Carrying His Secret. Marie Ferrarella
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was a comfortable place to spend their evening?
“If you don’t mind, why don’t we just go into my office?” Elizabeth suggested instead. “It’s right next to Mr. Adair’s.”
To show the detective how close it was, she pointed to it and then mentally crossed her fingers that he would agree to it.
The last place she wanted to go was a police station. She was tired, upset and she had a number of people to notify. Going to the police station would just needlessly use up more time.
“I do mind,” Kramer replied. His barely open eyes—like the slits of a reptile’s—looked at her for a long moment before the detective told her, “I do better on my own home turf. You understand,” he added loftily.
No, she didn’t, Elizabeth thought as she allowed herself to be escorted out of Reginald Adair’s office. She didn’t understand anything that had transpired today. Not who would have killed Mr. Adair, or why, not to mention how they could have done it without her hearing anything. She was, after all, in the next office. Could they have done it in the short amount of time she was gone from the building?
Most of all, she couldn’t understand why the police detective thought of her as a possible suspect—and he most certainly did think of her that way, judging by the look in his eyes when he was staring at her.
Aside from proximity, which might cover opportunity, the most important factor in a homicide was conspicuously missing in this particular instance.
Namely, she had absolutely no motive to kill her boss.
Adair had never been anything but kind and fair to her in the years that she had worked for him. While she knew that Reginald Adair had his flaws—who didn’t?—whenever he interacted with her, the man had never been anything but upstanding and kind.
She’d found herself admiring Adair’s work ethic and felt that AdAir Corporation was a very good place for her to work. There was an energy here, a zest that promised good things came of efforts that were put forth.
Nowhere within all that was there anything that even distantly resembled a motive.
Rather than just allow herself to be blindly herded out of the building, Elizabeth turned to the detective as they got into the elevator and demanded point-blank, “Am I a suspect?”
She tried not to dwell on the fact that they were riding down in the same private elevator that had just taken away Adair’s lifeless body.
“You catch on fast,” Kramer commented, slanting only a side glance at her.
“Why?” She wanted to know. “Why am I a suspect—other than the fact that I was the one who found the body,” she added.
Kramer nodded and what looked like a smug expression filtered over his face.
“That’ll do it,” he told her, then paused dramatically. “Do you know how many killers actually call in to report their crimes? They like inserting themselves into the crime scene. What better way to do it than to find the body and call it in? It gives them an excuse to hang around.”
“No, I have no idea how many,” Elizabeth replied, her calm voice at odds with the huge knot in her stomach. “All I know is that I’m not one of them.”
“We’ll see,” Kramer replied. Whistling, he got off the elevator, then turned and waited for her to catch up. “After you,” he said grandly, taking hold of her arm and hustling her toward his car.
This is a nightmare, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking. And it was only getting steadily worse.
An entire storm of emotions was spinning around within him at speeds that rivaled those attained by twisters and hurricanes.
If someone had asked him to describe exactly what it was that he was feeling, Whit Adair would have been forced to say, “Numb.”
He was numb.
Numb and perhaps, for the first time in his life, more than a little lost. As the vice president of AdAir Corp, as well as the oldest of Reginald Adair’s children, Whit was accustomed to being in charge and able to handle every situation he encountered.
It wasn’t something that he’d schooled himself to do, it was just something that had evolved naturally over time—because he knew that his father expected it of him and he both idolized and adored his father. He wanted to please the man. It had never occurred to him to behave in any other fashion.
Over the years, Whit had strongly nurtured the hope that someday his father would see him as a trusted asset and actually say as much. More than anything else, he’d longed to hear his father acknowledging the fact that he wasn’t just good at what he did, he was damn near excellent. He would have sold his soul in exchange for a little praise from his father.
But now that was never going to happen.
He’d been on his way to the ranch, where he spent most weekends, when the phone call came. Some detective, whose name he heard but that failed to register, said that the police were trying to locate him.
“Is something wrong, detective?” he’d asked, a strange premonition slipping over him.
“I’m afraid so, sir. Where are you? I’d like to meet in person.”
His place in San Diego was closer and he regarded it as less of a sanctuary, so he gave the detective his address. They arrived at the building almost simultaneously.
The detective looked as if he was worn out. Perhaps as a result of years of having to give unwelcome news to victim’s families, Whit thought. “I’m afraid your father’s been shot. He didn’t make it.”
Whit stared at the detective. He remembered noticing that the man had a small stain on his tie and thinking that the man’s wife—if he had one—was going to berate him for being sloppy.
Strange the thoughts that went through your head when your whole world was shaken up, Whit thought. The detective had said something about taking him to view “the body”—as if that was now his father’s new station in life; the body rather than Reginald Adair—offer to drive him. But he wanted some sort of control over the situation, so he had said he was going to drive himself. Giving him his card, the detective told him he’d lead the way, which was good because he had no idea where the morgue was.
His mind kept jumping around, going back and forth between the present and less than an hour ago.
Grief pressed against his chest like a giant lead weight.
He was never going to get the chance to bond with his father the way he’d always secretly hoped and, yes, dreamed that he would.
Someone had stolen that opportunity from him. Someone had murdered his father.
Someone was going to pay.
Whit swerved, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with an SUV that jumped the light.
Damn it, Whit, get ahold of yourself!
For the life of him, Whit couldn’t remember getting into his car. Moreover, he couldn’t really remember the name of the detective whose card was in his pocket.
The man he was now following to the morgue.
The man who had said those awful words to him: There’s been a murder.
And just like that, his entire life was put on hold as chaos took immediate possession of his brain. Everything else in his life—the myriad of details, the pending launch of new cellular software—all of it had taken a backseat to this horrendous event.
And now he was going to the morgue to identify the man who had been found shot dead in his father’s ultramodern office.
He wasn’t sure