Dial M for Mischief

Dial M for Mischief Kasey Michaels Meet mischievous Jolie Sunshine – out to clear her father’s name…and maybe get a little romance on the side. Hollywood darling Jolie is accustomed to trashy headlines. But the shocking gossip surrounding her father’s sudden demise has sent her over the edge… right into the arms of millionaire Sam Becket.Jolie and Sam once shared much more than a bed, till fame ended their escalating relationship. Now that very limelight is bringing them back together. With a murder to solve and a white-hot passion to quench, they’re really about to give the paparazzi a field day. Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELS “Michaels can write everything from a lighthearted romp to a far more serious-themed romance. [She] has outdone herself.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews, Top Pick, on A Gentleman by Any Other Name “Non-stop action from start to finish! It seems that author Kasey Michaels does nothing halfway.” —Huntress Reviews on A Gentleman by Any Other Name “Michaels has done it again…Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It “[A] hilarious spoof of society wedding rituals wrapped around a sensual romance filled with crackling dialogue reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story.” —Booklist on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie “A cheerful, lighthearted read.” —Publishers Weekly on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie Dial M for Mischief Kasey Michaels www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk/) Dear Reader, Ex-cop turned private investigator Teddy Sunshine raised his daughters to be tough and resilient, and to depend on themselves even as they’d always been able to depend on each other.And then Teddy died, supposedly committing suicide after strangling the wife of Philadelphia’s top mayoral candidate. Jade, the eldest of Teddy’s three girls, who worked with Teddy, summons her movie-actor sister, Jolie, and investigative cable news journalist, Jessica, home for their father’s funeral.Together they vow to prove their father had not been a murderer. The men in their lives are sympathetic, yes, but not at all happy to have the girls digging around in Teddy’s cold cases from his days on the police force, looking for the reason Teddy was killed. Four unsolved cases had haunted Teddy. The case of the vanishing Bride. The shooting death of a Scholar Athlete. The fishtown Strangler murders of six prostitutes. And, lastly, the Baby in the dumpster, a case that still held the attention of all of the cops in Philly. Somewhere in one of these cases, all recently worked yet again by Teddy, lay the answer to Teddy’s death. Somewhere, in the emotional turmoil of lovers past and present, the Sunshine girls hope to find some healing, some answers and a return of some sunshine to their lives. And somewhere out there, somebody should be very, very afraid that old crimes and new crimes are about to be solved! Oh, and one thing more—it would seem that two of the men in their lives are descendants of Ainsley Becket, patriarch of the Beckets of Romney Marsh, and heirs to the infamous Empress, a priceless uncut emerald that remains hidden two hundred years later, waiting for its “bad luck” to wear off so it can be found. I hope you’ll enjoy Jolie Sunshine and Sam Becket’s story. Happy reading! Kasey Michaels To Diana Ventimiglia onward and upward, baby! Chapter One THE SKY WAS UNUSUALLY bright the day his daughters buried Teddy Sunshine, the sun a big yellow ball chasing away all the early-morning clouds, if not the chill temperatures. Jolie Sunshine, when she noticed the sun, wondered whether her father had ordered it up or if it was some sort of sick joke dealt them by fate. In contrast to the brightness of the day, the small crowd around the grave site resembled nothing more than exotic black crows beneath the blue canvas canopy with Fulton Funeral Home stamped on the overhang. The only other colors were those of their pale faces and the blanket of bright red roses draping the bronze casket. When I kick off, I want to go out like a Kentucky Derby winner—draped with roses. Big red ones. Don’t you forget! “We remembered, Teddy,” Jolie whispered under her breath, earning her quick, inquisitive looks from her sisters, which she ignored. Roses they could do. What his daughters couldn’t do was to have their father buried with a full police funeral. Murderers didn’t get that kind of honor. Jolie swayed slightly between her sisters as the priest read a final prayer. The three held hands as they stood in their birth order: Jade to Jolie’s right, Jessica, the baby, to her left. Teddy’s Irish setter, Rockne, reclined stretched out at their feet, wearing his Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish kerchief around his neck. They were quite the dazzling trio, Teddy Sunshine’s girls; Teddy’s Angels, he’d only half-jokingly called them, harking back to the days of that old television show, Charlie’s Angels, which Teddy said the movie couldn’t really hold a candle to for sheer enjoyment. Jade could almost be typecast in the role Kate Jackson had played in the mid-seventies. Beautiful, refined and all business. Jessica could be a fresher, more lush and whole-some Farrah Fawcett, with brains as well as looks. Although, as Jessica had pointed out more than once, her teeth weren’t as big. But Jolie? Jolie didn’t fit Jaclyn Smith’s role, the one heavy on brains and beauty but also on sex appeal. Jolie was brunette; she was always told she was photogenic, but she had also spent most of her life believing herself to be too tall, too thin, too angular. Her mouth was too wide, her lips too full, her hair too straight, her hands and feet too long. Hell, she’d spent most of her teenage years carrying the nickname Jolly Green Jolie. Whenever she stood between her sisters, taller than either Jade or Jessica, she felt plain beside Jessica’s almost too-perfect beauty and stupid when compared to Jade’s quick, incisive brain—a living, breathing example of middle-child syndrome. It was only when she was in front of the cameras that Jolie didn’t feel awkward, inept, a giraffe in a field full of graceful gazelles. When the lights came on, all her self-doubt disappeared and she could be anyone she dreamed she could be. How she longed to be somebody else today, rather than a grieving daughter. How she longed to talk to Teddy Sunshine just one more time, watch as his big Irish smile lit up a room brighter than any Hollywood klieg lights and made her feel so very special, so very loved. Most of all, she wanted to hear his laugh, a laugh that could fill her world. But now—in the shade beneath the blue canvas tarp, except for the droning voice of Father Sheehan and the sobbing of two maiden aunts from Buffalo Jolie would have been hard-pressed to name correctly—silence, cold and uncomfortable, was all around them. There should be a Philadelphia Police Department honor guard in attendance, at the very least. Taps played. A salute fired. A flag ceremoniously folded and presented to Jade, as the oldest. But the Sunshine daughters had to make do with a priest who had never known Teddy, filling in for Father Muskie, who was on his annual vacation in the Canadian north woods and out of touch, unknowing that his good friend and gin rummy partner had died in disgrace. What the Sunshine funeral did have was press. Lots of it. Print and television news, along with about two dozen dredges of the tabloid-journalism pool, paparazzi hoping for a few good photographs, and some Mary Hart look-alike from one of the evening celebrity-magazine shows. The local reporters had shown up to put a fairly boring cap on the Teddy Sunshine story: the ex-cop turned P.I. who’d eaten his gun after squeezing the life out of mayoral candidate Joshua Brainard’s beautiful wife. The rest were here for Jolie Sunshine, movie star—and may they all go straight to hell. Rockne slowly clambered to his feet as the priest walked past, shaking hands with all three Sunshine daughters, and then collapsed onto his belly once more, raising his sad brown eyes to Jolie. He hadn’t eaten anything for the past two days, even when she had gotten down on the floor early this morning and gone face-to-face with him, one of his favorite treats clamped between her teeth as she’d mumbled, “Yum-yums. ’Ook, ’Ock-nee, yum-yums.” Now there was a picture for the tabloids: Movie Star Fights Pooch for Doggy Treat, Fears Rise Over Mental Collapse of Fan-Fave Sunshine. Like she’d give them the satisfaction. She’d get through this. They’d all get through this. “Okay, it’s over, Jolie. Time to say our last goodbyes,” her sister Jade told her quietly. Jolie felt her knees threaten to buckle once more but steeled herself to remain upright. When they left the grave site, the workmen standing under those trees over there would come back, lower Teddy into the ground, locking away all the real sunshine in her life forever. She wasn’t ready for that. “No, not yet. Please, not yet.” Jade sighed, squeezed Jolie’s hand. Jade, the oldest and, even now, in the midst of their nightmare, the practical one. The one who had stayed with Teddy, worked with Teddy in the Sunshine Detective Agency. The one who had come home to discover Teddy’s body and then called her sisters, broken the news to them without tears, without hysterics. Just, “Daddy’s dead—I need you here. Now.” “Honey, we have to face the cameras. One last time, and then we can go home, begin to figure this thing out. Okay?” “Come on, Jolie, Jade’s right,” her sister Jessica urged. “We’ll face them together. Just ignore the slimy bastards, say ‘No comment’ if you say anything at all as we keep moving toward the limo. You know the drill.” Jolie looked wryly at her sister, the blond bombshell who was currently on sabbatical from her own job as an on-air investigative reporter. “Slimy bastards, Jess? Aren’t they your comrades-in-arms?” Jessica rolled her huge sherry-brown eyes even as she tossed her head, her long blond hair falling forward once more to frame her face. “Puh-leez. I’m the real deal. What’s waiting on the other side of the road are the dregs of humanity. Entertainment reporters? Bottom-feeding, scum-sucking dirtbags, that’s all they are. But we’re not going to let them get to us. Right?” Jolie nodded. “Right. Just give me another minute. Just…just one more minute.” Jessica looked past Jolie to Jade, who only shrugged her shoulders and left the two of them standing where they were while she retrieved a trio of long-stemmed red roses the undertaker had provided. “Here, one for each of us. Jolie? Come on, honey. Follow me, do what I do.” “Yes, Mother,” Jolie said, smiling for the first time in days as she took the rose. She was an actress. She would act. The grieving daughter approaching at the graveside, kissing the petals of a drooping rose and then placing it on top of the casket that was really empty, a prop, a part of the scene, that’s all. She was the Mafia wife bidding farewell to her mobster husband, gunned down as he ate his favorite pasta in his favorite mobster restaurant. The sweetheart of a fallen World War I soldier who’d perished somewhere in France. The sister of a frontier sheriff ambushed on the streets of Laredo. Her hand barely shook as she gently laid the bloom on top of the blanket of roses. She was acting. It was all a sham. This wasn’t real. Teddy wasn’t dead. Her daddy wasn’t— “Oh, God, I’m sorry I’m being such a jerk. Let’s just get out of here before I lose it,” Jolie whispered as she stepped back from the casket and bent down to grab Rockne’s leash. She pushed past Jade, who had been stopped by one of the anonymous, interchangeable aunts. “What’s the rush? Oh, you want to leave now, Jolie? What a fantastic idea,” Jessica muttered, following after her. “Jade and I would never have thought of that on our own—you long-legged dork-stork.” “Stuff it, Barbie doll—if you don’t already—and go rescue Einstein from the aunts, will you? I’ll go ahead to the limo, keep the cameras off you guys if I can.” Jolie squared her shoulders. They were the Sunshine girls. They’d hung in this long and they were going to get through this! None of them had cried throughout the funeral mass or the short ceremony at the grave site; they wouldn’t give anyone that satisfaction. All Jolie wanted now—all she was sure the three of them wanted now—was to get this done, get this over and go back to the house Jade had shared with their father. The house where he had sat in his study, surrounded by a lifetime of achievements nailed to the walls, and used his service revolver to blow his brains all over those signed photographs and commendations. Jolie looked across the cemetery with its flat bronze plaques fairly hidden in the well-manicured grass, giving the area the appearance of a wide, green park. Pretty, even peaceful, if not for the crowd being held behind rope barricades on the far side of the macadam roadway that wound through the center of the cemetery. As she and Rockne moved toward the limousine, eager arms were raised and she could hear the whir and snap of two dozen cameras, had to blink at the sharp shafts of sunlight reflected from many of the telephoto lenses pointed in her direction. Her mouth went dry. Her heart pounded with pain and anger. She wanted to run, longed to run. Felt her hands bunching into fists at her sides because she wanted to hit someone, shake someone, demand to know if they really believed the “public’s right to know” extended to being voyeurs at a funeral. But she knew she had to keep walking slowly, at an unhurried pace, her