Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel) (24 page)

SIXTY-ONE

Sabrina stood at the
foot of the carved limestone steps while Strickland took lead. She watched as he jabbed a finger at the doorbell, the distant chime of it echoing throughout the house, summoning whoever it was in charge of answering the door.

They didn’t have to wait long. Within a few moments the door was opened by an older woman in a starched black maid’s uniform, her face as stiff as her apron. “I’m sorry but the Edwards are not receiving visitors at this … ”

Her practiced rejection tapered off when Strickland flicked the front of his sports coat to the side to reveal his badge. “I’m sorry to bother them, but it’s important. It’s about Bethany.”

The woman’s bottom lip trembled for just a second before she flattened it against her teeth in a grimace. “Of course, please come in.” She pulled the door open to invite them in before shutting it softly. “Follow me.”

She led them across hardwood and marble floors, through a grand foyer, and into a formal sitting room whose floor-to-ceiling arched windows looked out across the Presidio national park and onto San Francisco Bay. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let Mr. Edwards know you’re here,” the maid said from the doorway before leaving them alone to wait.

Strickland stood in front of one of the windows, hands dug into the pockets of his slacks while she took a slow trip around the room. “Don’t touch anything,” he said without looking at her, and she felt a smile tug at her mouth.

“Yes, mother,” she muttered to herself, her eyes taking in the muted gleam of pewter picture frames on one of the teak end tables, the soft shine of what she was sure were a pair of authentic Ming vases perched on the limestone mantel. Each were probably worth more than what she made in a year.

“Inspector Strickland.”

Sabrina turned to find Trent Edwards in the doorway. He might’ve been speaking to Strickland, but he was looking directly at her. It lasted only a moment but Sabrina got the distinct feeling that Edwards knew exactly who she was and that he was less than pleased to find her standing in his living room. She watched as he strode into the room, making short work of the distance between him and the window, hand outstretched. Strickland pulled his hand out of his pocket just in time to have it captured and shook by Edwards. “I was hoping my wife and I would be allowed to grieve in private. I’m not sure how much more we have to offer to the investigation other than—”

“You can start by telling the truth about who your daughter was seeing,” Sabrina said and was rewarded by stares from both men—Edwards’s eyes narrowed while Strickland went slack-jawed for a second before he recovered.

“What my partner means to say is—”

Edwards took his hand back and turned an accusatory glare toward her. “I saw you at the crime scene yesterday, Inspector Vaughn, and I was assured by Inspector Evans that you would have nothing to do with my daughter’s investigation. The last thing my wife and I need is to be mixed up in your media circus.” He turned his glare on Strickland. “Where is he? Where’s Evans?”

As ridiculous as they’d been, her hopes that she could remain a nameless, faceless badge while Strickland asked the questions were suddenly dashed. Of course Trent Edwards would know who she was and he would want no part of her. “Inspector Evans has been assigned to another case and was simply covering for my partner until she was able to arrive on scene,” Strickland said. “Whatever assurances he gave you were not his to give. Now if we could all sit down, there are some things Inspector Vaughn and I need clarification on.” Partnering with her was turning him into a practiced liar. She wasn’t sure if she should be proud or ashamed.

Edwards gave him what she was sure was his very best,
how dare you speak to me that way
look. “If you expect me to sit and listen while you and this … woman attempt to drag my daughter’s name through the mud, then—”

“Trent, darling, please sit down and shut up,” said a worn, tired voice from the doorway. They all turned to find Lauren Edwards in the doorway. Gone was the polished power suit and perfectly coifed hair. Yoga pants topped with a baggy Berkeley T-shirt, ash blond hair hanging limp and stingy around a face that was puffy and red from crying. This was no high-priced attorney. This was a woman who was barely hanging on.

She walked into the room, heading straight for Sabrina. “I want you to know that I don’t share my husband’s sentiment where you’re concerned. When you walked into Bethany’s … ” Her words got tangled in a hiccupping sob when she said her daughter’s name. “When I saw you, I felt like maybe, somehow it would all be okay … ”

For some reason, Sabrina thought of the letters she received, the bags and bags of them. The ones from the parents of lost children, the ones who were desperate enough to reach out to her for help. No-man’s land.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Edwards,” she heard herself say. “But I need to ask you some questions that might prove painful to answer.”

“Of course. Please call me Lauren,” she said. Catching a glimpse of herself in the beveled mirror above the fireplace, she gasped, wiping at her tear-stained face. “I look horrible. Bethany would be so mad at me if she knew I’d—” She dropped her hand, letting the words die in her throat. Turning, she stepped over to the couch to curl up on the end of it, her bare feet buried in its white silk cushions. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” She shot a pointed look across the room to where her husband and Strickland were watching the exchange. “For Bethany.”

