The Damsel in This Dress (21 page)

“No, it wasn’t Dave.” Ryan reached for his coffee mug as though it held the miracle drug that would cure all his problems. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. I’ll check into this. Just, uh, never mind, okay?”

His tired eyes beseeched her to leave well enough alone, but she couldn’t. Not with everything that had happened over the past few days.

“Ryan, I am being stalked. A woman has been murdered. Detective McKennitt questioned you about it, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Ryan suddenly looked much older than his years. Tired and concerned. As though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Did you tell Detective McKennitt about the rumored affair?”

“Look. I’m sure this affair thing doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to you this weekend. It’s just some kind of misunderstanding. I’ll take care of it right away.”

He closed his mouth and set his jaw, something Ryan did when he had reached a decision and was refusing any further discourse on the matter.

Betsy’s insides were all churned up. Ryan didn’t think there was a connection, and maybe there wasn’t. But maybe there was.

“Ryan. If somebody here at work has been spreading rumors about me, that person could be the same person—”

“No.” He shook his head. “The incidents can’t possibly be related. This person . . . no. That can’t be. It’s just a big misunderstanding.”

“Who is it, Ryan? Who made these accusations? I have the right to confront them directly, don’t you think?”

Ryan shook his head again. “No. This is a work scenario, and it’s my responsibility to take care of it. Don’t give it another thought.”

“But how can I—”

“I’ll take care of it. End of story.”

Betsy stood. Stepping toward the door, she turned back to her boss. “Judging from the guilty look on your face, the accusations against me must have been pretty bad. I’m sorry you believed them.”

Ryan shot out of his chair and moved around his desk to take her arm. “No, no, Betsy. I didn’t believe them. But I had to ask. Now I’ll know how to proceed. In all fairness, I have to give this other person the benefit of the doubt; hear their side of the story. Believe me, this has nothing to do with stalking and murder.” He gave a small laugh, as though the mere thought of a connection was ludicrous.

Betsy gave her boss a resigned smile. “First chance I get, Ryan,” she said softly, “I’m going to talk to Detective McKennitt about this. I’m sure he’ll be able to persuade you to divulge your source, even if I can’t. In the meantime,” she added, pausing to touch his shirtsleeve, “promise me you’ll be very careful.”

Soldier sat across from Betsy’s assistant in the conference room. Carla Denato was twenty-nine, neatly attired in a style that reminded him of the way Betsy dressed: feminine, flattering, pretty. Her light brown hair was styled a little like Betsy’s, too: short, a bit curly, very flattering. He was glad so many professional women had stopped trying to dress like men. He liked to see a woman in soft fabrics and colors.

Soldier asked straightforward questions, and Carla gave straightforward answers. The young woman seemed pleased to be able to help out any way she could.

“Okay, Ms. Denato—”

“Please call me Carla,” she said, and gave him a friendly smile.

“Carla, then. If you were to sum up your relationship with Ms. Tremaine, what would you say?”

Without hesitating, Carla responded. “Betsy is smart and very good at her job. I have admired her ever since I came to work here. Sure, there have been rumors, but I didn’t believe any of them. In a small working environment like this, there are always rumors, it seems. But anybody who knows Betsy knows they’re just not true.”

“What kinds of rumors?”

“Gosh, Detective McKennitt, Betsy’s my friend, not just my boss. I wouldn’t be comfortable repeating those stupid lies.”

“Do you know who started them?”

“I wish I did! I’d have a thing or two to say to the guy, that’s for sure!”

Soldier sat back in the chair and considered Carla. “You’re very devoted to Ms. Tremaine. That’s nice.”

Carla smiled back at him. “Well, Betsy’s the greatest.”

“Can you think of why anybody would want to hurt her?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Not one single reason.” She blinked, bit her lip, avoided eye contact with him.

Was she nervous, or was it something else?

“Did you have anything you’d like to add?”

She gave him a blinding smile. “Not a thing.”

By the time Soldier finished with Carla, it was nearly nine o’clock. He replenished his coffee mug, then called for Holly Miller.

Holly Miller was a college student working on the
Ledger
as part of an apprenticeship program to help her get her degree in journalism. As she settled into the chair across from Soldier, she smiled at him through shiny, fire-engine-red lips. Her long black hair seemed to shoot from her scalp in corkscrew curls that fanned out in all directions. She wore faded jeans and a fisherman’s sweater that hung all the way to her knees. As she spoke to him, Solider realized all her sentences seemed to end up as questions.

“Oh, I just love Betsy?” she gushed. “She’s smart and works hard, and those book reviews, like, what a hoot?”

Soldier grunted and decided not to mention his up close and personal experience with Betsy’s book reviews.

To counter Holly’s irritating speaking style, Soldier made his questions into statements.

“Holly, have you ever heard any gossip about Betsy? You know, the typical office kind of stuff.”

She blinked her large, gray eyes and looked out the window as she suckled her lower lip. Soldier was amazed that he could watch that sexy, and obviously well-rehearsed, little maneuver with complete and utter detachment.

Now, if it had been
Betsy
. . .

“Well?” she finally said in a slow, deliberate drawl. “I did hear she was having an affair, like?”

“With . . .”

“Like, with Dave Hannigan? The copy clerk? But, like, he’s even younger than me?”

Younger than
me
? This was a journalism major? “So, you didn’t believe the rumor.”

“Well, yah, I suppose I did, like?” She giggled. “I mean, why would anybody say something like that if it wasn’t, you know, like, true?”

“Do you know who might have been spreading those rumors?”

