as they disappeared into the darkness.

Then he headed back to the house.

He came in, looked her over. “Ready?” he asked. No cursing, no commentary about what had just happened. Something had to be done, and he did it. Calmly and with grace.

“You’re a nice guy, aren’t you, Ray?”

That made him shift in embarrassment, which amused her.

“What was I supposed to do,” he said, “leave him in the street?”

“Others might have.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” But he didn’t sound convinced. He checked his watch. “Look, it’s late. If we’re going, we should go.”

But the scene with Ray’s ex-family had dampened Gillian’s enthusiasm for partying. So instead of going downtown to close the tourist bars, she directed Ray west, into Belle Meade, where the bronze statue of a prancing Thoroughbred and colt paid homage to the area’s racing history and where the
capo di capo
of old Nashville money resided.

Like most of the homes in the area, the Gray house was set far back from the road. It sat on four wooded acres a stone’s throw from the Belle Meade Country Club. Pillars with open iron gates guarded the entrance. Ray drove between them slowly.

“These gates ever close?”

She looked at the braided black bars and decorative scalloped edge. “I don’t know that they can close. They’ve been there since 1872 or something like that. I think they’re rusted in place. Like the tin man.”

He grunted a reply, his eyes scanning as he drove up the curved drive that led to the house.

On either side, poplars, black walnuts, and Osage oranges lined the road. They were big trees, with heavy foliage that arched over the path in summer to create a light-dappled bower. Now, skeletal branches furred with buds reached over the drive. To Gillian they always looked like witch’s fingers, poised to snatch the innocent.

Ahead, the house loomed stately and patrician, its Greek revival portico gleaming ghostly white in the moonlight. It wasn’t hard to imagine the clatter of hooves and the jingle of harnesses, the open carriages that disgorged giggling women in bell-hooped skirts.

But not tonight. Tonight, the spirit of the Old South was dead, and the only vehicle pulling up to the door was working class. And there was no Scarlett inside.

Ray braked. Sat for a minute, eyeing the landscape.

“Looking for anything in particular?”

“Whatever’s out there.”

She followed his gaze out the window into the inky air. Did he also know about the monster? Did he expect to find him here? “Anything?”

He turned back to her. “No.”

“Too bad.” She lifted the handle to open the door, but he reached across and stopped her.

“I’ll take you in,” he said.

“It’s two steps away. I’ll be fine.”

He opened his door. “That’s what Gerhard Bruckner thought, too. His driver dropped him two yards from his house, and he was assassinated at his front door. Don’t get out until I get there.”

She plopped back, knowing he didn’t get it and suddenly too drained to tell him. Maybe it was the scene with Sergeant Burke. Maybe it was the proximity of her own screwed-up family. Or maybe, just maybe, some deep inner quirk responded to being protected.

Out of perverse curiosity, she tested the feeling. She hadn’t objected when he’d knocked her flat at the museum. Or on the walk up to his own house. Now, she sat still while he came around the truck’s front end and opened her door. Docile, she let him escort her to the house. Unlocked the door without protest while he guarded her. Hand on the knob, he spoke.

“Is there an alarm system?”

She laughed. “Of course. In the closet to the right.”

“What’s the code?”

She turned the knob herself and entered. “I have no idea. They usually forget to turn it on.”

His brows rose in surprise. “Forget?”

“Accidentally on purpose you might say. In this house, no one likes to be reminded how vulnerable we are.”

She ignored his frown because now that she was inside, the smell of roses slapped her back. As it did every time she’d been away and returned, the sharp tang hacked away at the false front of the present to reveal the bones of the past. The funeral. Standing at the bottom of the stairs while her grandmother tugged a coat on her. Scratching at the sleeves because they were too tight.

“It’s cold.” Genevra had fastened the top button until it choked. She had to lean close to do it, so the rose smell had overwhelmed. “We’ll be outside, and you’ll be glad to have it.”

Gillian remembered that coat clearly. Navy blue with a velvet collar.

“Where’s your room?”

The voice startled her out of the past, and she turned to the sound, looked up, almost surprised to find a tall, big-boned man standing beside her.

Ray.