Deathtrap (22 page)

She reached for his shoe. “You want me to help you put this on?”

“I’m good.” If the foot was broken, it would swell, and then taking the shoe off would be a sonofabitch.

She set it down and wrapped her arms around herself as she straightened. “What do you think he wanted?”

“Random burglary?” The thought that Sophie had been in danger about killed him. A pain worse than the one in his foot sliced through his chest.

Another break-in. Why? Who was it? What did he want from her? Bing bit back a curse. He should have spent the night in front of her house, dammit.

“You’re lucky Peaches was here.” The dog had kept the intruder busy, giving Bing time to reach them. If it wasn’t for Peaches, the man might have made it upstairs, to Sophie.

The dog stood by her side, looking up as if making sure she was all right. Those two sure made a pair after a rocky beginning. “You two have come a long way.” She wasn’t a coward, he had to give her that. Everybody had weaknesses, but she pushed and fought hers, a quality he could appreciate.

She rubbed the dog’s back but was looking at Bing. “How is your foot?”

Her house had been broken into. She could have been killed. But she was worried about him. That said a lot about her too. Rarely had he met anyone whose heart was more in the right place. Except, he didn’t want to be thinking about her heart. He couldn’t.

“It’ll be fine. Sorry about your door.”

“It was an old door. Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you came through it.”

So was he. But he couldn’t stand hanging around here, just the two of them in the night and her half-naked. Despite the insurmountable obstacles between them, part of him was still drawn to her, more perhaps than he’d ever been drawn to any woman. It couldn’t be, however, so there was no sense in standing here and getting all twisted up about it. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

A hesitant look crossed her face, worry coming into her eyes. “Are you leaving?”

“Mike and Harper will be back to dust for prints and take some shoe-print molds out back. I’ll wait to talk to them. And I’ll make sure someone will stay the night out by the curb.”

As she moved, he could see the kitchen table behind her. His gaze caught on the coffee mug in the middle.

The logo stopped him cold. His brain snapped into sharp focus, all his senses wide awake as he stared.

A crimson staircase with a golden door on top.

He pushed to stand, ignoring the stab of pain in his foot as urgency washed through him. “Where did that mug come from?”

“The dishwasher?”

Frustration rose in a wave. He stepped closer to her. “Where did you get that mug, Sophie?”

She tilted her head. “What’s the big deal? It was Jeremy’s.”

His mind spun. “Where did he get it?” Dozens of half-formed thoughts flew through his head.

“No idea.”

“I’m going to need his contact information.”

She stepped to the fridge, ripped a page off the grocery-list pad, and scribbled numbers on it, then handed it over, looking at him as if he’d gone nutty. “What’s wrong with the mug?”

“Do you know what that logo means?”

“No idea. Why?”

That was part of an ongoing investigation. Yet he wanted her to be careful, wanted her to be watching, wanted her to be telling him if she knew anything. “I’ve only seen it twice before. Once on a folder among Stacy’s belongings after her death, and then on a pen in Kristine Haynes’s car.”

She paled.

Okay. Good. She was taking him seriously about this.

“I’m going to see Jeremy first thing in the morning. Until further notice, you’re not to have any contact with him. Do you understand?”

She looked at him as if he was nuts and shook her head. “Jeremy had nothing to do with either of those women. He was just here the other day. He’s not that kind of person.”

Cold spread through him. “What did he want?”

Her gaze dipped to her bare feet. “He wanted to get back together.”

His entire body stiffened. Jeremy liked her weak. Maybe he wanted to scare her into admitting that she wasn’t ready to live on her own. Would he go further? Would he hurt her to make her weak again? “You’re not to see him. You’re not to talk to him. Not even over the phone. Do you understand?”

Her head snapped up. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

She’d had a long night and plenty of scares already. But he couldn’t cut her any slack.

He took her by the arm gently but held her firmly in place. “I can when your life’s in danger.” The thought of anything happening to her made him crazy.

She yanked hard on her arm. “Whatever is going on in my life, I am in charge of it.”

