Thicker Than Water

“That’s Lieutenant Jackson to you.” She took his camera bag from his hand, took out the camera and easily popped open the back. A second later his film was hanging from her hands like crepe paper. She stuffed it into the deep pockets of her olive drab trench coat. “Cause of death will be determined at the autopsy. The identity is unofficial until next of kin are notified and come in to verify it.”

“We won’t release his name until we get the okay,” Julie Jones offered. “Just so long as you give us the okay before you tell anyone else.”

“Uh—both of us, that is. Not just her,” Sean put in, sensing that Jones was trying to scoop him, as usual. He had to admit, though, he was a little relieved that she was finally acting like the professional he reluctantly knew her to be. He tugged a card from a pocket. “My beeper number is on that.”

Jax took it and nodded. “As if I don’t have ten of these?”

“Yeah, but you never call.” He gave her his most charming smile.

She returned a wink. “I’m way more than you could handle, MacKenzie.” Then she rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, you two get the scoop. But only if you get out of here right now and let my people do their job.”

“Deal.” Sean turned to head to the elevator, surprised when the normally aggressive Julie Jones turned around and followed him. Something was up with her. He wanted to know what.

He got into the elevator; she got in beside him. The doors slid closed. She sighed audibly, and he swore her body sagged.

“Do you have another set of keys?” he asked.

“Not on me.”

“So then…you need a ride home?”

“I can get a cab.”

He shrugged. “I could drive you.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

Frowning as if she trusted him about as far as she could throw him—a sentiment he understood well, since he felt the same way about her—she finally shrugged. “What the hell. Okay, fine. Drive me home.”

Chapter Two

Sean walked Julie Jones out of the hotel to his Porsche Carerra GT, which he figured would have impressed the socks off most women. With her, though, he wasn’t expecting a hell of a lot.

She looked at the shiny black car, then at him. “Midlife crisis?”

Ignoring her, he depressed the button on his electronic key ring. The door locks popped open, the headlights came on, and the engine started. He opened her door for her.

“Am I supposed to take off my shoes or just sprinkle myself with holy water first?”

“Just get in, would you?”

She did. He closed the door and went around to his side. She was making with the sarcasm, yes, but not in her usual way. It was almost automatic. Almost as if she were speaking with her mouth while her mind was somewhere else. The zings were hardly worthy of her and nowhere near up to her usual standards. She’d been zinging him for so long, she could probably do it in a coma.

He shifted into gear and pulled the car away from the curb. “So what was with the little crime-scene-trampling demonstration back there?” he asked.

She blinked at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What, do you think I’m as gullible as those cops are? I know you, Jones. You’re a pro. You knew better than to walk in there like that.”

Her eyes were huge and dark, and she blinked them now, using them to their full potential as proof of innocence. “I was just so stunned at seeing a New York State Senator’s brother like that.”

“Bullshit.” He shifted, told himself to keep his eyes on the road. It wasn’t easy, because she was wearing a skirt, and her legs were a longtime weakness of his. She had this skin…It was the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her skin. Smooth, almost luminous, bronze satin. The color didn’t fade, even in the winter months. He had often wondered about her ethnic background, but how did you ask someone a question like that in the age of political correctness?

“Turn here,” she said. “Take 92.”

“Huh? Oh!” He got his mind back on his driving and took the turn she indicated. “I forgot you live all the way out in Cazenovia.”

“Caz is only twenty minutes away from downtown.”

“Yeah, by air.” She sent him a look. He ignored it. “We got off the subject. Why were you so determined to get into that room?”

“I just wanted a closer look at Blackwood. I wasn’t sure it was him.”

“Uh-huh.” She was lying through her teeth. “And what was up with emptying your purse onto the floor?”

She looked at him fast, almond-shaped brown eyes beaming purity, almost willing him to buy into it. “It was an accident.”

“The hell it was.”

Once she realized innocence had struck out, arrogance arrived to take its turn at bat. She folded her arms across her chest, straightened in her seat and faced him squarely, chin pulled in and slightly downward to give the illusion she was looking down her nose at him. She reminded him of royalty when she copped that attitude. Like some kind of queen who would have your head if you pissed her off much more than you already had. “If I say it was an accident,” she assured him, “then it was an accident.”

