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Marva Collins

 
 
 
 
 
Tác giả: Linda Howard
Thể loại: Trinh Thám
Biên tập: Bach Ly Bang
Upload bìa: Bach Ly Bang
Language: English
Số chương: 33
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Cập nhật: 2015-09-08 10:31:33 +0700
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Chapter 15
HERE WAS AN ARTICLE IN THE NEWSPAPER TUESDAY MORNING under the headlineLACK OF EVIDENCE HAMPERS POLICE IN MOUNTAIN BROOK MURDER. Cahill grunted in disgust as he read the article.
The Mountain Brook Police Department is offering no information other than “no comment” on their investigation into the murder of retired federal Judge Lowell Roberts. The investigation seems to have stalled, and concerned citizens are wondering if the department, which hasn’t investigated a murder in five years, is experienced enough to handle this type of case.
“That’s bullshit,” he growled, tossing the paper onto his desk. All of the investigators in the detective division were pissed. The lieutenant was pissed. Basically, everyone was pissed. The investigation was stalled, all right, but it had nothing to do with incompetence or lack of experience. If the idiot who wrote that article had done his research, he’d have known that the Mountain Brook department was top-notch, with excellent people and excellent equipment. The head evidence technician had handled the gathering of evidence, and he’d done it right. Cahill himself had done a tour of duty with the Birmingham Police Department, where murder investigations were much more commonplace; all of the detectives were experienced. They knew how to run an investigation, but they couldn’t manufacture evidence that wasn’t there.
It came back to lack of motive. When Judge Roberts had been murdered he hadn’t been walking down the street and been a victim of a drive-by shooting, a for-kicks murder. His murder was deliberate, planned, and executed with precision—an assassination, in fact. Whoever had killed him had known it was Sarah’s day off and the Judge would be alone in the house. The mystery phone call by the mystery man from the pay phone in the Galleria was the only lead they had, but no one so far had recognized anything about the man in the photograph. They’d talked to friends, neighbors, family, and come up with exactly zilch.
The easy way hadn’t panned out. Things would have been a lot simpler if Judge Roberts had been gunned down as he opened the door, or walking to his car; then the revenge scenario would have played. Instead Cahill kept coming back to the inescapable conclusion that the Judge had known his killer and willingly let him into the house.
And that brought Cahill right back to the mystery man in the surveillance photo. The timing of that phone call was right. Someone whom the Judge knew, from out of town maybe, who had called and said, Hey, I’m in the area; and the Judge invited him to the house, and the guy killed him. That was the scenario the circumstances supported. But who, and why? That was the old truism—find out why, and you’ll know who.
Too bad he didn’t have any fucking idea.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. His bad feeling about this case hadn’t gone away. The answer was out there, but they weren’t getting any closer to it and he was afraid they wouldn’t. This one was going to be filed under “Unsolved.” He hated unsolved crimes of any sort, but a murder really ate at him. Even as a kid puzzles had nagged at him, and he couldn’t stop until they were solved. The damned Rubik’s Cube had driven him up the wall until he got it figured out. On a scale of one to ten, the Rubik’s Cube was like a five, and a murder was like ten zillion. That’s how bad it nagged at him. He could easily become obsessed with this case if he wasn’t careful.
This one was more personal than it should have been, because it had touched Sarah. If she’d been at home instead of at the movie, she might have been killed, too. She felt guilty because she thought she could have prevented it, but Cahill got a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of her there in the house with a killer. She would have gone to her quarters and left the two... friends? acquaintances? talking in the Judge’s library; she might not even have heard the shot, if it was silenced. Then, because she had seen him, the killer would have quietly gone up those stairs to her quarters. She wouldn’t have been expecting him, she wouldn’t have been armed, and he would have killed her. It was that simple, and he broke out in a sweat every time he played it through in his mind. Going to the movie had saved her life, and she had gone because she wanted to give the idiot who sent her the fancy pendant an opportunity to approach her. Funny how things worked out; by sending her the pendant and making her so uneasy, the weirdo had saved her life.
Sarah was... he didn’t know what Sarah was. Fascinating. Sexy. Strong and tender at the same time. He didn’t know what would happen between them; he wasn’t even letting himself think about what might or might not happen. With her, he was living totally in the present. When he was with her, he didn’t think about the past, and he didn’t care about the future. Hell, that was a lie, because if he had anything to say about it, the future included getting her clothes off and having some really hot, wet, wrecking-the-bed sex. Now that was some real planning for the future.
