Passion, Betrayal And Killer Highlights

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

For my mother, Gail Davis, who always offers me an ear when I need to vent, a shoulder when I need to cry and a hug when I crave the comfort of her unconditional love.

Acknowledgments

This book wouldn’t be in print if it weren’t for the hard work and enthusiasm of my agent, Ashley Kraas. I also want to thank my editor, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for all of her guidance and support.

Kathy Vizas allowed me to pick her brain and benefit from her years of experience as a lawyer. Her insights proved to be indispensable for the plotting of this novel. The same could be said of the help I received from Lieutenant John Weiss who patiently answered my countless questions and actively assisted me with my research. Detective Sergeant Donna Lind was a fountain of information as well. I hope they will all forgive me for occasionally taking a bit of poetic license with the facts they so generously supplied me with.

Last but absolutely not least I need to thank my stepbrother Chris Sullivan for watching my son while I struggled to meet my deadlines, and my mother for all the free childcare she provided and for her willingness to be my brutally honest and marvelously detail-oriented volunteer proofreader.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

PROLOGUE

I arranged some Pacificos in an ice bucket and slipped Sarah McLachlan into the CD player in anticipation of Leah’s visit. My sister and I love Sarah. She may be the only thing we agree on. At first glance people always assume our differences fall into the good girl-black sheep categories, with me playing the role of the rebellious farm animal, but in reality it’s much more complicated than that.

First off, although in humid weather my shoulder-length hair can resemble a ball of fluffy fleece, thanks to the genes of our now deceased African-American father and our very much alive Latvian-Jewish mother, my skin tone is much more bronze than black and Leah’s is a bit on the olive side. Second, I’m not that rebellious and Leah’s not that good.

The difference between us lies in our approach to life. My motto is: Always be true to yourself. It’s why I became a writer. Writing’s one of the few careers in which I can be paid for being a nonconformist.

Leah, on the other hand, has made it her life’s ambition to be someone else, specifically Martha Stewart (without all that messy felonious stuff). She’s not very good at being Martha; her ethnicity makes that whole WASPy look hard to pull off (despite all the relaxers), she’s not all that creative and she’d rather die than see her name stamped across any item that would ever be carried at Kmart. Yet she keeps trying, and she’s certain that once she achieves her metamorphosis she’ll have found true inner peace. So it wasn’t a big surprise when she announced her engagement to Bob Miller. Bob’s as average as his name. He’s Caucasian of the mutt variety, of medium build, moderately intelligent and, when in social settings, reasonably polite if not out-and-out friendly…or personable…or enjoyable to be with in any way. But as far as Leah’s concerned Bob is Town and Country’s version of Prince Charming.

So unless Martha had written a book about the heightened social status of imported beer, it was probably a safe bet that Leah would not be drinking a Pacifico. But Anatoly Darinsky might be.

Lately Anatoly had been starring in a lot of my more memorable dreams. He’s tall, has dark brown hair that matches his penetrating eyes, a tight physique—you know, all the good stuff. But there’s more to it than that—something I can’t put my finger on but that makes me want to put my fingers on all sorts of other things. Not that Anatoly’s perfect. At times he can be cocky, egotistical, argumentative—and don’t even get me started about the defamatory statements he’s made regarding Frappuccinos. He also hates me.

I suppose he has his reasons. I did frame him for assault and battery, and I kind of inadvertently got him shot in the process, but that was all due to a big misunderstanding. I thought he was a psychotic serial killer who wanted to murder me in some violent and horrifying way, and he thought I was the psychotic killer. Or maybe he just thought I was psychotic. That’s the problem with our relationship—not enough open communication. If we just talked more, we would spend a lot less time trying to send each other to death row.

But now I had another chance with my non-murderous love interest, for Bob had given Leah reason to believe that he had been cheating on her, and as luck would have it Anatoly is a private investigator who has loads of experience proving and disproving those kinds of suspicions. I had to offer Anatoly an obscene amount of money, but I did get him to accept the case.

