Read White Collared Part Two: Greed Online
Authors: Shelly Bell
The solid metal door creaked open. Mrs. Webber stared at Kate through the iron bars.
She gave a little wave. “Mrs. Webber? I don’t know if you remember me, but I met you at Alyssa Deveroux’s funeral.”
The woman’s eyes were glazed, but she nodded. “You were with Jaxon.” She stood on her tippy toes and tried to look behind Kate. “Is he with you?”
“No, ma’am. It’s just me. Would you mind if I came inside and asked you a few questions?”
“Of course.” Another lock later, she opened the gated door and ushered Kate inside. “You want a drink? Tea? Water?”
“No, thank you.” A haze of smoke hung in the air. Her eyes burned, and her throat tickled. She covered her mouth and coughed. Except for the missing stench of whiskey, it was like coming home.
Mrs. Webber sat on a bright-yellow flowered chair and gestured for Kate to take a seat on the matching couch. Between them sat a brown coffee table with an overflowing ashtray and a couple of last month’s gossip magazines.
The woman lit a cigarette and took a puff. “You’re helping Jaxon, right? I don’t believe what they’re saying about him killing his wife.”
Kate shifted, trying to get comfortable, but the couch’s springs were broken, causing her to tilt. “Had you ever met Alyssa?”
“Nah, but his father, bless his soul, showed me their wedding pictures. I was invited of course, but I was grieving then. Got a bit lost for a short time until Jesus Christ saved me from drowning in the bottom of a bottle. Nine years sober this Christmas.”
“Congratulations.”
Mrs. Webber tapped her cigarette on the side of the ashtray, spilling a couple butts onto the table. Frowning, she squashed one between her fingers and returned it to the ashtray, repeating the process with the other. “I don’t see how I can help you with Jaxon’s case.”
“I’m not here about Jaxon.” She scooted to the edge of the couch and said in a quiet voice, “I’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Stephanie.”
Her hands trembled as she brought the cigarette to her lips and took another drag. “What would you like to know?”
“The police thought she’d died in a drug buy gone bad. Did she give you any reason to suspect she was using drugs?”
“My Stephanie was a God-fearing child. Wanted to be a lawyer like you, only she didn’t want to do criminal. She was going to be a civil rights attorney like that guy on television who won all those million-dollar verdicts.” Mrs. Webber stamped out her cigarette between the lipstick-stained butts in the center of the ashtray, once again pushing used cigarettes and ashes to the table. “My girl was going to get us out of this neighborhood. She wouldn’t have allowed the Devil to lead her astray.”
Kate’s throat tightened. God-fearing children got high, blacked out from drinking too much alcohol, and slept with strangers all the time, but she didn’t need to shatter the poor woman’s illusions. “What do you think happened to her?”
Martha lit another cigarette. “I don’t know, but she was a beautiful girl. Someone with a demon inside him must have kidnapped and had his way with her before throwing her away like yesterday’s trash. My baby might have grown up in the ’hood, but she was never garbage. The police didn’t do nothing. Didn’t run any of those fancy tests they’d run for a white girl. Said the river had ruined the evidence, but I bet they could’ve gotten DNA off the blue rope like they do on CSI.”
Kate’s heart sputtered. “Blue rope?”
Martha shut her eyes and took a long drag off her cigarette. “When they pulled my daughter out of the Detroit River, she was naked as the day I’d given her life except for some blue rope around her wrists and ankles.”
Her mouth grew dry as the Sahara Desert. Why hadn’t Jaxon mentioned the blue rope to her and Nick?
Mrs. Webber sighed. “Jaxon was devastated by the whole thing of course.”
The room tilted and the air froze in her lungs. “Oh. Were they close?”
Crinkles formed around the woman’s eyes. “Well, no one else knows, but since Stephanie and Jaxon’s wife are both gone, I don’t see the harm.” She leaned forward and exhaled a cloud of smoke in Kate’s face. “Jaxon and Stephanie were dating at the time of her murder. They tried to hide it from me because they thought I wouldn’t approve, but a mom recognizes the signs when her daughter’s in love. Plus she wore some new jewelry I knew she couldn’t afford on her own. I wasn’t thrilled with the age difference, but I’d known Jaxon since he was a boy, and I trusted him to take good care of my girl.”
