Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahil 02] (7 page)

Francesca backed up discreetly as Bragg spoke. He was angry, quite obviously, and she was no fool—she knew his anger had less to do with being roused out of bed to solve a murder than with finding her there with the victim. It was like waiting for a tornado to strike and all the while watching it coming.

Was he concerned for her—or merely irritated?

He gave her a very dark look and approached the victim, squatting down beside him and clearly looking at the head wound. “I am waiting, Francesca,” he said, not looking up.

“Very well!” Somehow she threw her hands up in the air. “As I was leaving the Garden a woman pressed a card with a note into my hand, quite desperately, begging me for help. I was with my parents and I could not read the note until I returned home. Her name is Georgette de Labouche, and she lives here. She did not say what she wanted, but the note was quite clear—she begged me to come here immediately, tonight.”

Bragg had easily retrieved Randall’s wallet from his trousers and now stood, glancing through it. “So you stole out of your parents’ house at the midnight hour to meet a stranger, merely because she gave you a note asking you to do so?” He stared at the white calling cards in his hand. His expression briefly changed, but Francesca could not fathom the light that flitted through his topaz eyes.

“She sounded desperate, Bragg,” Francesca said nervously. “How could I deny her?”

He faced her. “Very easily, actually. Did it not occur to you that this could be a trick of some sort, or a trap? And where is Miss de Labouche?”

“She is upstairs, and yes, of course I considered the unsavory possibility—as remote as it seemed—that this might be a trap.”

“Did you touch
anything,
Francesca?” Bragg asked, turning over the wallet.

She prayed he would not notice the bloodstains. “No.” And she felt her cheeks heating.

“There is blood on your shoes. There is blood on the wallet,” he said, remaining calm. But his gaze was piercing.

She grimaced, uncertain of what to say, what to do. She did not like lying, but she did not like being put on the carpet this way, either.

He waited, his patience vast.

“Yes!” she cried. “Of course I peeked into his wallet!” Should she tell him she had taken Calder Hart’s card from it? But it was her very best lead!

“It is a crime to interfere with a criminal investigation,” he said less softly.

“I know, and I am so sorry, but after the intruder I could not seem to help myself!”

“The intruder?” Bragg asked sharply.

Francesca nodded eagerly. “Bragg, shortly after Joel left, someone entered the house. A man. I did not get a good look at him, as I was hiding in the kitchen after going there to make sure any back doors were locked. But he clearly went up the hall, saw the body, said not a word, except for a single curse, and he left. Just like that.” She was breathless, having spoken far too rapidly.

“Christ,” Bragg said. He slapped the wallet down onto the low table before the couch and paced to her, confronting her. “What if that was the killer? Jesus, Francesca, why do you have to put yourself directly in the face of danger, time after time? Will you ever learn?”

She knew she was wide-eyed. His proximity was doing two things to her: it was increasing her anxiety and increasing her tension. “But you do not care,” she heard herself say, and then she wished, fervently, that she could take the words back.

“What?” He stared. “Of course I care. You are my friend and the last thing I wish to do is attend your funeral!” His last sentence ratcheted up in volume until the final words were almost shouted. “I leave you at an orgiastic spectacle—which is bad enough. And then what do you do? You wind up in a stranger’s home with a fresh corpse! One day, you will drive some poor man insane with his fear for you!”

Francesca kept recalling now how he had broken their engagement for the morrow. She lifted both brows. “Well, at least you can be assured that that poor man will not be yourself.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled, turning away.

But he gripped her arm. “No, I want to know what that comment meant. And I want to know this instant.”

She faced him. “Commissioner, you are manhandling me.”

He dropped his hand. “I am sorry. But I had assumed you would return to a normal life, now that the Burton abduction has been solved.” He shook his head. “I can see that I have assumed wrongly.”

She said softly, “You should know me better than that, Bragg.”

He stared.

Then she said, “You can be irksome, too.”

His eyes widened. “I can be irksome?” 

“Yes.”

“And how is that?” He folded his arms across his broad chest.

