Under His Protection Read online

“Encrypted, like CIA spy stuff?”

  Nash nodded.

  “For the love of Mike,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What do they need—a secondary password or something?”

  He nodded. “They’ve tried for a week. Any ideas?”

  She shook her head, then winced. “I’m going to be charged for this, aren’t I?”

  “No.”

  She eyed him. “You can’t lie for me, Nash.”

  “I won’t lie. I’ll tell them you came here, not realizing the apartment would be secured, and found the door open and the place ransacked. When you were leaving, the perp hit you and left before I arrived.”

  “Nash,” she whispered, lowering the ice pack. He pushed her hand back into place.

  “You didn’t touch anything. They don’t need to know your intention. You just buried your husband, ex or not. Call it one last look at the life you had, I don’t know. But I spoke to the NYPD just before I came up here, so they know I was headed here. And I do know that someone got on one of the elevators just as I stepped out, because I heard the doors shut.” He made a mental note to ask the doorman about that.

  She felt her throat tighten, and if she didn’t trust him before, she did now. “Thank you, Nash.”

  He kissed her forehead and said, “Will you be okay for a few minutes? I want to have a look around.” Nash’s gaze swept the room, then he slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on.

  She started to get up.

  He stood and pointed to the floor. “Stay, and keep that ice on your head.”

  “But I can tell you what’s different, what’s wrong, if anything.”

  He arched a brow. “You didn’t know there was a safe in your own home, Lisa.”

  He was right, dammit. “Fine.”

  She looked like a sulking child just then.

  “This is what I mean about being helpless.”

  He smiled. “Darlin’, you’re anything but helpless.” He touched her cheek, then headed deeper into the apartment.

  Nash circumvented the room, noted the angry slashes in the sofa cushions, the needlessly smashed furniture and lamps. Even the shades were shredded. There was broken glass everywhere. This was pure unleashed rage, he thought. He also had trouble imagining Lisa ever living here, in these rooms with sharp lines and retro furniture. It was so unlike her home in Indigo and reflected nothing of the warm, loving woman he knew. As he made notes, he searched for the knife used to slash the cushions. It could have been any number of the ones scattered over the kitchen floor, and he realized that if whoever had done this had killed Winfield, then Lisa was lucky to get away with a knock on the head. If she’d interrupted this rage, she could have been stabbed to death.

  He moved to the bedroom, stopping just inside the door. Other than a bottle of the only perfume Lisa wore lying on the floor and an open jewelry box beside it, virtually nothing was touched.

  Except he’d found the knife.

  Chapter Six

  The butcher knife was embedded in the mattress.

  Right through a cream-colored negligee that had been carefully laid out. The sight pushed a chill over his scalp and down his spine. Nash didn’t doubt it was one of Lisa’s nightgowns. He searched the dresser and found her clothes neatly folded in the drawers, some with slashes, some not. Lisa was never that neat, he remembered.

  Winfield must have been obsessive to keep this stuff after so long. The bathroom was ransacked like the living room, yet woman’s toiletries were still there. Lisa’s? Or another woman’s? He went to the closet, finding nothing unusual about Winfield’s belongings that differed from how he’d found the victim’s things in the Baylor Inn. Yet the garments were pushed back, the false wall and safe exposed. He looked in the adjacent closet and found what he’d expected. Women’s clothing, slashed and scattered on the floor. He fingered a sexy beaded gown and tried to imagine Lisa wearing it and going out with Winfield. He failed.

  Was his mind refusing to accept the image because they didn’t fit, or was he just jealous? The woman sitting in the foyer bleeding was far different from the one this apartment portrayed, the one who’d married Winfield.

  He returned to her just as the paramedics came down the hall.

  Nash flashed his badge and they went to work on her. He stood back, watching, thinking of the nightgown and how the coroner, Quinn, had said that when Lisa left Winfield, she’d left everything behind. It must have been really bad for her to do that, Nash thought. Was Winfield harboring the hope that she’d come back after all this time? Is that why he kept all her clothing? Was that the reason they’d fought the night Winfield was murdered?

