Secret Sanctuary Part 2

She rushed over to fasten the door, but it resisted her tug. As she struggled with the latch, something moved outside beyond the patio. A flash of color, nothing more. A brief flare of yellow that melted into blackness.

Then the wind slammed the door to with such force that Elizabeth had to jump back to keep her hand from being smashed. She slipped on the wet floor and lost her balance, cras.h.i.+ng backward into a plant table. Expensive glazed pots shattered against flagstones.

She struggled to sit up, but the hoops beneath her voluminous skirts kept her off balance.

"d.a.m.n." she muttered, wincing as a shard from one of the shattered pots bit into her palm. She lifted her hand to see if the cut was bleeding, but for some reason, her gaze was drawn skyward. Among the trailing leaves of some lush vine, something swayed from the rafters.

Elizabeth propped herself on her elbows, staring upward. What was thata"

In a flare of lightning, she saw a pale face staring down at her.

A ghost! her terrified mind first thought, and her heart began to hammer painfully against her rib cage.

But then, an instant later, she saw the rope.

Chapter Three.

"Who found the body?"

The curt question broke into Elizabeth's chaotic thoughts as she stood outside the solarium with the Pierces. She looked up, expecting to see one of the uniformed officers who'd arrived on the scene a few minutes after William Pierce had called the police, or perhaps even the police chief himself. Instead, her gaze collided with Cullen Ryan's.

And her heart almost stopped.

She hadn't seen him this close since he'd moved back to Moriah's Landing several months ago. Elizabeth thought she'd conquered her old feelings for him once and for all, but then he'd gone and done the unexpected. The unthinkable. He'd gone and made himself respectable.

And now she was all confused again. She stared up at him helplessly.

His short, dark hair glistened with raindrops, and his eyesa"gray, like a winter skya"were cool and a.s.sessing. He wasn't overly tall, probably around six feet, but he carried himself in that edgy, confident manner which had always made him seem taller. He was dressed darkly in a heavy long coat over a black V-neck sweater and black jeans, and Elizabeth couldn't take her eyes off him. He was so good-looking!

And a young woman was so dead.

Elizabeth would do well to remember why Cullen was there. She tried to convince herself that her reaction to him was due to her lingering shock, not just in finding the body but in discovering the victim's ident.i.ty. And it had been a shock.

Once she'd turned on the light in the solarium, she'd recognized almost at once the pale face, the dark, flowing hair. The delicate features that remained winsome even in death.

And with recognition had come the shakes. Elizabeth had started to tremble violently, and she hadn't been able to stop. Someone had fetched her velvet cloak earlier, and she clutched it now like a lifeline. She opened her mouth to answer Cullen, but her teeth were chattering so badly she couldn't speak.

William came to her rescue. "Elizabeth found the poor girl. It's been quite traumatic for all of us, as you can imagine."

When Elizabeth had first informed William and Drew of her grisly discovery, they'd tried to leave the ballroom discreetly, so as not to alarm or panic their guests. Luckily, Mayor Thane had already departed the ball. Otherwise he would have undoubtedly insinuated himself into the situation in such a way as to garner as much press for himself as possiblea"and conversely, as much unfavourable publicity for his potential rival as he could generate. Bad enough that Zachary, Drew's younger brother, noting the grim expression on his father's face, had followed them to the solarium and a few minutes later, Geoffrey Pierce, William's brother, had shown up as well. Now that the police were on the scene, word would spread soon enough among the guests, if it hadn't already.

William stepped forward now and offered his hand to Cullen. "I'm William Pierce, by the way."

"Yes, I know who you are," Cullen said without expression as he shook hands with the man. "I'm Detective Ryan."

William glanced over Cullen's shoulder. "Where's Chief Redfern? Shouldn't he be here?"

"He's out of town, but he's been notified. The roads in and out of Moriah's Landing are a mess from the storm. It may be hours before he can make it through."

William frowned. "Shouldn't we wait for him?"

