In Harm's Way

“Sorry. Won’t get you off the hook.” The detective shrugged as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Sometimes a perpetrator will call in the crime, tryin’ to throw off suspicion,” he continued in that maddeningly slow drawl of his. “But we’ll get around to that in a little while. For now let’s just clear up a few things. Minor points, really.”

He pulled a small black notebook out of his pocket and smiled at her when he successfully located the ballpoint pen to go with it. Had Columbo started out like this? Robin wondered.

She hated his Southern accent. It poured out like thick molasses. Sinfully rich and dark. It made her want to finish his sentences for him. When he spoke in sentences.

Robin riveted all of her attention on him simply because it was something to think about other than what had happened in the next room. She couldn’t deal with that yet.

Her first thought was that this man didn’t look official. He hadn’t shaved. His dark-brown hair needed a trim, and he must have thrown on yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. He wore khaki slacks, a UT pullover and a windbreaker. He wasn’t even wearing socks, just scuffed leather deck shoes. He looked entirely too casual, too rumpled and laid-back for a detective. Since he didn’t look official, Robin didn’t trust him to act officially. She didn’t have much trust in men, anyway. Certainly not this one.

Worst of all he had a smile and an attitude that were working hard to make her drop her guard and lean on him. She quickly realized just which way she would fall if she did that.

“Did you see anybody when you came into the building? In the parking area? Driving away?”

“No,” she answered simply, in the second or so that he provided between each of his questions. He looked and sounded lazy. Or maybe only tired. Suddenly Robin was horribly afraid this man was going to lock her up just because she was handy instead of pursuing the person who had really killed James.

She shuddered, took a deep breath and clasped her arms tightly across her chest. James was dead, murdered, lying lifeless in the next room. The chilling horror of it made her shiver again, but she couldn’t put it out of her mind for more than a few minutes no matter how hard she tried. He was not going to let her.

“You say you flew in from New York just to visit your husband?” the detective asked.

Robin didn’t want to talk about her reasons for being here. She didn’t want to talk at all. Shouldn’t he be ordering people out to look for James’s murderer? Setting up roadblocks or whatever they did down here to catch a criminal? If they all moved and talked at this man’s speed, it was a miracle they ever got anything done.

“Mrs. Andrews?” he prompted, more firmly this time. “Why did you come here?”

“To visit,” she said, her words more clipped than usual.

“Does that mean you have one of those, ah, long-distance—” he paused to make a little questioning gesture with one hand “—what do you call ’em?”

“Separations,” Robin supplied. “James and I have been separated for almost a year.”

He frowned and made a note. “Okay. Were you on friendly terms with your husband, Ms. Andrews?”

“Yes,” she said with an emphatic nod. “James and I had been friends for several years before we decided to get married. After about six months he and I both agreed it was a mistake. He transferred to Nashville right after we separated, and I stayed in New York. His company has an office here.”

“Yeah, Townsend, Inc., you said. So what are you doing here visiting him if you’re not together any longer?”

Robin explained, “He called me at home last week and asked if I planned to fly down to Florida to visit my mother. I usually go for her birthday and he was aware of that. He wanted me to schedule my flight through Nashville and stop over so that we could talk.”

“Unfinished business?” Those penetrating blue eyes focused on her like lasers.

Robin bit her lip and glanced around the room, determined to concentrate on her answers rather than the horror that threatened to tear her apart if she let it.

James was dead. She didn’t love him, but she still liked him. He might have had a weak will where other women were concerned, but she figured she was as much to blame for that as James. The spark between them had been just that, a spark, not the fire they’d first thought it was. It had gone out more quickly than it had erupted. But fortunately it hadn’t destroyed their friendship.

The detective cleared his throat to get her attention. She gave it, studying his face, trying to guess what he would ask her next. This man was about to arrest her. She could feel it.

“I asked if you had unfinished business with your husband?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Also he…he wanted me to bring him something he said he’d forgotten when he moved down here. A computer disk.”

“Music?”

“No. Something to do with his work in the insurance company, he said. He told me he didn’t want me to mail it, because he was afraid it might get lost.”