  “It needs a stitch or two. She needs to go to the hospital,” the EMT said. “Maybe stay overnight.”

  “No way,” Lisa said.

  “Yes way,” Nash put in. “You could have a concussion.”

  “I have to get back home to work. I closed up for the day.”

  “I want a doctor to look at that first.”

  Lisa knew by his tone he was going to get his way.

  Detective Rhinehart stepped in, looking around and groaning under his breath. He showed his badge and went to Nash. “She okay?”

  “Yes, I am,” Lisa answered for herself and Rhinehart smiled apologetically.

  Nash explained to Rhinehart that he’d found her unconscious when he arrived, and Lisa listened to him tell the truth, leaving out one detail—that she’d come here to search.

  Rhinehart nodded, taking Nash at his word. He questioned Lisa, advising her of her lack of wisdom at coming to this place. She agreed, hissing when the EMT put something on her wound.

  “Does the rest of the place look like this?” Rhinehart said with a sour look around.

  “Pretty much.” Nash inclined his head to Rhinehart to follow him, yet paused to say, “Wait here,” to the EMT helping Lisa sit on the stretcher. Two uniformed officers came in with heavy silver cases, one moving to bag the sculpture.

  Nash and Rhinehart went into the bedroom, and the New York detective stilled at the sight of the bed. He radioed for a forensic team, then said to Nash, “My people stripped it, and the bedding is with our lab. The report should be in by the morning. Thanks for the files from Kilpatrick. Death by wedding flowers— cunning.” Rhinehart shook his head. “This is your case, Couviyon. Your jurisdiction for the death, but I have a feeling evidence is staring us in the face that only a shrink can see.” His gaze skimmed the room again.

  “This is rage, look at the wild destruction that ends right here,” Nash said. “And I’ll bet that Lisa Winfield’s prints were on the outside doorknob, not the inside. They weren’t in the room at the Baylor Inn or on the basket containing the bath tea or, in fact, anywhere in the hotel room.”

  “She could have wiped them off,” Rhinehart said.

  Nash shook his head. “Winfield was alive when she left. He bathed after she left. He would have seen her wipe them off. And if I know anything about this man,” Nash said, looking around the room, “it’s that he was obsessed with keeping his wife.”

  “We have circumstantial evidence and motive.”

  Nash eyed the other police officer. “Mrs. Winfield was not aware of the safe or the insurance, and all the evidence can be placed in the hands of any number of people. She left him without taking so much as a cent or a piece of clothing. From what I’ve learned, she’d moved twice to avoid him in the past two and a half years.” Nash didn’t tell Lisa he knew that. She’d just see it as prying, not investigating. “She’s given our offices everything we’ve asked for and agreed to a lie-detector test. It’s all circumstantial, but that’s convicted more than one innocent person. Background checks on Winfield pulled up the usual, and I’m still waiting on one that will go beyond his credit history. But I need more.”

  “If we break his file codes, we’ll have more,” Rhinehart said. “A man doesn’t encrypt files he wants the world to see. But right now we need Mrs. Winfield to identify t
he clothing. This could be someone else’s.”

  Nash didn’t want to scare her, but like most things in this case, he didn’t have a choice. In a few minutes he brought Lisa into the room. The way she clung to his arm told him that her injury was worse than she let on, yet when she saw the bed, she stiffened and inhaled sharply.

  “Oh, God.” She looked at Nash. “Is that directed at me?”

  “Or another woman.”

  “Catherine Delan, maybe?”

  Nash frowned at her as Rhinehart flipped through his notes. “The tall woman at the funeral?”

  “She said she and Peter worked together and…” She swallowed, glancing between the two men, then admitted, “She said they were having an affair.”

  Nash noticed Lisa’s rigidness, in her spine, her mouth. What else was beneath that look? he wondered.

  “I’ve questioned her,” Rhinehart said, looking at his notes. “She had some business dealings with Winfield, but didn’t admit to more.”