Those two words were sharp enough to deflate Trent Edwards. He seemed to shrink, his shoulders slumping forward. He turned away and headed for a small sideboard that held cut crystal glasses and a matching decanter full of what appeared to be scotch. “I’d offer you a drink, Inspector, but I know you’ll say no.” Edwards smiled bitterly at his glass as he poured himself several fingers. “You’re here on official business, after all.” He lifted the glass and drained it in a few long swallows.

Sabrina watched him for a few moments, waiting for him to raise some sort of objection, but he said nothing. Shifting her gaze to Strickland, she gave him a practiced signal and he readily produced a clean handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat. He handed it over to her quietly, and she gave him a smile. He always carried them, just in case. “Lauren, yesterday you told Inspector Evans that Bethany wasn’t involved with anyone.” She sat down in the chair across from the couch and pressed the handkerchief into the other woman’s hand. “That she didn’t have a boyfriend. But that wasn’t true, was it?”

Lauren dabbed at her eyes with Strickland’s handkerchief and shook her head. “Technically, it was … I’m not sure what was going on between her and Jamie. She was very secretive about the whole thing.”

“But this Jamie and her—they were involved?”

“Yes.” She glanced at her husband before continuing. “It was a casual affair, but given the circumstances, we were hoping it would develop into something more serious.”

There was a clink of glass on glass as Edwards refilled his tumbler. “Lauren,” he said, warning his wife not to say too much.

“She’s dead, Trent. There’s no reputation left to protect. Besides … ” She turned back to Sabrina. “They already know about the baby. That’s why they’re here,” Lauren said, giving her a sharp look that suddenly reminded her that beneath the grieving mother was a shark. “We’ve been friends with Jamie’s parents for years. Bethany always had such a crush on him, but he was older … much older. Things must’ve changed when she started college.” Lauren reached out and lifted one of the heavy pewter frames from the table beside her and studied the photograph it surrounded. “She was convinced that he’d started seeing her differently … lots of late-night phone calls. He’d meet her on campus occasionally to take her to lunch … She posted a picture of a beautiful bouquet of roses on her facebook page. She didn’t say they were from him, but I knew.” She gave the picture a sad smile. “Jamie is a gentleman.”

Sabrina’s gaze flew to her partner, and they locked eyes for a moment.

“Mrs. Edwards, what is Jamie’s last name? Is there some way we could contact him?” Strickland said, somehow managing to keep his tone level and calm.

Lauren held out the picture frame for her to take, so she did. The photograph showed a small group clustered onto the bow of a large sail boat. Trent and Lauren Edwards were behind the pegged, wooden wheel and another middle-aged couple was off to the side, smiling. Sitting on a bench just below was Bethany, pale blond hair caught by the wind, greenish-blue eyes laughing into the camera. The man beside her must’ve been Jamie. He was handsome, his hair several shades darker than Bethany’s, curled against the collar of his shirt. Laughter crinkling his deep, chocolate-brown eyes at the corners. Bethany leaned into him, hand anchored in the folds of his crew-neck sweater. He was smiling a smile Sabrina had come to know well over the past several months. One she’d seen aimed at her on more than one occasion.

“Is this Jamie?” she heard herself ask, lifting her eyes from the photo to watch Lauren Edwards confirm what she already knew. The man who Bethany was secretly seeing, the man who was most likely the father of her unborn baby, was Dr. James Liam Henry.

SIXTY-TWO

As much as she
wanted to, Sabrina knew she couldn’t be there when he picked Liam up for questioning. Questioning the Edwardses had been a calculated risk. Being involved in the detainment and questioning of the suspect in their daughter’s murder would have proved disastrous … especially given the fact that the very second Mathews learned that Strickland had dragged the son of Congressman James Henry in for questioning like a common thug, he’d completely lose his shit.

Strickland dropped her off at her car on the way to the hospital. “You sure he’s on duty today?” he said through the open window of his car, and she nodded.

“Yeah, he’ll be there. Try not to cause a ruckus when you nab him. The longer we can keep this on the DL, the better,” she said, and turned to her car door. Another envelope was in her car … but this one wasn’t red. It was a legal-sized manila and it had her name scrawled across the front of it:

Sabrina

“Ruckus-raising is your thing, partner—not mine,” Strickland said, and she turned and gave him a wave before she pulled her door open and got in, pushing the envelope over as she did. She started her car and followed Strickland out of the lot, not even daring to look at it until she pulled into the walk-in clinic’s parking lot and shut off her engine.

