A Widow's Guilty Secret (9 page)

“You really think she’s coming back, Dean?” Amanda asked him nervously.

“I most certainly do,” Abramowitz assured her with alacrity.

In her short time at the college, the professor had swiftly earned near-celebrity status. That in turn had brought a great deal of attention to their little, heretofore unheard of college. The dean wouldn’t allow himself to contemplate anything
less
than the woman’s unharmed return. Getting her safe return was his ultimate goal and he was determined to reach it, no matter what it cost.

* * *

The phone rang, rousing Nick from a dead sleep. He had no recollection of laying down, but he must have because when he jolted into a sitting position, he realized that he had sprawled out on his sofa.

Damn, but his back hurt. He needed to invest in a new sofa, he thought grudgingly, clearing the cobwebs from his brain.

A beat later, he realized what had woken him up.

Focusing on the source of the ringing, Nick grabbed the landline receiver, put it against his ear and growled, “Jeffries,” into the mouthpiece.

“You sitting down, Jeffries?”

It took him a second—because his brain was still struggling out of the haze that had surrounded it—but he managed to recognize the voice.

Bigelow.

The lab tech he’d gone out of his way to approach earlier today.

“In a manner of speaking,” Nick mumbled, dragging a hand through his hair and trying to pull his thoughts together at the same time. Neither was a complete success.

“I finally cracked Burris’s password and got into the computer,” Bigelow announced with no small amount of triumph in his voice.

Nick might have been sleepy before, but he was wide awake now. “And?” he prodded. He knew that Bigelow liked his share of drama and, when there wasn’t any, he had no problem with building it up himself.

“
And,
my friend, it seems that your town’s dead sheriff was one hell of a busy little beaver while he was still alive. Burris was into all kinds of stuff—if what I just pulled off his computer was on the level.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for a drum roll. “—not the least of which was blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” Nick echoed, stunned. “Who was he blackmailing? Were you able to get a name?” he asked.

“Oh, I got a name, all right,” Bigelow assured him. “Seems our black-hearted sheriff was blackmailing a number of people, but I think you’re really going to like his main target.”

Nick waited for a second, but Bigelow was silent, drawing the moment out. “And that was?” he prodded. “C’mon, Big, it’s the middle of the night. Don’t make me beg.”

“All right, all right, but just because we’re friends. Peter Burris was blackmailing Senator John Merris.”

Chapter 8

A
t this point in his life and career, Nick was confident that very few things could still surprise him.

What Chester Bigelow had just told him, however, definitely qualified as one of those few things.

“Are you there, Jeffries?” Bigelow asked when he received no response from the other end of the line. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“I heard you, Big,” Nick answered. The case was officially messy now—if what Bigelow had just said was true. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

Nick heard the man sigh impatiently. “I did what you said, I took some personal time and I’ve been working on recovering information from this damn hard drive since you brought it in. I haven’t been to bed yet, so, yeah, I’m sure,” Bigelow retorted waspishly. “I could email all this to you—and there’s a hell of a lot of stuff—this guy documented
everything
—guess he wanted to make sure he didn’t wind up being blackmailed himself.” Bigelow paused, as if reconsidering what he’d just offered to do. “Tell you the truth, I’d rather not put it out there,” the tech told him. “You never know who could hack into your system. How soon can you get over to my place?”

Nick looked at his watch again, trying to get his brain to engage and actually
see
the numbers. It was half past two—not that it affected his answer one way or another. He did a quick estimate involving traffic at this time of night and distance.

“I can be at the Dallas station in less than an hour.”

“Don’t go to the station. I’m at my house.” Bigelow proceeded to rattle off his home address. “I’ll be on the lookout for you. I take it you still drive with a lead foot. One hour, huh?”

With the phone receiver nestled against his shoulder and neck, Nick was already shrugging into the shirt he’d absently discarded last night. He was still wearing the jeans he’d changed into when he came home.

“Give or take.”

“I’d rather give,” Bigelow told him. “Okay, see you soon.” And with that, the line went dead as the call was abruptly terminated.

Nick staggered into his master bathroom, threw some water onto his face and went looking for his shoes, which weren’t where they were supposed to be.

The search for his shoes made him think of Suzy Burris and the high heels she’d had on—and how sexy her legs had looked to him.

Pushing aside his intense, immediate reaction to her image—damn, he was going to have to really police himself more stringently—he focused on the problem of her late husband.

Had she really been oblivious to what Big had just uncovered? Had Burris managed to keep all this from her, or was she actually his silent partner, taking part in his blackmail scheme?

Nick vacillated between feeling protective of her and angry for being duped by the woman.

