Twilight (23 page)

“Wait a second,” she protested. How could he drop a bombshell like that and then hang up on her? Was he beginning to suspect Tico’s brother of pulling the trigger for Carlos? Is that what Tico suspected that had him behaving so defensively?

Unfortunately, Rick didn’t seem eager to share his speculations with her. The phone connection had already been broken.

“Well, darn,” she muttered, putting the receiver back on the hook.

Thank goodness she had lunch to prepare. That would keep her occupied for the next half hour or so, until Mrs. Fallon’s arrival. It had been weeks since she’d actually prepared a meal, not that chicken salad in half an avocado was exactly gourmet cuisine, but it kept her attention off the case for a bit.

She had just put the finishing touches on the plates when she glanced at the clock and realized it was already well past noon. By the time she’d filled the coffeemaker and turned it on, it was almost twelve-thirty. It wasn’t like the secretary to be late. She had always prided herself on being prompt, even when Ken had told her time and again, especially during blizzards, to take her time getting to work on icy roads.

Dana went to the living room and glanced across the grounds toward the church. There was no sign of Mrs. Fallon on the path. The first faint stirring of concern crept over her as she went back to the phone and dialed the office. The phone rang and rang, unanswered.

Panicking now, Kate grabbed her coat and keys and raced toward the church. The side door to the parish hall was standing wide open, despite the freezing temperature.

“Oh, dear God,” she murmured, sure now that something was terribly wrong.

“Mrs. Fallon!” she shouted as she ran toward the office. “Are you here? Mrs. Fallon, it’s Dana.”

The door to the outer office was ajar. After she opened it wide, a quick, sweeping glance revealed nothing amiss. The room was as tidy as ever. A cup half-full of coffee was cool to her touch. Had Mrs. Fallon left the building, though, that cup would have been rinsed and set neatly into her desk drawer. It was possible she’d gone into the restroom down the hall and fallen ill, Dana speculated, then dismissed the idea. She would have taken the cup with her to wash.

Dana glanced to her left then and saw that the door to Ken’s larger office was closed. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she opened it, then cried out in shock.

Mrs. Fallon was sprawled unceremoniously across Ken’s desk. A bloodstain ran down her back from a bullet wound in the center. Fighting back nausea, Dana rushed to her, searching frantically for a pulse. There was none.

She hadn’t been dead long, though. Less than an hour, Dana guessed from her body’s temperature and based on the last time she’d spoken to her.

Tears welled up in her eyes. Mrs. Fallon would have hated the uproar that would ensue the moment the police came. She would have hated being the center of attention, especially in this undignified position. If she hadn’t known how critical it was to leave everything exactly as she’d found it, Dana would have straightened the woman’s dress and laid her carefully on her back.

Who would do such a thing? Who would kill a sweet, gentle woman who had never had a harsh word to say to a soul? There was no question that Mrs. Fallon’s death and Ken’s were linked. Why? Because she had known something, of course, and because she was going to share that with Dana today.

Was that it? Had someone learned that Mrs. Fallon was having lunch with Dana and feared what she might reveal? Only three people that Dana could think of knew about their plans—Kate, Detective O’Flannery and Rick.

It was the last that had her shuddering and weakened her knees so badly that she had to sit down. She calculated the time from the moment she’d spoken to him until she’d discovered the body. There had been time enough for him to make the trip, if only by the skin of his teeth. A desperate man would make sure it was enough time.

25

D
ana had to force herself not to think about Rick’s possible involvement in Mrs. Fallon’s murder. She reminded herself that suspicions and doubts were not evidence, and then tried to push him completely out of her head. If she were to dwell on Rick’s whereabouts right now, she would fall apart, and there was no time for that.

With every second that passed, the chances of someone else discovering Mrs. Fallon’s body with Dana herself in too close a proximity to it increased. She really didn’t want to have to explain her presence to anyone.

