Exposed (33 page)

Tamia scowled.“I didn’t catch that. I’m not at my desk, so I don’t have anything to write with.”

“I’ll call back and leave it on your voice mail.” Isabel had the nerve to sound exasperated, when
she
was the one asking for a favor. “Dominic’s leaving for a business trip this afternoon, so we’ll have privacy to talk. Can you be at my house by six?”

“Seven works better for me.” Struck by a sudden thought, Tamia’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.“Wait a minute. How do I know this isn’t a setup? How do I know I’m not walking right into a trap?”

Isabel sighed impatiently. “Why the hell would I want to hurt you at this point? I need your damn help. A dead mistress is of no use to me.”

She had a point, Tamia conceded. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances.“I’m telling my sister where I’m going tonight. If anything happens to me, she’ll know you were responsible. So you won’t get away with it.”

“Fine,” Isabel said curtly.“Just be there.”

Dominic and Isabel lived in The Woodlands, a premier community that was home to several major corporations and featured an upscale shopping mall, a plethora of restaurants, an amphitheater, seven golf courses, and a posh resort. The neighborhoods were divided into villages that offered everything from townhouses to custom estates.

Not surprisingly, the Archers’ home was located in one of the most expensive villages, which boasted stately two-story residences, rolling hills, and scenic lake views. Oaks draped with silvery moss shaded the neighborhood, and every yard was perfectly manicured.

As Tamia admired her picturesque surroundings, she remembered the many times she’d driven through The Woodlands fantasizing about the beautiful house she and Brandon would someday share, a home where they would raise their children and build a wonderful life together. A wave of sorrow engulfed her, bringing tears to her eyes. It wasn’t fair that she’d lost practically everything, while Dominic still came home to a gorgeous stone-and-stucco house nestled at the end of a winding cul-de-sac.

Parked at the end of the driveway, Tamia glared up at the house, thinking of how it was utterly wasted on two people
living out a farce of a marriage. Dominic had never appreciated what he had. He’d taken his lovely home and his wife for granted, then had reached into a perfect stranger’s life to poison her existence as well.

So now she would make him pay, Tamia silently vowed. She’d do whatever it took to help Isabel bleed him for every dime he was worth.

Climbing out of her car, she made her way up the walk, noting the beautifully landscaped yard and the silver Mercedes parked in the driveway. Lights glowed in the windows of the house. She imagined Isabel peering out from one of them, annoyed because Tamia was thirty minutes late.

Giving a mental shrug, she reached the front door and pressed the doorbell, then waited.

A minute passed.

There was no response.

Tamia frowned.

As she raised her hand to ring the bell again, she saw that the door was ajar.

She paused.

Her skin prickled with unease.

She threw a furtive glance over her shoulder. Dusk had fallen, casting shadows over the quiet street. The idyllic charm she’d previously admired suddenly seemed sinister, as if the forested hills were hiding dark secrets.

Shaking off the paranoid thought, Tamia turned around and gave the door a slight, gentle push.

“Mrs. Archer?” she called through the narrow opening.

No response.

She hesitated, then cautiously stepped into the spacious foyer.“Mrs. Archer?”

Silence greeted her. An unnatural silence, as if the house were an entity that was holding its breath.

“Isabel?”

Still no answer.

Tamia went still, the fine hairs rising on the back of her neck. Some premonition, some instinct, warned her to turn around and leave right now. Get away from that house as fast as she possibly could.

But curiosity overrode common sense. Which had always been her biggest problem.

Drawing a deep breath, she ventured farther into the house, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the polished hardwood floor. She walked past an expensively furnished living room, past a dramatically curving staircase.

“Mrs. Archer?” she called out again.

More silence.

She’d reached an arched entryway that led down a corridor. Her heart rate accelerated, scalp tingling with awareness. Swallowing nervously, she crept down the hallway until she came to an open door on the right.

She looked inside.

For as long as she lived, she would never forget the sight that greeted her, an image that would be permanently seared into her conscience.

