Body Heat (36 page)

Authors: Susan Fox

BOOK: Body Heat

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“Uh-huh,” the male officer said noncommittally. Then, “Tell me about Jesse Blue, and Ms. diFazio’s allegation that he attempted murder.”

Ms. diFazio is a nasty snoop.
Pressing her lips together to hold the words back, Maura unlocked her filing cabinet and handed over Jesse’s file. “This is what it says on paper.” She went on to tell him about Consuela’s situation. “You can speak to his lawyer, Barry Adamson. As for Jesse’s time here, he’s been skilled, conscientious, he puts in more than the required hours, and he really is great with the seniors. Ask them, they’ll tell you.”

“Uh-huh.” He glanced at the file, then up at her. “Ms. diFazio says you’re defending him because you’re having an affair with him.”

“What?” Her heart lodged in her throat and her mind raced. What did that nasty woman know? Nothing. She couldn’t. Should Maura admit it? It would make both her and Jesse look bad. It might not actually violate the terms of his community service, but she wasn’t positive. As for her, likely the Board would find out and she’d lose the promotion.

“You seem surprised,” Constable Singh commented.

“I am.” She shouldn’t lie to the police. Only an hour ago she’d vowed not to break the rules.

Okay, then she’d go by the letter of the law. The male officer had asked a question. Trying not to blush frantically, she repeated his words back, “No, I am not having an affair with Jesse Blue.” They’d had sex a couple of times, and now . . . now, he hated her, and maybe she deserved that hate. They’d been becoming friends, and now even that was gone. She was definitely not having an affair with him. It was the absolute truth. Surely Jesse would say the same thing, even if he was mad at her.

“But I have come to know him,” she went on, “during the week he’s been here, and I don’t believe he’s a thief.”

“Uh-huh.” Constable Meyer made a note.

That was so aggravating, that bland “uh-huh.”

“You say he came to your office after he finished work, to report in. Was that your routine?”

“Pretty much. Since he started work, I tried to be around when he finished.” She’d loved their talks, the growing friendship and intimacy. Trying not to flush, she said, “It’s my responsibility to record his hours and keep track of his progress.”

“So, he reported in. That took what, a couple minutes?”

“A bit longer.” She’d answered the question. She wouldn’t add that they’d had sex, but should she mention the repairs for seniors idea they’d discussed? It would make the two of them look awfully chummy, considering their relative positions and the fact that they’d only met a week ago.

“Then you both left. Together?”

“No. He left, and I tidied up a few things before leaving. His bike wasn’t in the parking lot when I went out.” No, it had been racing to her apartment.

“What did you do then?”

“Drove straight home, and didn’t leave until this morning, when Ming-mei called me about the robbery.” Again, she was telling the truth.

“Anyone to corroborate that you were home alone?”

She couldn’t tell them Jesse’d been there, not after denying they were having an affair. Avoiding a direct answer, she said, “I live alone, but what’s this about? You consider me a suspect? That’s ridiculous.”

“Ma’am, everyone’s a suspect. We’re gonna need your prints, compare to what we find on the jewelry box.”

“Fine.” They’d be printing Jesse, too. But she knew he was innocent.

Innocent people didn’t get convicted. Or at least they weren’t supposed to. But as Jesse had shown her, when he’d told her Consuela’s story, the justice system didn’t always work.

Jesse awoke with a pounding head and a mouth that tasted like camel dung. Not that he’d ever tasted camel dung, but it couldn’t be any worse than the inside of his mouth.

Dimly, he realized that the pounding wasn’t just in his head. Someone was knocking on his door.

Maura? Come to her senses?

Fat chance of that.

He hauled himself out of bed, wincing at the sunshine outside his window. Should’ve pulled the blinds when he came in at dawn, but he’d been too shit-faced to do anything but fall into bed. In yesterday’s grubby work clothes, he now realized.

Heading for the door, determined to silence that fucking hammering, he kicked something and his keys skittered across the floor. He froze for a moment. He hadn’t ridden home, had he? No, he vaguely recalled one of his pals flagging down a cab for him.

Hadn’t locked his door, though, he realized as he flung it open. “Would ya stop that damned—” He swallowed the last word at the sight of two cops, one male and one female.

“Jesse Blue?” the woman asked.

The distaste in her narrowed eyes told her he looked like crap, and a sexy smile wasn’t going to work on her. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“I’m Constable Meyer,” the guy said, “and this is Constable Singh. We need to ask you a few questions.”

Shit, what had he done last night? “About what?”

“It’s in connection with a robbery.”

“Huh? Who got robbed?” Or had he been robbed, with his door unlocked all morning? He glanced into the little kitchen, but everything looked normal.

“A couple who live at Cherry Lane. Mr. and Mrs. Trotter.”

“The Trotters?” He tried to make his hungover brain work. “Oh, hell.” He’d been in their apartment, alone. If something had gone missing . . . “I didn’t take anything.” He hadn’t even given in to the temptation to use their shower to clean up.

“We’re not saying you did. But you were in their apartment yesterday.”

“Yeah, fixing the pipes.”

“So let’s talk.”

“Do I need to call my lawyer?”

The two officers glanced at each other, then the woman, Singh, said, “It’s noon on a Sunday. I bet your lawyer has better things to do than sit around while we ask you a couple of questions. Of course, if you need him to look after you . . .”

A couple of questions. That didn’t sound so bad, and he knew he hadn’t stolen anything. He could handle this without bothering Barry Adamson—or running up another legal bill. “Nah.”

“Okay if we come in?” As Meyer asked the question, he stepped past Jesse into the kitchen.

The woman cop followed. “Mind if we take a look around?”

His sluggish brain processed that. “Whatever was stolen, I’m not the guy who took it.”

