Finding Laura (6 page)

“Don’t,” she murmured against his lips. “Somebody might come in.”

He tipped his head back and looked at her, smiling just a little. “Josie, we’ve been sleeping together for two months. Do you really think there’s anybody in this house who doesn’t know?”

Startled, she said, “Not Amelia, surely.”

He laughed. “She knew before anybody, sweet. You couldn’t sneak a secret past that old lady in pitch darkness a mile away from her.”

“She hasn’t said anything,” Josie protested.

“What would she say? We’re both over twenty-one and unattached, and despite the way she dresses and sometimes acts, Amelia is well aware of what decade we’re in. As long as we’re reasonably discreet, what’s she got to complain about?”

“She’ll think I’m cheating on Jeremy,” Josie said almost to herself.

Alex didn’t let go of her, but his arms loosened slightly and his expression was abruptly unreadable. In a level voice he said, “Jeremy is dead, Josie. He’s been dead for five years. You are not cheating on him.”

“I know that, but—but Amelia might not see it that way. She’s been a widow for
forty years
and still wears black, still keeps a place for David at the dinner table, and his picture by her bed, and—”

Alex framed her face in his hands. “Amelia wears black because she knows she looks good in it. As for the rest, if you think it’s emotionally healthy to keep an empty chair ready for a man who stopped needing it forty years ago, all I can say is that you ought to talk to somebody about this, sweet.”

Josie eyed him, conscious of brief amusement. “I take it you think the picture by the bed
isn’t
excessive?”

“Well, it’s not as bad as an empty chair. Do you keep a picture of Jeremy on your nightstand, by the way? Since you’ve never let me into the inner sanctum, I have no way of knowing.”

Back on balance now, Josie merely said, “I have his picture on my dressing table, not the nightstand.”

“When you move it into a drawer, or tuck it away in a photo album, let me know.”

“Why?”

He kissed her lightly and then released her. He was smiling, but his face was still unreadable. “Because then I’ll ask for an invitation into the inner sanctum.”

That surprised her somewhat; it implied that he didn’t want Jeremy looking over his shoulder while he made love to his cousin’s widow. But Alex had never shown a sign of being uncomfortable about their relationship. In fact, he had always talked to her easily and casually about Jeremy, before and since they had become lovers. But Josie chose not to question him, preferring not to look too deeply into Alex’s feelings about her dead husband.

“Walk with me in the garden,” Alex suggested again.

“I have all this work—”

“The work isn’t going anywhere, Josie, and nobody but you expects you to work all day without a break.” Alex got off the desk and took her hand, leading her firmly toward the door. “For the sake of your health, we’re going for a twenty-minute walk. You can finish up the work for Amelia later. No arguments.”

Josie offered a final protest. “But don’t you have work to do?” Alex, with a law degree earned several years before, was “in training,” as he termed it, to take over as the Kilbourne family lawyer when the current one retired.

“Our office handles only one client, remember?” Alex said, pausing at the door to smile at her. “The Kilbourne family. And since Preston Montgomery doted on Peter, and since he’s amazingly emotional for a lawyer—even an old one—the firm of Kennard, Montgomery, and Kilbourne is closed for the week. The only thing I have to do officially is read Peter’s will to the family after the funeral.”

“You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it,” Josie felt honor-bound to say.

Alex shook his head slightly, still smiling. “After all this time you still don’t expect me to be conventional, surely? Josie, I refuse to grieve for a man I didn’t like, or respect his memory as if death made him a saint. I know he was blood, but he was bad blood. He was in a seedy motel room with another woman while his wife was away—and it wasn’t the first time. If you want to see me offer sympathy, you should have been there this morning when I picked Kerry up at the airport. She’s the one I feel sorry for.”

Since Josie felt the same way, it was difficult to criticize Alex for his attitude, but Josie had been raised by conventional parents and it was hard for her to discard their teachings. “I do too, but—”

“But?” He waited politely.

