Читать книгу Key West Heat - Alice Orr - Страница 10

Des turned out the headlights of his Jeep and coasted to a stop within sight of the scene. Following Jethro’s flashy car had been easy. Des hadn’t really decided to follow them. It just happened. She’d marched out of the place, twitching her hips in that white dress. Was she aware that he could see the outline of her body through the fine material? Had she planned to use her charms to get what she wanted out of him, whatever that might be? Then she saw him and lost control for some reason and went running off before she could put her plan in motion. Was that what happened all those years ago? Did she lose control back then too? That’s what everybody said at the time.

Des let out a deep sigh. For almost as long as he could remember, he’d been pushing the past as far out of his mind as he could get it, especially his memories of that night. The air heavy with smoke, the running, choking, eyes raw and red, his heart screaming with the pain of being left alone again. He had been the beachcomber boy. Desiree had been the lovely lady from the beautiful house who walked the beach alone. He made her laugh sometimes. She gave him a pair of jeans without holes in them and boots made of real leather. She had given him books, too, and helped him learn to read as well as the kids who didn’t have to cut school to do odd jobs for money to live on.

Most important, she taught him things about himself he never knew, such as that he was smart and had courage and could do anything he wanted if he put his mind to it. His Uncle Murph might have done those things himself after Des’s mother died when he was only a baby, but Uncle Murph was generally too drunk to do much of anything but mumble and pass out. Desiree taught Des there was another way to be. It was the most significant lesson of his life. But what had he done for her in return? What if she had known that in the end he would leave her in a burning house to die? He knew the answer. She would say, “Thank you for saving my baby,” with the smile that had always made his heart feel full.

Tonight Desiree’s baby had walked back into his life, and he was trying his best not to care. For the most part, Des had kept himself from caring much about anything after the night of the Stormley fire. Now, he could feel the forces of hurt and memory threatening that resolve, and Taylor Bissett was to blame. Why had she come back here, anyway? What was she after? Anger flared. Des gripped the steering wheel hard, as if to choke the life out of that rage so he could return to the safety of coolness again. He didn’t want any of this to be happening. He wanted to go back to the Beachcomber and joke with the customers and the barmaids as he did every other night. Old tragedies, a beautiful woman with a screwed-up past—he didn’t need any of it.

Unfortunately, at this moment he couldn’t seem to stop wondering whether he would ever get to see Taylor Bissett smile. He forced his temper back under control. His guess was that she wouldn’t be smiling right now. She was too far away for him to make out her face, but he was sure about that all the same. Des had seen the cop cars streak past the Corvette and careen around the corner. He’d pulled over to let them pass. When the ‘Vette turned down the same street as the police cars, he thought Jethro might just be rubbernecking, trying to get a peek at the excitement. He was fool enough to do something like that. Maybe she was a thrill-seeker too.

Des saw the car door open on the passenger side of the Corvette. The police were all out of the two cars now. Two officers were on the path leading to the porch, but off to the side, probably to remain out of range of the front door. Two other officers had assumed break-in positions flanking that door. Des returned his attention to the sports car. Taylor was getting out of her side as Jethro’s door flew open and he jumped out, too. He ran around to her side and appeared to be trying to prevent her from exiting the car.

Through the open window of the Jeep, Des heard the police on the porch shout that they were coming in. He heard the thud of the door being kicked open. Des remembered that his field glasses were in the glove compartment. He pulled them out and peered through the eyepiece. A few adjustments brought the front of the guesthouse into focus. He flashed past the police officers on the walk. Something caught his attention, and he flashed back. There was excitement here, all right. Those cops had pistols in their hands.

Des refocused the glasses to direct his gaze back down the street to the Corvette. Taylor was out of the car now and trying to get to the sidewalk, but Jethro was blocking her way. Her back was to Des. She had managed to move onto the sidewalk, and that put her near a streetlight. She turned to say something to Jethro, and Des saw her face. Her expression was intense. She seemed to be explaining something to Jethro or trying to convince him of something. Des was beginning to doubt that her interest in this situation was limited to idle curiosity over some exciting police action. She looked as if she might be more personally involved than that.

Des saw one of the policemen approach Jethro and Taylor. The magnifying lens showed the policeman talking to them, and her answering. The conversation continued for a few moments, during which she grew increasingly agitated. Jethro was merely listening to the exchange. One of the two cops who had entered the guesthouse came out on the porch and called the other officers to him.

Taylor watched the cop walk away. She had one hand clamped over her mouth, as if to hold back a scream or a sob. Jethro was looking very nervous. He moved toward her and gestured as if he might take her by the shoulders, perhaps to comfort her. Instead, he dropped his arms and began to drum his fingers against the sides of his thighs. Meanwhile, she had started walking slowly toward the guesthouse. Her back was toward Des again, but he could see the tension in her shoulders.

