Killer Investigation

His troubled gaze came back to her. “There’s been a murder.”

Chapter Two

“The victim was a young female Caucasian,” Reid added as he studied Arden’s expression.

She looked suddenly pale in the waning light from the garden, but her voice remained unnervingly calm. “A single mother?”

The question was only natural considering Orson Lee Finch’s MO. He’d preyed on young single mothers from affluent families. It was assumed his predilection had been nurtured by contempt for his own unwed mother and resentment of the people he’d worked for. Some thought his killing spree had been triggered by the rejection of his daughter’s mother. All psychobabble, as far as Reid was concerned, in a quest to understand the nightmarish urges of a serial killer.

“I don’t know anything about the victim,” he said. “But Orson Lee Finch will never see the outside of his prison walls again, so this can’t have anything to do with him. At least not directly.”

Arden’s eyes pierced the distance between them. “Why are you here, then? You didn’t just come about any old murder.”

“A magnolia blossom was found at the scene.”

Her eyes went wide before she quickly retreated back into the protection of her rigid composure.

This was the part where Reid would have once taken her in his arms, letting his strength and steady tone reassure her there was no need for panic. He wouldn’t touch her now, of course. That wouldn’t be appropriate and, anyway, he was probably overreacting. Homicides happened every day. But, irrational or not, he had a bad feeling about this one. He’d wanted Arden to hear about it from him rather than over the news.

She’d gone very still, her expression frozen so that Reid had a hard time reading her emotions. Her hazel eyes were greener than he remembered, her hair shorter than she’d worn it in her younger days, when the sun-bleached ends had brushed her waist. The tiny freckles across her nose, though. He recalled every single one of those.

If he looked closely, he could see the faintest of shadows beneath her eyes and the tug of what might have been unhappiness at the corners of her mouth. He didn’t want to look that closely. He wanted to remember Arden Mayfair as that fearless golden girl—barefoot and tanned—who had captured his heart at the ripe old age of four. He wanted to remember those glorious days of swimming and crabbing and catching raindrops on their tongues. And then as they grew older and the hormones kicked in, all those moonlit nights on the beach. The soft sighs and intimate whispers and the music spilling from his open car doors.

The Arden that stood before him now was much too composed and untouchable in her pristine white dress and power high heels. This Arden was gorgeous and sexy, but too grown-up and far too put together. And here he was still tilting at windmills.

He canted his head as he studied her. “Arden? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I heard you.” Her hair shimmered about her shoulders as she tucked it behind her ears. “I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with the information.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I just thought it was something you’d want to know.”

“Why?”

“Why? Are you really going to make me spell it out?”

“Murder happens all the time, unfortunately, and magnolia blossoms are as common as dirt in Charleston. You said yourself this has nothing to do with Orson Lee Finch.”

“I did say that, yes.”

“This city has always had a dark side. You know that as well as I do.” She glanced toward the garden, her gaze distant and haunted. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was thinking, what she had to be remembering. She’d only been five when she found her mother’s body. Reid was a few months older. Even then, he’d wanted to protect her, but they’d been hardly more than babies. Pampered and sheltered in their pretty little world South of Broad Street. The fairy tale had ended that night, but the magic between them had lasted until her car lights disappeared from his view on the night she left town.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. If he was honest with himself, their relationship had soured long before that night. The magic had ended when they lost their baby.

But he didn’t want to think about that. He’d long since relegated that sad time to the fringes of his memory. Best not to dredge up the fear and the blood and the look on Arden’s face when she knew it was over. Best not to remember the panicked trip to the ER or the growing distance between them in the aftermath. The despair, the loneliness. The feeling inside him when he knew it was over.

Reid had learned a long time ago not to dwell on matters he couldn’t control. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with life. Hadn’t that been his motto for as long as he could remember? If you pretended long enough and hard enough, you might actually start to believe that you were happy.

In fairness, he hadn’t been unhappy. He still knew how to have fun. He could still ferret out an adventure now and then. That was worth something, he reckoned.

