Dark and Deadly Page 4

  Unfortunately, Torie had walked in on that discussion.

  “Anyway, he didn’t cheat. Then he won the jackpot. He came to me with the news, and wondered how on earth he was going to tell Torie. I asked if she would be happy about it, and he said he didn’t know.”

  “He didn’t know if his fiancée would be happy about several million dollars?”

  Chapter Three

  Sorrels seemed surprised. Paul smiled.

  “You see why I was worried?” Paul shrugged. “I kept asking him why he felt she wouldn’t be happy about it. He said he wondered if she’d want to leave her widowed mother behind, travel the world.” Paul remembered Todd’s boyish excitement about the prospect of honest-to-goodness world travel. “I knew that anyone, especially a woman, would be happy about money coming in, but if he was worried, I was worried.”

  “Especially a woman? You thought she was a gold digger?”

  “Oh, no, not in the sense you mean. Before the big win, her family had far more money than Todd’s. Her father owned some sort of manufacturing business, did pretty well. He passed away a few years before they were to be married, and the business was sold, but at the time, they were doing well.”

  “So why else did you dislike Ms. Hagen? She indicated that there was an antipathy long before the aborted wedding.”

  Once again Paul squelched the instant spurt of anger. How did you admit that kind of pain to a couple of strangers, both of whom had already decided you might be gay?

  “We’d had a confrontation over some college…” he hesitated. Torie had been adamant about the situation then, and given the trouble it was still causing, he’d better choose his words with care. “Pranks. We argued about it. Very loudly. And she heard me tell Todd I thought he shouldn’t get married. In typical fashion, she thought I was dissing her. I wasn’t.” He stated it flatly. Truthfully. It had never been about Torie, despite what she believed. “After that, she asked Todd not to invite me to their house. It wasn’t very pleasant to be excluded, but hey, we were adults. I got over it. It was hard to see my friend put in the middle of a tug of war, though.”

  “I see,” Sorrels made a series of scrawling notes. Paul wondered what inference the man had drawn from the simple words. Obviously Torie was up to her old tricks, pouring out the poison. How had he ever wanted her so badly, seen her as the pinnacle of everything desirable?

  “It’s old news, gentlemen. I didn’t have anything to do with Torie’s house being burned, and I’m sure Todd didn’t either.”

  “You reported him missing.”

  “We were supposed to go to the Flyers game on Wednesday. He didn’t call to cancel, and he didn’t show up. When I couldn’t get him on the phone, I went by the Ritz, where he was staying. The manager checked the room, the bed hadn’t been slept in, so I reported him missing this morning.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “No answer.”

  “Would he hate Ms. Hagen enough to burn her house down, flee the country? Was he someone who acted rashly?”

  “Rashly? Todd? No. He was considerate, usually thought things to death. And he didn’t hate Torie. Ever.”

  “Hmmm.” Marsden’s comment wasn’t articulate. Sorrels took one last note, and closed his book.

  “Thank you for your time. If you hear from Mister Peterson, please let us know.”

  “Will do.”

  Paul ushered the men out, only to find another officer, this time a cop, waiting to see him. Detective Tibbet was less annoying, but covered the same ground. At least he was more focused on Todd’s being missing, rather than Torie’s fire. Paul’s imagination of that event was a little too vivid, and he didn’t want to think about it.

  They were about ten minutes into their conversation when Tibbet got a call.

  “Scuze me,” he said, flipping open his phone to take it. His end of the conversation was unenlightening. Neither was his expression at the end of the call.

  “Tell me again where you were for the last two nights?”

  Frustrated, Paul went over his activities yet again.

  “Good to know. I’ll need names and numbers.” Tibbet sighed. “Hate to tell you, but you’re going to get another bunch of cops in here. Your friend’s been found.”

