Maternal Instinct (20 page)

"Unless they were friends or had met in another capacity."

"Ah." Her tone was dry. "So are you asking whether I heard Jerome cry, 'Jack! Do you want to play golf next week? Wait! Why do you have a gun?' right before the shot?"

Nell smiled politely. "I'm asking what you did hear. And how well you knew Ryman."

"I had barricaded my office door with the filing cabinet that stood beside it, and I'm afraid I heard very little. Fear must have lent me strength, because it took me some doing to get it pulled aside when you police arrived."

Nell nodded; Margaret Bissell wasn't the only worker to knock over furniture to prevent an office door being opened. A few had pushed aside ceiling tiles and climbed up to huddle in breathless darkness until police coaxed them down, while the majority hid under desks or in closets, where Gann would easily have found them.

She led Margaret through the huddle in the hall, noting a quiver of some emotion when she agreed that she'd seen Ryman sneer at the panic and return to his office with a loudly voiced intention "to get some work done."

"Since several of us are currently competing for a promotion, I saw it as a declaration of superiority." Her creamy foundation cracked slightly as her mouth twisted. "Classic Jerome."

"You've known him long?"

"I've been at Greater Northwest for eight years now." Her voice was tight. "He was already here."

Had they been competing ever since? Or, given that they were about the same age and Margaret Bissell was an attractive woman, had they hooked up at one time? Nell couldn't ask, given that she and Hugh were supposed to be probing the disappearance of a gun, not a murder by acquaintance. But she could wonder, and make a mental note to ask others.

In fact, she was thrilled to wonder, and to be back on the job. Anything was better than thinking about her queasy stomach, her approaching nuptials, and her teenage daughter, no doubt again spending the day with her ardent, blue-haired boyfriend.

Ironic, though, that if Jack Gann had never gone off his rocker and decided to take the lives of everyone he blamed for his misfortunes,
she
would never have gotten pregnant.

"Thank you, Ms. Bissell," she said, rising. "I hope we can leave you all in peace soon."

The dark-haired woman inclined her head. "I hope I don't offend you by saying that we hope the same." She rose without hurrying.

Nell watched her walk across the lobby. Her spike heels were one of the small contradictions that added up to Margaret Bissell, a woman who intended to compete successfully with men and rise at Greater Northwest, who hid emotion well, yet who chose not to deny her femininity.

She wasn't alone in giving away how much she had disliked Jerome Ryman, and yet here Nell suspected depths to that dislike beyond the petty.

Margaret Bissell, Nell believed, had the guts to seize the moment. But would she have been carrying a gun? And why would she have hated Jerome Ryman enough to murder him?

Chapter 9

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H
ugh almost enjoyed
seeing Nell being shy. He'd have enjoyed it more if he hadn't been so anxious for her to be accepted by his family.

The feeling annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of a teenager's angst. He was marrying Nell because it was the right thing to do, not because he was madly in love. It wasn't like she was a fake blond hooker. She'd fit in eventually.

Easily said, but nonetheless he wanted his whole family to fall on him afterward with exclamations of delight because he'd chosen such a perfect woman. And, by God, he wanted them to make
her
feel as if they loved her at first sight.

He had picked up both her and Kim for Sunday dinner at Connor's. His brother and Mariah had bought a house only a few blocks from John's in Old Town, a two-story built in 1911 with the spare lines of a farmhouse, a picket fence and slanting ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms. The clapboards were now painted a deep blue-green with trim in rose, a peculiar combination that somehow worked. In the two years they'd owned the house, Connor and Mariah had done miracles, transforming it from tiny apartments carved out of the floor plan back in the fifties to a warm family home with a formal herb garden out front and honeysuckle climbing the porch rails.

Nell's rigid silence in the car relaxed at the rich scent of the honeysuckle in bloom. She sighed with deep pleasure on her way up to the front door. "I like your brother already."

"John's house is an old one, too. You remodeled yours all by yourself? Hell, you'll have plenty to talk about."

Kim clung to her mother when they joined the crowd inside.

Hugh introduced Nell and Kim all around, watching as Nell murmured polite nothings and her sixteen-year-old gave stiff nods. Kim knew Mariah by sight, since she was an English teacher at the high school, but hadn't yet had a class with her, they established. His family behaved well, he had to concede; they gave Nell the once-over, but surreptitiously, and Natalie, Mariah and his mother swept her and Kim up and carried them off to the kitchen once the introductions were done. Twelve-year-old
Maddie
gazed awe-struck at the teenager, but didn't have the nerve to be her usual mouthy self.
Zofie
, less inhibited, trailed into the kitchen right on their heels, asking a barrage of questions in her piercing voice.

"How old are you? Do you want to see my room? We could play video games or something, if you want. Did your mom let you pierce your belly button, or did you sneak off to do it?"

Connor gave Hugh a rueful grin. "That's my
Zofie
."

Hugh nodded after them. "
Maddie
, why don't you go rescue Kim?"

"Me?" She looked around elaborately, as if he must be talking to someone else.

"You're a teenager. Go give her a break."

She flushed with pleasure at being upgraded in age and strolled off toward the kitchen as if she just happened to be wandering that way. Heck, they'd all started school last week; they'd find something to talk about.

"I wonder what they're talking about."