“So you don’t mind?”

Barry’d probably say they needed to get a search warrant, but that’d just make Jesse look suspicious. “Whatever. While you look, I could use a shower.”

He couldn’t think straight, not all grubby and sweaty, with a pounding head and camel-dung mouth. In the bathroom, he swallowed a few pills and drank a couple glasses of water, brushed his teeth, then soaped a day’s worth of sweat off his body in the shower, finishing off with cold water to jolt his brain to life.

Feeling marginally more human, he went into the bedroom. “Whoa,” he exclaimed on seeing Meyer, his hand inside Jesse’s underwear drawer.

“Got a problem?” the guy asked.

“Nah. Search away, you’re not going to find it. But toss me a pair of briefs.”

The cop chucked underwear in his direction. “You sound pretty sure we won’t find anything. Does that mean you stashed it somewhere?”

Jesse pulled on boxer-briefs, then clean jeans. “Means I never took it. What the hell is it, anyhow?”

“Pull on a shirt and we’ll talk.”

A few minutes later, the three of them sat at his small kitchen table, him on one side, the two cops across from him, both taking notes. They asked him about the flood at the Trotters’, and he went through the whole thing.

“What rooms did the dehumidifier guy go into?” Meyer asked.

“Just the front room. He delivered, Ms. Mahoney signed, then he left and I set up the machines.”

“When you left, did you lock the door?”

“Yeah.”

“With a key?”

“No, it’s one of those knobs you press in on the inside. I never had their key.”

“What then?”

“Went out to tidy up in the garden, then, uh, I reported in to Ms. Mahoney.” Now, he was on less certain ground. What had she told them?

“Ms. Mahoney.” Meyer flipped pages in his notebook. “She’s the accountant and acting HR manager.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s supervising your community service?”

“Uh, yeah.” He shouldn’t be surprised they knew about his community service.

“So, you say you didn’t take anything from the Trotter apartment?”

“I didn’t.”

“Suppose you’re going to tell me you’re not sleeping with Ms. Mahoney, either.”

“What?” The question caught him like a punch out of the blue. Maura wouldn’t have told them. She didn’t want anyone knowing. Shit. He’d figured all the cops would ask about was the Trotters’ apartment, so he’d be in the clear if he told the truth. Now, what the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn’t exactly lawyer up at this point. “Who the fuck told you that? Bet it wasn’t Ms. Mahoney.” Though some stupid bit of hope in his heart made him wish she’d owned up to it.

“She’s an attractive woman,” Meyer said.

“And you don’t clean up too badly,” Singh put in. “They always say that opposites attract. Is that right, Jesse?”

“That’s not how it usually works for me.” Maura was the sole exception.

“So,” Singh said, “if Ms. Mahoney said you were having an affair, she’d be lying?”

Had she? Had she actually said it, on public record? No, he didn’t believe that. “She wouldn’t have said it.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Meyer said. “Guess guys like us only get to dream about women like her, huh?”

Guys like us. As if that was going to soften him up and make him confess to something he hadn’t done. “Whatever. So where’d you get the idea we were sleeping together?”

Another bit of page-turning, then Meyer gazed across at him. “Ms. diFazio.”

“Who? I don’t even know a Ms. diFazio.”

“Nedda diFazio, who works evenings on reception.”

“Oh. That sour bitch.” She might’ve seen him and Maura leave a time or two, just a few minutes apart, but she didn’t know a damned thing.

“Her word against yours.”

“And Ms. Mahoney’s,” he reminded them.

“She also says that, after Ms. Mahoney left last night, you came back to Cherry Lane.”

“What? No, I didn’t.”

“You’re sure you don’t remember?” Singh asked. “You came back, wearing a black leather jacket, and said you’d forgotten something in the garden. You walked down the hall, out of Ms. diFazio’s sight. When you came back five minutes later, your jacket was zipped up and it was bulging like you had something inside it.”

“No! Fuck, no, I never went back.” He’d ridden straight to Maura’s and sat outside on his bike, waiting impatiently for her to get home. “That bitch is lying.”

“She’s not the one who’s had a run-in with the law,” Singh said calmly. “Why don’t you tell us about that?”

He went through the story. When he told them what Pollan had done to Con, he saw Meyer’s heavy jaw clench and anger flash in Singh’s dark eyes.

When he finished, Meyer said, “That the only time you’ve been in trouble with the law?”

“Haven’t you checked?” Aside from a few speeding tickets, he’d kept his nose clean since he was a teen.

Meyer shrugged. “You look to me like the type of guy who might have a juvie record. What you think, Singh?”

“Looks that way to me,” she said.

Yeah, he’d shoplifted some stuff, stolen a bike, got himself into all sorts of trouble. But juvie records were sealed. “Gonna tell me what was stolen?”

“Happen to remember a jewelry box that sat on the dresser in the bedroom?” Meyer asked.

Jewelry. He’d noticed the flashy ring on Mrs. Trotter’s left hand. Seems that wasn’t all she’d owned. He recalled the bedroom: old double bed in a mahogany frame, little bedside tables and dresser to match. Paintings he didn’t like, kind of dark and European looking. Clutter on the top of the dresser. “Yeah, there was a box there.” He made a rectangular shape with his hands. “About this size. Is that what went missing?”

“Did you touch the box, Jesse?” Singh asked.

He shook his head. “Didn’t touch anything in the bedroom, just set up a dehumidifier on the carpet between the bed and the dresser.”

“So we aren’t going to find your prints on that box?” she went on.

They had the box, which meant the jewelry inside it had been stolen. “Nope.”

“Your prints are on file,” she said. “As soon as the prints from the site are processed, we’ll check them against yours.”

“Good.”

“Smart guy like you’d know not to leave prints, though,” Meyer said.