Secret Sanctuary Read online

  But that hardly narrowed the field. Party-goers had come from all over the state, and in Moriah’s Landing alone, half the population had either received invitations to the party or been hired to work in some capacity at the compound.

  In short, the killer could be anyone, Cullen thought grimly as he tugged at the neckline of his sweater.

  The solarium was crowded with plants. Some of the tree ferns grew all the way to the top of the dome while a maze of sinewy vines coiled around the rafters and crept downward, inching away from the sunlight. Hanging baskets trailed lacy fronds that brushed against Cullen’s shoulders, making him think of spiders. He found the atmosphere inside the solarium suffocating, as if the plants were sucking all the air from the room.

  Elizabeth had stopped in front of him and was staring at him curiously. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” His tone was more clipped than he’d meant it to be.

  She cocked her head, still regarding him. “It’s rather close in here, with all the plants. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

  He glanced at her warily. “Claustrophobic?”

  “An abnormal dread of being in closed or narrow spaces.”

  “I know what it means,” Cullen said dryly. “But only you would put it that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Only you would use the exact dictionary definition. Word for word, I’ll bet.”

  She lifted her chin. “What’s wrong with being precise?”

  “Nothing.” She wouldn’t understand even if he explained it to her. People with a high IQ seemed to live in their own little world. “I don’t have claustrophobia,” he said with an impatient shrug. “I just don’t care for all these damn plants.”

  “Well, maybe you have botanophobia. Fear of plants.”

  “What I don’t have is time,” he snapped. “Let’s get on with this.”

  “Of course.” She gave him a cool glance as she turned and walked to the back of the solarium without another word.

  Cullen hoped he hadn’t hurt her feelings, but, damn, she could be so annoying. There seemed to be no end to the trivia she’d stuffed inside that head of hers. She’d always been way too smart—and far too superior—for her own good in Cullen’s opinion. That was one of the reasons she’d had so much trouble in school. Bad enough she was such an Einstein, but did she have to rub people’s noses in it?

  It was a shame, too, because she wasn’t a bad-looking girl. Cullen supposed that some might even consider her attractive, in a sisterly sort of way. Nice hair. Nice eyes. Slight build.

  She’d matured since he’d left town six years ago, but she was still very young. He had a hard time thinking of her as anything other than the bratty little kid he’d tried to protect from the bullies who’d ragged on her in school. Although, to this day, he couldn’t figure out why he’d bothered. She’d made it clear from the first she didn’t want or need help from the likes of him.

  Fair enough, he supposed. She wasn’t only brilliant, she was rich to boot. She came from the ritzy part of town, and Cullen had grown up down by the docks. Her parents were scientists; his old man had been a drunk. They didn’t exactly travel in the same social circles, he and Elizabeth.

  She’d stopped in front of him again, her head tilted skyward. Cullen glanced up. The body dangled about ten feet from the floor from a steel girder that helped support the glass dome.

  Cullen’s blood went cold with shock even though he’d had plenty of time to prepare himself. It didn’t matter how prepped he was or how many times he worked a crime scene, murder always got him in the gut.

  Especially when the victim was very young.

  She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. Snuffed out by a cold-blooded murderer who’d left her hanging there like a piece of meat in a butcher-shop freezer.

  “It’s not a suicide,” Elizabeth murmured.

  No, it wasn’t a suicide, he thought grimly.

  “I can’t see any wounds,” she added, “But I’m certain she was dead before she was hanged. Otherwise, there would be…visible signs.”

  A protruding tongue, for one thing. “How the hell did he get her up there?” Cullen muttered.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth shiver. She’d been the girl’s professor at Heathrow, but he was willing to bet there wasn’t more than a year or two difference in their ages. In spite of himself, he felt his protective instinct stirring again. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have let her come back in here.

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “I just need to ask you a few questions about finding the body. I want you to show me where everyone was standing when the Pierces came in here. Tell me about their reactions, what was said, anything like that you can remember. Then you can wait outside with everyone else.”

  She turned to stare up at him, her expression earnest. “I’d really like to stay until Dr. Vogel examines the body.”

  Cullen shook his head. “That’s out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I have to state the obvious? You found the body.”

  “But what does—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide. “Are you saying I’m a suspect?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone here is a suspect. I’m not ruling anyone out at this point.”

  “But—” She broke off again. “Of course. I understand. You have to take that approach. But I really think I can help you. I know about crime-scene investigation. I’m a professional, just like you.”

  “Not exactly like me. You aren’t wearing a badge,” he said bluntly. “If you really want to help, just answer my questions. That’s all I need from you.”

  She looked as if she wanted to protest, but decided against it. Pursing her lips, she turned her back on him.

  He’d probably hurt her feelings again, but it couldn’t be helped. Ph.D. or not, Cullen wasn’t about to involve a civilian in his investigation. For one thing, bringing in an outside consultant was a tricky business. Egos could get in the way, and secondly, he had his reservations about Elizabeth’s competence.

