Bouquet of Lies (24 page)

Twenty-nine

“YOU KNEW? YOU knew your uncle suspected Randy. You knew he did something to protect my sister? You knew, and you didn’t tell me?” Lacey sat in the passenger seat of Dan’s car, the radio playing in the background. They were on the way to have her urine tested at the police station. Uncle D had finally given in and said what he wanted her tested for. Any common agent that could have made her dizzy or drowsy. Like Ropynol or GHB or Valium.

Lacey didn’t need the results to know she had taken something. Or rather, been given something. She should have figured it out when Randy pretended to make nice. He gave her a drink at the reception which she only drank a part of. Almost immediately she felt sleepy.

“I didn’t know until right before you came in the room. And if he told me, I figured he was going to tell you. Heck, he did tell you.” Dan gave her a quick sideways glance.

That was true. Lacey relaxed a little.

“I don’t know any more than you know about how close my uncle is to proving who committed these murders. Believe me.”

She believed him. Dan was too ethical to lie.

“Sharing what he knows isn’t how he operates. He keeps everything close to the vest. He thinks the less people know about an investigation, the better.”

Lacey sighed. Then how was she supposed to know he was getting the job done? She couldn’t just sit around and do nothing.

“You have to trust him,” Dan said.

“I do, huh?” Wheels continued to turn in her head. “Maybe I’ll just leave that job to you.”

“He’s a good detective.”

A good detective who doesn’t share.
An idea hatched. She would break into Randy’s apartment and see what she could find out that way. She would have to learn how to pick a lock or get someone to help her. She eyed Dan. She couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t even let him know what she was planning. He could get fired if he helped her. She plastered on a smile and said, “Okay. I’ll keep the faith.”

Music stopped to air a newsbreak. Amid the stories was a mention of Edward’s murder.

Edward Bouquet is the father of billionaire Harper Bouquet who was murdered only last month . . .

Lacey felt a cold stab to the heart.

“How do they get their stories so fast? He was just killed.” Her voice was a whisper. To hear their deaths announced to the world like that, so cold and impersonal . . . She didn’t even know how to finish her thought. It was just something of interest for the listeners. Just news. Everyone who heard it, their lives stayed the same. Hers would never be the same again.

“You okay?” Dan’s voice drew her back.

“What?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course. For a person whose world is upside down.”

“I . . . I’ve been thinking.”

Lacey watched him remove one hand from the wheel and rub his wrist. She smiled inside. It was his tell. He was nervous about something.

“And?” she prodded.

“Well.” He paused.

“The well is deep.”

He glanced at her. “I think you should stay at my house tonight.” Both hands went back to the steering wheel.

Lacey cracked a grin. “Why, Officer O’Donnell. That sounds positively indecent.”

He stared straight ahead. “I know joking is how you cope.”

“Sure sounded indecent.”

“Lacey.”

“And to think. It just took a little murder for you to come ‘round.”

“It wasn’t indecent.”

“Then why should I take you up on it?”

“You’ve had another shock. That house is big. It isn’t safe. You’ll be there alone.”

“My father and Edward were both killed with lots of people around. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.” She stared out the window. “Anyway, the murderer is out of town.”

“We don’t know that. Sometimes people look guilty and they’re not.” He pulled the car into the police station parking lot.

“Randy’s guilty,
and he has an accomplice. A woman.”

She had two candidates in mind. Darla’s psychic. Although Darla had seen the woman at both murders and would have known if she was looking at the psychic. Lacey had seen the psychic, too. At the door eavesdropping. The woman wasn’t a blonde, and she wasn’t petite. She was a tall, fat woman who wore kaftans.

The more likely candidate was their mother. She was blond
and
petite.

Dan parked the car and turned toward Lacey. “Listen. After this I’ll take you home. You can get some things and drive your car to my house. I want you to move in with me until this is all over.”

She wasn’t afraid to stay at the mansion. Although she wasn’t keen on being alone. Murders or no murders, she liked people around.

“Hmmm,” she said with exaggeration, as if in a deep quandary. One night at Dan’s might be interesting. At least, she could do her best to make it so. She joked: “Well, only if you promise no funny business.”

“I promise.”

Great. He didn’t even miss a beat.

But then he smiled. “I thought you wanted me to practice being orange.”

From a safe distance across the parking lot, Jake watched Randy carry Darla over the threshold of their Santa Barbara motel room. It was a tough thing for him to watch. If there was anything to the philosophy that certain souls were mates, well, he guessed, that was how he viewed his soul and Darla’s. He loved her. He always had. He had fought the feelings as a kid. Called them something else. And whenever those feelings intensified, he reminded himself that she was like a kid sister. One who needed help and he was only feeling protective.

However, even after he had gone to live with his mother, he never forgot her. All his teenage years, she was there in the back of his head. He kept the picture she’d drawn of him and wished he had a photograph of the two of them together. Then he told himself, it didn’t matter; her angelic face was etched forever in his mind’s eye.

How could someone have such a hold on him if they weren’t supposed to be together?

He had waited too long to tell her how he felt. He was a fool for doing so. If he had opened his mouth, things might be different now.

