A MATCH MADE IN MURDER (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 5) (3 page)

              It wasn’t until two in the morning that they were sufficiently exhausted and out of things to discuss. Kitty collected blankets and pillows then pulled the bed from the couch with Layla’s help and made it up.

              When Layla was settled, Kitty slid into bed next to Sterling, wrapped her arms around his waist as he slept on his side, and drifted off into a deep sleep, never having given the window a second thought.

              Kitty woke with the warm morning sun on her face. A breeze blew through the bedroom carrying with it the scent of cut grass and the cooler woodland chill. Her first thought was that she couldn’t wait to take Layla for a hike and introduce her to the natural beauty of Greenwich. They’d planned on a full day together, and since Layla had volunteered to chime in regarding the many aspects of the wedding that Kitty had been struggling with, her advice would help get Sterling off the hook. She couldn’t wait.

              Sterling grasped her hip just as she was lifting up. He wasn’t about to let her sneak off. These lazy mornings were his favorite part about living with her.

              “Layla’s in the next room,” Kitty whispered as though that would deter him.

              “I’ll be quiet,” he grinned.

              “I won’t,” she teased. “When am I ever quiet?”

              He got a doggish smirk on his face, but she kindly shoved him off.

              “If we’re gone by the time you get out of bed,” she mentioned. “We’re just on a hike.”

              “Bring your pistol.”

              Kitty groaned an exasperated sigh, but agreed, as she wrapped a pink robe around her and fit each foot into her fluffy slippers.

              When she got to the living room, the bed was still pulled out from the couch, but Layla wasn’t in it. The covers were a tangle and at first Kitty assumed her cousin had hopped in the shower or was in the bathroom for other reasons, but when she glanced up the hall she noticed the bathroom door was open.

              A very bad feeling came over Kitty. She couldn’t seem to move and realized she was gripped by fear. Layla probably drove back to the Delamar, she told herself. She never had been the best at cleaning up after herself.

              Eager to confirm the best-case scenario, Kitty padded toward the front door and noticed it was open. Her heart sank again then beat hard, jarring into a galloping rhythm.

              She rushed to the door, flung it back, and saw Layla’s rental car beside her Fiat.

              The sight of it sent Kitty into full-blown panic.

              She raced down the driveway, her gaze darting this way and that.

              “Layla?”

              Nothing seemed unusual or out of place so she ran back to the door, but something kept her from going back in the house.

              That’s when she noticed the gravel and loose stones of the driveway had been scraped away, exposing packed dirt beneath. It looked as though feet had shuffled over the gravel or as though something or
someone
had been dragged.

              Kitty gasped at the thought then followed the long streak around the side of the house, but when she reached the back yard Layla was nowhere in sight.

              The yard was grassy and clear. The rolling hills behind the house were equally empty. Then Kitty stared at the tree line and into the woods.

              “Oh God!”

              She began running. She wasn’t sure why or what she’d find, she only surrendered to the impulse, the gut instinct, that her cousin was somewhere in those woods.

              “Layla?” she called out, though she could barely catch her breath. “Layla!”

              She’d reached the mouth of the hiking trail. Deep in the forest, covered by shadows, Kitty saw her cousin’s bare feet poking out from the brush. Panic rolled through her, causing her knees to buckle. She screamed. Then ran to her cousin.

              Layla was lying on the forest floor. She wore the white nightgown Kitty had supplied last night. Her hands had been neatly folded on her chest, the fingers laced. Her eyes were closed.

              She looked so peaceful, so still, but that’s precisely what jarred Kitty.

              This made no sense.

              Cautiously, she stepped closer and closer until she was standing over her cousin. That’s when she noticed an intricate, antique necklace was wrapped around her neck.

              Kitty kneeled. Confusion and panic and grief were a storm inside her. She placed her fingertips against Layla’s throat, desperate to feel a pulse.

              But there wasn’t one.

              Her cousin was dead.

              Sterling felt the urge to pace. He paced. Pinecones and twigs crunched under his boots. He was compelled to stand still. He tried. It didn’t last. He felt Kitty’s eyes on him, felt her devastation. He couldn’t look at her. He focused on Layla’s body, or tried to. All he could see was the necklace around her neck, its antique brass finish that seemed to absorb what little sunlight hit it, the pearls and opals and onyx that spanned its triangular shape in an alluring pattern.

              It was the exact same necklace. Not similar. Not a duplicate. The same one.

              “What’s taking them so long?” Kitty asked from yards away.

              She was holding herself together, literally and spiritually. Her arms were crossed. Each hand grasped her upper arms as if to protect her from impending blows. Her eyes were red, her cheeks tear-stained. And her eyes kept pleading. It was his job to make sense of this, and he could, but he couldn’t tell her. Not when he knew the necklace hadn’t been meant for Layla.

