Killing Her Softly (16 page)

By the time he reached his home away from home, he had cooled off considerably and was thinking clearly. There was no need to rip into either Marcy or Aaron, but they both needed to be aware that in the future, he wouldn't tolerate such behavior.

When he unlocked the front door, he halfway expected Marcy to meet him as she often did. Instead the living room was empty and no one was there to greet him. Wondering if all three of them had gone out, he walked across the tile-floored foyer and toward the hallway. That's when he heard voices coming from the kitchen, so he veered left and swung open the kitchen door.

Jace
was emptying the dishwasher and putting away dishes. Perched on a bar stool, Aaron hunched over the counter working on a crossword puzzle. Marcy was busy stirring what smelled like spaghetti sauce in a pan on the stove.

Jace
was the first one who noticed Quinn, who stood in the doorway studying the threesome. "Hey, Quinn, I thought you wouldn't be back this soon. Did you finish up with that private detective?"

"Yeah, we're through for now," Quinn said.

Marcy turned the temperature down on the stove eye, laid the wooden spoon on a folded paper towel and studied Quinn for a moment. "What's wrong? You're glaring at me."

"Was I?" Quinn pulled out the second bar stool and sat down beside Aaron. "Maybe it's your imagination. Or perhaps your guilty conscience."

Marcy flushed. Aaron looked up from the crossword puzzle. "What's going on? Why should Marcy have a guilty conscience?"

"I had a very interesting conversation with Griffin Powell. Would you believe that he knows more about my employees than I do?"

"I know I should have told you myself," Marcy said a plea for understanding in her voice and in her eyes. "But I didn't want to cause trouble between you and Aaron. We're like a family and I was afraid that if you knew what he'd done, you would be hurt and angry and . . ."

Aaron slid off the bar stool and inched away from Quinn, then grabbed Marcy's arm and shook her. "What are you talking about? Who did you tell what about me?"

Marcy jerked free of Aaron's hold and looked back and forth from Quinn to Aaron. "I never would have said anything, but when Mr. Powell told me that it was important for the police to be aware of all the men Lulu
Vanderley
had been with for the past two months—"

"Hellfire, Marcy, you didn't!" Aaron stomped across the floor, shaking his head as he clenched and unclenched his hands. "You swore to me you'd never tell." He paused looked at Quinn and said "Hey, she came after me. I swear. You know I'd never betray you. I tried to get away from her, but she just wouldn't take no for an answer. God man, I'm sorry. I—"

"Aaron, what did you do?"
Jace
asked a worried frown marring his handsome young features.

Quinn slid off the bar stool, reached out and clamped his hand down on Aaron's shoulder. "I don't care that you fucked Lulu. Or knowing Lulu the way I did I should probably say I don't care that she fucked you. But the police are going to care that you had sex with her because Lulu was pregnant. Six weeks pregnant."

"Oh, God!"
Jace's
face went white as a sheet. He nervously fiddled with his glasses, readjusting them farther up his nose.

"You're shitting me," Aaron said. "Lulu was pregnant?"

"The baby she was carrying could have been fathered by any man she had sex with five or six weeks ago," Quinn told him. "Me, Randall Miller and you and God knows who else. The police think that maybe whoever fathered her child killed her. And right now they're laying odds I'm the daddy."

"Don't you see, that's why I told Mr. Powell about Aaron being with her six weeks ago," Marcy said. "So the police would know somebody else might have fathered her child. When Mr. Powell said she'd been pregnant—"

A barfing sound came from the sink area. Quinn, Marcy and Aaron turned to see
Jace
throwing up.

"Are you okay?" Marcy asked as she rushed to
Jace
and rubbed his back.

Jace
lifted his head tore off a paper towel from the spindle rack and wiped his mouth. "Yeah, I'm okay. It must have been that burger I ate for lunch." He turned on the faucets and washed out the sink, then tossed the paper towel into the garbage.

"Why don't you go lie down for a while," Quinn said. "Everything is okay here. Nobody's mad at anybody."

"I—I think I'll go out, maybe ride around and get some fresh air." He looked at Marcy. "Mind if I take the rental car?"

"Go ahead" she told him. "I've been thinking about renting a second vehicle, maybe even one for each of us. Is that all right with you, Quinn?"

"Sure, whatever you think y'all will need while we're here," Quinn said.

"I'll probably call the rental place and make arrangements for an SUV of some kind. It'll be good for picking up supplies and all."

After removing his glasses and wiping them off with the edge of his sweater,
Jace
grabbed the car keys from the counter, then glanced at Aaron and said "You shouldn't have done it. Lulu
Vanderley
might have been a whore, but you had no right to—She belonged to Quinn."
Jace
ran out of the room, his glasses clutched in one hand.

"Poor
Jace
, he's so high-strung and emotional," Marcy said.

"He'll be okay." Aaron didn't make eye contact with anyone else in the room. "And he was right about my screwing
around with Lulu. Quinn, I'm sorry. I tried to steer clear
of
her but a part of me wondered what it would be like to get it on with one of your women."

"You
men are all alike," Marcy shouted. "All you ever think about—no, scratch that. Y'all don't think. At least not with your brain."