  Oh, she was plenty intelligent. No question about that. But it had been Cullen’s experience that no amount of classroom theory or book knowledge in the world could take the place of plain old-fashioned street smarts, the kind learned the hard way. And for all her education and degrees, Cullen doubted she’d ever really been put to the test. After she answered his questions, he’d send her packing.

  “There’s a ladder against one of the walls,” she said.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “You asked how he’d gotten her up there. I saw a ladder in here earlier. Mr. Pierce said it’s used to cut away dead leaves from the vines and the larger plants, and to change the bulbs when the ultraviolet lights burn out.”

  “Did anyone touch it that you saw?”

  “No. Mr. Pierce suggested his sons use it to cut her down, but I discouraged that. I warned them we had to leave her as we’d found her.”

  At least she’d done that right, he thought grudgingly. “We’ll dust the ladder for prints,” he said, ignoring the expectant look on Elizabeth’s face.

  He studied the immediate area underneath the body. The floor was a mess with broken pottery scattered about and muddy water all over the flagstones near the French doors. Cullen could see at least one partial footprint in the sludge.

  He motioned to the floor. “Was all this here when you came in?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip. “The floor was wet, but I knocked over the pots when I fell.”

  He’d been afraid of that. “Is that your footprint?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “We’ll have to check it out anyway. We may need your shoes for verification.”

  “Of course.”

  They both fell silent for a moment, then Elizabeth said softly, “You noticed, didn’t you?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “There’s no blood on
the body or on the floor. And look at the color of her skin. She looks as if she’s been exposed to extreme temperature, but there’s no frostbite.”

  Cullen had seen the same thing, but he’d kept his observation to himself. He’d learned a long time ago to make no assumptions.

  “My guess is she was killed somewhere else and brought here,” Elizabeth said. “She could have been dead for several days. The killer probably kept her in a cooler or freezer somewhere until the time was right.”

  “Meaning?” Cullen glanced at her curiously. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, something about the confident manner in which she spoke had his attention.

  “Until he was ready for someone to find her.” Elizabeth’s gaze moved upward, where the body of Bethany Peters stirred gently in a slight draft from a heating vent. “He put her on display. She was left here, like this, for a reason. The killer is trying to tell us something.”

  Cullen knew instantly what she meant. One-time crime-of-passion killers would only take the time to move the body of their victim in order to dump it in a remote location or to try and throw off the police. They wouldn’t flaunt it. Neither would a professional hit man. There was only one type of killer who would.

  Elizabeth turned to Cullen, her eyes deeply troubled. “This is a very bad thing, Cullen.”

  His gaze lifted to the body. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out.

  THE MOMENT the medical examiner arrived, Elizabeth was expelled from the solarium.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Cullen told her firmly.

  “But I’d like to help—”

  “If we need your help, we’ll ask for it.” He must have realized how harsh his words sounded because he almost at once altered his tone. “I appreciate everything you’ve done so far, but this is a police investigation. You need to wait outside with everyone else.”

  When she still resisted, his grasp tightened on her elbow. “Come on, Elizabeth. Cut me a break here.”

  “But you can’t seriously consider me a suspect,” she protested. “If you’d listen to your brain for a moment instead of your ego, you’d realize I could help you.” She winced. That hadn’t come out at all right. She hadn’t meant to goad him, but somehow, around Cullen, she always managed to say the wrong thing.

  “You’ve done quite enough already,” he said coolly.

  “If you’re referring to letting the Pierces come into the solarium, I had no authority to keep them out,” she defended. “I’m not a police officer.”

  He arched a brow. “Precisely my point.”

  “Just let me stay while Dr. Vogel examines the body. I want to hear what he says about cause of death.”

  “Out.”

  “Cullen—”

  “Out.”

  He opened the solarium door and gave her an unceremonious little push into the hallway. The door closed firmly behind her.

  The Pierces were still in the hallway, and they gazed at her curiously.

  “I take it your services are no longer required,” Drew commented.

  “Cops can be so…infuriating.” The latex gloves snapped loudly as Elizabeth peeled them off.

  “They do tend to have a one-track mind,” William sympathized. “But in this case, I have to agree with Detective Ryan. A murder scene is no place for a young lady.”

  “But I teach criminology,” she protested. “I’m not unfamiliar with crime scenes.”

  “You can’t be more than a day over twenty years old. Hardly more than a child. If Natasha were still alive, I certainly wouldn’t want her subjected to such a gruesome scene.” Pain flashed in William’s blue eyes, and whatever annoyance Elizabeth had been harboring toward him for his comments about her age vanished. Tasha’s death had affected them all, but especially her family. It was obvious that her father still grieved her passing. That was why he hadn’t been able to forgive David Bryson and probably never would.

  But had Bryson been able to forgive himself? Elizabeth wondered. Or had his guilt driven him to do unspeakable evil, as some of the townspeople suspected?

  Careful, she warned herself. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you.

