Indecent Danger (Danger Incorporated Book 3) (20 page)

“But it does clear up one thing,” Aubrey offered as she kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa, her legs tucked underneath her. “Martin couldn’t possibly have done this because he’s in jail awaiting arraignment. Since the two deaths are probably linked I would say that’s a compelling argument for releasing him.”

Travis’s chest puffed out with pride. “That’s my girl. You’re starting to think like a detective. You’re absolutely right. If Iris died from foul play then Martin should be cleared from both deaths.”

Her answering smile made his heart ache in his chest.

Shane groaned and rolled his eyes. “Can you two cool the goo-goo eyes and kisses for just a few minutes? Should I leave you two alone?”

Aubrey grabbed one of the throw pillows from the couch and smacked Shane right in the face, much to his shock. “We were not kissing, although I’ll admit to the goo-goo eyes. But you can’t blame a girl. I was warned the Anderson men were lethal but I still couldn’t resist.”

She always knew what to say and this occasion was no different. Shane grinned and practically beamed with pride. He enjoyed his reputation as a ladies’ man. Hell, he reveled in it.

“So back to the issue at hand.” Travis steered the conversation to today’s events. “It looks like we need to find out some details about Iris’s death but I don’t think Prather is going to be very forthcoming. He already has a shit attitude about pretty much everything.”

Leaning forward, the throw pillow on his lap, Shane waggled his eyebrows as if he was the villain in a silent movie. “I’m already on that, cousin. There were reporters there and I talked to one of them who would be willing to give us some information as long as we promise to give him an exclusive regarding Anderson Industries. He says he has an in with the forensic team and the coroner. I think he’s probably the best shot we have to learn anything.”

“Not one lead has panned out,” Travis groused, getting two more beers from the refrigerator and a soda for Aubrey. He handed the longneck bottle to Shane before opening his own. “You didn’t learn shit in New York. The bookie wanted Bruce alive so he’d get paid. We can’t find a photo of Martin’s cufflinks the night of the party and no one we talk to seems to know a damn thing and yet everyone has a motive.”

“Call Jason and West.”

Aubrey’s soft voice pulled Travis out of his frustrated misery. “What? Why?”

She looked almost afraid to answer as if he would be offended. “Because they’re cops and they’ll know what to do when we hit a dead end like this.”

Shane grinned and slapped his thigh with glee. “Damn, woman, you’re right. We’re so entrenched in this mess we can’t see what the hell we’re doing. I’ll get one of them on the phone right now.”

“At least one of us is thinking straight.”

Aubrey scooted onto Travis’s lap and laid her head on his shoulder. His pulse sped up at the delightful female that was currently nestled against him. “You need to give yourself a break. First you were trying to clear me and now Martin. You’re emotionally invested in this case and that doesn’t make thinking clearly easy.”

She’d brought up a salient point. Was he blinded by his respect and admiration for his friend? Martin had plenty of motive to kill Bruce but Travis honestly couldn’t imagine the man doing it. If he couldn’t keep an open mind and make logical decisions he wasn’t going to do any better than Detective Prather.

Shane fished his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Jason. Or West. Wait, which one do you think will answer their phone?”

Travis had no doubt at all. “West. He told me that he keeps it on twenty-four-seven. It’s a cop thing.”

“But he’s the mayor now.” Shane was pressing buttons on his phone.

“I’m guessing the habit hasn’t died.”

It hadn’t. West picked up on the second ring and Shane put the phone on speaker.

“Brother, we need your advice. We’re at a dead end here and I don’t know our next move.”

“I’ve been there more than a few times,” West laughed on the other end of the line. “When you don’t know what to do next the best thing to do is go back to the beginning. Look at all your suspects again even if you think you’ve eliminated them already. Look at who had motive and opportunity, but especially opportunity. Just because you think someone doesn’t have a motive doesn’t mean they don’t. It could be hidden, so don’t think a person is innocent just because you can’t see a motive. You need to make a chart of where everyone was at the time of the murder. Then take a closer look at anyone you can’t account for. But basically it’s all about going back to the basics. Don’t overthink this, Trav. In most cases criminals aren’t that bright.”

Travis hoped that were indeed true.

‡

T
wo large pizzas
later Aubrey, Shane, and Travis were sitting around the dining room table. They’d cleared it completely and were ready to start at the beginning.

“So what do we know for sure?” Aubrey asked, placing a notebook and pen in front of her. “Let’s make a list.”

She tore out two pieces of paper. One she titled
Things We Know
and the other she titled
Open Questions.

“We know that Bruce owed money to a lot of people,” Shane offered. “We don’t know if he paid Tom back or not.”

“That’s a good start.” She scribbled details on her lists. “What else?”

Travis stood and looked out of the windows but the moon was hidden behind clouds tonight. “We know Bruce was stabbed in the heart. It suggests that the killer had to be able to get close. I doubt a stranger could get near enough to make the first strike deadly.”

“He could have been surprised from behind and turned around,” Aubrey pointed out, chewing on the end of the pen. “Maybe the killer never gave him a chance.”

Shane shook his head. “I’m not buying that. Let me show you.” He tossed an extra pencil at Travis who caught it easily in his right hand. “I’ll stand here and you come up behind me.”

Shane stood with his back turned about five feet from Travis who stealthily snuck up behind Shane. Travis raised the pencil like a knife but at the last minute Shane spun around and grabbed Travis’s wrist, and a mock struggle ensued with Travis finally dropping the pencil on the floor.

“According to our sources, there were no defensive wounds on Bruce’s person which tells me he didn’t see it coming. Unless he was deaf and blind I don’t think he would have let a stranger sneak up behind him and shove a knife directly into his heart. But that’s just me.”