“You didn’t mention that when Detective Taylor taped your preliminary interview.”

She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “He didn’t question me. He only said to tell what happened after I arrived here.”

“So you brought what your husband wanted you to bring and, in addition to that favor, he planned to discuss something important with you?” he asked slyly. “Maybe he wanted to reconcile?”

“No, he didn’t. James and I are just friends now.” Then she remembered and corrected herself. “Were just friends.” Her voice only broke a little.

“I wonder why you didn’t get a divorce.”

Robin exhaled slowly. “We discussed it several times. I thought we should. But he…” She hesitated, unsure whether she should have admitted this. “Maybe he was ready to start proceedings. He didn’t say on the phone.”

“And now a divorce won’t be necessary,” he commented, shaking his head, sounding sad, looking sad. She resented the implication he made, and hated his acting as if he were concerned. Damn him, did he have no decency? The man she was married to had just been killed. But he was doing his job, wasn’t he? He had to eliminate her as a suspect.

She had to be precise, give the detective all the information he could use and suggest things he might do to establish her innocence. If she didn’t do that, whoever killed James would get away with it. And she might be blamed.

She drew in another deep breath and released it carefully, trying to gain a little control over the tremor in her voice. “I took a taxi from the airport and arrived here about ten-thirty, give or take ten minutes. I’m sorry I didn’t look at the clock more closely. You could verify the time with the cab company. Oh, and the plane was delayed for over an hour,” she informed him, remembering that detail suddenly, thinking it might be crucial. “It was Flight 1247, American. Check the passenger list.”

“Good idea. I’ll do that,” he agreed, as if that hadn’t occurred to him before. “So you got here and…” he prompted with an expectant look.

Robin rushed to explain, “James was…was like that when I found him. The door was unlocked, the rooms were wrecked, and he was just lying there. Like that.”

It felt surreal, all of it. James’s death, her second recitation of the events, this detective’s quiet questions in the deep, velvety voice. She looked at him again, puzzled by his unassuming manner. It was as if he did this every night. Did he? This was Nashville, not New York. Did people get killed here so regularly that it didn’t faze him at all?

Robin’s breath felt jerky and shallow as her gaze strayed to the door of the living room, through which she could see James. He lay sprawled facedown on the floor beside the coffee table, a dark pool of blood encircling his head. His eyes were open. A camera flashed.

She closed her own eyes tight. “Could…could they cover him? Please?”

“Sure they will. Don’t you worry,” he said, his words soft with faked compassion. It had to be faked. Why would he care if James lay there so exposed or that she might worry about it? He hadn’t known James and didn’t know her.

He went on. “As soon as they do what they have to do, they’ll cover him up. Why don’t you sit back on the bed a ways, ma’am. Then he won’t be visible to you. It bothers you, doesn’t it,” he asked gently, “seein’ him that way?”

Though he spoke softly, he watched her with an intensity that scraped across her exposed nerves. His words and relaxed attitude didn’t match those keen, narrowed ice-blue eyes that watched her like a hawk. A circling hawk about to dive at its prey.

“Of course it bothers me! He was a good man and he’s dead,” she said, choking on the words. Robin covered her eyes with a trembling hand and shook her head. “Please, Officer Wendall—”

“It’s detective, Detective Winton,” he corrected without a trace of impatience. He nudged her free hand and she looked down to see him offering her a pristine, neatly ironed handkerchief with a blue W embroidered on one corner.

Robin blinked. She didn’t know men did that anymore. Offered their handkerchiefs. Hesitantly she took it, though she had no idea why. She wasn’t even crying. Her throat hurt, her heart ached and she was terrified, but her eyes felt dry as dust.

“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked. It came out a bit more sharply than she intended. Had she sounded guilty?

He smiled. It was a quick little expression of what looked like sympathy. She knew better. “Not right now,” he assured her, then added, “but you do have to come downtown with me and give a written statement.”

“I told you everything.” She inclined her head toward the living room. “The other detective has it on tape and now you have notes.” She looked at the small tablet he’d been scribbling on.