3 Dime If I Know (12 page)

He cheated on you.

He’s not cheating now. He makes me feel good. He makes me feel alive. What would it hurt to enjoy what he’s offering?

Make up your mind, Cleo. You either trust the guy, or you don’t. Oh, God. I’m weak. I want sex, and I want it now.

I wiggled closer. He took that as an open invitation for more, and so did I. The man had great hands, after all. Despite the doubts I had about him, I loved him and he cared for me. We fought each other for the embrace. I couldn’t get rid of his pants quick enough to suit either of us.

Then we were skin to skin, and my hands stroked him as he enjoyed my assets. “You do things to me, girl,” he whispered against my throat.

“The feeling’s mutual.” I ran my fingers through his golden locks, down his muscled back, and clasped him close. Sensing my urgency, he slid into home base, and we gave ourselves to passion.

Reason dawned slowly, and I covered myself with my hands, blushing with the knowledge of what we’d done in his office. My golf pro caressed my skin reverently as I sat in his lap. “For the record, you can surprise me like this anytime you want.”

“I can’t believe we did that. Jasper is right outside.”

“My assistant knows how to be discreet.”

“Oh.” His assurance sent my thoughts careening in a different direction. The direction I meant to pursue before we got naked. “You do this often?”

He leaned over and kissed the tip of my nose. “Not as often as I’d like. What’s for lunch tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” I grappled with the notion of sex for lunch two days in a row. I hopped off his lap and began dressing.

“This is one appointment I’d never miss,” he said, his voice in its lowest, sexiest register.

Doing my best to ignore his innuendo, I slipped the heels on my feet and straightened. “I came here with lunch and to talk.”

“Lunch.” He stretched like a cat and reached for his clothes. “Yeah. I could eat. What we got?”

I scanned the office for the food bag. It was over by the door, where we’d started. I retrieved the paper sack. “Meatball subs. Though I don’t know if they’re any good now that they are cold. The bread’s probably soggy.”

Rafe opened his sandwich wrapper and dove right in. “This is great. Thanks.”

I was hungry, too, and I was hesitant to talk about the case when we were still in accord, so I ate my sandwich in silence. A few bites later, Rafe opened the mini-fridge under his desk that he kept stocked with bottled water. He handed me one and took another for himself.

We finished, gathered the trash, and tossed it in the garbage.

Rafe leaned back in his squeaky desk chair. “Talk.”

How could I be tough and demanding now that I had sated two of my basic appetites? “You’re driving me crazy.”

His deep laughter rumbled through the room. “That’s the way it works, sweetheart. You do the same thing to me. Although I’d be a lot less crazy if you brought me lunch every day.”

Heat flamed my cheeks. “Good grief. I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about the case.”

“Pity.” His eyes narrowed, and an odd tension filled the room. “What case?”

With the hair on the back of my neck stirring, I had no choice but to stand my ground. “Starr Jeffries. Britt needs to shift his focus to another suspect. Got any suggestions?”

“Britt can focus on me all he wants. I didn’t do anything.”

“You had a relationship with Starr.”

“A long time ago.”

“That’s not what I heard, and if I heard it, the cops heard it as well.”

His gaze narrowed. “What do you think you know?”

“You kept in touch with her. You went to see her. In the
now
. What’s going on? Why won’t you tell me the truth?”

“I haven’t lied to you. Starr wasn’t a part of my life. I felt sorry for her, if you want to know the truth. She was never strong. She had looks for a while, but those faded and so did she.”

“You dumped her because she got old and ugly?”

“I stopped seeing her because she slept with someone else.”

“She cheated on you?”

“Our relationship wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t truthful about much. It drove me crazy that she said what she thought I wanted to hear. She never sounded sincere. Finding out she slept around was all it took for me to walk away from an intimate relationship with her.”

He caught my hands and kissed them. “I swear to you. Starr was my past. She and I never swapped keys or much of anything else six years ago. I dated her for a few months, that’s all.”

I stated the obvious. “We’ve only been dating for a few months.”

“Yes, but what we have is richer, deeper. Your words have the ring of truth. You’re consistent in what you do and how you care.”

“I’m an open book. You’re not. There are secret recesses in your life. Places you won’t share with me. Things about your family. Things about your personal life.”

“I don’t ask you about your married life or how many times a week you had sex with Charlie. That’s private.”

“You think this is about sex?” I hated that my voice broke.

“Isn’t it? Aren’t you upset because you think I slept with Starr while I dated you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” I got up and paced the small office. “I want to keep you safe, to make sure you’ll stay in my life, but I don’t understand your ongoing relationship with Starr. If you cared so much about her, why didn’t you go to her funeral?”

Amusement danced with sadness in his eyes. “My lawyer told me to stay away.”

I sighed out my relief. “Thank goodness for that, at least. If Britt had seen you, he might have made another false assumption.”

“I don’t see why you’re so wound up.”

“Why did you go there, Rafe? Her neighbor identified your car and you. She said you visited once a month.”

His voice roughened. “I told you to stay out of this.”

“The fact that you won’t tell me what happened is a big red flag.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near the investigation into Starr’s murder.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t need help. Everything is under control.”

“Take off the rose-colored glasses. We’re neck-deep in a sucking mud hole. Time is not our friend. In the absence of hard evidence, Britt will line up the circumstantial facts and move against you. That’s how he operates.”

“Trust me. Everything will work out.”

“I can’t leave it to chance.”

“Promise me you’ll stay out of it.”

“I can’t do that. I love you, and I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

“Leave it alone.”

“We’ve already cycled through this argument. I won’t leave it alone. Where does that leave us?”

