Fast Women (35 page)

"Yes," she said and licked into his mouth, and he said, "You do realize this is in front of a window."

"It's dark. You want me or not?" She bounced on him a little, and the couch creaked, and he caught his breath, and so did she.

"Tell you what," he said, his voice husky, "if this couch breaks in the next half hour, you can have a new one."

"Deal." Nell pulled him down on top of her, rotating her hips to slide under him, figuring the couch would go that much sooner with him on top. Everything went according to plan for the next twenty minutes, both of them doing their usual good work until they were both too hot to stand it anymore and her underpants had been tossed somewhere on the other side of the desk. Then Gabe kissed her deeply and slid into her, and she braced herself for the storm to come.

It didn't. Instead he kept her still, imprisoned under him, while he pulsed against her, barely moving but hitting everything that counted with a rhythm that made her skin itch and her breath come short. She swallowed her gasp and said, "What are you doing?"

"Getting you there," he said in her ear, and she could hear the laughter in his voice.

She tried to bounce under him and couldn't, he had her pinned against the damn couch cushions so that she couldn't even get leverage on the floor.

"Harder," she said, and he said, "Nope," and slowed even more. She breathed deep as her blood thickened and said, "This isn't doing it for me," while she thought, If he doesn't stop I'm going to come my brains out on an intact couch.

"You lie," Gabe said in her ear, pulsing inexorably against her. "I can always get you there and I always will."

He kissed her neck and moved his hand to her breast, and she tried to bounce under him again, only to have him tighten his hand on her instead of picking up speed. She tried writhing, which he appreciated, and rocking, which he quelled with hot hands, and then finally, frustrated by her enforced stillness, she raked her fingernails down his back, lifting him off the couch with her hips and kicking herself into the first shudder of her climax. She jerked against him, and he sucked in his breath as she surged up from the couch, needing to move as much as she needed to come, and he bore down on her, pounding her into the creaking couch as she went mindless, everything in motion at last.

When she got her brain back, she realized the couch was still standing. "I am so disappointed," she said as her blood sang. "We'll have to do this again."

"Another reason not to get rid of the couch," Gabe said against her hair. "I'm going to have it reinforced when you're not looking."

"Get off me," Nell said, and he pushed himself off her and stood up. She shoved her skirt down as he zipped his pants, and then she said, "I can't believe this damn thing held."

"They made stuff good in the fifties," Gabe said. "Me, for instance. And, God knows, you."

Nell had turned on the desk light and was behind the desk retrieving her underwear when the street door opened. She straightened and saw Riley, holding his key.

"What are you doing here?" Gabe said, tucking in his shirt.

"I work here," Riley said. "You used to do that, too, before you gave it up to sexually harass your dognapping secretary. What a night." He tossed his keys on the desk and collapsed onto the couch.

It held.

"I can't believe it," Nell said, staring at it in disgust.

"I'm going to jump up and down on it before we do it the next time."

"What?" Riley said. "You just did it here? There's a window here, for Christ's sake."

"You have no flair," Gabe said. "Also it was her idea."

"Does it ever occur to you to say no to her?"

"No," Gabe said, but he was frowning, his head tilted. "Look at the legs on that thing."

"See, I told you," Nell began, but then she looked at the couch legs and shut up. They were splayed out sideways, as if the couch were slowly doing the splits, and the long seat had skewed as if it were warped. "Ooh. It's never done that before."

Riley pushed himself off the couch and it sank a little farther. "What did you do?"

"Now we have to get a new couch," Nell said, but Gabe ignored her.

He went over and grabbed the couch by the front edge, tipping it back until it rested against the window and he was looking at the bottom of it. "What the hell is that?"

"That" was a long piece of pipe, jammed tightly along the length of the seat at an angle.

"Well, no wonder it wasn't breaking," Nell said. "Of course, that also explains why it was so damn uncomfortable."

"It's not even welded in," Gabe said, looking at it closer. "It's just jammed in there. Give me a hand."

Riley came to stand beside him. "You know, if you jerk that out of there, the couch is history."

"Jerk it out of there," Nell said.

"Brace the couch," Gabe said, and Riley leaned against the seat, while Gabe grabbed the bar and yanked. "Damn it," he said, "one more time." Riley leaned harder on the back, and Gabe yanked again, and this time the pipe popped out, making him stagger back a step.

Riley let the couch drop back into place. "You want me to take this out to the Dumpster? Because it really is going

to go if anybody-" He stopped because Gabe had the pipe upended and was shaking it. "What are you doing?"

"There's something in here." Gabe said, trying to peer into the end. "We need more light in this place."

"Good," Nell said. "I'll buy lamps when I get the new couch."

"Give me something with a hook on it," he said, and Nell thought, Yeah, I have one of those, but then he said, "Wait a minute," and dug out his pocketknife. He stuck the blade in the end of the pipe and began to lever something out.

"I repeat," Riley said. "What-"

"My father was not a fixer-upper," Gabe said. "And he jammed this pipe in the couch."

"How do you know?"

"Well, it wasn't you or me." Gabe frowned as he worked on the pipe. "And I don't see your mother or Chloe cramming it in there. And the likelihood of somebody else sneaking in here and jamming pipes in our furniture-" He stopped as he maneuvered a wad of white cloth out of the end of the pipe. He put his knife away and pulled on the cloth and it came out easily, unfurling as he pulled, until something heavy fell out at his feet and glinted on the floor.

"Diamonds," Nell said, looking at the spilled pile of glittering circles.

"I can't wait for Trevor to explain this one," Riley said. "I can," Gabe said. "But I'm not going to."

"You gave Margie the pin and the ring," Gabe said half an hour later when he had the jewelry spread out on Trevor's dining room table. "You gave my dad the necklace, the bracelet, and the earrings. And I want to know why. No lies this time, no crap about ungrateful sons. The truth."

