A Kiss In The Dark

Before.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled, “you’re capable of anything you put your mind to.”

Beth curled her fingers into her palms, digging deep. The lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke and scorched coffee burned her eyes and throat; the gash at the back of her head throbbed with every beat of her heart. She wasn’t going to wake up. Two detectives really did sit across from her in the small interrogation room, tossing out one nasty scenario after another, as they’d been doing for over an hour.

“So you invited him over, slipped into that skimpy negligee, and tried to seduce him back into your bed.”

“No.”

“You didn’t like being divorced. You wanted your fancy life back. You were a little desperate. Didn’t enjoy being a has-been, the butt of town gossip, like your mama, is that it?”

“No!” The word burst from her with the force of a bullet. The fact they’d finally thrown her mother into the fray pushed Beth dangerously close to the edge. One way or another, everything always circled back to the notorious Sierra Rae.

They were trying to break her, she knew, rattle her, find some way to make her trip. It was their job.

Dylan didn’t have the same excuse.

“This has nothing to do with Mrs. St. Croix’s mother,” Janine White bit out. A longtime friend of Lance’s, then of Beth’s, the attorney had met her at the station without hesitation. The women who’d laughed over martinis sat side by side in the small room, cups of bitter coffee and a tape recorder separating them from detectives Paul Zito and Harry Livingston.

Detective Zito picked up his pencil. “Just trying to establish motivation.”

“There is no motivation,” Janine shot back, “because you’re talking to an innocent woman. Beth did not kill Lance.”

Gratitude squeezed through the icy tightness in Beth’s chest. Janine’s sleek white evening gown made her look more like an Amazon priestess than a savvy attorney, but she had a reputation for being as tough as nails. Even now she appeared amazingly composed, the red rimming her eyes the only evidence of tears Beth knew she’d shed.

“Did you and Mr. St. Croix have intercourse today?”

The question might as well have been a knife. It sliced deep, robbing Beth of breath. Disgust bled through.

Janine recovered first. “This woman’s ex-husband has been murdered!” she said, surging up and slamming her palms down on the table. “What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“You know damn well what I’m trying to do,” Detective Livingston drawled, turning his stony eyes to Beth. “Did he take what you offered and walk away? You felt used and hurt and ran after him—”

“That’s disgusting,” Beth bit out.

The balding detective frowned. “Murder is.”

Beth sucked in a sharp breath, trying not to splinter despite how effectively the detectives thrust the battering ram. For nine years she’d done her best to live a quiet, simple life. She didn’t want the spotlight Lance had developed a fondness for. She didn’t want the passion that propelled her mother from marriage to affair to marriage. To affair. She didn’t want the chaos Dylan created without even trying.

“A husband who loves me and a couple of kids, that’s all I want.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, maybe a house in the mountains, a couple of dogs and cats, some goldfish.”

The innocence of that long ago day burned. At the time, she would never have imagined how quickly things could fall apart, that within a month she’d tell Dylan that she’d never loved him, never wanted to see him again. That she would lay her hand against the tiniest casket she’d ever seen. That Lance would sit quietly beside her hour after hour, listening to her cry her heart out. That Dylan would leave town, but Lance would stay. That she wouldn’t see Dylan again for three long years, until the day she pledged her life to his cousin.

That Lance would become blinded by ambition.

That she would be sterile.

That the marriage she’d been so determined to make work would crumble.

That Dylan would suddenly reappear in her life.

That Lance would one day lie dead on the living room floor.

That the fire poker would be in her hands.

“Beth?” Janine asked, touching her hand. “Are you okay?”

She blinked, a steely resolve spreading through her. Slowly, she looked up, meeting Detective Livingston’s hard gaze. “I didn’t have sex with him today, this week, this month, or even this year. And I didn’t kill him.”

The older man leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Then maybe you’d like to tell me why you were in a negligee.”

“She’s already told you she doesn’t know,” Janine reminded.

“So she’s said.” This from Detective Zito, the tall, strikingly handsome man who’d stood in the shadows with Dylan.

“What about your wrists?” he asked, flipping through the pages of his small notebook. “Who put those bracelets there?”

Beth looked at the nasty purplish bruises, but saw only Dylan’s hands curled around her flesh. “I don’t know.” The claim sounded weak, but she spoke the truth. “I had no reason to kill him. We were divorced. There were no hard feelings.”

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to strike out at the man who walked out on her,” Livingston pointed out.

The pale green walls of the cramped room pushed closer. “That’s not how it happened.”

“Refill anyone?” Detective Zito asked, crossing to pick up the coffeepot.

Beth looked at the paper cup sitting in front of her, its contents long cold. She’d barely taken a sip. The mere smell of the burned coffee made her gag.

“Guess not.” He filled his cup and returned to the table. “Did your husband have any enemies?”

“He worked for the district attorney’s office,” Janine answered for her, practically snarling at Zito. “You know that. He was a prosecutor.” Just like Janine was. If Beth was arrested, Janine would be unable to help in an official capacity. “We all have enemies. It’s a hazard of the job.”

“Anyone in particular? Had he received any threatening phone calls or letters?”

“Not that I know of,” Beth said, but then, she and Lance had rarely spoken of that kind of thing. Toward the end, they’d barely spoken at all. She’d lost herself in her work at Girls Unlimited, a center for underprivileged teenage girls, and Lance had worked ungodly hours as one of Portland’s leading prosecutors. His political future had never burned brighter.

“That’s quite a security system you’ve got at the house,” Zito went on. “Was he worried about someone coming after him?”

Obviously, the detective hadn’t known the man whose murder he investigated. “Lance wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. He was born a St. Croix. It never occurred to him that something bad could happen to him.”

“And you?” Zito asked. “Did the thought occur to you?”

Icy fingers of certainty curled through her. “Bad times don’t discriminate. They touch us all.”

“Even the St. Croixs?”