“I can’t. I’m too nervous. This is the man who arrested my mother, who questioned her, who put her in jail. Now I’m going to ask him to help me prove he made a mistake. And I lied to Naomi. Again. I told her we were going for a drive.”
“We are driving.”
“That’s not the point,” she snapped. “I’m deceiving her, and Moses. Everyone. And for what? So I can satisfy this idiotic need to assure myself I don’t spring from a line of murderers?”
“Is that what this is about?”
“No.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I don’t know. Some of it. Heredity’s a scary thing.” As soon as she’d said it, she winced. “I don’t mean to imply that heredity’s the only factor in the makeup of character. Environment . . .” She trailed off, defeated.
“I lose on both counts,” he murmured. “I wondered when you’d add it up.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. That’s not what I’ve done.” She hissed out a breath and cursed herself. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It has nothing to do with you, or the way I feel about you.”
“Let’s backtrack a minute.” It had been a gamble, a foolish one to hope this moment would never come. If he was going to lose, he intended to lose big. “You have doubts about yourself because of your family history. Don’t,” he said when she started to interrupt. “Let’s lay the cards down. You have doubts about me because of mine.”
He was driving fast now, laying on the curves on the back roads, letting speed eat up some of the tension.
“That’s not true, Gabe. I couldn’t have slept with you if I’d had doubts.”
“Yes, you could. It’s easy to ignore logic and doubts in the heat of the moment. And we’re good in bed. We’re better than good in bed. But sooner or later, logic clicks in again. I’ve got bad blood, Kelsey, and there’s no draining it out.”
His eyes stayed on the road, though he was very aware that hers were on his face, studying, considering.
“Where you come from always stays with you. You can clean it up, dress it up, but it’s always underneath. I’ve seen things and done things that would shake that moral code of yours right down to the foundation. I don’t cheat and I don’t lean on the bottle, but that’s about all I can say I haven’t done. The simple facts are I wanted what Cunningham had, and I found a way to get it. I wanted you in bed, and I would have done whatever it took to get you there.”
“I see.” Now she stared straight ahead. The speed didn’t frighten her, but he did. “Is it just sex?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. They both watched the road twist ahead. “No. I wish to Christ it was.”
She closed her eyes on a quiet, shuddering sigh. “Pull over,” she murmured. When he ignored her, she straightened in her seat. “Pull over, Slater,” she said firmly, “and stop the damn car.”
The tires screeched when he slapped a foot on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the shoulder where gravel spat. “If you think I’m letting you get out here, you’re a goddamned idiot. I’ll take you into Reston, or I’ll take you back home.”
“I’ve no intention of getting out here.”
“Fine, that’s fine. You’d better understand I have no intention of letting you go, not here. Not anywhere. I gave you your chance to run.”
She’d never seen him so completely unnerved. “No, you didn’t.”
He snatched her lapels and jerked her around in her seat. “It’s all the chance you’re getting. Fuck your right and wrong, Kelsey, and your country club upbringing and anything else that’s in my way. You’re not walking out on me without a fight.”
Her own temper began to rumble. “Fine. Since you’re going to take that insulting, Neanderthal attitude, it hardly seems appropriate for me to tell you I’m in love with you.”
His hands went limp. For an instant every muscle in his body went numb. Her eyes were on his, sulky, signaling fight in progress. But he was already down for the count.
“You don’t know what you are.”
She hit him. Both gasped in surprise when her fist jabbed just under his heart.
“I’m not tolerating that.” She smacked his hands aside. “I’m not tolerating that attitude. I’m sick to death of people I care about assuming I don’t know my own mind or heart. I know it very well. And though at this particular moment it galls me, I’m in love with you. Now start this damn car and let’s get this over with.”
He couldn’t have driven a tricycle. “Give me a minute.”
She huffed out a breath, crossed her legs, and folded her arms. “Fine. Take your time. It’ll give me the opportunity to plan several ways to make you suffer.”
“Come here.”
She jabbed out, and connected with her elbow when he reached for her. “Hands off.”
“Okay. I just imagined I’d be touching you when I told you I love you.”
Not particularly mollified, but thoughtful, she turned her head a fraction. “Have you been imagining it for long?”
“A while. I thought it would pass. Like a virus.” He held up both hands when she jerked around. “Are you going to hit me again?”
“I might.” Damned if she was going to laugh, no matter how much his eyes tempted her. “A virus?”
“Yeah. Only there’s this thing about viruses I’d forgotten. They don’t go away. They just sneak into some corner of your system and kick back in when your defenses are down.” He took her hand, fisted it in his, and brought it to his lips. “I’ve been trying to get used to this one.”
“And how are you doing?”
“Better now.” He lowered his brow to hers. “Christ, what timing. We should be home, alone.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She tilted her head so that her lips brushed his. “We’ll make up for it when we are.” When he deepened the kiss, she sank into it. “How can everything be such a mess, and this be so right?”