head held high, her face shielded somewhat by the large, round sunglasses. Jolie swore she could hear her father’s big, encouraging voice whispering in her ear. That’s the way. One foot in front of the other, Jolie, baby, and soon you’ll be walkin’ right out that door… She was almost there, almost at the limo. She had to hang on just another minute, and they would be out of this madness. There were a half dozen rent-a-cops on the scene for crowd control, and yet someone wasn’t on the job. One of the paparazzi slipped through the line to do an end-run around the hearse and toward Jolie, snapping his camera as he approached. “Jolie! Look here! Look over here! Toss the glasses, babe! Let’s see those big baby blues! Come on, honey, you owe your fans something, right?” Steady, girl. One foot in front of the other… The rent-a-cops stood back as the photographer edged closer. He dropped to one knee to get a good shot, the telephoto lens still in place. Jolie madly wondered if her fans really needed a close-up of the hairs in her nose. “Hey, Jolie! What’s it feel like knowing your daddy was a murderer? Gotta be tough, right?” Something inside her snapped, actually went br-oi-i-n-g. She took a step toward the photographer. “That’s it, Jolie—nearly perfect. Now ditch the glasses.” “Don’t do it, Jolie,” Jessica called out, jogging toward her as quickly as she could in four-inch heels. “Don’t react. Just let it go.” “The hell with that. Come on, Jolie. Look this way. You smile for us when you want us around. Smile for us now!” Aw, the bloody blue devil with it, sweetheart—go give him a good conk! Jolie would probably never remember how she got from point A to point B, but she was suddenly there, looking down on the son of a bitch who was still shooting frame after frame up into her face. She’d rather not remember grabbing the camera from him even as she kicked front with one foot, connected with his chest and sent him sprawling on his back on top of Bertha M. Pierce, 1917-2003, beloved wife of Henry. Yanking open the back of the camera, Jolie ripped out the film, exposing it to the sun, and then pulled back her arm, ready to throw the camera in the photographer’s face. She knew the other photographers and video cameramen were having a field day from their vantage point across the road, but she didn’t care. She’d needed a target for all her anger, her grief, her frustration, and this bozo had volunteered for the job. And then she heard the scream. Turning, with the camera still in midair, Jolie saw the interchangeable great-aunts ten yards behind her. One of them—Aunt Marie; or maybe it was Aunt Theresa—had her right leg jammed up to the knee in a hole in the ground. She wasn’t screaming, even though her mouth was open and moving. She was white-faced with terror. “Help! Help!” the other aunt, the screamer, cried hysterically. “Somebody’s trying to pull her down!” Jolie let the camera fall to the ground as Jade and Jessica joined her, the three of them now staring at the aunts. “What in hell…?” “Gopher hole,” the undertaker explained quietly as he walked past the girls. “Happens a couple of times every summer, and they always think one of the dearly departed is reaching up to get them. I’ll dig her out. I keep a shovel in the hearse.” Jolie forgot about the cameras, forgot about the reporters, even forgot her anger. She involuntarily drew in her breath, air sucking in so long and so hard she thought she might have forgotten how to exhale. And then, when she believed she might faint, something inside of her released. She let loose with a fountain of laughter that had built up inside her and now exploded from her, totally beyond her control. She laughed until she had to bend over, brace her hands on her knees. And still she laughed. She laughed until the laughter turned to tears. Hard, racking sobs that sent her down to her knees, because Teddy would have loved the gopher hole so much and then later woven the incident into a huge story twice as funny as what had actually happened. “Come on, baby, showtime’s over.” Jolie stiffened at the touch of hands closing around her shoulders, pulling her to her feet. She turned around slowly…to look up into a face she hadn’t seen in five long years. “Sam? Oh, God…Sam…” “Yeah, Sam. We’ve got that covered,” Sam Becket said as he slid a protective arm around her shoulders and guided her away from the limousine and toward a sleek black Mercedes parked at the bend of the macadam road. “Your sisters can manage, but we’ve got to get you out of here.” Jolie tried to slow her steps, but Sam kept a strong grip on her as he hastened her across the grass. “I can’t just leave them to—” “You can, you are, and for once in your big, independent life you’re going to let someone else take care of you, damn it,” he told her. He opened the passenger door and all but folded her in half to shove her into the front seat as the bottom-feeders stampeded in their direction, cameras flashing and whirring. They plastered their cameras against the side window and windshield, and Jolie covered her face with her hands. Sam opened the driver’s-side door, pausing a moment to say, “You’ve got three seconds to back off, people. Move it or lose it.” One of the reporters, microphone in hand now, pushed even closer. The guy had bottle-blond hair, an indoor tan and too-white capped teeth that might make him look good on television but up close and personal he looked a little like a beaver. “Oh, yeah?” he yelled the challenge. “And who are you? Who the hell are you!’ “Me? Well, I’ll tell you, Bucky—I’m the guy who’s leaving now. Two seconds. Which one of you losers wants to be my new hood ornament?” “You won’t do that. We have a right to—” Sam’s door slammed. He shoved the key in the ignition and put the transmission into Drive. One quick warning tap on the horn and the large car moved forward. “Sam, you can’t just run them down,” Jolie warned him, at last realizing what she’d done. “I shouldn’t have snapped like that. I know the drill, I know what they are. I—Sam, don’t! Outside the car, someone yowled in pain and the rest of the barracudas scurried to safety. “Oops. Guess I might have rolled over a foot or two, huh?” Sam said, smiling at her. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t as if they weren’t warned. Duck your head, Jolie, we’re almost out of range.” “My publicist is either going to hug you or shoot you. Me, too, come to think about it,” Jolie said as the Mercedes came to a halt just past the wrought-iron gates, then turned out onto the highway. “Do you care?” She looked at him, seriously considering the question. “No, I don’t think I do.” She searched in her pocket and came out with a wad of tissues to wipe at her eyes. “Thank you, Sam. You didn’t have to do this.” “What can I say? Underdog to the rescue?” He flashed a quick grin at her, and Jolie’s stomach executed a small but powerful flip. How did men do it? Women just got older—and quickly, especially in Hollywood. But men? Men aged, like wine. Sam Becket, she should have realized, could be considered nothing less than the finest vintage. “All the superheroes to choose from, and you chose Underdog?” “I guess I’m just a sucker for long, floppy ears.” “Oh, my gosh—Rockne! I let go of his leash!” “Jade has him,” Sam said as he moved into the passing lane, one eye on the rearview mirror. “Hold on, we’ve got a tail.” “No, you have a tail. You’re Underdog, remember?” Jolie turned around on the seat and looked out the rear window. “So can this thing outrun a news van with a honking-huge satellite dish on top?” To answer her question, Sam put the pedal to the metal, so that Jade had to hold on as she tried to turn around in her seat once more and buckle herself in tight. “How could I have forgotten what a show-off you are?” she asked him, leaning her head back against the headrest as he cut in and out of traffic, the speedometer edging past eighty in the thankfully thin late-morning traffic. He was all concentration now, and Jolie took the opportunity to look at him more closely. His profile was still sharp, his nose straight and perfect, his cheekbones high, his brow smooth and unlined, his chin rock-solid as he edged past the sunny side of thirty. Thirty-three? Thirty-four? She should probably remember that, but she didn’t. What she remembered was the thick, dirty-blond hair he wore shorter than the last time she’d seen him, and rather tousled—the kind of tousled that probably cost two hundred bucks a haircut. His fine, unblemished skin was a golden tan, although his right hand was a bit more pale, proving that he’d found time to get in a few rounds of golf while running Becket Imports, one of the many holdings of the embarrassingly rich Becket family. Mostly what she remembered was how her body fit so well against Sam’s long, lean frame, the top of her head coming up to his chin, when she seemed to tower over most men. The way his hands had moved over her skin, the taste of his mouth, the intense, soul-exploding look in his green eyes as their two bodies merged… “Where…uh, where are we going?” “It would be rather senseless to lose the press and then go straight back to your father’s house, don’t you think?” She nodded, biting her bottom lip. “True. So where are we going?” “My place,” he said, dipping his head and looking across at her above the silver rims of his sunglasses. “Do you mind?” Jolie shook her head, ignoring another quick stomach flip. “I don’t think I’m ready to go back home yet, so, no, I don’t mind. You know, I was so busy trying not to look at anybody that I didn’t even see you this morning. Were you at the church?” “Sorry, no. I was out of the country until late last night and only saw the newspaper clippings my secretary put on my desk when I got to the office this morning. And since I haven’t said it yet, I’m really sorry about Teddy. He was a hell of a guy.” “He always liked you,” Jolie said, blinking back tears again. “Not always.” She turned to look at him. “Excuse me? It was always Sam this and Sam that and ‘Sam is a helluva guy, Jolie.’” “That probably was before he warned me to stay away from you or he’d rearrange my face.” “He—oh, he did not. Did he? Omigod, he did! When did he do that?” Sam looked at her, doing that head-dip thing again so he could hit her with those green eyes of his above the sunglasses. “Do we really want to go into ancient history right now, when we’re getting along so well?” “No, I suppose not,” she said as she slid down onto the base of her spine and watched the scenery that consisted mostly of enormous cement sound barriers erected to protect the mansions on the other side from the sights and sounds of the highway. Ten uncomfortably silent minutes later Sam eased onto the Valley Forge exit, and she knew they were now only minutes away from his home in Villanova. Too soon, he turned onto the familiar long, winding lane leading toward his house. His mansion. His humungo—ridiculously humungo for one person, in any case—house that stood at the rear of a cul-de-sac, behind high stone walls, huge wrought-iron gates. And a gatehouse, for crying out loud. Sam’s house made ninety-nine percent of the mansions in Beverly Hills look both insubstantial and faintly tacky. That was one of the differences, Jolie had decided, between old money and new money. New money shouted. Old money whispered. “Again, I’m sorry I got to the cemetery so late, although it turned out I got to park close enough to do my Underdog-to-the-rescue bit. I’d expected more of a crowd.” Jolie was grateful for the change of subject. “There was a crowd, lookie-lous outside of the church. But only the press followed us to the cemetery. And,” she added, sighing, “I guess you really know who your friends are when you’re accused of murder. I can think of at least two dozen faces I should have seen there today and didn’t. They’ll not be welcome once Jade and Jess and I figure out who killed Teddy and that woman, let me tell you.” He stopped in front of the closed gates. “You’re kidding, right?” She looked at him levelly, which wasn’t easy to do as she’d raised her chin a good three inches higher into the air. “Do I look like I’m kidding?” “No. I remember that determined look. I think I still get nightmares, as a matter of fact. But we’re not going to talk about any of that now, right?” Jolie knew what he was saying without really saying it, and since the last thing she had energy for was a five-year-old fight, she sat up straight as the gates swung open. Sam eased the Mercedes through the opening and stopped. “Isn’t that—” “Carroll Yablonski, yes. Although the last person who called him Carroll is probably still in traction,” Sam said as the human fireplug lumbered toward the window Sam was lowering. “Bear Man? No visitors, okay? I’m not home to anybody. Oh, and if any reporters show up and try to give you a hard time, you have my permission to eat them.” “That’d be fun. Got the choppers for it now, thanks to you.” Carroll grinned, showing off a too-large set of obvious dentures. Then he leaned his head in low and looked across the interior of the car at Jolie. “Hullo, Miz Sunshine. Love your movies. Seen ’em all. Tough break about your daddy.” “Thank you Car—Bear Man. I appreciate that.” Bear Man stepped back a pace, banged the flat of his hand on the roof of the car to give the all-clear, and Sam continued up the curved driveway. “Well, I’m waiting,” Jolie said quietly. “He needed a job.” “I thought he was a professional wrestler in one of those W-W-W-W thingies. And a star, too.” “He was—until he had his head run into the turnbuckle a few too many times. They may fake that stuff, but people