No One Left to Tell (21 page)

She glanced up at him. ‘I did. I’m not the chef Brian is, but I make a very good pie.’

‘Then, yes, please.’ She put two slices in the oven, then returned the rest to the refrigerator. ‘Wait. If you keep pie in the fridge, what’s in the pie safe in the living room?’

‘Come see.’ She brushed by him, unzipping her jacket as she went and he let out a breath. The tight black sweater left very little to the imagination. Mutely he followed, his hands itching to touch.

She opened the pie-safe doors, revealing a tall gun safe inside. ‘My friend made it for me for Christmas.’ She punched in the combination so quickly he missed it.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He missed it because he’d been staring at her breasts and he thought she was very aware of that fact. ‘Your friend is a carpenter?’

‘No, he’s a firefighter. But David does a little bit of everything on the side.’ Paige pointed to a framed photo on a shelf. ‘That’s him.’

He studied the photo, hating the jealousy that instantly rose within him. The man standing next to Paige could have been a model. Together they made a beautiful couple. Both wore
gi
s and black belts.

‘He’s a black belt, too.’

Of course he was
.

‘David’s married to my best friend Olivia,’ she said, and he felt better as the jealousy melted away.

‘The friend who stopped the guy who came back,’ he said, and her eyes shuttered.

‘Yes.’ She checked her watch with a grimace. ‘I was supposed to call her two hours ago to let her know I’m okay. She worries. I hate that she feels she has to.’

‘Did you introduce them?’

‘No, she met David through her family. I met him through my old
dojo
.’ She removed the shoulder holster. ‘He was my
uke
when I taught my self-defense classes.’

‘What’s an
uke
?’ he asked.

She unloaded her Glock and placed it in the safe. ‘An
uke
is the receiver in martial arts. He let my students practice on him. He had a way of making them feel at ease.’

‘You miss him.’

She dropped to one knee and loosened her boots enough to remove the small pistol she’d concealed. ‘Every day. He and Olivia and Brie are my best friends.’

‘Where was he the night of your attack?’

She put the small gun in the safe. ‘On his honeymoon. He and Olivia cut their trip short the moment they heard.’

‘Why did you leave Minneapolis? If your friends are there, why come here?’

Her jaw tightened, her hand stilling on the safe’s door. ‘I was suffocating.’

The teakettle whistled and she closed the gun safe before hurrying to the kitchen. He noticed she’d kept the small pistol holstered at her back. He wondered if she always felt the need to be armed in her own home or if today was especially terrifying.

He had a feeling it was the first one. Which made him wonder what, or who, it would take to make her feel safe again.

Tuesday, April 5, 9.20
P.M
.

Paige dialed Olivia on her cell phone as she turned off the burner under the kettle. She braced herself for another tirade and once again, was not disappointed.

‘You never call, never write,’ Olivia said sarcastically.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing her voice to at least sound calm. Being around Grayson Smith was making her edgy.

‘How many stitches?’ Olivia asked and Paige knew she’d seen the garage video.

‘Fifteen.’

Olivia sighed. ‘Did they catch the bastard?’

‘Not yet. And frankly I’ve been a little too busy to even worry about it.’

There was a long, long pause. ‘What the hell is going on there, Paige?’

Paige rubbed her forehead and told it all again, from Maria hiring her, to Delgado.

‘I can be there tomorrow,’ Olivia said. ‘Noah’s already said he can cover our caseload and David’s all but bought plane tickets for me and Brie.’

Just hearing their names made Paige so homesick her stomach hurt. Noah was Olivia’s partner and his wife Eve had been one of Paige’s best students. And having Olivia and Brie here . . . it would have been like old times.

Except not. If she could go back to the time before last summer, she would have in a heartbeat. But all Paige could see was the worry in her friends’ eyes. It was one of the many things that had been suffocating her. ‘Not yet. I’ll let you know if I need you.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Olivia said harshly. ‘Because you turtle. You’ve been turtling for nine goddamn months. You pull your head back under your shell and shut us all out. Why won’t you let me help you?’

Olivia was right. Didn’t mean Paige knew how to fix it. ‘I’m okay. I’ve got help.’