One of the officers had gone down the walk at the side of the guesthouse toward the back of the building. The other officer stationed outside had returned to his patrol car and was speaking into the two-way radio. She climbed the steps, getting close enough to look through the front door into the foyer before one of the policemen from inside came out and backed her off. Des thought he saw her stagger against the cop, but the glasses still didn’t give a good view of her face.

The policeman moved her away from the door and let her sit down on the top step. She put her head in her hands, and could have been crying. Des couldn’t tell. Jethro had kept his distance. Now the policeman beckoned him toward the porch. Jethro hesitated, then shrugged and trudged forward. Des stayed out of sight in the Jeep, despite his sudden impulse to help Taylor. He’d given in to that same impulse twenty-some years ago and lived to regret it. Besides, he wasn’t quite ready to become part of the scene he’d been watching through his field glasses, especially not before he knew exactly what was going on.

He continued watching. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, then the medical examiner’s car. A while later, a stretcher was carried out of the house. The figure on the stretcher was encased in a black bag, completely covered from head to toe.

Des sighed and lowered the field glasses to the passenger seat of the Jeep. “What is it about you, Taylor Bissett?” he asked out loud. “Whenever you’re around, people have a habit of dying.”

* * *

APRIL JANE COONEY had been robbed and murdered. According to one of the uniformed officers who knew her, she never kept much currency in the cashbox. She was too savvy for that. Her assailant had taken whatever little there was, anyway. The metal box had been pried open and left near the body. April Jane must have put up a fight. What was left of the lamp from the registration desk lay in pieces on the floor near the opposite wall. The lamp’s base was shattered, as if it had been thrown very hard. A small dent at about head height on the white wall supported that theory.

One of the policemen had taken Taylor into a sitting room off the guest-house entryway. He had left the lace-curtained double glass doors ajar, so she could hear them discussing what might have happened to April Jane. Taylor heard the words and even put them together into sentences in her mind. Still, they weren’t entirely understandable to her. She guessed that she wasn’t letting herself fully comprehend what she was hearing, because then she would have to believe it. She would have to absorb the very scary fact that a woman she had spoken with less than two hours ago was now on her way to the city morgue, the victim of a senseless, violent crime.

What if Taylor had been here when the thief came in? She felt guilty thinking such a self-centered thought, but she couldn’t help it. What if her uneasiness about walking the trellis path behind the guesthouse had actually been some instinct telling her there was a would-be murderer lurking in the shrubbery? She shuddered at the thought and wished someone would turn off the ceiling fan. The sitting room had turned suddenly chilly.

Taylor had overheard the police saying there was only one guest in the house when the attack happened, an older man on the third floor in the back. He had stayed in tonight and taken a pill to help him sleep off a sunburn. He hadn’t heard a thing. The other guests were out on the town, like most Key West tourists at this time of night. Consequently, there were no witnesses. A neighbor across the street had heard glass shattering and saw the vestibule light go out suddenly. She didn’t see anybody run out of the house, but she suspected something might be wrong and called the police. By the time they arrived, April Jane was dead. Her killer had fled, probably out the back way. The police had already begun canvassing the neighborhood, both on Amelia Street and one block north on Virginia Street, to find out if anyone had seen anything.

Taylor had heard Jethro’s voice out in the entryway shortly after the policeman brought her into this room. Her knees had gone weak, and she had asked to sit down. She couldn’t make out what Jethro was saying. Then she didn’t hear him anymore. Next, she heard a policeman talking to a guest who had returned to the Key Westian and was demanding to know what had happened here. The policeman said that everyone would have to be questioned. He added that the guest-house residents would not be allowed to sleep here tonight because it was a major crime scene and had to be sealed off to all but official visitors.

Taylor was suddenly very tired. A series of adrenaline charges had kept her nerves tingling, through her arrival on this exotic island, her near escape from being run down and her unsettling encounter with Des Maxwell. This most recent jolt—the discovery of a dead body in her hotel—had sapped her final reserves of even that nervous energy. Now, all she wanted was to sleep. The police weren’t about to let her go to her room and lie down there. They might think it bizarre of her to curl up here on this settee, but she was too tired to care much what they thought. She was almost too tired to care where in the devil she might sleep tonight.

“Miss Bissett is a personal acquaintance of mine, and I would like to talk with her.”

The voice from the entryway had obviously been raised for emphasis. That was why Taylor could hear the words so clearly. But it wasn’t the loudness or even the demanding tone, that cut through her head-nodding stupor and snapped her to full attention. She had met very few people on Key West in her few hours here. Yet, she was certain she knew the owner of that deep, resonating voice. One glance at the opening between the double doors confirmed this certainty.

