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“I didn’t think I needed an invitation. We’re partners,” Brannon drawled, watching her with those glittery gray eyes that didn’t even seem to blink.
“Not my idea,” she replied promptly. She put the files down beside his boots and stood staring at him. He didn’t look a day older than he had when she’d first met him. But he was. There were silver threads just visible at his temples where his thick blond-streaked brown hair waved just a little over his jutting brow. His long legs were muscular. She knew how fast he could run, because she’d seen him chase down horses. She’d seen him ride them, too. He was a champion bronc buster.
“You think Bib Webb hired a hit man to kill Jennings,” he said at once.
“I think somebody did,” Josette corrected. “I don’t rush to judgment.”
“Insinuating that I do?” he asked with an arrogant slide of his eyes down her body. He frowned suddenly as it occurred to him that she was dressed like an aging spinster. Every inch of her was covered. The blouse had a high collar and the jacket was loose enough to barely hint at the curves beneath it. The skirt was slightly flared at the hips, so that it didn’t pull tight when she walked. Her hair was in a tight bun, despite the faint wisps of blond curls that tumbled down over her exquisite complexion. She wasn’t even wearing makeup, unless he missed his guess. Her lips, he recalled, were naturally pink, like the unblemished skin over her high cheekbones.
“No need to check out my assets. I haven’t gone on sale,” she pointed out.
Brannon raised both thick eyebrows. That sounded like banked-down humor, but her face was deadpan.
Josette moved closer to the desk. “I’ve just explained my theory to Simon.”
“Would you care to share it with me?” he invited.
“Sure,” she said. “The minute you get your dirty boots off my desk and behave with some semblance of professional respect.” She didn’t smile as she said it, either.
Brannon pursed his lips, laughed softly and threw his feet to the floor. He’d only done it to get a rise out of her.
He got up and offered her the swivel chair with a flourish. He sank down gracefully into the chair next to the one his hat was resting on and crossed his long legs.
She sat down in her own chair with a long sigh. It had been a hard day and she only wanted to go home. Fat chance of that happening now, she thought.
“Anytime,” he invited.
“Dale Jennings’s mother was in serious trouble,” Josette said without preamble. “She’s sick and living on a small disability check. She’s only in her mid-fifties, not old enough to draw other benefits.” She leaned back in the chair, frowning as she considered the evidence. “She’d lost her small savings by listening to a fast-talking scam artist who convinced her that he was with a federal agency and she had to turn over her savings account to him in repayment for back taxes she owed.”
“Of all the damned outrages,” he said, angered in spite of himself.
That comment moved her. Brannon, despite his rough edges, was compassionate for the weaker or less fortunate. She’d seen him go out of his way to help street people, even to help young men he’d arrested himself. She had to force her eyes away from the powerful, lean contours of his body. She was still fighting a hopeless attraction to him.
“By the time she found out that no federal agency was asking for her savings,” Josette continued, “it was too late. Some people believe anything they’re told, even from people who don’t prove their credentials. She didn’t even ask for any identification, I understand.”
He grimaced. “Did she own her home?”
“She was barely a year away from paying it off. When she couldn’t make the next two payments, the bank foreclosed. She’s staying at a homeless shelter temporarily.” She studied him. “Now put yourself in Dale’s shoes,” she said unexpectedly, “and think how you’d feel if you were in prison and you couldn’t do anything to help her.”
Brannon remembered his own frail, little mother, who’d died an invalid. His thin lips made a straight line across his formidable face.
Josette nodded, realizing that he understood. She remembered his mother, too. “I’m not pointing fingers at anybody right now,” she said before he spoke. “I’m telling you that, first, somebody helped him escape prison detail. Second, somebody had proof or was keeping proof hidden of a crime that involved a person of means. Dale must have thought his chances of blackmailing the guilty party were pretty good. That doesn’t explain what he hoped to do on the outside. But he was killed, and in a very efficient manner. Whoever killed him had to know that he’d escaped from that work detail, and exactly where they could find him. I’m assuming that the person who had him killed was satisfied that he had concrete proof of something illegal, and that Dale was helped to escape so that he could present whatever proof he had and be dealt with efficiently.”
“Any prison has inmates who’ll kill for a price, guards and wardens notwithstanding,” he reminded her. “They didn’t have to get him out of prison to have him killed.”
