On top of that, she was supposed to meet her mother and stepfather for a little cocktail party fund-raiser at the Four Seasons immediately after work. As a result, she was dressed for the occasion in a pale gray suede skirt and belted jacket with matching heels. She was about to head for the stairwell and jog up two flights in high heels and a narrow skirt, when the elevator finally arrived.
MACK WAS STANDING at the chalkboard holding a clipboard in his left hand, writing a new list of possible suspects on the board, when Sam hurried into his office at 8:08.
The meeting hadn’t begun yet, and Shrader and Womack were standing near the chairs in front of Mack’s desk, drinking coffee. Shrader trumpeted the news of Sam’s arrival in a way that made her long to strangle him. “My God, Littleton!” he exclaimed, “is that really you? Jeez!” He elbowed Womack. “Have you ever seen a better pair of legs than Littleton’s got?”
“I’d have to see a little more of them before I could be sure,” Womack said with an exaggerated leer. “How ’bout it, Littleton?”
Sam rolled her eyes at him and walked over to her usual chair, the one closest to the chalkboard on the end. Unfortunately, Shrader was truly fascinated by the “new her.”
“So what’s the occasion?” he demanded. “You got a hot date for lunch?”
“No, for cocktails after work,” Sam replied distractedly. She hated feeling awkward, and she wished Mack would say something.
He did, and it was in a very cool, brusque tone. “You’re late, Littleton,” he said, as he continued to write on the board.
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do it again.”
That was unjust and pushing it too far. Sam had been coming in early, leaving late, and working weekends for weeks. She felt warm color rush up her cheeks, and unfortunately, Shrader not only saw it, he thought it was attractive, and remarked upon it, too. “It’s not just the way you’re dressed, Littleton. There’s something different about you this morning. You got a . . . I dunno . . . a glow.”
Too embarrassed and frustrated to think ahead, Sam retaliated against Mack’s second warning about being late. “I’m just more relaxed today than usual,” she told Shrader lightly. “Last night, I had an all-over body massage.”
Mack’s chalk snapped.
Sam bit back a satisfied grin as she bent down to pick up the broken piece that had rolled across the floor near her feet. At that moment, Mack turned around and walked toward her. Holding the piece of chalk in her fingers, Sam looked up at him from beneath her lashes and slowly stood up.
He held out his hand, his expression impassive, but she saw the warning in his eyes, and something else . . . something like accusation. She dropped the chalk on his palm—the same palm that had shoved beneath her bra last night and caressed her breasts. His long fingers closed on the chalk—the same fingers that had . . .
Sam cast that thought aside and watched him return to writing on the board. He was wearing a black knit shirt that outlined his broad shoulders and tapered waist, and Sam’s thoughts promptly drifted to the way his bunched muscles felt beneath her fingertips. He was so beautiful . . .
She sat down again and made herself chat with Shrader and Womack, who were leaning against McCord’s desk.
Dusting chalk from his hands, McCord turned abruptly and said, “Valente is off the suspect list permanently.”
“What?” Womack exclaimed, straightening.
“Why?” Shrader demanded.
“I can’t tell you the reason because it involves some departmental issues that I need to deal with separately, later. For now, I want you to accept my word that I have sufficient reason to disqualify him completely as a suspect. If either of you have a problem with that, say it now.”
Shrader and Womack hesitated only a second; then Womack shook his head and Shrader said, “No problem. It’s okay by me, if it’s okay by you.” Sam had known they wouldn’t hesitate to take McCord’s word: they were both as impressed by him as she was.
“Next,” McCord said implacably, “I want it understood that no one outside this room is to know we’re disqualifying Valente. No one,” he repeated.
Shrader and Womack both nodded.
He glanced at Sam then, but it was merely a formality, and she nodded, too.
“Can I just ask one question—?” Shrader said. “Does the decision to take Valente off the list have anything to do with what Littleton learned when she chased him down yesterday?”
McCord shook his head. “No, but she can fill you in later on what she discovered. Right now, we’ve got a killer on the loose.” He glanced toward the names on the chalkboard. “Littleton has said all along that she thinks a woman is the one who washed those wineglasses out—obviously in the snow, since the cabin had no running water—and then put them carefully in the sink, where they’d be less likely to get broken.
