DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS (6 page)

She shrugged, reached for the doorknob, then turned back. “But I’m not a suspect, right? You still know I didn’t have anything to do with the senator’s murder, don’t you?”

“I can’t totally rule you out as a suspect yet, but no. Personally, I don’t think you’re involved,” he said. “However—”

“However what?” she asked. To her dismay, her voice quivered slightly.

“You could be in danger,” he said.

Although she already knew she could be targeted by the man who’d killed Senator Sills, his words ramped up the chill of fear inside her. “In danger. From the murderer?”

“He knows who you are. I’m going to have one of the police cruisers in the area drive by your house every few hours, just to be safe.”

He reached around her and opened the door. She caught the clean scent of soap and shampoo. “I’ll walk you out.”

As they walked down the hall from the interview room, two well-dressed men were standing near the front entrance to the station, straightening their ties and talking in undertones to each other. Laney recognized one of them, Senator Myron Stamps.

Beside her, Ethan muttered a curse. He laid his hand reassuringly on the small of her back.

Reassuring, yes. His warm hand felt like a promise of safety, but she couldn’t help but be suspicious at the timing. Had he set up this
accidental
meeting to see how she would react when confronted by one of the two members of what Senator Sills had called the “Good Ole Boys” club? It had been long rumored that Sills, Stamps and Whitley, a trio of older politicians in the Louisiana Legislature, had taken bribes and kickbacks from businessmen and lobbyists in the import/export businesses to keep taxes low and look the other way when certain illegal substances were brought in through the Port of New Orleans. In fact, the kidnapping of Dr. Kate Chalmet’s little boy had been a warped plan to keep Stamps in office so the graft and corruption could continue.

As if he could hear Laney’s thoughts, Senator Stamps turned. Unsure what to do or say, meeting him in the middle of the police station, Laney pasted on a small smile and nodded.

Senator Stamps stepped forward. “Laney,” he said, reaching out a hand toward her, but Ethan stepped in front of her. “Excuse us, Senator,” he said evenly.

“I just wanted to speak to Laney,” Stamps countered, and spoke to Laney as if Ethan wasn’t there. “My dear, you must be in shock and terrified.” Stamps squinted at the bandage on her head. “Oh, my dear, were you shot?”

Laney opened her mouth, but Ethan deflected the senator again. “I’m sorry, Senator. It’s probably best if y’all don’t communicate.”

Stamps frowned as Ethan guided her past him. Beyond, Laney saw the other man, probably Stamps’s lawyer, scowl. Was his disapproval aimed at Stamps, at Ethan—or at her? She nodded to him as well, but he just glared at her.

Laney held her tongue until Ethan had opened the door to the squad room and guided her through and out the front door of the station house.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, once they were walking down the concrete steps.

“Do I have to remind you that you are a victim in this case, as well as my only witness, and Senator Stamps is a person of interest. You shouldn’t be talking to him.”

“Not that. Why did you walk me right past them?”

Ethan frowned. “That was an accident.”

“You mean you weren’t hoping for an encounter? You weren’t hoping someone would say something incriminating?”

“It didn’t hurt my feelings that Stamps confronted you.”

“He wasn’t confronting me. He was offering his condolences.”

“His lawyer should have stopped him. Didn’t you see the look he sent him?”

“I can’t say if it was aimed at Stamps or you or me.”

Ethan said, “Listen to me. You need to be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary chances. Don’t go out alone at night.”

“So you do think I’m in danger. But not from Senator Stamps, surely?” she asked. “I thought you figured any threats would come from Buddy Davis. Assuming he was the man in black.”

Ethan glanced around as they stepped off the bottom step and onto the sidewalk. “Watch what you say in public. And as for threats or danger, until I have some concrete evidence, I’m considering everybody dangerous, especially to you.”

Laney frowned at him. Suddenly, his voice had gone harsh.

“You’ve got my number. If anything, and I mean anything, odd or unusual happens, you call me. Got it?”