I kneeled down to stroke my cat underneath his chin. “Okay, Mr. Katz, our guests should be arriving—”

The buzzer echoed through my apartment.

“—now.”

CHAPTER 1

“My divorce attorney gave me a list of everything we can take from Dan,” she said mildly. “I’m beginning to think it would be more humane to just kill him.”

—Words To Die By

Anatoly pushed past me into my apartment without bothering to so much as grunt in greeting. “Where’s your sister?”

“Hello to you, too. Want a beer?” I popped the lid off one of the Pacificos.

He stuck his thumbs through his belt loops. “Where’s your sister?”

“You see, it’s like this—nobody ever told Leah about setting the clocks forward during daylight savings time, so she spends half the year running an hour behind.”

He took the beer and threw his jacket over the armrest of the love seat before lowering himself onto the leather cushions. “I’m not waiting an hour.”

“Oh, please, I was kidding.” I took a beer for myself and leaned against the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be here in forty-five minutes, max.”

“She has twenty.”

“Okay, I know you’re pissed at me, Anatoly, but I’m paying you a lot of money to sit on your tuchas and drink my beer, so the least you can do is give her thirty.”

“Twenty-five. Why don’t you give me the details of the case while we wait? Why does Leah suspect her husband of sleeping around?”

“You know, the usual. After years of inattention he suddenly began to shower her with gifts while at the same time scheduling a lot of late-night meetings, and if that isn’t code for ‘I’m screwing my secretary’ I don’t know what is.”

Anatoly waited for me to continue and when I didn’t do so immediately his countenance assumed a more pleading expression. “There’s more than that, right? Tell me your sister isn’t as paranoid and insane as you are.”

“Oh, excuse me!” I slammed my beer on the counter. “I am nowhere near as crazy or paranoid as my sister!” Anatoly took a long swig of his beer in lieu of responding. I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “A couple of weeks ago, the night before I accidentally got you shot…”

“Accidentally?”

“We’re not getting into that now. Anyway, Bob told her he had a dinner meeting with his employer so he wouldn’t be at Chalet.”

“Chalet?”

“His place of work, Chalet.com. They sell home furnishings via catalogs and the Internet. Think Pottery Barn but twice as expensive. Bob’s the comptroller. Anyhoo, that night James Sawyer, Bob’s employer, called looking for him. When Leah told him she thought Bob was with him, this Sawyer guy claimed that they had no plans to meet. When Bob came home, she asked him how the meeting went and he said it was great. Gave her all these details that she didn’t even ask for. Just totally lying. The next day he got her a pair of 1.5-carat studs. God, he’s such a pig.”

Anatoly jotted something down in a pocket notebook. “She have any idea who he’s cheating on her with?”

The buzzer went off before I had a chance to respond. “Well I guess you’ll just have to ask her yourself.” I pressed the intercom button. “Leah, is that you?”

“Yes.”

I hesitated. Leah is one of those people who uses five words in place of the one that was necessary. When she did opt for brevity it was never a good sign. I buzzed her in and stood by the door in wait.

When she reached the top of the stairs my level of alarm rose a notch. Her perpetually saturated hair seemed unusually devoid of products. As she moved closer I could see that the tip of her nose was a little too rosy and her waterproof mascara was barely hanging on. She nodded at me in acknowledgement before wordlessly passing into the apartment. She dropped her Louis Vuitton on the floor and paused while she impassively studied Anatoly.

He rose and offered his hand. “Hi, I’m…”

Leah walked past him to the window and stared blankly out at the street.

“Great. Just what I need, one more mentally imbalanced client.”

I gave Anatoly a warning look before crossing to my sister. “Leah?” I put a cautious hand on her shoulder. “Leah, Anatoly’s the PI I’ve told you about. He’s going to…”

“I don’t need him.”

