Hot and Irresistible (21 page)

“Rage makes a man do a lot of things and to have thirty years of it all come together at once could result in almost anything.”

Joe Earl looked from Donovan to Bebe like following a tennis match. “Father? What’s this about a father? What the hell’s going on with you two?”

She pointed to Donovan. “Ask the Yankee. He’s got all the answers.” Then she walked out of the room to keep from putting another bullet in Dara for causing all this trouble. Even from the grave the woman was determined to ruin Bebe’s life and the worst part was the bitch was succeeding.

Donovan watched as the last of the coroner’s department and the forensics people filed out of Dara’s room. Not much of a crime scene to process. No sign of struggle or forced entry. Someone she knew pointed a gun at her and shot and tore up the place. Of course the missing gull chip would have been a major find. How could Bebe just pick it up?

Joe Earl gazed around. “The woman sure enough was a first-class pain to Bebe, but she had a mighty nice place here. Who would have ever thought Dara of the projects would wind up as Dara on St. Julian Street living in the William Bird house on the historical registry?”

“This isn’t where Bebe grew up?”

Joe Earl laughed deep in his barreled chest. “Dara lived in some two-by-four apartment with a bunch of kids all about the same age. Couldn’t tell one from the other and none of them worth two cents except for Bebe. Then the kids left and she suddenly got class and moved on up to here. Said an uncle in Florida left her money. So what’s this about Bebe having a father? Who the hell is it? Some rich guy over in Garden City finally found Bebe?”

“Ray Cleveland.”

Joe Earl stared, then sat down hard on the tussled bed. “Sweet mother of pearl. I never suspected for a minute. Bebe just blended in with all those other kids. Everyone figured she was some bastard child of a deb.” Joe Earl looked tired to the bone. “For Ray to have his baby girl so close, my oh my. He searched everywhere for her and here she was all the while. Now that I see all the pieces, it fits. When Ray’s wife moved on, I suppose she paid Dara to take her baby. That rancher guy probably didn’t cotton to her bringing her kid along.” Joe Earl ran his hand over his face. “If that don’t beat all.”

“Would Ray do something like this?” Donovan nodded at the scene.

Joe Earl shrugged. “Well, there’re the facts to consider, that’s why police have to look at things. She took his kid, Donovan. What would you do if somebody went and took yours? But Ray had to know that he’d be first on the list of suspects and he’s already lost thirty years with Bebe. Then again, if he was riled and in a state, who knows what he’s capable of, what any of us are capable of doing.”

Donovan nodded. “I’d be in a state all right and it wouldn’t be pretty.” He was amazed he said that but it was true. If someone took his baby from him he’d go nuts. How did a man live with it all these years and then come to find out he’d been played for an idiot and a kid’s life had been the price? He looked at the spot where the chip had been. But the law was the law, and Bebe should not have tampered with evidence. She was a cop. “What do you know about the Raeburns?”

“They want their damn necklace. Tried to get me to do some work for them, but Jimmy got his head bashed in when he got involved and I’m not that hungry for money. I bet they went and found somebody. Those jewels must be worth a fortune and I’m sure the price has gone up considerable in the last thirty years.”

“Bebe thinks the Raeburns could be responsible for the morgue murders because they wanted the necklace then. And now whoever has it killed Jimmy because the Raeburns were getting too close.”

“I suppose it could work that way and then I went and got you involved and now you think it’s Ray doing all this because the necklace and the money belonged to him. I should have kept my big mouth shut, but I figured you’d find something to clear Ray, not implicate him.”

“Well either Ray or the Raeburns are responsible. There’s no one else in the ballgame.”

“Unless there’s a pinch hitter hiding somewhere and we’re looking right through him.” The front door closed and light footsteps sounded in the hall. Joe Earl studied the bloodstain on the carpet. “We sure got ourselves a lot more dead people in this here city than usual.”

“But I do think it’s just one killer,” Bebe said from the doorway. She looked at Donovan and he felt his chest tighten. How could two people find each other and be falling in love and then have all the powers in the universe be perfectly lined up against them? It was bad enough for him to come between Bebe and Cleveland when he was her friend but to come between Bebe and Cleveland with him as her dad…

She said, “Thought you’d both like to know that the slug that did in Dara was the same that nicked Donovan and did the morgue murders.”

Donovan nodded. “That proves that it’s Cleveland all the way. He’s guilty, Bebe. Give it up. There’s no place else to go with this.”

Donovan watched Bebe pace the noncluttered part of the bedroom. He remembered her bedroom just this morning where things between them had been so damn good as if they were the only people on earth, least for a little while. Was that really just this morning? Seemed like a lifetime ago. And for Bebe it was. Her whole life had changed.