She angled her head for a second. “Yes, sir,” she said, still not sure how she felt about his seeming certainty that something could happen to her. “I will call you at the first sign of a roach, a scorpion or a thug with a gun.” She smiled.

But Ethan didn’t. He scowled at her. “This is not a game, Laney.” He reached out and touched the bandage on her temple. “I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to make sure you stay safe. The killer shot at you because he wanted you dead. If his aim had been a quarter-inch lower, you would be.”

Chapter Four

By the time Laney got home, it was after five in the afternoon, fifteen hours since Senator Sills had been killed. She flopped down on the sofa, too tired to even kick off her shoes. Her eyes filled with tears, mostly from reaction to the long, awful night and day. The sight of the senator dead on the floor and the feel of the bullet grazing her temple seemed at once glaringly real and a terrifying nightmare.

She hadn’t minded working for the senator, but she hadn’t particularly cared for him as a person. Of course she was sad that he was dead. Sad for him and for his two daughters. They would be devastated. One of them had a new baby. The senator had been so excited and so proud. She’d never met them, but she wondered if she ought to call them.

What would she say? She couldn’t tell them anything about the murder, couldn’t tell them anything she’d seen or heard. She couldn’t tell them about the man in black. Ethan Delancey had warned her not to talk about the case and he’d told her that the police had taken care of notifying the senator’s family. It was likely that the only thing she would accomplish would be to upset them.

The senator’s daughters were not the only people she didn’t know how to handle. She had dozens of messages on her phone from people who had called while she’d been stuck in that interview room at the police station. And by the time she’d gotten into her car and headed home, her phone was ringing almost constantly. She had no idea what to say to any of them either.

She’d turned the ringer off and done her best to ignore the vibration whenever it rang. Now as she sat on the couch in her living room and tried to relax, she heard it vibrating in her purse, which sat on the table in the foyer. With a sigh, she pushed herself to her feet and retrieved it. Back on the couch, she started playing messages and returning calls. There were several from Senator Sills’s other staff members, wanting to know what had happened, was she okay, had she seen anything. She tried to keep her conversation with each of them short and her answers generic and vague, but every single staff member, from his secretary to his campaign manager, begged her to tell
just
him or her and swore they would not tell a soul.

While she talked to them the calls kept coming in. She screened several more and was surprised and irritated to hear other legislators’ staffers, whom she knew as speaking acquaintances, asking the same questions that Sills’s staffers had ask—was she all right, had she seen anything, if she’d tell them what happened they wouldn’t tell a soul. She deleted their messages. The last message was from her best friend, who’d sounded so frantic that Laney immediately called her back and did her best to assure her that she was fine.

By the time she’d listened to probably forty calls and returned more than twenty of them, her head was hurting and she was so tired that she could barely move. But staying on the couch in the clothes she’d worn for the past thirty hours or more was not an option.

With a great deal of effort, she pushed herself up off the couch and forced herself to walk to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. The contents included a carton of milk that was probably out of date, a take-out box of Chinese food from—she counted backward—four days ago, a carton of eggs, a package of shredded cheddar cheese and two cans of decaffeinated cola. She considered a cheese omelet, but even that sounded too difficult. Sighing, she closed the door and drew herself a glass of water from the dispenser on the front.

Before she could even take a swallow her phone rang again. She looked at the display. It was a number she didn’t know. Probably another congressman’s staffer, fishing for information.

As she went into her bedroom, she turned the phone off. She put it and her glass of water on the nightstand and looked at her bed. She wanted to collapse into it and fall straight to sleep. But there was one thing she wanted more than sleep. A shower. She headed to the bathroom, discarding clothes along the way.

Within seconds, she was under the hot shower spray. Again, the tears welled in her eyes. Weariness, sadness, fear. She could take her pick of emotions. Standing there with the warm water loosening her tense muscles as it washed
away the dirt and grime, she knew what she was really crying about. She’d been there. Right there in the room, a few scant feet from the man who had murdered Senator Sills in cold blood, and she hadn’t been able to do a thing about it. She couldn’t even identify him.

In that moment, staring up at him from the floor, she’d felt more helpless than she ever had in her life. Helpless and terrified and crushingly guilty.

