Get a Clue (13 page)

In contrast, the fire radiated a nice, warm glow. She had nothing but those crackling flames for company as she contemplated the fact that she was entirely alone and a possible murderer walked around unencumbered.

A murderer.
Her heart started pounding, and then a sound scraped behind her and the poor organ practically stopped.

Breanne leapt to her feet and whipped around, nearly falling to the floor in a relieved pile of Jell-O when she saw Cooper standing in the doorway.

At just the sight of him, tall and big and sure of himself, she began to shake. Delayed shock, she knew.

He strode across the room toward her in his loose-legged stride, looking deceptively lazy and completely at ease. He always did, as if all motion was effortless.

Somewhere deep inside, she hoped he would haul her close. Instead he lifted her chin with a finger and peered into her eyes. “You okay?”

Since her teeth were rattling in her head, she simply nodded.

“I need you to hang in there a little bit longer.”

No problem. She didn't need him. She didn't need anyone.

Especially a penis-carrying human.

“The phones are still out,” he said. “No cell service at all now, which means until I can reach the police, I'm it.”

She stared into his set face, so determined to do the right thing, and felt something deep within her give. She was desperately afraid it was her pride, which meant that any moment now she was going to throw herself at him. “What do you have to do?”

“For starters, I'd like to know what happened. Tell me again what you know. You left me in the library and . . .”

“And I went running down the hallway. I made a couple of turns and got lost. I ended up in the wine cellar.”

“You tripped over him?”

“Yes, I had my eyes locked on the bottles. I was going to take as many as I could carry to my room for a pity party.”

“You didn't move him at all?”

“No. Did he fall down the stairs?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “The body's positioned just far enough away from the stairs that I don't see how that happened.”

And then there was the hole in his chest.

“Have you seen any guns here?” Cooper asked.

She shivered. “Oh, my God.”

He put his hands on her arms and pushed her to the leather chair. “Have you?” he asked more gently.

Her chest tightened and she moved her head in the negative.

“Have you seen or heard anything strange?”

A harsh laugh escaped her. “Are you kidding me?
Everything
has been strange.”

He was still touching her, an oddly soothing gesture, considering she didn't want to need him. “You know what I mean,” he said.

She sighed. “Well, yesterday I kept hearing odd noises.”

“What kind of noises?”

“Odd bumps. Humming. Then there was that face over my bed last night. And then today . . .”

“Today . . . ?”

“Just before I went into the cellar, I thought I heard more noises, but I'm losing it, so what do I know?”

“What do you think of the staff?”

“Why, do you think one of them . . . ?” Unable to finish, she trailed off.

He looked at her for a long beat. “I don't know.”

She saw the tension in the lines bracketing his grim, unsmiling mouth, in the dark shadows under his eyes.

“You're not making me feel better,” she whispered.

“I'm not going to lie to you, Breanne.” Their gazes locked. “Ever.”

And she knew. He was telling her that despite what she'd learned from the men in her life, he was telling her the truth and always would.

She could believe in him.

But she just wanted to be far, far away, where there were no dead bodies, where there were no sexy-as-hell strangers now that she'd given up men.

“Can you think of anything else I need to know?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I'm not sure! The only thing I'm sure of is I'm scared to death.”

“Okay,” he said, and pulled her against him. “Stay close to the fire,” he murmured. “I'll be back when I can.”

It took every ounce of courage she had not to cling to him when he pulled away. “Where are you going?”

“To talk to everyone else.” With a quick stroke of his finger over her hairline at her temple, he was gone, leaving her to obsess over how she'd thought she'd hit bottom yesterday, but she'd been very, very wrong.

She was hitting rock bottom now.

 

 

So much for being on vacation,
Cooper thought. He had a dead body and a houseful of possible suspects, including one hauntingly beautiful, high-spirited, and happy-to-hate-all-men Breanne Mooreland.

And nothing added up.

Because it didn't, he went back to the starting board—the cellar.

Edward lay exactly as he'd been left. He looked to be a man in his late fifties, and in prime shape for his age.

Except for the hole in his chest.

Several things were niggling at Cooper, the last of which was how Shelly had assumed at first sight that Edward was dead. In the dim lighting, Edward could have just been taking a damn nap, and yet she'd taken one look at him and had cried, “Not missing, but
dead!”

A guess?

Or prior knowledge?

Another thing was that Edward lay on his back, sprawled out. Not a likely position for a person who'd fallen down the stairs and then crawled fifteen feet away to die.

Unless, of course, it hadn't been the fall that had killed him.

Cooper pulled out a flashlight he'd lifted from the foyer closet and a pair of tweezers he'd gotten from the guest bathroom, and crouched before the body. “Sorry, buddy,” he murmured, and lifted Edward's shirt, pulling it away from his chest to look at the chest wound.

A small, perfectly round hole. But not, as he'd first thought, a bullet hole. Or at least he didn't think so. The hole was too small, too inconsequential. In fact, he'd have sworn that it had come from a BB gun, given that he'd had many such wounds himself, courtesy of his brother, when they'd been kids.

Which brought up another unsettling point. A BB might hurt like hell—but it wouldn't have killed him, either.

So what
had?