still do get hurt. Bear Man needed a job that didn’t tax his scrambled brains too much. He needed somewhere to live. I just happened to be able to help him out, that’s all.” “The quarterback taking care of his offensive linemen,” Jolie said, smiling at him. “Did Carroll—Bear Man—ever graduate? I don’t remember.” Sam stopped the car at the top of the circular brick driveway, just in front of the arched wooden door that, Jolie knew, was so thick it could probably withstand a battering ram…or a bazooka. “No. He just couldn’t keep up his grades. Probation for one semester, and then he lost his eligibility and dropped out. But we kept in touch.” “More than can be said for you and some other fellow grads of good old Temple U. Not that we attended the same years. All I got to hear about back then, though, was Sam Becket, the scholar, the quarterback, the legend.” “Meaning?” “Meaning nothing,” Jolie said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I’m saying all the wrong things. I just buried my father, for God’s sake. Forget I said anything.” He put his hand on her forearm to keep her in her seat. “I’ve missed you, Jolie.” She looked down at his hand, willing him to remove it, wishing he had put his arms around her. “Not enough, Sam.” He moved his hand. “Let’s go inside and find you something to drink. Find us both something to drink.” She didn’t wait for him to come around and open the door for her but stepped out into the now warm June sun to stand looking at the house she’d visited a hundred times. They’d made love in most of those rooms. Twenty-three of them. Including one memorable interlude in the barrel-vaulted formal dining room that had involved the genuine Tudor-era table, a pair of sturdy, low-hanging wrought-iron chandeliers and the cream puffs that were supposed to be their dessert. Which they were. Sort of… Her cheeks had been flushed with embarrassment the entire next evening as she’d sat at the bottom of the table, playing hostess, while Sam had entertained the mayor and his wife to help launch the man’s reelection campaign. Especially when dessert had been served. Cream puffs. Sam had winked at her as one was set in front of her on a Rosenthal dessert plate. He’d then told the mayor how the chandeliers in the room were rumored to have been an acquisition of his notorious ancestor Ainsley Becket in the late 1700s, back when privateering was an acceptable way of life. And why did she have to think about all of that now? Her cell phone rang, shaking her out of her uncomfortable thoughts, and she rummaged in her bag, glad for the interruption. “Hello?” She looked at Sam, mouthed Jade. “You and Jessica want to what? I know nobody knows about him, but what does that have to do with—I don’t know, I’ll have to ask him. But won’t you be followed?” She listened a moment and then rolled her eyes. “Mea culpa. How could I ever even think the great Jade Sunshine couldn’t elude a—hey, Secret Squirrel, I said I’ll ask him. Give me a minute, all right? Munch on a walnut or something.” She pressed the open phone to her chest and looked at Sam, who was smiling at her in a way that told her he still enjoyed listening to the Sunshine sisters bicker like little children. “Jade and Jess want to come here, talk, maybe spend the night until the last of the press takes a hike from our front yard. I’ll tell them no.” “No, don’t do that. If the press is still bothering you at the house, it seems logical to bunk here, at least overnight. I’ve got plenty of room.” Jolie put a second hand over the phone. “But I don’t want them to come here. Say no, Sam. Be a beast.” He reached for the cell phone, and since she was holding it between her breasts and the contact was a little too intimate, she let him take it from her. “Jade? Hi, it’s Sam. Good to hear your voice again, too. No problem, somebody had to do it. Hysterical?” He grinned at Jolie, who glared daggers back at him. “I wouldn’t say exactly hysterical. But you know how she is…yeah, right. Sure. See you then.” “You know how she is what?” Jolie demanded, following him up the three shallow steps to the front door. “How is she, Sam?” He placed his thumb against a small, discreet panel cut into the woodwork of the doorjamb, and the door swung open soundlessly. “How she’s prone to be a bit dramatic at times,” he said as Jolie stared, bug-eyed, at the panel. “But that probably comes with the territory with actresses, right?” Jolie pointed at the panel. “It beats being paranoid, Chester. And why not a retinal scan? Or didn’t you want to be seen as going overboard? Jeez.” “Ah, that brings back memories. I haven’t been Chester for a long time. And I took the security system in exchange for a pair of Ming-dynasty floor vases I’d been trying to unload for two years. I don’t even need to key in a code once I’m in the house, thanks to the thumb pad. Clever, yes?” “Uh-huh,” Jolie muttered vaguely as she entered the large flagstone-floored foyer, mentally throwing away the key to Sam’s front door that she’d refused to part with for five long years. She stopped to take a look around, wondering what else had changed in her absence. But she should have known. Furnish your house in antiques and you don’t exactly go running out to JCPenney every couple of years for a new pseudo-suede lounge chair with built-in cup holders and a pocket for the TV remote. She removed her sunglasses and walked straight ahead, into the living room that stretched nearly across the entire rear of the house. A person could bowl in Sam’s living room, which he sometimes called “the lounge” or “the salon.” But only when trying to impress somebody who wanted to be impressed, as she recalled. “How long before Jade and Jessica show up?” “Two hours or more, I guess. They’re going to go out for lunch once they can get shed of the aunts—Jade’s words, not mine—and then they have to give the reporters the slip. That reminds me—I have to call down to Bear Man and alert him that they’re coming. Why do you ask?” He asked the question from only a foot or two behind her, so that Jolie found herself beating a retreat to one of the sets of French doors that led out to the flagstone terrace and the Olympic-size reflecting pool that stretched lengthwise away from the house between two rows of slim, tall Italian something-or-other evergreens. We made love in the pool, too…more than once… When she turned around, it was to see that Sam had also removed his sunglasses. And loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button of his crisp white dress shirt. How she longed to feel his arms around her, to feel something other than grief. Distance. She needed to put some distance between them. Fast. “I just…I feel grubby. Do you mind if I take a shower?” Sam bowed his head slightly and waved her toward the foyer and the wide circular staircase that led upstairs. “Be my guest. You know where everything is. Oh, and I think there’s still a few pieces of your clothing in a bottom drawer in my dressing room.” “You think?” she asked, her heart beginning to do its pounding-too-hard thing again. “All right, Jolie, I know. I had the bathroom and dressing room remodeled last year, and Mrs. Archer asked me what to do with a few things.” “And you told her to put everything in a bottom drawer? Why, Sam?” He looked at her levelly, a muscle working in his cheek. “Just go take your shower, Jolie, all right? I’ll find Mrs. Archer and have her make up some sandwiches for us before she leaves for her sister’s anniversary party.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she nodded. It took everything she had not to run from the room but to only walk away and not look back. But that wouldn’t work. It hadn’t worked then, it wouldn’t work now. She’d been looking back for five long years… Chapter Two SAM PLACED THE TRAY OF sandwiches on the round table in the alcove in front of the windows and turned to look across the large room. Jolie’s slingback heels sat on the floor at the bottom of the bed, her black silk dress spilled across the burgundy and gold striped raw silk coverlet. He fought the urge to pick up the dress, hold it to his face, breathe in the scent of the perfume she always wore. Amazone. He’d bought it for her, and she still wore it. There should be a law that no other woman could ever wear that fragrance. It belonged to Jolie. “Keep it up, Sam, and soon you’ll be writing bad poetry,” he mumbled beneath his breath as he slipped out of his suit jacket and settled it over the back of a chair. He was just sliding his tie out from beneath his collar when the door to the bathroom opened and he turned, his hand still gripping the tie, to see Jolie standing in the open doorway. She was wrapped in a large white, monogrammed Becket Hotels bathrobe belted tightly at her waist, and was rubbing at her wet head with a matching white towel. “Oh, you’re up here. That’s some bathroom you’ve got. It took me five minutes to figure out how to work the shower,” she said, dropping the towel. She then bent at the waist so that her shimmer of medium brown hair hung down as she ran her long fingers through it. When she stood up once more, giving her head a quick backward flip, every last damn strand of hair fell away from her face and sleekly to just beyond her shoulders, as if styled by a master. God, she was gorgeous. Tall and slim, her beautiful face bare of makeup. Not the movie star. Jolie. She reminded him of a young thoroughbred. His lovely, vulnerable, always skittish Jolie. She leaned against the doorjamb and returned his look. Just looked at him, her eyes so incredibly sad. “Are you all right, Jolie?” “No, Sam, I’m not. I’m not anywhere close to all right,” she said quietly, her hands untying the sash as she walked toward him. “Make me all right, Sam. Don’t talk, don’t say a word. Just make love to me. Please.” Her sea-blue eyes were turning liquid, and he could drown in them, if he let himself succumb. He caught her at the shoulders, holding her at a distance. “I’m going to hate myself for this. No, Jolie, we can’t. It’s not a good idea.” “Why not? Why, Sam?” He pulled the lapels of the robe together as she retied the sash. “You just buried your father, sweetheart.You’re going through hell. I don’t want you to do anything right now that you might regret in a few days.” Jolie’s bottom lip began to tremble as a single huge tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, as if ashamed of her show of weakness. Which, she couldn’t realize, only made her seem that much more vulnerable. Sam had to look away from her or else pull her close, comfort her, do anything she wanted him to do. And then, in a few days, he’d also probably regret what they’d done. She stepped away from him. “You’re probably right. What I don’t need in my life right now is another complication. I’ve only got two weeks here before I have to go back to California.” “You’re beginning a new movie?” She shook her head, cinching the sash tighter before sitting down at the table. “I don’t go on location for nearly a month. This is promo for Small-Town Hero. It premieres then, with the usual round of talk shows, interviews. I’m dreading them.” Sam pulled out the facing chair and sat down. To him the answer seemed simple. “So ban all questions about your father. You can do that, can’t you?” Jolie held up a finger as she chewed on a bite of ham-and-cheese sandwich, her favorite. Everyday American cheese, the sort that comes individually wrapped, and sliced boiled ham from a local butcher shop on white bread. He doubted she’d had either while in California. “Oh, this is so good. This ham is from Harry’s, isn’t it? His special wedding ham? It has to be. And we can’t do that, Sam. Make not talking about Teddy a deal breaker and it assures us that someone will bring it all up. Hell, they’ll make a story about how I don’t want to make Teddy a story.” “Is this where I ask Why don’t you just tell them all to go screw themselves and walk away? and you say What, and give up showbiz?” She smiled around another bite of her sandwich. “I really have missed you, Sam. Even with all this—” she indicated the room, the house, Sam’s whole world, he imagined, with one graceful sweep of her arm “—you’re still the most sane and normal person I’ve ever known. Well, normal multimillionaire anyway, I guess. I, uh, I’m sorry I sort of pushed myself at you there a minute ago. It wasn’t fair of me.” “Good. Now do something about that gaping neckline or I might forget how normal and sane I am,” he told her, and she quickly pulled the lapels of the robe together across her magnificent breasts. He got to his feet. “Did you find the clothing I told you about?” “I did, yes, and I can take a hint. I’ll finish my sandwich, get dressed and meet you downstairs, all right? Better yet,” she added, putting down the sandwich and getting to her feet, “I’ll go get my clothes and get dressed in another bedroom, because you probably came up here to shower and change into something more—Sam?” He’d closed the gap between them before he could think of any good reason not to, and cupped his hands on her shoulders. He began to knead at the hollows beneath her shoulder blades with his thumbs, vaguely aware that the terry cloth was damp, that she must have used the robe in lieu of a towel. More than vaguely aware that the robe was all she wore. “Sam…?” There had been other women since Jolie. He wasn’t a saint, and she’d been gone for five long years. But none of them had ever been allowed here, in his house, in his bedroom, naked beneath his robe. He’d reconfigured the master bathroom with her in mind, knowing that was insane. But a man without hope might as well just pack it