The Night Before (18 page)

Morrisette just about came out of her chair. “What would you know about rocket science?”

“Are we finished? I really do have an appointment. And just so you know, I’m moving. This place makes me edgy. Just thinking about Josh being . . . slaughtered over there—” She hitched her head toward the den and nervously scratched at her neck. “It’s too much for me.”

“So you don’t think he committed suicide?” Reed asked again though he’d already made that call himself. Bandeaux had been murdered.

“Josh? Are you kidding? He had too much to live for. Too much money to make, too much booze to drink and too many women to sleep with.” She must’ve seen Morrisette stiffen because Naomi looked straight at her as she said, “ ‘For the record,’ I know Josh . . . has had a few indiscretions in the past year or so. It’s not as if he really cheated on me. We were broken up at the time.” She lifted a slim shoulder. “That was going to end, once we were married.”

“Was it?” Morrisette asked. “How do you know?”

“Because he promised me. He was nuts about me.”

“Or just plain nuts,” Morrisette said under her breath. Reed shot her a warning glare.

“Look, I really have to go. Is there anything else?”

“How about the names of the women he slept with, if you know them.”

“I don’t. They were all just cheap one-night stands.”

Morrisette wasn’t convinced. “Well, think real hard, would you? Sometimes a woman scorned is the best suspect.”

“Then you’ve got your killer, don’t you? No one could be any more scorned than Caitlyn. It’s pathetic really. Kind of sad.”

“You really think she was capable of killing Josh?” Reed asked.

“I don’t know what she’s capable of. But I think she’s just off enough that she might, okay? And don’t ask me about proof, cuz I don’t have any, but she’s . . . freaky.”

Naomi adjusted her purse strap as Reed stood and pocketed his notes. “If you think of anything else”—he handed Naomi his business card—“call me.”

With a don’t-hold-your-breath smile, she dropped the card into her purse.

Morrisette snapped off her recorder and they all walked outside. The afternoon was even hotter than before. Steamy. The air so thick it clung to your skin. Reed was already sweating as he climbed behind the wheel. Naomi took the time to lock the house, then slid behind the wheel of her Jag. She flipped a pair of sunglasses over her eyes, started the sleek car, and took off in a roar, barely braking as she entered the street. Her tires actually chirped at the corner and she had to be ten miles over the speed limit within a block.

“Arrogant bitch.” Morrisette stared after the rapidly fleeing car. “And don’t even say it, okay? I get one free swear word a day and this is it. What’s she doing? Forty? Fifty in a twenty-five? It’s almost as if she’s begging for us to pull her over, a real in-your-lousy-cop-face attitude.”

“That’s something coming from you, Andretti.”

Reed put the cruiser into gear and pulled away from the shady curb.

“I’m not just talkin’ about her driving. It was her entire holier-than-thou, or at least smarter-than-thou attitude. It sucked.”

“That it did,” Reed admitted as he headed out of town.

“I’d love to bring her down a notch or two.”

“Wouldn’t we all, but before that you’d better level with me about Bandeaux. If you were involved with him, I need to know it and toss you off this case. We can’t taint it. Can’t give a defense attorney any reason to throw this case out.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, popping her gum as she found her lighter. “I told you I wasn’t involved with him, not personally.”

“And if I find out differently?”

“You won’t.”

“I hope you’re not lying to me,” he said as he cut across town. “I assume you’re too good a cop for that.”

“You assume right.”

“I’d hate to have to tell the D.A. that we fucked up because one of the detectives on the case was involved with the deceased.”

“Just drive,” she muttered, lighting up and pushing her sunglasses over her eyes in one motion. “And quit hassling me. We’ll both live a lot longer.”

Caitlyn slid her car into the garage and told herself she could not, could
not
fall for her shrink. That was crazy. Nuts! Exactly the reasons she’d gone to him to begin with. She walked into the house and greeted Oscar, stooping down to pet him for a second before checking her messages and deleting them one by one. Not a peep from Kelly.

