Twilight (21 page)

“You’ve been avoiding the subject with me, as well. What have you learned?”

“Nothing. I am all but certain it is the work of vandals.”

“Nothing was stolen?”

“Not that we’ve discovered so far.”

“How are you handling it?”

Apparently there were to be no secrets between them. “I was going to have Tico put out the word on the streets that we’re not happy about what happened. The culprit will turn up.”

“The culprit or a scapegoat?” she inquired thoughtfully.

He stared at her. “Meaning?”

“That someone hoping to please you or Tico might very well make a sacrificial lamb of an innocent party.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

She grinned. “That’s why you have me around, for the subtleties.”

“Quiet. You’ll ruin my reputation. Everyone around here thinks I grasp those on my own.”

“Then you would truly be a rarity among men,” she said. “The only man I ever knew who could read between the lines so well was Ken.”

“Yes,” he agreed, reaching for her hand. “He often saw things that the rest of us missed.”

She regarded him with puzzlement. “It sounds as if there’s a story behind that.”

He thought of his initial impression of her as a suburban snob with little redeeming social conscience. He had wondered at Ken’s judgment in marrying such a woman. Clearly, though, his friend had known that there was far more to this woman, a rare depth and complexity that Rick was only now discovering for himself.

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you,” he said.

“Not now?”

He shook his head. “No, it reflects too poorly on me, I suspect. We have reached a rapport, you and I. I don’t want to do anything that might cause you to question that. Your faith in me has been shaken enough for one day.”

“You want to be sure you can remain a spy in the enemy’s camp?” she asked tightly.

“Never that,” he said. He grinned wickedly. “So that I might be invited to share her bed again.”

Color flamed in her cheeks at that, but she didn’t pull her hand away, not even when Tico returned and stared at the two of them with blatant amusement.

“Perhaps I should warn you about my friend here,” Tico said lightly.

Rick was about to respond to the taunt when Dana spoke up. “No need,” she assured him. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I wonder,” Tico said enigmatically.

Then, at a harsh scowl from Rick, he retreated and left them alone, but not before a faint shadow of doubt crossed Dana’s eyes. Rick vowed to soundly thrash his old friend at the first opportunity. The stakes in this game were far too high for his kind of taunting interference.

23

D
ana returned home to find Kate and Detective O’Flannery engaged in full-scale warfare on her front stoop. She gathered that Kate had heard about the drug raid.

“Stay out of it?” Kate shouted.

She poked her finger directly into the man’s very broad chest. He withstood the gesture with obvious amusement, which no doubt only served to inflame Kate further.

“With people like you ready to crucify Ken Miller, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m going to stay out of it,” she told him emphatically. “In fact, I might just organize a rally, a protest march on the police station. We’ll demand your resignation. Maybe that will teach you to have some respect for the decent people of this community.”

Telltale patches of red climbed into his cheeks. The show was so good Dana decided to sit in her car and watch the rest of the performance. She leaned back and waited to see what would happen next. She doubted the policeman would allow the threat of his livelihood to go unchallenged.

“Decent people pay me to keep this community safe,” O’Flannery barked back, taking an intimidating step in Kate’s direction. She held her ground as he added pointedly, “That means following up on evidence of criminal activity.”

“Criminal activity, my aunt Bessie. It’s slander, that’s what it is.”

They were toe-to-toe now. Unless Dana was very much mistaken, there was enough sexual energy charging the air to send them both up in flames.

“We found drugs,” he countered quietly.

“I don’t care if you found an armed militia in the basement and enough guns and drugs to supply the entire Midwest. Ken Miller had nothing to do with any of it,” she said so emphatically that she was practically vibrating with indignation.

O’Flannery obviously wasn’t impressed. “Your faith in him is touching, but compared to the evidence, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

“I’m telling you that you don’t have any damned evidence,” Kate said, her voice climbing another decibel level, “except that someone was out to get him.”

“I agree.”

He said it so softly that it apparently took several seconds for it to register with Kate. When it did, her furious expression faltered. “You agree?”

O’Flannery grinned and nodded. “I would have told you that if you’d taken a deep breath and listened for half a minute, instead of trying to blast out my eardrums.”

Dana had to admit the effect of that grin was fairly devastating. Even she got a tingle, and she was clear across the yard and immune to the charms of all cops. Kate was absolutely no match for it. She flat-out wilted at the sight.

“Oh.”

The smile broadened. “Care to apologize?”

“When hell freezes over,” Kate said staunchly. “You still conducted the stupid search.”

“It was my job,” he explained patiently.

“Then it’s a stupid job,” Kate said, still defiant.

“Remember you said that the next time you’re in trouble and need a cop.”

“I don’t get into the kind of trouble that requires the Gestapo.”

He sighed heavily. “I can see there’s only one way to shut you up,” he said with an air of resignation, just before he bent down and planted a kiss on Kate that generated enough heat to melt the snowdrifts in the front yard.

