Читать книгу The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives - Ann Major, Ann Major - Страница 9

In the mock Tuscan villa down the hill from Dr. Pierce Carver’s four-acre lot and mansion, Amanda Jones, who was a light sleeper, especially when Ralph was out of town on business, was awakened by the faint but persistent sound of her neighbor’s car alarm.

She sat up and listened.

When it didn’t stop, she grew frightened and went to the window. Pierce was anal about his Porsche.

No matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see much of Carver’s property through the thick cedar and oak. Suddenly, two black figures burst out of the darkness from the direction of the Carvers’ house and raced down the strip of road that wound in front of both their houses.

Since she wasn’t about to turn off her own house alarm and go out in the dark and investigate, or even step out onto her upstairs balcony, which had such spectacular views of the sparkling city far below, she went back to her bedside table and called Pierce’s place. When his answering machine picked up on the first ring, she hung up without leaving a message. Then she dialed 911.

Michael Nash had a bad case of brain fog. Not great when you’re Homicide and you’ve got a body upstairs with a paring knife in his Adam’s apple, and two punks in black with blood on their shoes handcuffed to a tree in the victim’s front yard.

The body was probably that of Dr. Pierce Carver. Who the hell else could it be?

Funny, the rich jerk just happened to be somebody Michael had something in common with—namely a woman. Rose Marie Castle, to be exact. Nash knew Carver was a prick because Rose Marie had told him so and quite heatedly—after Michael had ticketed her for stalking the bastard with her Beamer last year. Apparently, Carver had dumped her for a younger model, Anita Somebody from Guatemala. Rosie never had taken failure well.

Not that Michael wanted to think about Rosie or that night ever again because, as usual, she’d twisted him around her little finger and had made a fool out of him.

Carver and she had probably deserved each other. Rosie was trouble, always had been and probably always would be. She’d cut Michael’s heart out on more than one occasion. Just not with a paring knife.

Hell, maybe he should count his blessings.

But murder? Rosie couldn’t have anything to do with this. Still, she’d been royally pissed at the guy.

Michael glanced up from his notebook and said a silent prayer for the dead man in the house. Not that he was sure there was anybody up there to listen. Still, his mother had taken him to church when he was a kid. Old habits died hard.

Michael glanced at the punks handcuffed to the tree and then at his watch. It was late, nearly 2:00 a.m. He lacked the energy to deal with their lies.

Liars! He hated liars!

Too bad, Nash. Everybody lied to cops. The murderers lied because they had to. Witnesses lied to cover up all sorts of minor peccadilloes that as often as not had nothing to do with the case. Everybody else lied just for the sheer joy of it.

His head was pounding as he approached the punks again. His eyes felt grainy. On top of that he was sweltering out here even at this hour.

Michael needed to share a cold beer with Ronnie Bob at The Tavern before heading home, where he would’ve loved to zone out channel surfing. Maybe watch a tiger eat a zebra or a rattler pounce on a mouse before he passed out on his couch.

Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the shifty-eyed kids in the faded black T-shirts and ragged jeans, slouching against the tree trunk. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Even though Michael didn’t think they had a damn thing to do with the murder, the older kid had a prior for car theft. No, they’d been after the Porsche and had set off the car alarm that had alerted Amanda Jones down the hill.

“You just got out of a detention center for stealing cars,” Michael began. “Am I right—Paulo—”

“Pablo.” The kid spat the name.

“Sorry.” Feeling the kid’s hatred, Michael scratched through the u and jotted a b on top of it. “Pablo.”

“We was joggin’.” This from Raul.

Michael’s thick, black brows shot together in a lethal frown. “Right. And you two live…where? Eight miles from here? East Austin. My old neighborhood.”

Rosie’s, too. Not that she liked to admit it even now that it was becoming rather gentrified.

“It’s a free country,” Pablo spat.

Michael was lifting his head to stare at the kid again when Ronnie Bob Keith’s florid face appeared at the front door. Keith’s smirk was a mile wide as he waved a plastic Baggie.

Michael loped toward his partner.

“Raul dropped his wallet. They were up there, all right. Their bloody footprints are everywhere. Talk about contaminating the scene!”