When Cooper left the cellar, he wasn't too surprised to find the house quiet as a mouse, with no sight of any of the staff. They'd scattered like wild seeds in the wind.

Funny how good they were at disappearing. He just hoped they weren't as good at being criminals.

He came to the main hallway, and heard a faint murmuring, which he followed to the dining room.

The empty dining room. “Hello?” he called out.

No answer, but he could still hear the voices, faintly but definitely there, coming from . . . the far wall? Odd, as there was no door there, no closet, nothing but drywall. Putting his ear to it, the voices became recognizable.

Dante and Shelly.

“Shelly, baby,
please
. Stop crying.”

“I c-can't.” Her voice was more muted than Dante's, as if maybe she had her face pressed to him.

Cooper pulled back and looked around the empty room. Where were they? Leaving the dining room, he strode down the hallway and into the kitchen, which shared the talking wall with the dining room.

The kitchen was also empty.

And yet the soft voices were still audible, coming from . . . the walk-in pantry.

“I just can't believe it . . .” came Shelly's voice.

Cooper lifted his hand to knock on the closet door, wanting to alert them to his presence, but Dante spoke again, his voice low and grim.

“He was cruel to you, Shelly. Christ, you feared him and you hated him.”

Cooper's hand lowered.

“But I didn't want him dead!” she cried. “My God, Dante. I don't want anyone dead.”

“Shh.”

“I won't shh!” Suddenly her voice was no longer muted, as if she'd pulled away. “This is bad, so bad—”

“Shelly,” Dante said again, softly, so gentle that Cooper had a hard time actually believing it was the tough-looking butler speaking that way. “Come on, come here.”

The sound of clothes rustling drifted through the door, followed by a shuddering sigh.

Jesus,
Cooper thought,
this house saw a lot of action.

“I dreamed of you holding me like this,” Shelly whispered. “But in my dream it was because you wanted to, not because you were trying to quiet the wigged-out chef.”

“Maybe I do want to be holding you like this.”

“But you haven't.”

“You've only worked here a few months.”

“Long enough.”

“Shelly.” Dante's voice was rough, gravelly. “I open the front door for a living.”

“So?”

“So you came from a small town. You grew up with money. Hell, you went to that fancy cooking college—”

“What does
that
matter?”

“Goddammit, I grew up in Watts.”

“I don't care.”

“I was in a gang. I've done things—You know it.”

“You said you left that behind you years ago, when you were still a teenager.”

“I'm still ghetto.”

“No, you're not.”

“Shelly.” Dante let out a disparaging sigh. “You have people who care about you deeply. I have no one who gives a shit, no one—”

“You have us here. All of us. We all give a . . .
shit
.”

“You said shit,” Dante said, sounding both shocked and amused.

“I'll say it again with a bull in front of it if you tell me that our different social backgrounds is what's holding you back from being with me.”

Dante stopped laughing. “That's what I'm telling you.”

“Then you are a very stupid man, Dante. And not because you open doors for a living.”

“Shelly—”

“Maybe I'm not who you think I am,” she whispered. “You ever think of that? Maybe I'm less.”

“Or more.”

“Well you won't know unless you look deeper.”

“But—”

“No. Dante, listen to me. I like you. I like you a lot, and idealistic as it sounds, that should be all that matters!”

“It
is
idealistic.”

“And here I thought you were so brave—”

Her words were suddenly cut off, and if Cooper wasn't mistaken, they were cut off by Dante's mouth—that is, if the slurping, kissing noises coming through the door meant anything.

Cooper resisted thunking his head against the wall, though he knew exactly how Dante felt, as if he'd just been handed a winning lotto ticket. He knew because he'd felt that way last night when Breanne had flung herself into his bed and his arms, and had stayed there all night. He knew because he'd felt it again this morning, and in the library, so he really hated to interrupt. But there was a dead guy downstairs who hadn't died of natural causes and couldn't ask his own questions, and Cooper felt honor bound to get those answers for him.

“Oh, my God,” Shelly gasped, not sounding like she was crying anymore, but breathless for another reason entirely. “Oh, Dante.”

Dante murmured something back to her in his South American native tongue, and Shelly sighed dreamily. “That sounds so sexy,” she whispered. “Say it again.”

Dante obliged her, then let out a rough groan. “No, don't—” He swore lavishly in Spanish. “
Stop
.”

“Stop?” Shelly asked incredulously.

“Not in a closet.” Dante sounded tortured. “Not with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you're different.”

“Different good?”

Dante's laugh was low. Baffled. “Yeah, different good. Jesus, Shelly.”

“So we're going to be together?” she asked with so much hope in her voice that it almost hurt.

Did
hurt. Cooper wondered if he'd ever been so hopeful. If so, his job, his world, had stomped it out of him long ago.

“We're going to be together,” Dante said, sounding both fierce and shaky.

“Now, then.”

“No.” Dante let out another laughing groan. “Soon as we can get back to my place. In town.”

“That might be days!”

“Shelly—”

“Come to me tonight. Please.”

“Shelly—”

“
Please
.”

They were never going to come out of there,
Cooper thought. He'd lifted his hand to knock again when Dante said, “Where's the guest?”