Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (2 page)

Then someone threw a blanket around her shoulders. She gripped the edges together and looked up at her Good Samaritan. He was a stranger she’d seen somewhere before. He had short hair the color of dark chocolate, straight dark slashes for eyebrows, and eyes almost as dark brown as hers. He had a jaw like granite and his white T-shirt clung to the shoulders of a football player. He didn’t look like a tourist, but he wasn’t dressed like the rescue workers gathering around Carolyn.

“She threw herself in front of the train. I couldn’t stop her,” Scott told sheriff’s deputy Brian Nash.

Rage simmered just below the surface of Marisa’s skin, not quite warming her icy chill. Could Scott shout it any louder?

“It was an accident,” she murmured.

“Did you see it happen?” her rescuer asked.

She looked up into his stern face. His expression was serious, his intent dark eyes probing. There was a deadness in them that made her wonder what horrors he’d witnessed and where.

“No, I didn’t see it happen.” Part of her wished she had. She shivered again.

“Then how do you know it was an accident?” His tone was flat, but his narrowed eyes expressed his doubts.

“She waved to me just before it happened. Besides, Carolyn wouldn’t kill herself.”

“How well did you know the deceased?”

Deceased. Marisa shuddered. She’d never laugh with Caro again, never share secrets or dreams or hopes again. Never again would she experience the unquestioning acceptance she’d shared with her best friend. Her eyes filled but she tried not to cry. Her throat ached, and her chest felt tight.

“I grew up with her.” Her voice sounded small and squeezed.

“I meant how well did you know her recently?”

Not as well as she’d wanted to. It was hard to spend time together when Caro lived in New York City. Long phone conversations just weren’t the same as sitting on the front porch of the huge white house where Caro’s family had lived.

“We talked on the phone as often as we could. She never said anything about … ” she waved a hand toward the train “ … anything like this.”

“People often keep their true feelings inside, especially if they’re dark feelings.” There was no softening in his unsmiling face.

“Not Caro.” Despite the tendency for her lower lip to tremble, her statement was firm.

“Nick,” the deputy addressed her dark rescuer, “would you help me question witnesses, find out who saw what?”

“I’m not a cop, Brian.”

“As a personal favor. I need all the help I can get.”

Nick nodded, still unsmiling.

Brian looked at Marisa then. He had short brown hair with the ends bleached blonde by the sun. His tan uniform was crisply pressed, despite the noon heat. The crinkles at the sides of his eyes showed he laughed often, unlike his friend. Dimples framed his wide mouth. Despite his serious occupation, he’d been smiling every time Marisa had seen him before, except for now.

“Marisa Avalos, right?”

Marisa nodded.

“I know you were raised with Mrs. Wentworth. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Marisa gulped back a sob. “Thank you. Deputy Nash, she didn’t kill herself. She wouldn’t.”

There was sympathy in Brian’s hazel eyes. “We like to think the best about the people we love.”

Her hands clenched around the blanket edges. Why wouldn’t anybody believe her?

“Ms. Avalos didn’t see what happened,” Nick told Brian. He frowned when he looked at Marisa.

She waved back toward the restaurant. “I was at the Seneca Harbor Station having lunch. I saw Caro standing at the crossing before the train engine blocked my view. She looked fine. She was fine.”

“Marisa.” Kevin caught up to her.

Her first urge was to throw herself into his arms for comfort, but then she remembered what they’d discussed in the restaurant. Kevin was leaving her. Tears welled in her eyes once more and her bottom lip trembled.

Kevin opened his arms and habit and a decade of friendship made her walk into them.

“You shouldn’t have come down here.”

“I had to see her.” She thought he would have understood that after all the years they’d known each other. But she was finding they didn’t know each other at all. She wondered whose fault that was.

“C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

She allowed Kevin to draw her away. The engine hissed, releasing steam at her retreating back. She didn’t know how she was going to make it through the rest of the day now that she’d lost her two best friends.

• • •

Nick Stark watched the athletic blonde man escort Marisa toward the parking lot. They made a striking couple, completely opposite in looks. Marisa looked Latina, with bronzed skin and hair the color and sheen of black satin sheets. With her wide, full lips he assumed she smiled often. At the moment, she looked as serious as the blonde man at her side. Too bad she was taken. For a moment, when he’d held her feminine curves in his arms, he’d felt a stirring of interest he hadn’t expected to find in his temporary exile to Watkins Glen. But he was doomed to be disappointed yet again.

