Sinclair Connection - Hot On His Trail Part 6

She sighed and grabbed another chair, placing it where she could see him but wasn't sitting too close. He couldn't help but notice the hint of wariness that touched her eyes. Ah, she tried to pretend all was well, but Shea wasn't completely oblivious to what was happening between them.

"All right. What other motive did they have?"

Nick didn't like to think about Lauren. He'd had such foolish hopes where she was concerned.

"The night of the murder, I had a barbecue at my place," he said, glancing out of the dining room window to the ancient trees that shaded the old house. Shea surely knew about the barbecue already. It had been part of the sordid story. "I'd invited all the neighbors. Have you see the neighborhood?"

He turned his eyes to her and she gently shook her head. "It's a double cul-de-sac, and I built ten of the houses on that street, including mine and Winkler's. I knew everybody, the weather was just starting to turn cool and nice, and h.e.l.l, it seemed like a good idea at the time." He had never told anyone everything, but... "I was going to ask my girlfriend, Lauren, to marry me, and I wanted her to meet all the neighbors. I wanted her to feel at home there."

Shea's eyes went wide. "I knew your girlfriend was at the barbecue that night, but I didn't have any idea your relations.h.i.+p was that serious."

Nick shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care, and turned his gaze to the window again. His contractor's mind noted that the frame needed a fresh coat of paint, that the gla.s.s was old enough to give the view beyond a distorted cant. "Apparently it wasn't all that serious. For Lauren, anyway. Winkler was ... have you seen his picture?"

Again, Shea nodded silently.

"He didn't seem like anything special to me, but apparently he was a bit of a ladies' man. I don't know how such an a.s.s gets anywhere with women, but apparently Gary had a gift."

Shea looked like she knew what was coming.

"Winkler took one look at Lauren and spent the rest of the evening d.o.g.g.i.ng her. Bringing her drinks when her gla.s.s was empty, patting her on the b.u.t.t when she pa.s.sed, smiling and winking and saying G.o.d knows what when he got a chance to corner her."

"What a jerk," Shea muttered sympathetically.

"Unfortunately, Lauren didn't seem to mind. I think she was flattered that he gave her so much attention."

Shea frowned. "Wasn't his wife there?"

"Yep. Poor Polly, she's one of those mousy women who lets her husband walk all over her. I caught her watching what was going on, every now and then, but for the most part she ignored Gary. She talked with the other wives, about recipes and Halloween decorations, since the holiday was less than two weeks away, and pretended everything was just fine."

"But not you," Shea said softly.

"I was never very good at letting things go," Nick said solemnly. "I warned Gary once to keep his hands off my woman-taking him aside so I wouldn't embarra.s.s anyone."

"I'm guessing that didn't work," Shea sighed.

Nick shook his head, getting angry all over again. "He took it as a challenge and moved things up a notch. He drank too much beer and poured Lauren too much wine. They danced to the radio and laughed and whispered. While I was flipping burgers they had themselves a good old time."

He had never told anyone everything, but if Shea Sinclair was going to stay in this with him, she deserved to know all the ugly details. "Then they disappeared. No one else seemed to notice. The kids were playing ball, the men were talking golf, the women were talking recipes. I went looking for Lauren and Winkler and found them in the laundry room. If I'd been two minutes later, they would've been doing it right there on the dryer."

He'd never forget the sight. Lauren sitting on the dryer, her legs wrapped around Winkler. One hand on his neck, the other reaching down between his legs as they locked their mouths together. That low moan coming from her throat had shattered all his stupid, idyllic plans.

"Oh my G.o.d," Shea whispered. "Why didn't I hear about this?"

"Only the three of us knew. Winkler was dead, and Lauren wasn't about to tell everyone that she was drunk and wrapped around my neighbor in the laundry room while I was asking the neighborhood ladies if they wanted onions on their d.a.m.ned burgers," he snapped.

"But everyone knew that he'd been hitting on her and that I didn't like it," he added soberly. "They all saw me drag his sorry a.s.s out of the house and tell him to go home and not come back unless he wanted the beating of his life. When we were where no one else could hear, I told him to keep his grubby hands off Lauren and to keep his dirty mouth shut. He left with a big grin on his face, and poor Polly followed dutifully behind." Nick locked his eyes to Shea's. "Honey, that's motive."

