Sea of Suspicion (9 page)

Her smile grew sly. “Not so much as a pimple, Detective.”

“How about I take you to lunch so you can help me out with some of my routine inquiries?”

“Routine?” Candace gave a husky laugh. “There is nothing routine about me, darling.” Without breaking eye contact she reached a hand to take something from someone who stood behind Ewan. Nick recognized Susie’s fingers as she handed over a file.

Damn
.

He leaned around Ewan and watched Susie stalk out of the office. He hated the way he reacted to Susie. He sent Candace a grin that didn’t begin to reveal what he was feeling and sauntered into Jake’s office. Chatting up Candace was working the case and if sex was on offer—well frickin’ terrific. Get rid of the boner he’d been carrying for Susie without messing up either of their lives.

He looked out Jake’s office window. Nice view in daylight. Slowly he walked the walls and stopped in front of the photograph of Chrissie and Jake on the sailing boat in South Africa.

“Nice shot.” Nick didn’t let his emotions slip. “Who took it?”

Jake sat behind his desk, gripping a sheaf of papers with both hands. “My daughter, Callie. She was eleven.”

Eleven when Chrissie died.

Jake’s other kids were a bit older. Had they known their father was cheating on their mother?

Nick leaned against a window. Jake’s hands shook. Ewan took his cue and cleared his throat as Candace sashayed through the door. The woman moved like single-malt sex.

“Here’s your coffee.” She smiled at everyone in turn, touched the tip of her tongue to her bottom lip as she passed Nick his cup.

And it did nothing except scare the shit out of him.
Bloody hell
. He took the coffee and placed it on the window ledge. He was taking Candace to lunch because admin assistants knew everything, and it was sure to get under Jake’s skin faster than a ravenous sheep tick. But he wanted to
want
her. And all he could think about was kissing a prissy blonde who acted as if she had a poker up her ass.

Ewan made sympathetic noises as he stirred sugar into his coffee. “This must be terribly distressing for you, Professor Sizemore.”

This from a man who’d tended the bullet-riddled bodies of a gym full of five-year-olds following the Dunblane massacre. It didn’t get any more distressing than that—unless you counted watching the woman you love die an agonizingly slow death. Respect for his fellow officer grew in direct contrast to his contempt for Sizemore.

Nick swallowed his own ego. This wasn’t about him, or even Chrissie. It was about a girl named Tracy Good who had nobody else to care about her. Well, she was his now; another face to add to the gallery of dead people in his head.

“I can’t believe this has happened. I can’t believe Tracy is dead.” Sizemore stared at his desk, his skin so pale Nick saw the network of blood vessels running beneath the surface.

He flicked a glance to Ewan to tell him to carry on.

“I’m sorry for your grief, sir, but you know we have a job to do. We need to catch Tracy’s killer before he or she harms anyone else.”

“The lab was her life.” Jake shook his head, bit the knuckle on his index finger. “She’d never hurt anyone.”

“Were you screwing her?” Nick asked.

Jake’s shoulders straightened and his hands came down. “If those are the sorts of questions you want to ask, I’ll call my lawyer.”

Evasion. Interesting. Often it was what people didn’t say, and how they didn’t say it, that revealed the answers Nick was looking for.

“Come on, Jake, a guy like you? And a no-strings hottie like Tracy? It wasn’t like she was married, now, was it?”

“I’m warning you—” Jake started to stand. Nick smiled and memories arced between them.

Sizemore standing over Chrissie’s grave. Tears running down his cheeks, mixing with rain.

“Nick…” Dougie’s warning.
Too late.

Sizemore slipping on wet grass and Nick on him, pounding, pounding.

“
You killed her. You fucking killed her!
”

“
I didn’t mean for this to happen. I loved her.” Sizemore straining away. His eyes rolling back in his head as Nick hit him again.

“Professor,” Ewan broke in, scowling at Nick who jerked away from the memories. “We have to ask these questions. We need to know. Were you having a sexual relationship with Tracy Good?”

Sizemore’s eyes flicked high right. “Depends what you call a sexual relationship,” he hedged, cupping his hand over his mouth.

“The Clinton defense?” Nick put his hands on his hips knowing the man was lying. “You can do better than that.”

“Can you tell me what Tracy was working on and if anyone might want to hurt her, or if she was involved with anyone else you know of?” Ewan switched directions.

Jake’s head went down as he scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I don’t think she was seeing anyone. I mean, she was a pretty sheltered young woman.”

Until you got your hands on her, you rat-bastard.

