Intimate Caresses (The Love and Danger Series) (15 page)

Nina laughed, but the sound wasn’t amusement.  It was derision over their obvious play to soothe the problems Jared had created.  “Jared Silverberg attacked people in the kitchen, had an affair with someone in his office and probably conducted several other unethical activities.  I’m sorry for the state of these projects, but I’m not going to take on all of those issues.  You’ll have to get someone else to fill that role.”

“But…” he started to argue but she held up her hand. 

Nina was now trying to soothe his ruffled feathers.  She didn’t want to create an enemy, but she needed to firmly state her position.  “I’m honestly not doing this maliciously.  I appreciate management trying to fix the problems and the morale, even if you are stepping in too late.  But my reasons for not accepting the role are valid.  I do have a personal project that I’m working on that has nothing to do with this office.  Taking on a larger role at this point would be detrimental to my personal goals.”  She paused to let that information sink in.  “I appreciate your faith in my leadership skills, but I politely decline the position.”  She tried to smile, but it didn’t feel very friendly.  She just wasn’t in a friendly mood. 

Reggie watched her for a long moment.  Whatever it was he finally saw, he accepted that she wasn’t just stringing him along or rejecting the position for nonsensical reasons.  “I don’t think we’re finished with this conversation,” he said with a fake smile.  “I think there’s a big role for you in this organization.  You do good work and the people who report to you say some very good things about you.” 

She couldn’t deny she was flattered.  “Thank you, but my answer remains the same.”

Reggie was obviously stumped but also realized she wasn’t budging. 
At least not at this point.  “How about if I let you think about it?” he offered.

Nina would have laughed if she hadn’t thought of Brock at that moment.  As it was, all she wanted to do was go out and find him, tell him what this guy had just said and curl up in his
arms.  It was a depressing state of affairs when all she wanted to do was find the man she’d just rejected.  Or the man who felt rejected.  Nina didn’t think she had really rejected Brock.

Well, okay, she could understand how he might feel like she’d rejected him.  She’d hidden a major facet of her life from him.  And he’d only been asking what it was.  It wasn’t like he was going to go out and….Oh good grief!  Did she really think that Brock would do the same thing Steven had done?  Sell her product out from underneath her?  Steven had taken the product to market before it was ready but, looking back, Nina should have seen how sleazy Steven was.  He’d always wanted to cheat on their taxes, nothing major, just slide a few extra numbers in occasionally to lower their overall tax burden; or he would short change cashiers, slip them foreign coins, she’d even seen him slide a candy bar into his pocket while in
the grocery store line once.  She’d been horrified, but he’d only winked at her, thinking it was a lark to get away with stealing something. 

Brock would never do anything like that.  She’d only been with him for a few days, but instinctively, she knew that he was an honest person.  Brock wasn’t trying to get one over on the little guy.  He was
risking his life trying to protect the little guy!

So why wouldn’t she tell him about the computer game she was building?  Why wouldn’t she trust him with just the name? 

She dropped her head down into her hands, her mind feeling like it would explode if she didn’t figure this all out.  Why did life have to be so complicated? 

By the time she was walking out that evening, she felt like the whole day had been a complete waste.  She hadn’t been able to work on anything at the office and she hadn’t resolved any of the questions about her relationship with Brock. 

Or even if she had a relationship with him!  Oh goodness, she couldn’t imagine life without him.  He’d burst into her life and created a whole rainbow of colors.  She hadn’t realized how much vibrancy he’d brought to her days until today when that color was all gone.  Her rainbow had dimmed!

So how was she supposed to get things back the way they were?  She still had trust issues.  What would happen if Brock got greedy like Steven?  What if Brock figured out how to market her game faster? 

What if she wasn’t enough for him?

That was the basis of all her fears, wasn’t it? 

Good grief!  What was this between her and Brock?  Wasn’t it just a fun, crazy fling that would burn itself out quickly? 

Even as she said those words in her mind, she knew they weren’t true. 

Colt eyed his partner, sensing that Brock wasn’t as thrilled about the world as he had been the previous morning.  “Nina okay?”

“She’s fine,” Brock snapped, sitting down at his desk and shifting papers around.  “We need to talk to the district attorney so we can get a search warrant.”

Colt agreed, but was concerned about the look on his partner’s face.  “What happened last night?” he asked, knowing that he was poking the bear, but he’d never seen Brock look like this.

“I told you, she’s fine.  Let’s go,” he snapped and walked out of the office.

Colt followed, unconcerned with his friend’s snapping and more worried about what was causing it. 

Sticking his head in Sam’s office, he glanced down the hallway to make sure Brock was out of ear shot. 
“Poker at my house tonight.  Something’s wrong with Brock.”

Sam instantly nodded his head.  “I’ll call Walker and get him over there too.”

Colt shot down the hallway to catch up with Brock, wondering what might have happened. 

The assistant district attorney was quickly able to get a sig
nature for both search warrants.  That was a relief, since they wanted to search the assistant’s apartment first, then go directly to the wife’s house. 

“You don’t think they did this together, do you?” Colt suggested. 