“True, but maybe he was lured out to present his proof in person, to make sure that he really had it.” Josette leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Then, what if they thought he had the proof on him, and he didn’t?”
“We don’t know that. We didn’t find anything on the body, no ID of any sort, not even a pocketknife. If it hadn’t been for the information about the Wayne escapee fitting Jennings’s description exactly, and that raven tattoo on his arm to clinch it, we might have spent weeks trying to identify the body.”
She nodded. “So either the perpetrator took the evidence with him, or he didn’t get it and there’s still somebody out there, who was helping Jennings,” she emphasized, “and who now has the evidence and may still use it. Money is a powerful motive for murder. What if Marsh had him killed, for some reason?”
Brannon frowned. “He’s had people killed before. There could be a hit man on the loose, and whoever he’s working for may dig deep enough to find Jennings’s source.”
“That means we have another potential murder waiting to happen unless we solve the crime in time,” she agreed.
He studied her quietly. “You’ve learned a lot in the past few years.”
“Simon taught me,” she said simply. “He started out as an investigator while he was in law school. He’s very good.”
“You haven’t said anything about Bib Webb,” Brannon said.
“I said I don’t have a potential perpetrator,” she replied quietly. “And that’s true. I’m approaching the case with a completely open mind. But there’s a lot of investigative work to do. I’ll give my information to the local district attorney’s office in San Antonio, and we can do interviews with the most prominent people in the case. But I want to talk to Dale’s mother in San Antonio, the evidence technicians and police in San Antonio, and the prison warden at the Wayne Correctional Institute near Floresville. And to any cell mates Dale may have had or anyone who corresponded with him. Especially somebody who knows computers.”
He watched her, brooding, with one eye narrowed. “Why do you dress like a woman out of the fifties?” he asked unexpectedly.
“I dress like a professional on the state attorney general’s staff,” Josette said, refusing to be baited.
“What’s your next move?” she asked.
“I’m going to see Mrs. Jennings, and then I’m going to try to get a line on the hit man.”
Josette raised an eyebrow. “Have a good relationship with Jake Marsh and his local stable of bad boys, do you?” she drawled in a good imitation of his own sarcastic tone.
Brannon stood up. “I have informants, which is probably about the same thing.”
“Did anybody question Marsh about the body being found near his nightclub?” she asked.
“The very day we found the body. He’s out of town. But his assistant manager seemed shocked!” He said that with a disbelieving expression. He studied her quietly. An impulse had brought him back into her office, when he’d meant to go straight to the airport. Two years, and she still haunted him. Did she hate him? Gretchen said she didn’t. But Josette had learned to hide her feelings very well. He’d thought to surprise her into a reaction. The one he got wasn’t what he was expecting. Or the one he was hoping for.
Brannon watched her rise from her chair with that same easy grace he’d admired so much when she was still in her teens. She wasn’t pretty, not in a conventional way, but she had a sharp intelligence and a sweet nature…. Sweet nature. Sure she did. He recalled the vicious things she’d sworn to about Bib and his expression closed up.
Josette came around the desk and right up to him, unafraid. “I’m not prejudging. That means you can’t, either,” she said deliberately. “I know what that—” she indicated his Ranger badge “—means to you. My job means just as much to me. If we’re going to work together, we have to start now. No acid comments about the past. We’re solving a murder, not rehashing an incident that was concluded two years ago. What’s over is over. Period.”
His gray eyes narrowed so that they were hidden under his jutting brow and the cream-colored Stetson he slanted at an angle over them. Until he’d seen her again, he hadn’t realized how lonely his life had been for the past two years. He’d made a mess of things. In fact, he was still doing it. She held grudges, too, and he couldn’t blame her.
“All right,” Brannon said finally.
She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted about anything I find, if you’ll return the courtesy.”
“Courtesy.” He turned the word over on his tongue. “There’s a new concept.”
“For you, certainly,” Josette agreed with an unexpected twinkle in her eyes. “I understand the Secret Service tried to arrest you when your sister came home to your ranch in Jacobsville the last time, and they threatened to charge you with obstruction of justice for assaulting two of them in the yard.”
He straightened. “A simple misunderstanding,” he pointed out. “I merely had to mention that I was related to the state attorney general to clear it all up.”
That sounded like the dry humor she’d loved in him so many years ago. “Simon uses his new cousin-in-law, the Sheikh of Qawi, to threaten people.”