It was really too bad he hated her guts. He lifted his brows and tipped his head to one side. “If you say it was an accident, then you’re lying through your pretty teeth, because that was no accident.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your powers of observation stink, MacKenzie. No wonder you got passed over for the anchor seat I won.”

“They passed me over for that job because you’re easier on the eyes than I am, sweetie, and because your boss was narrow-minded enough to think he needed a male-female team. Don’t even think for a minute it had to do with talent. It was those big brown eyes and that sexy little body.” And that skin, he thought to himself.

“Right.” She tossed her head, shook her hair a little. “You honestly think the viewing public watches the evening news just to ogle me?”

“Hell, I watch the evening news just to ogle you. And I don’t even like you. Much less your presanitized, government-approved idea of news.”

“You’re an animal.”

He shrugged. “I’m also the guy whose beeper is going to go off when they release the name of the victim. So if I were you, I’d be nice to me.”

“I gave the lieutenant my number, and I have no doubt she’ll call me first.”

“Yeah, well, I gave her my beeper number, and that’s way easier and quicker for her. So I have no doubt she’ll call me first.”

She sniffed. “For a date, maybe.”

He lifted his brows. “She always seems to look me over pretty thoroughly, now that you mention it. Gotta be that MacKenzie magic.”

She pursed her lips, looking as if she would like to strangle him. “Guess I must be immune.” Then she focused on the road ahead. “Turn left here.”

He did. Then he drove along a tree-lined lane, with rich, gorgeous homes scattered a half acre apart from each other and fifty yards away from the road, to be closer to the lake.

“Right there.” She was pointing out her place, a brown cobblestone split-level, with a lawn and gardens that were manicured to perfection, and with the midnight-blue of Cazenovia Lake as a backdrop. He almost gaped as he pulled into the long paved driveway.

“You, uh, live here?”

“Yeah.”

“The station pays that well?”

“Not quite. I bought it with some money I inherited a long time ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

She got out of his car. He shut it off and got out, as well, though she hadn’t invited him in. She sent him a frown, but he pretended not to see it.

“You gonna be able to get in without your keys?”

“Of course.” She walked over the flagstone path, up the front steps to the door and poked the doorbell.

Oh, so that was it. She didn’t live alone. He racked his brain for tidbits about Jones. Getting dirt on her would make his freaking year. But there was never much to find. She guarded her privacy like a goddamn pitbull. She wasn’t married, he knew that much. Maybe she had some stud living with her. He expected someone too young, too skinny and probably unshaven to open the door when he heard footsteps approaching. It would be just like Jones to go for some underfed, left-wing Bohemian type.

“It’s me, hon,” Jones called. And her tough as nails newswoman voice had gone all sugary sweet. It was enough to make him puke.

The door opened.

The teenager on the other side was pale and blond and cuter than hell. She smiled as if she really meant it. “Hi, Mom. Forget your key?” Then she caught sight of him and smiled even wider. “Hey, you brought home a date? Wow, we should declare a national holiday. And he’s cute, too. You wanna come in?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he said, at the same time Jones said, “No.”

The girl smiled wider. She could have been a supermodel with a smile like that. “I’m Dawn.”

“Sean MacKenzie.”

“So are you coming in or what?” She stepped back. Julie rolled her eyes but walked in and didn’t blow a gasket when he walked in behind her.

“You want coffee or soda or anything?” Dawn asked.

“Coffee would be great, thanks.” The living room was two steps up, and it resembled, Sean thought, a woodland paradise. Hanging plants everywhere, dark wood furniture and a small bubbling fountain full of tumbled stones in the far corner were what produced the effect, he realized. The colors were earth tones, greens and browns, with touches of russet and mustard in the throw rugs and pillows. It was a great room, though it was dim, lit at the moment only by the TV, the screen of which was frozen in place.

Dawn hurried through the room, under an archway into the kitchen, flicking on the light as she did. “Go on in and sit. Help yourself to popcorn,” Dawn called. “I was just watching Nathan Z’s Power Hour.”