“The suddenly silent twin,” she muttered to herself as she started for the stairs and stopped in the foyer. Something felt wrong . . . a little off. A scent. Someone’s perfume?

Or was she imagining it?

On edge and telling herself that she was losing her grip, she walked up the stairs and into the den. Everything was as it should be . . . or was it? She always pushed her computer mouse to the side of her monitor and today it was in front, a few inches out of place.

Or had she, distracted these past few days, left it where it was?

“Odd,” she whispered and clicked on her e-mail.

At last a message from Kelly.

Caitlyn sat in the desk chair and opened the letter. It was short.

That was it. The entire message. Offend? Since when did Kelly worry about offending anyone? Caitlyn clicked off the computer, set the mouse back in its place and told herself that she was just tired; she’d forgotten where she’d put the damned mouse after the last time she used the computer.

No one had been in her house.

She was almost certain of it.

Almost.

“Caitlyn! Caitlyn Bandeaux!”

Kelly inwardly cringed as she handed the girl behind the counter two bucks and accepted her cup off iced coffee. “Keep the change.” Maybe the woman who had confused her with Caitlyn, whoever she was, would realize her mistake and leave her be.

No such luck.

“Remember me?”

Kelly glanced over her shoulder. The answer was a definite no. “I’m sorry.”

“Nikki Gillette.” The woman, around thirty with wild strawberry-blond hair, sharp features, and confidence oozing from her, extended her hand. “With the
Savannah Sentinel.
I called you once, remember? Asked for an exclusive. I’d really love to talk to you.”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” Kelly said. She was wearing sunglasses and her hair was pulled away from her face. She didn’t bother to smile but, carrying her coffee, headed for the front door.

“But if I could have just a few moments of your time.” The woman was trailing after her.

“I told you I’m not Caitlyn Bandeaux.” Using her hip, she pushed open the glass door and, from the corner of her eye, caught the look of disbelief on Nikki Gillette’s face.

“You’re not? Wait a minute. But . . .”

“I said, ‘I’m not.’ ”

“You’ve got to be related.” She paused, her eyebrows drawing together as if she was puzzled. “You know, you look enough like her to be her twin.”

Kelly offered a smile that was meant to convey
no shit, Sherlock.
“You must be an
investigative reporter.
Look, I
am
Caitlyn’s sister and she’s going through a really rough time right now, so do everyone a favor and just back off, okay? Maybe when she’s . . . out of mourning or whatever she’s going through, she might talk to you. I wouldn’t, but she might.”

“Listen, I’d love to talk to you or someone in the family.”

Kelly sent her a look that said more clearly than words,
drop dead,
and kept walking. The pushy reporter started after her, and Kelly ducked around a corner, through a back alley and into the next street. Quickly she slipped into a shop displaying “collectibles,” where she caught a hard, unhappy glare from a salesclerk with blue cotton-candy hair and lips that were painted far beyond their natural line. The woman cleared her throat and glanced at the cup in Kelly’s hands just as she realized drinks weren’t allowed in the store. The persnickety clerk couldn’t do much about Kelly’s breaking one of the store’s golden rules as she was involved with another customer and a discussion of the value of some knock-off of the Bird Girl statue that Kelly figured was worth less than half of what it was marked. Nonetheless, Blue Hair was giving Kelly the eagle eye. As if she might try to shoplift some of this touristy stuff.
Great. Just . . . great.
With one eye on the front display window where she could view the sidewalk and street, Kelly pretended to show some interest in a faux antique telephone and an Elvis clock complete with swiveling hips. Blue Hair negotiated the deal and was ringing up her sale.

Kelly made her move while the clerk was dealing with the credit card transaction. “Excuse me, do you have a rest room?”

The clerk’s first inclination was to snap a quick, “No.” It was evident in her eyes, but she didn’t want to risk an argument in front of her customer, or to be confused in the middle of the sale. “Just a minute.”

“Don’t bother yourself. I’ll find it,” Kelly said.