              He returned to the body, though it pained him to turn his back on Kitty. He tried not to hear her sniffling, sobbing at times, and sighing to the heavens as if that might calm her.

              Sterling blamed himself. He had been the only connection between his mother’s murder and his wife’s, and now he had another death on his head.

              He should’ve made his lieutenant aware of the break in.

              What the hell had he been thinking?

              He hadn’t wanted to believe it. But that had been a coward's reaction, easier to deny his worst fears coming true than to face them, go on the offense, and do something.

              He’d told himself he’d kept mum for Kitty’s benefit. He hadn’t wanted to scare her. And there would’ve been no way to get a handful of officers in the house along with his partner to investigate the window without Kitty knowing.

              He’d told himself if she meddled at all this time, it would cost her her life.

              Staring down at Layla, he didn’t want to think to himself
Thank God
, but that’s how he felt. Thank God it had been Layla and not Kitty.

              But whoever had done this was still out there. It would only be a matter of time before they realized they’d killed the wrong woman. And with that realization would come a second attempt.

              A crunching pinecone stole his attention and he realized Kitty had stepped up beside him.

              In a small, trembling voice, Kitty asked, “The killer thought that was me, didn’t he?”

              Sterling met her gaze. Her hazel eyes turned dark and flat, and her mouth that had been quivering went suddenly straight, as though rage was taking hold.

              “Yeah.” It was less than a whisper. His throat felt raw and dry.

              “Why?” The question was so much bigger than the word and Sterling wished like hell that he had an answer. “Who hates you so much that they’re dedicated to killing off all the women in your life?”

              He didn’t know.

              “And over decades,” she added. “They don’t care how much time goes by. They have their eye on you. As soon as you’re happy, they strike.”

              He’d never forced himself to do the hard work of contemplating these questions. He’d always turned his back on it, ran off, kept moving forward, changed his surroundings so he could trick his dread-filled mind that it was all behind him and nothing could touch him. But that was a lie.

              And this time there was nowhere he could go. He wasn’t willing to leave. Kitty was his world now and his life.

              “Slaughter!” He heard a man call out from the field as he approached the woods.

              “Back here, Lieutenant!”

              Sterling shot Kitty a look that told her things would sort out, but the grimace on his face betrayed him. No one had any reason to believe this would sort out. This was the killer’s third murder. He’d gotten away Scot free in the prior two. There hadn’t been so much as a trace of evidence left behind.

              Sterling balled his hands into fists, which made it difficult to shake his lieutenant’s hand.

              Lieutenant Matt Harrison had been on the force for nearly forty years and his slow climb to the middle had never once bothered him. He wasn’t the most in-shape officer of the law, but once upon a time he had been. And his arms and legs still retained their athletic musculature, though he’d developed quite a belly and sported the shadow of a second chin beneath the one God gave him.

              Harrison was as much a comfort to Sterling as any member of his family. He’d known the man nearly all his life, though the age disparity was nearly as wide as Sterling was old. Throughout the years, he’d been a solid mentor and had never steered Sterling wrong, though Harrison tended to rule with an iron fist and was often brutally blunt in his choice of words.

              “Kitty’s cousin, you said?”

              “In from New Zealand,” Sterling supplied then leaned in close. “It’s all the same. The necklace, the pose, the fact that she’s in the woods.”

              “This girl close to you?” Harrison asked. He was familiar with Sterling’s history.

              “Not at all. Just met her last night.”

              “Then he’s getting senile and sloppy,” the lieutenant concluded.

              “Take a closer look,” he suggested.

              When Harrison did, kneeling beside Layla’s head so he could study her face, he got it. His gaze snapped up to Sterling.

              “Looks just like your fiancée.” Harrison rose to his feet with a grunt then asked, “You have any idea the significance of that necklace?”

              “All I know is that it should’ve been locked up in evidence.”

              Harrison breathed heavily as though it went hand in hand with serious thinking.

              “They archive,” he stated.

              “What does that mean?”

              “It means when a case goes cold—I mean stone cold for nearly a decade—the department moves the evidence into a storage facility off Route 12, our archives.”

              “A
commercial
facility?” Sterling was shocked.

              Harrison confirmed with a shamed frown.

              “Where security is run by college kids who are probably stoned or asleep?”

              “Are you asking me or telling me?”

              Sterling snorted.

              “This is unbelievable.”

              “Or it narrows it down,” Harrison said, thinking out loud. “You’ve never faced the fact that this guy knows you. He’s in your life and has been for a good long while.”

              “I’m a loner. No one’s in my life except for a handful of people.” He’d meant to dismiss Harrison’s logic, but he’d only confirmed it.

              “And now you know he understands how our evidence room works, our process of archiving. That should narrow it down even more.”

