A Grand Seduction (32 page)

Ridelle wondered why that dinner with Bruce had come to mind as she stabbed at an unidentified piece of meat. For his part, Warren alternated between gobbling food and stopping to watch Ridelle, as if he was trying to memorize every line and twist of her face.

She made it halfway through her food before her stomach rebelled. Sipping her iced tea, she shot Warren a look. “So no more mystery. What are we celebrating?”

“
You.” He raised his own glass to her.

Ridelle snorted. “Sounds like a line to me. Come on. Why’d you drag me to New York?”

She watched with increased trepidation as the glitter sputtered in his fiery blue gaze sputtered, then went out.

“
Warren? Is this really a celebration, or am I about to get the Dear Jane speech?”

He dropped his napkin on the table and pushed back with a sigh. “It’s neither. I wanted to make sure you’d come. I figured if you thought it was a special occasion, it’d give you more reason.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You don’t think you’re reason enough?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe not after today.”

The tone held a foreboding Ridelle had prayed she’d never hear outside her paranoid nightmares. “What are you saying?”

“
There’s been a big break in the Harrison case.”

Trepidation bloomed into screaming terror. She was a hundred percent certain she didn’t want to hear the rest. But she was about to, either way. “But you’re not celebrating?”

“
No. It’s good that we know, now, so justice can be served. But I must say it was quite a shock.”

Ridelle swallowed, glancing around the restaurant. Were these the last moments of freedom she would ever experience? Did he have backup standing by in case she tried to fight?

Her voice caught just a bit. “What are you trying to say?”

“
An arrest is being made for the murder.” He glanced at his watch. “Or will be any minute.”

They stared at each other for a mouth-drying stretch. “Then shouldn’t you be there?” Then again, he could very well be right where he needed to be.

“
I can’t,” he said. “Not anymore. But I didn’t want to risk you being there. I wanted you out of the way.”

Her eyes widened more with each word. “Why? Warren, who’s being arrested?”

He took a deep breath. “Your friend. Dominique Trudeaux.”

She mouth fell open, and the corners of her eyes began to sting. “You’re wrong. She didn’t kill anybody.”

“
I know this is hard for you, but you need to understand.”

Her voice flew up an octave. “Understand what? That you lied to me? That you’ve been playing me to get to her? Sleeping with her best friend. Don’t you guys have any scruples?”

He reached across the table for her hand, but she yanked it back. “Ridelle, please. It was nothing like that. I had no idea who you were.”

“
Oh, right. You just happened to meet me while looking to pin a murder on my friend. This isn’t a movie, you know. Coincidences like that don’t just happen.”

“
It did this time. We had no idea who we were looking for when I first went down there. How could I have known?”

Ridelle crossed her legs; nervous anger bounced the top one up and down. “So why were you there in the first place?”

“
Our original suspect placed a cell phone call to a woman she claimed was paying her to sleep with the victim. We traced it to a tower in Quakertown.”

Her heart pounded in a dizzying rhythm. His original suspect? Jesus, she’d been right there when Lanie had called. “Dominique couldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t.”

Warren leveled a gaze at her that she’d never seen. This was straight, undiluted cop talking. “Do you have an alibi for her on the night of the shooting?”

Ridelle thought for a moment. Dominique had taken Lanie’s payment up to the woman’s shelter in New York, which put her upstate that night. She frowned. “No. But that doesn’t mean she’s guilty.”

“
She was having an affair with Chester Harrison, wasn’t she?”

“
No! Of course not.”

“
We have witnesses who claim otherwise. Surely you knew?”

She shook her head. “They must be lying. She’d have told me.”

He shrugged. “Sleeping with a married man isn’t something you want to go around advertising.”

“
But, we’re her best friends. She said he didn’t want her.” Shit. The last part had just slipped out.

His jaw went slack. “You knew she’d met this man and didn’t think to mention it when you learned I was working this case?”

Words stuttered around her brain in fragments. “She said they met once, but he wasn’t interested in her. I didn’t think it possibly mattered.”

“
Everything matters in a murder investigation.”

“
But she didn’t do anything!”

“
Nothing she told you about. A bartender remembered her cozying up to him a couple months before the murder. Specifically recalled her introducing herself as Alice Smith. She left with him.”

Ridelle stared. “They left together? They can’t have.”

“
Funny thing, next few times she came in with the victim, she was answering to a different name. Dominique.”

The bartender had to have it wrong. Dom had gone there to try and get the guy’s attention, but she’d given up and admitted defeat. She’d been so distracted for a while over his rejection that she’d skipped lunches and not answered her calls.

Her breath caught.
Was
that the reason she’d been so distracted?

“
None of this proves anything,” she said, as much to herself as to Warren.

He shook his head. “There’s more. On the night of the shooting, one of the motel guests went missing before we could question her. According to the register, she’d signed in with a fake address—and the name Alice Smith.”

Her ears buzzed as the room grew oddly dim and surreal. “Sounds like a pretty common name.”

“
Except the desk clerk remembered seeing her with the victim before. Guess whose photo he identified?”

“
Oh, God.” Ridelle’s elbows sank onto the table, and she rested a heavy head on her hands. “Why would she kill him?”

“
I have a theory about that. I think he was set up.”

A lightning strike of resigned fear stabbed through her. “Set up?”

“
I believe she wanted to test him to see if he would cheat on her like he did his wife. So she hired a woman to seduce him, stuck around to see if it would work, and shot him when it did.”