  Paul was on his feet in an instant. “Where? Is he okay?” He knew as soon as he said the words that Todd wasn’t okay. Tibbet’s face, stony as it was, told him the story. “No. Please tell me he’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Mister Jameson, but your friend’s been found dead.”

  “Oh, hell.” The bad luck which had dogged Todd since he’d left Torie at the altar had finally caught up with him. “How? Where?”

  “Oh, my God. He’s what?”

  “Dead,” Pam managed through her tears, collapsing into the chair by Torie’s hospital bed. “You know, I thought I hated him for leaving you like he did, being such a prick, but…but…”

  “No.” Torie couldn’t fathom that Todd was gone. Dead. Not Todd, with his infectious laugh and booming voice. He couldn’t be gone, forever. “How?”

  Pam gulped and averted her eyes. “Pam, what aren’t you telling me?”

  “He was…he was…murdered,” she whispered. “At the church.”

  “Nooooo,” Torie wailed as her heart shattered into a million tiny fragments. It was her fault. Everything she touched turned to ash. To death. First Christian, now Todd. And if Dev hadn’t been as strong and as fierce as he was, he, too, would be dead because of her.

  Did she have to die to end this curse?

  Two weeks later, she still couldn’t fathom Todd’s death.

  The prayer ended and the pastor motioned for her to come forward. When she sat paralyzed, the funeral director touched her elbow, a concerned look shadowing his features.

  “Ms. Hagen? Are you all right?” he whispered.

  Torie shook her head no, but managed to stand anyway. She wasn’t okay.

  It had been two weeks. Two long weeks had not been enough for her to begin to come to grips with the losses, the double blow of her house burning and Todd dying.

  She wasn’t sure she would ever be okay again. Grief carved a hollow in the core of her body. She felt empty.

  Straightening her skirt as she rose, she tried to adjust the suit jacket as she stood behind the podium. The clothes were new, the shoes uncomfortable; everything she owned was in the house, covered in soot and saturated with smoke. The woman at her insurance agency warned her she might have to replace her entire wardrobe.

  As it was, until the fire investigators released the scene, she couldn’t go back in. She had nothing.

  Torie forced her mind away from that terrible, wandering path.

  The church looked so solemn. Not that she usually saw it from the pulpit, but the difference was obvious. Everyone was in black or a somber color. The sea of tear-streaked faces, pale and grim, made a horrible contrast with the gorgeous riot of flowers surrounding the casket situated in front of the altar.

  Many of the people here today had been in these very seats five years ago, waiting for the bride to appear, for her to appear.

  “I don’t know why Todd wanted me to be the one to speak today,” she began. She really didn’t know. She cleared her throat. “The last time I was in this church, many of you were, too…when Todd and I…when Todd left me at the altar.”

  Torie hadn’t meant to say it so bluntly. The pages of her carefully prepared speech quivered in her cold fingers.

  “Todd…” she began, but had to stop, fight the tears. “Todd hated to let anyone down.”

  Yes. That was it. Focus on that. “We’d only been dating six weeks when my father died. He hardly knew me or my family, but he was there for me. For us.” She saw her brother nod, felt the small smile of encouragement warm her.

  “When my father’s long estranged relatives from New Orleans came for the funeral, he helped us cope. He organized many of you, his fraternity brothers and friends, to shuttle people to and from the airport, he broug
ht groceries, he even fixed meals.” She saw nods and smiles from some of the brothers she recognized.

  “When one of the brothers from his pledge class was diagnosed with cancer, he took every spare moment he had from classes to call every other brother to raise money for medical expenses.” Torie heard a muffled sob, saw a man drop his head, saw his wife put a comforting arm around his shoulders.

  “When he came into his fortune, he didn’t change.” The words brought fresh memories: she’d come home from what was to have been her honeymoon, which had turned into her escape from the debacle at the church. The townhouse had been cleared of Todd’s things, and it was as clean as a whistle. Her car had been full of gas, the fridge full of groceries. The wedding presents had all been returned, with a note from Todd. He’d paid his secretary two thousand dollars to do it, and spare Torie the pain.

