Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series (6 page)

“Coffee’s fine,” he said.

“How did you find out about this so quickly?” It was still shy of noon. “You can’t tell me you had any interest in researching me before this happened. Bloody Mary is barely a speck on the map, and my career as coroner has been less than that.”

“You could say it was fate. I happen to live in Richmond and saw the story on the early morning news. And I can also say that I’ve got friends in the police department who were happy to let a few details slip. After I heard the nature of the crime, I decided it fit perfectly for my newest book. Bloody Mary is the perfect town for these crimes, and you’re right in the middle of it all. I think you’d be just the kind of character I could use as a female lead to drive my detective crazy.”

I snorted out a laugh before I could help it. “News flash, Brody Collins. I’m not some simpering fan who can be persuaded to do something foolish because you have an overabundance of charm. Men like you do not flirt with women like me, and I think it undermines both our intelligence to pretend otherwise. I’m a lot easier to impress when honesty is involved.” That had never been more true until after my parents died. That was when I’d realized my entire life had been a lie.

“Honesty then,” he nodded soberly. “I’d really like to observe you for a few days.”

“I’ll give you fair warning, murders are few and far between in Bloody Mary. In the whole county, for that matter. It’s going to be a short research session.”

“Does that mean you’ll let me observe you?” He held out his hand and watched me with patient eyes. I had a feeling they saw more of me than what I was comfortable with.

“I guess so, for what it’s worth.” I held out my hand for a no-nonsense shake between two business partners.

Awareness flared inside of me just before his skin touched mine. My mind was screaming
mistake!
even as my nipples hardened and moisture pooled between my thighs. As skin touched skin, my breath caught in my chest and I watched in fascination as his pupils flared and the thin green ring seemed to glow with the heat of his desire. His thumb rubbed over the pulse in my wrist and he took a step closer.

“You’re wrong, you know.” His breath whispered across my skin, and it took all my willpower to keep from leaning into him.

“About what?”

“A man like me can’t help but flirt with a woman like you. I’d be insane not to. That lean, sexy body under layers of clothes is wreaking havoc on my imagination. Full lips that beg to be kissed. And wounded eyes the color of cloudy skies. Your eyes undo me.” He leaned closer, his lips barely a whisper from mine, and I knew if I didn’t stop things now he’d find out how his much his words affected me. No one had ever spoken to me as if, in that one moment of time, I was the center of their universe. It had been so long since I’d been held. And my body and my soul thirsted for contact.

I pulled away quickly, and wiped my hands on my legs nervously.

He looked at me with a combination of understanding, sympathy and lust, but he let me escape. “Why don’t you give things a chance? You might be surprised to see where it goes. I have a feeling there could be something amazing between us.”

“Or it could be a complete disaster,” I returned.

I was a complete fraud. I wanted honesty between us, but there was no way in hell I could tell him how afraid I was of the chemistry that had just plastered me against my kitchen counters. I’d never felt anything like it before, and I was terrified I’d be the ones to screw things up. I had a hell of a lot of baggage I carried around with me.

He smiled as if he’d heard my thoughts, and the look he gave me was one of fierce determination. “I’ve been known to be patient.”

I nodded and fled toward the basement door. I hated to break it to him, but he was going to need a lot more than patience. Something more concrete—like a good attorney or a private investigator that would keep his mouth shut. In my experience, most people didn’t want to associate with anyone whose parents’ activities were being investigated by the FBI.

“That’s a pretty high tech security system for a small town coroner,” Brody said. “The medical examiner in Baltimore has the same system.”

I keyed in the code and waited as a series of locks unbolted. The thick metal door opened on silent hinges, and I led the way down metal stairs that echoed loudly with every footstep. The basement room was sterile and white from floor to ceiling. Metal shelves with my equipment lined one wall, four filing cabinets lined another, and a long counter with double sinks lined the third. On the fourth wall was the walk-in refrigeration unit and the metal tables I used for embalming. The fluorescent lights glared blindingly over the metal and white, and the ventilation system whirred softly in the background.

“My parents had the extra security added when I was a teenager,” I said. “A few of the high school kids decided it would be fun to break into the funeral home on Halloween, drink beer, look at dead bodies and generally scare themselves shitless. Sheriff Drummond was in charge then, and he showed them what it felt like to sleep inside a cell for a night.” I didn’t add that the current sheriff was one of the guilty parties involved. And Jack’s mama put the fear of God into him way more than a jail cell ever could.

“My parents didn’t press charges, and those kids are all fine, upstanding citizens of Bloody Mary today. But my parents had to overdo it on the security because the relatives of the deceased weren’t too happy about the situation.” And in hindsight, the added security had probably been necessary for my parents’ extracurricular activities.

“Ahh, to be young and foolish again,” Brody said with a wistful smile.
I went to the walk-in refrigeration unit and pulled out Fiona Murphy. The unit was meant to hold three bodies comfortably on gurneys, and I hoped I never saw the day when there were more than three residing there.

“What happened to her?” Brody asked when I pulled the sheet down far enough to show the marks at her throat. Death was always surreal when you looked at a body away from the crime scene—to see one naked and still, slightly blue tinged and somehow peaceful in the aftermath of violence.

“I got called to the crime scene early this morning. She’d been found by a man on his way to work, lying in a ditch at the side of the road.”

“Hell of a way to start the day.”

“You’re telling me.” I pulled on my surgical gloves and protective overcoat, strapped on my prescription goggles and pulled the sheet to the end of the gurney. “Here, put these on,” I said tossing him a pair of gloves. He blew into the end of each glove before sliding his hands inside. It was obvious he’d had practice. Latex gloves were a pain in the ass to a novice.