With a jolt, he realized that Arden was watching him. She physically started when their gazes collided. Her hand went to her chest as if she could somehow calm her accelerated heartbeat. Or was he merely projecting?

He took a deep breath, but not so deep that she would notice. Instead, he let a note of impatience creep into his voice. “So that’s it, then? You’re just going to ignore the elephant in the room.”

She smoothed a hand down the side of her dress as if to prove her nonchalance. “What would you have me do?”

“I would expect a little emotion. Some kind of reaction. Not this...” He trailed away before he said something he’d regret.

“Not this what?” she challenged.

He struggled to measure his tone. “You don’t have to be so impassive, okay? It’s me. You can drop the mask. I just told you that a magnolia blossom was found at the crime scene. Only a handful of people in this city would understand the significance. You and I are two of them.”

“White or crimson?”

Finally, a spark. “White. A common variety. Nothing exotic or unusual as far as I’ve heard. It probably doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like the killer placed a crimson magnolia petal on the victim’s lips. Still...” He paused. “I thought you’d want to know.”

Arden’s expression remained too calm. “Who was the victim?”

“I told you, I don’t know anything about her. The name hasn’t been released to the public yet. Nor has the business about the magnolia blossom. We need to keep that to ourselves.”

“How do you know about it?”

“I have a detective friend who drops by on occasion to shoot the breeze and drink my whiskey. He sometimes has one too many and let’s something slip that he shouldn’t.”

“What does he think about the murder?” Arden asked. “Do they have any suspects yet?”

“He’s not working the case. His information is secondhand. Police department gossip. The best I can tell, Charleston PD is treating it like any other homicide for now.”

“For now.” She walked over to the French doors and leaned a shoulder against the frame. Her back was to him. He couldn’t help admiring the outline of her curves beneath the white dress or the way the high heels emphasized her toned calves. Arden had always been a looker. A real heartbreaker. No one knew that better than Reid.

She traced her reflection in the glass with her fingertip. “When did it happen?”

“The body was found early this morning in an alleyway off Logan.” Only half a block from Reid’s new place, but for some reason, he didn’t see fit to mention that detail. There were a few other things he hadn’t shared, either. He wasn’t sure why. He told himself he wanted to keep the meeting simple, but when had his feelings for Arden Mayfair ever been simple?

She dropped her hand to her side as she stared out into the gathering dusk. Already, the garden beyond the French doors looked creepy as hell. The statues of angels and cherubs that her grandmother had collected had always been a little too funereal for Reid’s tastes. The summerhouse, though. He could see the exotic dome peeking through the tree limbs. The Moroccan structure conjured images of starry nights and secret kisses. He and Arden had made that place their own despite the bad memories.

“Reid?”

He shook himself back to the present. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“The cabdriver had the radio on when I came in from the airport. There wasn’t a word of this on the news. No mention of a homicide at all. Ambrose didn’t say anything about it, either.”

“No reason he would know. As I said, the details haven’t yet been released. With all the Twilight Killer publicity recently, the police don’t want to incite panic. Keeping certain facts out of the news is smart.”

Arden turned away from the garden. “What do you think?”

“About the murder?”

“About the magnolia blossom.”

Reid hesitated. “It’s too early to speculate. The police are still gathering evidence. The best thing we can do is wait and see what they find out.”

The hazel eyes darkened. “Since when have you ever waited for anything?”

I waited fourteen years for you to come back. “I have no choice in the matter. I don’t have the connections or the clout I had when I was with Sutton & Associates. All I can do is keep my eyes and ears open. If my friend lets anything else slip, I’ll let you know.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “You’re saying all the right things, but I don’t believe you.”

“You think I’m making this up?”

“No. I think you came over here for a reason, but it wasn’t just to tell me about a murder or to suggest we wait and see what the cops uncover. You’re right. Only a handful of people would remember that a white magnolia blossom was left on the summerhouse steps the night my mother was murdered. Everyone else, including the police, focused on the crimson petal placed on her lips—the kiss of death that became the Twilight Killer’s signature. The creamy magnolia blossom was never repeated at any of the other murder scenes. Which means it was specific to my mother’s death.”

