Read Keeper of the Bride Page 11


  “We’re not involved.”

  “I hope to God you’re not. Because Yeats wants her in here for questioning.”

  “For Robert Bledsoe’s murder? Yeats is fishing. She doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “He wants to question her. Bring her in. One hour.”

  “She has an airtight alibi—”

  “Bring her in, Navarro.” Coopersmith hung up.

  There was no way around this. Much as he hated to do it, he’d have to hand Nina over to the boys in Homicide. Their questioning might be brutal, but they had their job to do. As a cop, he could hardly stand in their way.

  He went up the hall to the bedroom door and knocked. When she didn’t answer, he cautiously cracked open the door and peeked inside.

  She was sound asleep, her hair spread across the pillow in a luxurious fan of black. Just the sight of her, lying so peacefully in his bed, in his house, sent a rush of yearning through him. It was so intense he had to grip the doorknob just to steady himself. Only when it had passed, when he had ruthlessly suppressed it, did he dare enter the room.

  She awakened with one gentle shake of the shoulder. Dazed by sleep, she looked at him with an expression of utter vulnerability, and he cleared his throat just to keep his voice steady.

  “You’ll have to get up,” he told her. “The detectives in Homicide want to see you downtown.”

  “When?”

  “One hour. You have time to take a shower. I’ve already got coffee made.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him with an expression of bewilderment. And no wonder. Last night they had held each other like lovers.

  This morning, he was behaving like a stranger.

  This was a mistake, coming into her room. Approaching the bed. At once he put distance between them and went to the door. “I’m sure it’ll just be routine questions,” he said. “But if you feel you need a lawyer—”

  “Why should I need a lawyer?”

  “It’s not a bad idea.”

  “I don’t need one. I didn’t do anything.” Her gaze was direct and defiant. He’d only been trying to protect her rights, but she had taken his suggestion the wrong way, had interpreted it as an accusation.

  He didn’t have the patience right now to set her straight. “They’ll be waiting for us” was all he said, and he left the room.

  While she showered, he tried to scrounge together a breakfast, but could come up with only frozen French bread and a months-old box of cornflakes. Both the pantry and the refrigerator looked pretty pathetic; bachelorhood was showing, and he wasn’t at all proud of it.

  In disgust, he went outside to fetch the newspaper, which had been delivered to its usual spot at the end of the driveway. He was walking back toward the house when he abruptly halted and stared at the ground.

  There was a footprint.

  Or, rather, a series of footprints. They tracked through the soft dirt, past the living room window, and headed off among the trees. A man’s shoes, thick soled. Size eleven at least.

  He glanced toward the house and thought about what the man who’d made those prints could have seen last night, through the windows. Only darkness? Or had he seen Nina, a moving target as she walked around the living room?

  He went to his car, parked near the front porch. Slowly, methodically, he examined it from bumper to bumper. He found no signs of tampering.

  Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe those footprints mean nothing.

  He went back inside, into the kitchen, and found Nina finishing up her cup of coffee. Her face was flushed, her hair still damp from the shower. At her first look at him, she frowned. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, everything’s fine.” He carried his cup to the sink. There he looked out the window and thought about how isolated this house was. How open those windows were to the sight of a gunman.

  He turned to her and said, “I think it’s time to leave.”

  * * *

  I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN Sam’s advice. I should have hired a lawyer.

  That was the thought that now crossed Nina’s mind as she sat in an office at the police station and faced the three Homicide detectives seated across the table from her. They were polite enough, but she sensed their barely restrained eagerness. Detective Yeats in particular made her think of an attack dog—leashed, but only for the moment.

  She glanced at Sam, hoping for moral support. He gave her none. Throughout the questioning, he hadn’t even looked at her. He stood at the window, his shoulders rigid, his gaze focused outside. He’d brought her here, and now he was abandoning her. The cop, of course, had his duty to perform. And at this moment, he was playing the cop role to the hilt.

