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“Sorry. Won’t get you off the hook.” The detective shrugged as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Sometimes a perpetrator will call in the crime, tryin’ to throw off suspicion,” he continued in that maddeningly slow drawl of his. “But we’ll get around to that in a little while. For now let’s just clear up a few things. Minor points, really.”
He pulled a small black notebook out of his pocket and smiled at her when he successfully located the ballpoint pen to go with it. Had Columbo started out like this? Robin wondered.
She hated his Southern accent. It poured out like thick molasses. Sinfully rich and dark. It made her want to finish his sentences for him. When he spoke in sentences.
Robin riveted all of her attention on him simply because it was something to think about other than what had happened in the next room. She couldn’t deal with that yet.
Her first thought was that this man didn’t look official. He hadn’t shaved. His dark-brown hair needed a trim, and he must have thrown on yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. He wore khaki slacks, a UT pullover and a windbreaker. He wasn’t even wearing socks, just scuffed leather deck shoes. He looked entirely too casual, too rumpled and laid-back for a detective. Since he didn’t look official, Robin didn’t trust him to act officially. She didn’t have much trust in men, anyway. Certainly not this one.
Worst of all he had a smile and an attitude that were working hard to make her drop her guard and lean on him. She quickly realized just which way she would fall if she did that.
“Did you see anybody when you came into the building? In the parking area? Driving away?”
“No,” she answered simply, in the second or so that he provided between each of his questions. He looked and sounded lazy. Or maybe only tired. Suddenly Robin was horribly afraid this man was going to lock her up just because she was handy instead of pursuing the person who had really killed James.
She shuddered, took a deep breath and clasped her arms tightly across her chest. James was dead, murdered, lying lifeless in the next room. The chilling horror of it made her shiver again, but she couldn’t put it out of her mind for more than a few minutes no matter how hard she tried. He was not going to let her.
“You say you flew in from New York just to visit your husband?” the detective asked.
Robin didn’t want to talk about her reasons for being here. She didn’t want to talk at all. Shouldn’t he be ordering people out to look for James’s murderer? Setting up roadblocks or whatever they did down here to catch a criminal? If they all moved and talked at this man’s speed, it was a miracle they ever got anything done.
“Mrs. Andrews?” he prompted, more firmly this time. “Why did you come here?”
“To visit,” she said, her words more clipped than usual.
“Does that mean you have one of those, ah, long-distance—” he paused to make a little questioning gesture with one hand “—what do you call ’em?”
“Separations,” Robin supplied. “James and I have been separated for almost a year.”
He frowned and made a note. “Okay. Were you on friendly terms with your husband, Ms. Andrews?”
“Yes,” she said with an emphatic nod. “James and I had been friends for several years before we decided to get married. After about six months he and I both agreed it was a mistake. He transferred to Nashville right after we separated, and I stayed in New York. His company has an office here.”
“Yeah, Townsend, Inc., you said. So what are you doing here visiting him if you’re not together any longer?”
Robin explained, “He called me at home last week and asked if I planned to fly down to Florida to visit my mother. I usually go for her birthday and he was aware of that. He wanted me to schedule my flight through Nashville and stop over so that we could talk.”
“Unfinished business?” Those penetrating blue eyes focused on her like lasers.
Robin bit her lip and glanced around the room, determined to concentrate on her answers rather than the horror that threatened to tear her apart if she let it.
James was dead. She didn’t love him, but she still liked him. He might have had a weak will where other women were concerned, but she figured she was as much to blame for that as James. The spark between them had been just that, a spark, not the fire they’d first thought it was. It had gone out more quickly than it had erupted. But fortunately it hadn’t destroyed their friendship.
The detective cleared his throat to get her attention. She gave it, studying his face, trying to guess what he would ask her next. This man was about to arrest her. She could feel it.
“I asked if you had unfinished business with your husband?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Also he…he wanted me to bring him something he said he’d forgotten when he moved down here. A computer disk.”
“Music?”
“No. Something to do with his work in the insurance company, he said. He told me he didn’t want me to mail it, because he was afraid it might get lost.”
“You didn’t mention that when Detective Taylor taped your preliminary interview.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “He didn’t question me. He only said to tell what happened after I arrived here.”
“So you brought what your husband wanted you to bring and, in addition to that favor, he planned to discuss something important with you?” he asked slyly. “Maybe he wanted to reconcile?”