“That’s speculation, too. We’ve never known that for certain.”

“It’s what we always believed,” she insisted. “Just like we became convinced that the real killer remained free.”

“We were just dumb kids,” Reid said. “What were we—all of twelve—when we decided Orson Lee Finch must be innocent? No proof, no evidence, nothing driving our theory but boredom and imagination. We let ourselves get caught up in a mystery of our own making that summer.”

“Maybe, but we learned a lot about my mother’s case and about how far we were willing to push ourselves to uncover the truth. Don’t you remember how dedicated we were? We sat in the summerhouse for hours combing through old newspaper accounts and scribbling in notebooks. We even rode our bikes over to police headquarters and demanded to speak with one of the detectives who had worked the Twilight Killer case.”

“For all the good that did us,” Reid said dryly. “As I recall, we were not so politely shown the door.”

“That didn’t stop us though, did it?” For the first time, her eyes began to sparkle as she recalled their ardent pursuit of justice. The polished facade dropped and he glimpsed the girl she’d once been, that scrawny, suntanned dynamo who’d had the ability to wrap him around her little finger with nothing more than a smile.

“No, it didn’t stop us,” he agreed. “When did anything ever stop us?”

She let that one pass. “We decided the white magnolia blossom represented innocence, the opposite of the bloodred petal placed on my mother and the other victims’ lips. Given the Twilight Killer’s contempt for single mothers, he would have viewed all of them as tainted and unworthy, hence the crimson kiss of death.”

In spite of himself, Reid warmed to the topic. “You were the innocent offspring. The first Child of Twilight.”

She nodded. “The white blossom not only represented my virtue, but it was also meant as a warning not to follow in my mother’s sullied footsteps.”

They shared a moment and then both glanced quickly away. The memory of what they’d created and what they’d lost was as fleeting and bittersweet as the end of a long, hot summer.

“No one knew about the baby,” he said softly.

Her gaze darted back to him. “Of course, someone knew. Someone always knows. Secrets rarely stay hidden.”

“It never needed to be a secret. Not as far as I was concerned. But...” He closed his eyes briefly. “Water under the bridge. This murder has nothing to do with what happened to us. To you.”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Arden—”

“I know why you’re here, Reid. I know you. You won’t come right out and say it, but you’ve been dancing around the obvious ever since you got here. Despite what you said earlier, this does involve Orson Lee Finch. The way I see it, there can only be two explanations for why a magnolia blossom was left at that murder scene. Either Finch really is innocent or we’re dealing with someone who has been influenced by him. A copycat or a conduit. Maybe even someone with whom he’s shared his secrets.”

Reid stared at her in astonishment. “You got all that out of what I just told you? That’s quite a leap, Arden.”

“Is it? Can you honestly say the thought never crossed your mind?”

“You’re forgetting one extremely important detail. No red magnolia petal found on the body. No crimson kiss of death placed on the lips. This isn’t the work of a copycat and I seriously doubt that a dormant serial killer has suddenly been reawakened after all these years. A jury of Finch’s peers found him guilty and none of his appeals has ever gone anywhere. This has to be something else.”

Arden refused to back down. “Then I repeat, why are you here?”

He ran fingers through his hair as he tried to formulate the best answer. “Damned if I know at the moment.”

She regarded him with another frown. “Just consider the possibility that you and I were right about Orson Lee Finch’s innocence. The monster who killed all those women, including my mother, has remained free and well disguised all these years. Maybe I’m the reason he’s suddenly reawakened. Maybe the white magnolia blossom left at the crime scene was meant as another warning.”

“It’s way too early to head down that road,” Reid said. “If anything, we may be dealing with a killer who wants to throw the police off his scent.”

“So you don’t think my coming home has anything to do with this?”

“You just got in today. The murder occurred sometime last night or early this morning.”

“A coincidence, then.”

“What else could it be?”

