Sprayed Stiff (5 page)

“Do you always think the worst of me?”

“It helps me keep my perspective for when things with you get even worse later, which they inevitably do.”

“Very funny.”

He dragged me toward the wall to a torturous-looking Louis XIII chair identical to the one Wilma was in, put a hand on my shoulder to ease me into the seat, and drew my right hand behind the back. A cold steel click around my other wrist told me my guard was an antique. The fan-back shape of the chair ensured I couldn’t get loose unless my arms suddenly achieved the flexibility of Gumby.

“Damn,” I muttered as I struggled halfheartedly. “I should’ve spent more time practicing those contortionist moves.”

Scythe leaned into me to check the fit of the left handcuff. “Been practicing, have you?” he said under his breath. “Maybe it’s time for me to collect on our deal?”

Blood flooded my face as my mind’s eye flooded with one too many visual images. I took a deep breath and smelled that sharp mesquite scent of Scythe’s. I squirmed. Oops. That didn’t help.

After a few seconds, the smoke in his dry-ice eyes blew out. “But I guess we’ll have to wait until
after
you get out of jail.”

Was he serious or just trying to scare me? Damn him. I watched him walk away, unable to risk a peek at the way his Wranglers snugged across his fine heinie with each stride. He sure knew how to play me to keep me off balance. I fumed. It was a helluva a lot safer to be mad at him. I reminded myself to stay that way.

The evidence techs arrived. On orders from Scythe, Friendly Officer Manning nearly turned me on my head to drag me and my chair out into the second-floor landing between the study and the stairs. The handcuffs were chafing my wrists, but I’d be damned if I’d give him the satisfaction of knowing that. I could hear Lexa sobbing somewhere downstairs, and even though I was facing the possibility that she’d set me up, I felt my heart tug for her grief.

I wondered whether Manning knew he had halitosis. Probably. His type would do it on purpose just to prove he didn’t give a hoot about being considerate of the rest of society. I held my breath as he double-checked that I wasn’t going to make a break for it once he left. After sucking in some snot, he blew out a cough. I considered filing a complaint for harassment based on his raunchy breath. It reminded me of the rotten Brie in my half-clean refrigerator.

“Whoa, would you look at this,” one of the techs called from inside the study.

Manning dropped his interest in me and rushed through the half-open door. Over the railing I could see Harland, who’d presumably been sweeping the downstairs in a clue-finding mission, glance at the open door, obviously tempted. He resisted. But when another of the techs hollered, “Sweet Jesus!” Harland couldn’t help himself and hauled ass upstairs, past me, and into the study. There was a cacophonic conversation coming from the room, and I was so curious to know what they’d found that I bounced myself off the floor to inch closer to the door.

I was about to bounce myself all the way down the hall when the Carricaleses walked into the foyer from the kitchen, heads together, whispering and glancing around nervously. You’d think that the cops would’ve stationed someone outside the door to intercept anyone coming in, but this was Terrell Hills, more than likely understaffed to handle the murder investigation of one of the county’s major citizens. Maria Carricales looked up and saw me. I’d met Maria once, when she’d driven Lexa to her hair appointment when Lex’s Pinto was in the shop. She grabbed the arm of the man I assumed was her husband and they raced up the stairs.

“Miss Sawyer! What are you doing here?” She pulled at my arm and the whole chair rocked. She exclaimed to her husband over the handcuffs, “José, look what has been done to this
pobrecita!”
Then, she tipped my chin up with her index finger. “Who did this to you?”

“The police. They’re holding me for questioning.”

“La policía?
What are they doing here?”

“Didn’t you see their cars out front?”

She and her husband shared a look, shaking their heads. “No,” José said. “We have to park in the alleyway behind the house and come in the back gate. Señora requires that. We don’t ever see the front of the house.”

“Why were you so nervous, then?” Had I imagined it?

They shared another look; then Maria spoke. “The gate was unlocked and standing wide open. We are certain we shut and locked it when we left for dinner and the movies earlier. I know we did. But we know we will be blamed if Señora finds out.”

Her husband nodded. “We hoped to see Lexa first, to know if we need to be careful around Señora, if she knows.”

“Don’t worry about the Señora,” I said. “She’s dead.”

They both gasped. Maria crossed herself. José swore under his breath. “A heart attack?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, brought on by a bullet to the chest.”