“No, he didn’t. James and I are just friends now.” Then she remembered and corrected herself. “Were just friends.” Her voice only broke a little.
“I wonder why you didn’t get a divorce.”
Robin exhaled slowly. “We discussed it several times. I thought we should. But he…” She hesitated, unsure whether she should have admitted this. “Maybe he was ready to start proceedings. He didn’t say on the phone.”
“And now a divorce won’t be necessary,” he commented, shaking his head, sounding sad, looking sad. She resented the implication he made, and hated his acting as if he were concerned. Damn him, did he have no decency? The man she was married to had just been killed. But he was doing his job, wasn’t he? He had to eliminate her as a suspect.
She had to be precise, give the detective all the information he could use and suggest things he might do to establish her innocence. If she didn’t do that, whoever killed James would get away with it. And she might be blamed.
She drew in another deep breath and released it carefully, trying to gain a little control over the tremor in her voice. “I took a taxi from the airport and arrived here about ten-thirty, give or take ten minutes. I’m sorry I didn’t look at the clock more closely. You could verify the time with the cab company. Oh, and the plane was delayed for over an hour,” she informed him, remembering that detail suddenly, thinking it might be crucial. “It was Flight 1247, American. Check the passenger list.”
“Good idea. I’ll do that,” he agreed, as if that hadn’t occurred to him before. “So you got here and…” he prompted with an expectant look.
Robin rushed to explain, “James was…was like that when I found him. The door was unlocked, the rooms were wrecked, and he was just lying there. Like that.”
It felt surreal, all of it. James’s death, her second recitation of the events, this detective’s quiet questions in the deep, velvety voice. She looked at him again, puzzled by his unassuming manner. It was as if he did this every night. Did he? This was Nashville, not New York. Did people get killed here so regularly that it didn’t faze him at all?
Robin’s breath felt jerky and shallow as her gaze strayed to the door of the living room, through which she could see James. He lay sprawled facedown on the floor beside the coffee table, a dark pool of blood encircling his head. His eyes were open. A camera flashed.
She closed her own eyes tight. “Could…could they cover him? Please?”
“Sure they will. Don’t you worry,” he said, his words soft with faked compassion. It had to be faked. Why would he care if James lay there so exposed or that she might worry about it? He hadn’t known James and didn’t know her.
He went on. “As soon as they do what they have to do, they’ll cover him up. Why don’t you sit back on the bed a ways, ma’am. Then he won’t be visible to you. It bothers you, doesn’t it,” he asked gently, “seein’ him that way?”
Though he spoke softly, he watched her with an intensity that scraped across her exposed nerves. His words and relaxed attitude didn’t match those keen, narrowed ice-blue eyes that watched her like a hawk. A circling hawk about to dive at its prey.
“Of course it bothers me! He was a good man and he’s dead,” she said, choking on the words. Robin covered her eyes with a trembling hand and shook her head. “Please, Officer Wendall—”
“It’s detective, Detective Winton,” he corrected without a trace of impatience. He nudged her free hand and she looked down to see him offering her a pristine, neatly ironed handkerchief with a blue W embroidered on one corner.
Robin blinked. She didn’t know men did that anymore. Offered their handkerchiefs. Hesitantly she took it, though she had no idea why. She wasn’t even crying. Her throat hurt, her heart ached and she was terrified, but her eyes felt dry as dust.
“Are you going to arrest me?” she asked. It came out a bit more sharply than she intended. Had she sounded guilty?
He smiled. It was a quick little expression of what looked like sympathy. She knew better. “Not right now,” he assured her, then added, “but you do have to come downtown with me and give a written statement.”
“I told you everything.” She inclined her head toward the living room. “The other detective has it on tape and now you have notes.” She looked at the small tablet he’d been scribbling on.
“We’ll need another, more formal statement, ma’am. In more detail, and in writing this time.” He held up a hand when she started to object. “I realize you have other things to do, but I know you want to help us all you can.”
“Of course,” she replied. What else could she say?
“Good. You’ll be able to call his family, yours and anybody else you want to once we get to the precinct, but I’d appreciate it if you don’t touch anything else in here. You know, like the phone over there? I need to look around a little more before we go. You just sit right there for a while longer.”
She knew she had already contaminated the crime scene, even touched the gun. A stupid thing to do. How many times had she seen people do that on television and thought they were absolute idiots? Now she figured it must be a reflex or something. God, she wished she had left it alone.
