A Widow's Guilty Secret (12 page)

Preoccupied, he started to tuck the phone back into his pocket, but he wound up missing his target. The phone slipped from his fingers and fell onto the rug.

Hitting the floor at an angle, the phone bounced twice and wound up landing under Burris’s desk.

All the way
under.

“Great,” Nick muttered, biting off a ripe curse in case either Suzy or her sister was passing by and could overhear him.

Getting down on all fours, Nick carefully crawled under the desk to retrieve his phone. The space was crammed and he had to be extra careful to keep from hitting his head.

The phone had landed at the extreme rear of the desk. Nick was forced to snake his way as far back as he was able to go.

He couldn’t help thinking that as a kid, he would have really loved getting under a desk like this one, with only one side opened up the way it was. He would have spent hours playing under it, envisioning the desk to be a dozen different things, not the least of which would have been a cave.

The Bat Cave, Nick decided with an unconscious grin.

And, since he was away from any prying eyes, Nick allowed himself a momentary nostalgic respite as fragments of memories came back to him. Memories of the little boy he’d once been before he’d become disillusioned with the world and found out that nothing ever turned out the way you expected or wanted it to.

But that time was years behind him, Nick reminded himself. Time to act like a responsible adult.

Phone in hand, he began to crawl backward out of the small spot. As he was snaking his way out, he thought he heard a landline ringing. Startled by the unexpected sound—half thinking it was coming from his own phone—he straightened abruptly and raised his head, only to smack it against the bottom of the drawer. Hard.

This time he did curse, although he managed to keep it under his breath, as pain shot through his skull and even vibrated along the bridge of his nose.

Moving carefully back one small “step” at a time, Nick glanced at the underside of the offending drawer to see if he had dented it—or left any blood behind.

And stopped short.

Unless he was hallucinating from the swiftly growing bump that was forming, there was something, a small padded envelope from what he could see, taped to the underside of the drawer.

Holding his breath, Nick began to work at peeling back the strips of tape and separating the envelope from the underside of the drawer.

The clear packing tape that held it in place was strong, which told him it was still relatively new. The weather in the area tended to be humid in the summer. The humidity was strong enough to leave its mark, corroding things like plastic shower curtains and plastic packing tape.

After finally freeing the envelope, Nick resumed backing out from the desk. He made sure not to lift his aching head until he was well clear of the desk. The top of his head was still throbbing from the sudden contact.

“Okay,” he said to the envelope once he was clear and out in the open. “Let’s hope you’re worth this trouble and not just another so-called lead that’s going to go nowhere.”

Ripping the envelope open, he turned it upside down and shook it.

A single, thin, silver key fell at his feet. The paper tag attached to it had a four digit number clearly typed on it.

The kind of number that was used to denote a bank safety deposit box.

Chapter 11

N
ick studied the key thoughtfully for a moment, turning it over to see if the name of the bank had been embossed on either side.

He found nothing.

Still, he felt it safe to assume that it
was
a safety deposit key. He was just going to have to find out which bank housed the box.

Looking at it, he wondered if Suzy knew about the key. Its existence may have slipped her mind in the face of all this turmoil. Or she was deliberately holding back information. All things considered, he was rather a good judge of character, but he wasn’t infallible.

Nick found the sheriff’s widow in the kitchen, whipping up something that smelled incredibly tempting on three of the burners.

Almost as tempting as she was.

He
had
to get hold of himself. Otherwise, his thoughts would wear him down and there was no telling how he’d wind up acting on these feelings, which kept blindsiding him when he was least prepared.

Suzy looked up from the green peppers she was chopping into fine slivers. “What did you find?” she asked.

Habit made him feel her out warily. “What makes you think I found something?”

“You’ve got that look on your face, that look that says you came across another possible piece of the puzzle.” She paused, waiting for him to disprove her assumption—or agree with it. When he didn’t, she pressed, “Well, did you? Find something?” she specified, her eyes never leaving his face.

“Did your husband ever mention having a safety deposit box?”

Suzy thought for a moment. “He said something once about getting one,” she recalled. “He said he thought we could keep life insurance policies and the deed to the house in it. But as far as I know, it was just talk.” She saw what looked like a flash of interest flicker in Nick’s eyes and second guessed what he was probably thinking: that maybe she’d had Peter killed to collect on the life insurance policy she’d just mentioned. “And, as far as I know,” she said, reiterating a point she’d made when he’d first asked her about the life insurance policy, “there are no life insurance policies. That was just more talk on Peter’s part.”

Picking up the chopping block she’d been using, she tilted it and poured its finely chopped contents into the pot where she already had chicken breasts, parsley and mushrooms simmering in chicken broth.

“Maybe there were no life insurance policies, but it looks like there
is
a safety deposit box,” he told her, holding up the key.