Confusion swirled around her head, and she licked dry lips. “That sounds crazy.”

“
People in love do crazy things,” he said, eyes boring into her enough to make her wonder who he was talking about. “I see proof all the time.”

A thought twisted the wrong way in her craw. “Something I don’t understand. Surely there are a lot of Dominiques in the world. How did you know you had the right one?”

“
Got a description of her vehicle from a patron at the bar. With only a first name, we didn’t have much to go on, but once we traced that call to Quakertown we were able to narrow the DMV search. We found a Doylestown address and when we started checking her out, we learned that she traveled frequently to Quakertown to visit friends—and that you were one of them.”

Tears finally broke. “I didn’t know she was seeing him, or that she’d killed anyone. I swear.”

“
I believe you. Seems like Dominique was keeping secrets from her friends. She ducked us twice when we went to question her, but that was before we knew she’d been placed at the scene on the night of the murder.”

His cell interrupted this unbelievable turn of events. “Ross.”

Warren looked at Ridelle as he listened, and despite the numbness creeping into her soul, his end of the conversation perked up her interest. “Shit. Where? Yeah. Hang on.”

He nestled the phone against his mustard colored button down. “Any idea where she might be?”

Her stomach flip-flopped. Yeah, she knew exactly where she was, along with the others. She could say no, but Warren might be testing her. If he’d been watching Dominique, he knew exactly where they’d all be right now.

She sighed. “Odette’s. She’s at Odette’s restaurant in New Hope. We always go for lunch on Wednesdays.”

“
We know. That’s where we were expecting her.” He tapped a finger against a fork lying idle on the table. “That’s why I wanted you here, away from the mess when they went in to arrest her. The manager there told my partner that your friends left earlier than usual from lunch, and Dominique before the rest. She’s not at her condo, either.”

Numb shock settled in. “Then I’ve no idea.”

He went back to the phone. “She doesn’t know. I know. Yeah, get on that. Check the usuals. See you back at the pen.”

The phone flipped shut and he closed his eyes for a moment.

“
She’s gone, isn’t she?” Ridelle asked.

“
So it seems. We’ll find her, though.”

A note of exhaustion crept into her voice. “I’d think you would want to be out there too, looking.”

“
More than you know. But I can’t.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because of you.”

She frowned. “Why?” God, maybe he did know more than he’d revealed.

“
It’s true that I didn’t know who you were when we met. But our involvement put me too close to the case. Right now, my partner’s the only one who knows, but that’s about to change. Meanwhile, we agreed it’s better if I take a step back.”

She swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“
Don’t be. We had no way of knowing. Anyway, that’s why I’m not part of the arrest team.”

“
No, you’re up here with me. Why?”

He leaned forward, and this time when he reached for her hand, she set it on the table for him to grab. “Don’t you know? I care about you, Ridelle. I knew how difficult this was going to be, and I didn’t want you in the middle of that mess. I wanted you safe, and I wanted to be here for you when it all went down.”

A sickle of guilt and nausea swiped at her stomach. “You called me up here because you knew I would be at Odette’s.”

“
Yes.”

“
Or you wanted to question me to find out if I helped commit the murder.”

He gave her hand a less than romantic squeeze. “No, Ridelle. That’s not it.” He released her and sat back. “But you should know that you will have to be questioned. You might even be called as a witness, a hostile one if need be. And there’s still the fact that our original suspect claimed two women paid her to sleep with the victim. We know Dominique was one. Hopefully we’ll find out who her accomplice was.”

What little remained of Ridelle’s spirit drained from her toes and sank into the depths of the floor. What if they showed Lanie a photo of her? She might recognize “Angel” through the weak disguise. It would still be over for Ridelle, whether or not Dominique was found to spill the rest of the story.

Had Dom gone on the run? Maybe they all should. But why run if they weren’t guilty? Dominique had probably done it to protect all of them. The money would be the only suspicious tie to their dirty deeds.

The money.

An odd feeling curled itself around her stomach, and suddenly Ridelle knew something she wished she didn’t. Dominique controlled all the funds, depositing and investing in sneaky ways known only to her. They’d trusted her, largely because no one wanted to deal with the evidence directly. Dom mentioned recently that she’d moved it out of the country, for their own protection. So if nothing else, with her gone, they had no way of accessing a dime.

That was that, then. Game over. Her friend was a fugitive, and the rest might soon follow or be caught. And they’d be caught penniless.

Not only had she risked everything, she’d done it for nothing.

Six Months Later

Ridelle watched through the bars as a nondescript pack of people walked away. Turning away from the wrought iron screen door, she headed back to the small table and sat down. Almost without thinking, her eyes shifted to the vacant four-top with an enviable view of the river. From her vantage point, the mysteries of the Delaware were hidden. Scattered trees and a vague, gray sky was the only scenery visible as she gazed beyond the table a certain group of friends had sat every Wednesday for close to ten years.

Ridelle still ate lunch at Odette’s sometimes, though she could never bring herself to sit at that table. So many secrets had unfolded there. Secrets that cemented them together, and others that tore them apart. Dominique had seen to that. Ironic that she’d been the one who’d brought them all together in the first place. Ridelle wouldn’t have believed she’d been the glue holding their quartet together, but once she’d gone the rest could never quite coalesce into a trio. The woman who’d started it had ended it—with lies, thieving, and betrayal.