Dana waited for a full sixty seconds, expecting steam to rise at any moment, before concluding it was time to make her presence known before the elderly neighbors saw more than their hearts could take. She deliberately bumped the horn as she exited the car. Kate jerked out of the detective’s embrace, as if she’d been shot. He looked as thoroughly unflappable as ever. In fact, he seemed so thoroughly amused that Dana had a sneaking suspicion he’d been aware of her arrival all along.

“So we’re all agreed that someone has been planting the drugs, correct?” Dana demanded, as she opened the front door and led the parade inside.

“Yes,” Kate declared firmly.

“Agreed,” O’Flannery said.

Dana beamed at them. “Now all we have to do is figure out who’s behind it.”

“You make it sound as if that will be a stroll in the park,” the detective said. “Do you already have some idea of where to start looking?”

She debated filling him in on the preliminary suspect list she and Kate had drawn up, but decided that would be a tactical error. He’d probably laugh his head off if he heard some of the names on that list. Respected community leaders, one and all. And when it came to a lack of solid evidence, she and Kate were in an even weaker position than the police were with regard to Ken.

“Not really,” she demurred.

He looked skeptical. “Okay, let me ask a few more questions, then. Who has access to the house?”

“Just me,” Dana said. “The boys are in Florida.”

He glanced at Kate. “You don’t have a key for emergencies?”

Signs of her hair-trigger temper flared in Kate’s eyes. “You’re accusing me now?”

“Simmer down. I just want to know exactly where we stand, okay? Do you have a key?”

“Yes,” Kate acknowledged irritably.

“Is it still in your possession?”

“Yes, dammit.”

“You’re sure?”

With a defiant scowl, Kate flipped her purse upside down on the kitchen table, dumping the contents into a heap. She plucked the key out of the mess. “Here. Satisfied? See anything else suspicious? Maybe that lipstick is an illegal weapon. Or the comb? I could do a lot of damage with that comb, I’m sure.”

He turned on his knee-weakening grin again. “I’m sure you could.”

Kate rolled her eyes. Dana gathered the detective’s charms were beginning to wear a little thin.

He fixed his gaze on Dana again. “What about the church? Does anyone there have a spare key?”

She almost said no, then paused. Had there been a master key in Ken’s office, along with all the others to the parish hall and the main church? It certainly made sense that there would have been. As had been so recently pointed out to her, after all, it was the church’s property.

“I’ll call Mrs. Fallon to check,” she said, reaching for the phone.

The secretary confirmed the existence of a master set of keys. She checked and reported that it was still locked in a small fireproof safe, along with important church documents.

“Who has the combination to the safe?” O’Flannery asked when Dana repeated what the secretary had said.

Dana asked.

“Reverend Miller did. I do. And Mr. Tremayne, of course, since he frequently has to attend to church business.”

Dana tried not to react to the mention of Lawrence Tremayne. “I see,” she said quietly. “Thanks, Mrs. Fallon. You’ve been wonderful through all of this.”

On an impulse, she added, “I hope you’ll come to lunch tomorrow so I can thank you properly.” The suggestion wasn’t made entirely out of generosity. Dana had the feeling that Mrs. Fallon knew more about church politics than anyone else. She’d been observing them from the inside for years now, longer than Ken had been pastor of St. Michael’s.

“Why, thank you, dear. I’d love to.”

“About noon, then?”

“I’ll be there.”

When she’d hung up, she noticed that O’Flannery was regarding her impatiently. “Sorry,” she apologized. “That was long overdue.”

“Who has access to the safe?” he repeated.

She debated lying to O’Flannery and keeping Tremayne’s name to herself, but decided maybe it was time for the police to put a little pressure on the church elder. If they considered him a genuine suspect, they had the means to conduct a far more thorough survey of his background than she could.

She told the detective the three names. “Mrs. Fallon would die before she would let anyone into that safe.”

“And Mr. Tremayne?” he asked, watching her intently. “You think he’s capable of this, don’t you?”

Dana winced. Apparently O’Flannery was a better detective than she’d given him credit for being, or else she was more transparent than she’d prided herself on being. “Let’s just say, I don’t like him and leave it at that.”

“To your knowledge, has he been in the house recently?”

“Actually, he was here for tea, just the other day,” she admitted, regretting the fact that she hadn’t recalled that herself earlier. In fact, there had been a whole bevy of people right here at her invitation, all of them suspects, for one reason or another.

O’Flannery’s expression brightened. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Did he ever leave the room, say, to go to the restroom?”

Dana slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She glanced across the table. “Kate?”

“No,” Kate said with obvious regret. “He was in plain view the whole time.” Suddenly her expression brightened. “But several of the others used the facilities.”

The detective regarded her expectantly. “Who? What others?”

