Capturing Cleo

“No gentleman friend,” she said precisely, her heart clenching at the idea that someone might have thought she’d consider Jack’s murder a gift.

“Oh,” he said. “Then, who sent the roses?”

The temperature of her blood rose a notch. She was not about to tell Malone about her secret admirer. He’d probably find it all very amusing. Besides, secret admirers were harmless. She’d had more than her share. They all turned out to be shy, sweet men suffering from something that was no more intense than a crush, ordinary men too timid to approach her even to say hello.

“None of your business.”

“You are going to cooperate, aren’t you, Ms. Tanner?”

She didn’t like the way he said that, or the way he lifted his eyebrows and planted his eyes on her and asked the question as if it wasn’t a question at all, but a demand. No one pushed her around anymore, no one told her what to do. Not even Luther Malone.

Cleo was saved from answering when the waitress appeared again, bearing a tray laden with food. She placed a heavy white plate with four pieces of toast—three more than Cleo would eat—on the table, along with a bowl filled with small containers of butter and strawberry jam.

Malone’s plate was huge: scrambled eggs, a mound of bacon, a bowl of grits and one of those doughnuts he’d tried to entice her with. Glazed.

She shook her head and smiled as she reached for the preserves, letting loose a very small laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Malone asked defensively.

“Nothing. Just wondering if I’ll be a suspect when you keel over with hardened arteries.” She glanced at the plate. “Something which is certain to happen any day now, if that is your ‘usual.’”

“Oh,” he said, reaching for the pepper. “I thought you were laughing at the doughnut.”

“That’s just icing on the…”

“…doughnut?” he finished.

She liked the fact that he ate such a huge and fat-laden breakfast and then finished it off with the cliché of a cop’s doughnut. It made him more…human, somehow. Her smile faded. It was bad enough that she’d placed him so high on the Barney-Bruce scale and thought he was inappropriately good-looking; now she actually had to like something about him? Bad news. Very bad news.

“And to answer your question,” she said, putting on her most severe face. “No, I don’t see any reason why I should cooperate with you.”

He nodded his head as if he had already figured that out.

Cleo took a bite of her toast, glad that Malone was giving at least some of his attention to his breakfast. He did keep looking at her, though, lifting his head and staring at her hard, as if he might see something different, this time.

He lifted his head, stared at her face and pointed. “You have…” He wiggled that long finger in her direction.

“I have what?” she snapped. “Guilt written all over my face? A suspicious glint in my eye?”

He reached across the table and touched her face, there near her mouth, dragging the tip of his finger slowly and gently down. It was a shock, when he touched her—a literal, heart-jolting shock. His warm finger briefly brushed her lower lip, sending a riot of sensations she did not want or need through her body. Her heart beat too fast, her temperature rose, and she was quite sure he would be able to see the heat she felt in her cheeks.

Malone showed her his finger as it withdrew. “Strawberry jam on your face.”

When he licked the jam off his finger, she thought she would swoon.

And Cleo Tanner did not swoon! She took a napkin and rubbed it vigorously against the corner of her mouth, there where he had touched her, doing her best to wipe away any remaining jam as well as the lingering effect of that warm finger on her face and her lip.

Malone seemed unaffected, by the contact and by her reaction to it. “Do you think Tempest would commit suicide?”

“No,” she said, while he dug into his breakfast. “I already told you that.”

“I know, but…it’s the grapefruit that mucks everything up. Would he jump with a grapefruit just to screw up your life again?”

Again, like Malone knew everything about her and Jack. “Maybe,” she admitted softly. “If Jack was going to kill himself, he’d definitely go out of his way to pin it on me.”

Malone wagged an egg-laden fork in her direction. “That’s what I figured, but still…I don’t see suicide.”

He sounded almost disappointed. “Then, why the hell did you ask?”

“Gotta cover everything.”

“Then, don’t forget about Randi with an i,” Cleo said. “She’d been with Jack long enough to know what he was like, and she didn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“Because Jack wouldn’t leave me alone, that’s why,” she said softly.

He nodded, again as if he understood.

“Now will you hurry up and eat that monster breakfast so you can get me back to my car and I can go home? I’ve had about all the cooperation I can take.”

Luther didn’t hurry, but he did quit questioning Cleo and gave his breakfast the attention it deserved, while she played with a piece of toast and sipped at her juice. Cleo Tanner hadn’t tossed her ex-husband off the First Heritage Bank building, of that he was ninety-percent sure. But she was at the middle of it, somehow.

He wished she’d eat a little more, maybe get more jam on the corner of her mouth so he could remove it for her. Wiping it off had been bad enough. What he’d really wanted to do, what he still wanted to do, was lick it off.