Michael returned with the evidence. Clenching the Baggie, he eyeballed the older kid. “Pablo, my men just found your little brother’s wallet in a pool of blood by a man with a knife in his throat, and you don’t know nothing?”

“Right.”

“How about you—Raul?”

Raul started shaking and refused to look up from the ground.

Michael continued to stare at Pablo. The youth was too tall and too skinny for his large frame. He wore a dirty red bandana. A greasy dark braid hung down the middle of his back. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and eased his weight from one foot to the other, his soulless eyes gazing anywhere but at Raul or Michael.

Michael wanted to know what the kids knew, what they’d seen, but he was going to have to take them downtown and separate them.

Sweat dripped from his brow onto his notepad as he sucked in a long, exasperated breath. “Kid, we’re getting nowhere fast.”

“I told you all I know.”

The fog in Michael’s brain thickened. He held up the wallet again. “You’re going to change your bullshit story before I’m through.”

Pablo stared at his dirty athletic shoes.

“Damn it! You were all over the house! Did you see anybody else? Hear anything?”

“Man, I don’t have to take this. I’m only sixteen.”

“Kids like you get tried as adults all the time. You think about that—Paulo.”

“Pablo! You think I’m just a kid, but I know my rights. We don’t have to talk to no cop without our lawyer.”

“All right. Have it your way.” Michael left them and headed toward the house.

“Hey! You! Come back here! Let us go!”

As their screams grew louder, Michael took the stairs beneath the brilliant chandelier two at a time.

To hell with them!

Finally, Beth had made it back to the hospital.

Maybe it was the late hour, maybe Rosie was just exhausted, maybe she’d seen too many scenes on TV where women got assaulted in parking garages, or maybe it was aftershocks from her ugly run-in with Pierce—whatever, Rosie had a bad case of the jitters as she climbed the concrete stairs to the fourth floor in the hospital parking garage. She was nearly to her Beamer when her cell phone rang.

Climbing faster, she dug for it in her purse, and for her keys, too, only to panic when she read Yolie’s home phone number in the little blue window.

It was well after two-thirty. Jennifer and Alexis were home alone now, since Yolie had driven to the ranch.

Rosie pushed open the door to the fourth floor. “Jennifer?” Her voice echoed in the dimly lit garage.

“Alexis is gone!” the teenager shrieked without preamble. “I’ve looked everywhere!”

Seeing her Beamer, Rosie raced to it. “She can’t be…gone. She’s hiding or something.”

“No…I’ve looked everywhere.”

With shaking hands, Rosie unlocked the car and got in. “Did you check the pool?”

“I turned on the pool lights and the floodlights and everything…She went to bed with Blue Binkie not long after Yolie left. My boyfriend called, and I was on the phone for a while. Then I went up to check on her. I swear, she was fine, but now her bed’s empty. I checked every door and window. They’re all locked. Your bedroom’s empty, except for Lula.”

Lula was Yolie’s huge, white poodle.

Rosie couldn’t believe anything else could go wrong—even if it was her birthday. Alexis gone?

Rosie squeezed her eyes shut and fought panic, not for the first time tonight. As she started the ignition, she thought about their mysterious break-in two days ago. That had been so strange…just as Pierce calling her tonight had been strange. Looking back, the break-in felt almost like an omen.

Yolie’s security company had phoned her and said the alarm was going off. When they’d checked it out, the kitchen door had been unlocked, but shut. Oddly, Lula had been locked in an upstairs bathroom without food or water, barking her head off. When Rosie had gone up to let her out, Yolie’s favorite pink bath mat had been nothing but bits of rubber and pink fuzz.

Other than that, there had been no signs of an intruder. Nor had any valuables been missing.

So, who had unlocked the door and set off the alarm? Who had locked Lula upstairs? Lula had a bad habit of biting postmen and pool men, but she’d let herself be locked in the bathroom without shedding so much as a drop of blood on the white wall-to-wall carpet.

“Shit happens,” the security guy had said, as if that explained it. “Or you have a mystery intruder. Somebody who’s got a key. Somebody your doggie knows. Or you’ve got a glitch in your system somewhere.”

“Check the system,” Yolie had said.