in and start collecting stamps or something. “You were wrong a while ago, Jolie. I did miss you enough. For the first year I believed every day that you’d be home again. For the second, I told myself you were just trying to build up the courage to admit you’d been wrong, that Hollywood wasn’t the place for you. And then…and then the movie came out and I knew.You had only a couple dozen lines of pretty lousy dialogue and appeared in only three scenes—I counted. But when you were up there on the screen, nobody else was there, nobody else mattered. You were magnificent. That’s when I knew, Jolie. That’s when I knew you weren’t ever coming home.” She lowered her gaze. “I got lucky. I was ready to come home by the end of that second year, my tail between my legs, when that horrible movie came out. Walter put me in his next movie, and I’ve been working steadily ever since. Things…things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. If I’d come home a failure I wouldn’t have been worth anything to anybody, Sam, not to you, not even to myself.” As she spoke, he was using his massaging thumbs to slowly push aside the lapels of the robe. “And you did it your way.” “Meaning not your way?” She put her palms against his chest and slowly eased them lower until they rested at his waist. “But that’s all over now, Sam. I didn’t take your money, I didn’t take your help. I could sing fairly well, I knew I could dance. I had to know if I could act. I had to, Sam, and I had to do it myself. So I waited tables, I sold shoes, I bagged groceries, asked if people wanted fries with their order. I did it on my own. I somehow finally nabbed that one role in the worst slasher movie ever made and I got lucky. I can’t believe you even saw it. The studio pretty well buried it once they wanted me for the new girl next door.” Now it was his turn to avert his eyes. “Somebody mentioned seeing you in the movie. I’ll admit I had to hunt for it.” “It nearly went straight to the video stores,” Jolie said, and now her fingers were busy, working at loosening his belt even as he was backing up, backing the both of them toward the bed. “Sam? Are we going to keep talking or is this going anywhere?” Sam knew their conversation wasn’t going anywhere near the truth, that was for certain. Not if he could help it. So why didn’t he just let it go where they both wanted it to go? His thumbs had done their job, and now his fingers were touching smooth bare skin, even as he felt the back of his thighs touching the heavy footboard of the bed. “Is that your way of saying you’re hungry and you want to finish your sandwich?” She looked up at him from beneath her remarkably long lashes. “I am feeling…hungry.” He skimmed his fingertips down the front of the robe and found one end of the sash, pulled it. The robe fell open. “God,” he whispered, drinking in the sight of her long, achingly perfect body. She shrugged her shoulders and the robe dropped to the floor, pooling at her feet, so that she stood there completely nude, completely unashamed, diligently working to open his belt, his button…his zipper. Then, with one swift movement, he was naked from the waist down, his slacks and boxers tangled around his ankles. He knew Jolie. He knew her moods, her signals. There wasn’t going to be anything gentle about what happened next. Sam closed his eyes for a moment, then looked past her, to the expanse of mirrored doors that concealed a small wet bar and entertainment center. He watched, bemused, as he saw his hands go around her back, cup her firm, high buttocks. Watched himself pull her closer, watched as her hands came up to balance herself against his shoulders. Watched as, lithe, limber dancer that she was, she bent one leg, gracefully hooked it up and around his waist. “Hold me, Sam,” she whispered, nipping at his earlobe as he braced himself against the bed. “Help me.” Did he have any choice? His hands still cupping her buttocks, he spread his legs as best he could to support her as she lifted her other leg, wrapped it around his back. He couldn’t stop watching the two of them in the mirrors. Even as he licked at the side of her neck, pushed his tongue into the curve behind her ear. Even as she slipped a hand between them. Found him. Helped him. Settled herself around him, over him. Drawing him in. Deeper. Deeper. “Yes…yes…Sam, yes.” This was need, simple and basic. Animal instinct. She wanted to forget. He longed to remember. He realized that at this moment in time he had all the control of a teenager unable to master his own raging hormones. He moved into her as she dug her long fingernails into his back. Once, twice, pulling her against him as he thrust, before something inside of him snapped, broke free, and he was convulsing inside of her, spilling himself inside her, giving himself over to her completely, absolutely. He selfishly took. She selfishly took. And then they were on the floor, Sam on his knees, still inside her, still with her wrapped around him like the dancer she was, the two of them breathing fast, saying nothing, for there was nothing to say. But there should be something to say, shouldn’t there? What in hell had happened? They hadn’t even kissed. “Jolie…sweetheart…” “No, Sam, don’t. Please don’t. A mistake…this was a mistake. I’m sorry,” she said quickly, just as gracefully disentangling herself as she had wrapped herself around him. She reached for the robe and held it in front of her, searching for the neckline as she got to her feet. Then, with a swirl of terry cloth that would do a caped superhero proud, she settled the robe over her shoulders and quickly padded back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. The dramatic exit. Jolie was the master of dramatic exits. He should know. Sam stayed where he was, his feet still tangled in his slacks, damn it. That’s why she was the queen of Hollywood, while he, at the heart of it, bought and sold used furniture… After a few moments spent mentally kicking himself for having made the first move—Jolie would be quick to point that out if the subject of the last minutes ever came up, which he decided it wouldn’t, not if he could help it—Sam got up and headed for one of the guest room bathrooms to take his own shower. He was downstairs in the living room once more by the time Bear Man sounded the musical chime that alerted Sam that his guests had arrived. By the time he got to the foyer, Jolie was coming down the stairs. She was barefoot and dressed in a thin sleeveless navy pullover that didn’t quite meet the waistband of the white shorts topping her mile-long legs. Her long hair, still damp, was tied back in a ponytail, and she hadn’t reapplied her makeup, not even lipstick. There were women—legions of them he was sure—who could cheerfully kill her for being so beautiful. “You found the clothes,” he said unnecessarily. She looped a finger in the waistband of the shorts and pulled it away from her body. “I’ve lost weight in five years. Here’s hoping they stay up.” And then she bit her bottom lip before she smiled, shrugged. “Sorry.” “I didn’t think it was an invitation,” Sam told her, once more heading for the door. “Jade, Jessica, good to see you,” he said as the two women stepped into the foyer, both of them kissing him on the cheek before putting down their overnight bags. Rockne entered behind them, padded straight to Jolie and lay down at her feet. “It’s really great of you to let us barge in on you like this, Sam,” Jade said. “I’ve got one more trip to the car, and then we can all get reacquainted.” Jessica lifted her hands to her neck and gave her blond hair a quick flip as she grinned at Sam. “Ever notice how Jade takes charge? Do you want to get reacquainted, Sam? Maybe you’d rather go to a movie or take a nap or play a game of strip PingPong. But Jade says we’re to get reacquainted, so that’s what we’re going to do. She doesn’t even realize she’s arranging everyone else’s lives.” “Have you two been fighting?” Jolie asked as she picked up Jade’s overnight case and put it at the bottom of the stairs. “Again?” “Don’t be silly,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes at Sam. “I’m never combative—it’s not in my nature.” “Right. Which explains why you’re on suspension from your network.” Jolie looked at Sam. “I was asked to take an extended bereavement leave. That’s different.” “The extended part sure is,” Jolie said, winking at Sam, who was beginning to feel he was a spectator at a tennis match. “Did you see the interview she did with that poor Willie somebody-or-other?” “Cartwright,” Jessica said, turning the name into a dirty word. “New York’s own Willie Cartwright. And I only asked him a few questions.” “She asked him questions, all right, Sam. But how? she kept asking him whenever he said what he would do if he’s elected to the U.S. senate. He’d clean up crime in the streets. But how? Jess asked. He’d secure our borders. But how, Jess pushed him. He’d balance the budget, reduce the trade deficit, improve education, provide health care for all. But how? How? How you gonna do that, sir? She kept at him and at him until I thought the poor guy was going to have a stroke—Jade sent me a tape of the whole thing. And then—bam—our little Barbie doll zings him with a quick question about some by-the-hour motel just across the line into Jersey and how he was seen there the previous week with a woman not his wife.” “So what’s the big deal? The guy deserved it.” Jessica gave her hair another flip. “He was using my airtime to make a campaign speech, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. I wouldn’t have zinged him if he hadn’t been so damn determined to stay on his talking points and not say anything concrete. That’s all. Who knew he’d go so ballistic with my bosses?” “Right,” Jade said from the open doorway. “Shame, shame on poor old Willie. And it’s really not her fault, Sam, she’s right about that. Most times the men she interviews take one look at that hair, that face—the girls—and say oh, please, please, let me tell you all of my most embarrassing secrets.” “I’ll have you know, Jade, I don’t appreciate you saying that the only reason I’m on-air is because of my hair and face.” “And the girls. Don’t forget the girls.” Sam might have been embarrassed, except he’d heard all of this before, a dozen times. They’d soon be doing a verbal tag-team match, with everyone changing sides every few minutes just because it was fun. He looked to Jolie, waiting for her to chime in, wondering whose side she’d take. But she just held up her hands in a sort of surrender and shook her head. She’d taken her shot, bringing up Willie Cartwright, and now she’d retired to her corner. Jessica appealed to him, explaining, “Jade’s chest somehow missed out on puberty, and she thinks it’s my fault that I got her share. Isn’t that right, Jade? Hey, you want help with those briefcases?” “No, I don’t,” Jade said tersely, and Sam belatedly noticed that her trip back to the car had been to retrieve two ancient, battered tan briefcases, the sort that actually had straps on them to hold them closed. “Good,” Jessica said, “because I wasn’t planning on helping you anyway. Bar still in the same place, Sam?” “Straight ahead and then to your left,” he told her before helping Jade by taking the briefcases from her. “Wow, you brought me bricks, Jade? Really, you shouldn’t have.” Jolie seemed to have changed allies and was now targeting Jade. “You’re right, Sam. She really, really shouldn’t have. Jade, this could have waited until tomorrow, when we’re back home.” “Not really, sis,” Jade told her as they all headed for the living room. “If nothing else, we had to bring Rockne over to see you. He still hasn’t eaten anything, although he did drink some water—thank God—so we might want to take him outside later if he starts looking for doors.” Jolie bent down to give the setter a hug. “Why don’t you and I go into the kitchen and see if there’s anything there you want to eat, hmm?” “We’ve offered him everything from cold spaghetti to doughnuts, Jolie—he won’t eat. You can try again later, all right? The sooner we get started, the sooner we clear Teddy’s name. Jess,” she called out as she headed for the large round-topped coffee table flanked by curved tapestry couches done in the Empire style, “get me a soda, too, while you’re at it. Diet, please. And ask Jolie and Sam what they’d like to drink.” “Jessica is right,” Sam said, grinning. “Jade really does give orders.” “She’s the oldest, remember, even though she and I are Irish twins, only eleven months apart. After our mother took a hike, Jade elected herself mama duck, with Jess and me as the baby ducklings she had to keep marching all in a row. That, and she’s just basically bossy. Court used to tell her she’d make a fine prison warden,” Jolie told him as Rockne nuzzled his head against her knee, nearly knocking her over. “I saw him last week, you know, in London,” Sam told her, referring to his cousin, Courtland Becket, once Jade’s husband. Sam, for his sins, had introduced them. The marriage had lasted less than six months. But Court still should be told about Teddy. “Damn, I should have called him as soon as I heard about your dad.” Jessica approached carrying a tray with ice-filled glasses and cans of soda on it, offering them their choice. “Court? Oh, he whose name cannot be spoken? What’s he doing in England?” Sam chose a glass and a can of ginger ale. “Thanks. Visiting our relatives at the ancestral manor, I guess you’d call it. Becket Hall. It’s a huge old pile located in Romney Marsh, right on the Channel. Our cousin Morgan got in touch with him a few months ago about something, and he