Taylor had no idea why Des Maxwell was here. Nonetheless, the sight of his brown, muscled arm flexing impatiently as he backed the policeman gradually toward the half-open doorway, told Taylor that she was no longer stranded and alone. A wave of relief swept over her, as deep as it was probably irrational. Taylor reminded herself that Des Maxwell was not a likely candidate for friend in need where she was concerned. Still, he was a familiar face in what felt at the moment like very alien territory. She couldn’t help being grateful to him for that.

There was something else about that face besides familiarity, something that struck her with a blow that took her breath away. It had happened when she had first laid eyes on him earlier in the Beachcomber barroom. It happened again now, with even greater force because he didn’t know she was looking at him and she didn’t have to be so careful to hide her reaction. She tried to tell herself she was only tired, otherwise his handsomeness wouldn’t have this effect on her. Still, she couldn’t keep the thought from crossing her mind that the word “manly” had been invented with someone like Des Maxwell in mind. Meanwhile, Des and the officer had walked out of the foyer and through the lace-curtained doors into the sitting room. The two of them appeared to know each other.

“Come on, Tony,” Des was saying. “What do you think I’m going to do? Abscond with your prisoner?”

“She’s not in custody, Des, and you know it. We’re just keeping her here to talk to Detective Santos. He’s on his way.”

“Does he have to talk to her tonight? Can’t it wait till the morning?”

“She may have been the last one to see April Jane alive. Santos will want to question her about that.” Tony glanced over at Taylor on the settee. “There’s something else too,” he added, barely loud enough for her to hear.

“What’s that?” Des asked, also glancing at Taylor then looking away.

She didn’t like the way they were talking about her instead of to her. She was even less pleased when Tony leaned toward Des and said something in a whisper. Des’s expression remained as unreadable as usual, except for a slight tightening around the eyes.

“Wait just a moment here,” Taylor said, rousing herself from the settee and mustering as much indignation as she could manage in her state of near exhaustion. “If you have something to say that relates to me, I want to hear it.”

Des gave her a cautionary look with “Keep quiet and let me take care of things” written all over it. That made Taylor even more indignant. Suddenly, she didn’t want anybody taking care of things for her, not even this man whose brawny body tempted her to do just that—at least until she wasn’t feeling quite so tired and out of sync with everything.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, “but I am perfectly capable of handling this myself.”

“I thought you said she was a friend of yours,” the officer said to Des. “How come she calls you by your last name if you’re such great friends?”

“We’re recent acquaintances,” Taylor said before Des could answer.

She was determined to speak for herself in every way. “Please tell me what you were whispering about with Mr. Maxwell.”

“That’s confidential police information.”

“If it’s so confidential, why were you sharing it with Mr. Maxwell? Is he a member of the police force?” Taylor levelled a steady gaze at the officer. “You can answer that question for me, or for my attorney.”

“I think I can help you out with that one, Miss...” The man who had stepped through the doorway consulted a notepad before going on. “Miss Bissett,” he said. “You are Taylor Bissett, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

He was medium height and sallow-complected. Taylor noticed a slight muscle tic in his left cheek. Even without that added clue, his manner told her that he took his job very seriously. In laid-back Key West, he was anything but laid-back.

“I’m Detective Santos. I’ll be taking charge of this investigation. What are you doing here, Maxwell?” Santos shot a dark-eyed, suspicious gaze at Des. “How do you know Miss Bissett?”

“She’s Netta Bissett’s niece.”

“Oh, yes,” Santos said with a nod. “Your friend with the big house in Casa Marina.”

Taylor thought she might have heard a hint of sarcasm in the way he said “friend.” Or maybe she was imagining that. Either way, Taylor didn’t like the tone of the discussion or that her aunt was its subject.

“If you have questions that have to do with me or my family, I must insist that you address them to me.”

“I see.”

Santos looked her over, no doubt taking in her rumpled dress and unruly hair and probably doubting that she was as capable of taking charge as she claimed. Taylor smoothed her skirt and stood very straight. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by this officious man. Des Maxwell was another story. He was looking at her too, and she felt his gaze as if it had fingers to reach out and touch her. Those fingers travelled over her, but not at all in the same way Santos had looked at her. There was nothing in the line of duty about Des’s eyes. She warmed to the tropical intensity of their touch, from the skin on down into the center of her where she suddenly felt desperately in need of warming.

“Since you are speaking on your own behalf,” Santos said, with unmistakable sarcasm this time, “maybe you can tell me why the perpetrator appears to have been in your room when the victim encountered him.”

“In my room?”

“You’re in... “ Santos again consulted his notepad. “Second floor, front left?”

