Lover In The Shadows

Harlan raked his hands through his own hair, dismissing the feel of Molly lingering still against his palms. He thought instead about the strain he recognized in her.

That strain showed in the way she started at every sound. Guilt? Fear? They were flip sides of each other sometimes. Fear of being caught? Fear of what she’d done when she’d stepped outside the boundaries of normal behavior? Possibly.

Watching her run recklessly to the safety of her house, he slicked back his wet hair and brushed off the knees of his grimy trousers. Looking at the mud stains and God only knew what else, he frowned. Hundred-and-fifty-dollar pants, and he’d be lucky if the cleaners ever got them clean. Well, hell, nobody’d ever promised him that a detective’s lot was an easy one. He slapped at an oily smear along the calf.

At the sharp crack of the screen door, he snapped his head in the direction of the house, staring at the door that had slammed behind Molly Harris as she fled into her curiously colorless house.

Her newly decorated house.

Rain ran in rivulets down the back of his neck as he regarded the graceful lines of the house. From the crushed-shell driveway leading up to the porte cochere and tall columns at the front entrance, to the long, low windows opening onto the gallery, the house was a superb example of old county architecture.

He’d recognized the address as soon as he’d seen it on the crime report. Before collecting his partner, Ross, and heading to the crime scene, on an impulse and out of curiosity, Harlan had pulled the files on the last murders at this lovely, idyllic house. While Ross drove the car, Harlan had skimmed the reports, reading for highlights while he refreshed his recollections of one of the most horrifying crimes in Palmasola County in the past fifty years.

With the prominence of the family involved and all that beautiful, beautiful money, the case had had all the earmarks, except sex, of a grocery-store scandal rag. Because of the money involved, the detectives on the case had followed the principle of cui bono, but the lovely daughter and charming son had had ironclad alibis. So did the lovely daughter’s ex-husband. Random home invasion. Murder as a result. And the homicide division had never solved the case. Reading over the files as Ross throttled the car down to a sedate fifty-five, Harlan wished he’d been one of the investigating detectives. The case had the feel of something pulpy and rotten at the core. His favorite kind.

Now, thoughtfully eyeing the lines of the gracious old mansion, he tilted his head. Too easy to know why Molly Harris had redone her kitchen and living room. Would have taken an idiot not to understand.

Her parents had been killed there. She’d found them shortly after midnight.

Molly Harris was edging along a mighty thin wire, and something had put her out there, something in addition to the unsolved year-old murder of her parents.

He’d give a good damn to know what was stringing her so tight right now. The more he thought about Molly Harris, the more he wished he’d been on that original case.

And wished he could have been one of the first officers to question her, because the scent of something rancid about the murders called to him in the darkest part of his soul. His mouth tight in derision, he smiled to himself. An alibi was only an alibi until it fell apart.

If Molly Harris with her innocent eyes had had secrets a year ago, he would have broken her. He clasped his hands and raised them skyward, stretching out the kinks. He’d have broken sweet Ms. Molly, broken her with immense pleasure.

Either way, though, she was hiding something now. He’d known that even before she answered her front door. Her voice quavering all over creation had been the first giveaway. He’d almost found out what she was protecting so fiercely, too. But he’d screwed up somehow this time. Next time he wouldn’t. He’d crack her like a sweet almond.

Tasting the rain on the edge of his mouth, he smiled. Before Ms. Harris saw the last of him, he’d know all her secrets, one way or the other.

He hadn’t Mirandized her. Hadn’t really thought he should yet. But if she’d blurted out a confession, Thomas would have been royally pissed off, and rightly so.

It would have been his final foul-up with the chief. If Molly Harris had confessed to him, Harlan would have been lucky if Thomas had kicked his rear to Mount Vesuvius and let it fry there.

That would have been the best-case scenario.

He didn’t want to think about the worst-case one.

Shrugging as he kicked at the tough saw grass and sandy clumps near the pilings of the pier, Harlan frowned. In the grainy light, something glinted underneath the dock, caught between the rough slats.

Stepping carefully onto the mucky, spongy ground, he looked up at the bottom of the pier. There. He could see it glittering. Gold.

Holding on to the top of the pier with one hand and straining with the other, he swung one-handed out over the dark water and reached, grabbed and swung back to the shore again, the thin gold bracelet dangling from his fingers.