"I'm afraid we can't wait. Deterioration of the body could break down any DNA evidence that might be present. We'll need to collect samples as soon as Dr. Vogel arrives," Cullen said, referring to the medical examiner.

"What about the state police?"

"This is our jurisdiction."

"I see." William still didn't look convinced. "That all sounds well and good, young man, but you haven't been with the police department all that long, have you? Are you sure you have the experience for this sort of investigation?"

Annoyance flitted across Cullen's brow. "I appreciate your concern, Mr. Pierce, but I a.s.sure you I'm a trained investigator."

"Yes, well, I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you seem a little young to me to be a detective."

He was twenty-four, Elizabeth thought, and age was relative. She knew that better than anyone.

If Cullen had remained with the Boston Police Department, chances were he probably wouldn't have made detective for another few years. But in Moriah's Landing, any big-city police-force experience automatically propelled an officer to the head of the pack. Most of the other law-enforcement personnel, Chief Redfern included, had only spotty experience and the minimum amount of training required by the Commonwealth. Whether William Pierce realized it or not. the town was lucky to have Cullen.

"I know what I'm doing," he said coolly.

"I hope you do." There was an indefinable edge in William's voice. Was his concern really due to Cullen's age, or because of Cullen's background? Before he'd left town, Cullen had had more than one brush with the local authorities. The charges were never anything too seriousa"vandalism, joy-riding, crimes of that nature, and because they could never be proven, the complaints were invariably dropped. But people had never had any doubt about Cullen's guilt, and they always suspected those petty misdemeanors were a prelude to something more serious, something potentially more deadly.

Did William Pierce harbor doubts about Cullen's transformation as so many others in town did?

Elizabeth didn't. Not really. She'd always known there was a good side to Cullen. He'd just never allowed anyone to see it.

What was it Becca had said to her earlier? You use your aloofness and even your intelligence as a sanctuary, a safe place to hide away the real you so you won't get hurt.

Had Cullen's juvenile delinquency been his sanctuary? Elizabeth wondered.

He was staring down at her, watching her closely, and her breath caught painfully in her throat. Would she never get over this silly crush? This terrible yearning that caused every nerve ending in her stomach to quiver if he so much as glanced at her?

"You're the one who found the body?" he asked her.

She nodded, buying herself a moment to collect her poise. "Yes, in the solarium. Her name is Bethany Peters."

One dark brow lifted. "You knew her?"

"She was a student at Heathrow College. She was in my Theories of Criminal Behavior cla.s.s last semester." Elizabeth tried not to dwell on the irony.

"Was she a guest at the party?" He addressed this question to William Pierce.

"No, none of us had ever seen her before."

Cullen turned back to Elizabeth. "What were you doing in the solarium?"

She hesitated. "The ballroom was very crowded. I just wanted a chance to catch my breath." Would he think she'd been dancing all night instead of people-watching from a secluded corner? Instead of daydreaming about him?

One could only hope.

"Why the solarium?"

"It has this wonderful gla.s.s dome. I wanted to watch the storm a bit." The intensity of his gaze made Elizabeth even more nervous. Her hand crept to her throat, and she found herself explaining. "It's an air ma.s.s thunderstorm rather than an organized system, you see, and I wanted to observe the redevelopment of new convection along the outflow of the previous cells." Shut up, shut up, shut up, she admonished herself, but she couldn't seem to stop babbling. "The main cell, of course, was well into its dissipating stage by that time," she finished lamely.

Cullen ran a hand through his short, spiky hair. "Uh, right. Do you have an idea what time you left the ballroom?"

"Midnight. I heard the clock in the foyer chime." Elizabeth pressed her lips together to keep from blurting out any more irrelevant facts. She had the unfortunate habit of resorting to trivia when she got nervous, and she had always been nervous around Cullen.

"Did you see anyone else in the foyer? In the hallway outside the solarium? Anyone lurking outside?"

"No. Maybe. I'm not sure." She drew an unsteady breath and told him about the open door in the solarium and the yellow flash she'd seen beyond the terrace. "It might have been nothing more than a reflection. I can't be sure. I certainly can't say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a person."

