The Quiet Storm

“Tina was…troubled, Detective. Angry.”

“Angry at who? The kid’s father?”

She thought about it then shook her head. “I don’t think so. She loved her son very much. ‘He’s a gift,’ she used to say. ‘A sweet and precious gift.”’ To her chagrin, her voice broke on the last word. Sudden tears choked her throat, burned her eyes.

Her heart ached to think what Tina would miss as her son grew up. She wouldn’t see his baby fat melt away or send him off to his first school dance or be able to buy him his first razor. She would miss teaching him to drive and arguing with him about curfews and preparing him for college.

She wouldn’t miss those things, though, Elizabeth vowed fiercely even as she wiped at her tears with a handkerchief she dug out of her pocket. She and Luisa would take care of Alex. They would love him and teach him and never, ever make him feel as if his disability made him any less of a person.

She looked up and found Detective Riley watching her out of those intense dark eyes that seemed to see right past her defenses.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Don’t be,” he answered, his voice gruff, then he turned back to sorting through Tina’s belongings. He might have only been trying to avoid an overemotional woman but she didn’t think so. He was giving her time and space to compose herself. The unexpected kindness warmed her far more than she wanted to acknowledge.

As a hardened detective he must have seen many grieving friends and relatives, she thought. And perhaps some who didn’t grieve. That was probably harder.

Why did he do it? she wondered. Grace Dugan said he was one of the best detectives in Seattle. When he works a case, Beau is relentless, like a junkyard dog with a bone. He’ll gnaw it and gnaw it until he shakes out the truth.

She was suddenly very grateful to have this particular fierce detective on her side, no matter how nervous he made her.

They worked through several boxes with only the occasional comment or question from Beau as to whether she recognized items or noticed anything missing.

After they opened most of the boxes containing the average flotsam and jetsam of a person’s life—a pitifully few knickknacks, some dishes, Tina’s collection of hatpins—he opened one that sent color climbing up Elizabeth’s cheeks.

These were Tina’s work uniforms. Her feathers and leathers, she had called them—the costumes she had worn while working as a stripper, albeit a well-paid one.

Beau cleared his throat and pulled out a minuscule nurse’s uniform that wouldn’t have concealed a single thing on any self-respecting female over the age of six, complete with thigh-high sheer white stockings and a perky little cap.

An odd, glittery heat uncurled inside her at the sight of such a silly, frilly thing in his masculine hands.

“You didn’t tell me your friend was in the medical profession.”

Oh! He had to know perfectly well what Tina did for a living. She couldn’t think how to respond to his tongue-in-cheek observation, even if she could find the right words.

At her silence, he looked over at her and his teasing grin slid away. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have joked about it. Given the circumstances, it was in bad taste, and I apologize.”

Finally she managed to smile. Tina would have laughed out loud at his comment. And under other conditions, Elizabeth would have joined in. “No. It’s…it was a joke to her. That’s all it was. She thought it was hilarious that she could make so much money for a few hours’ work.” She paused. “She didn’t like being a stripper, but it was helping her improve her life. She was taking computer classes, going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Looking for a better apartment.”

He watched her out of those probing green eyes for a moment, then finally spoke. “She had heroin in her system the night she died. Did you know that?”

Elizabeth nodded. “The other detectives told us. She must have had a…” She had to scramble for the right word. Difficulty? Backtrack? No. Those words fit but they weren’t what she was looking for. She hit on it after what she hoped wasn’t too noticeable a pause. “Relapse. She must have had a relapse. Before that, she had been clean for almost six months.”

“Do you know why she would have purchased a gun the day before she died?”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. She didn’t say anything to us. Maybe she was being threatened about something. Debts, maybe. I know she had quite a few. I tried to help her with…with money. A hundred times I tried to help her but she would only get angry.”

“That must have been difficult.”

“Yes,” she answered, hoping the simple word would conceal the world of pain behind it. When they were children, the disparity between their financial situations hadn’t existed. Only as they grew older had Tina begun to resent that Elizabeth would never want for anything.