A prize. The catch was broken, snapped off. Only luck he’d seen the thing. He smiled. Luck.

“Hey, Ross?” Harlan beckoned the tall, red-haired, crime-scene technician over. “Look what I have.” Holding the shiny chain up, he continued, “Tell Tanner I’ll be through with Ms. Harris in about twenty minutes and we’ll head back to town. I’m goin’ to stroll up to the big house and ask one or two more questions,” he said, mockingly swinging the bracelet in front of Ross’s face. “Maybe I can hypnotize her into confessing, and we can all go home.”

“Sure, boss, but the guys aren’t anywhere near through down here. We baggied the victim’s hands, collected some evidence off the pier, but a lot of stuff has washed away with the rain. I don’t think we’ll find the murder weapon unless a blood match shows up on that knife you wanted us to get. We’re waiting for the search warrant on that. Should be here soon.”

“Good.” Harlan strode to the large white house glimmering ghostly in the rain and mist. In spite of everything that had happened, Molly Harris had chosen to stay in the family home. Interesting.

She was at the kitchen sink staring out at him as he approached. He heard the water running from the faucet, and thought of Lady Macbeth futilely washing her hands over and over again after the murder of the king.

Tapping on the screen door, he opened it without waiting for her invitation. “Ms. Harris?”

“Yes?” She cleared her throat.

A lovely throat it was, too, long and curving into her washed-out, winter-white sweatshirt with its gaping neckline. White was her color, all right. She looked like a pale nun, a streak of winter rain…He curbed his thoughts.

“I have three additional questions I need to ask you.” Stepping into the white-and-black kitchen, Harlan watched her nervous step back, forward. He liked the fact that she was nervous. She should be. Keeping her nervous suited him. “If you don’t mind?”

“Would it matter if I did? Should I call my lawyer?” That edgy animosity he’d caught earlier surfaced through her cool, husky voice. She was dragging herself together with an incredible effort, questions she should have asked him earlier now obviously coming to mind. Or maybe she’d decided how to play her role.

Either way, her struggle for control interested him. Under other circumstances, Molly Harris would be a woman with a certain sass and vinegar to her.

Sticking her hands under the water, never letting her gaze drift from his, she added, “I can, you know. I have a lawyer, and he can be here in thirty minutes. And I would still be considered a cooperative witness.”

He’d been right. Ms. Harris had a dash of cayenne under all that fragile sweetness. Well, it was going to be fascinating to find out what else she had hidden. He was beginning to like the idea of discovering Molly Harris’s secrets.

Coming closer, walking right up to the sink, he decided he liked, too, the way the washed-thin, rain-soaked sweatshirt clung to her small curves, skimming down her shoulders to mold her delicate breasts and outline their rain-chilled peaks. Where the sweatshirt rode up to her waist, caught there by the waistband, he could see the soaked and sandy rear end of her jeans, the ridged outline of her panties showing against the butter-soft denim.

He reached past her.

She shuddered but didn’t step away.

Ms. Harris had courage, too.

Pushing down the faucet lever, he turned off the relentless gush of water. “Conservation, Ms. Harris,” he murmured into her ear.

She leapt back, the toes of one bare foot tripping against the heel of the other. “What were your questions, Detective? I’ll decide if I should call my lawyer. Ask your damned questions and then,” she said, false civility riming her words, “please, get out of my house. Since you don’t have a search warrant.” One hand with its chewed nails crept toward her neckline until she realized what she was doing and jammed both hands into her pockets.

“Certainly,” he said, matching her politeness. “And no, we don’t have a search warrant. But it should arrive any minute.”

She flinched, the wings of her shoulders drawing together as if he’d struck her.

“My questions are simple, really—should be no trouble for you to answer.” He strolled around the room, looking, touching, knowing she was watching his every nonchalant move. He toed the dish of food on the floor. “You have a cat, hmm?”

“Is that one of the three questions?” The triangle of her face tightened, the skin around her full lips pinched with effort. Her wet hands dripped onto the black-and-white tiles.

Harlan moved.

She jumped.

Handing her a paper towel he’d torn off from the rack in back of her, he nodded. “Fair enough. All right. That’s question number one.”

Looking for a trick, she studied him. Her eyes changed to a clear no-color, only that lovely, translucent shimmer of innocence shining in them. “No. I don’t have a cat. I fed a stray this morning before you came.”