She smiled suddenly. “Never mind. You’re right—I should never expect conventionality from a man who wears Looney Tunes neckties within the hallowed halls of a venerable law office.”

He winked at her. “Now you’re catching on.”

Josie felt peculiar chuckling as she let him lead her toward the back of the house, but she couldn’t help it. She doubted there was anything Alex took seriously, but his
casual attitude had frequently brightened her mood, so she seldom complained. Besides, she did need to get out of the house for a few minutes, to walk in a cool garden with a man who made her laugh, and forget the violent death of another man … even if only for a little while.

B
Y
T
UESDAY MORNING
, Laura had received both good news and bad news from the police. The good news was that her fingerprints had not been found anywhere in the motel room where Peter Kilbourne had died or in his car. The bad news was that one of the keycards used in her building on Saturday night belonged to a tenant who had gone off into the wilds hunting—and nobody seemed to know when he’d be back. Until he returned, and assuming he verified that he himself had used his card to exit the building at eight thirty-five on Saturday night, Laura could not be eliminated as a suspect.

She didn’t think she would be even then, unless the police found another suspect. A suspect they didn’t seem to be looking for. They had already spent time at the company where she worked, asking questions about her of her boss and other employees, and everybody in the apartment building had also been questioned.

A friend who worked at her bank had told her that the police had obtained her banking records, looking for God knows what, and she was willing to bet they also had her phone records to find out if she had called Peter Kilbourne—or he had called her. Neither of which, Laura was certain, would provide the police with the connection they were seeking.

Laura tried to work all day Tuesday, but her concentration was spotty and she kept thinking about the fact that today was the day they were burying Peter Kilbourne. And it was early that afternoon when she received her first call
from a reporter, which rattled her so much that she didn’t have a hope of getting any more work done.

She finally went to her boss and asked for a leave of absence, explaining truthfully that since the press now had her name and would undoubtedly be pestering her until the police solved the murder, it would be better for both her and the company if she took some time off.

“Take as much time as you need, Laura,” Tom Sayers said, more sympathetic than many employers would have been. “I’ll shift your projects to some of the others in the meantime.”

“I’m really sorry there’s been so much trouble, Tom.”

He smiled at her, a middle-aged man with a weathered face and sharp brown eyes. “I don’t see how you could have prevented it,” he told her. “All you did was buy a mirror.”

Laura was grateful that he believed in her, but not particularly surprised; he had hired her at eighteen on her innate artistic ability alone, training her himself and encouraging her to take night courses to get a college degree in the field of commercial art. Now, ten years later, Laura had her degree and was one of the top artists in his small but profitable graphic design business.

“Just take care of yourself,” he told her as she left his office. “And don’t let a bunch of nosy reporters turn your life upside down.”

Good advice, Laura thought as she drove home. But the situation had already turned her life upside down. Here she was, hiding out from the press—and taking an unpaid leave of absence from her job to do it, which meant money would be very tight if she couldn’t go back to work soon. And when she got home, it was to find on her answering machine several requests for interviews and a number of rude questions, which was definitely upsetting. She finally had to turn the phone off just to escape the constant ringing.

This is what I get for having a published number—even with just my initial in the book!

That afternoon she managed to get in touch with Dena Wilkes, the college student and researcher who had worked for her before, and Dena enthusiastically agreed to come over in the morning and get all the details as well as take photographs in order to start researching Laura’s mirror.

Laura spent Wednesday afternoon trying to paint. Her best efforts had always come purely from her imagination, so she tried to just let her mind wander and her fingers paint what they would. Not surprisingly, she found herself painting the mirror—but the perspective was interesting, she decided. The image taking shape on canvas was the mirror being held by a hand—a feminine hand.

Maybe when it’s finished, I’ll know what I’m supposed to see in the damned thing!

Cassidy arrived that evening, offering her company and Chinese take-out, and Laura was happy to accept both. In a determined effort to forget the murder, they watched an old movie on television and discussed the careers and sex appeal of all their favorite movie stars. Still, as soon as her friend went home, Laura was left with too many anxious thoughts.