“Nick?” Brian called.

Nick shook off the spell Marisa Avalos had weaved around him and approached the scene where Brian knelt next to the victim. Nick steeled himself for the gore. As an EMT with the New York City Fire Department, he should be used to seeing horrors. But he wasn’t. Each scene represented someone’s pain and someone’s need for help. But this woman was beyond his aid. A familiar feeling of helplessness assaulted him. Here was one more senseless death to add to the dozens he’d seen in the past few months. What good was his medical training in a circumstance like this?

The victim was mangled, the scene bloody. He’d seen something similar at a New York City subway suicide. Sharp steel wheels were vicious to skin and bone alike. This poor woman, if she’d really chosen to kill herself, had gone through a lot under the locomotive. Nick hoped she’d died instantly from the impact.

“Yeah, Brian?” He and Nick had gone to college together in New York City and been close friends until Brian decided to give up big city crime and take a job with the sheriff’s department in the tiny town of Watkins Glen, New York.

Brian signaled him lower and spoke so his voice didn’t carry farther than the two of them. “Mrs. Wentworth is the closest thing Watkins Glen has to a first family. Her parents, the Easterlings, died in a car accident last year. She owns the salt plant. Well, now her husband Scott does.” Brian’s hazel eyes were thoughtful.

“Interesting. That’s motive enough for murder.”

“This isn’t TV, Nick, it’s real life. Step lightly around Wentworth. That plant is the town’s main industry.”

“What if he did it?”

“What if he didn’t?”

“Three deaths in a short period of time, and now he’s inherited everything. Seems mighty coincidental to me.”

Brian gripped Nick’s forearm. There was no hint of a smile now. “If the husband wanted his wife dead, I can think of a dozen sure ways to do it. None of them include coming to Watkins Glen to push her in front of a slow moving train. There’s no way to make sure she’d die. We can’t make accusations without proof.”

“I saw her wave to her friend, Brian.” Nick didn’t know why he said it, but it had seemed proof enough to Marisa Avalos. “I was on the restaurant deck when it happened.” He’d been calling 911 when Marisa rushed past him. He’d reached out to stop her, but she’d avoided him.

“She could have been waving good-bye. We need to get the witnesses interviewed.” Brian handed Nick his spiral notebook and pen. “You’ll need these.”

Nick held back his quip about this not being the vacation Brian had promised him. The dead woman at his feet deserved more respect than that. Besides, this wasn’t a vacation. He’d been forced to take leave to get away from situations just like this. He wondered what the department shrink would have to say about it.

Nick approached the deceased’s husband. Brian might not approve, but Nick was curious what the husband had to say. The man was in his mid- to late-thirties and his clothes, although casual, were good quality. The man was doing well, being married into Watkins Glen’s first family.

“Mr. Wentworth? I’m Nick Stark. I’m helping Deputy Nash interview witnesses. Would you mind taking me back to where the accident happened and walking me through what you saw?”

Wentworth rubbed his face. “Sure, but is this necessary? She killed herself.”

“If your wife tripped, you’d want to know that.”

Scott failed to hide a trace of impatience. “I saw her jump in front of the train. She’d been depressed the last few weeks, since the miscarriage.”

Nick had lots of experience giving sympathy. “I’m sorry about your baby. How long ago did it happen?”

As they approached the engine, the blast of heat seared the autumn air around them like an oven. Nick felt the rumble of the running locomotive through his tennis shoes.

“It was last month,” Scott said. “Carolyn wanted that baby so badly. We’d been trying for two years.”

Nick noted the wording of Wentworth’s statement, that his
wife
had wanted the baby, not him. “Was this her first pregnancy?”

“Yes, and she took losing the baby very hard.”

Nick knew about the psychological effect of miscarriage on a woman, especially multiple miscarriages, but could a woman become despondent after her first? He made a note on his pad about it.

“Had your wife been under a doctor’s care?”

“Yes. She’d been treated for depression.” Wentworth seemed eager to impart this bit of information.