“You’re looking at this upside down,” Bebe finally said interrupting his bedroom thoughts. “You’re going from the old murders to getting shot at in the attic to now here at Dara’s. If you go backward, start with Dara, you get a different answer.”

Joe Earl stood. “You two are making my head swim. I’m tired as the dead and it’s five o’clock and it’s Tuesday, meaning the missus has fried chicken and corn bread waiting for me, so I’m letting you two battle out the cerebral stuff, and I’m going home to eat my supper. I’ll mosey out and talk to Ray this evening and tell him about Dara and see what he has to say about all this.”

He kissed Bebe on the cheek. “Welcome home, sugar. Mighty glad you’re here, mighty glad indeed. We’ll get this situation with Ray all straightened out now. Don’t you be fretting over your daddy.”

Donovan shook his head, hoping he didn’t hear what he just did. “What a minute, you don’t believe Ray killed anyone, do you? Dara? The morgue murders? The shooting in the attic? None of it?”

Joe Earl looked at him as if he’d sprouted two heads. “Hell, no. The way you look at things when you’re on the job isn’t always the way they are for real. Ray didn’t do anything other than miss his daughter and go to the morgue now and then and try and rethink that night when his whole life changed. Just like you probably went to where your partner in Boston was gunned down to try and make sense of that. But now we got Dara living beyond her means and dead in a house torn to hell and back and someone trying mighty hard to pin it on Ray. The murders are connected. Too many and too close together to think otherwise. That connection has to be the necklace, but the question is who and why?”

He looked at Donovan. “You got to remember, Ray’s a smart man. He’s not going to kill Dara in her own house and leave her here when he sits out there on the big old Atlantic Ocean with enough inlets and outlets he knows by heart to get anything he wants lost for good. And that reasoning goes with Jimmy’s body left on his boat. It doesn’t wash.”

Joe Earl left and Donovan sat on the bed. “This is nothing but the good old boys club.”

“It’s Savannah, and everyone knows everyone, just like I told you when you first got here. That hasn’t changed any in the last ten days just because you landed on our doorstep. We all know Ray’s not guilty. We need to figure out how Dara fits into the rest of the killings. What did she have to do with the necklace?” She headed for the door, calling over her shoulder, her very lovely shoulder, that he wasn’t going to be kissing any time soon, “And that means I’ve got a busy night ahead of me trying to come up with something.”

Donovan listened to Bebe’s footfalls on the steps, the door closing, leaving him alone. He didn’t mind alone, he minded lonely, and that’s pretty much how he felt when Bebe wasn’t around. They talked, figured things out, argued, and managed to find a way to be together…till now. Why did she have to pick up that chip? He pulled it out of his jacket pocket where she’d put it, then he slid it back.

And why in the hell couldn’t someone else be her father?

D
onovan balanced his supersized morning Starbucks—that some kid with glasses kept calling a grande something—in one hand and a no-caffeine latte mocha sissy drink in the other as he stepped over the yellow crime scene tape at Dara’s house and let himself in. The tape would probably come down sometime today. He wished the problems between him and Bebe would go away that easily.

He took the stairs to Dara’s room, her belongings still scattered everywhere. The closet door stood open. Someone was rummaging around inside. Bebe came out, pushing strands of mussed blond hair from her face. She looked more beautiful than ever with a glow of self-confidence that comes from having someone in your corner, someone who loves you beyond time and words and any kind of trouble that might come your way. Donovan always felt the love of family. Bebe never had it. Oh there was BrieAnn and Prissy and Charlotte to get her through, and they probably did, but that wasn’t the love of a parent. That kind of love changed a person.

“So, why did you want me to meet you here?”

“I…I missed you and I’m guessing by the circles under your eyes and the big high-octane coffees in your hands that you slept about as well as I did.”

He handed her the mocha. “No caffeine, so you got that wrong, but the rest is pretty much right on.” They stood there looking at each other, not knowing what step was next, so he went with business because he had no idea how to begin to sort out their personal mess. “Your text message said you found something important.”

“Thanks for this.” She took the drink. “Do you really want to know what I think or are you just here to find more nails to hammer into Ray’s coffin?”

“I’m here because I want the truth. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, and from where I stand Ray’s guilty. But you obviously got something else or you wouldn’t be digging around in that closet. If your latest idea has legs, I want to hear it, but if it’s another verse of the
My daddy can do no wrong
song, then you’re on your own, cupcake.”

“One of the reasons I like you, even when you’re being a big Yankee ass, as you so often are, is I can always trust you to do the right thing. Always. No matter what the outcome’s going to be, you cross the t’s and dot the i’s and you see things the way they truly exist. Emotion doesn’t get in your way. You’re a good cop, Donovan, and I’m going with that.” She took a crumpled paper from her suit pocket, the ugly blue suit today, and tossed it on the bed.

