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“Not a problem.”
“There’s something you need to check in the kitchen before you talk to her.” As he spoke, Gianos aimed his thumb across one shoulder in the direction of a brightly lit hallway that led toward the rear of the house.
“What’s that?”
“There’s a basket from a bakery on the counter, partially filled with muffins. A couple of empty wrappers are inside, so you’ve got to figure Ormiston sampled a few.”
Jake furrowed his brow while his mind fell into sync with Gianos’s thoughts. They had a healthy-looking man with no sign of trauma who seemed to have dropped dead while walking across his entry hall. “You saying you think he was poisoned?”
“I think I don’t know what to think.” Gianos shrugged. “Look, I know Nicole Taylor is Whitney’s new sister-in-law and her brother Bill is the number two man in the D.A.’s office.”
Mentally, Jake missed a step. “What’s that got to do with Ormiston maybe getting poisoned?”
“Could mean nothing…or something. All I know is there’s a card with Nicole Taylor’s name on it tied to the muffin basket.”
Jake felt his spine stiffen. “What does the card say?”
“‘Phillip, we’ve only just begun. Yours, Nicole.”’ Gianos shook his head. “The patrol cop mentioned that when she questioned Taylor, she claimed her association with Ormiston was purely business.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jones told me.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Gianos observed. “All I know is if a woman sent me a basket of goodies with a note like that, I’d get the idea her interest in me went beyond business. If the woman looked as good as Nicole Taylor, I’d welcome that interest.”
“Holy hell,” Jake muttered.
Gianos and Smith headed out the door just as Upchurch returned with a sheet. The M.E.’s assistant and one of the lab techs rolled Ormiston’s body onto the sheet.
The toothpick in the side of Upchurch’s mouth seesawed as he inspected the front of the dead man. “No sign of trauma on his neck, no blood visible.” Upchurch raised a shoulder. “Too early to tell, Sarge, but this death might be a natural.”
“And it might not be,” Jake countered.
“Might not.”
Jake knew that Gianos had been on target to turn a suspicious eye toward the muffins. At a death scene, you looked at everything that way.
Staring down at Ormiston’s body, Jake expelled a slow breath while his mind worked. Muffins were mostly carbohydrates, which the body digested faster than fats and proteins.
“Upchurch, I need a quick autopsy,” he began. “The M.E. needs to pay close attention to the stomach contents, the degree of digestion. Make sure he knows I want a tox screen on body fluids for poisons, both for time of death and cause of death.”
Upchurch cocked an eyebrow. “Poison, huh?”
“It’s possible,” Jake said, then headed for the kitchen.
She’d had to keep busy, or go crazy.
Gnawing her bottom lip, Nicole stared down at the folded sacks, empty foam containers and cups she’d aligned beside her on the back seat of Jake’s car. Now that she’d finished the task and had nothing to occupy her mind, she was again conscious of the clutching nervousness in the pit of her stomach.
At least she felt a little more calm in the back of Jake’s car with its windows rolled down than she had in the police car with its cagelike effect.
In an unconscious gesture, she flipped her thick blond braid behind her shoulder, then twisted her fingers together while she gazed out the open window at the massive brick house. She had found Phillip’s body nearly two hours ago, and her hands had yet to stop trembling. Except for attendance at an occasional funeral, she had never gotten close to a dead body. Certainly had never discovered one. Or touched one.
She’d done all three tonight.
Closing her eyes, she fought back a wave of unsteadiness. She concentrated on taking deep, controlled breaths, tried to remember the breathing exercises Sebastian had taught her to battle stress. The only thing closing her eyes did was bring a clear picture of Jake into her awareness.
He had looked grim, rugged and all-business when he’d climbed out of his car, this car, and headed across the lawn toward Phillip’s house.