“You taped that thing again today?” Julie asked.

“Oh, come on, Mom. It’s Ms. Marcum’s favorite show, you know, though I personally think Van Praagh is better. He’s on right after—I taped them both.”

“Efficient of you.”

“I think he really helps some of those people.” She shrugged. “Besides, he’s about to go big time. I read his cable show’s going into syndication.”

Julie rolled her eyes and headed for the sofa. Sean followed, leaned over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you had a daughter,” he whispered.

“Now you do.”

“She’s a doll. She looks nothing like you.”

Jones sent him a scowl. “Gee, thanks.”

“What is she, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” she said. “Barely. Just got her driving permit.”

He frowned. “Sixteen? Hell, Jones, what did you do, give birth at the age of ten?”

“Trying to flatter me now?”

“Here we go.” Dawn came in with a mug in each hand, handing one to her mother and the other to Sean. Jones sat in a nearby chair, so Sean took a seat on the sofa and glanced at the hottest New Age guru of the season in freeze-frame on the television screen. Dawn plopped down beside him, folded her legs under her and picked up the remote. Then she paused and looked at him, frowning. “Wait a minute. Are you the Sean MacKenzie? From the radio?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“Oh, God, I love your show. I listen to it all the time.”

That put a smile on his face. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Mom does, too.”

“Does she really?” He slanted Julie an amused look.

“What’s not to love?” Dawn went on. “You’re totally irreverent. I never know what you’ll say next.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t always agree with your politics, but your taste in music is awesome. Especially for someone your age.”

He had sipped coffee, beaming at her praise, but the last line had him damn near spitting hot java out his nostrils. Jones wasn’t so reserved. She laughed out loud, smiling at her daughter.

He swallowed, cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Sometimes Ms. Marcum tapes your morning broadcast and lets us listen to it during study hall. You know, after she’s edited out all the swearwords and stuff.”

He leaned toward Julie. “Ms. Marcum?”

“Favorite teacher, English Eleven.”

“Got it.”

“She says you’re relevant and thought provoking.”

“Ms. Marcum has excellent taste.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, MacKenzie,” Julie said with a nod toward the TV. “She just told you the woman’s favorite show is Nathan Z’s Hour of Wasted Air Time.”

He frowned, then returned his attention to the teenager beside him. “So do you like my show better than your mom’s?” he asked, just to wipe the smug look from Jones’s face.

Dawn frowned in thought, then sighed. “I guess I can’t really compare. I mean, Mom does news.”

He blinked as if she’d hit him between the eyes. “Ouch.”

“Oh, crap, that’s not the way I meant—” Dawn looked from her mother to Sean and back again. “I didn’t mean you don’t do news. I mean you do, sort of, it’s just…different. It’s like comparing Howard Stern to Barbara Walters, you know? You run this irreverent, wild commentary on the most notorious events and people, with your opinions right out there. Exposé stuff, mixed in with music and guests. And she just reports the news, sensational or otherwise, from an unbiased point of view. It’s totally different.”

“He entertains and I inform,” Jones clarified.

“I enlighten. You enable,” he said.

“I report and you sensationalize,” she countered.

“You report what the powers that be want you to report. I pull the curtain away and expose the little man at the controls behind it.”

They glared at each other.

Dawn said, “This wasn’t a date, was it?”

He slugged back his coffee. “Nope. It was just a nice guy giving a colleague a ride home.”

“Colleague,” Jones muttered, shaking her head.

Sean put his cup down and got to his feet. “It was nice meeting you, Dawn. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Sean. Play some Stroke Nine for me tomorrow, will you?”

“You got it.” He started for the door.

Jones strode along beside him, and opened it when he reached it.

“Nice kid,” he said. “Amazing, with a barracuda like you for a mom. Who was her father? Ghandi?”

“Go to hell, MacKenzie.”

He rolled his eyes, sighed, forced himself to turn back. “You really listen to my show every day?”

“Yeah. So I know how not to report the news.”

His temper heated.

“You really watch my show every night?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s the best sleep aid I’ve ever tried.”

She pursed her lips.

