Sole Witness (4 page)

“You didn’t love him. You had a boyfriend of your
own.”

Kimberley muted the television. “And T2 came between
us.”

“What?” Lori twisted to stare at her friend. “You
didn’t even know him. How could he possibly cause the breakup?”

“Marco was jealous of him. He’s not fair. I mean, I
dressed in slutty nursewear for him. Why couldn’t he pretend to be T2 for me?”

“Cripes. I don’t want to hear this.” Lori turned
back to the TV. “You’ll find someone new, Kimber. Someone better than both of
them.”

“Easy for you to say. You start someone new every
season of the year.”

The air thickened like molasses. Lori turned to
stare at Kimberley in hurt and disbelief. Sure, many men lusted after her. But
she stopped them with a well-practiced look. They only wanted her because they’d
seen her in jewel-encrusted bikinis, smiling at them from the pages of glossy
magazines.

“I’m not a supermodel like you,” Kimber continued.
“I couldn’t have a string of guys if I paid them.”

Lori stood and crossed her arms. “Well, this time I
came home to you. Lucky me.”

Kimber shrugged and pointed at the TV. “Look. Now,
there’s a hot cop.”

Accepting Kimber’s subject change, Lori turned to
the screen and froze. Davis Hamilton stood in a form-fitting suit, separated
from a gaggle of reporters by a thin strip of yellow crime scene tape. Kimber
was right. He looked good enough to eat.

“Lori—you’re blushing. Do you know him?”

Know him? That was one way to put it.

She knew how he stuck the tip of his tongue between
his teeth when he worked on his drawings. She knew how his body glistened with
sweat when he finished one of his marathon running sessions. She knew how his
eyes dilated and darkened when unable to hide his arousal.

But did she know him? Not really. Not anymore.

“Once. A long time ago.”

“When’s a long time ago? I’ve known you for eleven
years, and I’ve never met him. What’s his name?”

Lori took a deep breath and shifted on the bed.
“Davy.”

“Ohhh. Davy. The one that took your virginity your
freshman year and dumped you for the head cheerleader?”

“Kimber, for Pete’s sake. Do you mind?”

“Sorry! I didn’t know it was still a sore spot. He’s
hot, Lori. I’d have let him do it to me, too. I still would. Look at him. Is he
single?”

Lori grit her teeth. “He married the cheerleader.”

Kimberley flipped through the still-muted channels.
“Is it a happy marriage?”

“You’re not going to sleep with my ex-boyfriend.
Find someone else.”

“Fine, fine. If you love him so much, why don’t you
get him back?”

“I don’t love him.”

“Whatever. A little possessive, I’d say, for someone
who hasn’t boinked him in over a decade.”

“Kimberley, I swear to you, I’m going to–”

A crack of thunder interrupted Lori’s threat.

“A storm! Mr. Giggles is outside,” cried Kimber. She
motioned wildly.

What, she was too depressed to fetch her own cat?

With a sigh, Lori raced through the house to the
sliding glass door. She shoved it the rest of the way open and sprinted into
the back yard.

“Mr. Giggles? Mr. Giggles? Come on, kitty.”

A flash of white underneath her orange tree caught
Lori’s attention and she lurched after him, snatching him into her arms. The
first drop of rain plopped onto her nose. The sky opened up and sheets of rain
drenched the yard.

Another crack of thunder boomed in the clouds. A
streak of lightning raced across the sky. Clutching Mr. Giggles to her chest,
Lori ducked her head and ran inside, dropping the cat to the kitchen tile and
sagging against the interior wall.

“You didn’t shut the sliding door either.”

Lori blinked through wet lashes until Kimberley came
into focus. She reached out and slid the door shut without a word.

Kimberley walked to the refrigerator and snatched a
photo from the top. “Who’s this, Lori? Who’s this, and what are you doing?”

It was Sara, of course. Sissy. The two of them, over
a year and a half ago, on vacation in L.A. Sara’d been so jealous of Lori’s
crazy career, full of exotic locale’s featuring Lori’s bread-and-butter: Beach
shots.

A humorless little laugh escaped Lori’s lips.

What did Sara have to be jealous about? Third grade
teachers were far more important than fashion models any day. Third grade
teachers knew their multiplication tables. Lori couldn’t even leave tips
without the calculator feature in her cell phone.

Kimberley waved the photo in her face.

“I can see. Thanks,” Lori muttered.

Sara. The tail end of her summer vacation had
dwindled and she was determined to do something wild. If Lori had only known…

“How long has it been?” Kimberley insisted. “A
year?”

Yeah. Almost exactly one year since the sunny
afternoon Sara had talked her into hang-gliding to get over her fear of
heights. That plan had failed in more ways than one.

“Put it away.” Lori folded her arms across her wet
shirt.

“Oh, I’ll put it away.” Kimberly slapped the photo
back onto the refrigerator. “When will you? She’s dead, Lori. You have to start
getting over it.”

No. Lori’s muscles bunched in repressed anger.
“First my dad, then my sister. How am I supposed to get over losing the people
I love?”

Kimber shrugged and stroked her cat. “I don’t know.
Maybe you can’t. But you have to move forward. You haven’t done a single thing
since Sara died.”

“I have so.”

“Yeah?” Kimber raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Name
something.”

“I’m going to start my own business.”

“Oh yeah? When? I’ve been hearing about your ‘talent
agency’ since before Sara died. At the time, I thought you’d really go through
with it. I thought you could do anything. But I bet you’re no further on it now
than you were then. I bet you don’t even have a name picked out. It’s just
talk. All you’ve got is talk.”

Mr. Giggles pounced onto the kitchen table, sending
wet cat fur and Lori’s mail flying everywhere.

“I hate your cat.” Lori contemplating chucking the
little monster back outside.

