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“It’s either here or the station, Lisa. Your choice.”
She folded her arms and glared. “Fine. Ask away.”
“Did you carry anything into the room besides your handbag?”
Lisa searched his features. “No, but I had on a scarf.”
Something inside Nash froze. “Describe it please.”
“It was my grandmother’s. It’s pale green with hand-painted irises. It’s the reason I got here so quickly this morning. I was on my way here to get it back.”
“Why did you leave it?”
“I didn’t. It was in my hair, which I had in a ponytail. The scarf was tied around the rubber band to hide it. It must have come undone. It’s silk and slippery.”
Nash wrote, the notebook sliding on the highly polished table. The business card she’d given him showed and he flipped it over.
Lisa thought she saw sadness flicker in his eyes.
“The Enchanted Garden, that’s your business?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “Didn’t you already know that?”
Nash shook his head.
“I started it up about ten months ago. It’s on my land around the house and it’s doing really well.” Her brows knit. “I don’t get it. Your brother Temple buys some of his plants for his landscaping business from me. I thought you knew.”
“I knew he used this nursery, but he never mentioned it was yours.”
“Maybe he thought he was being disloyal to his older brother by doing business with me. I know how you Couviyon brothers stick together.”
“Obviously, Temple has his own set of rules.”
“I know, he’s an outrageous flirt.”
She was trying to ease the tension in the room. But Nash could feel it thicken the air. He tossed the card down and rose, moving to the door and speaking to the officer posted outside, who moved off to do his bidding. Nash waited, glancing back at her only once. She couldn’t have done this, he thought.
“Why didn’t you ever come by to say hello, Nash?”
“I knew you were here, Lisa.” He didn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to open that door again.” It hurt too much, he thought, then realized it still did.
“And saying hello, how’s your mama, would have been torture?”
“Yeah, it would have.”
Lisa’s lips tightened. Well, that said a lot, she thought.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked.
“I was still married.”
Nash simply stared, wondering if she’d been single would they have gotten back together. And in the same moment he remembered that she had dumped him. She’d wanted picket fences and babies, and he couldn’t give her that. Aside from the fact that he’d just taken a bullet in the line of duty and lost his partner, he’d watched the devastation hit the widow and cut a strong woman off at the knees. He couldn’t do that to Lisa.
The officer returned, interrupting his thoughts and handing him two paper bags. Nash moved back to the table and set them on the floor. He reached into one and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.
“Is this your scarf?”
“Yes.” She extended a hand.
He pulled it back. “Evidence.”
“What do you mean, evidence? It’s my scarf.”
“It was found wrapped around the victim’s neck, Lisa.” Her eyes widened, and she went perfectly still. When she sank back into the chair, he asked, “Now do you want to tell me what you argued about?”
“No, I don’t. It was personal.”
Nash backed off for now. “Were you angry when you left here?”
“No, I was just tired, Detective.”
Nash heard the wall go up between them, even if he couldn’t see it. He returned the plastic envelope to the bag. “Do you make teas?”
She blinked, taken aback. “Yes, I do. My herb plants grow quickly in this weather, and I have to cut them back. It’s a waste not to do something with the herbs.”
“And do you sell the teas at your place of business?”
“Not as a regular commodity, no. I use the cuttings for cooking or rooting new plants. Occasionally I make bath teas, scented bath salts, a couple of mint and catnip drinking teas, and I put them in baskets with a live plant. But it’s not a main part of my business, and it’s time-consuming to put them together. So I make them up as requested.”
“The baskets are for regular sale?”
“No, only with the custom orders. They’re handmade, too expensive to make a profit and to keep a reasonable stock of them takes up considerable space.” Lisa glanced at the notes he was furiously writing. “Especially because the humidity can rot them. I run a nursery, not a bath-and-tea shop.”
“Did you bring one of these custom baskets to the hotel or have it delivered?”
Her brows knitted. “No.” Peter would have seen any gift as a peace offering. Heck, she thought, her very presence made him believe she wasn’t going to divorce him, although she’d signed the papers weeks before and it had been only a matter of the time line hitting a specified mark. One that had her in deep trouble right now, she suspected.
“Describe the baskets please.”
Lisa told him what they looked like, but when she described the brass oval engraved with “Enchanted Garden,” he wilted in his chair. She’d bet her best Kamali pumps that a basket just like one of hers was in that larger bag at his feet.
“Did you speak to anyone on your way to the Baylor Inn, and did anyone see you enter and or exit the building?”
That Nash wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t even acknowledge her with so much as a nod as he wrote, made her bristle. “I don’t recall. At the time I didn’t know I’d need an alibi. Now my husband is dead. My ex-husband. And you’ve all but accused me of his murder.”
“I don’t have enough evidence for charges.”
Something inside her shattered. “We have nothing more to say to each other.” She stood. “Unless it’s with my lawyer present.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that, by law, he could hold her for questioning. “I’ll need everything you were wearing last night.”
“Fine. I’ll deliver the clothing to the station within the hour. Are we finished?”
“For now, yes.”
