Killer Investigation Read online

  She wandered over to the fireplace, running a finger along the dusty mantel before turning back to him. “What do you call this discussion if it’s not catching up?”

  “Airing grievances and catching up are two different things.” He followed her across the room. “The latter usually goes down better with a cocktail or two. The former sometimes requires a whole bottle.”

  “The liquor has all been put away,” she said. “And as tempting as you make it sound, I’m leaving tomorrow so there’s no time for dinner.”

  He turned to glance back at the foyer where she’d dropped her luggage. “That many suitcases for just one night?”

  She shrugged. “I like to be prepared. Besides, I may be going somewhere else after I leave here.”

  “Where?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  He cocked his head and narrowed his gaze. “Is that the best you can do? Disappointing, Arden. You used to be a much better liar.”

  “I don’t have as much practice these days without you egging me on.”

  His demeanor remained casual, but something dark flashed in his eyes. “As if I ever had to egg you on. About anything.”

  She felt the heat of an uncharacteristic blush and turned away. “Funny. I don’t recall it that way.”

  “No? I could refresh your memory with any number of specifics, but suffice to say, you were always very good at deception and subterfuge. Better than me, in fact.”

  “No one was a better liar than you, Reid Sutton.”

  “It’s good to excel at something, I guess. Seriously, though. How long are you really here for? The truth, this time.”

  She sighed. She could string him along until they both tired of the game, but what would be the point? “I haven’t decided that, either.” She brushed off her dusty fingers. “The house needs work before I can list it and I’m not sure I trust Grandmother’s attorney to oversee even minor renovations. He’s getting on in years and wants to retire.” There. She’d owned up to Reid Sutton what she hadn’t dared to admit to herself—that she’d come back to Charleston indefinitely.

  “Ambrose Foucault still handling her affairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s no spring chicken,” Reid agreed. “First I’d heard of his retirement, though.”

  “It’s not official. Please don’t go chasing after his clients.”

  He smiled slyly. “Wouldn’t dream of it. What about your job? Last I heard you were the director of some fancy art gallery in Atlanta.”

  “Not an art gallery, a private museum. And not the director, just a lowly archivist.”

  His eyes glinted. “I bet you ran things, though.”

  “I tried to, which is why I’m no longer employed there.”

  “You were fired?”

  “Not fired,” she said with a frown. “It was a mutual parting of the ways. And anyway, I was ready for a change. You should understand that. Didn’t you just leave your father’s law practice?”

  “Yes, but I was fired. Disowned, too, in fact. I’m poor now in case you hadn’t heard.”

  She was unmoved by his predicament. “By Sutton standards maybe. Seems as though I recall a fairly substantial trust fund from your grandfather. Or have you blown through that already?”

  “Oh, I’ve had a good time and then some. But no worries. Provisions have been made for our old age. Nothing on this level, of course.” He glanced around the gloomy room with the gilded portraits and priceless antiques. “But we’ll have enough for a little place on the beach or a cabin in the mountains. Which do you prefer?”

  Arden wasn’t amused. The idea that they would grow old together was ludicrous and yet, if she were honest, somehow poignant. “Go away, Reid. I have things to do.”

  “I could help you unpack,” he offered. “At least let me carry your bags upstairs.”

  “I can manage, thanks.”

  “Are you sure you want to be alone in this house tonight?”

  His tone altered subtly, sending a prickle of alarm down Arden’s spine. “Why? What aren’t you telling me?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she moved closer, peering into his eyes until he glanced away. “You didn’t come over here to clear the air, did you? What’s going on, Reid? For the last time, why are you really here?”

  He peered past her shoulder into the garden. “You haven’t heard, then.”

  “Heard what?”

  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.”
r />   “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 abi
lity 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?”