  “Ask her again,” Lisa said.

  Rhinehart looked at her, his eyes sharp and judging. “You believe they were lovers?”

  Lisa couldn’t look at Nash. Peter had chosen Catherine over their vows, and Nash had chosen bachelor-hood over her. She had so little dignity left. “I wouldn’t know about recently, but…yes, she was Peter’s lover. I haven’t been in New York for nearly three years, Detective, but Catherine didn’t know we were separated. Neither did Carl Forsythe. Peter led him to believe that we were still together. He had a thing about appearances.”

  “A thing?” Rhinehart asked.

  “The best wine, the finest clothes. His tastes were expensive but it was all show, because he was cheap in other ways, like that bed. The mattress is from a bargain surplus dealer in the Bronx, but the frame is worth three thousand.”

  Nash’s brows shot up and Lisa glanced at him, embarrassed to reveal this stuff, but she needed them both to see that the longer she knew Peter, the stranger he’d grown. “And with toiletries and household things, he’d buy in bulk and spend almost as much on a bottle of wine for a client. Or with phone service, he could have used two phone lines, one for the computer, but refused to do it. My clothing was designer, but most were a season off or from this nice secondhand store downtown. That—” she flicked a hand at the jewelry box spilled open on the floor “—is mostly paste and zircons.”

  Nash heard the sadness and disappointment in her voice, yet not for her dead husband, but for herself. Nash took some of the blame for that. He hadn’t treated her much better than Peter had, keeping distance between them and then coldly cutting her out of his life when she broke up with him. As if she’d never existed beyond the dull throb she left in his heart.

  “What do you know about his business dealings?” Rhinehart was primed to make notes.

  She was quiet for a moment, her brow furrowing. “At first I knew everything, then later on he wouldn’t talk about it with me at all, as if he figured I didn’t know what mutual funds were and didn’t need to know.” A light seemed to switch on in her head, and her expression brightened. “Before we split, or rather, just before I left, he was working on something that took him to New Orleans, but I don’t know what it was. He wouldn’t tell me about business, even when I asked.” And he’d patronize me when I did, she thought, and for the first time considered that Peter had been doing something illegal.

  Nash and Rhinehart exchanged a look and Lisa knew they were thinking the same thing.

  “Sounds like he was living a double life, but not really risking anything,” Rhinehart said. “Which is odd for a man who risked other people’s money on hunches.”

  “Peter never did anything without a plan. He might have gambled on stocks, but not without a great deal of research. Impulsive behavior was not in his personality. I think marrying me was the only impulsive thing he ever did.”

  “You don’t think he loved you?” Nash said, then wished he hadn’t. He’d hate for her to have gone through all this and not feel loved.

  “No, I know he did, or I wouldn’t have married him,” she said a little defensively. “But he was different those first few months. I didn’t really understand his compulsive behavior about order and appearances. It was a shock.” At Nash’s look, she said, “Well, for pity’s sake, the guy grew up on the streets. His father was a longshoreman, and his mother cleaned houses till the day she died. It’s not like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

  Nash blanched slightly, for that was the comment she’d made to him a couple of days ago. “Maybe his tendency for control had to do with never wanting to have to clean up for a living. Or get his hands dirty.”

  “I think his hands were dirty,” Rhinehart said. “Encrypted files means he was hiding something. We just have to find out where. And what.”

  “Try Carl Forsythe. He asked if I’d inherit Peter’s files, personal and professional,” Lisa said. “If they weren’t in the computer or that safe, then I bet Peter had a safety-deposit box somewhere.”

  Lisa’s fingers dug into Nash’s arm and he knew she was dizzy. He sent the other detective a meaningful look.

  “Let’s get this done and you to the doctor,” Rhinehart said, and gestured to the closet and bath.

  Hanging on to Nash, Lisa looked. Her gaze swept the room, recognizing everything she’d left behind. “It’s all mine. All of it. Good grief. Even my shampoo is still in the shower.” This was what Mama meant by “deep under weird,” she thought, the sight of her shredded clothing making her see just how angry the person who’d ransacked the apartment was. And how deadly they could be.