  Two days later, the deed to the house and the title to her car, paid in full, had arrived by courier. Neither she nor her family had ever received a bill or a complaint from any of the vendors associated with the wedding.

  A cough from the funeral director brought her back to the moment. She’d lost her place, fogged by the memories.

  “He asked me to give him another chance. I said no. All I could see, all I could remember,” she managed the words through the rising sobs. “All I could remember was the feeling of horror, standing in the bride’s room, with all of you out here, knowing he didn’t want me.” The words, ripe with pain, escaped, even though she had willed them not to.

  In the front pew, Pam sat crying. She saw Steven and Dev turn from either side to comfort her friend.

  “He would call me,” Torie managed to continue, to drag her gaze and thoughts away from Pam’s grief, “at weird times of the day or night. From weird places in the world.” Looking at the back of the church, she saw a few more nods, smiles. She focused on those last rows. She didn’t recognize many people sitting there, and that helped. She could not, would not look at Pam, or Paul Jameson sitting with the pallbearers on the other side of the church, in the front. “He’d send me presents, out of the blue. I know he did that to many of you as well.”

  She saw one of Todd’s frat brothers elbow another, bend his head to share a story. It made her smile. “Once he called me from the golf course at St. Andrews. I was annoyed because I was on a date, and here was Todd, calling me.” That memory was so clear, she was able to push back the tears. Her date had been outraged. “But I had to laugh because he wanted to tell me he’d seen an eagle and had thought of me, and that he’d won ten thousand dollars on a hole-in-one and was going to give it to a wildlife conservation group.”

  Wiping her eyes, she was able to echo the smiles she saw before her. “It was so like him. When I hung up, I didn’t even care that the date was a bust.”

  There were actual chuckles as she finished, and it helped her regain her composure.

  “He hated to come home at times. It seemed like bad luck plagued him if he were in the states. He said he had to keep moving so it didn’t catch him.”

  Torie looked at her brother as she said the next part. “When my grandmother for whom I was named passed away, Todd flew thirty-seven hours to be here for her service. He just did that sort of thing. The right thing. I know most of you have the same kind of stories to tell about him. He did the right thing, and with very few exceptions, he managed to make it fun.”

  Tears welled again, fell like rain onto the shiny wood of the pulpit. “I was never his wife, but I was his friend. I never managed to forgive him for being strong, doing the right thing, and not going through with our wedding. Now, remembering so many things, so many good things, I wish I’d done that before now. Told him…told him…”

  It took seemingly forever to pull her composure back from where it flew at those words, those thoughts. She knew her voice was shaking, but she managed to wrap up her speech.

  “I will miss him, and I know all of you will, too.”

  Stepping down from the pulpit, she fumbled her way around the flowers, approached the casket covered in roses. Pressing her hand to her lips, she carried a last kiss for Todd with them as she touched the cool oak.

  She didn’t remember going back to her seat. She didn’t hear the music, or remember leaving the church to follow the casket out. That was all a blur.

  The next thing that registered was Paul Jameson taking her arm at the graveside, leading her back to the family car. He’d stood next to her as they’d buried Todd next to his mother and father.

  She’d been there. She simply didn’t remember much of it. What she remembered were flashes of the sky’s amazing azure crispness, the trees beyond the tent blowing in the March breeze, the deep comforting warmth of Paul’s hand on her arm, or at the small of her back.

  Her brother drove her to the hotel where she was staying until the insurance company helped her find a rental. After she put Steven on a plane back to Russia, she called in sick. The following day, she pulled every string and every favor she could muster to get her projects covered. Assured by the vet that Pickle was on the mend, she turned the car toward the airport, and got on a plane herself.

  When she pulled another rental car up at the hotel in Nags Head, North Carolina, it was like coming home. A refuge in the storm. The same one she’d found after the wedding.

