Home Before Midnight (9 page)

Authors: Virginia Kantra

Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction

BOOK: Home Before Midnight

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“I think Paul wants to tell the whole story,” Bailey said carefully.

“So he’s going to sell a bunch of books by glorifying a killer and exploiting the deaths of two women and a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“You don’t understand the genre,” she said. “Paul is very talented. This book is his way of doing justice to the memory of the victims.”

“You do justice to the victims by putting their killer in jail. Not by making a living off their tragedy.”

She crossed her arms. “Lawyers make a living off of tragedy. Police, too.”

Acknowledgment lit his dark eyes. “Guess you could look at it that way. So, what’s your role in all this?”

“I’m a former editorial assistant. I do research, correspondence, filing, publicity—whatever Paul needs me to do.”

“Give me an example.”

She drew a deep breath. “For example, right now I’m trying to find out how long it will be before we can get back into the house.”

He raised his eyebrows at her change of subject. “Your boss gave his consent to search.”

“Last night. But Regan—Helen’s daughter—is flying into town tomorrow. She won’t want to stay in a hotel.”

“My team won’t be out of the house until the day after.”

“Thursday?” Bailey heard her voice rise and struggled to control it. “But . . . That’s the day before the funeral!”

“It’s the best I can do.”

No apology, she noticed. As if his best was plenty good enough for her.

“You did get a signed death certificate, though, right?” she asked.

He inclined his head.

She didn’t want to ask. She had to know. “Cause of death?”

“Drowning.”

Relief weakened her knees. “That’s all right, then.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t it?” Bailey pressed. “If the medical examiner says Helen drowned—”

“
Cause
of death is drowning,” he repeated. “Manner of death is still pending.”

Bailey squeezed the letters in her hand until the envelopes crackled. “What does that mean?”

“It means the ME is waiting for the results of the blood alcohol test to determine if loss of consciousness contributed to Mrs. Ellis’s fall.”

That sounded reasonable.

Her chest hollowed. Too bad she didn’t quite believe him.

Why would his team need another two days in the house? What was he looking for? And how could she get him to tell her?

“Would you like to come in for a minute?” she blurted. “For”—
What? Coffee? Questioning?
—“something to drink?”

His eyes narrowed in surprise. Well, no wonder, she thought, her heart thudding. She’d surprised herself.

“You’re inviting me in for a drink.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes, well, I thought . . .” She wasn’t thinking. Did she really want to introduce this man to her mother? “It’s awfully hot.”

He smiled at her, teeth white in his dark face, and the temperature climbed another ten degrees. “Yes, it is. But I’m afraid I can’t.”

No. Of course not. Good,
she told herself, pretty sure that rush she felt was letdown and not relief.

It wasn’t like he was actually rejecting her. She wouldn’t care if he did. She was an aspiring writer, a veteran of New York’s Dating Wars. She should be inured to rejection.

Anyway, it wasn’t personal.

She stuck out her chin. “Right. You wouldn’t want somebody to catch you getting chummy with a suspect.”

“Actually, I have a prior engagement,” he drawled.

Like a date? He was dating someone?

Maybe it was personal.

“Well, hello.” Dorothy Wells’s greeting flowed down the drive, sweet and sticky as molasses.

Trapped like a fly, Bailey turned to see her mother picking her way down the gravel driveway in size six strappy slides from Marshalls.

Dorothy smiled at Steve like a toddler spotting the cookie jar. “And who is this?”

He nodded at her politely. “Steve Burke, ma’am.”

“Burke,” Dorothy repeated. “Eugenia Burke’s boy?”

Most men would have revealed some discomfort at being referred to as “boy.” The police detective didn’t even twitch. “Yes, ma’am.”

Dorothy’s smile widened. “And you’re here to see Bailey?”

Bailey groaned silently. Of course. Steve Burke was practically designed to her mother’s specifications: a white, Southern professional. Not a practicing Methodist—anyway, Bailey didn’t recall seeing him at Sunday services—and at least ten years older than Bailey. But clearly Dorothy was prepared to compromise.

Bailey was not.

“He was just leaving,” she said, fixing Steve with a “run away, run away” look.

“Oh.” Not every fifty-six-year-old woman could pull off a pretty pout, but Dorothy had been practicing in her mirror since 1958, and even Bailey admitted the effect was charming. “Won’t you at least come in for a minute? Bailey has so few friends in town anymore.”

“I never had friends in this town, Mama,” Bailey said, deliberately flip. Steve Burke already suspected her of lusting after her boss, not to mention murdering her boss’s wife. Her lack of a social life wasn’t likely to lower his opinion of her any. “Let the man go.”

“Actually, I’d love a cold drink,” Steve said, making Dorothy beam and Bailey’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “If you all don’t mind.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed as they strolled up the drive to the house. Dorothy minced ahead, her heels punching holes in the ground.