              Sterling took a deep breath.

              “Who would be that close to me, but stupid enough to confuse Layla for Kitty?”

              “Someone who never met Kitty? Someone who only met her once or a handful of times or only saw a photo of her?”

              Sterling felt eyes on him and glanced over his shoulder. Kitty was staring, eavesdropping no doubt. So Sterling took Harrison by the shoulder and led him deeper into the forest.

              “I had a break in yesterday at the house,” he confided.

              “You call it in?”

              Sterling shook his head and expected Harrison to rip him a new one. He didn’t.

              “I came home and the front door was unlocked. Kitty and I always lock it, though we don’t do the best job of keeping the windows shut. Our kitchen window is a bit sticky whenever the weather warms up. Someone had forced it all the way up, which caused the glass to crack. I put two and two together. But nothing was missing in the house. Everything looked in place.”

              “The killer was casing it, checking out the rooms, the floor plan.”

              “I’d say dust the windowsill for prints, the door, hell dust the whole house.” He’d never ordered his lieutenant before. Harrison didn’t seem to appreciate the directive. “The only thing that doesn’t add up is the fact that Layla was sleeping on the couch. It’s a pull out bed. The killer would have to have known she wasn’t Kitty. Why would Kitty be sleeping on the couch?”

              “Did he walk in the front door?” Harrison challenged.

              Sterling didn’t want to have to include Kitty, but now it was imperative. He waved her over.

              “Did you lock the front door after you let Layla in? Or before you went to bed?”

              Kitty thought hard then remembered. “Yes.”

              Sterling locked eyes with Harrison.

              The lieutenant was the one to state what had happened. “He knocked on the door. He grabbed the woman who answered. He had every reason to believe it was who he was after.”

              Sterling felt like he could spit.

              “No signs of a struggle,” Harrison commented, glancing back at the body.

              “It’s the necklace that killed her.”

              Then Kitty had a question. “Why would Layla let a stranger put a necklace around her neck especially if the guy came in the middle of the night? That makes no sense.”

              “Be honest, sweetheart,” said Harrison. “What type of girl was she?”

              Kitty turned cross taking immediate offense. “I beg your pardon?”

              “Kitty, please,” Sterling said to calm her before she could explode. “He knows what he’s doing. You gotta trust that Harrison’s questions are crucial.”

              “If you’re insinuating that my cousin was some kind of lady of the night who throws caution to the wind and gets herself killed, you’ve got some nerve!”

              “What if he knocked on the door,” Sterling offered. “Placed the necklace down and hid. She sees it, puts it on. Drops dead—” with a glance at Kitty he added, “Sorry. Then he simply closes the door and drags her off into the woods.”

              “He didn’t close the door,” Kitty interjected. “But that sounds possible.”

              Harrison scrutinized her as though he could read in her eyes whether or not she liked the scenario because it made her cousin more a victim and less an imbecile.

              “The gravel near the door is stripped away and disheveled,” she went on, giving reasons why Sterling’s suggestion lined up.

              Sterling heard men's voices from the clearing, which Kitty had also noticed, turning to face the field.

              A few officers stalked up. Behind them were Sterling’s dad, Steve, and his Uncle Grady. It was the sight of his family that had Sterling suddenly caving under his emotions. Kitty grabbed his arm then wrapped it around her shoulder so he could lean on her. It was embarrassing, but if he kept his reaction purely physical he might be able to hide from Harrison the tears that stung his eyes.

              “I’m gonna give it to you straight, Kid,” said Harrison. “You can’t work this case. Period. You also can’t stay in that house. It’s a crime scene as far as I’m concerned.”

              Sterling swallowed hard, but didn’t argue.

              “Go on,” his lieutenant ordered. “Pack a few bags. Check into a hotel. We’ll take it from here.”

              “I have to call my parents,” Kitty stated, supporting Harrison’s reasons that they ought to shuffle off. “And my poor aunt,” she added with shrill and sudden horror. “Oh God.”

              Sterling’s legs felt less like rubber so he straightened up and started toward Steve and Grady with Kitty beside him.

              Harrison had one last thing to say. “Wrack your brain, Slaughter. And call me if you’ve got any names worth looking into.”

              Sterling shot the man a sharp glare, but nodded and continued on to his family.

              When he reached his dad he stated in a weak voice, “It happened again.”

              Steve turned to stone, though his cheeks flushed red with fiery rage.

              “How long ago?” he demanded.

              Grady tried to soften his brother by placing his hand on his shoulder.

              “The police can handle this, Steve.”

              “Shut up!” he barked then reiterated the question to his son. His tone was steady, but Sterling caught the anger broiling in each word.

              “Not long,” he answered. “Not a half hour.”

              Kitty added, “She felt warm.”

              That was all Steve needed to hear. He started for the woods.