“Wait a second. It’s not for public use—”

Kelly had already dashed through a door near the back of the store that led through the storage room. Just to the side of the rest-room door, tucked between shelves loaded with boxes of merchandise, she discovered the back door. In a second she was outside, past a small loading zone and across the square.

This was ridiculous. Running from reporters. Because she looked so damned much like her twin.

As a kid she’d found it fun to play pranks on people who didn’t know them well, pretending to be Caitlyn. As a teenager she’d hated being confused with her identical sister. As an adult it was a just a pain in the butt. A big pain in the butt. Especially since Caitlyn was such a wimp. And a fool. Kelly didn’t know which was worse.

She lit a cigarette and sipped from her drink as she headed back to the car. What the hell was she going to do about Caitlyn? Just wait for her sister to be arrested? Or until Caitie-Did opened her mouth to the police? Because she would. Kelly knew it, could sense that Caitlyn was cracking up again. Oh, sure, she was going through the motions, seeing a shrink, probably even on her way to taking antidepressants, or tranquilizers or some other mind-numbing drug. How about Valium? Or Prozac? Or a frontal lobotomy?

Jesus.

She took a drag on her cigarette and tried to think. She didn’t have time for Caitlyn to fall apart. She had her own life to live. Things to do. Some with her twin, some alone. But first things first. She had to make sure that she wouldn’t run into the damned reporter, or a policeman or an acquaintance of Caitlyn’s who couldn’t tell them apart. She just didn’t want to deal with all of that crap right now.

Carefully, she backtracked a bit.

It seemed that Nikki Gillette hadn’t managed to follow her, so she took a circuitous route back to the car, stubbed out her cigarette on the street and climbed inside. The leather interior was hot against the back of her legs, the steering wheel nearly burning her fingers. Quickly she twisted on the ignition and turned the air-conditioning up full blast while opening the sun roof, hoping to push the hot air outside. A woman pushing a stroller passed by on the street, and Kelly felt a tug on her heart. It seemed she’d never have a child of her own. It just wasn’t in the cards.

Before you could have a child, you needed a man, and Kelly wasn’t in the market for one of those. She’d been through her share of heartaches, and most of the men she knew were losers. Take Josh Bandeaux.
May he rest in peace
. What a joke. There was no rest for the likes of her dead brother-in-law. A bastard if one had ever walked the earth. He’d even had the gall to come on to her. To
her.
His wife’s twin sister, for God’s sake. She’d put him in his place, of course, but she had the creepy feeling that he’d wanted not only to get her into bed, but to have Caitlyn there waiting for them. As if either she or Caitlyn would be interested in a threesome. What kind of sick male fantasy was that? Well, forget it!

She managed to put the car in gear and ease into the afternoon traffic. Damn that Caitlyn anyway. Had she always been weird? Well, maybe a little bit. But things had gone from bad to worse after the boating accident. Kelly’s jaw tightened at the memory. An explosion in the motor, Caitlyn’s terrified screams, the boat collapsing in on itself and then all that water. Long, dark stretches of water.

Her throat suddenly tight, she slowed for a red light.

That’s when everything had really gone to hell.

Adam was missing something. Something vital. And he was running out of time. He sat in the desk chair long after Caitlyn had left the office and stared at the corner of the couch where she’d sat. Sometimes frail, other times remarkably strong, she bared her soul to him and he had to fight the oppressive feeling that he was using her unjustly, that she was leaning on him, depending on him, trusting him, not suspecting that his motives were far from pure.

“Hell,” he muttered.

He needed to speed things up.

His sessions with Caitlyn had gone well enough, but he hadn’t uncovered anything that he was hoping for. In fact he was beginning to think he was treading in waters that were rapidly deepening and darkening. Emotionally turbulent waters. Waters that could easily drown a man. He glanced at his wall of credentials and winced.

In this case, yes. And yet . . . he remembered her huddled on the couch, her arms drawn around her knees as she looked at the floor, studying the patterns of the carpet as she explained about her family. There was more to learn about her, so much more. She was complex and compelling and contradictory.