He smiled at her. He didn’t think he had ever enjoyed fighting with anyone the way he enjoyed fighting with her. “This is great,” he told her. “It’s been too long since we had a good sparring match. Not since that tornado hit the state fair.”

“I figured you finally realized you’d never win one and just gave up.”

He held her eyes for a long moment and noticed that the shadow from earlier in the evening was still there, hiding behind her make-believe smile. Something was wrong with his favorite enemy, and knowing it made his own smile fade. “So are you gonna tell me what you were up to in that hotel room tonight, or do I have to go digging for it?”

The color left her face in a rush. “I told you, I just had an off night. Will you let it go?”

“No way in hell.” If looks could kill, he would be a dead man, he thought. He sighed. “So are you gonna call me if you get word they’ve released the stiff’s name for public consumption?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s good, ‘cause I’m not calling you when Jax beeps me.”

“Fine.”

“Good night, Jones.”

“’Night, MacKenzie.”

She closed the door on the pain in the ass, pseudophoto-journalist turned tabloid radio jockey. But the second she did, everything she’d been through tonight came rushing back. For a little while sparring with MacKenzie had taken her mind off it all. Now that he was gone, there was nothing to keep the horror at bay.

She told herself she’d done nothing unethical. It wasn’t as if she had killed Harry. She had only taken precautions to see to it that no one else might think she had. So she’d wiped away a few fingerprints and sneaked out of the room. So what? And lied to the police, her mind added. And contaminated a crime scene.

Hell. It occurred to her that she just might have inadvertently wiped away the fingerprints of the real killer.

“Mom, come here!”

She turned to see Dawn leaning over to peer out the window. “What, hon?”

“Look at his car. God, it’s a Carerra!”

Julie moved toward her, frowning. “He’s such a liar. He told me it was a Porsche.”

“It is a Porsche! That is so cool!”

Smiling, Julie locked the door and walked back to the living room. She heard MacKenzie’s muscle car roar away, and then Dawn rejoined her. “Did you actually ride home in that?” she asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” She shrugged. “If I’d known how much it would impress you, I would’ve made him let me drive. Think he would’ve let me?”

“Not if he’s ever seen you drive.”

Julie grabbed a handful of popcorn and threw it at her daughter. Dawn caught a few kernels and tossed them back, laughing. “It’s true, Mom. You’re a terrible driver, and you know it.”

“I get by.”

“You don’t even buckle up.”

“I do when I remember.” Julie leaned back on the sofa, and Dawn sank down beside her, close to her. Julie picked up the remote. “So can we ditch the Z-man here and watch a movie or what?”

Dawn nodded, curled her legs beneath her and leaned against her mother. Julie slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, held her close and hit the buttons, killing the video and surfing the channels instead.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Dawn asked suddenly, staring up into her mother’s face, searching it with her eyes.

“Of course I’m okay. Why? Have I done something to make you think otherwise?”

Dawn shrugged. “I got the feeling something’s been wrong…lately, you know? As if maybe someone were—I don’t know, bothering you, I guess.”

Dawn’s perceptiveness never ceased to amaze. They were as tuned in to each other as any mother and daughter had ever been. “Well, there was a bit of a problem, and work’s been giving me headaches. Ratings are down. I’m probably going to end up with a new partner within a couple of weeks. But things are calmer now. And there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“I got the feeling it was something besides work and ratings.”

Julie nodded. “Too sharp for me. It was, but it’s okay. It’s over.”

“Did it have anything to do with him?”

“Who? MacKenzie?”

Dawn nodded. “Was he the one giving you a hard time?”

“No. He’s got the moral values of an earthworm, but he would never do anything like that.” Or she hoped in hell he wouldn’t, Julie thought. Because if he started digging and he found out the truth—but no. He wouldn’t find anything.

“That’s a relief.”

“Why?”

Dawn shrugged. “I like him, Mom.”

“Blech. Honey, you have terrible taste in men.” Julie ate a handful of popcorn and looked at her beautiful, precious daughter. God, how would Dawn feel if that evidence of Harry’s ever went public? She lowered her eyes, pretended to watch TV. It didn’t matter what she had done today. She would do whatever she had to do to protect Dawn from anything that might threaten her happiness. Especially the secrets of their past.