She hadn’t said anything about
any
of this to him yesterday. Was she just being secretive, or had she
really
been in the dark about this?

And just what was this information going to do to the investigation—besides blowing it sky high?

It couldn’t be just a weird coincidence that the Senator had been killed, too.

Or could it?

Had Burris conducted the blackmailing on his own, or was he an instrument for yet another, unknown party? Had that “unknown party” been the one to have killed Burris? Why?

And what did the third victim, David Reed, have to do with any of this?

Damn, Nick thought in exasperation as he hurried out of his house and into his car, he had far more questions than he had answers. Certainly a hell of a lot more questions now than he’d had before.

This investigation was
not
going well.

Nick turned up the music. It was going to be a long drive.

* * *

She’d been right. Even with Lori there to take over caring for Andy during the night, she hadn’t been able to sleep more than a few minutes at a time. And even those minutes were comprised of sleep that could only be termed as fitful.

Consequently, Suzy was up and sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee when she heard the doorbell. Glancing at the watch that was only off her wrist when she showered, Suzy frowned.

She wasn’t expecting anyone. Who could be on her doorstep at seven in the morning?

It had to be a reporter, she decided. Who else would be so insensitive as to bother her at this hour, especially just after her husband had been murdered?

By the time she reached the front door and yanked it open, Suzy had worked up a full head of steam. She was more than ready to give the person standing on the other side of the door a piece of her mind.

The hot words hovering on her lips died when she saw a rather rumpled-looking Nick Jeffries on her doorstep.

What was he doing here at this hour? She couldn’t tell by his expression if it was good news or bad news that he was bringing her. Suzy braced herself for the worst, just in case.

“Detective, are you all right?” she asked, quickly looking him up and down. She couldn’t come to a conclusion—other than he looked tired.

Welcome to the club,
she thought.

“Did you know?” Nick asked sharply.

It wasn’t quite an accusation, but there would be no room for forgiveness if she’d knowingly lied to him and he made that clear by the tone of voice he used.

Suzy stared at him. She hadn’t the slightest idea what the detective was talking about—but his tone made her uneasy.

“Did I know what?”

Nick strode past her into the house, pushing the door closed behind him. He was in no mood for her to play innocent.

“Did you know that your husband was blackmailing a number of people, including Senator Merris?” He swung around to look at her. “One of the two other murder victims found near your husband’s grave.”

Suzy turned pale.

This couldn’t be happening.

Just when she thought that it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Who
was
this man she’d married? When had he managed to do all this? It didn’t seem possible. Could she have been so blind to this darker side of his?

“He was
what?
” she cried, staring dumbfounded, at Nick.

“Blackmailing Senator Merris.” No one could fake that pale color that had just come over her face, he thought. His anger vanished as quickly as it had materialized. She wasn’t in on this with the sheriff. She looked too stunned and upset. Compassion made a comeback, stirring his gut.

“You didn’t know, did you?”

The detective’s voice became a distant buzzing in her head. None of the words registered as Suzy somehow managed to make her way to the sofa. Clutching the armrest, she sank down.

Actually, her knees just gave way a second before she reached the sofa. But rather than go down on the floor, she’d been caught. Held.

Suzy was vaguely aware of arms closing around her. Aware of a presence beside her, a person whose touch was exceedingly gentle. It was understood that she would shatter if any sort of actual physical pressure, no matter how well meaning, was applied to her limbs.

And although she’d always thought of herself as tough and made of sterner stuff, at this moment, she wasn’t all that sure that she
wouldn’t
shatter.

She heard the command “Breathe!” uttered near her ear and did as she was told, drawing in air, and then slowly releasing it again.

Once, twice—by the third lungful of air, Suzy had begun to come around, to be able to focus again.

She blinked a number of times, and then looked to see that the detective whose revelation had just torpedoed her world for a second time in two days was the one sitting beside her on the sofa, his arm protectively around her shoulders.

He’d created a haven for her.

There
was
no such thing, she told herself bitterly the next second, feeling numb and hopelessly betrayed at the same time.

“I’m okay,” she told Nick.

But when she tried to get up, she found that the detective was firmly holding her in place, his hands on her shoulders.

“Sit for a little longer,” he told her. It wasn’t a suggestion. “I don’t think you want me picking you up from the floor.”

He was talking about fainting. Just like she’d done the day before. Suzy had no intentions of embarrassing herself twice in two days.

“I wasn’t going to faint,” she protested.

“Whatever you say,” Nick allowed philosophically. Now that he realized she’d had no part in Burris’s dark actions, he was feeling bad for having detonated this newest bombshell on her like this. “But humor me for a couple of minutes.”