She stopped working and crossed to him. Wiping her hands on the apron she had carelessly tied around her waist, Suzy took the key from him and swiftly examined it, then handed it back to Nick.

“Never saw it before,” she told him with a puzzled frown. “What do you think is in the box?”

Something that might have gotten Burris killed,
but he kept that thought to himself for now, saying instead, “We’re going to have to open it to find that out—and in order to open it, we’re going to have to locate it.”

“Well, I’m going out on a limb here, but seeing as how Vengeance isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis, I don’t think that’s going to be overly difficult.”

Her droll comment made him grin wryly. He wouldn’t have thought she was capable of sarcasm. That she was amused him.

“Vengeance has two banks within the town limits. A lot of people are creatures of habit, so I’d start with the one where you have your checking accounts,” he suggested. “Unless,” he reconsidered for a second, “the sheriff was the type to try to hide his money in an offshore account somewhere, like in the Cayman Islands.”

That
really
didn’t sound like Peter, but then, this person who was emerging didn’t sound like Peter, either, she thought, shaking her head.

“As far as I know,” she told Nick, going back to the meal she was making on the stove, “he liked to keep things close by. I once told Peter I half expected him to keep our money under the mattress—for easy access. It wasn’t that he really didn’t trust banks,” Suzy explained, “he just wanted to be able to get his hands on what he needed quickly, night or day.”

Nick closed his hand over the key and tucked it into his pocket. “Nearby bank it is,” he told her.

With a course laid out for them, Suzy was all set to take her apron off and drive to her bank, but one glance at the overhead floral kitchen clock on the opposite wall told her that going to the bank was not exactly an option right now.

It was seven o’clock, an hour after the bank had shut its doors. “It’s closed,” she realized with disappointment.

He nodded. “Nothing we can do until morning.”

Suzy regrouped. “Well, we can eat dinner,” she pointed out.

“There is that,” Nick readily agreed, drawn closer to the stove by the aroma that was wafting over to him.

He recalled that he hadn’t really been near a stove—other than in passing—since his divorce. He made coffee for himself in the morning, using a coffee machine he’d brought along with him on his move from Houston. If he wanted more, there was always a takeout restaurant in the area to call or drive to. The only items he purchased in the supermarket were coffee filters and coffee. The largest cans of coffee the market had to sell so that he could keep his trips there to a minimum.

He inhaled deeply—and appreciatively. “Smells good,” he told her, nodding toward the pots on the stove.

Suzy smiled at the compliment. “I’m hoping it tastes better.”

* * *

Hard as it was to believe, it did, Nick thought approximately forty-five minutes later. The meal Suzy had made tasted so incredibly good that he’d done something he rarely did. He overate.

He ate so much that if he consumed one forkful more, he wouldn’t have been able to get up from the table and walk anywhere, much less to the front door.

He liked to think of himself as fighting trim. At this point though, he was more like pacifist fat. Or at least he felt that way, stuffed to the gills.

Suzy saw his empty plate and began to ask if he wanted another serving. “More—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her question because Nick held up his hand to halt the oncoming flow of words.

“No more,” he told her. “Otherwise, I’m going to burst at the seams right where I’m sitting. That was probably one of the best meals I’ve ever had,” he told her honestly.

His words surprised her and pleased her more than she could begin to say. “Thank you,” she said when she found her voice. “You really didn’t strike me as the type to hand out compliments like that.”

Nick caught himself thinking that he liked the way that her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled broadly.

“I’m not,” he told her. “I guess this just brought it out of me. It changed the rules,” he added, trying to explain things to himself more than to her.

She was definitely a game changer for him. Being with her made him look at the world a little differently—made him feel more the way he assumed a normal person felt.

Made him think about and want things a normal man might want, instead of being the emotionless machine he had become in these last years.

You’re waxing poetic, Jeffries. Time to go
.

Taking a deep breath, Nick placed his hands against the table and pushed himself back. Abruptly, he said, “Bank opens at nine. I can be back here at a quarter to the hour if that’s all right with you.”

She nodded. “A quarter to nine is fine with me,” she assured him. “I want to find out what Peter had in that safety deposit box as much as you do.”

He’d only been looking at it from his own point of view, as a cop. What was this like for her, finding out over and over again that she was married to a virtual stranger? He was surprised that Suzy wasn’t becoming increasingly bitter with every new discovery. He had felt bitter when Julie had been guilty of only one secret, not a score, like Burris seemed to be.

In her own way, Suzy Burris was made of sterner stuff than he was, Nick thought in admiration. He almost said as much to her, then caught himself at the last moment. He had to remember to keep this on a professional level.

“A quarter to nine tomorrow, then,” he confirmed formally.

“I’ll be ready,” she promised.

* * *

But she wasn’t.

When Nick arrived at her door the next morning, he found Suzy trembling, fighting to keep back tears. This was so different from the woman he’d left last night, he was instantly on the alert. His hand went to his gun as he quickly scanned the immediate area, looking for an intruder.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her sharply.