Nothing financial, anyway, she thought with old, familiar bitterness. Her father had paid her bills—her tuition, her car, her apartment. Or rather, the trust fund he and her mother had set up for her before her birth paid her expenses. But Jonathan Quinn had given her little else.

To her relief, the detective didn’t seem inclined to pursue that line of questioning. He opened the last box. Halfway through, he found the soft burgundy Coach handbag she had given Tina for Christmas the year before. Another harsh sliver of grief jabbed into her. Tina had adored that purse and had used it constantly.

“Pay dirt.” Beau pulled it from the box. “Just what I hoped to find.”

“Why?” She managed to squeeze the word out around the lump in her throat.

“I don’t mean to sound sexist here but most of you women carry your lives around in their purses. All the little bits and pieces that give a clear picture of who you are, what you do with your days. Makeup, credit cards, appointment books. Everything. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in here hides the key to unlocking the mystery of what really happened that night. We just have to find it.”

Chapter 4

Elizabeth couldn’t contain a small gasp as the detective dumped the contents of Tina’s purse out on the bedspread in the guest room. It seemed a terrible invasion of privacy, letting him paw through the contents. Like reading someone’s diary or opening another person’s mail. A woman’s purse was sacred!

I’m sorry, she whispered again to Tina. Even as she thought the words, she knew Tina wouldn’t have objected. Not if it meant finding out the truth about her death.

“A lot of cops think working a case is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces missing. To me, it’s more like a big, dead-serious scavenger hunt. The clues are there, you just have to know where to look for them. Then work your tail off to figure out what they mean.”

“Is there something I could do to help?”

He glanced over at her and she was startled again by the green of his eyes. “While I read the entries in her planner, why don’t you look through her address book here and put a small check by the people you might know in common? If you see anything unusual in there, make a note of it.”

Elizabeth nodded and took the slim address book from him. Only after she perched next to him on the edge of the guest bed did it occur to her to be uneasy at working in such close proximity to Beau Riley. Despite the solemnness of the task ahead of her, she was suddenly intensely aware of him, his broad shoulders just a few feet from hers, the masculine scent of his aftershave, of pine and sandalwood, the lock of unruly dark hair dipping across his forehead like a comma.

How many women had been tempted to smooth that lock of hair back into place? she wondered. And how many had acted on the temptation? Well, she would most certainly not be among their number.

If not for this case, she would be doing everything she could to stay as far as possible from Beau Riley. He made her so nervous. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been so edgy and off balance. It wasn’t a sensation she cared for at all—especially when she knew she should be focusing on finding out who had killed Tina, not on gorgeous police detectives with intense eyes and tousled hair.

Reining in her wild thoughts, she forced her attention back to the book in her hands and began poring through the pages. Most of the names were unknown to her and she assumed they were co-workers or men Tina might have dated. A few names seemed vaguely familiar, as if Tina had mentioned them in passing, but Elizabeth had never been very good at remembering names, especially when she didn’t have a face to assign to it.

By the time she reached the end, she had made small checks by a few dozen names, schoolmates of both of them or acquaintances from their time in Los Angeles but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If only she had some clue what she was supposed to be looking for. She was terribly afraid she would miss something important and just be too stupid to recognize it.

She turned the last page, to the Zs, then stared at the page. “This is odd.”

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until the detective looked up from the day planner.

“What?”

“Tina has the name of Dr. David Zacharias listed here. I had no idea she knew him.”

Beau sat back. “Zacharias. That rings a bell.” He thumbed back through Tina’s planner. “Yeah. Here it is. She had an appointment with him listed a few days before she died.”

She gaped at him, questions whirling through her mind. “Are you sure? She never said a word!”

“Yeah. It says Dr. Zacharias, three in the afternoon, Tuesday the first. What’s the big deal? What kind of doc is he?”

“He’s a…” Drat, the word escaped her. She closed her eyes for just a second while she tried to find it again, reeling from a complicated mix of astonishment, disbelief and an odd sense of betrayal.