  She said to Yeats, “I’ve told you everything I know. There’s nothing else I can think of.”

  “You were his fiancé. If anyone would know, you would.”

  “I don’t. I wasn’t even there. If you’d just talk to Daniella—”

  “We have. She confirms your alibi,” Yeats admitted.

  “Then why do you keep asking me these questions?”

  “Because murder doesn’t have to be done in person,” one of the other cops said.

  Now Yeats leaned forward, his gaze sympathetic, his voice quietly coaxing. “It must have been pretty humiliating for you,” he persisted. “To be left at the altar. To have the whole world know he didn’t want you.”

  She said nothing.

  “Here’s a man you trusted. A man you loved. And for weeks, maybe months, he was cheating on you. Probably laughing at you behind your back. A man like that doesn’t deserve a woman like you. But you loved him anyway. And all you got for it was pain.”

  She lowered her head. She still didn’t speak.

  “Come on, Nina. Didn’t you want to hurt him back? Just a little?”

  “Not—not that way,” she whispered.

  “Even when you found out he was seeing someone else? Even when you learned it was your own stepmother?”

  She looked up sharply at Yeats.

  “It’s true. We spoke to Daniella and she admitted it. They’d been meeting on the sly for some time. While you were at work. You didn’t know?”

  Nina swallowed. In silence she shook her head.

  “I think maybe you did know. Maybe you found out on your own. Maybe he told you.”

  “No.”

  “And how did it make you feel? Hurt? Angry?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Angry enough to strike back? To find someone who’d strike back for you?”

  “I didn’t know!”

  “That’s simply not believable, Nina. You expect us to accept your word that you knew nothing about it?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did. You—”

  “That’s enough.” It was Sam’s voice that cut in. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Yeats?”

  “My job,” Yeats shot back.

  “You’re badgering her. Interrogating without benefit of counsel.”

  “Why should she need a lawyer? She claims she’s innocent.”

  “She is innocent.”

  Yeats glanced smugly at the other Homicide detectives. “I think it’s pretty obvious, Navarro, that you no longer belong on this investigation.”

  “You don’t have the authority.”

  “Abe Coopersmith’s given me the authority.”

  “Yeats, I don’t give a flying—”

  Sam’s retort was cut off by the beeping of his pocket pager. Irritably he pressed the Silence button. “I’m not through here,” he snapped. Then he turned and left the room.

  Yeats turned back to Nina. “Now, Miss Cormier,” he said. All trace of sympathy was gone from his expression. In its place was the razor-tooth smile of a pit bull. “Let’s get back to the questions.”

  * * *

  THE PAGE WAS FROM Ernie Takeda in the crime lab, and the code on the beeper readout told Sam it was an urgent message. He made the call from his own desk.

&
nbsp; It took a few dialings to get through; the line was busy. When the usually low-key Takeda finally answered, there was an uncharacteristic tone of excitement in his voice.

  “We’ve got something for you, Sam,” said Takeda. “Something that’ll make you happy.”

  “Okay. Make me happy.”

  “It’s a fingerprint. A partial, from one of the device fragments from the warehouse bomb. It could be enough to ID our bomber. I’ve sent the print off to NCIC. It’ll take a few days to run it through the system. So be patient. And let’s hope our bomber is on file somewhere.”

  “You’re right, Ernie. You’ve made me a happy man.”

  “Oh, one more thing. About that church bomb.”

  “Yes?”

  “Based on the debris, I’d say the device had some sort of gift wrapping around it. Also, since it had no timing elements, my guess is, it was designed to be triggered on opening. But it went off prematurely. Probably a short circuit of some kind.”

  “You mentioned gift wrapping.”

  “Yeah. Silver-and-white paper.”

  Wedding wrap, thought Sam, remembering the gift that had been delivered that morning to the church. If the bomb was meant to explode on opening, then there was no longer any doubt who the intended victims were.