Brock thought about it as he drove to the apartment.  “I doubt it.  I don’t think those two women could be in the same room without killing each other.  So planning out a murder seems to be beyond the realm of possibility.”

Colt chuckled, but agreed with him.  “Stranger things have happened though.”

“That’s true enough.” 

There were three other police cars pulling in at the same time, all of them
there to help Colt and Brock execute the search warrant.  “Come on guys,” Brock said grimly.  “Let’s go see if we can find a gun or medicine.”

The uniformed officers walked behind Brock and Colt as they walked up the stairs.  When Brock knocked on the door, he could hear shuffling inside and he braced himself for someone to burst out of the door.

But when it opened, all he saw was Joan Spangler, her hair in wild disarray, her eyes bloodshot and her apartment was even messier than it had been the first time they’d visited.  “What do you want?” she mumbled, obviously drunk to the point that she had to lean against the door to hold herself upright. 

“Ms. Spangler, we’re here to search your apartment,” Brock stated firmly and held up the warrant.

Joan’s eyes widened and she stumbled backwards.  “But why?”

Brock nudged the door wider and waved the officers into the apartment.  “We’re looking for a nine millimeter weapon that is registered in your name.”

Brock and Colt watched her as she smirked.  “A gun, huh?  I don’t have a gun in here.  But look all you want,” she said.

“Found it, Detective,” one of the
uniformed officers called out.

Brock and Colt tried not to laugh at her astonished expression.  It had taken the officer less than ten seconds to find the gun? 

“Where was it?” Brock called out, his eyes narrowing on his suspect.

“It was hidden in the back of her closet, in a shoebox.”

It took monumental effort to keep from rolling his eyes.  In a shoebox?  Couldn’t she have gotten a little more creative in hiding the gun? 

“Has it been recently fired?”

Joan’s eyes changed to panic, a crazed expression entering her frazzled face.  “I go to the shooting range almost every day!” Joan exclaimed.  “Just because it’s been fired won’t mean anything!”

Colt stepped forward, his hands covered in plastic gloves
as he held up an evidence bag. 

Another officer
who had been searching the messy desk in the corner of her den called out.  “I think we have something else,” he said.  “Isn’t this blood?” he held up the paper so the others in the room could see it. 

Brock instantly knew that it was
significant based on Joan’s gasp of horror.  He looked at the paper, his eyes narrowing as he read through the details.  “This looks like an annual review form,” he commented, taking the paper and putting it into another evidence bag.  He then read through the words, his eyebrows going up.  “Looks like we have motive,” he commented. 

Turning to look down at the suspect, he brought the paper over to her.  “Ms. Spangler, we know you were having an affair with your boss.  The DNA evidence will prove that.  Would you care to explain anything to us?”

She gasped, her eyes darting from the paper to Brock’s eyes, then to Colts as if the other man might have mercy on her and get her out of this mess.  “He was a jerk!” she yelled out, furious now.  “He used me!  He was having an affair with me.  He said he was in love with me!”  She started crying, furious that everything was falling apart.  Her arms were wrapping around herself as if she were trying to hold her life together somehow.  “He said he loved me.  We were working late that night.  He’d just made love to me, then patted me on the butt.  Told me we needed to get some business out of the way.”  She sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest.  “I cleaned up and picked up my notebook, prepared to start taking notes.  But his wife walked in at that moment.”  Joan rolled her eyes, shuddering with anger over the other woman.  “She didn’t love him.  And Jared hated her!  She was always putting him down, ridiculing him, making him feel like less of a man.” 

Her chin went up defiantly.  “I made him feel like a man.  I’m the one that really loved him.”

Brock moved back, letting Colt take over.  They’d played this game several times over the years, the two of them switching from the good cop or the bad cop, whichever suited their purposes.  “What happened that night, Joan?  Did he hurt you?  Did he take advantage of you?”

Joan snorted.  “
No one takes advantage of me!” she came right back.  She shook her head, as if that movement might somehow put her hair back to some semblance of order.  But it barely moved, obviously too heavy with dirt and oil since it didn’t appear that she’d taken a shower for the past week. 

“Tell me what happened that night,” he said softly, encouraging her to release all the tension that had been causing her to drink so heavily. 

Joan shifted slightly, glaring down at the plastic bag filled with the annual review.  “His wife walked in.  They yelled and screamed at each other for a while.  They were always yelling and screaming about something,” she scoffed. 

“What time did she arrive?” Colt asked.

Joan shrugged.  “About nine, I guess.  She didn’t stay long.”  She sighed and rubbed her forehead as if she were exhausted.  That’s often the case with people who commit crimes.  They are so tired of trying to hide their crimes, when given the chance, they are more than eager to confess and the release of their stress sometimes causes exhaustion to overtake them. 

Colt looked at the review.  “Why did he say that you were underperforming?” he coaxed. 

Joan’s eyes lit up with fury and indignation.  “Because…” she wiped a tear away, smearing more of her mascara in the process.  “Because he was trying to get rid of me!” she exploded.  “After all I did for him, he was going to toss me aside!”

“Was he going back to his wife?”

Joan snorted.  “No way!”  She smoothed down her rumpled dress.  “He’d never go from me back to her.”