  That’s where Paul Jameson found her.

  She was on the beach. No towel, no chair, not even a jacket to block the whipping wind. The sea spray was a bitter gall to his lips as he strode toward her. Irritated, he stopped long enough to take off his shoes. He’d looked everywhere in the small town. It was still off-season, so there weren’t that many places to look. His last resort had been the beach.

  He could feel the sand weighing down the cuffs of his dress pants. Great.

  “Torie,” he called.

  Either she didn’t hear him, or she was ignoring him. He repeated the call, louder this time, and saw her frown, but she didn’t turn.

  “TORIE!”

  Her head whipped around and her mouth dropped open in an O of surprise. At least he’d finally gotten her attention.

  “Paul, what are you doing here?” She struggled to her feet, untangling and brushing at the full skirts she wore. They were a bright whirl of gypsy colors. He’d never seen her wear that style before. She was usually more conservative.

  “Looking for you, of course. What else?”

  It pissed her off, he could tell. Well, good. He was plenty pissed off himself to have to hunt her down. Again. Not to mention that the cops were all over him about Todd’s affairs. She was smack in the middle of everyone’s questions, and wasn’t there to be the target of them.

  Each part of the jumbled puzzle connected to Torie. To have to find her so she could answer the damn questions, and get her to be the center of the maelstrom, infuriated him

  “Why?”

  “Don’t play stupid, Torie, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “Stupid? You arrogant prat,” she fired up. “I ask a simple question, a logical one, and you call me stupid? What the hell do you want from me?”

  “Logical? Todd’s dead, your house is a wreck, and you run off to North Carolina? Yeah, and don’t expect someone to come looking for you? That’s logical?”

  She threw up her hands. “Yes, it’s logical. With Todd gone, you don’t ever have to see me again since you despise it so much. And my house isn’t any concern of yours, now is it? What does it matter that I’m in North Carolina, North Dakota, or the north quadrant of hell?”

  “You need to be home for the reading of the will,” he said, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Second, your friends are worried. Third, you’re a murder suspect.”

  She went pale, and staggered as if she’d been shoved from behind. “I’m a…a what?”

  “Murder suspect.” For some reason, the vindictive relish he’d felt when hearing that news dimmed in the face of her reaction. She looked as if she’d been punched.

  “But I would never…Yo
u know I wouldn’t…couldn’t…”

  “It doesn’t matter what I know or what I think. It’s about what the police think. I managed to find out some things. They have your hair and blood at the crime scene, or so I’ve been told.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not saying I believe you or them, but I do know you need to come back. Whatever trouble there is, you’ve got other matters to attend to.”

  “What other matters?”

  “Not my business to tell you, but Todd left you something in his will.” He frowned to think of all she was going to inherit. He really didn’t think she was capable of putting a bullet in Todd, but he didn’t like her, or trust her either.

  “What?” She strode toward him, standing in front of him, her own arms crossed. “What could he possibly leave me? He long ago paid any debt to me, which I never thought he owed in the first place, by the way. You know I never expected anything from him.”

  “You took it, though,” he snapped.

  “I offered to pay him back, every time I saw him,” she fired back. “I’ve saved a lot of money, thinking that one day he’d take me up on it.”

  “Not Todd.” That thought broke his anger. It was stupid to blame Torie. Todd did what he wanted to do. Paul knew it, but Torie was a handy target for his grief.

  “No.” She shook her head, turned to look at the sea. He followed her gaze and they both watched a V of pelicans skim the wave tops and disappear around the spit of land toward town. “But thanks to him, I have a great retirement fund.”

  Paul nearly told her she wouldn’t need it.

  “Come on, let’s get out of this wind.” He took her elbow and steered her toward the parking lot. His car was the only one there, so she must have walked. She waited unspeaking, as he shook the sand out of his cuffs. She kept a cautious distance between them as they walked to the car.