Chapter Three
Beau sat at a Formica-topped table in a small, sterile room off a long, linoleum-floored hospital hallway, waiting to talk to the police. He glanced up as the door swung open and the curvy brunette, Cassidy Jones, walked in. She was dressed in business clothes as she had been the first time he had seen her, camel slacks today and a turquoise sweater, both garments smeared with his father’s blood.
His slacks and V-necked sweater weren’t any better, the blood dried now into ugly dark patches. Looking at them made his stomach churn.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, taking a seat in the chair across from him.
He nodded, hating the trite phrase that meant absolutely nothing.
“What happened?” she asked.
Beau raked a hand through his hair, which as usual needed a trim. “You were there. Someone stabbed him.” He sighed into the quiet, wishing he could turn back time, if only for a few precious seconds. “He was dying when I got there. I knew it. I just didn’t want to believe it.”
The woman cast him a glance that lingered a little too long. “What were you doing at the house?”
His head came up. “What do you mean? I’m his son. I don’t need a reason to see my own father.”
“I realize that. But according to the senator, you rarely visit. You were there yesterday, back again today. Why did you come to see him?”
Beau straightened in the uncomfortable metal chair. “What business is it of yours?”
“I’m your father’s personal assistant, remember?”
Beau scoffed. “How could I forget.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She was way beyond pretty with her plump lips and those thick dark curls, about five-five and really put together. Then again, his father’s women usually were attractive.
“It means I can’t believe he had the balls to bring you into the house . . . at least not right now.”
She bristled. “I don’t know what you think you know, but whatever it is, you’re wrong. I just met your father last week. I only started working for him day before yesterday.”
So the old man was still wooing her. An attractive man, a former state senator with plenty of money, his seductions never took long. Beau wondered if she really had no clue what his father intended.
“So you walked in and he had already been stabbed,” she said, pressing him again.
He glanced up at her tone. “That’s right. You got there just a few seconds after I did.” Those perceptive green eyes continued to assess him and a light went on in his head. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I did it? You don’t think I’m the one who killed him?”
She held his gaze a little too long. “I don’t know.” But she clearly had her doubts. “I saw the letter opener in your hand when I walked into the study. What was I supposed to think?”
Beau came out of his chair so fast it teetered and almost toppled over. “I didn’t kill my father—but you can bet your last dollar I’m going to find out who did.”
The door swung open just then and a plainclothes detective walked into the room. Beau recognized Tom Briscoe, one of the guys he’d gone to high school with. In a town the size of Pleasant Hill, everyone knew everyone.
“I’m really sorry, Beau,” Tom said. He was thirty-five, same as Beau, a stocky man with thick, sandy-brown hair. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“Thanks, Tom.” Briscoe couldn’t imagine because Beau wasn’t sure himself. Angry, upset, confused, determined to find out what had happened. “Detective Tom Briscoe, this is Cassidy Jones. She was my father’s personal assistant.”
Tom gave her the same look Beau had, making the same assumptions. There weren’t many secrets in Pleasant Hill and his dad’s philandering was legendary. “That so?”
“As I told Mr. Reese, I only started working for the senator two days ago—and none of my duties involved anything of a personal nature.”
Tom relaxed. If Cassidy wasn’t the senator’s mistress, likely she wasn’t a suspect. According to her, she barely knew him. What motive would she have?
“Good to know,” Tom said. He turned to Beau. “The CSIs are out at the house. It’s a crime scene, so you won’t be able to go inside until they’re done.”
He just nodded. On the rare occasion he came to Pleasant Hill, he usually stayed at Blackland Ranch, Linc’s property outside Iron Springs, the next town over. Beau had yet to phone his partner and his partner’s wife, Carly. It would be the next call he made.
“Why don’t we start from the beginning?” Tom said, pulling up a chair and settling his stocky, muscular frame in the seat. “Mind if I record this?”
Beau shook his head and sat back down.
Tom set the recorder on the table and pushed the start button. “Why did you come to Pleasant Hill to see your dad?”
It was an ugly story, one he couldn’t tell without hurting someone else. “We had some business to discuss. We worked it out yesterday. I came back today with the paperwork for him to sign.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“When I walked into the study, my father was lying on the floor.” He swallowed as the memory arose. “He was covered in blood. There was a letter opener buried in his chest. Whoever stabbed him must have done it just a few minutes before I got there.”