Hugh nodded toward the chatter of women's voices. Connor shook his head. "Maybe
we
should go rescue Nell."

"She can take care of herself."

Could she? he wondered. Her own family seemed to consist solely of a mother she didn't often see and the rebellious daughter. He had no idea whether Nell had a wide circle of friends that stood in as a surrogate family. He doubted it. She struck him as a woman so used to taking care of herself, she wouldn't admit when drowning that she needed a hand to pull her out. If not for Kim, she would never have agreed to marry him.

Which left him wondering what kind of foundation this marriage would have once Kim had graduated from high school and headed off into the wide world. That gave him two years to build something more solid, if he really wanted this to work.

He frowned into space, momentarily unaware of his brothers.
If
he wanted his marriage to work? Damn sure he did. He wasn't used to failure.

He didn't see Nell again until the women began to serve dinner. By that time she was laughing at something Mariah said, her cheeks pink from the warmth of the kitchen or the laughter, her eyes sparkling. With her hair loose on her shoulders and her near-translucent skin brightened with color, she was pretty enough to catch any man's eyes. With that tall, thin body, she had the leggy grace of a teenager, but a few curves that were way more grown-up than any sixteen-year-
old's
. He found he was looking forward to exploring Nell's slender body when he wasn't fogged with booze. He was getting tired of relying on that memory.

Hugh stood unnoticed beside a buffet, watching the bustle of parents settling children, heaping bowls of food being carried to the table, and good-natured ribbing. It seemed he was invisible even to his mother, who paused and looked over the table with an assessing eye. She murmured something to Nell, who nodded and went back to the kitchen. So—Mom had been civil, at least.

He didn't know why he'd expected anything else. The hard shell that crystallized around his heart when he looked at his mother didn't prevent him from being fair. She would never be anything less than welcoming when one of her sons brought home a wife. Hell, maybe Mom would adore Nell, since she was a cop, too. Maybe she'd become a substitute for Connor, who had deserted the force for private practice as a counselor specializing in abused children.

He managed to avoid his mother entirely. A couple of times she appeared to be maneuvering her way toward him, and he found ways to escape the room or let the kids draw him into games. He, ten-year-old Evan, Connor and John cleaned the kitchen, John hampered by a toddler riding his shoulders.

A couple of times Hugh found his hands stilling in the dishwater as he watched his brother. A year from now, he'd have a baby; in another year, that son or daughter would be clutching his hair, giggling with glee and drumming heels in Daddy's chest. The idea gave him a peculiar squeeze of pleasure. Or maybe it was terror, he wasn't sure.

"Thinking about having your own?" Connor asked in a low voice.

"Um?" Jolted, Hugh glanced at his brother. "Oh. Yeah. I guess I was."

"Scared out of your wits?"

Hugh rinsed a pot and put it in the drainer. "No. Yeah. Oh, hell." He squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't know."

Connor's laugh was a comfortable rumble. "That's what becoming a daddy feels like. Until it actually happens."

"And then?" Hugh asked with genuine curiosity.

"Pure exhilaration. You fall in love. You know your life and priorities will never be the same again, and you don't want 'em to be."

"You and Mariah planned to have another child. It wasn't an accident."

Connor shook his head. "Won't make any difference. I guarantee it. You'll be head over heels." He gave his brother a sly look, "If you're not already."

Hugh's jaw clenched. "You know why we're getting married."

"I know when a man can't take his eyes off a woman."

"I was worried about her today."

"Uh-huh." His brother grinned. "And wishing you were somewhere else, without any company."

Evan appeared at his uncle's side. "We're not company! Why would Uncle Hugh not want us here?"

"Because he's in love," his father said matter-of-factly, bouncing baby Grace on his shoulders as he reached for the plastic top to cover a bowl. "People in love like to be alone."

"I get to come to the wedding, right?" Evan asked. His thin face had a momentary look of anxiety that came more often than it should. John's first wife's protracted illness and Ivy's critical style of surrogate parenting had done some damage. Hugh hated to see that expression.

"Darn straight," he said. "If you were old enough to sign the certificate, you'd be my best man. As it is, I'm going to have to flip to see whether it'll be John or Connor."

"We could fight for it," John suggested.

Connor snapped a dish towel hard enough to have him jumping back. "Any time!"

"Bloodshed might upset the women and children," Hugh said with a grin. "Here. I have a nickel. Evan, do you want to do the honors?"

Evan took the coin solemnly. "Who wants to be heads?" he asked the two men.

"Being the oldest, I figure I'm entitled," his dad drawled.

They argued for a minute before Connor gave in with relative grace. Then Evan spun the nickel into the air with a deftness that showed practice, snatched it up, and slapped it onto his arm. "Tails," he declared in obvious disappointment.

John clapped his shoulder. "That's okay. I was best man at Connor's wedding. Seems only fair this way."

"But we are all invited?" Evan asked again.

Hugh threw an arm around his nephew's thin shoulders. "I'd be hurt if you didn't come."

"Oh." The boy's cheeks flushed with pleasure. "Okay."

"Let's go find Nell and Kim. They should be ready to beg for rescue."

Evan fetched Kim from
Maddie's
bedroom, where she'd apparently been the center of a rapt circle of kids of varying ages. In the living room, Nell looked faintly surprised to see Hugh, as if she'd forgotten who he was, and said, "Is it time to go?"