She had felt James’s neck for a pulse. How could she not have done that? He might have still been alive and she could have helped him. But she couldn’t. He was already cold. The memory of his chilled skin made her fingers twitch.
Then she’d grabbed the phone in the living room to call for help. To make matters worse, she had rushed into the bedroom to get away from the terrible sight of death and wait for the police to arrive.
The covers had been torn off the bed and she was sitting on the bare mattress, so hopefully she hadn’t disturbed much in here. There would be fibers from her clothing, she guessed. She glanced at the satiny surface of the bedding. Could they take fingerprints from this? Why hadn’t she just backed out of the apartment and called from an outside phone?
As many times as she had seen it happen on TV and in movies, watched stupid people walk in after a murder and handle the very things that would incriminate them, it had never once occurred to her that she shouldn’t touch anything until after the fact.
She looked at her hands with the traces of wax residue on both sides. Why had they done that? Had the policeman said why? He had mumbled something about the fingerprinting, she thought.
There was also blood on her hands. James’s blood. On her hands. From the carpet where she had knelt beside him.
Suddenly Robin felt sick, ready to throw up. There was little time to debate whether she would destroy evidence in the bathroom. Better there than in here. She jumped up, rushed for the toilet and heaved until she couldn’t. Since she hadn’t eaten anything after breakfast yesterday, there was nothing in her stomach to lose.
Robin straightened, brushed her hair back behind her ears and turned to wash her face. The sight of James’s bottle of favorite aftershave sitting there on the counter top was the trigger. She saw it, sank to her knees, clutched the detective’s handkerchief to her face and wept uncontrollably for the man she had once thought she loved.
James shouldn’t be dead. He was only thirty-seven, too young to die, only six years older than she. Who would do such a thing to him? To anyone? He wasn’t bad. He didn’t deserve this.
She recovered from her crying jag, washed her face, scrubbed the blood off her hands and sat down on the closed seat of the commode to wait. Her legs felt too unsteady to carry her back into the bedroom just then.
After what seemed an eternity, the detective approached the open door of the bathroom. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, I’m not okay.”
He came closer and frowned down at her with what looked like worry, then brushed her bangs off her forehead with the tip of one long finger. She should have avoided his touch. It was inappropriate, certainly, but it seemed oddly comforting and not in any way threatening or suggestive.
At that moment the thought reoccurred that he was very dangerous. Handsome men almost always were in one way or another, and she rarely met one she liked. Usually she could figure them out, however. Not this one, not this detective.
He was being nice to her, but only sporadically. He believed she had killed James. She could see it in his eyes and tell from his questions.
If he considered her guilty of murder, why would he bother to pretend concern? To win her trust, Robin supposed. To trick her somehow. Yes, that must be what he was doing. She had to be very careful.
“Let’s go on downtown now and get you a good shot of caffeine. I could use some of that myself. It won’t take long to do the statement, I promise.”
Gently he took her by her elbow and helped her stand, his grip steadying rather than forceful. He slid the strap of her purse, which she had left lying on the bed, over her shoulder. Then he escorted her out through the trashed bedroom and the dreadful scene of the murder, remaining between her and James’s body, so she couldn’t see it, even peripherally. No matter what else he might do later, she did thank him for that small kindness. He could have made her look again.
She wondered where her suitcase and laptop computer were, but was afraid to ask. Robin guessed they would both have to be searched before she was able to retrieve them.
She wondered if the detective had searched her small shoulder bag while she was in the bathroom. Winton, she reminded herself. Detective Winton. She must try to remember his name.
The upstairs apartment opened to a breezeway with stairs back and front that connected the two buildings of the four-plex. Neighbors in nightclothes stood in their doorways, observing as she and Detective Winton exited the building. He led her straight to a light-colored sedan parked beneath the streetlight.
An ambulance had pulled up on the sidewalk, lights flashing, back doors open, waiting. There were a number of uniformed police and several other vehicles forming a kind of perimeter around the building’s entrance. Beyond the semicircle of authorities, a news team interviewed people within the small crowd that had gathered.
Robin wished she had rented a car, and that she could get into it now, drive back to the airport and fly on to Florida. There was nothing she wanted more than to dismiss this entire night like a bad dream.