It felt good to focus on one woman, rather than have more of those ships-that-pass-in-the-night encounters that took some of the pressure off his balls but left him still feeling alone the next day. He enjoyed playing with Sarah, and that was exactly what they were doing: playing. Having fun. It had been too damn long since he’d had fun, too long since he’d felt the particular thrill of watching a woman’s face and feeling in sync with her.
Like last night, for instance; she had seriously thought about grabbing his balls as payback, but had decided not to ratchet up the intimacy between them to that degree. Her dark eyes had been cool and challenging, but still he’d known what she was thinking, read it in the slight tensing of her very toned body. He’d been ready to endure a certain amount of pain—he doubted she’d cripple him, but she would still have made him hurt—in order to speed things up between them. Too bad she’d thought better of grabbing him, because from the way he looked at it, if she’d hurt him, she would have had to kiss it to make it better. Worked for him.
Getting a hard-on at work wasn’t a good idea. Cahill wrenched his thoughts upward.
He had a month to get her, the month she estimated it would take her to get everything packed and to close up the house. She would be taking another job; he hoped she would still be in this area, but nothing was guaranteed. As she had said, if someone needed her combined services of butler and bodyguard, the pay was much better, and how many people around here needed a bodyguard? He figured the odds were at least fifty-fifty she’d be leaving the area, so he had to work fast. Who knows? Maybe if they were having an affair, she’d take a job nearby and they could take their time with each other, see where this thing went.
That thought edged too far into the future, and he pulled back from it. All he could handle right now was right now. He would see Sarah every night, and every second in between the murder he had to investigate, plus the other investigations that came up.
The newspaper said the police didn’t have a clue in the Roberts murder. What a shame.
He was pleased; once again, he had proven himself more intelligent than others. Of course there were no clues. First he had seen Sarah safely in the movie, then he had driven to the Galleria and made the phone call from a pay phone. Thousands of people were in the Galleria every day; there was no way to pick him out. Judge Roberts, the old fool, had been happy to talk to the friend of a friend about a point of law, and as easy as that he was in the house.
Though his fingerprints weren’t in any AFIS data banks for the simple reason that he’d never been fingerprinted, he had still made certain to note everything he touched while he was in the house, and he had carefully wiped those surfaces before leaving. He had refused anything to drink, so there was no cup or glass to be taken care of. He had also picked up the spent cartridge shell from the carpet where the automatic had ejected it, and disposed of it in the trash the next day. The trash had since been picked up, so that was gone.
He was safe. Now he could concentrate on Sarah.
He didn’t want to repeat his offer too soon. She wouldn’t like that; her sense of propriety would be offended. But neither could he afford to wait too long, because her services would be in demand. He had discovered through his network of acquaintances in the neighborhood—really, one couldn’t call them friends —that the Roberts family was putting the house up for sale and had arranged for her to stay on to oversee that, for the time being.
Things couldn’t have been more perfect. He had time, a grace period as it were, to carefully think through how he would word the next offer. He’d made a mistake the last time, not taking her sense of loyalty into account and reducing her worth to merely that of money. Of course she was worth that amount, she was worth much more, but a woman of her conscientious nature would need something in addition to money: a sense of purpose.
She had to think he needed her. He did need her, so much more than she could imagine. Since first seeing her, he had come to realize she was the perfect woman for him, the woman he’d been waiting for his entire life, and he wouldn’t be complete without her.
He felt almost dizzy, thinking of her here, in his home. He would give her everything she could possibly want, protect her from a world that couldn’t possibly appreciate her sheer perfection. It had to be a trial to her, forced constantly to deal with people who weren’t worthy of her. When she was with him, there would be none of that. She wouldn’t need other people. Together, they would be perfection.
Tuesday was an incredibly sad and lonely day. It was the first day she had been entirely alone in the house; yesterday the family had been here until the early afternoon; then she had gone out with Cahill, which took her mind off the emptiness. Cahill, she suspected, could take her mind off dying.
Today, however, he wasn’t there. The knowledge that she would see him that night was a beacon she kept in the back of her mind, a bit of brightness against the gloom. She kept herself busy. She didn’t have to hunt for things to do; there was a huge amount of work to be done.
She began the work of methodically packing up each room, with a master inventory she devised and entered into her laptop, to show what contents were in which box and from which room they were taken. The boxes would be numbered, and on each box she’d tape an envelope containing a packing list for that particular box. The chore was time-consuming and exhausting, but that wasn’t enough to keep her mind off the fact that she was alone in this huge house, or to keep her from remembering every time she passed the library what had happened in there.