“Luck of the draw.” He eased back, and looked into her eyes. “We’ll make sure it stays right.”
“This is enough for now.” Gently, she lifted a hand to his cheek. “This is better than enough.”
The first thing Tipton noticed when the couple climbed out of the fancy foreign car in his driveway was that they were lovers. The man did no more than lay a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She did no more than glance up, smile. But Tipton pegged it.
The second thing he noticed was that the woman was almost a dead ringer for Naomi. Or the Naomi he had put behind bars.
Oh, there were subtle differences, and his trained eye nailed them as well. The daughter’s mouth was softer, a tad more generous. The cheekbones were slightly less prominent, the walk more fluid. Naomi’s gait had been an energetic, even a nervous scissoring of legs. One that had drawn the eye of every male within a mile of her.
But all in all, he was glad Kelsey Byden had called first. It would have been a shock to have glanced up and seen her strolling up his walk like the ghost of the woman he’d never forgotten.
“Captain Tipton.” Her smile was fleeting as her gaze shifted. “Lieutenant Rossi. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Small world, isn’t it?” Irritating her only amused him, and he helped himself to another beer. He wasn’t on duty, after all. “Why don’t I make the introductions. Kelsey Byden and Gabriel Slater, my former commanding officer, Captain James Tipton.”
“Roscoe here was always one for procedure.” Tipton grinned as Kelsey lifted a brow at the nickname. “Sit down, have a beer?”
“Mr. Slater doesn’t drink,” Rossi put in.
“Oh, well. I think the wife brewed up some iced tea. Why don’t you go on in, Roscoe, and pour our company a couple of glasses?”
“That would be nice.” Pleased to put Rossi in the position of serving, Kelsey made herself comfortable on the top step. “I appreciate your taking the time to see us, Captain.”
“No problem. I got nothing but time. How’s your mother getting on?”
“Very well. You remember her, then?”
/> “I’m not likely to forget.” But he shifted tactics, preferring to get a lay of the land. “Roscoe tells me congratulations are in order, Mr. Slater. You’ve got a horse that might cop the Triple Crown. Not that I know a lot about it. Baseball’s my game.”
Gabe knew something about tactics as well. “My money’s on the Birds this year. They’ve got a solid pitching rotation, and an infield so tight you can barely squeeze a mosquito through it.”
“They do.” Delighted, Tipton slapped his knee. “By sweet Jesus, they do. You see them tromp the Jays last night? Goddamned Canadians.”
Gabe grinned, slipped out a cigar. “I caught the last couple of innings.” He offered one to Tipton, lit it for him. “That last triple took fifty out of my assistant trainer’s pocket and put it into mine.”
Tipton puffed. “I’m not a betting man myself.”
Gabe flicked on his lighter at the tip of his own cigar, watched Tipton over the flame. “I am.” He blew out smoke, nodded when Rossi came back with two tall glasses. “Thanks.”
“Roscoe’s a football fan. I never could educate him into the thinking-man’s sport.”
“I’m beginning to develop an interest in the sport of kings.” Rossi took his seat again. “I’ll have my eye on the Belmont, Mr. Slater.”
“A lot of us will.”
“Now, the lady didn’t come out here to talk sports.” Tipton offered Kelsey a friendly smile. “You’re here about murder.”
“What can you tell me about Alec Bradley, Captain?”
He pursed his lips. She’d surprised him. He’d been sure she would focus on her mother. Intrigued, he shifted gears and turned back the clock. “Alec Bradley, thirty-two, formerly of Palm Beach. He’d been married once to a woman, oh, fifteen years his senior. She paid him off with a nice settlement in the divorce. Apparently he’d worked his way through most of it by the time he met your mother.”
“What did he do?”
“Charmed the ladies.” Tipton shrugged. “Sponged off acquaintances. Played the horses when he could. He owned his own tuxedo.” Tipton paused for a sip of beer. “He was killed in it.”
“You didn’t like him,” Kelsey commented.
To amuse himself, and to help align his thoughts with his words, Tipton blew three smoke rings. “He was dead when I met him, but no. From what the investigation turned up on him, he wasn’t the kind of man I’d ask home for dinner. He made dallying with married women—rich married women—a profession. They’d pay him off with money and presents, introductions to other restless married women. If they didn’t pay him enough, he’d use blackmail. In my day we called them gigolos. I don’t know what you call them now.”
“Slime,” Gabe said pleasantly, and earned an approving nod from the captain.
Slater had taste, he decided. In women and cigars. “That says it well enough. The man had a way about him. Fancy manners, fancy education, a family line that went back to some puffed-up English earl. And he had that way with women, married women who couldn’t afford scandal.”
“My mother was separated, Captain.”
“And in the middle of a custody suit. She couldn’t afford the carryings-on with Bradley to come out if she wanted to win it.”
“But she saw him publicly.”
“Socially,” Tipton agreed. “It didn’t seem to bother her that people assumed they were lovers. No one could prove it.” He tapped cigar ashes into the crushed can of Bud. “There were rumors about Bradley sniffing expensive white powder up his nose. No one proved that either. Until he was dead.”