Isabel lay sprawled on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. She had been shot twice in the chest. Her glassy, lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling as if she sought answers from God.

Tamia screamed.

Her stomach heaved in violent protest, bile rushing into her mouth.

Gasping and choking, eyes wide with horror, she staggered backward and spun around so fast her feet slipped on the smooth hardwood floor. She went down hard, pain screaming up her legs and back as she landed on her knees.

Sobbing, heart pounding with terror, she scrambled frantically to her feet and raced down the hallway, escape her only goal.

But as she neared the foyer, the front door suddenly burst open, crashing against the wall like a deafening crack of thunder.

Two uniformed cops barreled into the house, weapons drawn.

“Police!”
they shouted, their guns pointed straight at her. “Freeze!”

Tamia was trapped in a nightmare.

She kept hoping that she would wake up at any moment and discover that the past three hours had been nothing but a nightmare. What else could explain what she was doing in police custody, confined to an interrogation room where she was being questioned by a homicide detective who actually believed that she’d committed
murder?

It was surreal.

Horrifyingly surreal.

It
had
to be a nightmare.

But when she glanced down at her hands, she could see a residue of black dye from when she’d gotten fingerprinted. And when she inhaled, she could still smell the pungent, coppery odor of fresh blood, as if the scent had been burned into her nasal cavity.

The detective who was interrogating her had a craggy face, sandy brown hair, and small, deep-set dark eyes. He was medium height and had the beginnings of a paunch. When he first entered the room, he’d introduced himself as Detective Laramie.

Or was it Larson? Tamia wondered, her traumatized brain struggling to grasp basic details.

Nervously licking her dry lips, she glanced toward the mirrored wall across the room. She wondered if spectators were watching from the other side, dissecting her every word and gesture like she saw in the movies and on television.

“Let’s recap, shall we?” Detective Laramie sat across the table from her, eyeing her with open skepticism. “You were caught fleeing the scene of a crime, which also happened to be the home of your ex-lover and his wife. But you claim that you didn’t kill her?”

“Yes,”
Tamia adamantly insisted,“because it’s the truth!”

He snorted.“
Your
version of the truth.”

Tamia stared at him with mounting frustration.“I
told
you. Isabel asked me to meet her at her house tonight. Check her cell phone—she called me this morning at home
and
on my cell. Not only that, but she left a message on my voice mail giving me her address and directions to her house!”

The detective was silent for a moment, knowing that her claims could easily be corroborated. “Okay. So you and Isabel were meeting to discuss strategy. You were gonna supply the proof she needed to take the cheating husband to the cleaners. Hell hath no fury like two women scorned, and all that jazz.”

“That’s right.” Sweat beaded Tamia’s forehead, pooled in her armpits.

“So what happened? You showed up there, saw the beautiful house she was sharing with your lover, and you got jeal-ous—and snapped?”

“No!”
Tamia shouted.

“So you argued first, then. She taunted you. Or she confronted you about banging her husband.”

“
No!
That’s not what happened!”

Rising out of his chair, Laramie planted his hands on the table and leaned toward her face. His breath was stale, reeking of coffee and cigarettes. “I know for a fact that you wanted both Dominic
and
Isabel Archer dead. Wanna know how I know?”

Tamia stared at him, a knot of dread tightening in her stomach.

As she watched, the detective removed a mini-cassette recorder from his pants pocket and placed it in the center of the table, squarely between them.

“Does this sound familiar to you?” He pressed play.

Suddenly Tamia’s unsteady voice filled the interrogation room.“… I want to send a message to him. He needs to know who the hell he’s dealing with….”

Her blood ran cold.

Her eyes flew to the detective’s smug face. “W-where did you get that?” she whispered.

At her look of stunned betrayal, he chuckled sardonically and paused the tape. “The feds were kind enough to share it with us. They’ve been running surveillance on your friend Louis Saldaña for several months now, trying to build a case against key members of the Mexican mafia. If they dig up enough dirt on Saldaña, they can squeeze him into testifying against his
La Eme
associates in exchange for a plea deal. They’ve got his whole house wiretapped, and damn near everything in it.”

