Authors: Adrianne Byrd
Deadly Double (12 page)
“I think you might have told me that before.”
“Oh, yeah.” An embarrassed Josie remembered. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Beats me.” William chuckled.
She smiled but couldn’t combat the sudden chill that crept from her toes and slowly transformed her body into a giant glacier.
“Josie, are you all right?”
She heard him, but couldn’t get her teeth to stop chattering long enough to answer.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” He shut off the water, wrapped a towel around her head, and then helped her to lean forward.
Her shivers turned into violent convulsions, but Josie felt William’s arms slide beneath her and she was aware of him taking her back into the bedroom. When he placed her on the bed, she thought her soul was being lifted from her body. The experience frightened her.
William quickly piled blankets on her. All the while, he whispered words of comfort in her ear. “Just ride it out, Josie. I’m here for you.”
His words filled Josie’s head. Hope fluttered inside her chest, but another part of her was too afraid to believe him.
Trust no one.
However, the eighteen-year-old Josie, the part that still fantasized about that one magical summer in Paris, railed against her defensive mantra.
This was William, after all. He hurt her once, and he could do it again.
Chapter 16
A feathery kiss brushed against Ming’s cheek, and she woke with a soft moan.
Her husband, Conan, smiled down at her. “Why don’t you come to bed? I want something warm beside me tonight.”
Ming sat up and stretched out her arms as she let loose a wide yawn. “What time is it?”
“Three o’clock.” Conan placed his large hands against her shoulders and began an impromptu massage.
“Ah, you’re looking to have sex.” Ming chuckled and closed the case notes she’d fallen asleep on. “I should’ve known.”
“Yeah. It’s about that time of year.” Conan leaned down and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “One of these days I’m going to get you to leave your work at the office.”
“I think better at home.”
“All right then. Maybe we should start having sex at the police station.”
Ming laughed as she stood and looped her arms around his neck and gave him a quick peck. “Definitely not one of your better ideas.”
“Oh, I have some ideas.” He captured her lips in a tantalizing kiss as he slid his hands down her backside and gave her butt a gentle squeeze.
Ming sighed and wiggled her rump playfully against him before she came up for air. “If you were going to kidnap a person from a mental institution, how would you do it?”
“What?” Conan frowned at the question thrown in from left field. “What are you talking about?”
“This case I’m working on.” She turned from him and sat back down at the table to reopen her notes. “Whoever took Michelle Andrews from Keystone had to be either the luckiest bastard in Georgia or the smartest. They were able to get in, take a body, and leave without anyone seeing a thing. What are the chances of that?”
“Work? I was squeezing your butt and grinding against you, and you were thinking about work?”
“Sorry, honey,” she said, scanning over her last entry. “But after three days on the Andrews case, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere. It’s as if this woman just disappeared into thin air, and that’s just not possible.”
Conan huffed out a frustrated sigh. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
“Oh, thanks, honey.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“It has to be someone working on the inside.” She shook her head and turned the pages. “A dead doctor, a missing patient...and a missing medical chart. That alone is odd.”
“Fascinating,” Conan called from the kitchen. “Do you want fresh ground, or are we celebrating the moments of our lives?”
“You pick, honey.” Ming drummed her fingers on the table while she willed for something to jump out at her, but nothing happened. The department had already ordered cross-references for Keystone employees with names from the Daniel Thornton murder case and come up with nothing.
They’d also delved into Andrews’s background and Ming had no doubts that the missing patient had a few enemies of her own. However, everyone they’d interviewed turned into dead ends.
“You murder a doctor and take a patient,” she whispered to herself. “Why?”
Conan returned to the table and set a coffee mug beside his wife. “Anything I can help you with?” He pulled out a chair beside her and made himself comfortable. “You know I’ve been able to put together a few jigsaw puzzles in my time.”
“This is a little more complicated than a puzzle, honey.” She flashed him a smile, but didn’t pull her gaze from her paperwork.
He popped open a bottle of beer. “Since I’m not having sex tonight and I’ve had more than my fair share of cold showers this month, then I can at least lend my genius to my government to help crack their most difficult cases.”
Ming laughed and rolled her eyes.
“Ha. Ha.” He took a swig of beer, and then challenged, “Try me.”
She settled back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Okay, smarty-pants. Where do I start?”
“From the beginning. I would hate to think that you’re setting me up for failure.” He winked and took another swig.
“All right. I have two murders and a missing person. Murder number one, Daniel Thornton, a five-year member of our prestigious most-wanted list, is discovered dead in a public park beneath a tree. Cause of death: He drowned.”
“But doesn’t that close your case?”
“Technically, but the drowning…”
“Please don’t tell me you’re forsaking my sex life to work on a closed case.”
Ming sighed. “Murder number two, Dr. Meredith Bancroft. Seemingly a different case; however, she is the doctor of murder victim number one’s girlfriend. Then we mosey on inside and we discover that, lo and behold, the girlfriend, Michelle Andrews, is missing from the mental institution. Now Andrews isn’t exactly Sandra Dee. She has a rap sheet a mile long.”
“Uh-huh.” Conan bobbed his head as he listened.
“So, what do you think so far?”
He turned up his bottle and took a deep gulp. “Is there a butler in this story?”
She leaned over and popped him on the arm. “Come on, genius. This isn’t Clue. I want to hear your fresh prospective.”
“Well, tell me a little bit more.”