I glanced at Anatoly, who looked incredibly relieved. I held my hand up to indicate that he was not yet free to bolt for the door. “Leah, I know you think that Bob’s cheating, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to get some proof before you—”

“He already confessed…this morning before he went to work. I was standing there holding my son, our son, and he confessed to screwing some pathetic little home-wrecker. He says he’s leaving me for her. Just throwing it all away for some twenty-one-year-old whore.”

I removed my hand from her shoulder and clenched it into a fist. I was going to kill the SOB. I was going to reach down his throat, grab his tonsils and—

“All right, then—”

I started at Anatoly’s chipper tone.

“Sophie, thanks for the beer. Leah, it was nice meeting you. All the luck with the divorce…”

“There’s not going to be a divorce.”

My head snapped from Anatoly back to Leah. Either I had just misheard her or she had lost her mind. “What do you mean there won’t be a divorce? You just said…”

“I’m going to fight—for him and for my family. I can win him back, Sophie. I know I can.”

She made eye contact with me for the first time, and I saw the desperation tempered with what I assumed was some kind of psychotic determination. I opened my mouth to speak before I had formulated what the next words should be.

“Even better, then,” Anatoly boomed. “I hope you two have a wonderful life together. See you around.”

“Anatoly!” But he was already out the door.

Pig. Men were all pigs. I turned back to Leah. “Honey, you know you can’t win this one. Even if he did come back to you, why would you want him?”

“I knew you’d say something like that. I’m sorry if I actually take my vows seriously—unlike some people around here. I took a vow—”

“Yeah, you did. So did Bob. But he broke the deal, Leah. You can’t honestly think of being loyal to someone who has no interest in being loyal to you.”

“Lots of marriages survive adulterous affairs. Just because yours didn’t…”

“And thank God it didn’t! Don’t you get it? Finding Scott with that Vegas showgirl was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Otherwise, I might have actually done something stupid like try to stick it out in a doomed relationship. Hell, I still send that woman holiday cards.”

“Sophie, I’m not you and I don’t want to be you. I want to be Mrs. Bob Miller. That’s my life. Everything I have, everything I do…it’s all about being Mrs. Bob Miller. I’m good at it. My life with Bob…well, it’s what it’s supposed to be. He’s just forgotten that. He’s confused. But I’m going to make him see.”

“Leah, you can’t—”

“The hell I can’t!” I involuntarily stepped back. I had never seen her like this. She swallowed and looked away. “I found a receipt from Tiffany’s. He bought her a six thousand dollar bracelet. He bought it on the same day he bought me the diamond studs.”

“And what does that tell you, Leah?”

“It tells me that she’s using him. He bought the earrings for me because deep down he loves me, and he bought her a bracelet because he thought he had to in order to hold on to her.”

“Well that’s an interesting spin, if lacking in the logic department.”

But Leah wasn’t listening to me anymore. She brushed past me and stared at the chilled beers without reaching for one. “I am not going to take romantic advice from a divorced woman who talks to her cat.” I peeked guiltily at Mr. Katz, who was sleeping through the current fireworks. Leah snatched up the phone from the end table and started jabbing her fingers against the numbers.

“Leah, who are you calling?”

“Erika.”

“Bob’s secretary, Erika?”

“I spoke with her earlier. She’s as outraged as I am and offered to help me win him back.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Erika? Erika, are you there? It’s Leah. I’m coming over so if you get this message just…just wait for me. I need to come up with a plan before this goes too far.” Leah slammed the receiver onto the cradle.

“Leah this is crazy. You can’t put yourself through this. Plus you have Jack to consider—wait…where’s Jack?”

“He’s with my friend Miranda, and for your information I’m doing this for Jack.” She bent over to pick up her purse and made a beeline for the door.

“Oh come on, Leah, stay and talk to me about this. Erika’s not even home.”

“She will be soon and if not I’ll…I’ll just go home and do the laundry. Bob will need his golf clothes ready for the weekend.”

“Leah!”

“Goodbye, Sophie.” In an instant she was gone.

Well, that had been disorienting. It had looked like Leah, but I swear to God if I had closed my eyes I would have mistaken her for someone else. It wasn’t her words so much—although she had used more profanity than I was used to hearing from her—but her tone that had really thrown me. It had fluctuated from hollow to restless then back again. She seemed on the brink of losing her mind.