He turned in the chair and stared at Rebecca’s computer. There were no backup disks with Caitlyn’s name on them. Nonetheless, Adam had searched through them all. And nothing on the hard drive. At least nothing he could find. But there was a way to retrieve deleted files; he’d heard that from one of his computer-nerd friends. Always a way to get old information, sometimes even if the hard drive crashed. So all he needed now was some help. He wondered vaguely if there was a book entitled
Computer Hacking For Dummies.
If so, he needed a copy.

He glanced back at her untouched coffee cup and remembered her holding it as if for warmth. In a room where the temperature was pushing eighty. He suspected she wanted to talk about her husband. All the preliminary stuff about her family was important, to him, as a psychologist, and surely if he wanted to treat her, but she really wanted to talk about Josh Bandeaux, her marriage to him and his death . . . but first, Adam thought, to seem legitimate and to balm his conscience a bit, they had to lay the groundwork.

So she was coming back tomorrow. He tented his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles. He’d encouraged the appointment. He needed to move things along faster.

But there was another reason as well, one that he hated to admit to himself, one that he didn’t want to face. Caitlyn was a troubled and troubling woman. The simple truth was that he wanted to see her again and not necessarily as a psychologist to a patient, but more in the line of a man to a woman.

Which was totally out of line.

Dangerous to them both.

If he were to get involved with her—with a patient—it could cost him his license.

And if she were to get involved with him—with someone she trusted—it could cost her everything.

 

 

The phone jangled.

Sugar, dusting the television, stuffed her rag into a back pocket and snagged the receiver before the third ring. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

Again no answer. She thought about those incessant telemarketers trying to sell her everything from new telephone service to dildos. “Listen, I’m hanging up now!” She had another thought. Maybe it was some pervert who was in the club last night and had watched her dance. She’d had it. “Drop dead!” she ordered.

“You drop dead,” someone whispered on the other end.

Her blood turned to ice. She slammed the receiver down. “Shit.” She glared at the phone. Who had found her? She paid good money to have her number unlisted, but that didn’t keep the telephone sales people from finding her. Or the sickos. “Shit.” Then there was the weird call she’d gotten when no one had answered, but she’d thought she’d heard “Die, bitch,” just before Caesarina had come into the house injured. Her skin crawled. Were they related?

The front door opened, then slapped closed.

Sugar nearly jumped out of her skin.

Cricket, looking as if she’d gone to hell and back twice in the last twenty-four hours, wandered in, dropping her backpack near the dining-room table.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sugar demanded, still unnerved.

Caesarina, thumping her tail from her hiding spot under the kitchen table, climbed to her feet. She stretched and yawned, then ambled over for Cricket to scratch her ears.

“Jesus! What happened to her?” she asked, looking at the dog’s shaved neck and the stitched cuts. Yellow antiseptic and dried blood stained Caesarina’s skin. “Did she lose a fight with a grizzly?”

“Don’t know. It was weird. I let her out in the morning and she came back all cut up and sniffing and snorting and scared as hell, which you know, isn’t like Caesarina. I ran her to the emergency vet, who claimed she was lucky . . . I thought maybe she’d been in a fight with a possum or a raccoon, but the vet thought the cuts looked like they’d come from some kind of blade, glared at me like I enjoyed spending my early mornings slicing and dicing my dog. She thought she’d gotten into something toxic, that she was acting like she’d gotten a snort of something she was allergic to or something. Oh, hell, the vet didn’t know.”

“They’re all quacks down there,” Cricket said, patting the dog’s head.

“Anyway, she’s alive and, even though she looks like hell, in pretty good shape.” Still, it was weird. The phone call, the attack on her dog . . . Sugar was unnerved. “So,” she said, turning back to the subject Cricket was avoiding. “Where were you?”

“What’s it to you?” Cricket’s hair was in dire need of a brush, her makeup was all but worn off and her peasant blouse had a couple of stains on it. The edge of a tattoo peeked from above the waistband of hip-hugging jeans that needed to come face-to-face with a scoop or two of Tide. When she stretched, a belly-button ring glittered against her flat abdomen.