Cuff Me (6 page)

V
incent Moretti’s adult life had always involved two infallible constants:

(1) his legendary “whodunit” hunch

(2) Jill Henley

It was just his fucking luck that both of those things would give up on him at the exact same time, leaving him feeling a little lost.

And a lot pissed.

When Vin and Jill had gotten the early-morning call about a body at Lenora Birch’s house, Vin hadn’t even felt a flicker of warning that the case was going to be an elusive one.

In fact, he’d actually been fairly damn confident that it would be an easy one. The more high-profile cases usually were. The more famous the victim, the more people who wanted to be famous by association.

Even if that association was murder.

Vincent had cockily assumed he’d have a solid sense of their guy—or gal—by the time the news hit the media.

They’d bring the suspect in for questioning, and that’s when Vincent generally passed the baton to Jill.

If his skill was in figuring out who did it, her skill was coaxing—or tricking—them into confession.

But from the second Vincent had stepped foot in the stunning home of Lenora Birch on Eighty-First and Fifth, he’d known something was wrong.

The scene was clean. Too clean.

He got no immediate vision of what must have happened. No gut sense of how the legendary actress came to be lying dead on her foyer floor.

He hadn’t panicked. By the time they talked to all the key players, he’d have something to work with.

But he hadn’t.

Nothing from the utterly useless housekeeper.

He hadn’t gotten the flicker from Lenora’s sister.

Nor Lenora’s latest boyfriend.

Nor her ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands.

Hadn’t gotten it from her longtime best friend and legendary Broadway actress.

By the time he and Jill had called it a day with some much-needed caffeine, not only did Vincent have
zero
sense of who might have pushed Lenora over her staircase railing, he did not have an idea where to
start
.

Ignorance was not bliss.

Adding to Vin’s nagging sense of unease was the woman currently sitting across the table from him.

He didn’t know what had compelled him to ask Jill out for drinks.

They did it often enough, but usually it was a natural continuation of their day when they were still knee-deep in work talk.

Today had been different.

Today they’d both been exhausted, frustrated from the lack of leads and lost in their own heads.

He should have left it at coffee. Let them both get enough caffeine to make it through the remaining hours of the day, then dropped Jill off to call her fiancé, while he decompressed with a beer and whatever was on TV from the comfort of his couch.

But then he’d come out of the restroom at Starbucks, seen her lost in thought, smiling to herself, and he’d felt a surge of panic.

Panic that he didn’t know what she was thinking.

Panic that he didn’t know what was making her smile. (Although he was terrified that he
did
know.)

Panic that he was losing her.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She was supposed to have come back from Florida feeling like
he
had that day he impatiently counted the hours until he saw her at the welcome-home party.

She was supposed to feel what he was feeling.

If he only knew what that was.

Jill cradled a beer in her left hand, her phone in her right as she scrolled through. Then she winced and glanced up, holding her phone up to him. “Story broke.”

He reached for a handful of the complimentary bar snacks the pub offered to customers. “Took them long enough.”

“Right?” Jill said, turning her attention back to her phone. “I’m surprised the media didn’t beat us to the
scene. How the hell did this stay quiet all day in the age of Twitter?”

“Lenora Birch is old-school. Way old-school. Everyone we interviwed today was in the geriatric set. You really think they’re on Twitter spreading the news?”

“Everyone’s on Twitter,” Jill muttered, never looking up from her phone.

“I’m not.”

She snorted. “Please. You can barely maintain a relationship with one person, much less hundreds of followers.”

Vin sat back in his chair, and damn if he didn’t feel a little… wounded.

It was strange, considering how long they’d been working together, but Vin had never really given conscious consideration to what Jill thought of him. Their relationship had always been both horribly complicated and wonderfully simple.

Those two elements canceled each other out so that when it came right down to it, Jill and Vincent were beyond definition.

They simply
were
.

He’d always thought they’d shared a secret understanding that the fact that what was between them couldn’t be named was precisely what made it theirs.

Now, he was realizing that this had been one-sided. That all this time, he’d merely been her colleague while she’d been his… everything.

“Can you put the damn phone away,” he heard himself snap.

Jill glanced up in surprise, and he saw guilt flash across her face. She immediately locked her phone and set it facedown on the table.

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

Her apology was simple. Sincere.

And yet it did nothing to mollify him. He didn’t want Jill to pay attention to him just because he begged her to. He didn’t want to have to compete for Jill’s attention at all. He wanted—

Fuck
. He didn’t have a clue.

He reached for his beer, then instead changed course and grabbed one of the laminated menus at the back of the table.

“You hungry?”