Suzy shrugged carelessly, remaining where she was. Not so much because she was going along with the detective’s veiled order, but because what he’d just said had all but paralyzed her, or at least had frozen her in place.

Where did she begin to try to untangle all she’d been hit with?

Feeling utterly helpless, she looked at Nick and clutched at a straw. “Are you sure? About Peter blackmailing people? And what did he have on them? How could he be blackmailing someone? Why would he do such a terrible thing?”

Suzy suddenly covered her mouth with her hands, as if she was attempting to physically hold back the questions until she could organize them so that they made more sense.

“God, you must think I’m a total idiot not to know about any of this.” Her eyes shifted to his. “But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. When Peter didn’t talk to me, I didn’t realize that there was this much he wasn’t talking about.”

Suzy blew out a long breath, feeling completely overwhelmed.

“A lot of smart people get fooled by people they trust,” Nick told her gently. “Did you ever notice the sheriff spending lavish amounts of money, buying large-ticket items he wouldn’t have been able to afford on a sheriff’s salary?”

She shook her head.
That
she would have noticed. “No, nothing. No fancy clothes, no vacations, no expensive cars, nothing,” she insisted. “You can search the house if you like.” She dragged her hand through her hair. It hung loose, like a blond storm, about her shoulders.

This all sounded like something out of a movie, not her life. “Everyone seemed to like him,” she told Nick helplessly. She’d already told him that, she realized, but it was the only thing she could think of to offer as a defense.

And then, overwhelmed, she shook her head. “It’s like he had this whole other life that I didn’t know about.” It would take her a while to wrap her head around this. To believe that Peter had done all these things. “So do you think that this—this blackmailing that Peter was doing—was what had gotten him killed?”

At the moment, that was the million-dollar question, Nick thought.

Out loud, he said honestly, “I don’t know. Especially since the main person he appeared to be blackmailing was Senator Merris and like I said, Merris was buried in the grave near your husband.”

“Blackmail,” she repeated incredulously. It was so hard to believe. “And here I thought that Peter’s affairs were the most sordid thing he was guilty of. I guess that really shows me,” she laughed harshly, a trace of bitterness hovering around her words.

She suddenly looked very fragile to him. Moreover, Nick was actually feeling her pain and all the insecurity the situation generated. She was the kind of person, he sensed, who felt responsible for her husband’s shortcomings. But it wasn’t her fault.

“What your husband did has nothing to do with you,” Nick told her firmly. Placing the crook of his finger beneath her chin, he raised her head so that her eyes met his. “The only people we are responsible for in this life are ourselves. Sometimes a spouse does evil things that you might feel reflect badly on the person they’re married to but the real truth of it is, it just reflects badly on them. Most of the time, their spouse has nothing to do with their bad behavior. They don’t even know anything about it.”

She looked at him for a long moment. And then she understood. Nick had gone through this himself.

“You sound like you know about that firsthand.” And just like that, the tables turned. Sympathy rose like a solid wall when she saw him shrug at her words. “Are you married, Nick?”

He thought of the wife he’d once loved. And of the woman who had ultimately betrayed his trust. It seemed like a hundred years ago now.

“No,” he responded, his voice distant.

She wasn’t ready to let this go just yet. Nothing made her forget about her own situation faster than someone else in need of comfort. “But you were?”

He could have easily said that his marital state had no bearing on the case. But instead, he heard himself answering her question. Maybe it was because he felt he owed it to her because he’d pried into her life.

“Once.”

Suzy made assumptions from the look she saw in his eyes. “And she kept secrets from you?”

“As far as I know, there was only one thing she kept from me.” Maybe there had been more than one, he didn’t know. He hadn’t stuck around to find out. It was the one that had ended their marriage.

Suzy backed off. She didn’t want to cause him any undue pain, especially since she now knew what that felt like. “I’m sorry, I have no right to pick at your wounds.”

The denial came quickly and automatically. “It’s not a wound. Besides, it happened a long time ago.” He supposed, if he were really over it, he could talk about it without any residual pain.

He braced himself anyway.

“She was pregnant and she didn’t tell me.” He looked away, not really seeing anything. It went along with distancing himself from the words he said. “She just decided not to be.”

“Oh.”

The full impact of his words hit her and Suzy knew that what she saw in his eyes, despite his detached, distant voice, was raw pain. Rather than offer any platitudes or say something that would just sound inane, she put her hand over his, silently offering him her condolences as well as a mute offer of support and comfort should he want either.

When she looked back on this later, Suzy realized that this was the moment when they ceased to be just polite strangers on opposite ends of a murder investigation.