“Was she taking medication?”

“Yes.”

When Wentworth didn’t expand on this answer, Nick probed, “Which one?”

Wentworth threw up his hands. “I don’t know which one. Does it matter?” He sounded exasperated.

The man apparently hadn’t been watching the national news where certain antidepressants were linked to an increased risk of suicide. “It might. I’ll need the name of it and her doctor’s name.”

Scott stopped in his tracks and glared. “Why is that relevant? She’s dead. She killed herself.” He waved toward the train.

If she killed herself. Nick wrote down the shrink’s name Wentworth provided. As they rounded the front of the engine and crossed the tracks, Nick saw blood traces on the metal. The scarlet showed up clearly on the tan and black locomotive.

He wished he didn’t have to interview witnesses because he’d rather not be near an accident scene. It made him itch to get back to work where he could actually help people. But he was exiled from his job for another week and he owed Brian. So he and Scott Wentworth walked toward the promenade.

“You and your wife were coming from the lake?” he asked.

“Yes. We’d spent the morning sailing. I’d hoped being on the water would cheer her up. We could see the train approaching as we walked toward the tracks. She must have planned to kill herself then.”

Nick was getting tired of Wentworth repeating those words as though the new widower thought Nick would forget. A woman was dead; he wasn’t likely to forget.

They’d reached the brick promenade. “You stood where?” Nick asked.

Scott moved to the center of the walkway. “Here. Carolyn stood on my right and just slightly in front of me.”

“Was there anyone else here? Or anyone behind you? Any other witnesses?”

“There were other people, but I didn’t recognize anyone.”

Nick jotted a note to ask around for witnesses. Civic-minded individuals would stay in the area to give their statements, but not everyone would want to get involved, especially if they were on vacation. And a lot of people vacationed here.

“How many witnesses were there? Were they men or women?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at them.” Scott inhaled and added, “Four or five, maybe, both men and women.”

Nick made another note to ask Marisa Avalos who she’d seen waiting with her friend. “Mr. Wentworth, I know it’s painful, but would you describe what you saw.”

Scott took a deep breath and breathed out. “The train was coming. We stood back a few feet from the tracks waiting. Then when the engine was almost in front of us, Carolyn threw herself in front of it. I grabbed for her, but couldn’t catch her. I had to pull in my arms fast or I’d have been hurt, too.”

“And did you see what happened to your wife?”

Scott frowned at him. “I told you, she jumped in front of the train.”

Nick held on to his temper. “I meant did you see the train hit her?”

Scott shook his head. “No, I didn’t watch her die. I couldn’t bear to see that.”

“I understand.” Nick’s gut told him Scott Wentworth had lied, but Nick wasn’t sure about what.

Nick couldn’t find another witness to corroborate Wentworth’s story. But he did find someone who told a different story.

The Voglers were a middle-aged couple who’d spent the morning boating like the Wentworths had. They lived thirty minutes away in Corning and kept their boat on Seneca Lake during the summer. They’d driven up to make the most of the sudden warm spell.

“The young woman dropped something,” Aaron Vogler insisted. He had a striking black handlebar mustache.

“Did you see what it was?” Nick asked.

“No. I saw it flutter to the ground and the next thing I knew, she was reaching for it. I couldn’t react fast enough.” He gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “And then she fell.”

“Did you see what it was, Mrs. Vogler?”

Peggy Vogler put her hand to her chest and shook her head. Her short brown hair was artfully streaked with blonde. “No. I was watching the train. All I saw was her arms outstretched as she leaned forward in front of the train. I couldn’t watch the rest.”

“Did she jump in front of the train?”

“Jump? No.” Mr. Vogler shook his head. “Maybe she lost her balance, but I’d swear she wanted whatever she’d dropped.”

“I just don’t know.” Mrs. Vogler looked distressed.

Nick thanked them and said the sheriff’s department would be in touch if anything further were needed.

Why was Wentworth so sure his wife had jumped? Hadn’t he seen her drop something? Until the train moved, Nick would have difficulty proving Mr. Vogler’s version of events. He knew from his years as an EMT that people witnessing a traumatic event often gave conflicting stories. But why would a man say his wife had killed herself?