Before she called Detective O’Flannery, Dana wanted to see if she could find Ken’s calendar, the one Mrs. Fallon had kept for her own record of his daily schedule so she could pencil in appointments for him.

It wouldn’t have been in any obvious place in Ken’s office. She was confident of that, so she backed out of the room and gently closed the door, leaving it precisely as she’d found it.

To her disappointment a thorough examination of the secretary’s desk revealed nothing. Would Mrs. Fallon have put it with her purse to make sure she didn’t forget to bring it along? Or was she so fearful of its contents being discovered that she might have hidden it in the safe?

Dana prayed it wasn’t the latter. She didn’t know the combination, and though she’d had some experience with breaking into safes, it wasn’t a skill she’d actually perfected. She didn’t have time to try out her amateur technique right now. The purse was her only bet.

She knew that the secretary routinely changed her hiding place for it, from the supply closet to the filing cabinet in Ken’s office to her desk. Since she already knew it wasn’t in the desk, she took a deep breath and returned to Ken’s office to try the drawers in the file cabinet. There was no sign of either purse or calendar tucked behind the neat rows of folders. For the second time, she closed the door carefully behind her as she left.

The supply cabinet in the outer office was next. If the purse wasn’t in there, it was also possible that it had been stolen. Perhaps Mrs. Fallon had merely interrupted a thief, who’d panicked and shot her. Thieves were common enough in churches these days, though until now, St. Michael’s had been spared. Of course, most of them didn’t go out of their way to shoot an old woman in the back—especially when it was fairly obvious that she couldn’t have seen him with her back turned toward the outer office.

Dana tried the door to the supply cabinet and found it locked. No doubt Mrs. Fallon had the key in her pocket. Swallowing her distaste for the task, Dana retrieved the key. She was shaking uncontrollably by the time she returned to the cabinet.

She fumbled her first several attempts to unlock the door, but eventually she was able to get it open. Sure enough, there on the bottom shelf was Mrs. Fallon’s purse and under it, Ken’s calendar. Dana grabbed the daybook and ran.

Only when she was back at home with the calendar safely secreted away under her mattress did she call the police.

“Where are you now?” Detective O’Flannery asked when she told him what she’d discovered.

“At home. I didn’t want to touch anything in the office,” she explained dutifully.

“Good thinking,” he praised.

She might have felt guilty about her lie if he hadn’t sounded so darned condescending.

“Stay there,” he added. “I’m on my way.”

Within minutes, the church and the grounds were swarming with police. Detective O’Flannery, after a brief visit to the church, rang Dana’s doorbell. She had seen him coming and reluctantly opened the door before the second screeching chime could sound.

His gaze swept over her. “You okay?”

“Just peachy.”

He grinned and took her elbow. “Come on. Let’s go into the kitchen. You’ll feel better after you drink a nice, hot cup of tea.”

“I already have coffee made,” she protested.

“And I’ll drink that,” he said. “You need tea, preferably loaded with sugar.”

“When did you go into medicine?” she grumbled, but she found that she sat willingly enough and let the detective wait on her. He found the tea readily, indicating that he’d been observing her very closely on past visits. Just thinking about it made Dana jittery. She wondered how Kate was going to like being involved with a man who noticed every little detail. Maybe to her it would be a pleasant change, after being married to a man who had hardly noticed her at all.

When O’Flannery handed her the sweetened tea, Dana wrapped both hands around the cup, absorbing its warmth. She hadn’t realized how very chilled she was, chilled and heartsick.

“Better?” he asked eventually, his gaze steady.

Dana nodded, resisting the desire to squirm under his penetrating observation.

“Tell me what happened.”

She took a deep breath, then recited the information she’d been subconsciously preparing ever since she’d found the body. “I’d invited Mrs. Fallon to lunch.” She met his gaze. “You were here yesterday when I talked to her.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, I spoke to her again just before twelve, actually closer to eleven-thirty. Then I fixed lunch. When I had it on the table, I glanced at the clock and realized that she was almost a half-hour late.”