“Always,” she said. “Nachos? Wings? Ooh, we could split a burger!”

Vin lowered the menu and gave her a look. “One does not
split
a burger.”

“One can and one
should
when the burger is as big as it is here,” she said.

In the end, they ordered nachos for her and a burger for him.

“I’m not sharing,” he said, pointing his newly refilled beer at her.

“Of course not,” she said soothingly, picking through all of the nuts to get at the almonds and leaving the peanuts for him.

Vin grunted. He knew that voice. He was definitely going to end up sharing that burger.

“I must be out of practice,” Jill said with a tired sigh. “Because for the life of me, I don’t know where we start tomorrow with this case.”

“Me either,” he admitted.

She lifted an eyebrow. “I
wondered
why I wasn’t getting your smug, I-know-it-was-you vibe all day. I thought I was rusty on my Vincent-reading skills too.”

You are
, he wanted to say.

But that wasn’t fair. Not really.

He couldn’t expect her to read him, when he didn’t have a read on himself.

He didn’t know what he wanted her to look at him and see. He only knew that something was very, very wrong. Starting with the fact that she was going to marry another man in…

“When’s the wedding?” he asked.

Jill’s beer glass froze halfway to her mouth, and she lowered it without taking a sip. “So I guess we’re not talking about the case then.”

He popped a handful of nuts in his mouth. “We’re off the clock.”

“That hasn’t stopped us from talking about work before.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you avoiding the question?”

Jill puffed out her cheeks and then slowly blew out a breath the way she always did when she was annoyed. He took a sip of his own beer and studied her.

Interesting.

Interesting that she should be annoyed about a topic that should send her over the moon.

And she’d been
plenty
happy to talk about wedding stuff with the women of his family last night, so it was obviously just with him that she didn’t want to discuss it.

He leaned forward. “Come on. If you can’t give me a date, at least promise me I’ll get to be a bridesmaid.”

She smiled, and he was relieved to see that it reached her eyes. “You’re going to look so pretty in pink.”

He winced. “Don’t tell Nonna that. She’ll make it her
life’s mission to get me into a pink bow tie. Seriously though, when’s the big day?”

“We don’t know yet.” She fiddled with her glass. “It’s all been happening so fast.”

“You think?”

She glanced up. “If you don’t approve, you can just say so.”

“Who said I didn’t approve?”

She gave him a look. “Your scowls. Your grunts. Your silences.”

He shrugged. “I’m always like that. Even when I’m happy.”

This time it was Jill who leaned forward. “So you
are
happy?”

“You are so damn annoying,” he muttered.

She sat back in her seat and studied him, then leaned forward again, her face all kinds of animated. “Okay, two things. First, that is
such
a pathetic non-answer. I’m disappointed in you. Second, it doesn’t even make
sense
considering earlier today you accused me of not being happy.”

He leaned even closer. “Speaking of non-answers, you didn’t exactly rush to reassure me that you’re over the moon about your fiancé.”

He drew out the last word, and it came out just slightly mocking.

She didn’t look away, but he had the sense that she wanted to. “I answered.”

“So you
are
happy?” he asked, turning her own game around on her.

Someone who didn’t know her as well might not have noticed the half-second pause. But he noticed.

“I’m happy,” she said.

“Uh-huh. So just to be clear, you’re one hundred percent happy to be marrying this Tom guy, whom you’ve known for all of three months?”

“Absolutely. Very happy.”

He studied her face for several seconds, then shrugged. “Then it’s like I said. I’m happy if you’re happy.”

That was mostly true.

“You don’t mean it.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me if the news of you marrying some tassel-shoed millionaire isn’t the impetus I need to turn into Mr. Smiley.”

“What
is
the impetus you’d need then?” Jill snapped back. “Because I’ve known you for years, and I’ve yet to see a damn thing that makes you feel anything other than irritable.”

Vincent took a sip of his beer, annoyed to realize that this was the second time in one evening that he’d felt an uncomfortable sting at her words. Vin had no illusions about the type of man that he was. He knew he was prickly and guarded and too intense.

But for some reason, he’d always thought that Jill saw past all that—beyond it. He’d always thought that Jill
got
him. Liked him for who he was.

But now—now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she didn’t know him.

Because he sure as hell wasn’t sure that he knew her anymore.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked quietly.

“Like what?”

“With so much… dislike.”

“I’m not.”

Jill threw her hands up in frustration. “I’m so glad you asked me to drinks so that you could alternate between telling me how unhappy I am about my engagement and then not talking to me at all.”

“I’ve never been particularly talkative,” he said slowly. “Never seemed to bother you before.”