Eyes to the ceiling, they said some Hail Marys and crossed themselves in unison. Then they shared another one of those looks. It made me wonder how much they could communicate without talking and if all couples who’d been married for decades managed this unspoken language. “You didn’t do it?” José asked.

“Of course not,” I snorted.

They nodded to each other like that was a given.
“Dios mío,
she must have found out about her. Then he got angry and shot her.”

Who’s “her” and who’s “him”?

“Or maybe she found out about her running around with him again, even though she told her not to, and she shot her because she got angry?”

Is this the same “her” and the same “him”?
I knew the shot “her” was Wilma. But the other “hers” and “hims” were different this time, I thought. I opened my mouth, but Maria spoke again before I could get the words out.

“I bet it was
them.
” Maria crossed herself again and whispered something in Spanish.

José nodded. “They came for him and shot her instead.”

“Who’s
them?
” I blurted out.

They looked at me and then at each other. And, you know, they would have told me, I just know it, except Jackson Scythe, the man with the worst timing in the world, poked his head out the door. The man must have radar for messing up my life.

“Don’t even think about answering her,” he said to the Carricaleses. “She’s under arrest.”

“U
NDER ARREST?”
Maria, José, and I all exclaimed simultaneously.

José patted my arm. Maria took a step away from me, hand over her heart. “Did
she
kill Señora?”

“That is still under investigation, ma’am,” Manning blurted out officiously, coming out of the study from behind Scythe.

“This little girl couldn’t have managed anything like that.” José smiled at me apologetically as Manning ushered them down the hall.

“I don’t know.” Scythe raised both eyebrows. “Reyn is extremely capable.”

Wouldn’t you know, the first compliment I ever get out loud from him, and it makes me look like a murderess. I glared at him, which, come to think of it, probably made me look
more
like a murderess. Oh, well, I was already in handcuffs. How much worse could this get?

I was about to find out.

Manning, rubbing his shaved pate, probably to build his tough-guy mojo, took the Carricaleses into a room four doors down. Scythe leaned into me. I could tell he was mad, but I wasn’t sure at whom. “You’ve left me no choice, Reyn. If you’d stuck your nose in a murder in San Antonio city limits, I could’ve pulled some strings and gotten you some leeway, but I am the example here. If I’m going to teach them how to do things right, you’re going to have to go to jail.”

I opened my mouth and the squeal-squeak that came out was akin to what a mouse sounds like when it’s stepped on. “Jail?”

“I have to book you on nothing less than interfering with a murder investigation, or maybe even accessory to murder, depending on what you tell us in the interview.”

“What do you mean, what I tell you? I have nothing to hide. I plan on being honest.”

“Plan on being smart. Street-smart, for once.” He paused, and his eyes softened as he patted the top of my head. “Not book-smart.” Wow, another compliment. “Or hairstyle-smart,” he added with a visual review of my hair. So much for compliments.

He turned away, heading down the stairs. As he reached the bottom step, Percy Barrister, in a thousand-dollar British pin-striped suit that was a size too small, walked in the front door. His unibrow inchwormed over his forehead. He was less attractive than I remembered from the one time I’d seen him, along the lines of an overgrown troll, with wiry red-gray hair that stuck out at odd angles from his melon-shaped head. “It’s the middle of the night. What the hell is going on?”

He slammed the door, and the ensuing whoosh of air sent the overpowering scent of garlic toward me. I wrinkled my nose and saw the intrepid police detective take a step back.

Scythe, being brave, held out his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Jackson Scythe, SAPD.”

The older man ignored his offer to shake hands, elbowing past him to the stairs. “What are you doing in my home, pray tell?”

“Just a moment, Mr. Barrister.” Scythe put a quelling hand on his arm. Percy looked at it like it carried the plague. “There’s been a murder.”

“My daughter?!” Percy dropped his briefcase.

“Do you have any reason to think someone might want to murder your daughter?”

I thought it was cruel of Scythe to let Percy think Lexa had bit the big one, but then I realized he was trying to extract as much information as he could while the man was mentally off balance. I saw now why empathy probably wasn’t taught at the police academy. It didn’t win any points in a murder investigation.

“It’s that boy. I just knew he was a bad influence and—” Oops. Percy caught himself. His mouth snapped shut. He was an attorney, after all.