  She went back to the bed, staring at the knife thrust deep into the mattress and nightgown. “This is the nightgown I wore on my wedding night.”

  Beside her, Nash inhaled, almost glaring at the pale silk.

  “It’s safe to say that someone hates you, Mrs. Winfield.”

  She glanced at Rhinehart. “Bracket, please,” she corrected. “Not Winfield. Not anymore.” She looked back at the gown, remembering that night and thinking how she’d wished it was Nash lying next to her, wanting her enough to want a future with her. It had shamed her, and so she threw herself into being the perfect wife for Peter. But her efforts were never good enough.

  Nash felt her squeeze a little harder on his arm and walked with her back to the foyer. The EMTs helped her back onto the stretcher. “I don’t need this,” she said.

  He could see she was fighting a fresh wave of pain from just that short walk around the apartment. “Humor me, then, will ya?” He knelt and tugged on the straps. “I’ll be down at the hospital in a few, after…” He gestured weakly at the abused home, yet kept his gaze on her. Her gaze shifted beyond him to Rhinehart. The man smiled gently.

  An EMT put her purse on her stomach. Nash told her he’d take care of her rental car, and she gave him the keys, then pulled off her keys to Peter’s apartment, handing it over with a look that said, Yeah, I know I was stupid to come here, and you were right. It didn’t give him any satisfaction as they wheeled her out and to the ambulance on the street below.

  Rhinehart gestured to a patrol officer standing outside. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he ordered, and Nash knew the New York detective understood the significance of where he’d seen the knife.

  Winfield’s killer was dissatisfied and angry with Lisa. But the question why Peter Winfield was murdered hadn’t been answered.

  “The knife in the nightgown and bed was for her. Someone had to know she’d come here,” Nash said. “And did you notice that none of Winfield’s clothing was destroyed?”

  “Yeah. You need to keep an eye on that lady, Couviyon.”

  “I will,” Nash said. “The killer’s going to realize very soon that she’s not been locked up on murder charges and be even angrier.”

  “And maybe take it to the next level.”

  Nash had understood that the instant he’d seen the twelve-inch butcher knife embedded in the nightgown.

>   “I think we’re looking for a woman,” Rhinehart said.

  “Not necessarily. This was all carefully staged. The perpetrator didn’t expect to be surprised.”

  Nash jiggled Lisa’s keys, then looked down at his palm. The apartment key was on a ring, a delicate silver disk attached. He frowned, flipping the disk over and reading the engraving. His features tightened.

  “I think we’ve found the code,” he said, and looked at Rhinehart, handing over the key ring.

  On the silver disk were the words Eternally Yours.

  THE POLICE GUARD in the hall outside Lisa’s hospital room drew some curious looks. Inside, Nash was slumped in the chair, watching Lisa sleep. She was so still, and in the past few hours, Nash realized how easily he could have lost her. It twisted inside him, making him want to bash someone for doing this to her. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he rubbed his face, then looked at her.

  Her eyes opened slowly and she met his gaze.

  He straightened in the chair. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself, Couviyon.” She smiled softly. “What are you still doing here?”

  “Confirming my theory that you snore.”

  “You liar.” She pressed a button that made the head of the bed rise.

  His smile was mischievous. “Hey, you’re asleep, so how would you know?”

  She sniffed. “I’m a Southern woman, and Southern women don’t snore, sweat or drink. We nap, glisten and sip.”

  Nash smiled. “I stand corrected, ma’am.”

  “You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”

  He nodded and Lisa was touched.

  “Thank you. But really, Nash, you should go. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know, but I want to see you on a plane home.”

  “But I’m staying in New York. I can help.”

  “How? By getting your skull bashed in some more?”

  “I can show you Peter’s old haunts, his offices.” She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her head felt as if it had just blown off her shoulders, and she sagged into the bed, moaning.