"If it was, we're not going to find any footprints in this weather," he said grimly.

Elizabeth's fingers tightened around the fastener on her cloak. "I don't think it very likely, but I suppose it's possible someone could have been inside the room when I first entered, and then left through that door. I didn't turn on a light."

"Why not?"

"As I said, I slipped away from the party to be alone for a few minutes. I didn't want anyone to see me."

Cullen's glance sharpened. "Were you afraid someone would follow you into the solarium?"

As if. "No, I just thought someone might see the light and become curious. And, also, it was easier to observe the storm in the darkness."

"I see. When you went back to close the door, that's when you saw the body?"

She nodded. "I lost my balance on the wet floor and fell. For some reason, I looked up and I saw her hanging from one of the steel supports...." Elizabeth broke off, shuddering in spite of herself.

She wasn't unfamiliar with death. In her Criminal Investigations courses at Heathrow, she taught her students how to dissect crime scenes a.n.a.lytically and view murder victims objectively. As a graduate student, she'd interned with the Worcester Police Department in order to research her doctoral thesis, and just a few months ago, she'd attended a series of seminars conducted by an FBI profiler. She knew crime. She lived and breathed crime.

But when the victim was someone you knew... someone so young...

"I'll need statements from all of you," Cullen said to the Pierces who stood cl.u.s.tered behind Elizabeth. "For now, I want everyone to remain out here. We need to keep the crime scene as virgin as possible."

Elizabeth winced. "I'm afraid...that is, the solarium may already have been compromised."

"Someone besides you has been in there?" Cullen asked sharply.

"We rushed in without thinking when Elizabeth told us what she'd found," Drew explained. "She tried to keep us out, but we couldn't know for certain the girl was dead. We thought we might be able to help her."

Cullen glanced at Elizabeth. "How many went inside?"

"All of them," she admitted gloomily.

He shook his head in frustration. "We'll have to cross-check fingerprints then. I'll also need a copy of the guest list." He turned to the uniformed officer who stood directly behind him. "Make sure guards remain at all the exits. No one leaves, no one gets in without my say-so. I don't care who it is," he said pointedly at the Pierces. "I don't care what excuses they give you."

"Surely you don't expect everyone to wait around here indefinitely," Geoffrey Pierce, Drew's uncle, complained. "I have things to do."

"At this hour?" Cullen gave him a speculative look. "What kind of things would they be?"

Geoffrey didn't answer, just stood there looking unpleasant. A tall, slender man with thinning blond hair, he hadn't managed the approach to middle age with quite the same grace as his older brother, William. And he didn't seem to have William's compa.s.sion. He was handsome, as all the Pierces were, but something about his expression, about the cruel set of his lips, made him seem at once sinister and weak.

Drew put a hand on the man's arm. "Detective Ryan is right, Uncle Geoffrey. We screwed up. Let's not make things worse." To Cullen he said, "We'll do everything we can to cooperate."

"I'm counting on that." Cullen took a pair of latex gloves from his overcoat pocket and snapped them on. He handed another pair to Elizabeth. "Show me the body, Elizabeth."

THE FIRST THING Cullen noticed about the solarium was the temperature. The room was still frigid even though Elizabeth said she'd closed the outside door.

He could feel the chill though his overcoat, but then, the heavy fabric was still damp from the rain.

He wondered now, as he followed Elizabeth toward the back of the solarium, if he might have been able to prevent the tragedy if he'd accepted the moonlighting job as a security guard for the Pierces. Probably not. So far, it appeared that the murderer had been able to slip in and out without being detected by any of the other guards or guests which suggested to Cullen that the suspect was someone familiar with the Pierce compound. Someone who had either come in the front gate as a guest, or through the back entrance with the hired help.

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 c.o.c.ked 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 s.p.a.ces."

"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 d.a.m.n plants."

"Well, maybe you have botanophobia. Fear of plants."

"What I don't have is time." he snapped. "Let's get on with this."