My mouth watered as he pulled a pair of horn-rimmed glasses out of his shirt pocket and slipped them on. I rolled my eyes at my idiocy and rushed to fill the silence before he noticed I’d been staring. “Her body was found near her car. She’d run out of gas on the way to her sister’s.”

“So do the police think it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Nope. She was on her way to her sister’s because she was leaving her abusive husband of twelve years.”

“Okay,” Brody said. He ran his fingers through his hair and his eyes narrowed in thought. “So she packs her bags and tells him she’s going to live with her sister, and he follows her until she runs out of gas. And luck just happens to turn in his favor so he has the opportunity to kill her. That doesn’t seem very likely.”

“This wasn’t a crime of passion. It was premeditated and planned down to the last detail. Bob Shiney owns the gas station here in town and he told the sheriff this morning that she bought a full tank of gas yesterday morning, so someone helped relieve her of a few gallons between 10 yesterday morning and 9 last night when she left her house.”

“What do you mean someone? Don’t you think it was the husband?”

“He’s the most logical suspect,” I said, avoiding the question. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone Jack’s theory on the murder. Research for a book or not, information like that had a tendency to get out, and I didn’t want to make things any harder on Jack than they were going to be. “George had a history of violence with her—of violence period—but she never pressed charges against him.”

I rolled Fiona over gently and parted the hair at the back of her head. “The first blow was struck here. There are no fibers, so that tells me it wasn’t wood or a synthetic material. It was probably a metal pipe of some kind because the wound is even across the skull.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“I mean that if he’d used something like a hammer or a pipe wrench the blow would have been deeper in the area originally struck, just from the point of impact. This was not a life-threatening wound. It would have given her a concussion and incapacitated her for a short period of time. Which is exactly what he wanted it to do. But you already knew that, didn’t you? You obviously know your way around an autopsy room if you’ve been observing the Baltimore M.E. Are you testing me to make sure the small town doctor knows what the hell she’s doing?”

“No, Maam,” Brody said, coughing to stifle a grin.

I narrowed my eyes, ready to spew fire at the insult. I was one of those people who hated failing at anything, and I had enough insecurities about the job without having others add to the problem.

“But I’ve found it’s never a bad thing to ask questions. I never know what answer might strike a new idea or make me consider a different angle.”

“Right. Sorry,” I said, feeling more and more like a fool the longer I was in his presence.

“Was she sexually assaulted?”

“Yes. After he rendered her unconscious with the pipe he moved her to the backseat of her vehicle and tied her with a natural fiber rope, which can be bought at any hardware store in America.”

I pulled her arm up so he could see the slight abrasions and discolorations on her wrist. “I pulled fibers from the ligature marks this morning and sent them to the lab just in case there’s something unusual that will help us identify where he bought it, but I doubt it.

“She fought him during the rape,” I said, laying her arm back down. “There was skin under her nails, and the struggle is what caused the abrasions from the rope. She finally found the courage to fight back and leave, and this is what she got for it.”

“And all of this happened on the side of the road, fairly early in the evening, without one person driving by?” he asked, skeptically.

“You’re saying nine o’clock is fairly early in the evening because you’re from Richmond. Time moves slower here. The entire town is shut down by that time of night.”

“God, how do you survive the boredom?”

“There’s a lot to be said for peaceful towns,” I answered primly, even though I’d asked myself the same question after I’d been forced to move back home. “There are only four houses on
Canterbury Street
where Fiona was found. The lots are large in size and surrounded by trees. Even if she’d screamed the neighbors probably wouldn’t have heard her.”

I moved further down the table to where I’d collected the sample of semen that had been left behind. “He did us a favor by leaving his DNA. I sent the sample to the lab this morning. We should have the results back by next week.”

“I’ll play devil’s advocate and say wouldn’t the husband’s defense be that they’d made love earlier in the evening? The physical evidence doesn’t prove murder.”

“There was a reason I went to medical school instead of law school. I’ve never been a fan of injustice. He tore her up a little, caused some vaginal bleeding. Cause of death was strangulation. You can see the marks around her throat. Murder weapon was a red silk scarf. If George committed the crime then the sheriff will find a way to prove it.”

“I wouldn’t think a town this size would have a police department capable of handling a murder investigation.”

I bristled a little at the implication. Jack was always underestimated, even by the people who’d voted him into office. “That might normally be the case, and I’ll admit the police here don’t have a lot of opportunity to get on the job experience, but Jack Lawson, our sheriff, knows what he’s doing. He’ll get the job done.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. It sounds like you’re close with the sheriff.” It was obvious he was fishing for information about our relationship by the competitive glare that came into his eyes.

“We are. Jack’s a good man. He’ll see to it that whoever killed Fiona pays.” His scowl deepened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but I beat him to the punch. “I hate to cut your research session short, but I can’t perform the autopsy with you here without getting permission from Jack first. It’s his investigation, and anything I find is sensitive information.”

Brody’s jaw clenched and jealousy practically oozed from his pores every time I mentioned Jack’s name. I realized as I was doing it that I was subconsciously trying to push Brody away. I covered Fiona back up and pushed her back into the freezer.

When I turned back around Brody’s body stood rigid and unmoving, and he blocked my path so I had no choice but to face him head on. I somehow found the courage to meet his stare, and I was surprised at what I saw. It was obvious I hadn’t deterred him at all. If anything he looked more determined to get what he wanted. And apparently he wanted me.