He let her go, his feelings in a confused jumble, watched as she spun on her heels. He waited until she stomped upstairs; then he hobbled around and started processing the scene while he waited for Mike and Harper.

They came back an hour later. They’d been up and down every street, checking out the entire neighborhood, but hadn’t found the car they were looking for. No big surprise there. Their chances had been infuriatingly small to begin with.

When they finished gathering evidence, Bing sent Harper back to the office to handle whatever needed handling there and asked Mike to stay and keep an eye on the house until somebody else could come and take the next shift.

Because he couldn’t afford to be taken out of the action, Bing drove home, cleaned up, dressed, and drove himself to the ER. One X-ray later, he was fitted for a removable fracture boot. He had a broken metatarsal from kicking the damn door in. He was told to stay off his feet. He didn’t make any promises.

By the time he got home, it wasn’t worth going to bed. He took care of Mango, then drove into the office, thanking God all the way that Sophie hadn’t been hurt. He looked through his case files for Stacy and Kristine Haynes, searched for connections that would tie the two women to Sophie. Other than the fact that Sophie had received the heart of the man who’d killed Stacy, he couldn’t find any.

That logo of the crimson stairs leading to a golden door was the key, he thought and tracked down the address that went with Jeremy Denvil’s phone number. He had it in five minutes.

He caught Denvil in front of his fancy condo building just as the man was leaving for work. He drove a shiny black BMW. Unfortunately, Bing hadn’t seen enough of the car the night before to positively identify it.

Denvil was tall, as tall as the intruder the night before, but slimmer. Of course, the guy last night had worn a jacket. Denvil was years younger than Bing, and handsome enough, he supposed, but he had weasel eyes. Not that Bing was biased. His blood pressure punched up a notch when he tried to picture him with Sophie, so he quit.

He introduced himself and pulled up the picture of the pen with the staircase logo on his cell phone, showing it to the man. “Have you seen this before?” Everything inside him stilled as he waited for the answer.

“Yeah. Sure. What is this about?”

The first piece of progress. He watched the man closely. “Can you tell me what it means?”

“Golden opportunity. I’ve got a pen just like that from an exclusive investing club I’m involved in. They gave out promo stuff at the initial investment pitch meeting. Mugs, folders, mouse pads, and whatever.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking me about this?”

“One of their promo items was found at a crime scene. Probably unrelated.” Although he didn’t think so. “I’m just trying to run down every last lead. You have a contact number for this investment group?”

Jeremy scrolled through his contact list on his phone, then rattled it off. “How did you find me? I mean, how did you know I had something to do with them?” he asked as Bing finished writing.

“I saw a mug with the logo at Sophie Curtis’s house. Miss Curtis informed me upon questioning that it was yours. She provided your contact information.”

Greg’s expression changed instantly from mild annoyance to true alarm. He stepped forward. “Why were you at Sophie’s place? Is she all right? Is she sick?”

“I can’t discuss confidential police business with you, I’m sorry.” He paused while a mother with two toddlers passed by them, struggling with the stroller. “I’m also going to need your whereabouts for last night.”

“I was out for drinks with a buddy from work. From seven until the bars closed at two in the morning. Then at his apartment until almost four. He’s going through a rough divorce. Am I being accused of something?”

“I’m going to need your friend’s name and contact information.”

He rattled that off without having to look, although he didn’t seem pleased about it. “Is everything okay with Sophie?”

“Miss Curtis is fine,” Bing said as he jotted the number down. “Where were you the Monday of April 27th?” The day Kristine Haynes had been murdered. Not that he could think of a connection beyond the staircase logo, but he might as well be thorough while he was here.

“At work.”

“Have you ever heard the names Greg Bruckner, Stacy Bing, or Kristine Haynes?”

“No.” He drew back. “And I’m not answering any more questions without a lawyer, unless you tell me what this is about,” he snapped.

Bing considered his options. He could bring Denvil in, make him sweat in interrogation, show him what true aggravation was. He would, he promised himself, if the man’s alibi for last night was off by as much as a millisecond.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the investigation at this time. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Denvil.”