Jaxon had sworn Stephanie had been nothing more to him than his neighbor. Had he lied? She pushed her fingers into the bruise on her neck. Something about Martha’s story didn’t ring true. “Wasn’t he with Alyssa at that time?”
She pointed at Kate with her cigarette. “You know, I’d asked Stephanie about that, and she told me they’d separated, but no one knew yet and not to tell his father. Of course after Stephanie died, he must have decided to make his relationship with Alyssa work. Poor, poor Jaxon. To lose two lovers to murder. ’Course ’round here, it’s not uncommon. But those murders are gang related. Stephanie didn’t hang out with gang members.”
Kate jumped to her feet. She had to speak with Jaxon about the blue rope. She had to know if he’d lied about his relationship with Stephanie. “Here’s my number if you think of anything else.” She handed Martha her card and followed the woman to the door. “Does Jaxon’s father still live next door?”
“No,” Martha said, ashes off the end of her cigarette fluttering to the carpet. “He died some years back. Doctors said cancer, but I think it was from a broken heart. He never got over his wife’s death all those years ago, and with Jaxon living the high life in the suburbs, he had no one left. Without family, what’s tying you to the earth?”
She stepped onto the porch. “Thank you, Mrs. Webber.”
The woman flicked her cigarette into the bushes and shut the door.
Kate climbed on her motorcycle and put on her helmet, noticing that the BMW had disappeared. She chuckled to herself. Wonder if the driver had left or the car had been stolen?
Driving off into the night with more questions than she’d had when she arrived, she tried to determine whether anything Mrs. Webber had said was more than the ramblings of a woman who’d lost her grip on reality.
Kate’s own mother had spouted religious babble during some of her alcoholic rages. Although Martha was sober, who knew what damage she’d done to her mind from the alcohol? Maybe she’d confused the facts of Alyssa’s murder with Stephanie’s.
But what if she hadn’t? What if Jaxon had lied about Stephanie and purposely kept the detail about the blue rope from her because . . .?
No. She didn’t believe it.
Jaxon wasn’t a murderer.
The cold air and short drive home did little to clear her doubts. If she’d had more time, she would’ve kept going, driven until her cheeks went numb and her worries melted away under the heat of the tires on the asphalt highway.
Jaxon would arrive soon to take her to Benediction.
To the dungeon.
How could she interrogate her lover when she was supposed to trust him? Then again, how could she not? She was his lawyer.
She had no choice.
With a growing sense of dread, she parked her motorcycle, hopped over the passed-out bum in the entrance of her building, and ran up the stairs to her apartment.
She put the key in her lock and turned.
The door was unlocked.
Had she forgotten to lock it when she’d left for Martha’s?
Her hands shaking, she gripped the knob and pushed open the door.
The familiar scent of copper welcomed her home.
Bile rose into her throat, threatening to choke her.
She stepped inside.
Flicked on the lights.
And screamed.
She lay on her stomach on the floor in the same spot where Kate had awoken this morning. Wearing the same black suit she’d worn all day. Her long, wavy blond hair soaked with bright red blood. Not moving. Not breathing. A knife sticking out of her back.
How could she be dead when she was standing right here?
She crept toward the body. Fell to her knees. And swept back her hair.
She wasn’t having an out-of-body experience.
This wasn’t her.
This was Hannah.
Don’t miss the next thrilling installment of
WHITE COLLARED
By Shelly Bell
PART THREE: REVENGE
coming June 17 from Avon Red Impulse!
SHELLY BELL
writes sensual romance and erotic thrillers with high emotional stakes for her alpha heroes and kiss-ass heroines. She began writing upon the insistence of her husband, who dragged her to the store and bought her a laptop. When she’s not practicing corporate law, taking care of her family, or writing, you’ll find her reading the latest smutty romance.
Shelly is a member of Romance Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.
Visit her website at ShellyBellBooks.com.
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White Collared series
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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HITE COLLARED PART TWO: GREED
. Copyright © 2014 by Shelly Bell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780062336804
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062336811
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