"Yes it is," she whispered.

"But I didn't kill him."

"I know."

He shook his head in disbelief. She seemed so sincere, so naively confident. "How do you know? How do you know I'm not just the best liar you've ever met?"

She grinned and his gut turned over. "I have great instincts. Growing up with three older brothers will do that to a girl." Her smile faded. "I don't think you're a great liar, Nick. I'll bet you're a lousy liar. You're too straightforward to be good at it."

"Too bad the jury didn't have your instincts," he said bitterly. Shea shrugged her shoulders and scribbled in her spiral notebook. "We can't worry about that now. All we can do is move forward. So, who else wanted Gary Winkler dead?" "Everybody," Nick whispered. "d.a.m.n near everybody." * * * She'd wanted a list of possible suspects. She just hadn't expected that the list would be this long.

Nick looked good today, much better than he had yesterday. His eyes were lively, bright and alert, and he wasn't quite so pale, though he could definitely use a few days in the sun. He simply looked stronger. Healthier. She wasn't certain she was prepared to face a healthy Nick Taggert just yet.

"Okay," she said calmly, "so no one liked him. Other neighbors were upset by him painting his house chartreuse and not mowing his lawn regularly."

"And when he did mow," Nick added, "it was at the first appearance of sunlight on a Sat.u.r.day or a Sunday morning, while everyone else was trying to sleep."

"Annoying, but hardly motive for murder."

"The media made 'annoying' work for me," he said darkly.

Shea gave him an apologetic glance. "If he'd hit on Lauren, he'd hit on other women. You said he had a reputation as a ladies' man. Any names?"

"Just gossip. A woman where he worked quit after their affair got ugly, I hear."

"A name?"

Nick shook his head. "Pearl, Ruby ... something like that. I can't remember."

"Did anyone check this woman out?"

"I don't know. I told Norman about it, but he said the cops weren't exactly interested."

"They already had you," she said angrily.

"Exactly."

She leaned back in her chair and propped her bare feet on Aunt Irene's old oak table. This task she'd set for herself was much easier when she was not looking directly at Nick. With his blue eyes and his nice mouth and that snug black T-s.h.i.+rt he wore, she kept getting distracted. "Anyone else?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nick shake his head. "He was a shark at work. He bragged once about taking some poor schmuck's software idea and tweaking it a little and calling it his own."

A woman named after a jewel, a computer nerd, an annoyed neighbor, any number of jealous husbands... "What about Lauren?"

"What?" Nick asked, snapping his head up.

Shea made herself look him in the eye, trying to gauge his reaction. "Would she kill Gary and plant the evidence to convict you?"

"No," Nick said quickly, confirming Shea's suspicion that he was still in love with the woman who had fallen for Gary Winkler's charms in the laundry room.

Shea lowered her eyes and leaned back to leaf through her pages of notes, trying to calm the furious pounding of her heart. Lauren had been faithless and Nick still loved her. He defended her, when he should be latching on to any and all possible suspects.

"Okay," she said calmly. "The key to the conviction has to be the blood and green paint that was found in your kitchen." Not much, just a drop of each. No fingerprints had been found directly on the d.a.m.ning evidence of Gary Winkler's blood and a touch of bright green paint, though. That in itself should have raised a red flag for the investigators. "Someone must've deliberately placed it there. Since Winkler was killed in the middle of the night, let's a.s.sume it was planted there the next day. Who was in your house?"

Nick shook his head. "I've been through this a thousand times. Polly Winkler came by early to collect a dish she'd left the night before. That was just a half hour or so before she discovered the body in her backyard. Norman came by, to see if I wanted to go golfing. A fourth had backed out at the last minute. I declined."

"Norman Burgess, your lawyer?"

"My lawyer, my neighbor and my friend," Nick snapped defensively.

"Anyone else?" Shea asked calmly.

"Lillian Ca.s.son, the Winklers' next-door neighbor, came by to collect a dish as well, and after the murder was discovered, two other neighbors stopped by. Tom Blackstone and Carter Able."