For a second, it was still all too fresh, too unnerving, and Suzy couldn’t talk, couldn’t organize what had just happened into coherent words.

Her heart was hammering hard in her chest, so hard that she thought it would literally break through her ribs.

Since there appeared to be no clear and present danger in the house, Nick removed his hand from his weapon and looked at the woman he had begun to think of as cool under fire.

This was definitely
not
cool under fire.

He saw the anguish in Suzy’s eyes and he felt it twisting his heart. Before he could stop himself, Nick took her into his arms, his gruff voice transformed into a softer, infinitely more soothing one.

“Suzy, what’s wrong?” he asked again, then coaxed, “Talk to me.”

She willed herself to calm down as she took in a deep cleansing breath, and then let it out slowly. She had to do it a second time before she could even begin to answer him.

“I just had a phone call.” She pressed her lips together to keep the sob that was hovering in her throat from coming out. “Someone just threatened Andy. He threatened my baby,” she cried, her voice hitching. “He said that if I didn’t hand over what Peter had on Senator Merris, what Peter had been holding on to as his ‘insurance policy,’ he was going to kill Andy.”

Her voice shook now. “And he told me if I called the police, or told anyone at all about this, he was going to slit both our throats.”

The senator again, Nick thought in exasperation. But the man was dead. Who the hell was calling if the senator was dead? Who was left to gain anything by getting their hands on whatever it was that Burris had stashed away? And what
was
it that Burris had had on the man? Compromising pictures? An incriminating tape?

Whatever it was, Nick had a hunch it was in that safety deposit box. The sooner they located it and opened it, the better.

Nick’s arms tightened around her, as if to silently tell her that he was going to keep her safe, no matter what.

Because he was.

“No one’s going to hurt you or your son,” he told her fiercely. “I’m going to protect you. I swear I will.” He needed her to try to remember everything she could about the call. “Suzy, this person who called you, did you recognize his voice? Did it sound familiar?”

Ashamed of her tears, she buried her face in his chest and moved her head from side to side in response to his question. A sense of hopelessness echoed in her voice.

“No, it was distorted.” She raised her head to look up at him, her cheeks stained with tears as she struggled to regain control. “I can’t even tell you for sure if it was a man or a woman. It was like being threatened by some mad, futuristic robot.”

It sounded insane, but he knew what she was trying to say.

“For the time being, let’s just assume it was a man. We need to find out what that key that your husband kept taped to the underside of his desk unlocks and what’s inside. I have a feeling that it’s going to be whatever this guy is looking for.”

He knew what she was thinking, that the second they left for the bank, the person who called her would break into the house, harm her baby and her sister. “I’ll have a patrolman keep an eye on things here while we’re at the bank,” he told her, taking out his phone.

Suzy let out a sigh and nodded her head. The promise of a police officer on the premises didn’t calm her down completely, but it was a start. If anything ever happened to Andy—or her sister—because of this, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

* * *

Frank Kellerman smiled to himself. It was the kind of smile whose full impact sent chills through brave men’s hearts and caused casual strangers to cross the street in order to avoid him and pretend he didn’t exist.

The cold expression had served him well in his dealings as the late Senator Merris’s head aide. Due to his dedication—and his less-than-upstanding dealings on his boss’s behalf—he had clearly been on the rise. The senator saw him as an asset. Who knew how far he would have gone?

But then, according to new reports, someone had placed a plastic bag over the senator’s face, suffocating him—and simultaneously sent all his well-orchestrated plans crumbling into the dust. He’d been filled with rage at the unfairness of it all, ready to lash out at the world and everyone in it.

And then, out of the blue, he’d been contacted by party or parties unknown. No names had been used, but the caller had known an unnerving amount of information about him. He’d been given specific instructions: retrieve the damning evidence that the late Sheriff Burris had had on the senator any way he could.

The disembodied voice on the other end of that fateful call had told him that if he served well, he’d go much further than he could possibly have ever dreamed.

Failure, the caller made it very clear, was not an option.

Kellerman wasn’t planning on failing. Failure was for men without ambition or backbone. He had both—in spades—and he intended on going places.

He’d thought he’d get there after hitching his wagon to Merris’s star, but obviously he’d been wrong there. The senator had gotten himself killed. For all his cunning, John Merris had ultimately turned into a loser.

Well, that wasn’t going to be him, Kellerman thought fiercely.

As if to underscore that, out of the blue, he’d been given a second chance and he was going to make the most of it. Lightning had struck twice, it wasn’t about to strike a third time.

Whoever had initially called and pressed him into service was not going to be disappointed with his performance. He would get results. Hell, he’d had the sheriff’s widow in tears, he could hear it in her voice. She wasn’t about to risk her son’s life and cross him.