Home Before Midnight (5 page)
Read Home Before Midnight Online
Authors: Virginia Kantra
Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction
“I didn’t sign that damn consent form so you could force me from my own home.”
“I can’t force you to do anything, sir. I want all this to be over as much as you do. But it sure would speed things along if my team didn’t have to worry about disturbing you tonight.”
Paul’s indignation faded. Maybe this Sheriff Andy wannabe imagined he was doing his job. In which case, an appearance of cooperation would serve Paul better than threats.
“I’ll need a change of clothes.”
“Yes, sir. Officer Lewis can help you pack a bag. He’ll take those clothes you have on and then drive you anywhere you want to go.”
Paul flung up his head. “Are you people offering laundry service now?”
The detective was silent.
Paul sighed. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I want to cooperate. I really do. But this is my
home
.”
home
.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
“She was my
wife
.”
wife
.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Burke repeated in his flat, deep drawl. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
At least he didn’t say he understood. No one could understand what Paul was thinking and feeling right now. Least of all some thick-necked redneck with a badge.
He had to tell Regan.
The realization broke through the numbness that gripped Paul like a stone through pond ice. Despite their estrangement, Helen’s daughter would be devastated by her mother’s death. And furious she hadn’t been contacted immediately.
Should he make the call himself? Or have Bailey do it?
The detective said something, his words lost in the roaring inside Paul’s head. Something about the coroner’s office and releasing the body. Helen’s body.
Paul held up his hand. He didn’t want to think about the autopsy right now, about Helen’s body photographed and measured, weighed and dissected.
“I can’t deal with that now,” he said. “Bailey will call your office tomorrow.”
On cue, he heard a swift knock, and Bailey entered the room. Relief rolled through him. She’d changed her clothes and tied back her hair, but she hadn’t bothered with makeup. Militant spots of color flew in her cheeks like battle flags. Her eyes were bright.
The detective’s hulking body shifted in a play for her attention, but she never glanced at him. All her concern was for Paul.
“I came as soon as they let me,” she said, crossing the room with uncertain steps. “Are you all right?”
He couldn’t speak. He was overcome. He stared at her dumbly.
She put her hand on his arm, even that tentative touch a breach in the employer/employee distance she was so careful to preserve between them.
It wasn’t enough, Paul realized. He wanted—needed—more from her than that. He pulled her to him, feeling her involuntary recoil, her quick stiffening against his body.
But she wouldn’t reject his claim on her comfort. Not tender-hearted, loyal Bailey. He held her close, his heart pounding as he breathed in the bromine scent of her hair.
And at last, as he hoped, as he expected she would, Bailey put her arms around him and patted him awkwardly on the back.
From the other side of the room, the detective watched impassively.
THREE
G
ABRIELLE scowled from the front porch steps as Steve pulled into the driveway at nine-thirty in the morning.
ABRIELLE scowled from the front porch steps as Steve pulled into the driveway at nine-thirty in the morning.
Busted
.
.
The headache building behind his eyes ratcheted up a notch. He wanted to spend more time with her. That’s why he’d moved back to Stokesville. But not after he’d been up all night with a dead woman and three officers more used to drunk-and-disorderlies and traffic stops than crime scene investigation. And not before he’d had a chance to wash away the taste of station house sludge with a fresh pot of coffee.
Slowly, he climbed from the car, slinging his jacket over his shoulder.
Gabrielle narrowed her eyes as he approached the porch. “You missed breakfast.”
At least she was speaking to him this morning.
Stooping, he dropped a kiss on top of his nine-year-old daughter’s smooth, dark head, feeling his reality, his responsibilities, shift and grip around him. “Did you save me any?”
“Grandma did.” Gabrielle scrambled to her feet, leaning briefly against his side in what passed these days for a hug. “You didn’t call this morning, either.”
Guilt scraped him. Steve opened the door to his mother’s house. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Huh.” Gabrielle snorted. “That’s what I’m going to say when I’m a teenager.”
Four more years,
he thought.
They could make it.
he thought.
They could make it.
“When you’re a teenager, I’m going to lock you in your room and sit on the front porch all night with a shotgun,” he said mildly. “So it won’t be an issue.”
Gabrielle tossed her braid in a gesture so reminiscent of her dead mother that his chest squeezed. “That’s police brutality.”
“Good parenting,” he corrected.
She flounced into the house.
The interior was cool and dim and smelled of bacon. Steve stopped in the entryway, rubbing the tension from the back of his neck.
“Gabby?” His mother’s voice carried from the kitchen. “Who is it?”
Steve took a deep breath and followed his daughter down the hall. “It’s me, Mom. I’m home.”
“About time, too,” his mother said.
Eugenia Burke was one of those Southern women who would look the same at seventy as she did at fifty-five, her body kept toned by exercise and her mind kept sharp by an interest in everything and everybody. As far back as Steve could remember, her hair was sleek and dark, her complexion moisturized, and her toenail polish pink. The death of Steve’s father five years ago had hit her hard, but her life since then had settled into a routine of book club, Bible study, and volunteer work at the hospital.