She sighed in frustration. “I don’t understand you, Reid Sutton. You berate me when I don’t show the proper reaction to your revelation about the magnolia blossom, and now you go out of your way to try and convince me—and yourself—that it has nothing to do with me. You came all the way over here just to tell me about a coincidence.”

“I’m just trying to be sensible,” Reid said.

“You were never any good at that.”

“Maybe not, but someone needs to put on the brakes before we get too carried away.”

“Now who’s being pedestrian?” She brushed back her hair with a careless shrug. “Something’s not right about all this. Something’s not adding up. Why do I get the feeling you’re still holding out on me?”

Reid glanced away. The proximity of the crime scene to his place niggled. Another coincidence, surely, but ever since he’d heard about the murder, he hadn’t been able to shake a dark premonition. For days he’d had the feeling that his house was being watched. He’d caught sight of someone lurking in the shadows across the street. One night he’d heard the knob at the back door rattle.

The incidents had started at about the time Dave Brody had been released from prison. The ex-con had stopped by the office as soon as he’d hit town, strutting like a peacock with his smirks and leers and ominous tattoos. He blamed his incarceration on Sutton & Associates, claiming the attorneys that had represented him pro bono—in particular, Reid’s father, Boone Sutton—had suppressed a witness that could have corroborated Brody’s alibi.

Why he hadn’t gone straight to the source of his resentment, Reid didn’t know. He hadn’t even been out of law school when Brody had been sent up, had only worked peripherally on the appeals. Yet he was apparently the attorney Dave Brody had decided to target for the simple reason that Reid was now the most vulnerable. Without the money and prestige of the firm backing him, he was the easiest to get to. Knock out the son in order to get to the father. But Brody would find out the hard way that Boone Sutton didn’t cave so easily, even when family was involved.

Reid hadn’t reported the incidents because police involvement would only provoke a guy like Brody. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last time an irate client had harassed him. Best just to ignore the creep, but still the location of that murder scene bothered him.

“Look, to be honest, I don’t know what any of this means,” Reid said. “I just knew that I wanted you to hear about that magnolia blossom from me.”

He expected another argument; instead, she nodded. “Okay. Thank you. I mean it. I haven’t been gracious about any of this. You caught me off guard. That’s my only excuse.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not usually like this. It’s just...” She seemed at a loss. “You and I have a complicated history.”

“To put it mildly,” he agreed.

She drew a breath. “Fourteen years is a long time and yet here we are, back where it all started.”

He smiled. “History repeating.”

“God, I hope not.”

“I’ll try not to take that personally.”

“You know what I mean. Everything was so intense back then. So life and death. I don’t think I could take all that drama these days.”

“That’s why we have booze. Adulthood has its perks.”

“I don’t want to numb myself,” Arden said with a reproving glance. “But a little peace and quiet would be nice.”

“You’ll have that in spades here,” he said as his gaze traveled back into the foyer. “Are you sure I can’t help you with those bags?”

“I can manage.”

He lingered for a moment longer, letting his senses drink her up as memories flowed. Man, they’d had some good times together. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d missed her. Arden Mayfair wasn’t just his ex-girlfriend. She’d been his best friend, his soul mate, and a true and enthusiastic partner in crime. He hadn’t had anyone like her in his life since she’d left town. Oh, he had plenty of friends, some with benefits, some without. He never lacked for companionship, but there was no one like Arden. Maybe there never would be.

“I guess I’ll say good-night then.” He wondered if she noticed the hint of regret in his voice.

“Reid?” She crossed the room quickly and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. She was like quicksilver in his arms, airy and elusive. Before he had time to catch his breath, she’d already retreated, leaving the scent of her honeysuckle shampoo to torment his senses.

He caught her arm and drew her back to him, brushing her lips and then deepening the kiss before she could protest. “Welcome home, Arden.”

She looked stunned. “Good night, Reid.”

