Читать книгу Body Movers Books 1-3 - Stephanie Bond, Stephanie Bond - Страница 22

At Detective Terry’s nonchalant declaration, Carlotta’s anger detonated. “How dare you follow me like I’m some kind of criminal!”

He folded the newspaper carefully and tossed it into a nearby trash bin. “I wasn’t following you. I just happened to be out shopping.” He lifted a ratty Dick’s Sporting Goods bag as proof.

“Really? That’s funny, because there’s no Dick’s in this mall.” Then she angled her head. “Of course, if you’re talking about just plain old dicks, I could probably point one out for you.”

“A muscle car and a sense of humor—wow, you’re just full of surprises.”

“And you’re full of crap. What the hell do you want?”

“Like I said, I’m off duty, just doing a little shopping. But since I ran into you, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. How about we grab a cup of coffee?”

Instantly wary, she asked, “What do you want to talk about?”

He smiled again. “The weather, the Braves, your parents—there are so many things.”

Through clenched teeth, she said, “I told you, I don’t know where my parents are.”

He held up both hands, Dick’s bag swinging. “I’ve been reading the files, and I just want to clarify a few details, that’s all.” A cajoling smile transformed his big features into almost handsome, dammit. “Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

She hesitated.

“Ms. Wren, you’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later. Let’s try to keep this as informal as possible.”

She narrowed her eyes. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Peter Ashford?”

“Should it?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I just thought…after last night…”

“No, I got final word from the coroner’s office this morning. They stand by their accidental-death ruling. Case closed.”

“Oh.” So even the police had put the matter to rest.

“How about that coffee?”

She frowned. “Don’t you have something better to do on a Saturday night?”

“Apparently not. Did I interrupt some kind of sunglass-shopping emergency?”

A flush warmed her cheeks. “I wasn’t looking for sunglasses. I was looking for celebrities.”

“Excuse me?”

She tapped her purse, not caring whether he thought she was silly. “I collect autographs, and this is a great place to spot famous people.”

He pursed his mouth. “Good to know.” Then he gestured toward the food court. “Shall we?”

She nodded curtly, then fell into step with him. He had traded his suit and shoddy tie for Levi’s, a black T-shirt and a pair of black western boots. Ten points for the boots since western wear was back in style, although she suspected that Jack Terry didn’t know or care that he was accidentally in vogue. She became hyperaware of his size as they walked. The man was a mountain, with a thick torso and long legs. More than one woman turned to look at him as they made their way toward a coffee shop. The two of them must look like quite the odd couple, she realized.

Not that they were a couple…or that anyone watching them could mistake them for a couple.

“Is this table okay?” he asked, gesturing to a tiny café table with two chairs.

She nodded and awkwardly lowered herself into the chair he held out for her. With a shove, he scooted her so close to the table she felt as if she were in a high chair.

“I’ll get us some coffee. How do you like yours?”

“I’ll have a double latte with fat-free soy milk and a bottle of Pellegrino.”

He gave her a small smile that told her he had no idea what she’d said. “I’ll be right back.”

She watched him walk up to the counter, obviously out of place at the yuppie establishment. Dread ballooned in her stomach as she pondered the questions he had for her. Just the thought of him reading the files on her father’s case made her tingle in embarrassment—he knew all the family secrets and scandals, and seemed intent on making her relive the part of her life that she most wanted to forget.

Her fingers itched. Christ, why had she stopped smoking?

“Here we go,” the detective said, setting a tray on the table. “Two coffees with cream, a bottle of springwater and two chocolate éclairs.”

She frowned. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He sat down on the diminutive chair and slurped his coffee, then bit into the éclair and chewed heartily. “How’s your brother?”

“Fine. Better, I think. Although I can’t say that I’m crazy about his job choice.”

“There are worse jobs. It might scare him straight, confronting death like that.”

“I noticed last night that you seemed acquainted with his boss.”

“Cooper Craft? Yeah. When I first joined the force, he was the coroner.”

She frowned. “The coroner? As in, a doctor?”

“Yeah, Dr. Cooper was the chief medical examiner.”

“But I thought he worked for his family’s funeral home.”

“He does now. He had some problems with alcohol and there was some kind of blunder with a high-profile case. There was an inquest and he lost his license—and his job. I think he might even have served some jail time.”

Carlotta was astonished. The tall man with the long sideburns who thought she was cute had quite a colorful past. “So now he works for a funeral home and moves bodies for the morgue.”

“Yep. And he seems to have put the booze behind him. He’ll be a good influence on your brother.”

“Good. Wesley worships the man.”

“He’s probably just starved for a father figure.” He cleared his throat, reached into the Dick’s Sporting Goods bag and pulled out a folder. “Speaking of which, I was hoping you could help me fill in a few gaps regarding your father’s disappearance.”

Her spine stiffened as she sipped from the cup of surprisingly good coffee. “I doubt it, but I’ll try.”

He opened the folder that contained a half-inch sheath of papers, most of them printouts and official-looking reports. “Do you remember the day your father was indicted?”

She nodded and looked into her coffee, recalling the tension that had blanketed the town house, overrun with a constant stream of lawyers and the addition of a bay of file cabinets to keep up with the paperwork. “Everything seemed to be leading up to that day. Wesley and I stayed home, but we heard the news on the radio before my parents returned home.”

“So they did return home?”

She nodded. “My mother was crying and my dad was angry, saying that he’d been framed and that he’d get even with everybody.”

“Did they mention that they were thinking of leaving town?”

“No.”

“You had no idea?”

“No,” she said evenly. “My parents said they wanted to go to dinner alone, to talk about some financial issues. They left about seven o’clock and…they simply never came home.”

His expression darkened. “That was the last time you and your brother saw them?”