“Stalemate.”

“Not checkmate?”

“Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Stalemate it is, then.”

My lips tightened into a thin line. I hunted for my purse, knowing if I didn’t get out of here in the next thirty seconds that tears would start streaming down my face. We weren’t broken up, but we were darned close.

“Cleo?”

“Yes?” I glanced up to see mischief in his dark eyes.

He stood between me and the door. “I’d like a pastrami on rye tomorrow for lunch.”

“Tomorrow’s Monday, your day off.”

He smiled and glanced hopefully around the office. “I know. But we can still eat here if you’d rather come to the club instead of my place.”

“I’d rather you tell me why you aren’t worried about this murder investigation.”

“Simple. I didn’t do it.”

“That’s not how it looks.”

He was silent for a bit. “Do you think I killed someone?”

I chose my words with care. “My heart says absolutely not. But my mind isn’t convinced. You’re withholding information, and it makes me uncomfortable to know you don’t trust me. I don’t know who killed Starr. The cops think you did it. I need to shoot holes in their theory. I need to know who wanted the woman dead.”

“I don’t want you involved in this.”

I reached around him for the door. “Too late. I’m involved. Get used to it.”

Somehow I made it to my car without crying, but once I was safely locked inside the Gray Beast, the tears wouldn’t stop.

Knowing that Charlie had the girls this afternoon, I drove straight from the golf course to my office. It was past time for some answers. Snooping through Rafe’s past might be viewed as a breach of trust; however, I rationalized the action as client research. If I hadn’t been flattered and blinded by his initial interest, I would have done this long before I ever sat in his flashy red sports car.

No point in beating yourself up over coulda-shouldas. The point is to move forward from where you are today.
Now, more than ever, I wanted to make sure Rafe stayed out of prison, but I had to know what I was facing.

I searched online for newspapers in his home town of Potomac, Maryland, but other than learning I couldn’t afford a parking space there, I didn’t find any bad news about him or his family. After searching two weekly papers, I tried the Washington dailies to broaden my scope.

As if I’d hit the jackpot, the number of entries for Rafe’s family kept racking up. His mother, Amanda Golden, spent much of her spare time serving on community boards, bettering the world, along with acting as CEO of Golden Enterprises. His father, Shep Golden, had retired from the family firm to sail and play tennis.

His sister, Regina, worked as chief counsel for Golden Enterprises, but she sat on several community boards as well. Younger brother Hill frequented the society pages with his new fiancée, Tiffany Ellis. Beautiful blondes, every last one of them. Not a brash redhead or a sultry brunette in the Golden crowd.

A chill shuddered through me. Nothing about my bright red hair came close to a soft yellow color. Would Rafe continue to thumb his nose at family tradition and date me?

I rubbed my throbbing temples. Why was I worried about hair color when the true problem was my perception of the big picture? I wanted us to keep moving toward a legal commitment. Rafe preferred having an affair.

Deep in my bones, I knew something was off between us. Rafe’s actions to date had been consistent. Until recently, he’d been creative in ways to steal time alone. With Starr’s death, that had changed. He’d changed. He’d become unavailable.

Why?

I dug a little deeper in my mental database, trusting my instincts to sort through the meager facts. Published reports indicated Rafe’s family members moved in different circles. Other than the family business, they appeared to have little else in common and weren’t shown together in any local news or society pages.

Had something devisive happened in their collective past? The idea felt right. Given the minimal data points, nothing else made sense. Still, searching public records was a long shot at best. Their discord could be from feuding over an inheritance or another private family matter. But it wouldn’t hurt to keep looking.

Searchable newspaper features only went back so far online before I hit a dead end and needed to find a library and a microfiche machine to continue. That would be tedious and time-consuming. With Britt hot on the trail of Starr’s killer, time was of the essence.

I had to keep moving forward on the case, but nothing I’d discovered so far was worth feuding over, nor was it worth killing anyone. After searching several more keyword combinations to no avail, I thought to search obituaries. Those electronic archives stretched back farther than the regular news stories. The surname of Golden cropped up often, though not as often as Jones. Even so, there were a lot of records to sift through.

That’s when I saw the notice. Brenna Nicole Golden. Same parents, same brothers and sister. I rubbed the chill from my arms. One of Rafe’s siblings died as a teenager.

The cause of death wasn’t listed. I scrolled down to the end of the obit. None of the big-name charities was listed as a beneficiary either. I had no idea how this fourteen-year-old died. Using her name and death date as search terms, I found another article from the archive of a competing newspaper.

Brenna Golden died of an accidental gunshot wound.

What?

I tried to focus on what a teen’s sudden death might do to her family. There would be sadness, of course. Perhaps anger, too.

Was the fatal injury self-inflicted, a misfire, or an instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Any of those possibilities would be heart wrenching. Parents might blame each other. Siblings might be bewildered. Any or all of them might feel guilty and responsible.

Turning off the computer, I paced my shadowed office, turning the new information over in my mind. Rafe had never mentioned Brenna. He’d never hinted about a family tragedy.

On the other hand, Rafe was estranged from his family. Sure, he claimed it was because they didn’t approve of his golf vocation, but what if that wasn’t the entire story? In the course of my career as an accountant and two forays into homicide investigations, I’d seen broken families, families where hate and distrust thrived and took a dark turn.

I’d met Rafe’s brother and sister. Hill seemed privileged and spoiled. Regina seemed intense and overachieving. Rafe fit somewhere in between his siblings. He had Regina’s strong work ethic, but he also had a caring side she lacked. His fancy car and condominium were indulgences worthy of Hill.