“And that’s unusual?”

“Very. We could have a foot of snow on the roads and Mrs. Fallon would be at her desk precisely at 9:00 a.m. She prided herself on punctuality. She thought it was a matter of courtesy and a tidy mind.”

He jotted down a note. “Okay. What did you do next?”

“I had a really bad feeling about it, so I called. When no one answered, I ran over to check on her. She wasn’t at her desk.”

“Was your husband’s office door open or closed?”

She thought of her repeated trips into that office. “Closed,” she said. “Just the way I left it for you.”

He’d been scribbling down her answers again, but his head jerked up at that. “Closed? It was open when we got there.”

Dana’s heart thundered wildly at that news. Had the killer still been there when she’d been in the office? Had he or she seen Dana steal the daybook? Or had someone else come along and stumbled on the murder scene, then fled in a panic?

“Think very carefully. Are you sure you closed it again?” O’Flannery demanded.

Again and again, actually. “I’m positive,” she said.

He grabbed his two-way radio and barked out an order to the officers at the church. Then he turned back to Dana.

“You didn’t see anyone? Hear anything?”

“Nothing,” she swore. “Believe me, I was so scared I think I would have jumped if a pin had dropped.”

“Did you notice any fresh footprints in the snow on your way over?”

“The snow’s been on the ground for days. The kids play out there sometimes. There’s no way to tell which footprints might be fresh.”

“Okay, then. After you saw the body, what did you do?”

“I checked for a pulse, then ran back here and called you.”

Unlike his response on the phone, this time he stared at her with blatant skepticism. “Isn’t there another phone around the church you could have used?”

Dana had figured he’d ask that, once he’d had time to think about it. She was ready with another dutiful recitation. “As far as I was concerned, the whole church was a potential murder scene. I didn’t want to disturb anything.”

He still appeared skeptical, but he let it pass. “Can you remember anything else? Anything that struck you as odd, before you ever got to that office?”

The question triggered a memory. “The side door was open,” she said at once. “I had my key with me, but I didn’t have to use it. No one uses that door except those of us with keys. It’s a fire exit. It’s kept locked from the outside. If it’s opened from the inside, it should set off an alarm.”

“But you never heard an alarm?”

“No.”

“Which means that more than likely whoever used that door before you had a key and used it to enter,” he said thoughtfully.

Dana felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It couldn’t have been Rick, then. It had to have been someone connected to the church, someone in that group of suspects she and Kate had already been considering. Lawrence Tremayne, for example.

As if she’d conjured him up, the church elder came bursting into the kitchen just then. Apparently he’d seen no need to bother knocking or ringing the doorbell.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded indignantly. “I drop by the church to check on things, and I’m told that I can’t go inside.” He scowled at Dana, as if she’d had something to do with the presence of the police. “Is there some new scandal? Ever since your husband came here, we have been mired in controversy.”

Detective O’Flannery shot a sympathetic look at Dana, then slowly rose to his feet. He scowled at the irate man.

“I don’t believe I heard you knock,” he said quietly. “That’s breaking and entering.”

“Who the hell are you?” Tremayne asked. “This house belongs to the church, I can come in here anytime I feel it’s necessary.”

“Oh, really? I think there are a few laws on the books that might say otherwise, as long as Mrs. Miller is in residence.”

The detective was doing such a good job on her behalf that Dana saw no need to enter into the fray. She sat back and watched the two men go at it. Tremayne seemed only mildly intimidated by the mention of the law.

“I suppose you’re some legal flack she hired to protect her own interests the minute we told her we wanted her to get out. Well, you can just check the terms of the contract we had with her husband. He was expected to be out within thirty days of being dismissed or leaving for any reason. We have been more than lenient with Mrs. Miller, due to the tragic circumstances.”