“Real estate listings?”

“Dara wasn’t that great of a Realtor, which means she was definitely getting money from somewhere. She didn’t have stocks or bonds or a sugar daddy in the wings.”

“Blackmail? I agree with Joe Earl that all these murders are connected, but it wouldn’t be blackmail over knowing where the jewels were. If she knew, she’d get the necklace and run. If it’s not that, then maybe she knew the murderer. That’s possible. We can check her bank statements for large regular deposits and then track them back to—”

“Hold on. You’re thinking Boston, New York, where business is business. Here in Savannah your business is everyone’s business. If Dara was depositing regular sums of money, the word would get out and the same if she frequented a safety deposit box or was wiring to an offshore account. Everybody knows where Dara came from. The gossips take note when things aren’t quite what they should be. Cash doesn’t require a signature, it doesn’t have a monthly statement, and gets passed from one hand to another and then it’s gone. If Dara kept my secret, she kept others.”

Bebe nodded at the room. “Whoever did this didn’t find what they were looking for. This place is a mess, no doubt about it, but not excessively so, kind of a quick toss.”

“Cleveland covering his tracks and making this look like burglary.”

“Except Dara knew her killer. She didn’t try and fend him off. Heck, he was in her bedroom. That is not Ray Cleveland; they hated each other.”

Donovan drank more coffee and drank again. “So we’re looking for something big enough to hold bills and probably fireproof. It has some weight to it and is about the size of a small suitcase.”

“Or a large suitcase, depending on Dara’s greed, and did you just say
we?
”

He looked at Bebe, the smartest, most gorgeous, most fun, and most loving woman on Earth and thought he might die if he had to give her up. “You said I was a good cop. I respond to flattery.”

“You’re going to stay and help me? Well, that’s more than I hoped for. I just wanted to talk. Try and salvage something between us and give you my latest theory on Dara and see if it had any holes. I knew you’d be objective.”

She rubbed her forehead looking exhausted and not just from lack of sleep. “I hated what happened with you and me here yesterday. A bad ending to what should have been a great day. I guess there’s no day where everything is just the way you want it. So, Yank, on a scale of one to ten just how mad are you at me?”

He said in a quiet voice, “You shouldn’t have taken the chip, or at least you should have explained where you were going with all this.”

“If you recall, you weren’t exactly in a listening kind of mood. You didn’t even want to kick Dara, this from the guy who offered to lend me his gun at one time. And the police were coming down the street. Being a cop is a job and Ray’s my dad and I’ll pick him every time, Donovan. That’s my decision, I know it’s not yours.”

He didn’t want to ask but he had to. He had to know where they stood. He liked Bebe too much. If they were over it would hurt like hell and he didn’t want to be blindsided. “What about you and me together? Where is this taking us? We get caught in the middle and have nowhere to go. Is that what we’re doing now, going nowhere. Are we…through?”

She kissed him on the mouth. “The big reason I wanted you here is because looking for this blackmail money puts us on the same side.” She kissed him again, longer this time. “We both want to find it, and I wanted to spend time with you and not be arguing. Today we can do that. I want to be with you. I miss you, a whole lot. I love my job, always have, but I love Ray more.”

She put her drink down. “It’s the way I’m wired, Donovan. You go with the evidence and follow the facts and see everything in black and white. I follow my heart and defend those I care about. Even before I knew Ray was my dad, I protected him. It’s who I am.”

He threaded his fingers into her long blond hair, loving the feel of her in his arms and her arms slipping around him. This time he kissed her and she kissed him back, allowing him to relax a little, the fear of losing Bebe that ate at him all night subsiding. Except this wouldn’t last. There was a lot of evidence stacked against Ray. What would happen between him and Bebe if he had a part in arresting Ray? How could they ever get beyond that?

They wouldn’t. Deep in his heart he knew it was true. There was nothing more sacred than family, just ask the girl who didn’t have one for thirty years.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She hugged him tight, her cheek on his chest, her body warm against his. He forced himself to think about Bebe now and not what might be. “It’s easier to be facing this with you and not against you. But the question now is—where the heck did Dara hide that money and does she have any cookies around here? I’m starved.”

The clock on Dara’s nightstand blinked ten p.m. as Donovan came back into the bedroom. He shoved the mattress up onto the box springs and all but collapsed on the pile of covers. Bebe scooted the antique dresser back against the wall and joined him, both of them staring straight ahead in an exhausted stupor. “I’ve look behind and under and in and between every piece of furniture in this house.”

He handed her a chocolate chip cookie and ate one himself. “I went into the attic looking for trapdoors and passageways and all the other things old houses are supposed to have. I found two dead bats and rotting timber. Dara has termites. I tapped on walls and floors, but no space to hide a suitcase. I’d say Dara planted it in the backyard, but that meant every time she got money she had to dig it up, and with houses here being close someone was sure to notice the difference between a silver box and a red rosebush.”