She nodded. “When we got up the next morning, their bedroom door was closed. I assumed they’d gotten in late and were sleeping in. I got Wesley ready for school and we left. When we came home from school, Liz Fischer was waiting for us. She’d been looking for my father all day.”

His eyebrows went up. “Liz?”

She squirmed, remembering that he and Liz had history. “You were aware that she was my father’s attorney?”

“Yeah, it’s in the files, but I thought she was simply on the defense team. I assumed she was handling things behind the scenes.”

Her smile flattened. “She was. Liz and my father were—how did you put it? Oh, yes. Friendly.”

He scratched his temple. “Are you saying that something was going on between them?”

“Why don’t you ask her the next time you…see her?”

“I will,” he said smoothly. “So you were saying that Liz was waiting for you?”

“Right. She said she’d been trying to reach my father all day. From the look of my parents’ bedroom, it appeared as if they hadn’t been there since they’d left the previous evening.”

“Did they leave a note?”

She swallowed more coffee. “No.”

“Did they call?”

“No.”

His mouth twitched downward. “Do you remember the date?”

“December second, three weeks before Christmas.” She heard the bitterness in her own voice.

He sipped from his coffee. “Does that have something to do with the little Christmas tree in your living room?”

She looked up sharply.

“I noticed it when I went there to take your brother in. It’s hard to miss.”

She picked at the éclair in front of her. “Yes. Wesley wouldn’t let me take it down.”

“Even after all this time?”

“Even after.”

He made a rueful noise in his throat. “When did you first hear from your parents?”

She looked off into the distance, and tried to make her voice sound detached from the information she conveyed, as if it had happened to someone else. “It was about six months later, in June. We received a postcard from Michigan, I think.”

“Do you have family in Michigan?”

“None that I know of. My mother’s parents were deceased before I was born, and she was an only child. My father’s parents died when I was in grade school. He has a half brother in New Zealand, and a couple of extended cousins somewhere in Utah, but he wasn’t close to them. I believe the police followed up with them, though.”

He scribbled on a piece of notepaper. “Where did your family go on vacations?”

She shrugged. “Where didn’t we go? All along the eastern coastline, north and south, France, Germany, England and Ireland, cruises to the Caribbean. My father liked to live large.”

The only vacation she and Wesley had taken since then were the three days they’d spent at Walt Disney World when he was eleven. It had taken months of saving every dime and had been marred by Wesley’s conviction that Carlotta was holding out on him—that their parents were going to join them in Orlando as a big surprise. Of course that hadn’t happened, and Wesley had cried the entire eight-hour drive back to Atlanta. She straightened. “How much longer, Detective? I’m rather tired, and I haven’t eaten yet.”

“Jack.”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you drop the detective stuff? My friends call me Jack.”

She glanced at the notes in front of him and reminded herself that the man was manipulating her to get the information he needed to bring her father home, which would only plow another furrow through her and Wesley’s lives. She stood and smiled down at him. “Goodbye, Detective.”

He nodded. “Ms. Wren, before you go…was there something you wanted to tell me about the Angela Ashford case?”

Her hand moved automatically to cover her neck as she tried to look innocent. “Uh…no.”

His gaze went to her neck. “Really? Because if you know something…”

She knew she had reached the point of now or never. “W-well, it probably doesn’t mean anything.”

He slurped his coffee. “Why don’t you let me decide?”

“Angela was a customer of mine,” she blurted before she lost her nerve. “She purchased a man’s jacket last week. A couple days later I ran into Peter at a party and asked him about the jacket, but he didn’t know anything about it.” She decided to leave out the fact that she’d asked Peter about the jacket again last night and he hadn’t corrected her when she’d said it was brown.

The detective frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, I started thinking that…perhaps she had bought the jacket for…someone else.”

“You mean a lover?”

“I have no idea. I’m just telling you what I know.”

“You mean what you think.”

Carlotta gritted her teeth. “Anyway, she returned the jacket yesterday.”

“When yesterday?”

“In the afternoon.”

“Was she acting strangely?”

“She’d been drinking,” Carlotta admitted. “The man’s jacket had been worn and when I told her I couldn’t give her a refund, she became…verbally abusive.”

“What did she say?”

“She had the idea that…Peter and I were having an affair.”

He lifted his cup to his mouth. “Why would she think that?”

Carlotta fidgeted. “Perhaps because he and I were engaged before they were.”

“But you said that happened years ago.”

“Yes. Peter ended our relationship about the same time my parents left.”

He frowned. “He dumped you when the going got tough, huh?”

“He was just a kid,” she said defensively. “I was hurt, but I eventually understood why he did what he did.”

“So maybe Mr. Ashford has been pining for you all these years?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But Mrs. Ashford seemed to.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, what I’m trying to tell you is that Angela might have been the one having the affair. I don’t know if it means anything, but I felt obligated to tell you, so there.” At this point, mentioning that the woman had also tried to strangle her seemed like overkill.

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head slowly. “You want to know what I think? I think that you imagined this thin story of Angela Ashford having a lover to make yourself feel better over the fact that whatever was going on between you and her husband might have made her take a flying leap into that pool all on her own.”

Carlotta’s mouth opened, then closed as denial washed over her.

He lifted his cup to her. “This theory that you have—where I come from, we call that borrowing trouble. The truth is, Ms. Wren, you and Peter Ashford both should be thankful that the M.E. ruled the death an accident.” He smiled. “Now you can carry on with a clear conscience.”

White-hot anger whipped through her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked her up and down over the top of his cup, then he gave a little laugh. “Maybe not, but I know guilt when I see it, lady.”

Carlotta glared at him, then wheeled and stalked away as fast as her high heels would allow. The man was insufferable!

And dead on.