He leaned down. “So do I,” he confided with a grin.
That grin was so like the old Brannon, the one she’d loved with all her heart. She let the smile she’d been suppressing come out. It changed her face, made it radiant. His breath caught at the warmth of that smile.
“If I run into any uncooperative officials, I’ll use it myself. He’s my cousin-in-law, too,” Josette recalled.
Brannon cocked his head and smiled quizzically. “I forget that we’re related.”
“By an old marriage way back in our family tree,” she agreed. “And it’s a very thin connection with no blood ties.” She turned away and walked ahead of him to her office door. “I’ll make arrangements to see Mrs. Jennings day after tomorrow.”
He gave her a long scrutiny, remembering her at fifteen, shivering in a blanket—at twenty-two, passionate and breathless in his arms. Then he remembered what he’d said to her, afterward. He hated his memories.
She glanced at him and saw the resentment and bitterness on his face. “I don’t like you, either, Brannon, in case you wondered,” she drawled.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me,” he lied.
“Not much does.”
He nodded curtly, closed the door behind him and she stood in the middle of the room listening to his footsteps die away down the hall. She hadn’t realized until then that her heart was doing a rhumba in her chest. She moved back to her desk and stared blankly at the stack of file folders. When her heart threatened to break, there was always work waiting to divert her attention. At least, there was that.
That evening, she curled up with her cat, Barnes, on the sofa and tried to get interested in a popular detective show, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. She stroked the big cat’s fur lazily while he nestled against her and purred. She’d have to board him at the vet’s while she was in San Antonio. She didn’t like the idea, but she didn’t have anyone she could ask to keep him for her.
As she stared blankly at the screen, she remembered the fateful party that had cost Dale Jennings his freedom.
She’d met Dale at a coffee shop around the corner from the college she’d attended. Dale drove a fancy late-model sports car, and he was personable and charming. He also knew Bib Webb, and was helping him with his campaign for the lieutenant governor’s race in his home district, which was San Antonio. Webb was in partnership with Henry Garner, a wealthy local man who’d made a fortune selling farm equipment. Webb and his wife, Silvia, shared a palatial mansion on a private lake with Henry Garner in San Antonio, in fact. Garner was a lonely old man and welcomed the companionship of Webb and his wife.
A number of influential voters and members of high society were invited to the Garner home for a party on the lake two months before the election. Dale, who was keeping Josette company since Marc had quit the Rangers and left town, invited her to attend the party with him.
It didn’t occur to her at first that it was odd for someone like Dale, with rough edges and only a high school education, to be invited to a high society party. In fact, she asked him bluntly how he’d been invited. He’d laughed and told her that he was old Henry’s chauffeur and bodyguard, and he’d been invited by nobody less than Silvia Webb to the party. Henry wouldn’t mind. Silvia didn’t care if he brought a friend, either. Josette had a passing acquaintance with Silvia Webb, whom she saw infrequently at the same coffee shop where she’d met Dale. There was a tall, shady-looking man who came there to meet Dale occasionally, too. She’d never known his name.
Josette was grateful for an opportunity to go to the party, expecting that Brannon would be there, and she could parade in front of him with Dale. It would have helped her shattered ego, because Brannon had dropped her flat after their last, tempestuous date. But when she and Dale arrived at the palatial lake house, Brannon hadn’t been there.
Silvia Webb’s reaction to Dale’s date had been less than flattering. Her beautiful face had undergone a flurry of emotions, from amusement to calculation and then to polite formality.
Silvia had pulled them over to introduce Josie to her husband, Bib, who gave Josette a look that made her want to strangle him and then he asked amusedly if she was a missionary. Her single party dress was high-necked and very concealing, and she’d been insulted by the remark. Webb had been drinking. A mousy little brunette was standing nearby, watching him adoringly. Silvia ignored her.
Dale had laughed with Bib Webb, which didn’t endear him to Josette, before Silvia herded them toward a dusty-looking old man in a dark suit holding a can of ginger ale. He had receding white hair and gentle eyes. This, Silvia had muttered, was Henry Garner. While Josie was returning his greeting, Silvia drew Dale away with her into the crowd.
Henry Garner was a kind, sweet man with a dry wit. Josie had liked him at once, when she saw that he was drinking ginger ale and not alcohol. She explained about her strict upbringing, and he grinned. They found a quiet place to stand and talk while the party went on around them and guests got less inhibited.