She would do whatever she had to. Always.

Chapter Three

An hour after collapsing in her bed, Julie sat up, her eyes flying open wide and her heart hammering in her chest as the thought that had jolted her awake echoed endlessly in her mind.

“His apartment,” she whispered. “God, the police will go to Harry’s apartment. They’ll search his place for clues, and that damned Detective Jackson won’t miss a thing. She’ll find everything Harry had on me and Dawn. Oh, God.”

She flung back her covers, put her feet on the floor and fought to catch her breath. There had never been any love lost between Julie and Cassandra Jackson. Julie hadn’t worked with the woman often, but whenever she’d been compelled to seek out Lieutenant Jackson for information, she’d hit a brick wall. She didn’t know why “Jax” disliked her. Maybe it was the natural enmity that tended to form between the police and the press, but she didn’t think so. The woman didn’t seem to have the same attitude toward MacKenzie.

She was going to have to stop Jackson from getting her hands on that evidence. It wasn’t too late, she told herself. The cops wouldn’t have gone there tonight, would they? No, not in the middle of the night like this. They would want to clear it with the senator. Discuss it with him, make sure it was handled with finesse. And they would need a search warrant, too. They would want to make sure it was all done legally. Hell, Harry was the victim in this, not the suspect. They had no reason to go charging in like bulls, offending a New York State senator in the process.

“Okay, good, then.” She got to her feet, yanked open a dresser drawer and dug for a pair of jeans, then hopped on one foot while pulling them over the other. “They might have put a cop on Harry’s place, just to watch it. Maybe not, though. But even if they did, that’s okay. I can handle one cop. Maybe two. It’ll be fine. Hell, they’ll probably be sleeping in their car at this hour.”

She pulled on a sweatshirt, white socks and a pair of running shoes from underneath the foot of her bed. Harry’s condo was in one of the renovated old buildings downtown, within walking distance of the War Memorial at the Oncenter and City Hall. She hoped to God the security was as lax as it had been the one time he had insisted she meet him there. Even so, getting into the building would be the hard part. She tied her shoes, her mind racing. You needed a key card, or to have someone inside buzz you in from upstairs. She wouldn’t be likely to catch someone else going in at this time of the night and be able to slip in with them.

She hurried out of her bedroom, into the upstairs hall, and thought of her car, still parked in the hotel’s garage. She was going to have to take Dawn’s Jeep. Not that Dawn would mind, really, although she would pretend to, and probably gripe about her mother’s notoriously poor driving skills being turned loose on an innocent Jeep.

Julie paused at her daughter’s bedroom door and peeked in. Dawn was sound asleep, her back to her mother, nothing visible but the shape of her body underneath the blankets. The radio was playing softly beside the bed. She always fell asleep with her music playing. All the better, Julie thought, and she pulled the door closed and tiptoed to the stairs, down them and out to the garage.

Sean hadn’t gone home at all. He’d driven around for a little while, wondering who, among all the man’s known enemies, would have had the best motive to murder Harry Blackwood. The senator’s brother had a less than stellar reputation. He drank. A lot. He gambled. And it was widely known that he liked his women. In fact, the big scandal of the last election had involved allegations from a prostitute who claimed Harry was one of her best customers. The guy was a lowlife.

But now he was a dead lowlife, and Sean wanted to know why. In fact, he wanted to know a lot more than he already did about Harry Blackwood and his sleazy side. A guy like that must have more than a few skeletons in his closet. And the public would want to know. Within twenty-four hours this was going to be the biggest story in the state. People would be clamoring for inside dirt, and he was just the man to provide it. His value as a reporter, he thought with a slow smile, was about to sail through the roof. And that new job he’d been thinking he didn’t stand a chance of landing might just be in the bag. He could use this.

Meanwhile Channel Four’s ratings were sinking, had been ever since Julie Jones’s former coanchor had retired and she’d begun sitting alone at the evening news desk. She was good, he thought. But he was better. People liked the dynamics of a male-female anchor team. She couldn’t give them that. People also liked dirt, and she wouldn’t give them that, either.