Scythe knew he was too late, but asked anyway, “What boy is that, Mr. Barrister? Would that be your son?”

“Of course not. Kermit lives in Houston. He’s a respected businessman, and I have nothing more to say until my representation arrives.” Wow, he’d gone from grief-stricken to self-preserving in five-point-
four seconds.

“That’s too bad because we’re losing precious time in finding who did this to your wife.”

I had to hand it to Scythe, he was pretty darn wily. Slipping the real victim in at the end threw Percy off balance again. For a few seconds his face registered shock, then relief. Relief that his daughter wasn’t dead, or relief that Wilma the Hun wouldn’t be ruling his kingdom anymore?

I thought I saw guilt flash across his face before it went carefully blank. Then he reached down to retrieve his briefcase. “Where is she?”

“With the crime scene techs. Once they are finished, the medical examiner has cleared her, and you’ve been interviewed, then perhaps you can see her.”

“Oh, I don’t want to see her.”

Scythe cocked his head in question and Percy added hurriedly, “At least not until she’s, uh, ‘cleaned’ up. I have a weak stomach.”

“I see,” Schythe answered cagily.

“Where is my daughter?”

“Your daughter is being interviewed right now. She found your wife.”

“Oh, dear Alexandra,” Percy sighed, and I saw honest regret in the hang of his head. “I must go to her. She’s…environmentally impressionistic.”

Huh? Was this a new kind of art? Or some new tag conjured by a therapist?

Scythe didn’t miss a beat. “She’s an adult and holding up fine. You know you can’t see her until you are interviewed. If you want to speed that up some, I’ll sit down with you right now.”

Percy met Scythe’s challenging stare. “I’ll wait for my representation. May I place the call now?”

Scythe nodded once and watched Percy pull his cell phone out of his briefcase and dial. It was the briefest of conversations, with the lawyer on the other end asking little besides Percy’s location. I guess when you represent criminals for a living, you get used to 2
AM
cryptic phone calls.

Percy looked up and saw me for the first time. He rang off and turned to Scythe. “You didn’t tell me you’d caught the perpetrator.”

“Who said we have?”

“Who is that?”

“A material witness.” Gee, thanks. Vote of confidence from Scythe.

“Why is she handcuffed, then?”

“To keep her out of trouble,” Scythe answered. The way he did a double take up at me made me think he was considering keeping me in handcuffs twenty-four/seven.

“Forget it,” I shouted down.

Scythe’s eyebrows rose in surprise that I’d read his mind.

The police chief I had yet to meet formally exited the study, silently took in the arrival of the husband, and paused beside me. “Are you doing okay?”

I liked this guy. In his early fifties, he had a tan face that was lined like he smiled a lot, and his gray eyes were bright but kind. Not razor-sharp like Scythe’s. The way he hard-parted his medium-brown hair two inches off to the right reminded me of my dad. A straight arrow. I nodded. He stuck out his hand. “Ralph Ferguson. I’m the chief of police here in this little town.”

Well, he was modest, even if most Terrell Hills residents weren’t. On a cop’s salary, he probably couldn’t afford to live here, anyway. I smiled back at him, looking apologetically at his outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He realized belatedly I couldn’t shake and rubbed his hands on his khakis. “I’m sorry, Miss Sawyer, about the cuffs.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure I do. You don’t look all that dangerous to me,” he admitted in a quiet voice. “But I’ve given Scythe my word he’ll have free rein in my department to teach my greenhorns how to handle investigations. So if this is the way he wants to do it, I can’t get in his way.”

“It’ll work out,” I said to reassure him.
It’ll work out in jail when I’m either beaten and left for dead, the ladies of the night recruit me, or the resident gang leader takes me as her girlfriend.

“Lieutenant,” Ferguson called to Scythe, “are you ready to interview Miss Sawyer yet?”

“Okay.” Scythe ran his hand through his hair, harried. It made it look worse. I’d noticed his bad haircut earlier and it pained me to study it. But, hey, it was my business. “Can you wait with Mr. Barrister for his attorney while I get Harland started on the interview with her?”

“Works for me,” Ferguson said. He descended the stairs and led a reluctant Percy into the kitchen.