My eyes wandered to my unfinished beer on the counter. I picked up the bottle, then thought better of it and went to get the vodka from the kitchen. Leah would snap out of it. She just needed time. I poured the clear fluid over some ice cubes, then added a little cranberry juice for color. I should write something…like a book, or more specifically, the book my editor thought I had already started working on. In four months I would be touring to promote my latest finished Alicia Bright mystery, Words To Die By, and it would be helpful if I could complete the first draft of the next book in the series before hitting the road.

I silently welcomed the burning sensation the liquor provided as it worked its way down to my liver. The problem was I wasn’t quite ready to write another murder mystery yet. It had only been a few weeks ago that some lunatic had tried to break my head open with a golf club. Funny how being stalked by a homicidal maniac can knock the blood lust right out of you. Although I did want to kill my brother-in-law, Bob. That was promising progress.

I eyed my drink. It looked a little too red so I diluted it with more alcohol. If only Leah had gone running off to her friend Becca. Becca would have told her to kick Bob to the curb. But Becca was currently touring Europe with her boyfriend and it was doubtful Leah knew what country they were in, let alone what hotel.

I took another sip. I needed to relax. Erika may not give the best advice in the world, but evidently she and Leah had become close. She would undoubtedly offer Leah the emotional support she needed. This was good. Leah had Erika, and I had Absolut.

My pet strolled into the kitchen and blinked at me. “That’s what I like about you, Mr. Katz. You’re quiet, nonconfrontational, and it was legal for me to cut off your balls.”

It must have been a little after 10:00 p.m., because a Friends rerun was on. That meant I’d been unconscious for one…no, two and a half hours. The last thing I remember was watching a Will and Grace rerun. I had only consumed two cocktails (albeit, two very strong cocktails), but the combination of the alcohol and a good dose of emotional exhaustion had pretty much done me in for the evening.

It took a little effort but I managed to get off the couch. Unfortunately, the ringing of the phone interrupted my journey to the bedroom. I tapped the receiver with my index finger and considered my options. It rang again. Hell, it was worth picking it up just to keep it from making that shrill sound two more times. “Hello?”

“Sophie?”

I rolled my eyes skyward. “Leah, I’m tired, I’m grouchy, I’m intoxicated and I’m going to bed.”

“Sophie, please.”

There was something in Leah’s voice that stopped me. It wasn’t the desperation that had colored her tone earlier, but it was unnerving nonetheless. I sighed and leaned against the dining table. “Okay, what is it this time?”

“It’s Bob…I’m home…I’m here with Bob. Oh God, Sophie!”

I stood up a little straighter. “What? Did he hurt you?” My bloodlust was definitely back. I was going to kill him. Actually, I’d do better than that. In my next book I’d castrate a philandering husband named Bobby by rigging his inflatable sex doll with explosives.

“No, no, he didn’t hurt me. He can’t. Oh God, Sophie…Oh God, he’s dead! Bob is dead!”

My eyes traveled to the depleted bottle of vodka on the counter. “I’m sorry, Leah, but I think I must have misunderstood you—”

“He’s dead! D–E–A–D. BOB IS DEAD!”

“You mean like dead dead?”

“How many kinds of dead are there?”

“I’m not getting this.” I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. “Bob is only five years older than I am. Thirty-five is a little young for—”

“I think he was shot or something.”

“Shot or something?”

“I think so. I don’t know. He’s just lying there and there’s all this blood coming out of his head. Sophie, what do I do?”

Well, I wasn’t sure about her but what I wanted to do was throw up. “Leah, how exactly did Bob get ‘shot or something’? Who shot him?”

“How in God’s name would I know? I just came home and found him in the middle of the living room with a hole in his head! And our pictures, the framed wedding pictures that were in the room, they’re all smashed up. No one even bothered to clean up the glass! What if Jack had come home with me and cut himself?”