“Well, when one plans one’s entire day over an event and then, quite summarily, that event is canceled, why, that is rather irksome, wouldn’t you agree?” Her tone was sugary, her smile sweet.

His hands found his hips. “I see. I see now what your temper is about. You are upset because I cannot take you driving tomorrow. It is a matter of your female disposition.” He started to smile.

“I have made other plans. And there is no such thing as a female disposition.”

“The library?” he suggested. “To study? For your self-exams?”

He was wisely ignoring the subject of female dispositions. Now she flushed. Only Connie and Evan knew that she secretly attended college, and once, when Bragg had almost caught her, she had told him she liked to test herself on the subjects she studied by herself. “I have other callers,” she said, a lie.

“Francesca, enough. I am sorry you do not understand the pressure I am under in my position as commissioner of police. I promise that one day we will have our outing.” He glanced at her a final time and turned back to the corpse. His shoulders seemed rigid now.

One day they would have their outing?
Francesca was disbelieving. Had she so misunderstood his intentions? It did not sound as if he had any interest in her at all; it did not sound as if he intended to court her, not now, not tomorrow, not
ever.

I must not be disappointed,
she managed, turning away.
I
have a case to solve, an important case, my first, and it is
murder.

“What did you take from the wallet, Francesca?” Bragg asked, somewhat wearily, now moving about the room, his gaze going everywhere.

“Nothing,” she lied. She shoved her disappointment aside. Of course, she would have to tell him about Calder Hart’s card, but maybe Hart would provide a clue and she would solve the case—first, without Bragg’s help. And never mind that she had somewhat fancifully imagined the two of them solving this case together.

“What happened when you arrived at the house?” Bragg asked, looking underneath seat cushions and pillows now.

Francesca walked away from him and the corpse and sat down in a far chair. “What are you looking for?” She could not help being curious.

“Often the killer leaves evidence behind, and often in a homicide that evidence is the weapon that was used to murder the victim.” He walked over to a table filled with photographs and bric-a-brac. “I shall not be surprised if we recover the murder weapon within half a city block of this house.”

Francesca filed away that interesting piece of information.

“Please tell me what happened when you arrived?” Bragg said, now looking in corners of the room and behind the single window’s draperies, which pooled on the floor.

“Miss de Labouche was quite distraught when I arrived,” Francesca said, wishing she could help him look for the gun. “She was unhappy that I had brought Joel,” she added.

He faced her, hands on his hips. “And how did our little ‘kid’ appear on the scene?”

“I do think he has mended his ways, Bragg,” Francesca said, in reference to Bragg labeling Joel a “kid,” which meant a child cutpurse.

He snorted. “So he just showed up here?”

“I sought him out. I was afraid to wander about the city alone.”

He smiled at her. It was an “I told you so” smile.

“The moment I arrived she showed me the body—then asked me to help her hide it,” Francesca said with wide and innocent-looking eyes, well aware of the reaction her dramatic statement would cause.

“What?” he exclaimed. “Jesus! And she is upstairs?” He started for the door.

“She did not do it, Bragg.” Francesca stood up. “She is—was—Randall’s mistress and she is afraid you will think she did it, which is why she was desperate to hide the body.”

“And you believe her? Francesca, you are too naive.”

“She was in the bath when she heard a shot ring out! With sex toys, I might add.”

That stopped him in his tracks. He looked at her and she looked back.

Francesca said, breathlessly, “I am merely repeating exactly what she told me.”

“I see.” He seemed somewhat flushed. Then, “Do you have any idea what you are talking about?”

She shook her head. “No. But she assured me the toys were not rubber ducks.”

He stared. And his stare was direct.

Francesca thought about the bathtub upstairs and the toys that might still be in it, devices that would give extra pleasure to their owner. She swallowed hard. “Do you know what she is talking about?” she heard herself ask.

“Yes. It is time to talk to Miss de Labouche.” He stalked out of the parlor.

She ran after him. “The murder occurred around seven o’clock this evening,” Francesca added to his broad shoulders.

He regarded her at the bottom of the stairwell. “So you have already interviewed the suspect?”