She’d never been Senator Sills’s biggest fan, mostly on behalf of her father, but she had never wished him dead. But he was dead, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what she could have done to save him. Her brain began inventing scenarios—what if she’d not gone to her room when she did? What if she’d jumped up immediately when she heard the pop?

Ethan’s voice came back to her from the E.R., when he was being nice.
You couldn’t have done anything. Not against a gun. If you’d tried, you’d probably be dead now, too.
The words weren’t very comforting, but somehow, they helped. Or maybe it wasn’t the words. Maybe it was him. The timbre of his voice. During that brief time, unlike the interrogation at the police precinct, he’d spoken gently, even kindly. When his eyes turned smoky and soft, she would believe anything he said.

She closed her eyes and let the hot water cascade over her, washing her fear and guilt down the drain, at least for a while. The image of Ethan Delancey’s hard-planed face and smoky eyes helped her relax. As she washed, she realized that her hands were lingering on certain areas of her body and her languid relaxation was morphing into a pleasurable tension. Not the sharp, electric tension of fear and guilt. No. This was different. It swirled, building slowly, spiraling from the deepest center of her desire out to her suddenly sensitized skin. She lifted her head and let the shower spray caress and tease her breasts. As she drew a deep, moisture-laden breath, the water began to cool.

She shivered and wrenched off the water taps. Quickly, she ran a towel over her body, which suddenly felt too heavy to lift. Wrapping a terry cloth robe around her and using the damp towel to squeeze the last droplets of water out of her hair, she headed into her bedroom and threw back the covers.

Then she dropped the robe and slid into bed. She snuggled under the covers with a relieved sigh. Closing her eyes, she searched her brain for the image of Ethan’s smoky eyes, but that spell was broken. As she’d turned off the hot, seductive shower and dried her body, she’d also turned off the hot, seductive daydreams.

It was as though stepping back into the cool real world had erased all that. Now all she could picture was Ethan’s mouth as it twisted into an annoying smirk at things she’d said, or inverted into a frown when he didn’t like her answer. It was obvious that he could turn the kindness on and off at will. And clearly, his default attitude was officious and annoying. She wondered how that worked for him when he wanted information from witnesses or suspects.

Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she needed to get her dad’s financial records before it occurred to Detective Ethan Delancey to get a warrant for them.

* * *

S
HE
WOKE
TO
the sound of gunfire. A muffled pop that had her cringing, paralyzed with fear, until she fought her way to consciousness and realized she’d been dreaming. She opened her eyes to darkness and lay there, listening. Two more pops sounded, and then—a car’s engine revved and tires squealed.

Laney collapsed back into the bedclothes, her limbs quivering with relief. The pops were nothing. Just a car’s engine backfiring. She wasn’t in the hotel room facing a killer. She was home in her own house. She was safe.

Safe.
The word immediately conjured Ethan’s words.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to make sure you stay safe.
With those words and the memory of his smoky eyes reassuring her, she relaxed and drifted toward slumber. But her fickle brain began to wonder what time it was. Sighing, she glanced over at her silent phone, then with a groan, reached out and picked it up.

Turning it on, she saw the time. Eleven-thirty. She’d been asleep for about four hours. Then with a cringe of dread, she looked at her phone log. There was a long list of numbers she didn’t recognize. But she saw a missed call from her Aunt Darla, in Philadelphia. That meant that Senator Sills’s murder had made the national news.

She pressed redial and spoke to her father’s sister for a few minutes, assuring her that she was all right and declining to come to Philadelphia to visit. She explained to her aunt that she had to stay here during the investigation into the senator’s killing. She didn’t mention to her that she’d been a witness or a victim.

When she ended the call, she turned the phone off again, feeling much less guilty and somewhat self-righteous that she’d interrupted her much-needed sleep to check her messages. As soon as she closed her eyes, she fell asleep and dreamed that it was Ethan who got off the elevator and rescued her from the murderer.