Picking up the envelope, she flipped it over and worked the seal loose to pull out the thick stack of papers nestled inside. On top was a handwritten note:

Sabrina—

I thought you should know the kind of man you’re protecting.

Jaxon

She didn’t even bother to look. Just shoved it all back inside the envelope and tucked it under the drivers’ seat. Croft’s vendetta against Michael was not something she could deal with right now.

As soon as she got back to the station, she settled in behind Strickland’s computer and ran Liam’s name. She’d done it before, when he first asked her out, and had gotten the same results—nothing. Then, she’d been willing to accept them at face value, but not now. There was something there, she felt it. Something his family had hidden behind a wall of influence and money. Luckily she knew someone who enjoyed kicking holes in the kind of walls wealth and privilege built.

“Hello,” Ben said.

She listened for a moment. No twittering females or music to gyrate to pulsating in the background.

“Hello?” he said again.

“I need information on someone.”

“I’m doing great, thanks for asking. How are you?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten. Pushing Ben would be counterproductive. He moved at his own pace and never took direction unless he was feeling generous. It looked like his generosity had reached its limit. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a hurry. I need information on a suspect, and I need it before my partner gets back with him in tow. I tried to run his arrest record, but—”

“Slow down, motor mouth … who is it?”

“Dr. James Liam Henry.”

Nothing but silence.

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.” His tone was rock hard. “That’s the guy you’ve been dating, right?”

She wasn’t even going to ask how he knew about that or try and correct him. “Yes.”

“Check your email in thirty minutes.” And then he was gone.

She checked it in twenty and there was a full dossier on Liam Henry waiting for her on her computer. It outlined typical rich-kid troubles—he got kicked out of an affluent boarding school at age fourteen for repeated offenses that ranged from cheating on exams to theft of school property. When he was seventeen, there was a minor scandal involving organizing “pharm parties” where kids raided their parents medicine cabinets and partied on Mommy’s Xanax and Daddy’s Viagra. During his first year at Harvard Medical, he was busted for buying marijuana from an undercover cop. His expulsion brought him back to San Francisco, and he transferred to Berkeley’s medical school.

In his third year of medical school, he was arrested for using school lab equipment to manufacture a designer drug that was linked to a rash of on-campus sexual assaults.

It had been Lauren Edwards, bulldog defense attorney and fierce family friend, who’d gotten Liam off the hook with a series of dizzying legal maneuvers that surely involved nothing short of bribes and coercion. Three years later her pregnant daughter was dead, and they were still defending him.

Sabrina thought of Liam, his earnest smile and easy laugh and felt ill.

You know what attracted you to him, do you, darlin’? He reminded you of me …

Her desk phone rang and she answered it, forgetting momentarily that it was no longer her phone to answer. “Vaughn.”

“Inspector, Vaughn—this is David Song.”

Sabrina stifled a sigh. David Song was the last person she needed to deal with right now. “Hello, Mr. Song, is there some way I can call you b—”

“He’s out. Kenny Denton was released from custody this morning. You assured me that there was no way that would happen,” he said in a rush.

“Excuse me?”

“Denton. He was released. I got a call from a victim advocate not more than five minutes ago. About a half an hour
after
he came into the store.” He laughed a little, the sound saying
too little too late
. “They said there was some sort of evidence mix-up and the judge tossed the case. He scared my clerk, asked for me specifically. You told me he was—”

“Mix-up? That doesn’t make sense. There was a witness
and
your surveillance tapes. Hard to mix up cold, hard facts.” She and Strickland had been chasing Kenny Denton all over the city for the better part of three months before they’d finally caught a lucky break and landed him. Identifying him as their shooter had never been the problem; finding him is what had proved nearly impossible. If Denton was in the wind, he was as good as gone.

“Did you hear me, Inspector? He came here looking for me. He killed that woman, I know he did.” Song said in a panicky rush. “He did it because she was a witness and now he’s after me.”

She couldn’t tell Song that what happened to Sheila had nothing to do with the Denton investigation, not without admitting the lie she’d told him about why she needed his security footage. But brushing him off would do more damage than she could hope to repair.

“I’ll call in some favors, get patrol to step it up around your store and residence, but the best thing you can do right now is let us do our jobs. The Denton case isn’t over. Inspector Strickland and I plan on continuing our investigation.” Just then, the elevator doors slid open and Strickland strode in with Liam in tow. “I’ll call you as soon as I have more information,” she said as she all but threw the handset back into its cradle and stood up from her desk.

Liam’s gaze found hers immediately, locking onto her from across the squad room. Gone was the easy smile and good-natured attitude of the man she thought she knew. In his place she saw someone who chilled her to the bone.

She saw someone who was guilty.