“She was running tissue samples to estimate if sea pollution accumulated in the tissue of dogfish.” Jake looked up at Ewan, making an attempt at sincerity. “She had no family, no social life, and I don’t know anyone who’d want to hurt her.”

“Do you mind if we take a sample of your DNA for elimination purposes?” Ewan pulled a tube out of his pocket and held out a sterile cotton bud. Jake paled but took the applicator, scraped the inside of his cheek and handed the sample back to Ewan.

“What time did you leave the Gatty on Saturday night?” Ewan wrote notes.

Jake shifted in his seat, leaned back, then forward again. “Five, maybe six o’clock in the evening. I don’t remember exactly.”

“And where were you between Saturday 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning?” Ewan’s pen hovered expectantly above the paper.

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing hard as if his eyeballs were trying to escape. “I was home in bed with my wife.”

“We’ll need to verify that with Mrs. Sizemore, sir.”

Jake nodded, his face clenched against some unspeakable emotion.

“If you are lying about your relationship with Tracy, you know we’ll find out, don’t you?”

Jake’s eyes darted to his bottom drawer and Nick remembered the condoms hidden there. It confirmed the sexual relationship in his mind—not that he could prove it. But Sizemore could no more keep his pants zipped than he could hop around the room on his dick.

“Did you kill her, Jake?” Nick leaned over the man’s desk and got in his face. “Did she piss you off? Threaten you? Did you bash her brains out because she wouldn’t go down on you anymore?”

“Is that how she died?” His voice shook.

“Did you kill her?” Nick used every bit of self-restraint not to slam the man up against the glass.

“No! No. I didn’t kill Tracy!” Jake’s voice was loud and shrill and he started sobbing, hiding his face against the desk as he bawled like a baby.

Nick didn’t like what the signals were telling him so he turned away and stared at the beach where Tracy had been bludgeoned to death. Nothing remained—no shallow indent, no rust-colored stain, no drag trail where she’d pulled herself through the sand trying to escape her assailant. Rain and tide had washed it all away. The man behind him might be genuinely grieving but it didn’t mean he hadn’t been the one wielding the hammer. Nick wouldn’t get anything out of him now, the guy was a wreck, and though it gave him some satisfaction to see Sizemore blubber, it wasn’t quite the high he’d anticipated.

Nick turned and left the office, telling Candace he’d pick her up at twelve-thirty. He and Ewan went through the labs where Tracy worked but saw nothing of note except enough chemicals to poison half of Scotland. He left Ewan interviewing Dr. Imelda Chalmers, a gorgeous faculty member who could have doubled as a catwalk model.

No doubt about it, the Gatty was full of smart, beautiful women. Nick walked around to Susie’s office, his tread heavy on the oven-baked tiles. He knocked on Susie’s door and tried the handle, surprised when he thudded up against solid oak.
Damn
. He glared at the wood, stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Dr. Cooper has a lecture in the Bute this afternoon.” The young Latino Nick had seen in the pub on Friday night came out of the aquarium behind him.

“What’s your name?” Nick asked. Anger stirred inside him, shortening his patience and locking his teeth. He was pissed and ready for a fight.

“Rafael Domenici.”

It was said with enough inbred arrogance that Nick knew the guy’s parents were loaded and influential.

“You been interviewed regarding the murder of Tracy Good yet, Mr. Domenici?” Nick allowed his irritation to shine through his voice and the younger man grew still.

“No.” Pale blue eyes narrowed but held steady.

Nick took a step closer. “Did you try it on with Tracy the same way you try it on with anybody in a skirt?”

The guy laughed, knocking Nick off his stride.

“Funny, Detective. I hear the same about you.” Rafael Domenici’s mouth was stretched into a smile, but Nick recognized a hardness in the depths of those young eyes.

His hands grew hot, drawing into fists. The guy hadn’t answered the question and had deflected him so effectively Nick would have given him points if he hadn’t wanted to smack the bastard.

But Nick wasn’t so prejudiced as to develop tunnel vision about a crime. “Where were you Saturday night, sunshine?” He watched carefully for tells and lies.

“He was with me.”

Nick turned and raised his brows. Lily stood in the doorway of an office, a highly decorated lab coat hanging to her knees, green lace-up Dr. Martens filling the gap from hem to floor. Her dyed-blond hair stood up from her head, making her a foot taller than her five foot nothing. Under the black liner and painted lips she looked tired, but there were enough traces of her dead sister in her features to squeeze his chest.