The phone rang incessantly. The callers didn’t mean any harm, with their questions about the family and what they intended to do, but the constant interruptions meant Sarah didn’t accomplish as much as she’d planned, and the questions kept the Judge fresh in her mind. She didn’t want to forget him, but she would have liked a little distance from the pain.
Thinking about Cahill provided that distance. Maybe she was thinking about him too much for her own well-being, but... well, she’d just have to deal with that.
Far from being the humorless man she’d first thought him, he had a lighthearted streak that made her laugh and kept her on her toes. She sensed that he was being careful with her—not because she was fragile, but rather because she wasn’t.
Sarah knew her own worth, her own strength; she was neither a Kleenex to be used and casually tossed away, nor a butterfly who would gaily flit away on her own. Cahill wanted her, but he was wary of anything except a sexual, superficial relationship with anyone, and he wasn’t certain exactly how serious he wanted to get with her. They had fun together, but on a certain level they were like two heavyweight boxers, circling, each testing the other’s strength, not committing until they knew whether or not they were going to get hammered.
She liked him more than anyone she had dated before—but then how could she not like someone who would take her to both a bowling alley and a symphony? She had known from the beginning that the physical chemistry was great; overwhelming was a better word. Still, she could resist physical attraction if that was all there was. In Cahill’s case, the total package was as seductive as a Lorelei, pulling her to him.
Lunch was a sandwich and a glass of water, eaten in her quarters. The silence beat at her, until she thought she could hear her own heartbeat. She washed the knife she had used, and the glass, and put them away. Then she burst into tears.
Half an hour later she found herself sitting on the steps leading from the portico to the flower garden. The bright sunshine beat down on her upturned face, her bare arms, and the air was redolent with the sweet freshness of spring. Birds chirped madly in the trees, their colors flashing as they darted about. Bees zipped from bloom to bloom, drunk on nectar. Inside the house was sadness, but out here was life and warmth.
Footsteps sounded on the stones behind her, and she turned her head to see Cahill. “Hi,” he said, dropping down to sit beside her. “You didn’t answer the doorbell, so I walked around to see if your truck was here.”
“I’m here,” she said, unnecessarily. “I’m just... taking a break.”
He studied her taut face and swollen eyes, then gently eased her into his arms and cradled her head against his shoulder. “Bad day, huh?”
“So far, it sucks.” God, being held felt so good. He was solid and strong, and she turned her face against his neck so she could inhale the heated aroma of his body. She put her arms around him, one arm looped around his neck and the other pressed to his back; her fingers dug into the layered muscles there, traced the indentation of his spine.
He tilted her head back and kissed her, and his palm settled warmly over her right breast. She allowed the caress, leaning into him and surrendering to the kiss. Just now she needed cuddling, needed the physical comfort of his presence, so she didn’t protest when he unbuttoned her sleeveless blouse and unhooked the front closure of her bra, pushing it aside. Fresh air gently brushed over her bare flesh, puckering her nipples; then they were covered by the hot slide of his callus-roughened palm. “God, you’re pretty,” he said, his tone low and rough. “Look at this.”
She opened her eyes and looked. Her breasts were the color of warm cream, with small, pinkish brown nipples. She wasn’t overly endowed, but her breasts plumped in his palm, his hard, tanned fingers in sharp male contrast to the very womanly curves. He stroked his thumb over one nipple and it beaded more tightly, flushing with color.
A sound like far-off thunder rumbled in his throat, and she looked up to see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I’m working,” he said hoarsely.
“You couldn’t prove it by me,” she murmured. She thought she could sit here in the sunshine for hours, letting him fondle her. Except she wouldn’t be sitting here for hours, she would very shortly find herself on her back, on the stones of the portico; not exactly a comfortable place for lovemaking.
“I just stopped by to check on you. I can’t stay.” He kissed her again, his hand still working its warm magic on her breasts; then he reluctantly released her. Actually, he released her as if it tore his skin off to separate from her. “Just remember where we were, and we’ll pick up there tonight.”
Feeling much better, she rehooked her bra and began buttoning her blouse. “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You’ll have to start over.”
“Not a problem,” he said, smiling.
She snorted. “I didn’t think it would be.” Then she smiled, too, a little mistily. “Thanks for stopping by. I was feeling blue.”
“I noticed. Six-thirty again?”
She nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
“So will I.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Well, hell,” he said in disgust.
Already she could feel her smile edging into a grin, feel laughter beginning to bubble. “Go back to work, Cahill, and remember: Never take anything for granted.”
“Well, hell,” he said again.
Dying To Please Dying To Please - Linda Howard Dying To Please