decided to accept the invitation to come see the place.” “Morgan? Yet another handsome guy, right? Nice to know there’s one left for me to romance and then toss away,” Jessica said, toasting Jolie with a can of Coke. “Children should be seen and not heard,” Jolie warned her tightly. “Sorry, Jessica,” Sam told her. “Morgan’s a girl. Morgan Becket Eastwood. Her branch of the Beckets has been living at Becket Hall since a bunch of the family emigrated to America nearly two hundred years ago. Court and I had a bet going as to how drafty the old pile has to be.” “If it’s two hundred years old, it probably has a bunch of ghosts, too,” Jessica said, raising her eyebrows. “I’m surprised you didn’t go with Court. Even if there aren’t ghosts, think of all that moldy old furniture. You’d have been in heaven.” “I thought about it, but as it turns out, I’m glad I decided to come home instead,” Sam said, looking at Jolie. “At any rate, I really should go call him. He should know about your father, decide whether or not he wants to cut short his vacation.” “Jade won’t thank you for it,” Jolie pointed out. “And Court will go nuclear when he hears what Jade and Jess and I are going to do.” “Yes, what you three are going to do,” Sam said, looking across the room to see Jade unloading fat manila file folders on his antique table—after pushing a delicate Sevres porcelain bowl to within a half inch of the edge. He wasn’t a stickler, he really wasn’t. Still…“Jolie? Pretend I’m Jade, issuing orders. Rescue that bowl, find coasters for your glasses in that drawer next to the couch Jade’s sitting on and let me go call Court. I’ll be back in five minutes.” Well, that settled it. He was now officially old. And boring. Although he hadn’t been all that old and boring an hour ago, upstairs. Maybe there was hope for him yet… Chapter Three THEY WERE SITTING around the coffee table, Rockne, having walked in a circle three times in front of the fireplace, now soundly asleep in front of the cold hearth. They were not, basically, a jolly group. “And that’s it, a thumbnail sketch. Business has been slow, as it usually is around Christmastime, and then it tails off again a little in the summer months.” “Maybe all the adulterous spouses are too full of holiday cheer in December, and on vacation in June?” Sam suggested, and Jolie covered a laugh with a cough. “We do more than divorce work, Sam,” Jade told him tightly. “Background checks for corporations, for instance. That’s really the bulk of our business. We’ve had nothing new open this past month except, okay, a few run-of-the-mill divorce cases, and they’re already wrapped up except for the paperwork. Nothing out of the ordinary there, unless Teddy was hiding something from me.” “Not out of the realm of possibility,” Jessica said, popping a pretzel nugget into her mouth. “If it was a dangerous case, that is. His little girl and all that—oh, stop glaring at me, Jade, you know I’m right.” “I know,” Jade said, sighing. “He’s hidden a few things from me before, but I always found out eventually. So we work the case Teddy may have been working when he died—as soon as we figure out what the hell it is. In the meantime, we work these four old cases that have been driving him crazy for years, hoping one of them may be the right case and lead us to the true killer. He had all four cases out on the desk in his bedroom, so I know he was checking into them again. As I said, it’s been a slow month.” Jade looked all business, as she always did, Jolie thought, watching as her sister straightened the pile of manila folders, unaware of the picture she made in the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the French doors. She was really pretty—elegant actually. The one who most favored their mother in appearance. Although Jade had never played up her good looks. She wore her light brown hair straight and long from a center part. Her hair was naturally streaked with gold, because Jade would consider hours spent in a stylist’s chair, her hair separated and wrapped in tinfoil, to be a total waste of valuable time. At least she wore black mascara on her lashes, highlighting her sherry-brown eyes, and she occasionally remembered to tint her wide, full lips a soft apricot. And Jessica was wrong. Mother Nature hadn’t overlooked putting Jade through puberty; she’d just employed defter strokes, so that Jade was slim, slightly curved, not voluptuous. Again, like their mother. Maybe that’s why Jade had never played up her looks. For Teddy. Because seeing her might then bring back the pain of his wife’s defection. Was that the reason? Was that why Jade stayed, worked with Teddy in the agency? Did her big sister still long to go to medical school, as she’d talked about years ago, in junior high school—before their mother left? That was a hell of a depressing thought on a generally depressing day. Jolie wondered if she might run it past Court the next time she saw him. A self-sacrificing Jade might explain a lot of things to her ex-husband. Jolie shook herself back to attention when, after having remained silent for several minutes as Jade stated her case, Sam finally spoke. “You’re kidding, right? You three can’t really, seriously be considering playing at private detectives.” “Playing? Jade has a license,” Jolie pointed out, wishing he didn’t sound so incredulous and she didn’t sound so defensive. “Yeah,” Jessica added as she popped another pretzel nugget into her mouth. “Go ahead, Jade, whip it out, show Sam that big bad boy.” Jolie covered another involuntary smile with her hand, wondering if it might be possible to muzzle her baby sister. But Jessica got away with outrageous statements. Maybe it was the blond hair. Maybe it was the innocent tilt of the head and the fairly bemused look. Maybe it was all a carefully orchestrated act… “All right, Jolie. So Jade has a license. And yippee for her,” Sam all but barked, getting to his feet and heading for the wall of Chinese cases that served as a concealed wet bar. “However,” he said, turning his back to them, “you do not have a license or any training, Jolie, and neither does Jessica. It’s a bad idea. A really bad idea.” He opened the doors, pulled out the stopper of a crystal decanter almost as if he planned to drink some of its contents without wasting time looking for a glass before plunking the decanter down on the bar and facing them once more. “A really, really bad idea.” Jessica looked at Jolie. “Funny. I always used to like him. Oh, Sam-u-el—I’m a journalist, remember? An investigative journalist? And Jolie’s a…um…Jolie, you want to help me out here?” “I’m a quick study,” Jolie gritted out from between her clenched teeth as Sam rejoined them. “And now yippee for you,” Sam said tightly. “But in the real world, sweetheart, the bad guys don’t use blanks.” “Nobody’s getting shot at,” Jolie protested, thinking it might be time she headed for the wine decanter herself. “Why are you always such a pessimist? No, Rockne, lie down, sweetie. You can bite him later.” “A pessimist? You want to enlarge on that, Jolie?” She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath. Now was no time to remind him that he’d said only one of every ten thousand hopefuls who flock to Hollywood in any given year ever end up with even a small part in a movie. “Never mind. Jade, let’s hear about thecases.Youknowyou’redying to tell us.” “No. Don’t do that, Jade. You’re not going forward with this, so we don’t need to hear about any old cases,” Sam said quickly. “Look, I know the three of you are devastated by what’s happened. I would be, as well. I mean it. It’s a tough pill to swallow—that Teddy would ever hurt anyone or that he’d kill himself. But you can’t do anything about it. You just can’t.” Jade sniffed—actually snorted. “Because we’re women, right?” Sam rolled his eyes. “That has nothing to do with—okay, all right, so it has a lot to do with it. You want someone to investigate, I’ll hire someone. I’ll hire a whole team of someones.” “Who died and left you boss? You’re not in charge of either Jade or me. And don’t look now, Sam, but you don’t own Jolie. She proved that when she left.” Now Sam turned to glare at Jessica. “Sam, no, please. And Jessica, I can fight my own battles, thank you,” Jolie cut in before there could be actual bloodshed. “It’s all right. I am coming on pretty strong, I guess. No wonder they called you the pest,” Sam said, his smile helping to soften his words as he ruffled Jessica’s hair. Jolie had been watching Sam’s face as her older sister had explained their plan and she’d known he wasn’t going to stand up and applaud. But he seemed genuinely angry—which might be flattering, if her sisters wouldn’t kill her if she said so. If Jessica’s nonsense had made him smile, at least for the moment, she’d be an idiot not to take advantage. “Sam, look, it can’t hurt anything to just talk about it. Teddy’s been working these cases on his own since he left the force. Cold cases, they’re called. We probably won’t get anywhere with any of them. Lord knows he never did.” “Unless he did and that’s why somebody framed him for murder and then killed him, making it look like a suicide. There is that. Besides, we’ve got to do something. We can’t let this stand the way it is now. Teddy would never forgive us and we’d never forgive ourselves. Fighting is better than crying any day,” Jessica pointed out, picking up one of the file folders and reading the words on the tab. “The Fishtown Strangler. Juicy. I think I want this one. Jade? Do you know what it’s about?” “Slow down, Jessica. First we’ll discuss all of them, then pick one and work it together,” Jade told her. “Why?” Jolie asked her sister. “Three of us, four cases. Whoever solves theirs first, or runs into a definite dead end moves on to the fourth one. I can only be here for another two weeks, remember? Going one by one makes no sense.” Jade looked at her levelly for a moment and then nodded. “All right. But we discuss each case every night. Together.” Sam looked at each one of them in turn. “I can’t stop you, can I? No, I can see I can’t. All right, all right, then I’m in. My house, my coffee table, my booze—I’m in.” “Not with me, you’re not. As long as we’re dividing things up here, I prefer to work alone,” Jade said quickly. “It’s bad enough I have to keep an eye on my sisters, I’m not taking responsibility for you, too, Sam. We said three cases. Jolie, he’s all yours. You watch him, he watches you, and that’s one problem solved.” “Two amateurs do not one professional make,” Jessica pointed out but then waved off her words. “It’s all right, a fair division of labor. Forget I said anything.” Jolie was about to protest but then realized she had no good argument to offer. She and Sam weren’t a couple anymore and hadn’t been for five long years, that embarrassing interlude of two hours or more ago notwithstanding. And if she said no, Jessica would probably ask why, and then they’d go round and round and…no, she wasn’t up to it. “Okay,” she said at last. “If I have to, I suppose it’s all right.” “It’s so wonderful to be wanted. I feel like the last kid on the playground to get picked for kickball,” Sam said, mockingly toasting them all with his wineglass. “Now, before I give in to the urge to get royally drunk, let’s hear about these cases.” “Do the Fishtown Strangler first,” Jessica pleaded. “Some headline writer came up with that name, right?” Jade took a sip from her soda glass and then carefully replaced it on the coaster. “The Fishtown Strangler wasn’t the Fishtown Strangler until the third murder. And nobody probably would have noticed someone was out there strangling prostitutes if it hadn’t been for that headline—Fishtown Strangler Strikes Again. By the time the fourth body showed up the mayor had set up a task force. It was an election year, you understand. Concerned citizens, some higher-ups from the mayor’s political party, a couple of pastors, that sort of thing. But after the sixth body there weren’t any more and the trail went cold. If there ever was a trail—and I don’t think there was.” “So why was Teddy involved?” Sam asked, finding a seat on the couch next to Jolie. “He caught the second murder,” Jade told him. “He couldn’t stay the primary because of the task force and the detective who’d caught the first murder, but he got involved with the victim’s mother and young daughter.” She turned to look at Jolie. “You know Teddy—always leading with his heart. Funny, they weren’t at the funeral. I would have thought they would be after what Teddy did for them.” “And what was that?” Jolie asked before Sam could open his mouth again, establish himself as the leader of their two-person team. Really, he was only hearing any of this because he was here. And it was his house. Jolie inwardly winced. Maybe she should take the chip off her shoulder. “He moved them out of some condemned building in Fishtown,” Jade told them as Jessica began paging through the manila folder in her lap. “And he’s been checking up on the daughter all these years, the same way he’s done with Jermayne.” Jessica looked up from the page she’d extracted and was holding in her hand. “Who?” “Jermayne Johnson.” Jade looked at Sam. “Sam, maybe you remember this one. Terrell Johnson? The high school basketball player who was found shot on a city playground about ten years ago?” “Yes, I think I remember that. He was just about to sign a letter of intent with one of the top Division One schools and then he was gone.” He shook his head. “A real waste of a good kid. Scholar-athlete, wasn’t he?” “He was going to use his talent to get his grandmother and brother out of the city—that’s what the