Stupid idea. Cleo was gorgeous, in an exotic, all-woman kind of way, but she was too stubborn for his taste. She liked to argue, to butt heads. And what a mouth! He liked his women soft and sweet and compliant.

Well, soft, sweet and compliant was great for an hour or two, he admitted grudgingly. After that, most women lost their luster. They wanted too much, they needed too much. Cleo Tanner was anything but compliant. She was also anything but sweet. As for soft…

He almost groaned aloud when Russell walked into the diner, smile on his face, not a single golden hair out of place. The kid didn’t even dress like a homicide detective. Tan pants, blue shirt, brown jacket, burgundy tie and those damn loafers. The kid looked like he’d just stepped out of GQ, right down to the brilliant grin he turned on them.

“I figured I’d find you here,” the kid said, and then he laid eyes on Cleo.

The kid was transparent, and he’d just fallen instantly, deeply and annoyingly in love. Well, in lust, anyway. Luther had a feeling that happened a lot to Cleo. She sucked unsuspecting men in like a swirling, dangerous, inescapable black hole. If he wasn’t careful, he could be next.

“What do you want?” Luther asked.

“We’re supposed to be partners, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip,” Luther grumbled. God, the kid was so damn…enthusiastic.

“My mistake. I thought we were working on the Tempest case today. I didn’t know you had a…” He laid adoring eyes on Cleo again. “A breakfast date.” Russell actually blushed.

“Michael Russell, this is Cleo Tanner.”

The kid’s smile faded quickly. He knew the name well. “Oh.” Still, he offered his hand, and Cleo took it. “A pleasure, ma’am.”

“I wish I could say the same,” she said, with a frosty smile that Russell apparently found endearing. He sat beside her, and she scooted toward the window to give him room.

“Cleo Tanner,” Russell said, nodding his head knowingly.

Cleo sighed. “Yes, Jack Tempest was my ex-husband,” she said in a no-nonsense voice. “Yes, I hated his guts. No, I didn’t kill him. You’re up to speed, now.”

Russell smiled at her, that sweet smile that probably had women falling at his feet. Luther was glad to see that Cleo didn’t immediately fall. She looked as wary as ever.

“Glad to hear it,” the kid said.

“Robin,” Luther said, signaling to the waitress as he took out his wallet and threw a few bills on the table. “Get Mikey here a good breakfast.”

Russell bristled at being called Mikey, as he always did, and Robin waited for his order. The kid debated for a minute, until Luther rose to his feet and signaled for the kid to let Cleo out. Russell came quickly to his feet and offered Cleo an assisting hand that she blatantly refused. Good for her.

“No, I’m not hungry,” Russell said as he stepped back and let Cleo rise from the booth on her own. “I’ll ride with you guys, if that’s okay. I can pick up my car later.”

Luther growled and took Cleo’s arm, and she shook him off with a muttered and sardonic “The more the merrier.”

He drove Cleo to the lot where her car was parked, Russell chattering away in the backseat. Luther tuned the kid out, and apparently so did Cleo. Russell was not deterred; he talked about the weather, a movie he saw last night, the traffic. Inane, polite, irritating chatter. He was still talking when Luther pulled into the lot where Cleo’s car was parked.

She exited the car quickly, and Luther did the same. When Russell tried to open his door and join them, Luther pushed it in and glared through the window. The kid got the message and settled back with that damnable smile on his pretty face.

Cleo wasted no time. She had her keys in her hand and had inserted one into the door lock, as Luther came up behind her.

“Put a peephole in your door,” he ordered.

“Mind your own business.”

“And move that damn spare key.”

She had the door open. “Screw you, Malone.”

Oh, he could only wish… He shook the inappropriate cravings off and grabbed Cleo’s arm, preventing her from slipping into her Corvette and out of the parking lot.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

She stared at the hand on her arm. “Neither do I,” she said frostily.

For a second, a long second where nothing moved, Luther wondered if either of them was talking about Jack Tempest, murder or grapefruit.

He didn’t release her. Not yet. “I would like to believe that your ex committed suicide, but I don’t.”

Some of the toughness faded from her face, leaving her looking momentarily vulnerable. “Neither do I,” she said again.

“And like it or not, the grapefruit means you’re involved.”

“I know,” she said.

“So put a peephole in your door and move that friggin’ key.”

She almost smiled. The tension faded for a moment and she was more tempting than ever. For a second he saw the unguarded Cleo, a real warm woman who needed to be scratched behind her ears until she purred. “I’ll think about it.”

He released her, and she immediately opened her door and dropped into her seat. Before she could close the door, he leaned in, placing his face near hers. He could almost see every muscle in her body tense, and her eyes—golden eyes that had been almost laughing a moment ago—became guarded. She didn’t like it when he got too close, he had sensed that from the beginning. Tough.