“Drugs.” Kelsey paled but continued. “My mother said nothing about drugs. I didn’t read anything about them in the newspaper reports.”
“No drugs at Three Willows.” Tipton sighed. Her eyes, so much like her mother’s, were taking him back. “The place was clean. Your mother was clean. Bradley had a mixture of alcohol and cocaine in his system when he died.”
“If that’s true, he could have been irrational, violent, just as my mother said.”
“There weren’t any signs of struggle. The lace of your mother’s nightgown was torn.” He touched a hand to his chest. “She had a couple of bruises. Nothing she couldn’t have done herself.”
“If she did that herself, why didn’t she knock over a few tables, break some lamps?”
Smart girl, he thought. “I asked myself, and her, that same question.”
“And what did she say?”
“The first time, we were sitting downstairs. They were still taking pictures in the bedroom. She’d put on a big robe over her nightgown.” As if she’d been cold, Tipton remembered. As if she’d been shivering under that heavy quilted material. “When I asked her, she snapped right back, ‘Maybe I didn’t think of it.’ ”
He smiled, shook his head. “Pissed at me is what she was. Those were the kind of answers she gave until her lawyers shut her up. The second time I asked her was in the interrogation room. She was smoking, one cigarette after the other. Practically eating them whole. When I asked her again, she said she wished she had thought of it. She wished she had because then someone might believe her.”
He set his beer aside and sighed deeply. “And you know, Ms. Byden, the thing was—just like I told Roscoe here before you drove up—I did believe her.”
Kelsey unfolded legs she could no longer feel, and forced herself to stand. “You believed her? You believed she was telling the truth, but you sent her to prison.”
“I believed her,” Tipton repeated, and his eyes narrowed, focused. Cop’s eyes. “But the evidence was against her. I spent a lot of sleepless nights looking for something to weigh on the other side. All I had was my gut. I did my job, Ms. Byden. I arrested her. I booked her. I presented the evidence at her trial. That’s what I had to do.”
“Is that how you live with it?” Kelsey held her fists at her sides. “You knew she was telling the truth.”
“I believed,” Tipton corrected. “That’s a long way from knowing.”
“Well, Roscoe, that took me back a few.” Tipton watched the Jaguar back out of the drive, then set his chair to creaking again. “How many times do you see real gray eyes? No green in them, no blue, just smoke. You don’t forget eyes like that.”
“Naomi Chadwick got to you, Captain. That doesn’t mean she was telling the truth.”
“Oh, she got to me. I was a happily married man, Roscoe, never once caught any action on the side. But I thought about Naomi Chadwick. Did I believe her because she played some elemental tune on my libido?” He sighed, shrugged, and crushed his second can of beer. “I don’t know. I was never sure. The D.A. was pushing for an arrest. He wanted that trial. And the evidence was there, so I did my job.”
Rossi studied his second Bud. “What did you think of Charles Rooney?”
“The P.I. ? He was a hotdogger. There were plenty of fancy names on his client list back then. Mostly divorce cases. I leaned on him, and he stuck to his story. He had the film, he had his reports, and the Bydens’ lawyers backed him up.”
“He witnessed a murder and didn’t report it.”
“We pressed that button. Claimed he was shaken up. A guy thinks he’s going to snap pictures of a bout of hot sex, gets murder instead. Allegedly he was still sitting in his car when the black-and-whites arrived. He logged the time down to the minute.”
“Then waited three days to bring in the film.”
Tipton wiggled his wiry eyebrows. “How deep are you digging here, Roscoe?”
“As deep as it takes.” He set the half-full beer on the porch between his feet and leaned forward, hands on knees. “Twenty-three years ago, you’ve got a dead horse in a race, drugs, a suicide, and a murder. Now we’ve got a murder, a suspicious death with the earmarks of suicide, a dead horse in a race, and drugs. Does the pendulum swing like that, Captain? Or does it get a shove?”
“You’re a good cop, Roscoe.” Like a veteran firehorse, Tipton quivered at the sound of the bell. “How many of the players are around on this sw
ing?”
“That’s what we need to find out. Maybe you could take some time out from your workshop and give me a hand with the research.”
Tipton’s smile was slow, and settled comfortably on his round face. “I could probably work it into my schedule.”
“That’s what I’d hoped you’d say. The jockey who hanged himself? Benedict Morales. Benny. Maybe you could flesh him out for me.”
Kelsey straightened in her seat when Gabe drove through the gates at Longshot. “Gabe, I should just go home. I’m not good company.”
“No, you’re not.” He braked, turned off the ignition. “And I figure you might as well have your explosion here rather than at Three Willows where you’d have to explain it to Naomi.”
“I’m just so angry.” She bounded out of the car and slammed the door. “He believed her, but he sent her to prison.”
“Cops don’t send you to prison, darling, juries do. Believe me, I’ve been there.”