Excuse me? I lowered myself into a chair and tried to figure out if Leah’s instincts proved her to be Mother of the Year or just stark raving mad.

“Sophie, are you still there? What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m here.” Big sisters taught their younger siblings how to straighten their hair and apply their makeup. They did not instruct them on how to behave at a murder scene. “Leah, I honestly don’t know. What do the police say?”

“The police? I don’t know, they’re not here. Do you think they’re coming?”

“Didn’t they say they were coming?”

“No, no, I haven’t called them yet…. I called you. Oh, Sophie, he’s really dead! I mean really, really…”

I couldn’t hear Leah anymore, nor was I suffering the effects of the alcohol. All I could feel was the beginning of a panic attack. I took a deep breath and tried to make my voice slow, steady and clear. “Leah, I need you to hang up the phone right now and call the police.”

I could make out Leah’s quiet sobs on the other end of the line. “Leah, this is really important. I’m coming over but I need you to call them right now.”

She made some kind of weak affirmative noise. I hung up and for a few moments I couldn’t get myself to move. This was very bad. Hours after Bob had informed Leah that he was leaving her, he had transformed into a bloody corpse, and the phone records would show that the first number Leah dialed after discovering his body was not 911, but mine.

I looked down at Mr. Katz who had wrapped himself around my foot. “What now?”

My first stop was not Leah’s but Anatoly’s. I double parked in front of his building, ran up to the stoop and stood methodically tapping the buzzer until he relented and came down. He threw open the glass door and glared at me.

“Get your finger off the button, now.”

“Anatoly, I need help.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“Not that kind of help—” I took a moment to turn and acknowledge a driver yelling obscenities as he maneuvered around my illegally parked Audi “—although that should probably be my next stop. I’m here because Leah’s in trouble.”

“Leah’s made her choice, and you’re going to have to deal with that. Who knows—maybe she’ll get lucky and he’ll end the affair.”

“The affair’s pretty much a nonissue now, unless of course his mistress is into necrophilia.”

Anatoly’s lower jaw seemed to detach from his head. “She killed him? What the hell is wrong with you people? Doesn’t anyone in your family understand that vigilante justice is wrong?”

“She didn’t do it.” As soon as I said the words I realized my voice lacked the conviction to make them believable. I cleared my throat and forced myself to look Anatoly in the eye. “My sister did not shoot her husband. She loved him. Yes, they were having problems, but she was fully confident that they would work through them.”

Anatoly’s forehead creased and he leaned against the door frame. “What is this? Rehearsal for when you have to talk to the police?”

“Why? Didn’t I sound convincing?”

“That’s it. We’re done here. Goodbye, Sophie.”

I put my foot in the path of the door, inadvertently bringing myself closer to Anatoly. I could feel his breath in my hair and, despite his harsh words, I could see the twinkle of interest ignite in his eyes as he noted my new proximity. His mouth curved into a little half smile. I know that people often find themselves craving sex after a funeral but it probably isn’t healthy to be overcome with lust right after a family member has been shot. I distracted myself by looking at his feet. I’ve never been into feet no matter how big they are.

“Anatoly, I’m here to hire you. I was going to pay you six thousand dollars to find out if Bob was messing around. Now I’m offering you…ten. Ten grand to find out who messed with him.”

“It’s not about the money, Sophie.”

“What if I raise it to twelve? Then can it be about the money?”

He was silent for a bit and I kept my eyes glued to his boots. My friend Marcus always says that if a man’s shoes match his belt it means he’s gay. Anatoly must be the straightest man alive because his shoes never match anything. They are always ugly and—

“If you hire me I might uncover information that you don’t want to know.”

The statement was loaded with enough reality to quiet my raging hormones. I refocused on his face. “Then I’ll fire you.”

Anatoly snorted and looked out to the street. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”

“Great!” I pulled my keys out of my pocket and dangled them in front of him. “Get your coat and get in the car. I’ll fill you in on the details on the way.”

“I didn’t say I would take the case.”