He looked down his strong, crooked nose at her. “Accepting your invitation.”

“What about your ‘prior engagement’?”

He actually glanced at his watch. “I have a few minutes. We can talk some more about what kind of work you do for Paul Ellis.”

Was that why he’d changed his mind? Because he saw the opportunity to pump her?

“Not with my mother listening.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “She doesn’t like your job?”

Not her job, not her life, not her wardrobe.

“Crime stories make my mother uncomfortable. She doesn’t even read the newspaper.”

“You should be glad.” He opened the kitchen door, earning another approving smile from Dorothy.

Bailey paused on the stoop. “Why?”

“Because if your boss holds a press conference, your name’s going to be in a lot of papers. Your mother won’t like that.”

He was right.

She scowled. “How would you know?”

Humor touched his hard mouth. “Because if she’s anything like my mother, she believes a lady’s name should only appear in the paper three times—when she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies.”

“Who’s getting married?” Dorothy called from the kitchen.

“Nobody, Mom.” Bailey stalked inside and turned to face the detective, crossing her arms over her meager chest. “Lieutenant Burke is here because somebody died.”

FIVE

D
OROTHY Wells’s expectant face collapsed like a leaking balloon.

Not good,
Steve thought, and did his best to defuse the situation.

“I’ll bet your mother already guessed why I’m here.” He smiled wryly at Dorothy. “Those middle of the night phone calls are tough on parents, aren’t they? You think your children are grown, but when something like this happens, they need their mamas.”

“Actually—” Bailey said.

“She didn’t call.” Bracelets jangling, Dorothy opened a cabinet, a petite, well-put-together woman with a mission and a grievance. “Her sister would have called. Not Bailey. I didn’t even know something was wrong until I came down this morning to make Frank’s coffee and found her sitting at the kitchen table.”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Bailey protested.

“And what time was that?” Steve asked.

“Six-thirty? Seven?”

Bailey had told him she got home at three. What had she done for three or four hours?

The memory of her white face and dilated pupils tugged at him. She might have been in shock. She could have been too numb or strung out or flat-out exhausted to make up a story that would satisfy her parents.

Or she could have been with her married lover.

That thought didn’t sit well with Steve at all. He was tired, hot, and sweaty. Now he had to make time to talk to Lewis and the clerk at the desk to find out when Ellis had checked into his hotel. And with whom.

“Well, of course it was a shock.” Dorothy snapped a glass down on the counter. “But I told her how it would be when she got involved with those people.”

Bailey stirred from her post by the kitchen counter. Her crossed arms lifted her shirt in front, revealing a pale slice of belly above the drawstring of her black pants.

He forced his gaze up, into her eyes.

“I don’t think Lieutenant Burke is interested in your opinion of my employers, Mom,” Bailey said.

“But I am. Very interested.”

Her gaze clashed with his. She probably thought he was a middle-aged pervert.

Maybe he was.

He cleared his throat. “You weren’t friends with Helen Ellis?” he asked Dorothy.

“Helen was all right.” Dorothy opened the refrigerator door, where plastic vegetable magnets squeezed in between family photos: a whole gallery of a towheaded boy and a curly-haired toddler in pink; several shots of a smiling blonde with various hairstyles and in different stages of pregnancy who must be Bailey’s sister; and one candid of an earnest, much younger Bailey squinting from beneath her mortarboard at the camera.

Steve narrowed his eyes.
Only one?

“Although I always thought she could have done more for Bailey,” Dorothy confided, turning. “Taken her to the right places. Introduced her to the right people.” Ice rattled into a glass. “The right
men
.”

“I didn’t come home to Stokesville so that Helen Ellis could invite me to Saturday night dinners at the club.”

Dorothy poured his tea. “It just breaks my heart to see you waste your opportunities.”

“I am
not
wasting my opportunities,” Bailey said loudly. She took a deep breath. “I have a good education and a valuable research position with Paul Ellis.” She made his name sound like it was splashed in capitals on a freaking book cover. “He won the National Booksellers’ Optimus Award last year,” she told Steve, like he should know or care what that was.

Dorothy sniffed. “Paul Ellis.” The name sounded a lot different when she said it. She handed Steve a frosted glass.

“Appreciate it,” he said. “You don’t like him? Ellis?”

Bailey glared. “Don’t you have to pick up your date?”

“After I finish my tea.”

“You have a date?” Dorothy asked.

But he’d been a cop too long to let a pair of women turn an interrogation on him.

“You were saying about Paul Ellis . . . ?”

Dorothy pursed her lips. “Well, he’s Not From Around Here, is he?”

“That’s not a crime, Mom. It’s not even a bad thing. Not everyone wants to live in Stokesville all their lives.”