‘The prosecutor. I could
see
that he was helping.’

Paige’s cheeks burned. ‘If he hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gotten away.’

‘Fifteen stitches. I saw the tape. Why didn’t you tell me about him?’

There was hurt in her friend’s voice that Paige wouldn’t have put there for the world. ‘I just met him today and that’s the truth.’

‘Oh. That’s . . . I’m not sure what that is.’

‘Me either,’ she said, turning to find Grayson at the window, looking at the parking lot through the blinds. He still wore a suit, although he’d tugged the tie loose. His coat had to have been custom-made, his shoulders too broad for off the rack. He stood still, a fine tension around him. He was ready. For what she wasn’t certain.

Unfortunately she was ready too. And she knew exactly for what.

‘Just don’t rush into anything,’ Olivia said, as if reading her thoughts.

‘I’m not stupid, Liv,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve stayed on the Waiting for Mr Right Express for eighteen fucking months. I’m not going to jump ship today.’
Maybe tomorrow, but not today
.

‘Or eighteen no-fucking months, as it were,’ Olivia said dryly, then sighed. ‘I just want you to be okay. We all do. We’re scared and we feel helpless.’

‘And I love you all for it. Truly. I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise.’

‘If you don’t, I’m buying those plane tickets. Is the prosecutor with you now?’

‘Yes.’ He’d left the window and was back in the kitchen where he watched her, a frown line bisecting his forehead. She wanted to smooth it away but didn’t trust herself to touch. He was too much, too soon. And when he held her it felt too damn good. ‘I’m safe,’ she told Olivia. ‘I have to go, but I will call if I need you. You have my word.’ She hung up and met Grayson’s avidly curious stare. ‘My friends worry. It makes me crazy.’

‘Doesn’t your family worry?’

She took their pie from the oven and slipped by him to put it on the table. ‘My grandparents raised me and they’re both gone. So it’s just friends left to worry. Come and eat some of this pie so I don’t feel so guilty for eating dessert instead of dinner.’

He looked like he had more questions, but asked no more. ‘It smells good.’

‘Tastes better. Can you get my backpack? I’d like to work on that trial transcript.’

‘I can start on the files, Paige. You need to sleep.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t sleep. I close my eyes and see Delgado. And Elena. The hours are slipping away. I need to do something.’

‘Then let’s start looking at Crystal Jones. But first let’s eat. I didn’t know I was hungry until I smelled the pie.’

And I didn’t know how much I’d missed a man’s touch until you held me
. Now she wanted more. A lot more. And that could be worse for her than eating dessert for dinner.

Tuesday, April 5, 9.35
P.M
.

Grayson took the Muñoz file from his gym bag, leaving the file Daphne had compiled on Paige. He’d look at it later, when Paige was asleep.

The trial transcript sat on the table in front of her, a spiral notebook next to it. She’d already filled several pages of the notebook with shorthand, surprising him.

‘Why do you know shorthand?’ he asked.

‘I was a paralegal for several years. I transcribed depositions and did some low-key investigation.’ She waited a beat. ‘I even worked for the defense for a while.’

He wasn’t as surprised as she apparently thought he’d be. ‘Were they
all
innocent?’

‘Hell, no. They were all guilty as sin. I didn’t work for that law office for long.’

‘Did you ever work for the prosecution?’

‘No. I worked for a family law firm, doing a lot of the same things for them that I do for Clay. Taking pictures of cheating spouses, et cetera.’

‘Did you ever think about going to law school?’

‘Only every day at the beginning. But that required money for university and I could only afford community college.’ She tapped the transcript. ‘Just like Crystal Jones.’

‘Your avoidance of my questions is improving,’ he said.

Her glance was rueful, then she sobered as she began to read from her notes. ‘“Crystal Jones, age twenty, went to a party on the night of September 18. She was discovered the next morning in the garden shed by one of the gardeners – not Ramon, who had not yet arrived to work. Crystal had been stabbed three times and there were ligature marks around her throat. Her dress was pulled up to her waist, her upper body exposed.”’

‘They did a rape kit,’ Grayson said. ‘No sign of sexual assault.’