“Well, it bothers me now,” she said, mostly to herself.

They were saved from a full-blown argument by the arrival of their food, and before he realized what he was doing, Vin was cutting off part of his burger—not quite half, but at least a third—and was putting it on a side plate and sliding it across the table.

He watched her face, feeling almost shy… wondering if she would accept the shared burger for what it was. A peace offering.

And from the sunny smile she gave him, he warmed just a little. She understood.

But the warmth vanished as quickly as it arrived with her next words.

“You asked about a wedding date. We’re thinking June.”

June. That was in four months.

The fry and ketchup in his mouth suddenly didn’t taste as good.

“That’s fast,” he said eventually, because he had to say something. “You got a hankering to be a June bride or something?”

“Not really.” She fiddled with a burned corn chip on the edge of the nacho platter and didn’t look at him. “Tom thinks we should get married before we move.”

Vincent’s burger paused in midair, halfway to his face. He slowly put it back down again.

“Move?” His voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Move where?”

She was slow to meet his eyes. “Tom’s opening up a new property. It’ll take up all his time, and we want to spend our first months as newlyweds together, so—”

“Jill,” he interrupted. “Move. Where?”

She licked her lips. “Chicago. We’re moving to Chicago in the summer.”

It was the second time in twenty-four hours that Jill Henley had dropped a bomb on his head, but this time, his subconscious must have been prepared.

Because no sooner were the words out of her mouth, then Vincent
knew
.

Knew that there was no way he was letting Jill Henley walk away from him. Walk away from them, and what they had.

Whatever that was.

He only knew that the thought of her moving away…

… It felt like he couldn’t breathe.

E
ven before Vincent and Jill had become partners—before they’d even known of the other person’s existence—they’d both lived in Astoria, Queens.

Manhattan rent was outside of a comfortable cop’s salary (unless you were like Vin’s brothers and had a grandmother hooked up with rent control).

Brooklyn was
slightly
more affordable—or at least it had been, back when Jill was looking for her first New York apartment a few years ago—but then she’d toured the cozy one-bedroom in Astoria and she’d felt…

Home.

Sure, it was a longer-than-desirable commute into the city, and yeah, there was nothing trendy or particularly sexy about it. It wasn’t the New York City one saw on TVs or the movies, or even the gritty NYC one saw in the
other
types of movies.

Astoria was one of those New York neighborhoods that inspired loyalty in its residents for reasons they could never quite explain to nonresidents. You either lived there and
got it
… or you didn’t.

But Vincent? He got it.

Jill knew this because he, like her, had never voiced interest in moving anywhere else, even when their most recent raise might have allowed for it.

And living just a few minutes away from her partner had other perks, like easy carpooling.

The morning after her and Vincent’s gorge on nachos and burgers and beer, Jill dropped into the passenger seat of the car with a grumpy huff.

“Caffeine,” she said. “I need
all
the caffeine.”

She jumped a little in surprise when a travel mug appeared in front of her face. She started to push his wrist aside. “No, not
your
coffee. You know I don’t like it all thick and tarlike.”

It was one of their many differences. Vin preferred his coffee blacker than his wardrobe. Jill preferred cream. And sugar. Preferably mass amounts of both.

“You know, all this time together, and I never realized how you drink your coffee,” Vincent said in a sarcastic voice.

Jill turned to look at him.

He looked… the same.

Same aviator glasses, same simply styled black hair. Same dark shirt, same leather jacket, same dark pants.

But something was different today.

She narrowed her eyes as he extended the mug to her once more with his right hand. And this time she registered that he had a second mug in his left hand.

One for him…

And one for her?

“Don’t worry,” he said, giving it a little shake. “I dumped in all sorts of cavity-causing goodness for you.”

“Thanks?” Jill said. She accepted the mug, taking a tentative sip. It was good. Really good. Not just a packet of sugar and a splash of milk good, but like…

“Is this vanilla flavored?” she asked, staring down at the mug.

Vincent still hadn’t pulled away from the curb outside of her apartment. “French vanilla if you want to get fancy.”

She shifted in her seat to stare at him. “This is your backup travel cup, which tells me you brought this from home, not a coffee shop. Which begs the question… why does a man who thinks anything other than black coffee is a sin have French vanilla coffee creamer at his apartment?”

He looked at her over the rim of his own mug. Took a sip without a response.

She sat up straighter. “Did you meet a woman while I was gone? A sweet-flavored-coffee-loving woman?”

Vincent merely held her gaze, and Jill kept her smile in place, but she also wanted to shake him. To demand that he answer.

“I already told you I’m not seeing anyone,” he said.