grandmother told Teddy. So Teddy got them out. He wiped out more than half of his savings doing it, but that’s Teddy.” Jade shrugged her shoulders, sighed. “That was Teddy…” “Were the Johnsons at the funeral?” Jolie asked, as long as they were all descending into the maudlin again. “Mrs. Johnson passed away sometime last year,” Jade told them. “But, you know, I don’t think I saw Jermayne. Not that that means anything. I really wasn’t looking around, counting noses.” “It wouldn’t have taken you long,” Jolie muttered, and Sam covered her hand with his. She didn’t pull away. The man was offering her comfort and she was grateful for the gesture. But that didn’t mean she was going to make any more mistakes. In two weeks, no matter what happened here, she would be back in Hollywood for the premiere and then off to Ireland to film a new movie two weeks after that. That’s just the way life was for her now, for both of them. “All right,” Jessica said, still holding up a page of Teddy’s precise notes. “This could be interesting. Teddy has notations on two of the four strangling victims, made in the last three weeks. A Tarin White and a Kayla Morrison. Are either of these two the one with the daughter?” “Kayla Morrison. Her daughter’s name is Keely. Now put that away because we’re not finished yet.” “The warden has spoken,” Sam whispered to Jolie, and once again she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from smiling. What a strange day she was having. Tears, yes, and also laughter. And a mistake… “Case number three,” Jade said, pulling another manila envelope onto her lap. She opened it, frowned. “Oh, this one. Another catchy headline. This one was called the case of the vanishing bride.” “Jolie and I will take that one,” Sam volunteered much too quickly, and Jolie pulled her hand out from beneath his as if his skin had just turned white-hot. “You could say I’ve got experience.” “Not funny, Sam,” Jolie said, absently rubbing at the ring finger of her left hand until she realized what she was doing and stopped. “Not even remotely funny.” “Oh, I don’t know, Jolie,” Jessica said, finally closing the folder she’d been paging through for the past several minutes. “Jade? Was the bride one of Teddy’s cases or someone else he just took a shine to?” “It was his case. But as to why it haunted him?” Jade turned a few pages and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph, turning it so everyone could see it. “You tell me.” Jolie’s jaw dropped slightly as she looked at the photograph. “That could almost be Jess, just with shorter hair,” she said, her stomach knotting. “How old is that picture?” “About twelve years,” Jade said. “Our Jessica was still in junior high when the bride disappeared, I think. But it’s amazing, isn’t it? Cathleen Hanson was about as old as Jess is now when this photograph was taken, and the resemblance can’t be denied.” Jolie felt tears threatening again. Something about this one touched her, the fact that her father had seen his own daughter in the vanished bride. “All right. Sam and I will take this one.” “Deal,” Jade said, closing the folder and replacing it on the table. “And I’ll take Terrell Johnson. Leaving us with the fourth and last case. I don’t think we have to concern ourselves too much about it, either, because this is one cold case that gets worked every year. These others? The cops assigned to them after the primary has retired must pull the cases out once a year, look them over…and that’s about all they do with most of them. And since a homicide was never proved, the vanishing-bride case doesn’t get looked at at all. She’s just one more missing person. But it’s different with this fourth case. In fact, this one was just on the news again last month.” “Let me guess,” Sam said, actually raising his hand as if hoping to be called upon to answer. If Jade wanted to give up her job as warden, she’d be a great high school principal. “The baby in the Dumpster. A real heartbreaker.” “You’ve got it right in one,” Jade said, grabbing the thickest folder. “This one hurt everyone, not just Teddy, who happened to catch it late one rainy night. He isn’t—wasn’t—the only active or retired cop who kept a personal file on the Dumpster case. A baby, only a few months old, thrown away like garbage. It hit everyone—bad. The skull was kept, forensic artists update what the boy would have looked like if he’d lived, there’s DNA just waiting to be matched to someone out there. But nothing. Back when he was still on the job, Teddy would get reporters calling him every year on the anniversary of discovering the body. Which, by the way, were the only times I ever saw Teddy drunk. That he was drunk the night he died just screams to me that he’d discovered something he really didn’t want to know.” “Which is why we’re going to work these cases,” Jolie said firmly, getting to her feet. “Is anyone hungry? I seem to have missed lunch.” “Most of it, anyway,” Sam said, also getting to his feet. “We’ll be in the kitchen.” “Why are you following me?” Jolie asked him once they were out of earshot. “I remember where the fridge is, you know.” God, she was a bundle of screaming nerves, ready to explode. Didn’t he know that? Surely she couldn’t be that good an actress. “True, and I don’t think you’re planning to pocket any of the silverware,” he said, moving ahead of her to push open the service door to the kitchen. “We need to talk.” “No, we don’t. What happened upstairs was a mistake. You know it, I know it. It was…it bordered on disgusting, frankly. I attacked you. I have no excuses, but I will say I’m sorry. But that’s it. Discussion over.” “Agreed.” Jolie whirled around to goggle at him. “Agreed? You agree with what? That the discussion is over? That I should have apologized? Or that it was disgusting?” Sam held up his hands, making a T, signaling time-out. “I agree it was a bad start, probably due to a bad ending five years ago. I also apologize and don’t think we’ll gain anything by having a postmortem, okay? Although I will say it’s nice to know we’re both so limber five years later—uh-uh, no hitting.” “Then stop tempting me,” Jolie said, sure her cheeks were growing pink. “If I might continue? I do not, however, agree that it was disgusting. If anything, it was a little like old times…at least some of the old times. Now, white bread or rye?” “Neither, thank you,” Jolie said quietly, feeling she’d been rightly chastened. They may not have actually swung from those chandeliers in the dining room that long-ago night, but it had been a close-run thing. And then there was the night they’d discovered the joys and varied interesting applications of the nifty pulsating hose sprayer on the kitchen sink just behind her. They’d nearly flooded the place. And that time she’d come straight to Sam’s from dress rehearsal at the local theater, still in full makeup and wearing her black wig and Velma Kelly costume from the final scene of Chicago, and Sam had taken one look at her and… “You don’t want any bread at all?” “Huh?” Jolie snapped herself back from the movie reel of bordering-on-the-lascivious memories. “No. I’ll just make up a small plate of ham and cheese. They practically had to sew me into my gown for the premiere at my last fitting. If I gain an ounce anywhere, I could sneeze and end up with the seams exploding in front of a million cameras.” “Film at eleven,” Sam said, smiling. “Yes, and the cover of every trash magazine out there,” Jolie told him as she grabbed a plastic bag filled with ham slices from the meat drawer of the industrial-size stainless-steel refrigerator. “Where’s the cheese? I really need something that wasn’t free-range-bred or organically grown or certified to be healthy for you while only tasting a little bit like soggy cardboard.” Sam reached past her to retrieve the package and then retired to one of the stools placed at the large granite-topped breakfast bar that might, Jolie had once remarked, be used to land a 747. He turned over the package and squinted at the fine print. “Let’s see, how many calories in a slice of cheese? Hmm, how about that? More than I thought. You may have one slice, Ms. Sunshine, no more. Break it into little pieces—it’ll last longer. I always wondered what the big time felt like. Now I know. Slow starvation. You know, Jolie, you get famous enough and you could just disappear altogether.” “Funny man.” She grabbed the package from him and pulled out a single wrapped slice. Then she thought about that for a moment and extracted a second one. Near-constant dieting was one of her least favorite things about the movie industry, and wasn’t it just like him to zero in on that fact. “You know, Sam, if you’re just going to take shots at me, we can end this right now. Jade and Jessica shouldn’t have come here, and it wasn’t my smartest move either, when you get right down to it.” “You want to go home now, run that gauntlet of reporters again? Be my guest.” “And don’t dare me!” Jolie turned away from him, pinching at the bridge of her nose as she mentally counted to ten, trying to calm her temper. “I haven’t slept in days. I hate staying in that house. Jade had some disaster-recovery company come in, promise to make things right again, and I guess they did—as much as they could, at least. Jade stays there with no problem. Jessica is back in her old room, surrounded by cheerleading trophies, stuffed animals and that frilly lace canopy over her bed. The princess back in residence, as if she’d never left. But I still know what happened in Teddy’s study, right below my bedroom, and whenever I walk past that closed door I—” “That settles it, Jolie. You’re staying here with me. No more talk of leaving. And I won’t pressure you for anything else, I promise. I won’t turn you down if you offer. I’m not a monk, Jolie. But there will be no pressure, I promise. And no more arguing, either. I just want to make things easier for you.” “You know,” Jolie said, slowly turning back to face him once more, “we never used to fight. I thought it was strange, actually, how well we…how well we got along. Slightly crazy but compatible. What happened to us, Sam?” “We could only remain stagnant for so long before we came to a fork in the road? We got to it and I wanted to go one way, you wanted to go another. I lost. And,” he ended on a wry smile, “it turns out I’m pretty damn lousy at losing.” “Oh, Sam,” she said, collapsing onto the stool next to his. “I had to try, I had to know if I was good enough. If I hadn’t…” “It would have come back to bite me in the ass, I know. The road not taken, the wondering what might have been. You’d have grown to hate me, or at least resent the hell out of me. You left, you did what you had to do and now you know.You’re wonderful, Jolie. Looks, talent, the camera loves you—the whole package, I think it’s called. For a while there,” he added, grinning, “I was wishing you’d been born with a big wart on the end of your nose.” Jolie laughed and the tension was broken. “My first agent wanted me to get my nose fixed—shorten it, thin it out a bit. And get implants, teeth caps, liposuction. I look back on that now and wonder if I would have done what he said, if I’d had the money. Now I’m the sexy but wholesome girl next door, so it’s a good thing I didn’t have that money.” Sam reached out to run his index finger down the side of her nose. “I’m crazy about that nose. And what you’re saying is that if you’d agreed to let me bankroll you, that nose might be only a fond memory?” “Yeah, but think about this one, Sam—the boobs would have been spectacular,” she teased, grinning at him before filling her mouth with a big bite of rolled-up boiled ham. “Have I ever complained about that area?” Jolie coughed, and a bit of ham stuck in her throat. She grabbed the glass he’d brought with him into the kitchen, taking a huge gulp. She shivered, a full-body shiver, and quickly put down the glass. “Eeww, how can you drink this stuff?” “You have the palate of a plebeian, Jolie Sunshine,” he told her, pulling a glass from the cabinet beside the sink and filling it with tap water. “Real wine isn’t supposed to taste like some sweet, fizzy kids’ drink.” “It does when somebody turns his back and somebody else slips a teaspoon of sugar into the glass,” Jolie reminded him, grinning at the memory. “How old was that wine I did that to?” “Old enough to have been treated with more respect.” Sam turned his back to the sink and leaned against the edge of the counter. Jolie caught her breath. Movie stars were handsome, granted. Although she’d often wondered about the offspring of all those gorgeous faces born with Mommy’s original nose and inheriting daddy’s original receding chin. But Sam? Sam was just Sam, and he was the real McCoy. He also didn’t throw a hissy fit if she accidentally moved into his camera line during the filming of a love scene. “Are we good now, Sam? There was hurt on both sides when I left, I know that, and I caused most of it. But have we agreed that what happened is in the past and at least now we can be friends? Can we move on now?” “Friends? Maybe you could clarify that.” He looked at her for a long moment, slowly measuring her from head to toe and back again with his gaze before seeming to concentrate on her mouth. “What level of friends are we talking here? Good friends? Very good friends?” Her bare toes were trying to curl themselves into the coolness of the tile floor. “Good friends. Older. Wiser. Less inclined to be selfish, self-centered—and I’m speaking of myself, mostly. How’s that?” “It’ll do. For now. And I take full blame for my part in what happened back then—even more than you know. Shall we seal the bargain?” “You