"Any one of them could've taken a Taggert Construction T-s.h.i.+rt from the laundry room the night before and dropped it in the storm drain with the baseball bat, then planted the blood and paint that next morning."

Nick shook his head. "I can't believe any one of them could be so cold-blooded."

Shea leaned forward, watching him for reaction. "Where was Lauren?"

He fixed his intense blue eyes on hers and her heart hitched. "She was there. I let her spend the night on the couch, since she was too d.a.m.n drunk to drive home."

"Nick," Shea said, using her most sensible voice. "One of these people killed Winkler and pinned it on you."

"I just can't believe-"

"Believe it," she interrupted. Personally, her money was on Lauren. That rush of indignant anger wasn't fueled by jealousy, was it? Of course not!

"Do you still love her?" she asked softly.

Nick's eyes hardened. "No."

"But you did, once?"

He hesitated. "I suppose."

"You were going to ask her to marry you," she said defensively. "You must've loved her."

He took his eyes from her face and stared out the window. She'd caught him doing that several times this afternoon, when he didn't want to answer her probing questions.

"I thought she wanted the same things I did," he said softly. He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care. "I was wrong."

"What do you want?" He didn't answer right away so she added, "I'd really like to know."

He continued to stare out the window, and for a long moment Shea though he wasn't going to answer. "A house," he said in a low voice. "Nothing fancy, but something comfortable and safe, with a swing on the front porch and a swing set and a fort out back for the kids."

Her heart hitched. "Kids?"

"At least four." He pinned his eyes on her again. "You had that, didn't you? Two parents, three brothers, a house that was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The white house with the picket fence and a nice green lawn and laughter coming from behind solid doors that kept out everything ugly and mean."

"Yes," she whispered.

"I didn't," he said. "So I thought I could manufacture that life for myself and a wife and a few kids. I came close." He shut himself off with that statement. Turned off his emotions like he'd flipped a switch that shut everything down. "But I guess it wasn't meant to be."

"When this is over you can-"

"Start all over?" he snapped. "I don't think so."

"It's not too late," she said, closing the cover of her notebook. "You're still young."

He laughed darkly. "Thirty-two never felt so old. It's not the time, weathergirl, it's the will. I don't have it anymore."

"You'll have it again," she said optimistically, wanting that warm, normal life for Nick. After all he'd been through, he deserved it. "You'll see. Once all this is behind you, the will and the drive and the desire will come back."

Nick pinned cold eyes on her. "You'd best not be talking about desire around me, weathergirl. I'm not completely disabled."

He tried to annoy her by calling her "weathergirl," tried to scare her by acting sinister, by glaring at her with a threatening and seductive gleam in his blue eyes.

But she'd been right. Nick Taggert was a terrible liar. He did like her, he did want her-but he would never hurt her.

"I think it's time for you to get to bed," she said, rising to her feet.

He lifted his finely shaped dark eyebrows.

"Don't give me that, Taggert," she said roughly. "You're not so tough."

"I'm not," he said as she helped him to his feet.

"You made it down the stairs on your own, once," she said, wrapping her arm around his waist and heading for the stairs. He leaned against her, warm and snug and familiar, using her for support but not weighing her down. It had become a rather comfortable ritual, the way their arms snaked around the other's waist, the way they stepped in tandem. "When you can make it up on your own, then I might start to worry."

He grumbled.

"Until then," she said, "save your growls and glares. You don't scare me."

"You have no common sense at all," he grumbled.

"Please, if I need to hear that I'll call Dean."

Nick smiled as they began to make their way slowly up the stairs. "You're tough, weathergirl."

"Call me 'weathergirl' again and I'll b.l.o.o.d.y your nose. Again."

His grin, a reluctant smile on a beard-roughened face, seemed real enough. "Fair enough."

"And Nick," she said, softly and with a new seriousness. "Don't give up on your dreams. What you want is very nice. Very warm and real. You'll have it, one day."

He didn't argue with her, but he didn't agree, either.

"What about you?" he asked as they slowly climbed the stairs. "What do you want?"

"Right now career comes first," she said, nodding her head for emphasis.