O’Flannery tried hard, but he couldn’t entirely mask his disdain. “Actually, I’m Detective Dillon O’Flannery. And while I’m fascinated with the arrangement you had with Reverend Miller, it’s hardly any of my business. And you would be?”

The color washed right out of Lawrence Tremayne’s face. He seemed to be having a difficult time recalling his name, so Dana supplied it.

“Ah, yes,” O’Flannery said. “I’ve heard quite a lot about you. In fact, I’ve left several messages at your office. Don’t you check in?”

“How I run my business is no concern of yours,” Tremayne said scathingly.

“We’ll see about that,” O’Flannery replied. “In the meantime, perhaps you’d like to wait in the living room while Mrs. Miller and I conclude our business.”

The church elder didn’t take kindly to being summarily dismissed. He huffed and turned on his heel.

“Mr. Tremayne?” O’Flannery said.

“Yes?”

“In case there’s any doubt in your mind, that wasn’t a request, that was an order. Don’t even think about budging out of that living room.”

Tremayne stared at him, practically quivering with indignation. “You’re actually detaining me?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m sure, as an official of the church, you’ll want to cooperate, won’t you?”

“Cooperate in what? More of this damnable mess that Miller left behind?”

O’Flannery started to reply, but Dana shot him an oh-please-let-me look. He nodded.

“They’re investigating a murder,” she told him, her gaze locked on Tremayne’s smug face for any change in expression that might betray him. “Mrs. Fallon has been killed.”

To her deep regret, his shocked reaction seemed genuine. In fact, his eyes practically bugged out of his head.

“Mrs. Fallon is dead?” he asked, his normally forceful tone gone. In fact, he sounded a little lost.

“I found her body earlier,” Dana told him.

He stared at her, looking truly shattered. “Oh, my God, this is terrible, just awful,” he murmured, then looked at O’Flannery. “Who would do such a thing? I have to tell the others. They’ll want to be here.”

“No,” O’Flannery said. “Any notifying that gets done for the time being will be done by me. If you’ll just go into the other room and wait, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

All of the fight seemed to have drained out of the other man. He simply nodded. “Yes, yes, of course. Whatever will help.”

When Tremayne had gone, O’Flannery looked at Dana. “What did you think?”

“I think he was stunned.”

“Me, too. Unfortunately, there’s nothing on the books that lets me run a man in just because he’s an arrogant jerk.”

“He does have a key to that exit, though. And he knew the combination to the safe,” Dana reminded him. “Maybe he’s also a consummate actor.”

“Maybes don’t win convictions. You sit tight, okay? Let me go see if I can pump any additional information out of him.”

“Can’t I sit in?”

“Not a chance.” He grinned. “Of course, if you happened to be passing nearby and eavesdropped, there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it.”

She returned his grin. “You know, you may turn out to be okay after all.”

“Put in a good word for me with Kate, that’s all I ask.”

Dana doubted Kate needed any good words from her on the subject of the sexy detective. She seemed smitten enough, as it was. Besides, the man needed to worry a little about his prospects.

“We’ll see,” she said.

He frowned at the lack of commitment, but he didn’t argue with her. When she rose to follow him, he warned, “Stay out of sight and keep quiet.”

“You’ll never know I’m there,” she promised.

“I will,” he said. “Just see to it that Tremayne doesn’t.”

Dana tiptoed into the dining room and crept along the wall, remaining just out of Tremayne’s line of vision from his position on the sofa on the same side of the living room. To her everlasting regret, O’Flannery kept his voice pitched deliberately low. She couldn’t hear half of the questions he asked, but she had no problem at all with Tremayne’s responses. He bellowed most of them, growing more and more outraged with each apparent hint that he had access to several crucial pieces of information related to both Ken’s murder and now Mrs. Fallon’s.

He had just leapt up and declared an end to the interview when Dana felt a hand close over her shoulder. She whirled around and came face-to-face with Rick. Her heart ricocheted around in her chest like a Ping-Pong ball.

“You scared me to death,” she muttered.