Trevor sat down at the table, looking older than Gabe had ever seen him. He felt no sympathy for him at all.

"There's brandy there on the sideboard," Trevor said.

Gabe picked up the brandy bottle, keeping his eyes on Trevor. "Who killed Helena?"

"Stewart," Trevor said, and Gabe almost dropped the bottle.

"Stewart? Margie's husband?"

Trevor nodded. Gabe splashed some brandy into a snifter and handed it to him, and he drank, not deeply, and then took a breath.

"Sit down," Trevor said, "and I'll tell you what happened. And then I hope you won't tell anyone else."

"Trevor, it's murder," Gabe said. "That's not something-"

"You'll never prove it," Trevor said. "If I could have proved it, I would have. I was divorcing Helena, but I didn't want her dead. She was Margie's mother. Margie's never really gotten over it, you know. Imagine if it were Chloe and Lu."

"Talk," Gabe said, staving off sympathy.

"I had an affair," Trevor said, sadly. "With Audrey. I

loved her, but I wouldn't have married her, Helena was my wife, after all. But then Audrey got pregnant and I wanted my child to have my name, and my marriage had really been over-"

"Trevor," Gabe said. "Get to the part where Stewart shoots Helena, and my dad helps."

"Helps?" Trevor looked revolted. "You should be ashamed of yourself. Your father was a fine man."

"With a hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in his couch," Gabe said. "Explain."

"That's where he put them?" Trevor laughed, but without much humor. "In that cheap couch? That was Patrick for you. Smart as hell." He picked up the snifter again. "You could have thrown that couch out any time and then nobody would ever have known. How did you find them, anyway?"

"Nell wanted a new couch," Gabe said. "I want the story. Spill it."

"Nell's an industrious woman," Trevor said. "Helena wasn't. She took the divorce badly."

And most people take them so well, Gabe thought, wondering if Trevor had any idea of what a fathead he could be.

"I was prepared to provide for her, but she wanted half of my share of the firm, which was ridiculous. She wasn't going to get it, of course, but the litigation was going to kill us. Jack had just married Vicki, and he didn't have any spare cash since Abby had taken half of his assets. Stewart had just married Margie and wanted more money from the firm, but that wasn't possible with the cash flow. And then he came to me and said he and Jack had talked and they had a way out of our problems, that he could shoot Helena while I had an airtight alibi. I said no." Trevor stared at Gabe across the table. "I told them both no. I told him if we waited, she'd get tired and give up the fight, and we'd be fine."

"I believe it," Gabe said. Trevor would have suggested

waiting during the Chicago Fire because the flames were sure to die down on their own.

"I didn't want her dead," Trevor said again. "And about a month later, he called me. He said Margie had gone to her mother's and now was the time, that if I called her there and kept her on the phone, he could take care of Helena in the next half hour. I told him absolutely not. He said if we waited anymore, we'd lose everything. Then he hung up."

"So you rushed right over to warn Helena," Gabe said. "You called the police."

"The police?" Trevor looked aghast. "You're joking. No, I called Helena and Margie answered. She said Helena was acting strangely and she asked me to come over, but I knew I'd be too late. I told her to take Helena to the hospital right away, that I'd meet her there, and she said, no, that if I just came over-" Trevor closed his eyes. "While we were arguing, she heard the shot. And then I went over."

"Was Stewart there?"

"No," Trevor said, his voice flat. "Margie had found her mother and she was hysterical, so I put a blanket over Helena and called the paramedics." He took a deep breath. "And then I went upstairs and found Helena's suicide notes. Three of them. She'd been practicing." His face flushed and he sounded angry. "She'd been planning on killing herself all along. If Stewart had -just waited…"

So much for Trevor not wanting Helena dead.

"He was a fool," Trevor said. "I should never have let Margie marry him."

You shouldn't have let him shoot your wife, either, Gabe thought, but he said, "She was shot with your gun."

"He'd taken it earlier," Trevor said. "Jack had everything planned."

Gabe leaned against the liquor cabinet. He'd buy that Stewart hadn't planned the murder, but the accusation against Jack was fishy, coming as it did on the heels of the

Quarterly Report. And that "he'd taken it earlier" bit had been rushed. "I'm still not seeing Patrick in this."

"Margie had told me that her mother had on her good jewelry. When I saw the body, Helena had on her rings and her pin, but the rest was gone."

"Stewart had taken it," Gabe said, playing along.

"Just the pieces he could grab before he ran," Trevor said, distaste making his voice curdle, and Gabe began to believe him. "The pin would take too long to unlatch and the rings were embedded in her fingers because she'd put on so much weight. I knew he'd do something stupid with the other pieces, he was a stupid man, so I called Patrick."

"And still nobody tells the police," Gabe said.

"The scandal would have ruined us," Trevor said. "Your daughter was married to her mother's murderer,"

Gabe said.

"Exactly," Trevor said. "Imagine what that would do to her if she ever found out."

Gabe stared at him, Margie's maybe-they'll-never-know mantra made flesh.

"Your father was magnificent as always," Trevor said. "He followed Stewart for days until he went into a pawnshop. Then he took most of the agency's capital and bought the diamonds back."

"And he told my mother and she left him," Gabe said, thinking, What fools the two of you were.

"Of course not," Trevor said. "Lia wouldn't have understood. But she didn't understand anyway, didn't understand what had happened to the money and didn't understand why he wouldn't tell her. She wasn't a good wife, Gabe. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. Not trusting at all."

Gabe looked at him and thought, You must be fiv.-.t Mars.

"And Patrick wasn't the kind of man to let himself be run by a woman," Trevor went on.