Lisa strode to the door. Before she could open it, Nash was there, his hand over her fist.
Her gaze snapped to his. He could taste her fury, it was so pungent.
“Back off, Detective.”
He didn’t. “Lisa, let’s not start like this.”
She laughed, sharp and bitter. “We aren’t starting a damn thing, Couviyon. We were finished four years ago.” Four years ago when I was pregnant with your child, she thought, knowing that if she’d ever considered telling him the truth, she sure didn’t now.
“You finished it. I didn’t.”
“You were never in the relationship, Nash. You had your own neat version and you kept me on the outside unless we were in bed.” She shook off his hand and jerked opened the door.
“Lisa. This is my job.”
“I’m thrilled for you. Go do it. And until you have something more than accusations, don’t come near me.”
She left, striding past the officers. Nash signaled to let her pass. She was pure anger in a snug skirt and high-heeled sandals.
“Seems like a hostile witness, Detective,” an officer said.
Nash let out a breath. “Oh, yeah.”
Chapter Two
Nash watched Lisa storm off, leaving him feeling twisted and confused. This was why he hadn’t dropped by her place to say hello, he thought. She did things to him no other woman had and he still hurt. The humiliation of being dumped by her hardly compared to the feelings of regret he’d had for months after learning she was six hundred miles away walking down the aisle with another man.
Seeing her today warned him he still wasn’t over her. Just looking into her eyes stung his heart.
Suddenly Quinn stuck his head out of the room, caught a glimpse of Lisa and whistled softly. Then he looked at Nash.
“That Couviyon charm not working today, laddie?”
Nash eyed Quinn. “You knew she was coming here?”
“I heard the supervisor call her. And yes, I also remembered her married name.”
Quinn’s look said Nash had had his head in the sand. Not good for a cop, Nash knew. “She’s divorced officially as of this morning.”
“So she was still the wife when the victim died?”
Any connection between Lisa and the victim was suspect and damaging, Nash thought. “As I recall, the exact time of death is your job, Kilpatrick,” he snarled, pushing past Quinn and into the suite.
Nash ordered a background check on the victim. And his wife.
“Detective?”
Nash rounded, ready to chew someone in two.
A short, wiry man in a black suit stepped into the room. “You couldn’t keep this quiet?” he said, glancing around.
Nash’s breath snapped out of him. Baylor, the owner of the hotel, and he looked pissed. The day was just getting better and better.
“There are other guests, you know, and they want back into their rooms.”
“They will be allowed in soon. And it’s a little hard to hide a suspicious death.”
The man’s eyes were glued to the black body bag rolling away on a stretcher. “Murder?”
Ignoring that, Nash took out his pad, and when he was about to escort Baylor to another room for questioning, the man rushed over to an officer dusting the dresser for prints. “Is that going to leave a stain? This chest is two hundred years old.”
The police officer gave Baylor a once-over, then glanced beyond him to Nash and said, “No sir,” before going back to work.
“Sir?” Nash crooked a finger. “You’re Mr. Will Baylor?”
The man nodded. “William Reese Baylor IV,” he clarified. “I’m the owner. My family built this home over 150 years ago.”
“Nice place,” Nash said, caring little about Baylor’s lineage and the inn’s history. His own family had a plantation, Indigo Run, on the edge of town that had been in operation since 1711. “You met the deceased?”
“Briefly when he checked in two days ago. Very nice man. He kept to himself.”
“Did he meet anyone here?”
“We don’t question our guests so personally. We pride ourselves on privacy, relaxation and discretion.”
Nash’s gaze narrowed dangerously, and the owner folded.
“Not that I know of. But I’m not here twenty-four seven. With the exception of lunch yesterday, I believe he dined in his suite.”
For a man here on business, Winfield didn’t do much, Nash thought. Except meet with Lisa. Winfield’s PalmPilot indicated he had three meetings but gave no names or times, only dates, and though the victim’s laptop was found in the room, they needed a password to access the data.
“How did they get in? Was it someone he knew?” Baylor moved to a set of French doors, but Nash stopped him from opening them, wiggling his own gloved fingers.
“Prints.”
Baylor glanced at the officer still kneeling by the chest of drawers. “Oh, yes, of course. This balcony leads to a separate entrance for this room and the one next door. There’s a staircase, very narrow and steep, leading to the lower floors outside the kitchen and a path to the patio. It was once the servants’ staircase.”
The door had an old-fashioned brass latch, one that you had to wrap your hand around to open. With a pen, Nash tried pushing it. It was locked from the inside. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have come up here and left this way. Checking that it had been already dusted, Nash opened it, careful not to step on the porch. Earlier, officers had canvassed the area, and it was going to take some manpower to see if anyone had noticed someone entering the suite through this door. He looked down, then squatted. They hadn’t had rain in a while, and the dust level was high. There were several shoe prints in the dust outside the door, and although they’d been lifted and logged already, there were two smaller sets. A woman’s?
Nash rubbed his face and straightened. “Who sent the basket?”
The owner frowned and Nash produced the sweet-grass basket with Lisa’s logo on the rim.