“I’m so scared, Ms. Castle,” Jennifer whispered now, cutting into Rosie’s thoughts.

Me, too, Rosie thought.

She wound her way down the parking garage ramp and soon was speeding west on Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The house is so big and dark…And there’s all these spooky sounds. I’ve been hearing them ever since Yolie put the garage door down and drove away.”

“Then call 911! I’ll be there as fast as I can, but I’m at least ten minutes away!”

Oh, why hadn’t Yolie installed cameras?

The break-in had seemed so insignificant. It was odd how the small moments and the casual decisions could turn out to be the most important ones of all.

What if…Rosie simply hadn’t gone to Pierce’s tonight?

She forced herself to concentrate on her driving and getting home safely so she could find Alexis. Darling precious Alexis.

Alexis had to be all right.

A distant light switched from green to yellow to red.

Rosie slowed, looked both ways; then she stomped down hard on the gas pedal. She prayed that Michael wasn’t nearby in his radio car, ready to pounce again, like he had that night a year ago when she’d seen Pierce jogging and had decided it was time to confront him about the rent.

No sign of a radio car.

Rosie shot through the light.

Michael was worrying over his report in his unmarked four-door Crown Vic in front of Carver’s mansion.

The scene, the punks, the victim, all felt wrong. Why? What was he missing?

Keith was leaning back in the passenger seat smoking while Michael went over the facts one last time. Suddenly they caught a call about a missing little girl on their radio.

The name Alexis Castle meant nothing to Michael. The name Rose Marie Castle charged through him in a soul-searing bolt.

Castle. His old girlfriend, Rosie. Carver’s girlfriend, too.

Her grandkid missing tonight? That was a helluva coincidence. What was going on? He had to make sure Rosie and the kid were okay.

“We’re not taking another damn call.” Keith’s eyes flashed in the dark as he sent a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

“The grandmother’s the victim’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Shit.” Keith blew another smoke ring and settled back in his seat.

Michael was glad Keith decided to give him the silent treatment instead of pumping him with questions. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss Rosie, whom he had no desire to see ever again.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her.

A year ago, Michael had caught her on the rebound from a bad relationship with the dead man. And damn it, as always, they’d ended up in bed.

So what else was new? He’d been her first back in high school, but then she’d dumped him, married, had a kid. Not that his own life had been any less complicated. Last year when he’d run into Rosie, he’d been separated from his wife, Marie.

Funny that her name was Rosie’s middle name.

Not so funny.

Michael’s mouth thinned at the memory of Rosie’s long, honey-gold legs wrapped around his on that hellishly hot Sunday, the morning after. They’d cuddled all night long, but come morning, she’d turned on him.

Why was it that, with a little alcohol on board, two former lovers feeling the need for a little TLC could take up right where they’d left off?

It had been a pretty amazing night. He might have been well on his way to falling in love with her again, but the next morning she’d taken one look at his black head on her pillow and had started throwing things at him—first his shirt, then his jeans and then his boots. When she’d gone for the lamp and handcuffs, he’d locked himself in the bathroom.

Good thing, too. She’d smashed the lamp against the door. Next, he’d heard the handcuffs bounce off the wall. Then she’d run just like before, screaming, “You ruined my life—all over again!”

What the hell had that meant? She’d run out on him after high school. He’d called her a few times, but she’d always hung up on him.

When his wife had finally called him back, he’d stupidly confessed about Rosie, and that had been the final straw for Marie. Since their divorce, he’d been lonely as hell.

So, now Rosie’s granddaughter was missing.

He hoped to hell Rosie wasn’t connected to this murder. Or that the kid wasn’t in the hands of whoever had cut Carver up.

Just the thought and his palms began to sweat. Gut instinct told him to get over there fast.

Without so much as a glance toward his silent partner, Michael started the ignition.

As he drove, he thought about the missing kid. When his marriage hadn’t worked out, he’d been glad Marie and he hadn’t had children. Still, deep down, not having them was one of life’s big disappointments.

What if Rosie’s granddaughter’s life depended on somebody who gave a damn making the right decision?

Hell.

When he stepped on the gas, Keith swore viciously and flicked his cigarette lighter.