At the time, Steve had figured Eugenia was filling the void left by her husband’s death. Now he knew some chasms could never be filled. Eugenia had simply stepped back from the edge.
She slid a plate into the microwave and turned to face him. “I suppose it’s too much to hope you were out all night on a date.”
Steve crossed the sunlit kitchen to the coffeepot, refusing to rise to her bait. She knew where he’d been. He’d left a note. But he and Gabby had barely moved in when Mom took it into her head it was time he started dating agin, and now she never lost an opportunity to remind him he wasn’t getting any younger and there were plenty of nice girls in Stokesville. “I was out on a call.”
Eugenia nodded, momentarily distracted from her campaign to mend his broken heart and secure more grandchildren. “Helen Stokes. Bless her heart.”
Steve raised his eyebrows, arrested in the act of pouring. “How did you hear about that?”
“Judith Griggs—you remember Judith, from the book club?—lives right down the street from the Stokes place. She saw the lights last night, and then the yellow tape this morning. She went over with a pan of her monkey bread, because that Paul Ellis is supposed to speak to the book club next month, and she was afraid maybe something had happened to him. But it was Helen.” Eugenia took a plate of French toast and bacon out of the microwave and set it on the counter in front of Steve. “So, what happened?”
Steve looked down at the plate and then up at his mother. “Attempting to bribe a law enforcement officer, Ma?” he asked dryly.
“Certainly not,” Eugenia said, blushing.
“Good.” All he wanted was hot coffee, a cold shower, and a couple of extra strength Tylenol. But he went through the motions. You had to go through the motions. He dumped syrup over his plate. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Is somebody dead?” Gabrielle asked.
Shit.
If he’d had any appetite, that would have killed it.
If he’d had any appetite, that would have killed it.
“A neighbor lady, honey,” his mother replied. “Nobody you know.”
Gabrielle’s dark gaze fixed on her father’s face. “Was she sick?”
Teresa had been sick. Ovarian cancer. Two short months, while Steve begged and threatened and cajoled and raged, and then she died.
“Not sick,” he said.
“An accident?” Eugenia asked.
“Looks like it.”
It looked like . . . trouble.
Steve had no witness, no weapon, no visible bloodstains, nothing to suggest homicide. Only a prickling under his skin, like a numb leg twitching to painful life, and a memory of skinny Bailey Wells with her arms around Paul Ellis.
Something stirred in Steve’s belly. Anger, maybe.
He scowled into his cup. He wasn’t emotionally involved. He didn’t want to be emotionally involved.
Compartmentalize. Depersonalize. Detach.
Compartmentalize. Depersonalize. Detach.
Eugenia ran water over the frying pan in the sink. “Dotty’s going to want Bailey out of there now, you mark my words.”
Steve set down his mug. There was a daughter in Atlanta who needed to be notified—Regan. And an estranged son, Richard, in Chicago. “Who’s Dotty?”
“Dorothy Wells. Her daughter Bailey works for Helen’s husband.”
Well, hell.
“She told me she was from New York,” Steve said slowly.
“She may be. But her family’s right here in Stokesville.”
“Why don’t I remember her?”
“She’s a whole lot younger than you,” Eugenia said frankly. “Ten years at least. I’ll bet you remember her sister, though. Leann Wells?”
“Nope.”
“Beautiful girl,” his mother said. “But she’s married now. To Bryce Edwards. He sells insurance, I think.”
He let her talk. He needed to know his territory, to re-learn the fabric of town life so he could see the patterns and the pieces out of place. You never knew when some tidbit dropped in friendly conversation, in the checkout line or over coffee, could become the connecting thread in a crime.
Eugenia glanced over her shoulder. “So you talked to her? Bailey?”
He remembered Bailey’s thin, pale face, her shock-dilated pupils, her unnatural composure. Her hands on the back of Ellis’s shirt. He hadn’t missed her initial stiffness when her boss grabbed her . . . or her awkward softening. He just didn’t know what to make of it yet.
“She was at the scene. Of course I talked to her.”
“How is she taking it?”
“I’d say pretty well.” He watched Eugenia dry her hands on a towel, his mind turning over. “So, Dorothy Wells doesn’t approve of her daughter’s living arrangements?”
“Steven Burke.” Eugenia pursed her mouth. “Are you attempting to pump your own mama for information?”
He lifted his eyebrows. The question was payback, he knew, for his earlier crack about bribing him with breakfast. “What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, what
are
you talking about?” Gabrielle asked from beside him.
are
you talking about?” Gabrielle asked from beside him.
She was growing, he realized with a pang, pierced ears, ragged nails and all. Her head was level with his shoulder.
He put an arm around her. “Nothing important. What are you up to today?”
Her shoulders hunched, dislodging his arm. “I don’t know.”
He watched her slide away along the counter. “You want to go to the movies, invite a friend?”
“I don’t have any friends here,” she said. Not sulky, but with the exaggerated patience she’d adopted recently.
Eugenia turned away, busying herself arranging the towel over the bar on the oven door. Letting him deal with it.
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