“You didn’t go after the assailant? Try to catch him?”
“I was trying to save my father’s life so no, I didn’t go after him. I didn’t hear anything or see anyone—I wish I had. I don’t think the killer was still in the house.”
“Your father was a retired senator. He must have surveillance cameras on the property.”
Beau shook his head. “My dad didn’t like them. He felt they were an invasion of his privacy.” And some of the people he dealt with were the sort who didn’t want their visits recorded.
“Too bad,” Tom said.
“Yeah.”
Tom turned to Cassidy Jones. “So you were working at the house when it happened?”
“I hadn’t gone into his office yet that day. I have a workspace set up in the guest house. That’s where I’ve been staying.”
Beau shot her a glance. The guest house. Damned convenient. He wondered if she was telling the truth about her relationship with his dad.
“So the senator was expecting you?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said. “There were some things he wanted to discuss. But when I walked in, I saw . . . I saw him lying on the floor, his chest covered in blood. I saw that he had been stabbed.”
“Where was Beau at that time?”
Cassidy’s gaze swung in his direction, and he didn’t like what he saw in her face. “Beau was leaning over his father. He had the letter opener in his hand.”
“I was pulling it out!” Beau shot to his feet. “I was trying to save his life!”
Cassidy’s eyes locked with his. “I don’t know exactly what happened before I got there, but Beau did everything he could to save his father. Unfortunately, it was already too late.”
Tom eyed him a little differently now. “I’ll need to take both of your statements. I’d like to do that down at the station. You can ride with me or meet me there.”
“My car is back at the house,” Beau said. Where he’d left it to ride in the ambulance.
“I can drive you home to get it,” Cassidy said. She looked down at her blood-stained clothes. “Would it be all right if I went into the guest house to change?”
“You can go in and get some clothes, change at the station. Take one of the officers in with you. What about you, Beau?”
“I’ve got an overnight bag in my car.”
“So you planned to stay in town?”
“Actually, no. Just force of habit. Always better to be prepared.”
Cassidy stood up from her chair, hesitated, then released a breath. “Before we go, there’s something I need to tell you, Detective Briscoe.”
Setting her purse on the table, she opened it, took out a leather badge wallet and flipped it open. “I’m a private investigator. I work for an agency called Maximum Security in Dallas. The senator hired me last week. He wanted me to do a little digging. He was worried. He said he thought someone was following him. He said people had been asking questions. He wanted to know who it was and why. He specifically said he didn’t think his life was in danger. Obviously he was wrong.”
* * *
Cassidy studied Beau as Detective Briscoe took his leave. Strong biceps filled the sleeves of his blood-stained sweater. His forearms were tanned and corded with sinewy muscle. Despite the circumstances, he looked good. Too good, she thought as the two of them walked out of the hospital into the sunlight.
Two months ago, her relationship with Richard Shelton, a successful Dallas attorney, had come to an end. She had enjoyed Rick and he had enjoyed her, but they weren’t in love, and when work began to hold more appeal than an evening at home with Rick, it was clearly time to move on.
Since then she hadn’t dated. Which was probably the reason Beau Reese pushed all her hot buttons. Or maybe it was just because he was hot, an extremely good-looking, incredibly sexy male.
Whatever the reason, now wasn’t the time or place, and a wealthy celebrity with dozens of women chasing after him wasn’t worth the trouble.
Cassidy opened the door of her silver Honda hatchback and slid in behind the wheel. Beau climbed into the passenger seat, pushing it back to accommodate his long legs. They buckled their belts and she started the engine.
The late January weather was chilly, but a blue sky curved overhead. Still, it was Texas. It wouldn’t be long before the weather changed.
“So you’re a private detective,” Beau said as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“I’m mostly an investigator. I rarely carry a weapon. I specialize in digging up information, asking questions, figuring things out. Sometimes I work with a bounty hunter friend of mine. I do the tracing, he brings in the skip, and we split the fee. One of my least favorite jobs is finding out if a spouse is cheating, but it pays the bills.”
Beau didn’t smile. She knew his mind was still back at the house, going over and over what had happened to his father. Her instincts said he hadn’t done it. And when she replayed the scene, the timing seemed slightly off. She trusted her instincts and her judgment, but she needed to be sure.