Bebe flopped back on the bed. “I want food, real food with protein and vegetables and not sugar food. I’m getting fructose jitters. Let’s order in Chinese. Are you a chopstick kind of guy or do you fork it?”

“Fork’s cheating. Face it, cupcake, there’s nothing here. No blackmail, no evidence, and no money. Joe Earl said Dara got an inheritance, so maybe that
is
how she afforded this place. The uncle was in Florida, she could have an online account there to keep people and her rotten kids out of her business here. And that leads us back to Ray as our number-one suspect. The district attorney is starting to build a case against Ray and he’s got a lot of ammunition. It wouldn’t be long before they arrest him.”

“We’re missing something.” She was quiet for a minute, then continued, “What if we’re reading too much into Dara’s murder? What if it’s just another attempt to frame Ray? Finding Jimmy on Ray’s boat set Ray up. Dara’s murder adds to it, letting the real murderer go about his business looking for the necklace. Someone’s covering their tracks and we’re looking right at them and buying every word they’re feeding us and this has gone on way too long and we’re getting nowhere. We need a change of action. This is all about finding that damn necklace. Period.”

She sat up. “We need to find those diamonds and do it now. Then the killer will come to us. That would be really nice for a change. I’m so tired of looking for that bastard.”

“It would be different, I’ll give you that.” Donovan sat up beside her and she rested her head on Donovan’s shoulder. He needed that. He needed her with him because life was so much better with Bebe in it. He kissed her hair and he felt her relax against him. Somehow he had to find a way to keep them together just like they were now. Somehow…

“Most of the activity involving the necklace is at the morgue, so our chances are best for finding it there. We’ll do a search the police way. No more hit-and-miss looking around the morgue, we divide the place into quadrants and methodically cover every inch. The more people we have, the better and more thorough job we’ll do.”

She laughed “For once I get to play the sisters-forever card. We can count on BrieAnn and Prissy and Charlotte and now they have Beau and Sam and Griff. With you and me and Vincent and Anthony that gives us ten people. I can get Joe Earl, he’ll help.”

“How well do you know Joe Earl?”

She gave a nonchalant shrug. “He’s lived in Savannah forever and been a cop just as long. He was my mentor when I first joined the force. He and Ray are tight as twins. Do you know something I don’t?”

“That he and Ray are tight as twins and he’s a cop.” And that he met with the Raeburns in the park and it looked a lot more involved than simply turning down a job offer. Before Bebe could ask any more questions, he hooked his arm around her and brought her close. “We’ve got a plan for tomorrow, so that leaves us the rest of the night and for now we have that same-side thing going for us. Any ideas?”

Her mouth met his. “Come home with me. The cats miss you. Daisy was complaining, ‘
He doesn’t write, he doesn’t call, he doesn’t send flowers
.’ You’re giving men a bad name.”

“There’s Chinese All-Night over on Abercorn. I’ll get extra dumplings.”

“And don’t forget the flowers.”

Bebe scooped out cat food into crystal bowls, Daisy meowing at the top of her lungs, Carraway dancing figure eights at her ankles, Gatsby just looking pissed because food wasn’t served now. “I’m scooping as fast as I can, give me a break here, will you?”

She set the bowls on the floor to expressions of
what, no tablecloth and candelabra?
All three darlings sniffed, fluffed their tails, and walked away, stubby noses in the air. “Do not give me the pout look. I spend more on your food than I do on mine.”

There was a knock at the door. “Please be Donovan with lots of food.” And it was Donovan, but there were no bags in his hands or yummy smells of shrimp egg rolls or spicy General Tso’s chicken drifting her way. “Chinese All-Night was closed? I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut and…and oh my goodness,” she said forgetting her empty stomach and egg rolls as a white carriage pulled by two black horses, the interior filled with red roses, came to a stop in front of her apartment.

“But I remembered the flowers.” Donovan took her hand and helped her into the carriage. She sat next to him surrounded by so much loveliness and that included the man at her side.

“How did you do this?”

“Yankees have their ways. Happy Birthday, cupcake.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“It was a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-to-one shot that I’d get it right, so we’ll just pretend.” He called to the driver, “Home, James.” And the carriage started off, the rhythmic clip-clop of hooves on cobblestone chasing away the tedium of the day. The romance of Savannah settling over them.

“Where’s home?” She snuggled up to him and kissed his lips, letting hers linger so he knew she meant it.

“Someplace that’s not your apartment or Dara’s house or the police station or the morgue or Magnolia House. Some place where no one can find us for the rest of the night. I want this to be about us.”