“I consider her a witness,” Francesca retorted.

“You are not a policeman,” Bragg said firmly. “And what you consider is neither here nor there. I mean it, Francesca,” he warned. “This case is
not
your affair.”

How many times would he hurt her feelings in one evening? she wondered. “I helped you solve the Burton Abduction,” she said, not as firmly. “You admitted so yourself.”

“Yes, you did. And for that I am forever grateful. But, and I do mean
but,
Francesca, you will
not
help me solve the Randall Killing; you will
not.”
His eyes blazed. “Not even if I have to keep you under lock and key in your home.”

She folded her arms across her breasts and did not rebut him.

“But what?” he demanded.

She couldn’t quite smile. “Miss de Labouche is my client,” Francesca said. Which wasn’t quite true, as their arrangement wasn’t quite official. But Francesca felt certain that they had an understanding; besides, Miss de Labouche would undoubtedly agree to retain her as a crime-solver if Francesca offered her services for free.

And she watched as the blood pressure Bragg had spoken of soared.

He bounded up the stairs ahead of her, without a word.

Francesca followed. On the second floor’s landing he whirled and they collided. “Go downstairs,” he said tightly.

She did not really want to fight. “Very well. But you do not have to be so mean-spirited, Bragg.”

His response was, “My hair has turned gray in the two weeks since we have met.”

Francesca smiled as he turned away; absurdly, she was somewhat pleased.

She heard him calling for Miss de Labouche. There was only one bedroom on top of the stairs, which was not unusual, as clearly this was a large townhouse that had been subdivided into several apartments. The lady of the house did not answer.

As Bragg finally pushed open the door to the bedroom, Francesca glanced into the separate bathing room. Signs of a hastily disrupted bath were everywhere: a small stool contained an open bottle of champagne and two glasses, one half-full, a towel lay in a heap upon the floor, and candles had been burned down to their wicks. The bathroom, while small, had been painted a dusky shade of pink, and it was quite pretty. A colorful painted screen was in one corner, and wall pegs contained several lacy peignoirs. There was no toilet, which was in an adjacent and separate chamber.

Francesca stared down. In the porcelain tub, a tub that stood on gilt claw feet, floating in the two inches of leftover water, was a large plastic object in a nondescript color. But there was absolutely nothing nondescript about its shape and there was no mistaking what it was meant to represent. As Francesca stared, she felt herself warm.

Good God. Now she understood.

.

“She isn’t here and there is a back stairs which leads to the kitchen—she is gone,” Bragg said darkly, pausing on the threshold of the bathroom.

“Oh,” Francesca said, backing out and brushing past him in her haste.

So that was what a sex toy was. She simply could not get over it. Her mind spun.

“Oh, Christ,” Bragg said, stepping out of the bathroom.

She could not look him in the eye. “Well, she was most definitely in the bath.”

“That does not mean she did not kill her lover,” Bragg returned, far too evenly.

Still not looking at him, Francesca poked her head inside the bedroom, which was a red room with many Chinese paintings on the walls, gold velvet draperies, and an Oriental screen. The bed was large, also done up in red, and it dominated the room. It was perfectly made up.

Francesca left the bedroom, glancing briefly down the back stairs. In the dark, and in her fear, she had never noticed stairs that led to and from the kitchen. “She was in the bath, Bragg,
exactly
as she said she was,” Francesca said.

He sighed, placing his hand on her shoulder and guiding her downstairs, the back way. Voices could now be heard in the foyer in the front of the apartment. “Francesca, you are young. And genteel. Perhaps she bathed
after
killing her lover.”

Bragg was one of the smartest men she knew; he was also very perceptive. Surely he had seen that plastic object floating in the bath? She said, harshly, “She bathed with her toy, Bragg.”

They had reached the kitchen. Francesca turned on the light as Bragg repeated, “As I said, perhaps she bathed after killing Randall.”

Francesca finally understood his meaning and she stared. “But that is sickly!”

“Yes, it is.” He left her standing in the kitchen as he went through the dining alcove and into the front hall.