"Okay, now that everybody has had their say, let's put this whole thing into the proper perspective and move on." Quinn patted Aaron on the back and held out his hand to Marcy. When she came to him, he put his arm around both her and Aaron. "No more fighting among ourselves. We're a team. Let's act like one. Okay?"

They both replied in unison, "Okay."

"Marcy, go rent yourself an SUV and, Aaron, if you need a vehicle—"

"I
don
't." He shook his head.
"
Jace
and I can share the car."

"If you change your mind, rent whatever you want." "Yeah, sure."

"I've got a phone call to make and then I'm going out again," Quinn told them. ""Don't wait on me for supper tonight."

Thinking
it
might be safe now to leave Marcy and Aaron alone, Quinn walked
out
of
the
kitchen and into the living room. After removing
his
cell phone from his pocket, he sat down
and
dialed Kendall's office number again.

Marcy came out
of
the kitchen, a frosty mug in her hand. She set it on a granite coaster atop the coffee table, offered Quinn a halfhearted smile and disappeared down the hall
to
ward the bedrooms. Quinn eyed the iced tea. Wherever they were, Marcy always made certain she kept a pitcher
of
unsweetened tea made for him. Neither she nor the guys would touch the stuff, preferring traditional sweet tea. And Marcy knew he liked his tea, milk and most beverages served in a frosted glass, so she always kept glasses in the freezer.
 
Despite their occasional squabbles, Quinn's personal en
tourage worked well together as a general rule and made day-to-day living much easier for him.

"Yes, this is Quinn Cortez," he said to the receptionist at Hamilton,
Jeffreys
, Lloyd and Wells. "May I speak to Kendall Wells, please."

"Just a moment."

Quinn lifted the tea and took several sips. He frowned. The tea tasted a little bitter. Maybe Marcy had changed brands.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cortez, Ms. Wells isn't here," her secretary told him. "She left early to have drinks with a client and then she was going home. You can probably reach her there in about half an hour or so."

"Okay, thanks." Quinn returned his cell phone to his pocket, downed two-thirds of the glass of tea, then got up and called to Marcy and Aaron. "I'm leaving now. You two behave yourselves, especially around
Jace
."

After getting into his Porsche, Quinn didn't immediately start the engine. He sat there for a few minutes trying to decide whether or not he should try to talk to Annabelle before he drove over to Kendall's. Probably not. But he could stop by a florist shop and order her some flowers. A dozen red roses. No, not red roses for Annabelle. He wanted to send her something else, not the standard red roses he'd sent to so many other women.

Yellow roses as golden as her hair? Or perhaps pink roses as soft and feminine as she was? Or even cream roses as alabaster as her complexion?

Why not a dozen of all three colors? Yeah, why not? Three dozen might be a little extravagant, but if his goal was to impress her with how sorry he was, maybe he should send six dozen.

Kendall entered the great room through the garage entrance, tossed her briefcase, purse and car keys on the counter and headed straight for her bedroom. She wanted to strip out of her suit, heels and pantyhose, take a quick shower and then prepare an easy microwave dinner. She should probably call Quinn later tonight and tell him what she'd done—having her secretary telephone Bob Reagan at the
Commercial Appeal
to reveal the true story about Lulu
Vanderley
. Quinn might be pissed, but on the other hand, he might agree that she'd made a wise decision. Either way, he had to know that she'd done what she thought was best for him.

After stripping, putting her suit in a bag to take to the cleaners and her underwear and pantyhose in the
handwash
laundry bag, Kendall turned on the faucets in the shower to allow the water to heat up. Just as she turned to the vanity and removed the lid from her jar of face cream, she thought she heard a noise. Had the sound come from inside or outside? She stood perfectly still, barely breathing, and listened. Quiet. Absolute quiet. Then she heard the clink of ice dropping from the machine in her refrigerator freezer into the plastic holding container. Breathing a sigh of relief because she'd figured out what the noise was so quickly, Kendall smeared her face with cold cream. Using a washcloth, she removed her makeup and rinsed out the cloth. Staring at herself in the mirror, she groaned. Although she was still a fairly good-looking woman, age was beginning to catch up with her. Tiny lines around her eyes and nose and mouth. Laugh lines. And there were several small age spots on her cheeks that could easily be mistaken for freckles, only Kendall's dark skin never freckled.

After taking a fresh washcloth from the stack on the vanity, she opened the shower door and stepped inside, sighing as the warm water peppered her naked body.

There was that noise again. Louder. And it wasn't the ice machine.

Stop being paranoid,
she told herself.
It's barely dark. Whatever you 're hearing is probably outside, one of your neighbors doing something noisy.

She should have turned on her alarm system again, but she never rearmed it until bedtime. She'd always felt perfectly save here in her own home.

Kendall lathered her hair and massaged her scalp.

There it was again. That noise. Her fingers, forked through her wet, soapy hair, then paused as she listened.

Were those footsteps she heard?

It
's
your imagination,
she told herself.

But she hurriedly rinsed her hair and bathed herself, then opened the shower door and listened, but heard nothing. She had a gun in her nightstand drawer. But she didn't keep it loaded. If someone was inside the house, could she get to the gun and load it before the intruder caught her?

There was no intruder. Houses creaked and groaned. Ice machines made noise. The sound of a neighbor walking on his deck next door might easily be mistaken for footsteps inside her house.