‘At least there’s that,’ she said, then continued reading. ‘“Crystal attended community college where she majored in Business, but was also auditing a political science class at Georgetown University where she met her date for that night, Rex McCloud, a senior at Georgetown.”’

‘Ah, Rex McCloud,’ Grayson murmured. ‘Grandson of retired State Senator James McCloud. As soon as the word “Senator” popped up, the powers-that-be ducked for cover. It was like walking through a damn minefield, every day.’

‘The transcript doesn’t say much about Rex,’ she observed carefully.

‘The cops cleared him early, so we were asked to tread lightly for the family’s sake.’

‘Special treatment?’ she asked.

‘Yes and no. There are a few powers-that-be that count on the McClouds for political support, and naturally they wanted to shield them from any “unpleasantness”. If Rex had been a person of interest I would have grilled him. But he wasn’t.’

‘Then,’ she said.

‘Then,’ he agreed. He consulted his own notes. ‘Crystal told Rex that her name was Amber and that she was a full-time Georgetown student, too. He realized she’d been lying to him after she was killed, that she had just wanted an entrée to his party. Apparently Rex’s parties were legendary among his crowd.’

‘Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?’

‘Mostly sex and drugs,’ Grayson replied dryly. ‘Any rock ‘n’ roll was just for show. Rex insisted that if the partygoers were doing drugs, he didn’t see it.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘No, but I wasn’t prosecuting him on drug charges. I was prosecuting Ramon Muñoz for murder. Rex was drinking that night, said he’d lost track of Crystal. He assumed she’d left because he’d been fooling around with some of the other guests.’

‘Where were the adults during all this partying?’ Paige asked with a frown.

‘Technically Rex was an adult. He was twenty-one at the time. Rex’s mother was out of town on business. His stepfather said he’d taken a sleeping pill. His grandparents said they “retired early”. Didn’t hear a thing.’

She looked skeptical. ‘How could they not know that sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll was happening in their own backyard?’

‘It’s a big estate. The pool’s a fair distance from the house, so it’s possible they didn’t hear. It’s more likely that they chose not to know. Rex was wild and his mother seemed absentee. Stepdad seemed like a nonentity in the family. The grandparents may have felt unable – or unwilling – to control him.’

She frowned, considering. ‘I read up on the McClouds.’

The way she said it gave him pause. ‘Why?’

She looked him in the eye. ‘Because Rex was barely mentioned in the transcript even though he was Crystal’s date for the night, and because I find it difficult to believe that somebody on the estate didn’t know what was going on at that party.’

‘Rex had an alibi,’ he said mildly.

She shrugged. ‘Alibis can be bought if you’re rich enough. The McClouds are.’

He leaned back in his chair, studying her. He’d verified Rex’s alibi himself, because he’d thought the same thing. But he was interested in the conclusions she’d obviously drawn and how she’d arrived at them. ‘So you read up. What did you find?’

The look she gave him said she knew he was indulging her. ‘The McClouds have a buttload of money, originally made in coal. They still own mines in western Maryland and are stockholders in several public utilities, here and in Europe. They give a lot of money to charity and started the McCloud Foundation in the early eighties. They do fundraising, matching donors to causes, that kind of thing. The senator retired from his senate seat after thirty years in 2000, planning to play golf every day, but a mild stroke a year later left one hand too weak to hold the club.’

Grayson blinked. ‘How do you know the part about golf?’

‘James McCloud gave a commencement speech the year after the stroke and mentioned it as a means of preparing the graduates for life’s little disappointments.’ She checked her notes. ‘He has two daughters, Claire by his first wife, who is deceased, and Reba by his current wife, Dianna. His daughters run the businesses and non-profits now. Claire makes the money and Reba gives it away.’

‘Claire is Rex’s mother,’ Grayson said. ‘I met her briefly when we were interviewing Rex about the party and his whereabouts. She was . . . intense. A real control freak. Rex was terrified of her. So was her husband – what was his name?’

‘Louis Delacorte. Claire’s grown the business every year since the nineties. Unfortunately Louis doesn’t have her Midas touch. He used to be a bigwig in the McClouds’ European business division, but was dismissed when their profits took a dive. He was given a position in the non-profit foundation, reporting to Reba.’