Bib Webb was dancing with the little brunette, his face quiet and intent as he stared down at her. He was saying something, and she looked worried. He glanced around covertly and then pulled her closer. She looked as if she were in heaven. When he turned her, as they danced, Josie could see that his eyes were closed and his eyebrows drawn down as if in pain.
Henry Garner noticed Josie watching them and distracted her, talking about the lieutenant governor’s race and asking about her party affiliation, successfully drawing her attention away from Bib Webb. When Garner asked her gently if she wasn’t thirsty, she agreed that she was. She couldn’t see Dale Jennings anywhere. She asked Garner if he wanted some punch, but he chuckled and said no at once. She didn’t question why. She was still disappointed that Brannon hadn’t shown up. She’d wanted him to see that her heart wasn’t breaking. Even if it was.
Josie went to the punch bowl, and Henry Garner made a beeline for Webb and the brunette. He said something to them. Bib Webb smiled sheepishly and the brunette moved away from him to where the band was playing. Odd, Josie thought, and then dismissed the little byplay from her mind. She thought she heard Garner’s voice raise just a note, but she didn’t think much about it. She got a cup of the pretty red punch with ice floating in it and took several long swallows before she realized that it wasn’t just punch.
Unused to alcohol, it hit her hard. She felt disoriented. She looked around for Dale, but she still didn’t see him anywhere. One or two of the older men started giving her pert figure speaking looks, and she felt uncomfortable. Looking for a port in a storm, she made her way back to where Henry Garner had been, only to find him gone.
Bib Webb was sitting down in a chair, looking worried and a lot more sober than he’d been acting before. He was sitting beside the little brunette, who had a small hand on his, and was talking to him earnestly. He looked as if the world was sitting on him. But when he saw Josie, he smiled politely and nodded. She shrugged, smiled and moved back into the crowd.
She was feeling sicker by the minute and she couldn’t find Dale. All she wanted was to go home. Mr. Garner hadn’t been drinking, so perhaps, she thought, she could ask him to drive her home. She made her way to the front door and walked out onto the porch. Down a double row of steps, past a deck and a garden path was the pier that led out onto the lake. She couldn’t see all the way to the edge of it, but she knew Mr. Garner wouldn’t be out there. She turned and went down the side of the house. On the way, she ran into Silvia.
The beautiful woman was a little disheveled and the hand that pushed back her windblown hair was trembling. But she forced a smile and asked how long Josie had been stumbling around outside in the dark.
It was an odd question. Josie admitted that she’d had some spiked punch and was sick. She wanted Dale or Mr. Garner to drive her home.
Silvia had immediately volunteered. She’d only had one wine spritzer, she assured Josie and herded her toward a new silver Mercedes. She put the young woman in the car and pointedly remarked that Henry Garner’s car was still sitting there, but he’d told Bib he was going out for some cigars. She waved, but Josette couldn’t see anybody to be waved at.
She drove Josette home. Late that night, the local news channel was full of the breaking story of the apparent drowning of philanthropist Henry Garner, whose body had been found by a guest—floating in the lake. A news helicopter hovering over the Garner and Webb estate fed grainy film to the studio for broadcast. Police cars and ambulances were visible below. It was an apparent accidental drowning, the newswoman added, because the gentleman was drunk.
Still unsteady on her feet, but certain of her facts, Josette had immediately phoned the police to tell them that she’d just been at that party. Henry Garner had been drinking ginger ale, he wasn’t drunk, and he and Bib Webb had apparently been arguing before Garner vanished from the party. The tip was enough for the local district attorney’s office to immediately step into the investigation.
A blackjack with blood on it was discovered in the passenger seat of Dale Jennings’s car at the scene, where police were holding guests until they could all be interrogated. Against the wishes of Bib Webb, an autopsy was ordered, which was routine in any case of sudden, unexplained violent death. The medical examiner didn’t find a drop of liquor in Garner’s body, but he found a blunt force trauma wound on the back of the old man’s head.
The “accidental” drowning became a sensational homicide overnight.
The best defense attorney in San Antonio was at Bib Webb’s side during a hastily called press conference, and Marc Brannon got emergency leave from the FBI, with Webb’s help, to come back to San Antonio and help investigate the murder. In no time at all, Dale Jennings was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The blackjack in Jennings’s possession was said to be the instrument used to stun Garner; it had traces of Garner’s hair and blood on it, despite obvious efforts to wipe them off. Silvia Webb added that she’d seen Jennings near the lake, and the blackjack in Jennings’s car, just before she’d come back to the house and had taken Josette Langley home.