Holly pursed her lips and rolled her eyes up and to the right, obviously thinking very hard about his question. Finally, she must have reached some kind of conclusion because she said, “Well, like, you know, like, see, no, um, hmm, you know?” She blinked her eyes and smiled as though he wouldn’t actually need the Rosetta stone to decipher her answer.

He took a wild-assed guess. “That was a no.”

“Yah, like, yah? Like, no?”

Soldier talked through the frozen smile he set on his face. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Miller. Please call me if you can think of anything else.”

He dismissed Holly and resisted the urge to shake his head violently to try to dislodge the verbal litter her interview had deposited in his brain.

Soldier made some notes in her file, then rose from the chair he’d been glued to. He stretched his muscles and meandered over to the window. Below him lay downtown Port Henry, a neat little community with an old-fashioned sense of style.

The place was homey, and if he’d been looking for a new place to settle, the little waterfront town might have appealed to him.

An image of his apartment popped into his head. It was functional, neat, nicely decorated, and once in a while he’d brought a woman there to share his bed. But most nights, when he turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, the coldness and emptiness of the place made him wish he hadn’t not come home at all. Yeah, it was the place he went when nothing else was going on, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be called a home.

He thought again of Betsy, her pretty face and compassionate eyes. A man could do a lot worse than come home to a woman like her every night. That is, if a man didn’t have guilt eating away at him, assuring him that marriage and a family were things he did not deserve and should never even hope to have.

A knock at the door made Soldier turn from his thoughts and greet his next interviewee. Rita Barton was a middle-age woman, her appearance neat, her graying hair pulled back in a tight bun. She wore round-rimmed glasses that had lenses so thick, her brown eyes seemed to be floating in two little fishbowls.

“Mind my own business, thank you very much,” she snapped when Solider asked her about rumors concerning Betsy and Dave Hannigan. “Don’t give much thought to rumors. Don’t know who started them, don’t care, either.”

“Can you think of anybody who might want to harm Ms. Tremaine?”

Rita shook her head. For a split second Soldier thought the woman looked on the verge of speaking, then thought better of it. It was those thoughts Soldier was most interested in hearing.

“Were you about to say something, Ms. Barton?”

Silence. Rita Barton pursed her unpainted lips and investigated the tips of her fingers.

“Ms. Barton. A woman has been murdered. Ms. Tremaine’s life may be in danger. If you have heard or seen something, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you, please tell me.”

Rita raised her thin lashes and stared into Soldier’s eyes. She heaved a labored sigh. “Well . . .”

In the wake of Rita Barton’s departure, a young man peeked around the jamb. He had serious brown eyes and a round face cursed with runaway acne. His light red hair had been cut in a short, military style, which exposed much of his pale scalp. When he entered the room fully, Soldier felt a pang of chagrin for the poor kid.

He stood taller than Soldier and was badly dressed in a wrinkled shirt and baggy jeans that were belted below his soft belly.

“Hi,” the boy said, extending his hand to Soldier, who rose to greet him. “I’m Dave Hannigan.” For all his awkward appearance, Dave had a firm handshake.

“Dave. Have a seat.”

The whole time Soldier spent explaining who he was and why he was there, all he could think of was that somebody had started a rumor Betsy was having an affair with this poor, geeky kid? Not only was the rumor an obvious lie, but it was a heartless thing to do to the boy.

“Tell me about your relationship with Ms. Tremaine, Dave.”

Dave Hannigan shifted in the chair, making it protest against the weight it held. He lowered his red lashes and stared at the plump hands he’d folded neatly across his stomach.

“She’s very nice,” he said. “Um, everybody sort of, you know, ignores me, but not Miss Tremaine.” He lifted his gaze to Soldier as a furious red blush covered his round face. “I like her.”

“How old are you, Dave?”

“Almost eighteen.”

“You in high school?”

“Yeah. I graduate this June. Miss Tremaine, she helps me sometimes with my homework. I want to go to college. Major in journalism or communications. She knows that, so she helps me.”

“How are your grades?”

“I’m not dumb, you know. Just because I’m sort of fat doesn’t mean I’m dumb. I’m pulling a 4.0, but people think that when you’re fat, you’re stupid.” He bent his head. “But it’s not true,” he said softly.

Soldier chose his next words carefully. “Do you maybe have a little crush on her?”

Dave’s blush intensified until he was so red, his soft cheeks looked blistered. “Sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”

Indeed
, Soldier thought.

“Dave, have you heard the rumor, that you and Miss Tremaine—”

Shaking his head violently, Dave pushed himself out of the chair. “No! Miss Tremaine would never! Whoever said that is mean and horrible!”

“I agree, Dave,” Soldier soothed. “I’m sorry, but I had to ask. It’s obvious to me that you’re not the kind of man to take advantage of a lady. To hurt her reputation like that.”

Dave Hannigan straightened his spine and, for the first time, looked Soldier squarely in the eye. “No, sir,” he said. “I’m not.”

For the rest of the day, Soldier conducted interviews, taking time only to hit the head, get a coffee refill, or call the hospital to check on Taylor.

He’d worked through lunch, so he hadn’t had a chance to speak to Betsy for several hours, but now that the day was winding down, he let the thoughts of her he’d been avoiding drift into his mind.

Leaning back in the conference room chair, he closed and rubbed his tired eyes. Immediately, Betsy’s face and form slipped into his awareness. He let himself imagine he was kissing those plush lips again, and he nearly groaned in frustration. The longer he was around her, the more he wanted her, and it was driving him crazy.

It was the nature of the male of the species to want sex—anytime, anywhere, occasionally any woman. But this was different. He wanted sex, all right, but he wanted it with Betsy and only Betsy, and he wanted it
now
. A lot of it. As much as he could handle. More.