Ming shrugged. “There are a few other characters. Andrews’s twin sister for one. Talk about a cold bitch.”
“Twin?” Conan frowned.
“Yeah. I did some digging, pushed a few envelopes, and peeked inside their adoption records. Apparently, this sister, Josephine Ferrell, was adopted by some well-to-do family and lived most of her life overseas. She was even a jazz slash blues singer for a couple of years. All in all, she’s just some rich kid who inherited a ton of money about a year ago when her father was killed in a plane crash.”
“I take it this Andrews wasn’t so lucky?”
“She wasn’t adopted by a rich family, but a pretty good suburbanite family took on the challenge...and failed. When Tyrese and I went to talk with Michelle’s adoptive mother, she made it pretty clear that she’d severed all ties with Michelle sometime ago. She didn’t show the least bit of interest in her daughter’s disappearance.”
“Ouch.”
“You’re telling me.” Ming thought about it for a moment. “This Josephine has a clean record, but she’s definitely a handful. I didn’t care for her.” She paused. “Actually, something about her made my skin crawl.”
“All right, all right.” He set his beer down, braided his fingers, and cracked his knuckles as a stalling tactic. “Okay, how about this. This Andrews chick killed her boyfriend or had him killed, I don’t know, maybe he slapped her around one too many times, and then she entered the mental institution to cover her butt. So if she’s arrested or found guilty, she can say that she was crazy at the time.”
“And the doctor?”
Conan shrugged. “I don’t know. I usually think better after sex.”
Ming shook her head. “No dice. You’re supposed to offer a fresh look at this. You didn’t fulfill your end of the bargain.”
“You mean if I come up with something that you haven’t thought of, I get to have sex?”
“You got it.”
Excited, Conan turned up his bottle and drained the rest of its contents. “All right. Something you haven’t thought of...okay. I think I got it. Michelle killed her boyfriend…”
“You said that already.”
He held up his hand. “Let me finish. She killed her boyfriend, and then convinced someone at the institution to help her escape. The doctor stumbled onto their escape so they killed her and then she went on to kill her twin sister so she could take her place.”
“Wait a minute. That’s three murders. Who said anything about three murders?”
Conan got to his feet, and then pulled Ming to hers. “Hey, have you ever seen the two sisters side by side?”
She blinked. “Well, no. But the staff at Keystone…”
“Saw them before the patient disappeared,” he reminded her. “How do you know that there isn’t another body out there to be discovered?” He began to rock against her. “Did I tell you about this fantasy I had of you the other day? You never took off your gun.”
“Switch places?” Ming said, frowning.
“Yep.” He nuzzled her neck. “You’re wearing my favorite cologne.”
“It’s Ivory soap.”
“Still my favorite.” He worked his way down her collarbone.
“How
did
they meet?”
“Who cares?” He slid open her top button. “Boy, your skin sure is soft.”
“Josephine lived most of her life in Paris,” She mused. “She’s rich, has everything going for her...how
does
Michelle fit in the picture?”
Conan worked his magic on a few more buttons.
“Someone like Michelle wouldn’t be too happy that her twin sister received the better end of the stick.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He slid off her shirt and fumbled with the hooks of her bra.
“That would mean I met Michelle, not Josephine.” She thought it over, and then shook her head. “Nothing in my notes supports your theory,” she continued on. “I mean, this is pretty thin.”
“Thin is good.” He tried tugging. “Was this thing so difficult last time?”
Ming wiggled away. “Baby, stop. I think I better call Tyrese.” She grabbed her shirt from the floor.
“But…”
“We’ve looked at everything else, it won’t hurt to check, this out.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and then rushed off to find the cordless phone.
“But…”
“Thanks, honey,” she called out over her shoulder. “I owe you one.”
“But...” Conan hunched his shoulders and slumped back in his chair at the table. “I want to have sex.”
Chapter 17
“When do you mean, ‘you can’t find her?’” Michelle Andrews seethed as she paced the green room inside the Ferrell estate. Josephine couldn’t have walked out of that hospital room in her own.” Her eyes flashed, and then narrowed. “If I didn’t know any better, I think you had something to do with her escape.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” Dr. Ambrose Turner retreated in the mist of her growing anger and took a nervous sip from his scotch on the rocks.
“Am I?” her voice dripped with venom. She closed in on him, and then circled as if contemplating to attack. “ Then how come my guys couldn’t find her when he went upstairs to her room?”
“We’ve been over this a thousand times.” Ambrose slammed his glass down on a nearby table. “I don’t know.”
Disbelief blanketed her face.
“I do know that you never mention killing Dr. Bancroft,” he snapped.
Finally, Michelle’s intense expression relaxed with a sinister smile. “I don’t like loose ends.” Their gazes clashed, while she added, “you should know that.”
Ambrose’s heart skipped a beat.
Michelle shrugged. “She saw my face.”
“And who is this D’Angelo? How do we know that we can trust him?”
“Don’t worry about D’Angelo. He’s a good friend of mine. Besides, it’s not like I could have gone in there myself. I would’ve been recognized, and you were too chicken to do the job.”
He stared at her and felt, once again, that he was in way over his head. However, it wasn’t easy untangling from Michele’s finely spun web. A few had died trying.
Michelle drew a deep breath and settled into a plush couch across the room. Her long shapely legs crossed about the leak, and Ambrose felt his anger ebb away.
“I still have a major problem,” she announced a pout. “I need to know whether you’re still on board or whether you need some further coaxing.”