At a subtle nod from Dana, Kate said, “Miriam Kelso, Peter Drake and Carolina Vincenzi. I remember all of them excusing themselves at one time or another.” She paused, her expression thoughtful. “Actually, I take that back. Carolina never said a word. She just slipped out of the room, right after Peter Drake left.”

“So each of them had the opportunity to have planted those drugs,” O’Flannery said. “Interesting.”

Dana found it interesting, but far from conclusive. She still thought Tremayne made an excellent prime suspect. “Don’t forget, I was out of town for weeks after the funeral. Tremayne had access to the key. He could have come in here undetected at any time and planted those drugs. I haven’t cleaned since I’ve been back. I doubt I would have looked behind that dresser, even if I had.”

With Tremayne and the three who had excused themselves during the tea the only ones with probable access to the upstairs bedroom, the suspect list was shrinking. There was still one on it that Kate and O’Flannery didn’t know about, and Dana intended to keep it that way.

As desperately as she wanted to believe that Rick had had nothing to do with Ken’s death or the drugs, she couldn’t help thinking about the access she’d innocently given him to the very room in which the cocaine had been found. Until she had a truly viable alternative, her awareness of that fact would always stand between them.

* * *

Tico was charging the basket with far more force than was necessary, Rick concluded, when he’d taken his third elbow to the gut. He backed off.

“Hey, man, what’s with you tonight?” he demanded. “You’re playing like a spot in the NBA finals is at stake.”

Tico grabbed a towel and wiped his face before replying. “Just trying to work off a little steam,” he said.

“Is that it, or do you still have a problem with the fact that I asked about you and Maria?”

Tico shot him a look of undisguised disgust. “Not that again. I don’t need this. I have a mother who cross-examines me if I so much as frown. I have employees who think they can run the business better than I can. I have a kid brother who’d rather get high than wait tables.”

Rick sensed that this last was the real source of Tico’s short temper. “Joey’s using?”

“José,” Tico corrected. “He’s discovered his roots. Latino pride has kicked in with a vengeance, thanks to that worm Carlos.”

“He’s running with Carlos?”

“He thinks he’s some kind of god,” Tico said. “Nothing I say can convince him that at the first sign of trouble, Carlos will drop him like a sizzling fajita pan. He’ll give him up to the cops if it’ll save his own sorry hide.”

“Is Joey the one who tipped you that Carlos might know something about Ken’s murder?”

Tico shrugged. “Not intentionally. I heard him and his buddies. They said enough for me to add two and two. I had a little talk with Carlos and convinced him that he should clear his conscience by talking to you.”

“I’m sorry I missed that conversation. I didn’t see any war wounds when I talked to him.”

Tico shrugged. “There are other ways to convince a man to do what is right.”

Rick’s gaze narrowed. “You have something on him, don’t you?”

“What I know about Carlos is between us,
mi amigo.
I would not tell anyone—even you—unless it became necessary.”

“Dammit, a decent man is dead, a man who helped you get straight, a man who put his word on the line to set you up in business,” Rick snapped. “Isn’t that enough to make it necessary? Carlos is slime, Tico. He doesn’t deserve your protection.”

“I am not protecting him. I am maintaining my leverage.”

Rick muttered an oath under his breath. Tico’s expression hardened.

“Up until now, you have been my friend,” Tico said, his tone lethal. “Do not say anything to make me regret that.”

Rick really didn’t like being warned off by a man who owed his salvation to Yo, Amigo. He whirled on the other man so quickly that Tico was forced to back up a step, straight into the wall. Rick crowded in close, a subtle reminder that he had twenty pounds of solid muscle on the wiry younger man.

“Do not threaten me, Tico. There is too much history between us. I would not like to have to remind you who controlled these streets before you.”

Fury flashed in Tico’s eyes. “That was a long time ago. You are out of practice.”

“There are some things a man never forgets,” Rick said.

Sweat beaded on Tico’s brow, but his gaze remained defiant. “I like threats no more than you do,
amigo.
”

“Then do not make them necessary again,” Rick suggested, backing away.

Tico snatched up his gym bag and left, without another word. Rick had the feeling that the exchange had just cost him another friend. What he didn’t understand was why it had happened in the first place.

Back in his office, he went over the conversation, word by word, trying to see why Tico had gotten so riled and so defensive so quickly. Was it Joey? Was Joey inadvertently dragging his big brother back into gang life, if only to serve as his protector?

And what were the links between Tico and Carlos? At one time, he supposed, they had been kingpins of rival gangs, though Carlos’s name had never surfaced in any of the usual street talk. When Tico had walked away from the streets, the rivalry should have ended, anyway.

Or did such things ever end? Perhaps Carlos’s recruitment of Joey had been deliberate, a slap at an old enemy. Not even his recent successes in mainstream society would be enough to keep Tico from reacting to such a taunt.