never give up, do you?” Jolie said, laughing. And then she held out her right hand just to see what he’d do. He did what she’d wanted him to do. He ignored her hand to slide his arms around her and lowered his mouth to her own. For the first time since Jade’s call at midnight four days earlier, Jolie let herself feel. Really feel, react, instead of just acting and hoping for something to fill the sudden hole in her heart. But what she felt when Sam kissed her wasn’t passion. Nor was it the momentary escape she’d insanely hoped to find in their desperate coupling of only a few hours ago. Not lust, not even love. What she felt was this enormous sorrow welling up inside her. Filling her, crushing her, yet leaving her unbearably empty. So many chances lost. So many missed moments that could never be recaptured. Choices made. Paths taken…and those not taken. But there was time; there had always been time—that’s what she’d told herself. And now she was out of time. She couldn’t go back, change anything. Even Sam’s strong arms around her couldn’t change anything… When she broke the kiss, it was to press her face into Sam’s neck, her voice catching on a sob. “He’s gone, Sam. Teddy’s gone.” Sam held her tight, mumbling words she couldn’t quite make out because the hurt was swallowing her now, pulling her down into that black hole of misery and loss she’d been fighting any way she could, calling on every acting skill she might possess in order to hide her tearing grief. Her guilt. “I phoned him once a week, Sam, faithfully. I invited him out to the coast a million times, but he always said he was too busy. And so was I. First working three part-time jobs to feed myself and then I always seemed to be shooting somewhere in the world. Six movies in three years. Once…once he visited me on location in South Dakota, but we were behind schedule, and I was almost always on the set and…” She swallowed down hard. “A year, Sam. I hadn’t seen Teddy in an entire year, not even on Christmas. The big movie star, always too busy even to come home to see her own father. And now I’ll never see him again. We couldn’t…we couldn’t even have an open casket, not the way the bullet tore through…oh, Sam, this hurts. Just hold me, please. I hurt so bad.” Chapter Four SAM WALKED INTO THE living room after an hour spent holding Jolie in the privacy of his bedroom suite. He’d taken her up the back staircase from the kitchen to avoid the living room and her sisters. She’d cried and apologized for crying and then cried some more. When he’d left her, she was in the bathroom, washing her face and applying makeup. He believed she was putting her mask back on but didn’t think he should point that out to her, poor kid. “She was crying about Teddy, not you. Right?” He looked at Jade, one eyebrow raised at her sharp tone. “I beg your pardon?” “Jade sneaked upstairs and listened at the bedroom door,” Jessica informed him. “We wondered if we should knock, come in and check on her, make sure she was all right. We took a vote and it was a draw. I voted to leave the two of you alone, and Jade…well, you know how she voted. But that’s to be expected. Jade’s off men right now, especially Becket men.” “I think the day finally hit her,” Sam explained as he retrieved his car keys from a small table just inside the door. “The finality of it.” “Exactly what I told Jade. Is she all right now? She probably needed a good cry, Sam. Me, I think I’m all cried out for now, but I cried buckets. God only knows what Jade did until we got here. Jade doesn’t share easily, do you, Jade?” Jade pointedly turned her back to both of them, picking up a small silver bowl and turning it over, examining the maker’s mark—or pretending to so that she could hide her face. Leaving Sam to wonder why women always said things like that, that someone needed a good cry. The statement had never made any sense to him, but Sam only nodded, sure it was a female thing men weren’t meant to understand. “Jolie will be downstairs in a couple of minutes. We’re going to go over to the house to pick up her clothes. She can’t stay there anymore, at least not yet. She hates that she can’t, but I think I convinced her that people handle things differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.” Jessica, who had gone back to reading one of the files, looked up at him, a pencil caught lengthwise between her teeth. “I erk,” she said, nodding. “Alwus id.” “She works. She always did,” Jade translated. She put down the bowl and turned around when Jolie joined Sam, once more clad in her simple but elegant black dress. “I turn into a monster and go looking for a fight. Sorry, Sam. Do you remember the alarm code, Jolie?” Jolie nodded, wiping at her eyes one last time with the increasingly large wad of crumpled tissues she held in one hand. “Teddy’s birthday. One—two—four—three. I’m sorry I’m bailing on you guys…” “You’re not bailing,” Jade assured her. “We know where to find you when we need you. Besides, you and Sam are going to work the bride case together, right? We’ll meet here every night to talk over what we’ve done each day—eight o’clock good for everyone? Good,” she said, not waiting for anyone to answer. “So just go now and get your clothes. I’ll wait until five and then call for a pizza delivery at six, so be back by then. Sam? Does the guy at the gate like pizza?” “Probably. With or without the box,” Sam said, visions of Jade running his life poking at his brain and making him spare a moment’s pity for his cousin Court. Then again, Courtland Becket always liked to be in charge, the go-to man. It might be considered a success that his and Jade’s marriage had lasted a full six months. “Do either of you want anything else from the house while we’re there?” “See if Teggy as marcus.” Jessica removed the pencil from her teeth. “Sorry. Could you check in Teddy’s office, see if he’s got markers? You know, highlighter pens? Stupid, but I have a system when I work, and that includes highlighters. Pink would be nice, but I’ll use yellow in a pinch.” “Pink highlighters,” Sam repeated. “Got it.” He put his hand on Jolie’s waist. “Ready to go?” But Jolie just stood there, staring into the middle distance, every muscle in her body taut. “Jade?” she asked quietly. “When you got home the night you found—when you got home? Was the alarm engaged?” Jade shook her head. “Sorry, honey, I see where you’re going, but that won’t work. We need the code to shut off the alarm after we enter the house, but anyone can just push the set button on the way out and arm the alarm again. The cops say suicide in a locked house. We can say Teddy let his murderer in and the killer just set the alarm again before he left. We can say Teddy turned off the alarm, which he’s been known to do, so that the killer entered the house without Teddy knowing it. Face it—a man who insists on using his birth date for a code isn’t really taking the alarm system seriously in the first place, as I always told him. Any scenario works, but the cops bought the suicide version.” “You should change the code in any case,” Sam pointed out, feeling himself being drawn into this whole murder/suicide conspiracy thing. Much against his will, not to mention his better judgment. “If you’re right, that is, and Teddy let his murderer into the house that night. Even if you still need a key for the front door, the guy could—” “The perp,” Jessica interrupted brightly. “If we’re going to play private dicks, let’s use the snappy lingo, okay? You’re a guy, Sam. The killer is a perp.” Her smile faded slightly. “Besides, I’m having trouble thinking Teddy and killer in the same thought. Somehow perp is easier.” “All right, the perp,” Sam conceded. “If there was a perp, and Teddy admitted said perp to the premises, said perp may have seen Teddy punch in the code. In other words, ladies, change the damn code, all right?” He looked to Jade because he wasn’t stupid, he recognized the pecking order in their little group: Jade, Jessica, Jolie and, fourth, finishing out of the money, himself. “Jade? We agree on this?” “Hmm?” she said, blinking as she looked at him. “Sorry. I was trying again to remember if the alarm was on or not that night or even if the door was locked. Teddy was so lax about setting the alarm. In fact, to get real about the thing, if it was on, that alone would be unusual. I just can’t remember if it was engaged or not. As for the front door lock? I always use my key, but that doesn’t mean the door was locked when I put the key in, you know? I think I’ll take Rockne for a walk in the garden, if nobody minds. I have to go think about this, mentally retrace my steps. If it was on, that might tell us for certain that Teddy was killed—not that I’m questioning that…” Sam looked at Jessica, who was making notes on a scrap of paper and totally ignoring everyone, and then glared at Jolie. “Humor me. Change…the damn…code.” “We will,” Jolie promised as she headed for the front door. “You want to explain to me why you’d think the murderer would come back?” “If I had all the answers, sweetheart,” he told her as he opened the car door for her, “I’d be king of the world. I’m basing my concern solely on books and TV shows wherein the murderer—excuse me, the perp—always returns to the scene of the crime. Like it’s part of their job description.” Jolie buckled herself in as he started the car. “So you’re going along with us? You’re willing to believe Teddy was murdered?” Sam put the transmission into gear and the car pretty much on autopilot as he headed toward the Sunshine family home in nearby Ardmore. “I just walked in on this earlier today, Jolie, and haven’t had much time to think about anything but the moment following the one that just preceded it.” “Our fault, I know. The Sunshine girls invaded, and you haven’t had much chance to do anything but listen to us rant and rave. So think about it now, Sam. Do you think Teddy was capable of suicide—for any reason? I really do want your opinion.” “Okay, I’ll think about it.” A minute later Jolie gave him a soft punch in the arm. “Out loud, Sam. Think about it out loud.” “All I seem to be doing today is taking orders.All right. Teddy was one of the most alive people I ever met. That’s one. He loved you three girls more than anything else in the world, and I can’t see him taking the coward’s way out of trouble, leaving you three behind to clean up his mess—and I mean that in any way imaginable. Whatever trouble he might have been in couldn’t have been more important to him than…well, he had to have known Jade would be the one to find him. So, no, Jolie. I can’t see Teddy doing something like that to Jade, no matter how much distress he might have been under at the time.” Jolie nodded, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “That’s what Jade kept telling the police. Teddy wouldn’t have done that to her. He would have gone somewhere private, away from the house. Somewhere someone else would find the…find the body. And he would have left a note, too. Explaining what he did, why he did it. He would have apologized, told us that…told us that he loved us.” This was something new to Sam. He looked across the car at Jolie. “He didn’t leave a note?” “No. Nothing. Jade said there was an almost empty bottle of Irish whiskey on the desk. An overturned glass on the floor across the room, as if he’d flung it away from him. That’s how Jade described it, anyway. The case Teddy kept his old service revolver in was on the desk, too, open, the key beside it. The gun was on the floor next to him, two shots fired.” Sam nearly ran off the road as he looked over at Jolie. “Two? Two shots?” Jolie sighed, nodded. “According to the police, the first was a test shot to see if he really had the nerve to pull the trigger. A lot of people do that, supposedly. They dug that shot—slug?