“You’re kidding?” And now he sounded more like an older brother than a detective.

Lily shrugged. “He was at the bar. We got talking.”

Nick turned back to Rafael Domenici, letting the young man read the threat in his eyes, biting down on the words he wanted to say. Then he walked, leaving Rafael and Lily alone in the corridor.

“What is his problem?” Rafael’s face showed his confusion. “Why you lie?”

Lily shot him a look. “Do you
want
to be deported?” She shrugged and tried to punch in the code to the aquarium, but he blocked her way.

“Look.” She twisted a silver hoop through one earlobe. “Nick’s my brother-in-law and I may have said some things that weren’t exactly flattering about you before Tracy was killed.” Rafael’s face revealed shock at her words and she hastened to reassure him. “But I know you’re not a killer.”

“How? How you know?” His brows pinched together in a look of bewilderment.

“Because you’re too busy screwing to think about murder.”

He closed his eyes and squeezed her shoulders in an exchange that could have passed for friendship. “
Obrigado
, Lily.”

It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t hurt. It was white-hot rage that reverberated with every footstep as Susie pounded the path toward the harbor. She wasn’t jealous of Candace, a divorcée who, according to gossip, had hit forty with the force of a psychotic Linda Hamilton taking on the Terminators. She was not going to be jealous of a woman who wore enough makeup to stucco a small ranch house and enough lipstick to paint every fire truck in Scotland.

Dammit
.

Gulls screamed in the wind like storm harbingers and Susie hugged her wool blazer tight around her waist. She passed a middle-aged woman walking a toy-poodle and a younger woman whose hair whipped around her in a frazzled cloud as she pushed a screaming baby in a stroller. The baby’s face was scrunched up with indignant fury.

Susie knew how he felt. She’d like to yell at Nick Archer—not that she’d ever let fly like that in public, she was too
polite
. Even the thought tasted sour on her tongue. She was sick of
polite
.

With a resigned sigh, the mother lifted the toddler out of the stroller, hugging him to her shoulder where he quieted.

A familiar pang shot through Susie and she looked away.

That could have been her if Clayton had stood by her…but he hadn’t. She’d called him to tell him she was pregnant, naïvely expecting him to ride to her rescue. A week later he married his childhood sweetheart and Susie had sunk into a depression that had lasted for more than a year. Long enough to give away the only thing that mattered.

Her fingers gripped the edge of her jacket. She’d been weak and foolish. Maybe she didn’t deserve a second chance. The bony tops of her knuckles chafed in the icy breeze.

Compared to what had happened when she was a teenager, Nick Archer was an amoeba. She clanked over the metal bridge spanning the narrowest section of the harbor. Marched up stone steps, past the foundations of the Church of St. Mary on the Rock. On a whim, she cut through the entrance in the huge stone wall surrounding the ancient cathedral.

Who needed men anyway?

The grass was vivid green despite the cool temperature and, though it was way past morning, dew clung to the slender blades and soaked through the suede of her shoes. She huddled in her jacket, drew her hair back behind her ears, grateful to be out of the wind in this sheltered enclave.

And it was quiet, she realized, looking around. No tourists. The students mostly in lectures this time of day, or using the shock of the murder as an excuse to skip class and recover over coffee. This was pretty much what she was doing, Susie conceded, as well as avoiding a particularly lecherous police officer.

It felt strange to skip off in the middle of a work day, though her friend Dela would have approved. Dela was always dragging her out of the office and off on adventures, if only to man-watch on the beach. At least Dela had known how to live before she’d died.

Being a workaholic was a hard vice to break, which made her desire for a family seem ill-conceived. Men might be able to combine families with scientific careers, but women? Susie could count on one hand the number of successful women scientists who were in relationships and raising children. Gravel crunched beneath her soles as she wandered along the path. She stopped and took a breath, forcing some of the anger out of her system.

Walking these grounds, where Scottish queens had walked, sent a quiver through her blood that hummed from her toes to the tips of her ears. The sense of history was palpable. When the U.S. was being founded in 1776 on that warm Fourth of July, this cathedral had already been laid to ruins for more than two centuries. That put her life in perspective.

The tall square tower of St. Rule, the guy who’d supposedly brought the bones of St. Andrew to the town, stood solid and sure against time and man. On impulse Susie bought a token from the visitor center and climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the top, coming out into a strong northeasterly gale. She grabbed the lichen-encrusted wall and looked over the edge. Her stomach lurched.

Gravestones dotted the grass.