Jennings didn’t confess or protest. His public defender attorney entered a plea of not guilty, evidence was presented, and Josie had to admit that she hadn’t seen Dale during the time the murder was apparently committed. But she had been in Jennings’s car on the way to the party, and she hadn’t seen any blackjack, and she said so on the witness stand.
She also said that Bib Webb had a better motive for the old man’s death than Dale, and that he’d argued with Henry Garner that same evening. But Webb spoke to the prosecutor privately during the lunch break and gave him an ace in the hole. When she was fifteen, Josie had slipped out of her parents’ home to attend a wild party given by an older classmate. She’d ingested a drug and a senior at her school had tried to seduce her. She had been so frightened, she’d screamed and neighbors called the police. Her parents got an attorney and tried to have the boy prosecuted, but his attorney had the deposition of the emergency room physician on call the night of the incident—who testified that there had been no rape. The arresting officer, a former Jacobsville police officer named Marc Brannon, had been instrumental in getting the boy acquitted of the charges.
Brannon had told Bib Webb’s attorney this, and Webb had given it to the prosecution to use against Josette’s defense of Jennings. Josette Langley, it seemed, had once made up a story about being raped. Ergo, how could anybody believe her version of events at the party, especially when she’d been drinking, too?
The sensationalism of the story was such that reporters went to Jacobsville to review the old rape case, and they printed it right alongside the Garner murder trial as a sidebar. Jennings was convicted and sent to prison. Josette was publicly disgraced for the second time, thanks to Brannon. For a woman who’d made only one real mistake in her young life, she’d paid for a lot of sins she hadn’t committed. Consequently, she’d given up trying to live blamelessly, and these days she gave people hell. Her experience had made her strong.
But she still thought of Brannon with painful regret. He was the only man she’d ever loved. There had never been another man who could even come close to him in her mind. She sighed as she remembered the way they’d been together two years ago, inseparable, forever on the phone when they weren’t exploring the city. He’d helped her study for tests that last year in college, he’d taken her to Jacobsville to go riding on the ranch. When it all blew up in her face, she thought she might die of the pain. But she hadn’t. The only problem was that Brannon was back in her life, and she was going to have to face those memories every day.
Well, if it was going to be rough on her, she was going to make sure it was equally rough on him. She thought about giving Marc Brannon hell, and she smiled. If any man ever deserved a setback, that strutting Texas Ranger did. She was going to prove that Dale Jennings never killed Henry Garner, and she was going to rub Brannon’s nose in it so hard that he’d be smelling through his ears for the rest of his life!
Josette ran a gentle hand over Barnes’s silky fur. “You know, if men were more like cats, we’d never have wars,” she murmured. “All you guys do is eat and sleep and sleep some more. And you don’t drive trucks and wear muddy boots and cowboy hats.”
Barnes opened one green eye and meowed up at her.
She turned her attention back to the television set. “Too bad these writers never saw the inside of a courtroom,” she murmured as a defendant in the series grabbed a bailiff’s gun and started shooting jurors. “If a defendant ever tried to disarm our bailiff in superior court, he’d have his fingers bitten off on the way!”
Chapter Four
Before he got on his plane back to San Antonio, Marc stopped by Bib Webb’s second home in Austin. The Webbs lived there except during holidays and weekends, when they were at Bib’s San Antonio home.
Silvia beamed when the butler showed Marc to the living room, where they were sharing cocktails with three other couples. Blond, beautiful and vivacious, she was a woman most men would covet. Marc liked her, but he found her a bit too aggressive and ruthless for his own taste. She was an asset to Bib, of course, who wasn’t at all pushy or aggressive by nature.
“Marc, I didn’t know you were in town!” she exclaimed.
“I’m doing some investigative work for Simon Hart,” he drawled with a grin. “You look prettier than ever,” he added, brushing his hard mouth against her blemishless cheek.
“And you always look like a male model, darling,” she purred. “What sort of investigative work?” she added coquettishly, hanging onto his arm with her free hand while she sipped a martini held in the other.
“A murder.”
She paused with her eyes on her glass. “Anyone we know? I hope not!”