Patience was hardly her strong suit, especially when she was all too aware that others—namely the police—were possibly in charge of her destiny; she wanted to do something herself, to put her fate back in her own hands. She told herself there was nothing she could do except find out about the mirror, but that undoubted fact did nothing to soothe her restlessness.

Then, on Thursday morning, she found among her usual mail two letters. One was positive, a motherly type of letter assuring her that of course she hadn’t killed Peter Kilbourne and that everything would be all right if she would just put her faith and trust in God. The other was a
vehement and crudely worded invitation to her to burn in hell for her sins and crimes.

Both were from total strangers.

Laura’s rational mind told her they were the types of letters anyone experiencing a sudden—and negative—notoriety might easily receive, and that she shouldn’t let them get to her. But the mere fact that two strangers had somehow discovered she was the “female acquaintance of Peter Kilbourne being questioned by the police” was more than unnerving.

She dropped the letters as if they burned, staring down at them for a long moment. Then she went to turn on her phone, and hunted up the business card Peter had given her. She had a hunch he used the “business” cards more for social contacts than anything else, and when her call to the number on the card reached an answering service, she was sure of it. Without leaving a message, she hung up, wondering uneasily if the police were keeping track of calls made to Peter’s number now that he was dead.

Pushing that unnerving possibility out of her mind, she placed a second call, this one to a number she knew well. “Cass? Listen, didn’t you say that the Kilbournes banked there? I know you shouldn’t, but … can you get me the phone number at the house?”

A
LLOWED THROUGH THE
gate by an expressionless security guard, Laura drove her Cougar up the long driveway to the Kilbourne house at four o’clock that afternoon. She was still surprised to be here at all—surprised both because she’d found the nerve to call and request an appointment, and because that request had been granted so quickly.

She didn’t know quite what she would say to whichever member of the family had granted her request, but she had several Polaroids of the mirror in her purse as well
as the receipt she’d been given at the auction for her cash purchase. Just in case.

She parked her car in the small turnoff near the walkway leading to the house and walked slowly up the brick pathway toward the front door. The house looked even bigger and more imposing than it had when she had first seen it days ago, and even though Laura felt the same affinity with it that she had felt then, she was also all too aware now that it was a house in mourning.

The funeral wreath still hung beside the front door.

Reaching it, she took a deep breath in an attempt to steady her nerves, and firmly rang the doorbell. The response came so quickly that she actually stepped back, startled, as the door was pulled open.

A lovely woman with beautifully pale skin and auburn hair stood there, looking at Laura intently out of wide gray eyes. Dressed very plainly in black slacks and a dark blue, silky blouse, she was inches shorter than Laura and slightly built; a delicate, almost doll-like woman who might have been any age between twenty-five and thirty-five.

“Miss Sutherland? I’m Josie Kilbourne. Please come in.”

As she stepped into the entrance hall, Laura realized that it was Josie Kilbourne she had spoken to on the phone, even though the other woman had not identified herself then. Though her manner was brisk, her voice was curiously childlike and sweet, and instantly recognizable. But it was not she who had granted Laura’s request; after listening to it, she had gone away for a few minutes and then returned to set today’s appointment.

Barely giving Laura a chance to look around at the vast, marbled entrance hall, Josie said, “If you’ll come into the library, I’ll tell Mr. Kilbourne you’re here.”

Which answered the question of who had agreed to see her. Except, wasn’t there more than one Mr. Kilbourne
in residence? Hadn’t the newspapers mentioned a lawyer in the family? He was probably the one.

The library, just off the entrance hall, was book-lined and very pleasant. There were two big windows, curtained in a dark gold fabric that went well with so much wood, and the hardwood floor was covered with a rug in muted tones of gold and burgundy. There was a huge desk in one corner, a smaller one closer to the door, and two long leather sofas faced each other at right angles to the magnificent fireplace.