It gave her a little quiver to think of all those dead people down there. The emerald grass and vermillion pan-tiled roofs were the only splashes of color on an otherwise dreary day. The foundations of the cathedral ruins formed a pale cross in the grass, the spears of the East Gable pointing defiantly to the heavens. St. Andrews might be a sleepy little town, but in medieval Scotland it had been a fulcrum of power.

Awareness swept into her core. Turning, she looked at the East Sands toward the Gatty Marine Lab and then farther along the coast toward her cottage, and it struck her…this place felt like home. The huge aching chasm that had been inside her for half a lifetime had stopped growing. Scotland felt like home in a way the Sunshine State or the Sunshine Coast never had. This was where she belonged and she knew it.

She was home, and no goddamned womanizing cop was driving her away.

Glancing at her watch, she realized she still had two hours before she gave her lecture. It wasn’t that she didn’t have work to do, but for once in her over-timetabled life she didn’t want to do it. She wanted to blow it off. She needed lunch, but had no appetite, so she climbed back down the stairs and started reading gravestones as she strolled toward the university library.

Newer markers mixed with old. A smaller stone caught her eye. Plain white marble. A four-month-old baby girl called Alice. She’d died March 4, 1968. Tears formed on Susie’s lashes even though she blinked them away. She moved on to the next marker and her feet fused to the ground with shock. The marker was shaped like an open book, the page on the right-hand side empty and expectant like the Grim Reaper himself.

The left side was inscribed Christina Emily Archer (nee Heathcote). Beloved daughter and wife. Born January 7 1974. Died October 10 1998. “The stars are not wanted now: put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.”

She knew the rest of the poem. “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

W. H. Auden.

Winter pansies bloomed purple and white in small clay pots. Blood thudded through her ears with a dull roar that seemed to slow time to a standstill. She was staring at Nick Archer’s grave and he wasn’t even dead yet.

Susie hadn’t returned. He’d checked. Twice.

Nick phoned Candace from the car park. He was late for their lunch date and didn’t think Candace was the sort of woman who appreciated being kept waiting. He’d spent a frustrating morning interviewing Gatty staff but finding nothing he didn’t already know. Tracy was a hardworking student who’d recently got in touch with her inner siren.

“Gatty Marine Lab, Professor Sizemore’s office.”

“Ready for lunch, Candace?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure I’m hungry anymore.”

“Well I’m ravenous.” His voice was gruff, more from shame than desire. He’d conned drug lords and skinheads, but lying didn’t come as easily as it used to. “I really need to ask you some questions about Tracy.”

“Okay, I’ll be right down.”

Whatever else, he’d gotten the impression Candace was damn good at her job. Thirty seconds later she was out the door striding across the tarmac in knife-edge stiletto boots.

They went to a new bistro, Table for Two, facing the Tron in the heart of Market Street. Nick ordered steak as Candace danced a finger around the rim of her wineglass.

“How well did you know Tracy?” Nick slanted her a glance as her knee brushed his. Candace shrugged slender shoulders, making her breasts bounce and sending up a whiff of flowery perfume in his direction. She was beautiful, and Nick wished he could react to that beauty with more than his intellect. Her skirt had ridden up far enough to give him an expansive view of smooth creamy thigh and…
nothing
. Absolutely nothing.

“I didn’t know her as well as some of the other students.” She picked at a bread roll, crumbs scattering across her plate as she flashed him an embarrassed look. “I tend to mother some of them, I suppose. Try to keep them from blowing the simple things like turning up at a reasonable hour, turning in reports on time, that sort of thing.”

She frowned, staring off into space. “Tracy didn’t need that.” She took a swallow of white wine. Licked her lips. “She was a model student.”

She shot him a hooded look that suggested she might reveal something useful and Nick leaned closer.

“I suppose she came off a bit cold really. I think she wanted to make friends, but she didn’t know how.”

The food arrived, the smell of it stirring his empty stomach and reminding him he’d forgotten to eat breakfast. Again.

“She used sex to make friends,” Nick ventured. He had a bite of steak and nearly groaned it was so good.

“I’m not the moral judge or jury.” She looked him squarely in the eye, her blue gaze open and honest. “I like sex and I’m not shy about making moves on men, but…” She broke off and stabbed her fork into her pasta, dissatisfaction twisting her lips and stiffening her shoulders.

“But she was screwing the boss and it made things awkward at work?” Nick finished for her.