She had thought constantly about him since her brother’s wedding. Crazy thoughts, she acknowledged. Thoughts she should have easily discarded because she knew the type of man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and she was certain Jake Ford wasn’t even close. Still, she hadn’t managed to rid her mind of him. Not since they’d danced…
The next instant the door beside her swung open, snapping her eyes open.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
In the wash of light from the street lamps, Jake’s eyes looked almost black as he leaned through the open door. “Uh…waiting for you. The female officer told me to stay—”
“The trash, Nicole,” he stated through his teeth. “What the hell did you do to my trash?”
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to the sacks and empty containers sitting in rows beside her. “When I get nervous, I have to have something to keep me busy. To keep my mind focused.”
His gaze stayed on her face, frank and assessing, as he propped a forearm along the top of the car’s open door. “Sorting trash gets your mind focused?”
“It helps.” No way was she going to admit that all she’d gotten from sitting in his car and organizing fast-food sacks were thoughts that had focused on him.
He swung the door open wider. “I need to talk to you. It’d be easier if we both sit in the front seat.”
“Okay.” She had answered what seemed like a million of the uniformed officer’s questions, and she doubted she could give Jake any more information. On a sigh, she slid out of the car into the warm night air. When she turned to face him, she discovered that, without the strappy heels she’d worn while they danced, she was a full head shorter than he.
His eyes were cool, very cool, as they inched down her body, taking in her white, oversize dress shirt, navy leggings, thick socks and workout shoes. His slow, measured assessment filled her with unease. She wasn’t sure if it was the man or the cop—or both—who made her feel as if she were not being looked at, but into.
The sound of muted conversation pulled her attention toward the sprawling brick house. The wheels of a stretcher holding a black body bag clattered as two men rolled it over the doorstep and onto the porch.
Her throat tightened. “He must have had a heart attack.”
Jake closed the car’s back door with a quiet snap, then turned. His handsome face held no expression. “What makes you think that?”
“Phillip confided in me that he’d had a heart attack a few years ago. It was a mild one, but enough to have him start working out and eating right.”
“Phillip,” Jake echoed. A muscle in his cheek jerked, but his eyes stayed level on hers. “Right now his death is unexplained. That’s how I’m investigating it.”
He leaned around her and pulled open the front passenger door. The movement brought him close enough for her to catch his warm, musky scent. For a mindless moment, they were back on that dance floor, their bodies swaying in slow, seductive unison. As if feeling again the heady sensation of his thumb against her wrist, she curled her fingers over her palms.
He pointed toward the front seat. “Climb in.”
He said the words with such quiet authority that she instantly complied. She watched as he skirted the hood, pulled open the door, then settled behind the wheel.
“Tell me about Ormiston.” As he spoke, Jake propped his wide shoulders against the car door and dangled one hand over the steering wheel.
Dressed in a rumpled chambray shirt and worn jeans, black hair on the shaggy side, Jake might come across as relaxed. Not to her. Nicole considered herself an expert when it came to reading people, and she saw the leashed intensity in the alert tilt of his head, the sharpness in his dark gaze.
“Phillip was a client of Meet Your Match.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe six months. I’d have to check his file for the exact date he signed his contract.”
“Did you know him before he became a client?”
“No.”
“He just walk in off the street and sign on?”
“Well, I did meet him at a charity fund-raiser and gave him one of my cards,” she amended. “He showed up in my office the next day and signed a contract.”
“Did you and Ormiston go out?”
She blinked. “I don’t date my clients.”
“Why were you at his house tonight?”
She told him the same thing she’d told the female officer, ending with “It wasn’t like Phillip not to call the office when he was scheduled to. Wasn’t like him to miss a racquetball game. I was concerned.”
“Was he scheduled to play racquetball with you?”
“No, Sebastian. They played a couple times a week.”
“Is it standard operating procedure for you to drop by each of your client’s houses to check on their welfare?”
“Of course not. Phillip had been having…problems and I felt he needed special attention.”
“What sort of…problems?”