Kimberley scowled. “Well, he hates you, too. Oh, and
what’s this?” She bent and picked up an envelope from the floor. “From
Playboy.” She ripped it open and unfolded the letterhead within. “Looks like
they want you to be a centerfold. Guess that’s how you know your career is
over.”

Lori snatched the letter from her hand. “That’s not
true.” She crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash without reading it.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Whatever.” Kimber scooped up her cat and kicked the
rest of the mail in Lori’s direction. “I’m going to watch TV.”

Steaming with frustration and injured pride, Lori
stared after Kimber’s retreating form. She gathered up the rest of her wet,
cat-scented mail. She dumped it all back onto the table before stalking out to
the living room. A little alone time might help. Maybe some retail therapy.

“I’m heading out!” Lori yelled at the empty hallway.
She grabbed her purse from the couch and stalked to the door.

“Where you going?” came Kimber’s bored voice.
“Everything’s closed but bars and strip joints.”

Far, far away. “Driving. Maybe off a nice, tall
bridge.”

Scuffling footsteps raced down the hall. Kimber
skated into the living room. “Let me find my shoes and I’ll go with you.” She
shrugged into a floor-length faux fur coat and kicked out a tennis shoe from
behind the recliner.

Lori shook her head. It wasn’t
that
cold, and
Kimber looked like a yeti.

“I’d rather be alone.”

A flash of hurt crumpled Kimber’s face and, just as
quickly, the look was gone.

“Fine.” She strode back down the hall, one shoe on,
fur coat floating behind her, head held high.

Lori considered calling her back with an apology and
a promise to hang out later, then changed her mind. With the mood she was in,
she’d only wedge the distance between them even further.

She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

Davis groaned when the
early-morning scent of a burning coffee pot wafted down the hall from the break
room.

Thank God he relied on tasty,
non-burnable Mountain Dew.

“Your buddy, the Detective
Sergeant, is totally out to get you,” Tonda Carver huffed as she plopped into
her chair.

“Why me?” Davis asked, not
expecting an answer. “You’re my partner. Shouldn’t he be after both of us
equally?”

Carver shrugged and fiddled with
a cough drop. “Don’t ask me. He’s a man. You’re a man. Ain’t a woman on this
earth who understands men.”

“Thanks.” Davis debated telling
her than men didn’t understand women either, but figured she already suspected
as much.

“All I know is, you better solve
this case and solve it fast. He’s under pressure due to the whole ‘high
profile’ aspect, and he’s making noises like the fall guy won’t be him.”

“Nice.” This wasn’t the first
time his superior officer breathed down his neck.

Carver sucked the orange-scented
lozenge into her mouth, distending her left cheek with its bulge. “Didn’t he
threaten to lateral you last year?”

Davis clenched his jaw.

The threat had nothing to do with
his performance on the job and everything to do with the one aspect of his life
he’d never had any control over—his father, the unstoppable defense attorney
from hell.

“Yeah,” he answered. “But he
knows I’d rather stay here.”

She snorted. “No kidding. It
wouldn’t be a threat if you
wanted
to work somewhere else, dingdong. You
think he might do it?”

He threw a pencil at her. “What
do you care? You’ll be on maternity leave.”

Carver scooped up the pencil and
stuck it behind her ear. “Raising a kid without a father will be hard enough.
Coming back without my partner—now, that might be too much. I expect your butt
to be in that chair.”

“Then let’s get back to work.
What do we have?”

“First off, a witness.”

“Potential witness,” Davis
corrected. “She called it in, she didn’t say she saw it.”

“Whatever.” Carver sucked loudly
on the cough drop, most likely to annoy him. “Obvious surfaces were wiped
clean, but forensics is checking the rest of the place for prints.”

Davis nodded. “Lots of traffic,
so that will take a while.”

“A single blonde hair found stuck
in the blood. What color is the witness’s hair?”

As if he could forget. “Blonde.”

Carver retrieved the pencil from
her ear and scratched a note on her desk calendar. “So, we might have a
suspect.”

Wrong. “No motive, no suspect.
Statistically, most killers are men who–”

The lead snapped from Carver’s
pencil. “Statistically, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Davis didn’t look at her. He already knew.

“The M.E. said Turner’d been shot
in the crotch. Crotch shots are personal. Personal, Hamilton. Turner being
ridiculously heterosexual, one has to assume the perp could be a disgruntled
female.”

“Our job isn’t to assume. Our job
is to find proof.”

Carver rolled her eyes.

“First we have to be suspicious.
Hence, a suspect. Let’s see, perp might be female. Whaddya know, Ms. Summers is
female. Blonde hair found on scene. Whaddya know, Ms. Summers is blonde.
Motive? Hookup gone bad, spurned for a new lover, could be anything. Means?
Money buys guns and supermodels have money. Opportunity? She called it in
herself. And—here’s the big ‘and’—the blonde hair was lodged in a pool of the
vic’s blood.”

Carver crunched on her lozenge.
“What the hell was she doing next to the body if she wasn’t killing him?”

Davis wished he could throw
something at Carver heavier than a pencil.

“Checking his pulse?” he
suggested. “CPR?” Lots of reasons. Hell, Lori didn’t even kill flies. “In every
murder case,
somebody
has to come across the body or the police would
never be involved. Crotch shots can come from jealous boyfriends, too. Bet not
all of Turner’s women were single.”

“So let me get this straight. She
hears shots. She knows somebody with a gun is inside.” Carver’s tone turned
sarcastic. “So she enters, despite a deranged gun-wielder present, just in case
there’s any dead bodies she can do CPR on?”

Put like that, his explanation
did sound a little weak. “We’ll have to ask her.”

“Oh yeah, suspects are always
truthful. That’ll clear things right up.”