“Tracy had sex with at least three students in the department that
I
know of.” Candace swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti and used the time to organize her thoughts. “Jake isn’t really a bad man,” she said finally.

“Did you ever do him?” Nick asked with a sly half grin. Her eyes bugged so wide Nick thought she was choking.

“God, no!” She sputtered and knocked back a healthy measure of wine. “My ex ran off with his secretary.” She shook her head and the look she gave Nick summed up everything she thought about men in general. “I don’t shag married men and I don’t have sex with the boss.”

“He ever ask you?” Nick asked.

“What do you think?” Her smile was bright and slow, her eyes sliding over his body, which remained stubbornly indifferent.

“A woman who looks as good as you do? Damn right he did.” Nick pasted on a smile, irritated because on the surface lies came so easily, and yet underneath he was drowning. He took a long swallow of water, closed his eyes. Susie’s stiff-backed image floated into his mind, and memories of the sweet kiss they’d shared flickered along his nerves.

She was better off without him.

His fist squeezed in his lap. This was bullshit. He didn’t want to be here, he didn’t want to hurt Susie—or Candace for that matter, who seemed like a nice woman. Christ, Candace had already told him almost everything he needed to know. Sitting straighter in his chair, he took out his notebook. “I’ll need the names of Tracy Good’s lovers.”

She told him the names and he wrote everything in his illegible handwriting, jolting as she slipped a warm hand onto his thigh.

“So…?” Candace smiled. “You’re not married and you’re not my boss.” She was attractive and available and definitely a no-strings encounter. “My place is just around the corner…”

And there on cue was Susie Cooper ambling out the Mercat Wynd and crossing the cobbles of Market Street.

Sweat beaded his brow. God, he wanted to have sex and his body finally reacted, but it wasn’t to Candace. Fan-bloody-tastic. Slowly he took Candace’s hand from his thigh and gave her fingers a quick press before letting go.

“I’m flattered.” He really was. He managed a practiced smile that was much cooler than she deserved, and stood and gathered his jacket off the back of his chair. “Unfortunately, I have got to get back to the station.”

“Later then?” Confusion brought high color to her cheeks, but then her eyes filled with understanding.

“I’ll be in touch.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue because he meant about the investigation, but it sounded like a brush off. Avoiding eye contact, he left enough money on the table to cover the bill and headed out into the sunshine.

Susie ducked into Bonkers, a gift shop on the corner of Market and Church Street that had been a favorite haunt of Chrissie’s. Nick hadn’t been inside in years. Even the smell fueled memories of Chrissie trying to turn their small rented flat into a home.

Nick watched Susie through the huge plate-glass windows that were stuffed with carved puffins and oversized ceramic plates painted with cats. Susie frowned, clearly undecided whether to buy a red cat plate or a blue cat plate.

She was pretty, biting her lip and trying to decide about something so inane.

Abruptly she looked up and caught him staring. She froze, looking angry before pulling her bag higher up her shoulder and marching out of the shop to stand directly in front of him, checking her watch. He was curious as to what was going to come out of her mouth.

“Sorry I couldn’t wait for you to finish your interviews, Detective, but I had work to do.”

Cold, polite, brittle.

Ah
.

“So I see.” Nick jerked his chin at the sparkling interior of Bonkers and let his irritation show. “Shopping. Much more important than a murder investigation.”

“If you want to criticize my work ethic why don’t you come by the lab at 10 p.m. some night, or maybe on the weekend, when I’m usually in?” Her perfect eyebrows arched and her smile drove spikes into his chest. The exterior might be cool, but fire burned within. She turned and walked away up Church Street, brushing him off as if he was begging for change.

He caught up with her. “I need to ask you some questions about Tracy Good.”

She swept a hand through her hair, spun on her heel and stared at him, incredulous.

“No. No, you don’t.” Her face froze into severe lines, pinched lips, shadowed eyes. “You’re playing with me and I don’t like it.”

It was the hurt in her voice that nailed him. She began hurrying away, but he wasn’t ready to let go yet so he fell into step beside her.

“Come on, Susie Q.” Hadn’t he just refused wild monkey sex with a woman who looked as if she was an Olympic athlete at the sport? Exasperated, he touched her arm, deepened his voice to raw honey. “You like it just fine.”

She shook him off with a furious jerk of her hand.

“Stop calling me that ridiculous name. Stop touching me and stop following me!” Fury vibrated through her voice like electricity through a live wire. “My life is none of your business. Last time I saw you, you were hitting on another delusional female you’d just met. Do I look
stupid?
”