When Winton opened the back door of his car, she obediently slid in and suddenly found herself caged. Though it was unmarked on the outside, he was definitely driving a police vehicle, complete with the barrier to protect the driver and front-seat occupant from the criminals they transported. Without even trying them, she knew the back doors would only open from the outside.
He had not handcuffed her, but she was definitely a suspect, Robin realized. The only suspect. Were they even considering that anyone else might have done it?
Chapter 2
Mitch hated this part of his job, but he was damned good at it. His interrogation techniques worked, and his instincts had been honed by twelve years on the force, the last four as a detective. If he couldn’t drag a confession out of a suspect in her condition, then she was, by God, not guilty.
“Are you booking me? Should I call a lawyer?” she asked after they’d entered the precinct.
Oh, great. Now she was going to lawyer up. “If you want to call one, that’s fine, but you’re not under arrest. All I want to do is get on record what took place. It’s standard procedure.”
Mitch didn’t want to hang around here the rest of the night waiting for her attorney to show up and then be advised he’d have to either arrest her or turn her loose. He was ready to get down to business. “We’ll be in room three,” he notified Nick Simon, who was manning the desk.
He took Robin Andrews’s arm and guided her down the hall. He hoped her written statement and the following interrogation didn’t turn up anything new and he could simply release her.
Mitch didn’t want her to be guilty, and truthfully didn’t think she was, but she had a lot going against her. She had possible motive and opportunity. She had been at the scene, had the victim’s blood on her hands and prints on the weapon.
She was the spouse and the most likely perpetrator according to statistics, he reminded himself. Sure, she’d phoned it in herself, but as he had told her earlier, she could have done that to try to divert suspicion.
Mitch supposed it could be a crime of passion. A shot to the head. Weapon dropped on the floor by his body. The apartment had been trashed.
That last aspect bothered Mitch a little, however. The mess wasn’t exactly consistent with the tossing an angry wife might do after shooting her husband in a fit of anger. It looked more like a quick, frantic search. Maybe she’d been looking for something. But if she’d found it, where had she put it? And if she hadn’t found it, why had she called 911 and just sat there on the victim’s bed until they arrived?
Oh well, he would take her statement, read it, then do his best to find holes and inconsistencies.
Robin Andrews was an exquisite woman, a pale, slender blonde with aristocratic features, who, in spite of her height of around five-ten, appeared to be as fragile as thin crystal. But he couldn’t allow that to color his opinion of her one way or the other. He should be the last man on earth to be taken in by beauty and a look of vulnerability. Given a fit of rage, she could have shot her husband.
But she didn’t. You know she didn’t, said the insistent voice in his head. Gut instinct aside, Mitch intended to bend over backward to counteract that feeling, to leave no doubt about her innocence or guilt when he was finished with her.
“This way,” he directed, releasing her arm and pointing to the door at the end of the hall. She preceded him wordlessly and hurriedly, obviously wanting it to be over. He could tell by her body language that she was terribly afraid. The question was why? Fear that she’d be railroaded for a crime she hadn’t committed, or fear that she would let something incriminating slip out?
She had made no further mention of a lawyer.
He took his time seating her in the uncomfortable straight-back chair. “Just take it easy, Mrs. Andrews, and we’ll get this out of the way as soon as we can. Don’t you be nervous now. I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Mitch went down the hall to the coffee room and poured two cups of sludge that had been steeping for several hours by the smell of it. He loaded both cups with sugar and powdered creamer, then returned to the interrogation room.
“Here you go,” he said, placing one of the cups in front of her. She just stared at it, wide-eyed, then slowly cupped both hands around it, probably seeking warmth. The air-conditioning was working overtime.
Her long, elegant fingers were free of the blood now, but their tips still bore faint traces of the ink used to fingerprint her again when they’d first arrived. This time they’d taken three sets, for local, state and FBI use. He’d told her that was so they could distinguish her prints from any others that shouldn’t be there at the scene. The explanation hadn’t reassured her.
He had explained what the paraffin test was for and she had seemed almost eager to have that done again, assuring him they wouldn’t find any gunpowder on her anywhere. Of course, she might be under the impression water and soap would have washed it off.
Mirandizing her would probably scare her to death, but it was necessary. Kick might have neglected to do it. Mitch had to do this by the book in the event she broke down during questioning and admitted to the murder. So he began, trying not to sound too gruff. “You have the right to remain silent…”