Scythe trudged up the stairs, heaving the world’s biggest sigh. Hell, I wasn’t that bad. Just when I thought he was about to spring me from my cuffs so I could walk to the room where I would be interviewed, Scythe leaned down and picked up the entire chair. For an instant it made me feel small, light, and feminine, a lie if there ever was one. After all, I’d eaten about four billion calories’ worth of cheesecake just a couple of hours ago. I’d probably already gained fifteen pounds. I hoped he was getting a hernia, or at least a hemorrhoid or two, carrying me down the hall. I knew he was playing a head game. He was the macho he-man and I was the helpless female, shackled and at his mercy.

Good, let him think that. It put me at an advantage.

“Hey, what’s got everyone all excited in there?” I nodded toward the study as we passed.

“Leave it alone, Reyn. It’s none of your business.”

“I’m handcuffed to a chair. Of course it’s my business.”

“Not anymore, it’s not. It’s police business. It was police business from the beginning.”

“I know that.”

“That’s your problem. You know you shouldn’t go poking around somewhere, and yet you still do it. It would be better if you were simply stupid or ignorant or stumbled into things by accident. But no, you’re smart, yet you willfully implicate yourself and put yourself at risk. Just like the deal with Montoya. Why didn’t you let us find the murderer instead of rousting out the rattlesnake yourself? You were nearly killed and caused us a whole lot of trouble we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

“You guys might not have found the murderer otherwise.”

He kicked open the last door on the left and used his shoulder to flip on the light of a grim guest bedroom trimmed in black and burgundy. The wood in the bedroom suite carried the combined weight of an elephant. Scythe dropped the chair on the dank Kashan rug right next to a suit of armor that startled me so, I hit my head on the chair back.

“Plus”—I refused to be intimidated—“you’re talking about one of my good friends. What was I supposed to do, just go to the funeral and let fate take its course?”

His look told me that was exactly what I was supposed to do.

“How good a friend is this Alexandra?” Scythe asked tightly. He was making a big effort to control his temper. The guy had a powerful charisma, and when it combined with anger, he was combustible. It wouldn’t take much more than the wrong word to set him off. I was the teeniest bit scared, considering I seemed to pick the wrong word without even trying.

I swallowed hard. “Not that good. She’s a client. I feel sorry for her. I wish she’d start a life of her own.”

“Stop doing that. Feeling sorry for people. Feeling responsible for things that have nothing to do with you. Life is good for Alexandra. She’s probably about to inherit a whole lot of money, and she can afford to get her head screwed on straight. If you’re going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for yourself. She
might
go to jail. You, on the other hand, are
definitely
going to jail.”

Trying to ignore his intimidation, I wondered how Scythe had pegged Lexa so fast. How long had they been in the House of Horrors before they walked in on me in the study?

“That is,” Scythe continued quietly, “unless she goes to prison for life for shooting her mother to death for being a controlling bitch.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Say what? Bad things about Wilma Barrister or about your friend?”

“About Lexa. She’s had a rough row to hoe.”

Scythe leaned in so close I could smell that mesquitey scent of his. “Don’t be so blindly loyal. It just might kill you one day.”

He strode to the door, where Harland appeared. They talked in low tones that even my eagle ears couldn’t make sense of. He handed Harland a voice recorder out of his pocket and the younger man took it with shaking hands. Then Scythe looked pointedly at me over Harland’s head. “I’m leaving you to give your story to Officer Harland, Miss Sawyer. Make sure to tell him everything just as you
remember
it.” He walked away.

I was insulted that he was leaving me with Harland, who seemed very sweet but probably had the IQ of the village idiot. I’d rather him than Officer Bad Breath, but still…Then the point of Scythe’s look hit home—he was letting me tell my story without a whole lot of intense grilling. I could sway it as far in my favor as the facts would allow. Later, I would likely be tortured by a defense attorney on the stand, but the initial statement given to police was always considered the most plausible, the most accurate.

The long-limbed young cop stumbled once on the carpet, then began to test the voice recorder. It took him about ten minutes of “testing one, two, three” to get it all figured out while I critiqued his over-gelled dirty-blond hair, which was spiked but missed being hip by needing to be shorter on top and a bit longer on the sides. Maybe I would offer to fix it for him while I was lingering behind bars. The adrenaline began draining from my veins, and I felt myself droop. It was somewhere around three o’clock in the morning. I was about the drift off to sleep when Harland finally was ready. He sat on the love seat across from me and set the recorder on the coffee table between us.