Chapter Three

Arden finished unpacking and then took a quick shower, dressing in linen pants and a sleeveless top before going back downstairs to decide about dinner. There was no food in the house, of course. No one had been living in Berdeaux Place since her grandmother’s passing. She would need to make a trip to the market, but for now she could walk over to East Bay and have a solitary meal at her favorite seafood place. Or she could unlock the liquor cabinet and skip dinner altogether. She was in no hurry to venture out now that twilight had fallen.

At loose ends and trying to avoid dwelling on Reid’s visit, she wandered through the hallways, trailing her fingers along dusty tabletops and peering up into the faces of forgotten ancestors. Eventually she returned to the front parlor, where her grandmother had once held court. Arden had a vision of her now, sitting ramrod straight in her favorite chair, teacup in one hand and an ornate fan in the other as she surveyed her province with quiet satisfaction. No matter the season or temperature, Evelyn Mayfair always dressed in sophisticated black. Maybe that was the reason Arden’s mother had been drawn to vivid hues, in particular the color red. Arden supposed there was irony—or was it symmetry?—in the killer’s final act of placing a crimson petal upon her lips.

Enough reminiscing.

If she wasn’t careful, she could drown in all those old memories.

Crossing over to the French doors, she took a peek out into the gardens. The subtle glow from the landscape lighting shimmered off the alabaster faces of the statues. She could hear the faint splash of the fountain and the lonely trill of a night bird high up in one of magnolia trees. Summer sounds that took her back to her early childhood days before tragedy and loss had cast a perpetual shroud over Berdeaux Place.

Checking the lock on the door, she turned away and then swung back. Another sound intruded. Rhythmic and distant.

The pound of a heartbeat was her first thought as her own pulse beat an uneasy tattoo against her throat.

No, not a heartbeat, she realized. Something far less sinister, but invasive nonetheless. A loose shutter thumping in the breeze most likely. Nothing to worry about. No reason to panic.

She took another glance into the garden as she reminded herself that her mother had been murdered more than twenty-five years ago. It was unreasonable and perhaps paranoid to think that the real killer had waited all these years to strike again. Reid was right. The magnolia blossom found at the murder scene couldn’t be anything more than a coincidence.

Arden stood there for the longest time recounting his argument as she tried to reassure herself that everything was fine. A jury of Finch’s peers had found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He would never again be a free man. And even if another killer did prowl the streets, Arden was as safe here as she was anywhere. The property was sequestered behind brick walls and wrought-iron gates. The house had good locks and, ever since the murder, a state-of-the-art security system that had been periodically updated for as long as she could remember. She was safe.

As if to prove to herself that she had nothing to fear, she turned the dead bolt and pushed open the French doors. The evening breeze swept in, fluttering the curtains and scenting the air with the perfume of the garden—jasmine, rose and magnolia from the tree that shaded the summerhouse. She’d smelled those same fragrances the night she’d found her mother’s body.

She wouldn’t think about that now. She wouldn’t spoil her homecoming with old nightmares and lingering fears. If she played her cards right, this could be a new beginning for her. A bolder and more exciting chapter if she didn’t let the past hold her back.

Bolstering her resolve, she walked down the flagstone path toward the summerhouse. The garden had been neglected since her grandmother was no longer around to browbeat the yard crew. In six months of Charleston heat and humidity the beds and hedges had exploded. Through the untrimmed canopy of the magnolias, the summerhouse dome rose majestically, and to the left Arden could see the slanted glass roof of the greenhouse.

The rhythmic thud was coming from that direction. The greenhouse door had undoubtedly been left unsecured and was bumping in the breeze.

Before Arden lost her nerve, she changed course, veering away from the summerhouse and heading straight into the heart of the jungle. It was a warm, lovely night and the garden lights guided her along the pathway. She detected a hint of brine in the breeze. The scent took her back to all those nights when she’d shimmied down the trellis outside her bedroom window to meet Reid. Back to the innocent kisses in the summerhouse and to those not so innocent nights spent together at the beach. Then hurrying home before sunup. Lying in bed and smiling to herself as the light turned golden on her ceiling.