“He was unhappy that I had yet to connect him with a woman whom he felt would make a suitable mate.” She lifted a shoulder. “I understood his impatience. His wife passed away two years ago. He was lonely, and at a point where the loneliness was turning into depression. I’m a firm believer some people aren’t meant to live their lives alone. Phillip is…was one of them.”
When Jake didn’t shoot back another question, Nicole realized he’d turned his head to stare out the windshield into the dark night. He seemed lost in thought, his profile hard and unyielding. As she studied him, the weak light from the street lamps seemed to shift, and for a brief instant, she saw what she thought was utter desolation in his eyes.
A quick, surprising tremor around her heart had her leaning to touch his arm. “Is something wrong?”
He jerked his head around so fast that she snatched her hand back. His eyes were hooded, his face as expressionless as carved stone. “So, Ormiston was unhappy you hadn’t managed to find him ‘Miss Right.”’
She took a deep breath. Whatever brief emotion she’d seen in his eyes had been replaced by a chilling remoteness.
“Yes, Phillip was unhappy. Some clients have a hard time at first understanding how long it can take to find their perfect match.”
Jake flicked a look over his shoulder toward the house. “Ormiston was loaded. Seems to me he’d have no problem getting a date.”
“He knew quite a few single women, but no one he wanted to get serious about. He ran a huge, thriving funeral business with locations all over the state. At the minimum, he put in sixty-hour work weeks. That limited the time he had to make connections. Phillip wasn’t a twenty-year-old man who wanted to hang out in singles’ bars, hoping to meet someone.”
“How many women did you fix him up with?”
“Quite a few over the past couple of months.” Frowning, Nicole shoved her braid over one shoulder. “Phillip claimed nothing clicked with any of his dates, which surprised me.”
“So, you had a dissatisfied customer on your hands. Was he planning on ending your association?”
She linked her fingers, twisted them. “Yes. The last time I saw him he said he wouldn’t renew his contract.”
“When was this?”
“A few days ago.”
“Where?”
“At Sebastian’s.” She looked out the windshield just as the black station wagon into which the men had loaded the body bag crept slowly along the street. Sadness for the man she had known settled inside her. “I guess none of that matters now,” she added quietly.
“Since Ormiston thought he got a raw deal, he might have planned to bad-mouth your company. I doubt that would have made you happy.”
In the next heartbeat, Nicole vividly understood that the man with whom she shared the car’s close, intimate confines was not conducting an interview, but an interrogation. It wasn’t fear that stiffened her spine, but temper.
“Of course that didn’t thrill me. I’m in business to make my clients happy. I feel a lot better when I succeed at my job. Don’t you?”
“There’s a lot of people behind bars who can swear to that.”
“Are they all guilty?” she asked coolly.
He gave a short laugh. “Most claim they aren’t.”
For a slow, languorous moment he studied her, his dark eyes on hers. Watchful. Nicole tried to ignore the knots that tightened in her stomach.
Finally he asked, “Do you think Ormiston would have been happier if you had agreed to go out with him?”
His question caught her like a slap in the face. “What makes you think he wanted me to go out with him?”
“You slide your business card into his pocket at a charity to-do. The next morning he shows up at your office. Not hard to figure out what was going on.”
“Nothing was going on, Sergeant. I don’t date my clients.”
“But he did ask you out, right?”
“Once, after he signed his contract.” The lethal sureness in Jake’s eyes brought all of her nerves swimming to the surface. “I refused, and Phillip didn’t ask again. I told him to be patient, that we’d only just begun looking for his perfect mate.”
Jake reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag. “‘We’ve only just begun,”’ he murmured, angling the card inside the bag until it caught light from the nearby street lamp. “Sounds familiar.”
As she read the message with her name below, a shiver skittered like a bony finger down the back of Nicole’s neck. She lifted her gaze. “Why do you have the card in a bag?”
“It’s evidence.”
“Of what?”
“That you sent Ormiston a basket of muffins.”