Jill felt her shoulders relax a little; told herself that it wasn’t because she didn’t want Vincent to have met someone. Of
course
she wanted her partner to meet a nice woman. To settle down and—

She pushed the thought aside. Lifted her mug. “Explain.”

He shrugged before putting his mug in the cup holder and turning the ignition. “I stopped at the store last night for eggs and paper towels. Then I saw the foofy coffee
creamer stuff, knew that you rarely get your ass out of bed in time to make your own coffee…”

Vincent broke off with a shrug as he began to drive, and Jill could only stare at him in puzzlement.

“Six years we’ve been doing this,” she said, “and you’ve never made me coffee.
Brought
me coffee, yes. Picked up a cup for both of us while we’re working OT, sure. But this…”

She held up her mug and stared at it.

Vincent made an irritable sound like he wanted to rip the mug away from her, but then he surprised her—again—by changing the conversation once more.

“How’d you sleep?”

Jill sighed and took a sip of coffee—a big one. “Didn’t. Not much anyway.”

“Me either.”

She tapped her nails against the cup, stared out the window. “I’d forgotten about this part. Forgot that it’s always like this on the first night of a new case. Especially one that doesn’t have so much as a hint of a clue.”

“Same.”

Jill pivoted her head to look at him. “I think we should start with the scene. There’s got to be something we missed. Maybe run through a couple scenarios…”

“I was thinking we start with questioning the sister,” he said. “Her prints are all over the place.”

“Yeah, because it’s her
sister
,” Jill said. “The housekeeper said Dorothy was at Lenora’s all the time.”

“Still want to question her,” he said.

If Vincent bringing her coffee had shocked the hell out of Jill, it was nothing compared to the jolt his next sentence had on her:

“If you’re okay with that,” he said slowly, flicking his eyes to her.

Her mouth dropped open. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my partner?”

He said nothing, and she punched his arm. “No, seriously. I don’t even recognize this thoughtful guy who brings me caffeine and asks my permission before interviewing someone.”

“We’re partners,” he said roughly. “Of course I need your permission.”

Jill laughed. “Since when? Since when have you done anything other than bark out directives and expect me to go along?”

He sighed as he rubbed a hand over his hair. “That makes it sound like I don’t respect you.”

“Yeah it does, doesn’t it?” she teased.

But then her smile slipped, because he looked troubled.

She hadn’t meant it that way. It was true that Vin could be an ass, but he was never chauvinistic. Had never made her feel like less than an equal despite his penchant for taking charge when he had a hunch.

“For the record,” she said, “whenever you do utter your grumpy directives… I trust you.”

That too was true.

Sure, his bossiness had grated in their first months together when they were trying to figure out their rhythm, but over the years she realized that he’d never boss her around for the sake of being bossy.

When he insisted they do something, it was always with good reason. The man was very nearly always right, which was why…

“Okay then,” Jill said with a shrug. “The sister it is.”

“Good. She already knows we’re coming.”

Jill smiled, and they fell silent for the rest of the drive to Lenora’s sister’s place.

To a non–New Yorker, Dorothy Birch and her now deceased sister were practically neighbors. Dorothy lived on Eighty-Ninth and First, Lenora had lived on Eighty-First and Fifth.

On a map, they were close.

But in New York reality? They were worlds apart.

Not that Dorothy Birch lived in a hovel, by any means. Her Yorkville apartment building was a lovely prewar mid-rise with a doorman and carefully laid flowers outside.

It just lacked the splendor and prestige of Lenora’s Upper East Side brownstone.

As Jill stepped out of the car and looked up at the building, she wondered how much that distinction bothered Dorothy.

Yesterday when they’d come to deliver the sad news of her sister’s passing, Dorothy had been as distraught as one might expect.

Disbelieving at first. Followed quickly by shock.

Jill wondered if Dorothy had moved into grief yet. That was always the worst part… seeing the moment a family member moved beyond the shock and into the heart-wrenching reality that their loved one was really, truly gone.

It was easily one of the worst parts of Jill and Vincent’s job.

Vincent came to stand beside her. “What’re you thinking?”

Jill tilted her head back to look at him. “Why her? Why start with the sister?”

He shrugged. “Only surviving relative, save for the ex-husbands.”

Jill blew out a breath. “So no magical Spidey sense? Not one of your legendary hunches?”

Vincent shook his head. “Nope. Just good old-fashioned by-the-book investigating.”

“That’s the worst kind,” Jill muttered as she followed him into the building.

Dorothy Birch had indeed moved into the grief stage, if her puffy eyes and red nose were any indication, but she was remarkably poised as she carried a tray over to the coffee table.