Tamia felt chilled to the bone.

Laramie laughed, giving her a look of mock sympathy. “Awww. You look like you just lost your best friend, like you’ve suffered the worst betrayal in the world. But take heart, kiddo. Saldaña didn’t know his cell phone was bugged when he went to see you that day. So he had no idea that FBI agents were listening with great interest while you asked him to take care of a little problem for you. Lucky for Saldaña, he never acted on your request.” Laramie smirked. “Not so lucky for you, though.”

Tamia panicked, heart thudding. “It wasn’t like that,” she hastened to explain. “I didn’t want Dominic killed, I swear! I just wanted to give him a warning so he’d back off and leave me the hell alone!”

“And what about his wife? Why did you order a hit on her?”

“
I didn’t!
If anything,
she
was trying to kill
me!
”

The detective sneered.“Is that so?”

“Yes!”Tamia insisted, nodding emphatically.“She was having me followed! On at least two separate occasions, I was tailed home by someone in a dark sedan with tinted windows. The driver took pictures of me, and one night he nearly ran me off the road!”

Laramie eyed her skeptically. “How do you know it was someone hired by Isabel?”

“Because she’d already threatened to kill me! And I knew she was capable of making good on her threat. She was a member of a Crucian crime organization, and they were ruthless!”

The detective stared at her as if she were a raving lunatic. “Where the hell did you get a harebrained idea like that?”

“My sister told me!”Tamia cried.

“Your
sister?
” Laramie repeated derisively. “You mean the same sister who’s an ex-convict? The one who just got out of the joint about two weeks ago?”

“She heard the story from another inmate who’s from St. Croix!”

“And that makes it more credible?”

Tamia opened and closed her mouth, floundering.

“I hate to break it to you,” the detective drawled, his voice dripping with scorn, “but you’ve been hoodwinked. Isabel Archer belonged to a powerful organization all right, but not the kind you were told. She was a member of one of the oldest, wealthiest families on St. Croix. They once owned and operated a bunch of sugar mills. So Isabel wasn’t a mafia princess. She was an heiress—the Paris Hilton of St. Croix.”

Tamia gaped incredulously at him. She didn’t believe him. Why on earth would Fiona have made up that story about the Crucian crime syndicate?
Why?

Laramie smirked. “And as for the car that was following you that night—the one that nearly ran you off the road? You wanna know who was behind the wheel? An overzealous FBI agent who got suspicious when you tried to outrun him. See, you had the misfortune of getting on the Bureau’s radar after Saldaña paid you a friendly little visit one night back in April. The feds thought you might be one of his loyal hoochie mamas, so they started keeping an eye on you after that.”

Tamia stared at him, struggling to comprehend what he’d just told her. The
FBI
was behind the stalking? Not a private investigator—or a hired assassin?

“So let’s see here.” Laramie sounded reflective.“So far I’ve got an audiotape of you ordering a hit on your ex-lover and his wife. But even better than that, I’ve got you fleeing the actual crime scene.”A slow, satisfied smile crawled across his face. “What else will I uncover when I start digging around, talking to your colleagues, visiting some of your favorite stomping grounds? Hmm?”

Tamia gulped, automatically thinking of her fight with Isabel at the coffee shop. Would the manager or any of the customers who’d been present come forward to tell the police what they’d witnessed that day? Would any of them remember what she’d screamed at Isabel on her way out the door?

The words echoed through her brain now, taunting her.
If you ever step to me again, bitch, I will bury your ass six feet under!

All this time she’d been so focused on how Isabel had threatened
her
life.

Would her own deadly threat come back to haunt her?

Tamia shuddered at the possibility.

Laramie pinned her with a direct look. “I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you kill Isabel Archer?”

“No!” Tamia shouted hoarsely. “I didn’t kill her! She was already dead when I got there, and that’s the damn truth!”

The detective’s expression hardened. “Well, based on the
evidence we already have against you, you’d better get yourself a damn good lawyer—”