—out of the floor. But there was no note. Not in his handwriting, not on his computer.” Sam turned onto the street where the Sunshine family lived ina small Georgian-style brick two-story house and slowed the car to a crawl when he saw a nondescript blue van parked at the curb. “Only one still sticking around, Jolie,” he said, looking at the blond man sitting on the second of two steps that led up to a long cement walkway and another half flight of steps that ended on the front porch of the house. He had one shoe off and was rubbing at his foot. “Looks like my new friend from the cemetery. And he’s trespassing. What do you want to do?” Jolie leaned forward in her seat, lowering her sunglasses and squinting into the sun. “Oh, God. It’s Gary Tuttle.” “I should recognize the name? I mean, I did run over his foot.” “Nobody should know him. He should live under a rock. Maybe Gibraltar. Tuttle works freelance, which means he’ll do anything for a photo, a story, and then sell it to the highest bidder. He’s been sued at least three times and got out of it each time, claiming he was just trying to make a living and the person he was harassing was a public figure and not entitled to privacy. Whoever thought up that law also should be living under a rock.” “So Tuttle’s not destined to be one of my best friends.” Sam pulled to the curb behind the van, more than ready to take out his frustrations on the so-called reporter. “You stay here. I’ll get rid of him.” “No, Sam. You’ve already done enough, more than enough. We’ll be happy if he doesn’t sue you for pain and injury.” She pulled down the sun visor and turned her head side to side, practiced a smile. “How do I look? My eyes are sort of puffy, but if I keep the sunglasses on it shouldn’t be too bad, right?” “You’re going to pose for the bastard?” Sam felt his temper climbing. “The proverbial performing seal, yes.” She shoved the visor back up and put her hand on the door handle. “It’s the easiest way, and Tuttle knows it, which is why he stuck around. Three seconds to make up your mind, Sam—do you want to be in the photos or not? Because we’re going to give Tuttle a cover shot that should make his day. And make him go away.” “I don’t freaking believe this,” Sam said, pushing open his door and walking around the front of the car, glaring at Gary Tuttle the entire time, his left arm out, warning him to keep his distance. “I’m beginning to have a lot of sympathy for anybody who ever popped one of these guys in the nose with his own camera.” Jolie turned on the seat, her long bare legs exiting the car first. She took his hand and allowed him to help her and then touched at her sunglasses once more and began walking down the sidewalk. To the idle observer, Sam thought, she looked the picture of calm, of confidence. More than ever he longed to run over Gary Tuttle’s other foot. With a tank. Gary Tuttle was already on his feet, his open cell phone aimed at them, snapping pictures. “Call off the muscle, Jolie, sweetheart. I don’t want any trouble from him,” he shouted, backing up a few paces even as he kept snapping photos. “A man’s gotta eat, Jolie, you know that.” “I know that, Mr. Tuttle,” Jolie said, linking her arm through Sam’s. “Just as you know that I’ve just buried my father this morning. Now, we’re going to keep walking and you snap as many pictures as you can, and we’ll call it a victory for both of us, all right?” Tuttle held on to the camera phone as he pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. “You’ve always been the best, Jolie. Abso-toot-lee aces! Give me a name, okay? Who’s the hottie? Been a while since we’ve seen you with anyone special. Guess Mick’s been replaced, huh? He know it yet? He will tomorrow when my photos hit the papers, right? Give us a smile. Hey, how about a kiss while we’re at it?” “Sam, don’t,” Jolie whispered as Sam growled low in his throat. “Michael Carnes is on location in Australia, Mr. Tuttle, as you know. My old family friend Samuel Becket was kind enough to offer his comfort and support in my time of grief. That’s Becket—one T, Mr. Tuttle.” She stopped in front of the first short set of steps, turned with Sam, tilted her head intimately toward his shoulder as she squeezed his arm and looked into the camera one last time, her expression unreadable. “Careful, Mick will be jealous,” Sam whispered, actually beginning to get into the ridiculousness that surrounded Jolie Sunshine, movie star. “Shh, don’t ad-lib,” Jolie warned before addressing the news hound once more. “We’re also, you might want to know, investigating the circumstances surrounding my father’s death. We’re confident, my sisters and myself, that we will soon be able to prove that he had nothing to do with the murder of Melodie Brainard and in fact was a victim of murder himself. You have that, Mr. Tuttle? I’m not speaking too quickly for you?” “Got it, got it,” Tuttle said, still scribbling. “Comfort, Jolie? What kind of comfort is he giving you?” “Okay, that’s it, Tuttle, quit while you can still chew soft foods,” Sam said, tugging on Jolie’s arm so that she had little choice but to follow him up the cement path to the house. “I never knew you were a masochist, Jolie. You live with that crap all the time?” She stepped forward with the key when he pulled open the old wooden screen door. “It comes with the territory. I’ve learned to go along to get along, unfortunately. And Tuttle’s right. There are times we’re more than happy to have guys like him around. So it cuts two ways.” She opened the door and moved inside, going to the security panel and punching in the code: 1243. “Don’t forget to change that,” Sam said, standing in the small foyer and looking around, beginning to reacquaint himself with the house he hadn’t seen in five years. “Doesn’t look as if anything’s changed. Not even the smell.” “What smell?” “You don’t smell that? It always smells like roast beef in here for the first few moments. I get hungry every time I come into the house.” Jolie smiled, but the smile was sad. “Pot roast, Teddy’s favorite. He also said it was the only thing he knew how to cook. We ate a lot of pot roast growing up, even after Jessica took over kitchen duty while she went through her wanting-to-be-the-next-Martha-Stewart phase.” She put her hand on the newel post and hesitated, one foot on the first step leading up to the bedrooms. “Sam? Mick Carnes was my costar. We made appearances together for publicity, and that’s all. He’s dating a script girl, but he knows if the press finds out, they’ll shred her, so I agreed to be his cover. Not that I should have to tell you that.” “I didn’t ask,” he reminded her. “No, you didn’t. Thank you for that. You, um, you can wait here. I’ll be just a few minutes. Oh, and we should pack up some of Rockne’s toys and some of his food if I’m staying with you. I’m sure I can get him to eat something soon. If not, we’ll have to take him to the vet tomorrow.” Sam walked into the living room that also hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been invited into the house. Not that he’d been there long—just long enough for Teddy to warn him off Jolie. Let the girl have her head, he’d said. She’s young, and she’schasing her dream. If it’s you she wants, she’ll be back on her own. Sam had agreed but only because he’d had a plan of his own. The one that had backfired right in his face. He spent a few moments looking at a collection of photographs of the three Sunshine sisters and then could no longer avoid the door on the far wall. The door to Teddy’s office. “Pink highlighter,” he muttered as his excuse and turned the knob, entered the room where Teddy Sunshine had died. Knotty-pine paneling out of the sixties or maybe the fifties. A huge oak desk strangely clear, as it had always been littered with files, with the humidor containing Teddy’s favorite cigars, with at least one family-size box of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. And photographs of his girls. You couldn’t walk more than five feet in any direction in Teddy’s house without running into photographs of his girls. The commendations Sam was used to seeing hanging on the wall behind the desk were also gone, lighter rectangles visible on the aged paneling showing where they had once been displayed. The desk chair, a massive piece of cracked burgundy leather, was also missing, as was the carpet. There was a raw hole in the floor, probably where a bullet had been pried out and removed as evidence. The entire room reeked of cleaning materials, and the smell burned at Sam’s nose, the back of his throat. Teddy simply wasn’t in this room anymore, wasn’t a part of it. And yet his ghost was also everywhere in the room. “We’ll stop at a store, get Jess’s damn high-lighters,” Sam told himself, told Teddy’s ghost, leaving the room and softly closing the door. With nothing else to do, he climbed the stairs to offer to carry down Jolie’s suitcases. “Oh, you startled me,” Jolie said as he knocked lightly on the doorjamb and she turned around to face him, holding several hangers in her hand. “I thought I could help,” he explained, looking about the room. There were movie posters tacked to all four walls, her degree from Temple University almost lost among them, the furniture merely dark and old rather than antique. Funny, he’d never seen her childhood bedroom, had never been upstairs in the Sunshine house. Which gave him an idea. “Did the police search up here that night?” “Up here?” Jolie frowned as she carefully laid the blouses, hangers and all, in the suitcase opened on the bed. “I don’t know. Why would they search up here?” “Isn’t Jade’s office up here?” “Yes, but—oh. You’re saying that someone might have come here to demand something that Teddy had and then somehow shot him with his own gun and left before he found whatever it was that he wanted?” Sam didn’t say that he found it difficult to believe that Teddy could “eat” his own gun unless he’d done it himself. He certainly couldn’t say that he was just plain nosy, even if he was. “Anything’s possible,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll have to ask Jade.” “True, but she’s been under a strain these last days. You all have. Plus, Teddy might have hidden something in his bedroom rather than keep it in his office if he was worried about something.” “I didn’t think of that. We only went into his room one time, to get clothes for the burial.” “Maybe if I took a quick look around?” “I can’t go in Teddy’s room again, Sam. Not yet. You do it while I finish up here.” He didn’t need a second invitation or even bother to ask Jolie which room was which. The first door he opened had to be to Jessica’s room. Pink and white, complete with a canopy bed littered with stuffed animals and a half dozen huge cheerleading trophies lined up on wall shelves. The huge wall poster of Dan Rather during his years of reporting in Vietnam would have seemed out of place expect for the career path Jessica had chosen. He opened the other door on that side of the large, square hallway and stepped into Teddy Sunshine’s bedroom. It was a small room, clearly not designed as the master bedroom, and held only a single bed, a large dresser that was probably the companion to the one in Jolie’s bedroom and a small desk on the far wall. The only thing on the desk was an ancient twelve-inch television set. Sam opened the door to the closet and smiled at the colorful array of Hawaiian-print shirts and a short row of identical khaki slacks. Teddy’s post-cop uniform. Sam wondered if he’d been buried in his only suit and then wondered if Teddy had even owned a suit. “We buried him in his blues,” Jolie said from the doorway as if he’d spoken out loud. “Even as a detective, he had to keep a set of blues for certain occasions. He was so proud to have been a cop. And then to be denied a cop’s funeral? Right now we should all be crowded in down at Shandy’s Pub for one hell of a party, laughing, telling stories about Teddy, listening to more outrageous stories, all while lifting pints to his memory. That’s the way he wanted to go out, Sam, he always said so. No tears. Laughter.” Sam closed the door on the Hawaiian shirts. “Jade’s room is across the hall?” he asked, feeling stupid because he had nothing to say that could make up for the honors Teddy had been denied. “She won’t like us looking around in her room,” Jolie said, leading the way. “Just look at her desk, Sam, that’s all.” He waited for her to enter the room and then followed after her to see that Jade had the largest bedroom. Once again Jolie seemed to be reading his mind. “When Mom left, Dad took over Jade’s room and gave her his. He just couldn’t stand being in the room anymore. Jade was the oldest, so she got it. I don’t think she wanted it, to tell you the truth. But it worked out in the end, because it’s large enough to also serve as her office.” Sam looked around the room, one word repeating inside his head: spartan. No photographs, no prints or paintings, no knickknacks on the furniture tops, just an alarm clock next to the bed and a single lamp. The space was as impersonal as a hotel room, maybe even more so. And the empty curio cabinet and wall shelves seemed almost ominous. “What did Jade do in high school and college?” he asked. “Do? What do you mean?” “I’m not sure. You’ve got movie posters on your wall, Jessica’s got her cheerleader trophies and stuffed animals—I’d mention Dan Rather, but I’m not sure I want to go there. Jade’s got nothing here, nothing of herself. It just seems strange, that’s all.” Jolie looked around the room. “You’re right. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. She used to collect Belleek china. You know, that china made in Ireland? Oh, of course you know what I mean. Teddy brought her a few pieces back from a trip he took to Dublin years ago, and she added to it a lot over the years. Pretty pieces, mostly with little green shamrocks on them. I wonder what happened to it all.” While Jolie spoke, Sam made himself busy walking around the room, inspecting the areas around the locks on the filing cabinet and the desk drawers. Everything seemed neat, with no signs of tampering. As a private eye, he was pretty much striking out. Hell, as a nosy snoop, he was also batting zero, less than zero. Then he opened the door to Jade’s closet. “Omigod! Oh, Jade…” Sam caught Jolie’s arm as the two of them looked down at the floor of the closet, littered with shards of once-treasured Belleek china. He pushed aside the clothing, exposing gouges in the back wall of the closet where the pieces had hit, shattered and fallen to the floor. Pieces thrown in rage, grief—what? When presented with her father’s death, Jolie had held it together as long as possible, denied her grief until the floodgates opened on their own. Jessica had “cried buckets” and then gone to work. And Jade? Sam could see her in his mind’s eye. All alone in this house, waiting for her sisters. Unable to cope with the horror of what she’d seen, Teddy’s body being taken away in a body bag, listening to people telling that her father was a murderer and, worse, a coward who had killed himself knowing his oldest daughter would find his body. She hadn’t cried. No, not Jade. She’d come up here and taken out her anger, her grief, her rage, by methodically smashing her beloved collection against the back wall of her closet. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/keysi-maykls/dial-m-for-mischief/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.