  But why kill Nina? he wondered as he headed back to the conference room. Could this whole mess be attributed to another woman’s jealousy? Daniella Cormier had a motive, but would she have gone so far as to hire a bomber?

  What was he missing here?

  He opened the office door and halted. The three homicide detectives were still sitting at the table. Nina wasn’t. She was gone.

  “Where is she?” Sam asked.

  Yeats shrugged. “She left.”

  “What?”

  “She got fed up with our questions, so she walked out.”

  “You let her leave?”

  “We haven’t charged her with anything. Are you saying we should have, Navarro?”

  Sam’s reply was unrepeatable. With a sudden sense of anxiety, he left Yeats and headed out the front entrance of police headquarters. He stood on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street.

  Nina was nowhere in sight.

  Someone was trying to kill her, he thought as he headed for his car. I have to reach her first.

  From his car phone, he called Nina’s father’s house. She wasn’t there. He called Robert Bledsoe’s house. No answer. He called Lydia Warrenton’s house. Nina wasn’t there either.

  On a hunch, he drove to Lydia’s Cape Elizabeth home anyway. People in distress often flee home for comfort, he reasoned. Eventually, Nina might wind up at her mother’s.

  He found Lydia at home. But no Nina—not yet, at least.

  “I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday morning,” said Lydia, ushering Sam into the seaview room. “I’m not sure she would come here.”

  “Do you know where she might go?” Sam asked. “Someone she might turn to?”

  Lydia shook her head. “I’m afraid my daughter and I aren’t very close. We never were. The truth is, she wasn’t the easiest child.”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Warrenton?”

  Lydia seated herself on the white couch. Her silk pantsuit was a startling slash of purple against the pale cushions. “What I mean to say—I know it sounds awful—is that Nina was something of a disappointment to me. We offered her so many opportunities. To study abroad, for instance. At a boarding school in Switzerland. Her sister Wendy went and benefited wonderfully. But Nina refused to go. She insisted on staying home. Then there were the other things. The boys she brought home. The ridiculous outfits she’d wear. She could be doing so much with her life, but she never achieved much.”

  “She earned a nursing degree.”

  Lydia gave a shrug. “So do thousands of other girls.”

  “She’s not any other girl, Mrs. Warrenton. She’s your daughter.”

  “That’s why I expected more. Her sister speaks three languages and plays the piano and cello. She’s married to an attorney who’s in line for a judicial seat. While Nina…” Lydia sighed. “I can’t imagine how sisters could be so different.”

  “Maybe the real difference,” said Sam, rising to his feet, “was in how you loved them.” He turned and walked out of the room.

  “Mr. Navarro!” he heard Lydia call as he reached the front door.

  He looked back. She was standing in the hallway, a woman of such perfectly groomed elegance that she didn’t seem real or alive. Or touchable.

  Not like Nina at all.

  “I think you have entirely the wrong idea about me and my daughter,” Lydia said.

  “Does it really matter what I think?”

  “I just want you to understand that I did the best I could, under the circumstances.”

  “Under the circumstances,” replied Sam, “so did she.” And he left the house.

  Back in his car, he debated which way to head next. Another round of phone calls came up empty. Where the hell was she?

  The only place he hadn’t checked was her new apartment. She’d told him it was on Taylor Street. There was probably no phone in yet; he’d have to drive there to check it out.

  On his way over, he kept thinking about what Lydia Warrenton had just told him. He thought about what it must have been like for Nina to grow up the black sheep, the unfavored child. Always doing the wrong thing, never meeting Mommy’s approval. Sam had been fortunate to have a mother who’d instilled in him a sense of his own competence.

  I understand now, he thought, why you wanted to marry Robert. Marrying Robert Bledsoe was the one sure way to gain her mother’s approval. And even that had collapsed in failure.