Jill sat on the love seat and watched the older woman carefully.

Like her more famous sister, Dorothy Birch was tall, slim, although not frail, despite the fact that Jill knew her to be sixty-six.

Two years younger than Lenora had been when someone had shoved her to her death.

“You two are certainly up and at ’em early,” Dorothy said with a faint smile as she set down an antique gold tray on the table.

Dorothy had told them she was making tea for herself, and although she’d offered to make a pot of coffee as well, Jill hadn’t wanted to burden the grieving woman so she’d accepted tea on behalf of herself and Vincent as well.

A fact Vin was clearly not pleased about, judging from the glare he gave Jill when, with a sweet smile, she handed him his dainty teacup.

His big hand dwarfed the feminine-patterned china as he accepted it.

“Ms. Birch—”

“Dorothy, please,” the woman said as she settled onto the love seat opposite Jill. Vincent retained his standing place against the window. He’d never been good at sitting.

“Dorothy,” Jill said sincerely, “let us just say again how sorry we are for your loss.”

“Thank you.” The woman’s lips pressed together firmly, a trick that Jill knew could be quite effective in staving off a crying bout. “I don’t—Lenora is all I have. Had.”

“You never married?” Vincent asked rudely from behind Jill.

It was all Jill could do not to roll her eyes at his lack of sensitivity.

But Dorothy merely gave him a mild look. “No, Detective. Never married.”

“But Lenora was,” Vincent pressed. “Several times.”

Dorothy’s smile was genuine. “Yes, four times. Engaged two more than that, although those never came to pass. She always kept our last name though. Never took her husband’s on account of her being so famous.”

“Did you resent her for that?”

Oh, for God’s sake.
Jill could shake the man.

“Well, resentment would have been pointless, now, wouldn’t it?” Dorothy said, leaning back, lost in thought. “Some say my sister was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe in terms of her legendary appeal for men.”

“That must have been—”

Jill cut Vincent off before he could further insult a grieving woman who’d been nothing but cooperative and kind thus far.

“Did Lenora keep in contact with any of her exes?” Jill asked.

They’d spoken with Lenora’s latest beau yesterday. A wealthy widower who’d only recently moved to the city from Dallas.

Of everyone they’d spoken with, he’d been the most visibly upset by the news. Really, truly upset. And as they weren’t married, he had no financial motivation to kill her. Even if the man weren’t loaded himself—and he was definitely loaded—he had to have known that he wouldn’t earn a penny from her death.

But money could be a powerful motivator for her
exes
. If she was on good terms with any of them, there was always a chance they could end up in her will.

“Oh, goodness no,” Dorothy said with a dismissive wave. “As skilled as Lenora was at drawing men to her, she was equally adept at driving them away when she tired of them.”

“Tired of them?” Vincent asked. “They’re not shoes.”

Jill silently echoed the question.

It was an odd way of describing a failed relationship. It spoke of a woman who entered relationships to stave off boredom, or a woman prone to fits and starts of passion as little more than a whim.

“No, of course men aren’t shoes, Detective.” Dorothy took a sip of her tea. “But for Lenora, they may as well have been.”

“She was… fickle?” Jill asked, searching for the right word.

Dorothy’s lips pursed. “More like… Hmm, how do I say this? Lenora was always very aware of how removed she could be from other people. Men in particular. She tended to throw herself into one relationship after another in hopes of connecting with someone.”

“Did she ever? Connect, I mean?” Jill asked, taking a sip of her own tea to be polite. She didn’t have to turn around to know that Vincent probably hadn’t touched his.

“Oh, for a time she would. A few months. A couple years, with some of them. But they always wanted more than she had to give. They’d get jealous. Demanding. Needy. And that’s when Lenora would move on.”

“So it was always her that ended the relationship?” Jill asked.

“Generally, yes.”

Jill silently cursed.

It wasn’t ideal for crime solving. She’d hoped for one ex in particular that had been discarded. It would be a starting point. But from the way it was looking, they had four ex-husbands, two ex-fiancés, and an unknown number of unnamed lovers that could have been wooed and discarded by the famous Hollywood siren.

“Well except for Clayton Wallace,” Dorothy said as she pulled a delicate macaroon off a china plate and took a tiny nibble.

“Clayton Wallace?” Vin asked.

“Her third husband,” Jill said.

She’d done her homework last night when she couldn’t sleep.

“And he was different from the others?” Vincent prompted, the impatience in his voice seeping through as it always did.

Dorothy carefully wiped her fingers on a cloth napkin. “Only in that he was the only man who ever dumped Lenora.”