Might be. He took a deep breath. What if she chose Randy over him anyway?

He wasn’t sure what to do. Try to get a room right next to theirs? No. That was too risky. He needed to watch. Maybe he would sit on his motorcycle all night and keep his eyes peeled. He hadn’t seen any security personnel roaming the parking lot.

He stared at the door. Another man had married Darla. Another man had carried her over the threshold. The image gnawed at him. It hurt. Standing there watching, knowing this was Darla’s wedding night with Randy. He tried to stop his thoughts from focusing on what might be happening inside the room. Sex, not love. If this Randy guy’s intentions were as dire as Lacey made them sound, then he was using her, not loving her.

And if his plan was to actually hurt Darla, Jake couldn’t bring himself to use the term kill, then how was watching from a distance going to stop that?

He had half a mind to pound on the door and then pound on Randy’s face. “We’re on to you,” he’d say. “So give it up.”

Yeah, he could do that. And then he’d be arrested and this guy, if he was a killer, a psychopath, he would still get the job done. Whatever that job was. Because that’s what psychopaths did.

They had been in the room all of ten minutes when Randy came out the door. Jake moved from the bike to make certain he was obscured by the oleander he was parked next to. Randy took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it. He drew on the thing and looked back at his room. He took a second and third puff, dropped it and crushed it. Then he took out his cell phone and walked as he called someone.

It was dark. If he kept a little bit of distance between them maybe he could get close enough to hear the conversation. He would have to risk it.

Jake stepped around the foliage and immediately stepped back in when Randy turned around. He was pacing, not walking away. Whomever he called answered.

“Are you here?” Jake heard Randy say. “Well, there’s been a hitch.” Randy actually walked away from the building and close to the tree and bushes where Jake was hidden. He held his breath, his heart pounding. What would he say if he was caught spying?

Randy lowered his voice but was near enough now that Jake had no trouble eavesdropping.

“You’ll have to do it in person. I don’t know what happened to the headband. She swears she packed it, but it’s not there. I’m afraid I lost my cool and now she’s all upset.” He paused, listening. “Let’s just say that wasn’t going to happen. She
is
a nut case. I’ll go in and calm her down. I’ll give her a pill. Light enough so that you can wake her. It’s what?”

Randy checked his watch.

“Okay. I’ll tell her we need to get a good night’s sleep and we’ll head back for Los Angeles in the morning. She’ll like that. She wants to go home. Doesn’t give a hoot about Carmel or the scenic drive.” He paused again. “I don’t know. She’s on the edge which is what we wanted, so . . .” He nodded. “Yeah. Eleven’s good. I’ll leave the key in the slot for you, then hang out at the swimming pool for a couple of minutes.”

Randy listened.

“I don’t want her racing outside screaming for me. We don’t want a scene. Or maybe we do.”

Randy thought for a second.

“But then someone might see you. Three minutes should be enough. Sit on the bed and put your hand over her mouth. That’ll work.”

He hung up and went back in the room.

Jake immediately called Lacey.

Lacey closed her eyes and listened with some relief to Jake’s words: “The good news is, he isn’t planning on killing her.”

She and Dan had finished at the police station. Then they had gone to get something to eat, putting off that monkey business. They were back at the mansion for her to pick up some clothes and a toothbrush. Dan was doing a walk-through, looking for the boogeyman, which Lacey appreciated, but knew was a waste of time. The boogeyman was in Santa Barbara with her sister.

“How do you know?” Lacey asked Jake.

“I heard him on his cell. Someone’s helping him. I won’t go into it all, but if I can get a picture of this person with my phone, I’ll send it to you. Oh, and get this. The honeymoon is over. They’re heading home tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. That meant Lacey had to act fast. She had to break into Randy’s apartment tonight. She checked the hall outside her room and didn’t see Dan. She ended the conversation with Jake and called Sigmund. She asked him to meet her and gave him Randy’s address.

It was about a fifteen to twenty minute drive from Lacey’s house to Dan’s and Lacey hadn’t arrived. Traffic had been heavy in spots and she had vanished from his rearview mirror.

And now she wasn’t answering her phone.

Dan put his cell on the coffee table and tried to think. Was there something to be worried about? This was Lacey, after all. Unpredictable. Something he never thought he would like in a person, but he liked in her. He smiled despite himself. He pictured her barging into his house, negotiating for a pork chop. He pictured her testing him about that glass of Cabernet.

Then he saw her the night of her father’s murder. In the kitchen. In that sexy magician assistant’s costume where her breasts were bursting at the seams. She had been so vulnerable, her world spinning out of control. And yet, she still had this strength that said she would always be able to weather the storm. He had wanted her in his arms right then. In fact, he had taken her in his arms.

He closed his eyes and remembered the sensation of her body next to his, desire traveling from his heart to everywhere else. He’d kissed her and had to fight to let her go. He felt that desire now, and his analytical mind took over. Had he invited her to stay with him out of concern or because he wanted her near?

The answer came quickly. Both. He wanted her, yes. But he was concerned. That house was huge. She needed to stay with him. He intended to keep her safe.