Aubrey sighed and held up her hands in surrender. “Mea culpa. I’m convinced. I see what you’re saying and it makes sense. Only someone he wasn’t afraid of would have been allowed to get that close without him fighting back.”

“But is that something we actually know or just suspect?” Shane popped open another soda. “I don’t think we can know it for sure at this point. We don’t have any of the forensic reports to help us either which really ties our hands.”

“We can’t know it but I think we can call it an assumption. I don’t think this was a stranger killing.” Travis braced his hands on the back of a parson’s chair. “Bruce was killed for a reason. This wasn’t some random act of violence.”

Aubrey scribbled more on her list. “I’ll put an asterisk next to it to mark our assumption. What else do we know?”

All three were silent until Shane rolled his eyes and groaned loudly. “Shit, we really don’t know anything, do we?”

“We know that my whereabouts were confirmed by other people at the party, so that means we have a time of death or at least an idea. They think he was killed around eleven-thirty.”

Aubrey tapped her chin with the pen. She’d always had a respect for law enforcement, but now they’d soared in her estimation if this was what they dealt with every day.

“Good.” Travis rubbed the back of his neck as he paced back and forth. “Who else do we remember at the party during that time? We can take them off the suspect list.”

An hour later they had a list of party guests they couldn’t account for and possible motives they might have. Aubrey rubbed her temples and yawned, a headache pounding behind her eyes. It was clear she wasn’t cut out for this detective stuff.

Travis sat down and leaned his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands. “But this doesn’t even scratch the surface as to who would want both Bruce and Iris dead. That’s the real mystery.”

The faces of party guests drifted through Aubrey’s mind but one kept crowding out the others.

“Caroline,” she said softly. “She had motive to kill both of them.”

Travis was already shaking his head. “I don’t want to believe that. She’s been through the wringer with Bruce.”

“All the more reason for her to kill him,” Shane retorted. “She’s a sweet girl as far as we know, but hell, we don’t spend that much time with her. Not really. She could have done it and she’s on our list of people not accounted for during the time of death. We have to consider her.”

Travis fell back into one of the chairs and dragged a hand down his face, stubble darkening his jawline. “Dammit. I know we have to. I just hate the thought of it. We also have to include Martin as well. He’d do anything to protect his granddaughter.”

“Add Alana to that list,” Shane offered with a grimace. “I personally don’t know what Martin sees in her but she does appear to be in love with him. If she thought he was being hurt by Bruce with the insider trading thing, and by extension Iris as his accomplice, she might have killed them to help her husband.”

Travis picked up two soda cans from the table and offered one to Aubrey. “At least you’re off the list. You might have had a motive for Bruce but you didn’t know Iris and had no reason to kill her.”

That was true, but it felt strange to have had a conversation with a woman a short time before she died. Had it been only been two days ago? It felt like a lifetime had happened since then.

“West said you shouldn’t worry about motive,” she reminded him, accepting the soda and popping it open. She needed the caffeine desperately as it had been a long night.

Travis grinned and nudged her foot with his own under the table. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have any hidden vendettas against Iris Perry, nor are you big enough to wrestle her into a pool and hold her down until she drowns.”

Aubrey tapped her pen on the table as she pictured different scenarios. “What if she was drunk or drugged?”

“That might make it easier or harder.” Travis raked his fingers through his hair for the dozenth time that evening. “She’d be dead weight if she was unconscious. No, I think it would take a man.”

Shane stretched his arms over his head and twisted his head side to side in an attempt to shake off several hours of sitting. “Of course we’re assuming that she didn’t drown herself or that it wasn’t an accident. I don’t see the latter happening but possibly the former.”

“She didn’t seem very suicidal when I talked to her at the spa,” replied Aubrey. “She wasn’t even mourning really. That could be part of the denial maybe. It’s all so confusing. Where do we go from here?”

Travis drank down the last of the soda and slid the can to the center of the table with the discarded pizza boxes. “Martin, Alana, and Caroline are our best bets as much as I hate to say it. Hopefully we’ll hear from that reporter Shane befriended and find out what the forensic team and coroner have to say. Without that information we’re flying blind.”

Aubrey stood from the table and tucked the laptop under her arm. “I’ll get back to work looking at those pictures from the party. Maybe we’ll see something in them that will help besides just looking for a picture of Martin’s cufflinks.”

“It’s late,” Travis objected. “You should get some sleep.”

“Are you going to bed?”

She knew he wasn’t. He had that look on his face she’d seen so many times before.

“Shane and I are going to go through the file that Jason sent us regarding Bruce one more time. See if we missed anything.”

No surprise there.

“Then I’m working too. Should I put a pot of coffee on?”

Travis opened his mouth to argue and then simply smiled. “I almost forgot about that team thing we talked about. Make it a strong pot, babe. I have a feeling we’re going to be up all night. Or what’s left of it.”

Aubrey hummed as she measured out the coffee, her gaze straying to the man in her life every so often. She admired his dedication in trying to help her and now he was helping his friend as well. He could go back to the office and mind his own business, letting Martin rot in jail, but he wasn’t the kind of man to do that.

He wasn’t perfect but he was good. And kind.

She waited for the fear and trepidation to seep into her bones but it didn’t come. It felt just fine and not scary at all. In six short months he’d managed to knock down years of defenses. He’d never given up no matter how many times she’d pushed him away.

She was ready to embrace being happy.

Now the only issue was making sure he felt the same.

He’d talked of the future. He’d even mentioned marriage.

Somehow she needed to find a way to tell him she was all in. Ready to take the next steps.