“Given Manning’s love of the ladies, that theory fits. If so, then the missing sleeping bag could indicate he had sexual intercourse with someone who knew enough about police forensics to know we’d check that sleeping bag for traces of hair and fluids.”
“Anybody who’s ever watched a couple episodes of Law and Order knows that,” Shrader pointed out.
“Exactly. And from any similar movie or television program, the killer would have learned that we’d check Manning’s hands for powder residue, so she—or he—fired one of the shots with Manning’s hand wrapped around the butt of the weapon.”
Pausing, McCord tipped his head to the list of names on the board. “Let’s start with the women we know of who Manning came into contact with through his wife, since he had a partiality for screwing her friends and acquaintances. You’ve checked out their alibis but not as thoroughly as we would have if we hadn’t been so sure Valente was our man.”
Shrader and Womack settled into their usual chairs, and Sam slid hers back a little so they could see past her to the board. Normally these meetings in Mack’s office were intense and fast-paced, but disqualifying Valente as a suspect left everyone without a focus, and the atmosphere in the room became noticeably desultory. Not only were they now without a suspect, they also had to come to terms with the unexpected reality of having dedicated enormous energy and time to a “sure thing” that wasn’t one.
“What about Leigh Manning?” Shrader said finally. “She’s not on the board.”
For the first time, McCord’s gaze shifted specifically to Sam, but the smile twisting the corner of his mouth was one of impersonal amusement. “I think Littleton has been right all along about Leigh Manning’s innocence. I want to talk to Mrs. Manning myself today, but based on what Littleton learned from Valente in the limo yesterday, it’s reasonable to believe Mrs. Manning had no idea that her old friend ‘Falco Nipote’ was actually Michael Valente until after her husband died.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Womack said bluntly.
Instead of impatiently telling Womack to take his word on it, McCord reversed his earlier decision and asked Sam to relate to them what she’d learned from Valente yesterday. Sam admired him for that. Mack was not only an extraordinary team leader, he was an all-out, full-fledged team member who understood when his teammates couldn’t go forward without more background.
“That makes a lot of sense,” Shrader said when Sam finished her tale about the note they’d confiscated. “I mean, why would a guy sign ‘nephew’ and ‘Falco’ on a note that already had his name printed on the top of the paper?”
“It also explains why we couldn’t connect him with Leigh Manning before the murder, no matter how hard we tried,” McCord said. “They weren’t connected. If you have any doubts about why she didn’t recognize him at her party, have a look at his mug shot when he was busted on the manslaughter charge. He had a dark beard. Hell, I wouldn’t have recognized him.”
Sam thought of Valente’s voice in the limo, the smooth rich timbre of his baritone and McCord noticed her frown. “Are you disagreeing?” he asked her dubiously.
r /> “No,” Sam said emphatically as she reached behind her nape to tighten the wide silver clip holding her hair back. “I saw that old photograph in Valente’s file. The only thing Leigh Manning could have recognized when she met him at her party was his voice. Valente has the most amazing voice. It’s very deep and very mellow—”
Womack slapped his knee. “I knew it! I told you—Littleton has a thing for Valente. C’mon, Littleton, come clean—is your heavy date tonight with Valente? We won’t tell a soul,” he lied. “You can trust us,” he lied again, oblivious to McCord’s clenching jaw.
Sam was losing patience. She looked at Womack in bewildered disgust and said, “My ‘date’ is with my stepfather and mother! Now, knock it off, will you?”
“What’s your stepfather do, anyway?” Shrader asked suddenly.
Unaware of the almost imperceptible softening in McCord’s gaze when she mentioned the identity of her “date,” Sam reached for a spare tablet lying on McCord’s desk and took a pencil out of her purse. “He works for the government and lives off the taxpayers just like we do.”
“Can we get back to business?” McCord said, but he sounded less curt than he had before, and several seconds later, Sam belatedly realized that he might have assumed she was all dressed up to go out with another man. Mack was a detective who would instinctively look for other, subtler, reasons for the things people did—which could have meant he wondered if she’d gotten dressed up and mentioned a drinks date just to tease him, keep him off balance, and make the waiting harder.