  They had absolutely no evidence thus far linking David Bryson to Bethany’s murder. Nothing except an innate distrust of the man, and Elizabeth knew she was prejudiced in that regard. Tasha had been her friend.

  If she wasn’t careful, such a biased perspective would end up proving Cullen’s point—that she had no place in a murder investigation.

  “They won’t find anything,” Geoffrey Pierce murmured in a strange, offhand manner, his gaze on the solarium door. “That girl was dead before she was hanged.”

  Elizabeth had come to the same conclusion, but it wasn’t exactly admiration she felt for Geoffrey’s keen perception.

  Earlier, when they’d all rushed into the solarium, the other Pierces had been deeply disturbed by the sight of the body, especially Zachary, who’d turned a bit green when his father suggested that he and Drew find a way to cut her down. The same look of horror and compassion had emanated from all the Pierces’ blue eyes—all except for Geoffrey’s.

  In his eyes only a cool curiosity had gleamed.

  Elizabeth had to wonder about a man, a nonprofessional, who could remain so stoic and unaffected in the face of such horror.

  Her gaze on him narrowed. “Why do you think Cullen won’t find any evidence?”

  He shrugged. “Because whoever did that knew what he was doing.”

  “He?”

  “Given your field of expertise, I’m sure you know as well as I do that crimes of this nature are almost always masterminded by white males. Serial killers seem to be a unique affliction to our race and gender.” He didn’t seem especially disturbed by his conclusion.

  “Serial killer?” Elizabeth said, feigning surprise. “Who said anything about a serial killer?”

  Geoffrey gave her an enigmatic smile. “Don’t tell me the same thought didn’t cross your mind when you saw her hanging there. The way the body was put on exhibition? What else could it be?”

  “An act of rage,” Elizabeth said. “A crime of passion.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t believe that. You know what we’re dealing with here as well as I do.”

  Elizabeth had studied crimes such as this in both her undergraduate and graduate courses. She’d learned a long time ago what it meant when a murderer “signed” his kill.

  But she couldn’t help wondering how Geoffrey Pierce knew.

  And would another body soon follow that would prove his point?

  Chapter Four

  The storm had moved out to sea an hour or so earlier, but Elizabeth could still see flashes of lightning in the distance as she sat in her parked car down the street from Krauter’s Funeral Home. The downpour had finally abated into an icy drizzle that glistened on the cobblestone pavement like a scene from a French Impressionist painting.

  The hour was very late, after three in the morning, and for a moment, Elizabeth was struck by the eerie silence, the preternatural peace that had settled over the night in the wake of bone-chilling violence.

  Cloistered in the leathery confines of her new car, she could almost believe that the last few hours had never happened. But they had. A young woman was dead. A student had been murdered, and Elizabeth had discovered the body. No seminar or classroom or degree in the world could have prepared her for that grisly sight.

  She watched nervously as the gleaming black hearse carrying Bethany Peters’s body slowly glided past her. The windows were so darkly tinted in the vehicle that she couldn’t make out any of the occupants, but she knew that besides the driver there was one other attendant. She’d been present at the Pierce mansion when the mortuary people had arrived to pick up the corpse.

  Tomorrow, Bethany would be transported to a nearby hospital where an autopsy would be performed, and the cause of death would likely be determined. But for tonight she would remain in a cooler at Krauter’s.

  A
squad car—flashers blacked out, siren silenced—followed the hearse, and Elizabeth ducked down in her seat even though she was fairly certain Cullen had remained at the mansion. He had hours of interviews to conduct and acres of grounds to search, but he would abandon everything in a heartbeat if he had even an inkling of what Elizabeth was up to.

  She tamped down a momentary reservation. Okay, so what she had in mind wasn’t exactly brilliant. Probably wasn’t even a good idea. She would be interfering with an official police investigation. She could be fined, even do some serious jail time if she were caught, but Elizabeth didn’t see that she had any other choice. When she’d approached Cullen again later about examining the body, he’d told her no way. No way in hell, to be exact.

  “Just give me one minute, Cullen. That’s all I’m asking for. I need to see the body again. I think I saw something—”

  “Saw what?”

  “I’m…not sure.”

  He ran his fingers through his dark hair, a gesture that was both familiar and endearing—or would have been, if Elizabeth hadn’t been so thoroughly irritated with him.

  The feeling, evidently, was mutual. “I don’t have time for this, Elizabeth.”

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn? Can’t you just admit you may need my help?”

  “With what?”

  “The investigation, for crying out loud.”

  He gazed down at her for a long, tense moment, his gray eyes cool, remote. Sexy. “Haven’t you ever heard that old saying, Elizabeth? Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

  That hurt.

  She gave him a disparaging look. “Are you afraid to let me see the body, Cullen?”

  “Why would I be afraid?”

  “Maybe you think I’ll find something you didn’t.”

  His expression became rigid then, and Elizabeth had known she’d gone too far. Again. She’d pressed him way past irritation all the way to anger. Maybe even nudged him into contempt.