  By the time he pulled up at Nina’s new apartment building, he was angry. At Lydia, at George Cormier and his parade of wives, at the entire Cormier family for its battering of a little girl’s sense of self-worth.

  He knocked harder at the apartment door than he had to.

  There was no response. She wasn’t here, either.

  Where are you, Nina?

  He was about to leave when he impulsively gave the knob a turn. It was unlocked.

  He pushed the door open. “Nina?” he called.

  Then his gaze focused on the wire. It was almost invisible, a tiny line of silver that traced along the doorframe and threaded toward the ceiling.

  Oh, my God…

  In one fluid movement he pivoted away and dived sideways, down the hallway.

  The force of the explosion blasted straight through the open door and ripped through the wall in a flying cloud of wood and plaster.

  Deafened, stunned by the blast, Sam lay facedown in the hallway as debris rained onto his back.

  Eight

  “Man, oh man,” said Gillis. “You sure did bring down the house.”

  They were standing outside, behind the yellow police line, waiting for the rest of the search team to assemble. The apartment house—what was left of it—had been cleared of any second devices, and now it was Ernie Takeda’s show. Takeda was, at that moment, diagramming the search grid, handing out evidence bags and assigning his lab crew to their individual tasks.

  Sam already knew what they’d find. Residue of Dupont label dynamite. Scraps of green two-inch-wide electrical tape. And Prima detonating cord. The same three components as the church bomb and the warehouse bomb.

  And every other bomb put together by the late Vincent Spectre.

  Who’s your heir apparent, Spectre? Sam wondered. To whom did you bequeath your tricks of the trade? And why is Nina Cormier the target?

  Just trying to reason it through made his head pound. He was still covered in dust, his cheek was bruised and swollen, and he could barely hear out of his left ear. But he had nothing to complain about. He was alive.

  Nina would not have been so fortunate.

  “I’ve got to find her,” he said. “Before he does.”

  “We’ve checked with the family again,” said Gillis. “Father, mot
her, sister. She hasn’t turned up anywhere.”

  “Where the hell could she have gone?” Sam began to pace along the police line, his worry turning to agitation. “She walks out of headquarters, maybe she catches a cab or a bus. Then what? What would she do?”

  “Whenever my wife gets mad, she goes shopping,” Gillis offered helpfully.

  “I’m going to call the family again.” Sam turned to his car. “Maybe she’s finally shown up somewhere.”

  He was about to reach inside the Taurus for the car phone when he froze, his gaze focused on the edge of the crowd. A small, dark-haired figure stood at the far end of the street. Even from that distance, Sam could read the fear, the shock, in her pale face.

  “Nina,” he murmured. At once he began to move toward her, began to push, then shove his way through the crowd. “Nina!”

  She caught sight of him, struggling to reach her. Now she was moving as well, frantically plunging into the gathering of onlookers. They found each other, fell into each other’s embrace. And at that moment, there was no one else in the world for Sam, no one but the woman he was holding. She felt so very precious in his arms, so easily taken from him.

  With a sudden start, he became acutely aware of the crowd. All these people, pressing in on them. “I’m getting you out of here,” he said. Hugging her close to his side, he guided her toward his car. The whole time, he was scanning faces, watching for any sudden movements.

  Only when he’d bundled her safely into the Taurus did he allow himself a deep breath of relief.

  “Gillis!” he called. “You’re in charge here!”

  “Where you going?”

  “I’m taking her somewhere safe.”

  “But—”

  Sam didn’t finish the conversation. He steered the car out of the crowd and they drove away.

  Drove north.

  Nina was staring at him. At the bruise on his cheek, the plaster dust coating his hair. “My God, Sam,” she murmured. “You’ve been hurt—”

  “A little deaf in one ear, but otherwise I’m okay.” He glanced at her and saw that she didn’t quite believe him. “I ducked out just before it blew. It was a five-second delay detonator. Set off by opening the door.” He paused, then added quietly, “It was meant for you.”