“Like it or not this is my case, Ms. Tanner, and alibi or no alibi, you haven’t seen the last of me.”

She said something obscene, and he withheld a smile. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Not if I can help it,” she said, reaching past him to grab the handle and pull the car door closed. He barely had time to jump out of the way.

She jammed the keys into the ignition, then hesitated. After a moment she rolled her window down and lifted softened eyes to him. “I didn’t mean that,” she said, almost apologetically. “About my mother.”

He could not imagine why she was telling him this, but he nodded as if he understood completely.

“True, we get along much better when she’s in Montgomery and I’m in Huntsville, but…” Her face fell. “Crap. I’m going to have to call and tell her about Jack. She hated him more than I did, but she will want to send flowers to the funeral.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “It’s the right thing to do, you know.”

“Do you want me to make the call for you?” he asked.

She laid her strangely golden eyes on him, no longer angry. This Cleo was guarded but honest. She was a little afraid, a little shaken, and she refused to admit to either. Still, the strength that put fire in her eyes and a sassy retort on her lips was there, as much a part of her as her shape, her mouth, that amazing head of hair. And he wanted, more than anything, to kiss her.

“You would do that?” she asked.

“If you want me to.”

“No, thanks. I can handle it.” She shook her head slightly. “God, Malone, you would have to turn out to be a nice guy.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“It is,” she said as she began to roll up her window.

Oh, this was a bad idea. Cleo was a suspect in a murder, and even though he had dismissed her as a viable option, she was connected to the investigation. She was off-limits. This was his damn job, and he never mixed business with pleasure. He couldn’t start now, no matter how tempted he might be.

Cleo was talking to herself as she drove away. He couldn’t hear her, but he saw her mouth move. Maybe she was cursing his name. Then again…

“Now, that’s a woman,” Russell said, and Luther turned around to see that the kid was leaning against the car with an annoyingly jaunty air.

“Too much woman for you,” Luther said as he headed for the driver’s side.

“But not for you,” Russell said, with a smile, hurrying to the passenger seat so he wouldn’t be left behind.

“Maybe she is,” Luther said, starting the engine. And then he thought about the way she’d looked fresh from bed, in her cat nightshirt with her hair going in every direction; the expression on her face, the fire in her amber eyes when he’d licked the jam off his finger; and the hint of vulnerability that had flashed over her face when she’d agreed that somehow she was involved in her ex-husband’s death.

“And then again, maybe she’s not.”

“Did she do it?” Russell asked, as Luther pulled onto the street. His bright smile faded rapidly as they got back to business.

“No.”

“Does she know who did?”

Luther sighed. “I’m not sure. I’m going back to the club tonight. Whoever did this might be there to see Cleo’s reaction to the murder. If he’s fixated on her, he might be there every night.”

“So what are you gonna do, take up hanging around bars as a part of the job? Can I come?”

Luther opened up his very clean ashtray and plucked out a peppermint, unwrapping it expertly and quickly. At times like this, he wanted a cigarette so bad he could almost taste it.

Truth was, another pair of eyes would be a good idea. Russell looked at everything from a different slant, and, like it or not, that made them good partners. What one missed, the other often saw.

“Sure,” he said. “And don’t forget to bring your ID.”

Russell growled, and Luther smiled. The last time they’d gone out for a drink, Mikey had gotten carded.

“Dress casual, and let’s go in separately and keep it that way.” Yeah, another pair of eyes would be great. “There’s a barmaid about your age, pretty girl named Lizzy. You can cozy up to her and pick her brain over the next few days.”

Russell nodded. The kid loved undercover work, even something as simple as this. “That’s great. What about Cleo? Should I try to pick her brain, too?”

It was true, Luther usually let Russell interrogate the women. They just seemed to crumple when he smiled and asked them questions. A woman who was intimidated by Luther would fold in a heartbeat for Mikey.

But he had a feeling Cleo never folded. Besides, she’d chew the kid up and spit him out before he had a clue he was in trouble. Besides…

“Cleo is mine.”

Chapter 4

The last person Cleo needed or wanted to see, as she pushed through the club door, was Malone. The man was a menace. And he stood at the bar talking to Edgar as if he owned the place! Confident, supremely relaxed, he looked like he belonged here as much as she did. And it was her place!

He turned to watch her walk toward him, his eyes squinted against the afternoon sun that shone brightly behind her as the door swung slowly shut.

“We’re not open yet,” she said.

“I know.” Malone nodded to Edgar. “He let me in.”