He strode away, forwarding the investing company’s information to Joe at the station and asking him to track down who was running the thing. He called Denvil’s alibi for the night before. His buddy vouched for him. And then so did the people he worked with, giving him a solid alibi for the day of Kristine Haynes’s murder.

Bing kept turning all the information over and over in his head. Stacy’s murder—for which he still needed a motive—Kristine Haynes’s death, the intruder at Sophie’s place last night. The single link that tied all three women together, the damned staircase logo, was tenuous at best. Maybe he was reading things into it because he was desperate for answers.

As much as he thought, he didn’t arrive at any great revelation by the time he reached the station. He grabbed another cup of coffee on his way to his office. He was feeling decidedly bleary-eyed this morning.

After he topped off the java, he paged through Greg Bruckner’s yearbook once again, and this time he caught a photo he’d somehow missed before. The wrestling team. Two dozen kids in uniform grinned into the camera, the middle two in the back row familiar.

Greg Bruckner and Tag Taylor.

He stared at the grainy image. What in hell was Taylor doing with Stacy’s killer?

Stacy and Kristine worked for Anselm-Gnamm Pharmaceuticals. Bruckner and Taylor were old friends. Connections or coincidences?

Okay. He rolled his shoulders, all senses alert like a hound on a scent.

What did he really know about Taylor? He and his wife Amanda worked for the same company as Stacy had. They’d been married forever, typical professional couple with a nice house, annual vacations in Hawaii, and pretty fine cars, especially Taylor. They both brought in good money and, without children, spent it on themselves. Not a crime.

The few times Bing had met with them, he hadn’t gotten the sense that anything was off. Then again, he hadn’t been paying that close attention. He tried to think back now, recall snatches of conversation, body language. Nothing stuck out in his memory as unusual.

He ran Taylor through the system, but the man didn’t have a record. Bing glanced at the clock on his computer. Taylor should be at work this time of day.

“Going over to Wilmington,” he told Leila as he strode by her on his way out. “I need to look into something regarding the Haynes case.”

She didn’t even lift her gaze from her computer screen as she nodded, her fingers flying over the keyboard, probably working on one of the dozen reports they had to put together each month. She was the heart of the station and no doubt about it. “Need backup?” she called after him.

“Just following a hunch. It’s a pretty long shot.”

Traffic was light, so he was at the company in less than half an hour. Fancy building, plenty of expensive cars in the parking lot. The pharmaceutical industry seemed to be doing well, whatever else was going on in the economy, he thought. Sick people would always need their pills.

He took the elevator up to the HR department and caught Taylor between two video conferences.

“Can it wait?” The man flashed an unconcerned, friendly smile, stopping in the hallway but looking past Bing at the conference room door, and shuffling. “I really can’t miss this meeting. We’re switching HR software.”

He might have been graying on top, but in the back he kept his original dark blond color. The maid, Maria Gonzales, had only seen Kristine’s lover from the back when she described him as blond. Could she have seen Taylor?

Bing thought of Amanda for a second, all that she would have been through already with the cancer. Then he put everything that was personal aside. “Did you have an affair with Kristine Haynes?”

Taylor stiffened. He glanced around. “What are you talking about?”

Bing gambled. “There was a witness to the affair at the Mushroom Mile Motel.”

The man’s lips narrowed, his gaze turning hard, then, little by little, his expression changed to chagrin, then embarrassment. He ducked his head. “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

The place was small and crowded with bookcases and file cabinets, but it had a window and a small buffet cart in the corner with a fancy coffeemaker.

Bing followed him in but didn’t take a seat. He stayed standing and waited while Taylor put the desk between them as if needing a shield. No pictures of his wife in his office. The place had few personal touches, in fact, other than a poster with a sunny beach and palm trees.

“I don’t want Amanda to find out about this. Listen…” He grimaced, closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, his gaze begged for understanding. “It’s not a crime to want a beautiful woman.”

Bing swallowed the distaste creeping up his throat. “You’re married. So was Kristine.”