He nodded carefully, as if he were trying to see her side. 
“So what did you do?  You were obviously angry.”

“He was sipping that stupid coffee his wife had brought.  He told me to sit down and he handed me that…crap!” she spat out, glaring at the review.  “I’ve never handed in any assignment late, my work is impeccable and I’m always accurate in my data!  How dare he say all those negative things about me!  He can’t use me and then treat me like that!”

“What did you do, Joan?”

She looked into Colt’s eyes, the hurt and anger emanating from her own.  “I killed him! I shot that bastard!  And I don’t regret it!”

Colt nodded his head as if he understood.   “Why did you have the gun with you?  Were you intending to shoot him?”

She shook her head.  “No!  I loved him!  I wanted him to leave his wife.  I always carry the gun because we work so late.  I get nervous at night, coming home alone.”  She started crying again as she remembered all she’d given up for her boss.  “So many nights we’d work late into the night.  I gave up
my nights, my dreams, my life for him!”

Colt nodded his head.  “You’re right.  You gave up a lot to be with him.  It wasn’t fair, what he did to you.”

Her startled eyes looked up at him, relieved that someone understood.  “I know!” she gasped, so happy someone finally understood. 

It was now Brock’s turn.  “Joan Spangler, you are under arrest for the murder of
Jared Silverberg.”  He continued on, reading her the Miranda rights while he pulled her hands behind her back and handcuffed her.  He did a quick search of her person, then nodded to one of the uniformed officers.  “Good work, guys,” he said as one of them took control of the now-sobbing woman.

They walked out of the apartment, the officers ensuring that the door was locked. 
“Ready for the next one?” Colt asked.

Brock nodded grimly.  “What an ass,” he grumbled as he got into the truck. 
“Three women!”

Colt scoffed as well. 
“Probably more of a nightmare than a dream.”

Brock nodded.  “Do you think the wife put the allergy medicine in
the coffee?  Or the nanny?

Colt shrugged.  “My money is on the wife.  I don’t think the nanny had the gumption to do anything.  I also suspect that she was aware of the strife in the marriage, probably thinking he
would leave his wife for her soon.  So the nanny just needed to wait things out.”

Brock nodded.  “I’m with you.  I can’t see her trying to kill him.  She didn’t have any motive.  And the wife had more access to the medicine.”

They pulled up outside of the Silverberg house twenty minutes after Joan’s arrest, four other police cars pulling in directly behind them.  A knock on the door revealed only the nanny.  “Hi Desiree.  We have a search warrant,” Brock explained.

Desiree’s eyes widened and she looked anxiously behind her.  “The kids aren’
t home.  Nor is Ms. Silverberg.”

Brock was the nice guy this time, although he definitely didn’t feel like it today.  “That’s okay,” he replied, digging deep to find the nice guy.  “Why don’t you step out here and the officers will conduct the search?”

Desiree watched in awe as several uniformed officers stepped through the doorway while she stood to the side.  “Should I call her and let her know?” she asked.

“
That’s up to you.  I believe officers are informing her as well.”

Desiree crossed her arms over her stomach as if warding off whatever horrible scenes were occurring inside the house where she worked. 

This time, there weren’t just uniformed officers.  Because they were looking for chemicals, a crime scene technician was also there, ready to test surfaces where the medicine might have been introduced to the coffee. 

“What the hell is going on?” a screeching, female voice yelled from the end of the driveway.

Brock, Colt and Desiree all turned to watch the furious woman storming up the driveway, her purse sliding off of her arm.  “What’s this all about?  Why are these people in my house?  Get them all out now!”

Brock stepped in front of her, effectively stopping her forward momentum.  He held the warrant up for her to look at.  “We have a warrant to search the house, Ms. Silverberg.”

“I didn’t shoot my husband!” she snapped.  “Now get out of my way.”

“You may enter the house, ma’am,” Colt said, stepping to the side so that he was blocking one way while Brock continued to halt her from the other direction.  “But you can’t interfere with the search warrant.  If that happens, I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

“This isn’t justice!” she shrieked.  “This is a witch hunt!  I’ve done nothing to my husband but lose him.  Are you telling me that this is how the Chicago Police Department treats their victims?  This is reprehensible!”

“Be that as it may, the less you interfere, the less time this will take.  We can clear this up pretty quickly if you’ll just stand out of the way.”

She glared up at Brock, her anger rising.  “And have those men rifle through my home?  My life!  What a horrible invasion of privacy!”  She took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm down.  “I’ll have my lawyers deal with this!”  She turned to face Desiree, steel maliciousness in her eyes.  “And you’re fired,” she snapped. 

Desiree’s mouth fell open and she looked up at the two detectives while her employer walked away.  “Can she do that?” the nanny asked, worried that she’d just lost her job for real.

“Let’s work on one problem at a time,” Colt reassured her, touching her arm gently. 

Thirty minutes later, one of the technicians walked out with a medicine bottle as well as several test strips taped to something that looked official.  “I can’t be sure,” he said, but it looks like the capsules in this bottle were opened upstairs in the bathroom where most of the makeup is stored and we found more on the counter by the coffee maker.”