“I wish I’d had a few more days,” she said, regaining his attention as the car rolled down the road. “Maybe I could have found something that would have given us a warning, something that would have prevented his death.”
Intense blue eyes went to her face. “He must have told you something, said something that could lead the police to the killer. He hired you because he was worried. What did he say?”
“He gave me a couple of names, business associates. There was also a woman. He said their relationship hadn’t ended well.”
Beau scoffed. “His relationships rarely ended well. My father wasn’t the sort of man who stayed friends with the women he dated. He used them, then discarded them like old shoes.”
Cassidy filed the information away. “I know the two of you didn’t get along. I read that in more than one account. I got a firsthand look yesterday when I heard you arguing.”
He scoffed. “He was a terrible father and a rotten husband. My mother wasn’t any better. I think she got pregnant because she thought it was a necessary part of being married, but she didn’t really like kids. She and my dad believed as long as they gave me money, they could go on with their lives as if I didn’t exist.”
“Was that the reason you got in trouble in high school? Nobody around to take care of you?”
He cast her a dark look. “Hey, I didn’t kill him, so you don’t need to be investigating me.”
“Sorry.” But she wasn’t really sorry at all. Yesterday Beau and his father had had a vicious quarrel. Today Stewart Reese was dead. Was it possible Beau had lost his temper and stabbed the older man in a fit of rage?
“How’d you get interested in becoming a PI anyway?” he asked.
“Lot of cops and military in my family. My granddad, my brothers. My grandfather died in the line of duty when I was a kid. I was never interested in joining the force, but I liked the idea of catching bad guys, so I studied criminology in college. I apprenticed for a while with a friend of my brother’s in the security business in Houston. I liked it. Investigative work seemed to be a good fit.”
The entrance to Country Club Estates loomed ahead. She pulled into the area of luxury homes and drove along the golf course to the big white house with the columns out front. Several white-and-blue police vehicles were parked on the street, and yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the porch, reminding her that a man had just died here and that man was Beau’s father.
Silence fell inside the car.
“Thanks for the ride,” Beau said a little gruffly, his features drawn and grim as he opened the door and ducked out of the car. He and his father weren’t close, but the senator was still his dad.
Cassidy watched him walk toward the Ferrari she had spotted parked out front when she’d left to follow the ambulance. With his long, lean-muscled build, wide shoulders and narrow waist, the man was definite eye candy.
She knew he was in great physical condition. She had read he trained in mixed martial arts, and apparently he was good at it—like pretty much everything else he did.
She went around to the guest house, walked up to the uniformed patrolman standing out front and told him Tom Briscoe had said she could get something to wear. The officer escorted her inside and waited while she grabbed a pair of jeans, a yellow scooped-neck sweater, and a pair of sneakers.
“We should be done with the guest house in a couple of hours,” said the patrolman, a skinny young guy with light brown hair. “You’ll be able to come back then.”
“Great.” Because she planned to stay for at least a few more days—unless Beau Reese threw her out. She had only begun her investigation into the three names the senator had given her. She needed more information, needed to look into the senator’s personal records, into his life.
By now the police would have taken his computer and the folders in his file drawers, but she had a hunch there was more. From the little she had gleaned since she’d met him, the senator was a secretive man, not the sort to leave his personal information lying around.
If her hunch was right, there would be a place he kept his important documents, his personal records, and she intended to find it.
Carrying the change of clothes, she returned to where her car was parked, surprised to see Beau Reese sitting in his Ferrari waiting for her. Apparently Beau was a gentleman, the last of a dying breed.
As she started the Honda and turned it around in the street, Beau fired up the powerful Ferrari engine, waited for her to drive in front of him down the road, then fell in behind her.
She knew where to go. When she had first arrived in Pleasant Hill, she had passed the police station, downtown on a side street off Main. Most of the buildings were false-fronted brick structures, the drugstore had dark green awnings out front, and the streets all had angled parking.
She pulled into the lot next to the station and got out of the car, waited for Beau to park and catch up with her, and they walked inside together, both of them cordial and friendly.
Cassidy planned to keep it that way—unless Beau Reese had cold-bloodedly murdered his father.