“That’s right.”

“According to my officers, there are no signs of disturbance in any of the other rooms, but it looks like there was quite a disturbance in yours.”

“I don’t know why that would be.”

Taylor was confused. Why would a thief single out her room? She hadn’t brought any valuables with her to Key West. This time, she was relieved when Des intervened.

“Isn’t Miss Bissett’s room off the veranda?” he asked. “Maybe the guy climbed in that way. April Jane could have heard him and gone up to investigate. The struggle might have started up there and ended up down here when April Jane ran down to call the cops.”

“Interesting theory,” Santos said with something like a sneer. “Did you think that up all by yourself, or do you have an inside source of information I should know about?”

“I was making the point that the guy could just have happened to come in through Taylor’s room.”

“Maybe.”

Santos was looking Taylor over again. She might have been unsettled by that, but her attention seemed to be stuck on the way her name sounded when Des spoke it and how that sound spread over her like heat, the same way the touch of his gaze had done. Once again, she told herself that such thoughts were only the effects of exhaustion on her overtaxed mind. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as sure that was true as she would have preferred to be.

“What makes you think there was a struggle?” Santos was asking Des. “I only said there were signs of a disturbance.”

“I assumed you were talking about the same kind of thing as out there.” Des gestured toward the entryway with its shattered lamp and general disarray. “That looks like the scene of a struggle to me. Besides, I knew April Jane. She would have put up a fight, and she was strong enough to give the guy a pretty hard time.”

Taylor had to agree. April Jane hadn’t come across as a woman who would sit still for being pushed around, or for letting somebody rob the place, either.

“What about you, Miss Bissett?” Santos asked. “Do you think the perpetrator just happened to be in your room when the victim found him and decided to give him a hard time, like Des says?”

Hearing April Jane repeatedly referred to as a victim brought the body bag and the city morgue to Taylor’s mind once more. She swallowed the lump of sudden grief in her throat.

She hadn’t known April Jane Cooney personally, but the woman had to have deserved something better than to be a live human being one minute and a victim the next. The true horror of what had happened here tonight was beginning to impress itself upon Taylor. She was seized by a terror that felt familiar somehow. Why familiar? She had experienced very little violence in her life. Yet, this deep-down fear had been with her before. It had been with her in her dreams.

“Miss Bissett, is there some reason you don’t want to answer my question?” Santos was studying her with continued interest.

“What was the question again?”

“Do you think that the perpetrator just happened to be in your room?”

“I can’t think of any other explanation.” Actually, she couldn’t think much of anything right now. “Detective Santos, would it be possible to continue this in the morning? I’ve had an exhausting day.”

“Murder can do that to you.” Santos was at it with the sarcasm again. “By the way, do you have somewhere else to stay? This place will have to be closed down, at least for the next few nights.”

Taylor searched for an answer. She didn’t really know anybody here in the Keys. She didn’t know the hotels either. And, she didn’t want to stay at Stormley. She wasn’t ready for that yet.

“You can come to my place,” Des said.

Santos glanced back and forth between them with obvious interest. For the moment, Taylor couldn’t think what to say, especially since the suggestion had tripped loose that flutter in her heart she’d felt earlier.

“There’s a room at the Beachcomber over the café,” Des said. “It’s quite comfortable and very private.”

He’d emphasized the privacy part. Taylor wondered if his offer might be her only recourse. She thought of asking Santos if he had any recommendations. She was wavering between taking a chance that he’d offer her a cot in the local jail and taking a chance on Des’s invitation when a flurry of motion turned everyone’s attention toward the door.

The woman who had swept in was dressed all in white, from her turbanned head to her slippered feet. Her clothes appeared to swirl around her—a loose tunic top, full-legged trousers and a kind of shawl or train draped over her shoulder—all in soft, mobile fabrics. Her skin was light by Key West standards, but brightened by dramatic makeup, as were her very round eyes, which were almost as dark as Detective Santos’s.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed as she advanced on Taylor with open arms.

Santos stepped into the path of this swirling, white onslaught. “Mrs. Starling,” he said. “I believe we’ve met.”

“Of course,” she replied. “I have met everyone on this island.”

Jethro appeared in the doorway, confirming Taylor’s guess that this woman was Winona Starling.

“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Santos inquired.

“I have come to the rescue of this beleaguered young woman,” Winona pronounced. “It is what my dear friend Netta would have wished.”

Taylor had spent entirely too much of her life being hovered over and protected and rescued. She had vowed that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but right now that vow felt less crucial than usual. She did her best to ignore the twinge of regret that it wouldn’t be Des Maxwell’s brown, muscled wing under which she would find shelter from what was left of this harrowing night.