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
TIME
she woke, it was to a loud banging that set her heart to racing. She reached for her phone to see what time it was, but it was turned off. So she threw back the covers to get up—and discovered that she was naked.

For a second she just stared at herself in disbelief. She had never gone to bed completely naked before—and with wet hair, too. She must have been exhausted. The last thing she remembered was the exquisite sensations the hot water sluicing over her skin caused.

The banging forgotten, she closed her eyes, but it started again and a loud familiar voice cried, “Laney! Laney Montgomery! It’s Ethan.”

Ethan.
Detective Delancey. What was he doing here? She jerked the sheet up to cover her breasts, then sniffed in embarrassed amusement. She was alone in the room.
For now.

She pushed the covers back and got out of bed, wondering what she could throw on that would sufficiently cover her nakedness. And what the hell was Ethan Delancey doing outside her door at—whatever time it was in the morning anyhow?

She scurried into the bathroom, trying to suppress the urge to cover herself with her hands as if he could see through the walls. She splashed water on her face and glanced in the mirror. She’d gone to sleep with wet hair and this morning it looked like Medusa’s snakes. She ran her wet hands through it, trying to smooth it. Then she looked at the robes and gowns on the back of the door. No. She wanted her terry cloth robe. It was white and thick and covered her from chin to toes. Likely the most modest piece of clothing she owned, as long as the sash at the waist stayed closed and the front flaps didn’t slip.

But where was it? She glanced through the bathroom door at her bed. There it was, right where she’d left it last night. She tiptoed over to the bed and quickly threw it on. She wrapped the robe tightly around her and cinched the sash as tightly as she could. Then she hurried down the hall to the front door.

Just as she reached to unlock the deadbolt, Ethan banged again. “Laney? Are you in there? I swear if you don’t answer the door I’m going to break it down. Are you okay in there?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m—I’m here,” she said. “Just a minute.”

“Laney? It’s Ethan.”

“I know,” she cried. “Hold on.” She finally got the door open.

Ethan was standing there, on her front stoop, his pressed white shirt unbuttoned over a white T-shirt and his hair uncombed. “Thank goodness,” he said when he saw her. “I was afraid something had happened to you. Do you know that your phone is off?”

She nodded.

“Well, turn it on. Don’t you know people are trying to call you? I called several times. I figured you might have turned your phone off while you were asleep, but it’s eight-thirty.”

“Eight-thirty? Oh, my God. I slept for over twelve hours.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess,” he said. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Laney glanced behind her. “I—uh, well I just got up and—” She instinctively stepped out of the way as he walked inside, closing the door behind him. He surveyed the foyer and the rooms that opened onto it—the living room to his right, the kitchen directly in front of him and a hallway to his left. There were three doors on the hall—bedrooms and a bathroom he figured.

Laney watched him take in her little house. His expression didn’t change, but his head moved slightly in what she thought might be a nod.

“Got coffee?”

“I can...make some,” she said with a vague gesture toward the kitchen. But then she stopped. She had no reason to extend hospitality to him. He’d shown up at her door banging and making a scene. She turned to face him. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

She started to put her hands on her hips, but felt the terry cloth sash give a little and decided a better idea would be to fold her arms across her middle, anchoring the robe in place.

He headed into the kitchen. “The coffee’s not made,” he said, looking at the pot and then at her.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “I asked you a question.”

“I’m here because I need you to come in to sign your statement. Can you be there at ten?”

Laney looked at her kitchen clock. “That’s barely over an hour from now.”

“Yeah,” he said, opening the cabinet above her coffeepot, spotting a can of coffee and retrieving it. “Plenty of time.”

He inspected her pot, emptied the reusable filter, rinsed it and refilled it with fresh coffee. He filled the carafe with water and poured it into the pot, then turned on the power.

“No,” she said. “It’s not plenty of time. Oh, and please, make yourself at home,” she added sarcastically.

He glanced at her, first in puzzlement, then understanding. “I figured I’d better make the coffee if I wanted some, since you’re busy holding your robe together,” he commented, a small smile curving his lips. It wasn’t wry but it wasn’t kind either. It was more...suggestive.