a damn thing, Couviyon. We were finished four years ago.” Four years ago when I was pregnant with your child, she thought, knowing that if she’d ever considered telling him the truth, she sure didn’t now.
“You finished it. I didn’t.”
“You were never in the relationship, Nash. You had your own neat version and you kept me on the outside unless we were in bed.” She shook off his hand and jerked opened the door.
“Lisa. This is my job.”
“I’m thrilled for you. Go do it. And until you have something more than accusations, don’t come near me.”
She left, striding past the officers. Nash signaled to let her pass. She was pure anger in a snug skirt and high-heeled sandals.
“Seems like a hostile witness, Detective,” an officer said.
Nash let out a breath. “Oh, yeah.”
Chapter Two
Nash watched Lisa storm off, leaving him feeling twisted and confused. This was why he hadn’t dropped by her place to say hello, he thought. She did things to him no other woman had and he still hurt. The humiliation of being dumped by her hardly compared to the feelings of regret he’d had for months after learning she was six hundred miles away walking down the aisle with another man.
Seeing her today warned him he still wasn’t over her. Just looking into her eyes stung his heart.
Suddenly Quinn stuck his head out of the room, caught a glimpse of Lisa and whistled softly. Then he looked at Nash.
“That Couviyon charm not working today, laddie?”
Nash eyed Quinn. “You knew she was coming here?”
“I heard the supervisor call her. And yes, I also remembered her married name.”
Quinn’s look said Nash had had his head in the sand. Not good for a cop, Nash knew. “She’s divorced officially as of this morning.”
“So she was still the wife when the victim died?”
Any connection between Lisa and the victim was suspect and damaging, Nash thought. “As I recall, the exact time of death is your job, Kilpatrick,” he snarled, pushing past Quinn and into the suite.
Nash ordered a background check on the victim. And his wife.
“Detective?”
Nash rounded, ready to chew someone in two.
A short, wiry man in a black suit stepped into the room. “You couldn’t keep this quiet?” he said, glancing around.
Nash’s breath snapped out of him. Baylor, the owner of the hotel, and he looked pissed. The day was just getting better and better.
“There are other guests, you know, and they want back into their rooms.”
“They will be allowed in soon. And it’s a little hard to hide a suspicious death.”
The man’s eyes were glued to the black body bag rolling away on a stretcher. “Murder?”
Ignoring that, Nash took out his pad, and when he was about to escort Baylor to another room for questioning, the man rushed over to an officer dusting the dresser for prints. “Is that going to leave a stain? This chest is two hundred years old.”
The police officer gave Baylor a once-over, then glanced beyond him to Nash and said, “No sir,” before going back to work.
“Sir?” Nash crooked a finger. “You’re Mr. Will Baylor?”
The man nodded. “William Reese Baylor IV,” he clarified. “I’m the owner. My family built this home over 150 years ago.”
“Nice place,” Nash said, caring little about Baylor’s lineage and the inn’s history. His own family had a plantation, Indigo Run, on the edge of town that had been in operation since 1711. “You met the deceased?”
“Briefly when he checked in two days ago. Very nice man. He kept to himself.”
“Did he meet anyone here?”
“We don’t question our guests so personally. We pride ourselves on privacy, relaxation and discretion.”
Nash’s gaze narrowed dangerously, and the owner folded.
“Not that I know of. But I’m not here twenty-four seven. With the exception of lunch yesterday, I believe he dined in his suite.”
For a man here on business, Winfield didn’t do much, Nash thought. Except meet with Lisa. Winfield’s PalmPilot indicated he had three meetings but gave no names or times, only dates, and though the victim’s laptop was found in the room, they needed a password to access the data.
“How did they get in? Was it someone he knew?” Baylor moved to a set of French doors, but Nash stopped him from opening them, wiggling his own gloved fingers.
“Prints.”
Baylor glanced at the officer still kneeling by the chest of drawers. “Oh, yes, of course. This balcony leads to a separate entrance for this room and the one next door. There’s a staircase, very narrow and steep, leading to the lower floors outside the kitchen and a path to the patio. It was once the servants’ staircase.”
The door had an old-fashioned brass latch, one that you had to wrap your hand around to open. With a pen, Nash tried pushing it. It was locked from the inside. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have come up here and left this way. Checking that it had been already dusted, Nash opened it, careful not to step on the porch. Earlier, officers had canvassed the area, and it was going to take some manpower to see if anyone had noticed someone entering the suite through this door. He looked down, then squatted. They hadn’t had rain in a while, and the dust level was high. There were several shoe prints in the dust outside the door, and although they’d been lifted and logged already, there were two smaller sets. A woman’s?
Nash rubbed his face and straightened. “Who sent the basket?”
The owner frowned and Nash produced the sweet-grass basket with Lisa’s logo on the rim.
“I don’t know. It’s not something we ordered. We provide toiletries for our guests and we have better taste than to offer homemade items.” Baylor made a face at the basket. “We do seasonal fruit and flavored coffees, too.” He pointed to the silver tray on a stand near the windows. An officer was collecting it.
Nash stared at the basket. Most of it wasn’t homemade, and he wondered again about the teabag-shaped thing dangling from the bathtub faucet.
Another officer stripped the fitted sheet and quilt from the bed.
“No, no, no, that quilt is mine,” Baylor said.
Nash touched his arm. “It’s evidence. It’ll be returned to you.”
“It’s a hundred years old and in perfect condition, and it had better come back to me that way.”