First Syd and now Edgar! Her friends were turning against her. Cleo gave Edgar a warning glare, and received a shrug in return. She headed for the office, and heard the annoying clip of Malone’s step as he fell in behind her.

“I suppose you’re here for a reason,” Cleo said, without glancing over her shoulder.

“Maybe I just wanted to say hello.”

Cleo snorted softly as she opened her office door. “You don’t strike me as a social butterfly, Malone. I doubt you ever drop by anywhere just to say hello.”

Every nerve in her body went on alert when he shut the office door behind him. She didn’t like being this close to him, pinned in, wondering why he was here. She didn’t have to wonder long.

“Jack didn’t jump,” Malone said curtly.

Her heart lurched. “How can you be sure?”

“He was probably unconscious when he went off…when he died. There was a substantial amount of a drug in his blood—not enough to kill him, but more than enough to knock him on his ass for a while.”

Cleo rounded the desk and sat down. Something about Malone and the news he always carried with him made her knees weak. “Maybe he took it on purpose. Trust me, Jack wasn’t above a little recreational—”

“No grown man uses furniture polish for recreational purposes,” Malone interrupted. “Even if it is a furniture polish that takes a nasty turn when ingested.”

Cleo tilted her head back and looked up at the detective. Usually she didn’t care for this position. She preferred eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose. Not right now. “So somebody gave Jack something to make him…easy to handle, and then pushed him off the roof?”

Malone stood on the other side of her desk, his eyes on her. Did he still think she might have killed Jack? For the first time, Cleo was really scared. No one had wanted to see Jack dead more than she. If she were investigating the case, she’d definitely suspect her.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Malone continued. “There are easier ways to kill an unconscious man than throwing him off a roof. It looks like he was already out of it when he was taken up there. That wasn’t easy.”

Cleo swallowed, wanting nothing more than for this man to leave. Quietly. Without another word. Without another opportunity for argument. “Why are you telling me this?”

Malone placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward, bringing his face close to hers. Eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose. “I don’t think you killed him,” he said. “But I think you know the man who did.”

“How do you know it’s a man?”

“Ever tried to drag a body up several flights of stairs, across a roof, and then toss it over the side? There was a four-foot rail. Whoever tossed Jack over had the strength to lift that unconscious body over the rail. You don’t have that kind of strength.”

She wanted to argue with him. These days she didn’t let any man tell her what she could and could not do! But he was right. And she would be a complete fool to argue with him about that particular point.

“Why do you think I know the man who killed Jack?”

Malone shook his head. “If whoever did this just wanted Tempest dead, he could’ve poured more furniture polish down his throat, or smothered him with a pillow. The job could have been finished in any one of a dozen other ways that were simpler and cleaner than this. That’s not what happened. When the killer tossed Jack and the grapefruit over the side of the building, he was sending a message.”

“To me?” Cleo whispered.

“To you.”

Malone backed away slowly, and withdrew a small notebook from his jacket pocket. A slim pen followed. The way he sat there, half sitting, half leaning against her desk, made his dark jacket gape open. His shoulder holster rested at his side, snug and somehow natural looking against the plain white shirt. The gun housed there was small, a compact.

“I’m going to need the names of everyone you’ve dated in the past two years.”

“I don’t date.”

Malone latched his dark eyes to hers. “Come on, Ms. Tanner. You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

His skepticism stole away her fear and made her angry. Thank goodness. She much preferred anger. “I have my own business, Detective Malone. It keeps me quite busy.”

“Too busy for…” He let the question die away.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Too busy for.”

He closed the notebook and returned it, and the pen, to his pocket. Very smoothly, he traded the implements of his profession for a wrapped candy, a strawberry-shaped sweet he deftly unwrapped and popped into his mouth.

“What’s with the candy, anyway?” she asked sharply. “You have a sweet tooth or something?”

“I ask the questions here.”

She ignored him. “Are you determined to buy your dentist a new car?”

He laid his dark eyes on her. “If you must know, when I quit smoking I relied on candy to help me get by. Now I have to find a way to get rid of the candy.”

Cleo smiled. “Oral fixation.”

“Excuse me?”

“You just traded one oral fixation for another.” She rather liked the fact that such a hard, seemingly perfect, man had a weakness. Even if it was for something so ordinary as hard candy.

“Thank you, Dr. Tanner,” he said dryly. “But now that we’re through analyzing me, let’s get back to—”

“So the only way to get rid of the candy,” she interrupted, “is to trade it for another oral fix. Back to cigarettes?” she teased. “Or maybe you can start sucking your thumb.”

Cleo was so sure she had the upper hand with this latest turn in the conversation, and then Malone threw her for a loop without uttering a single word.

He stared at her mouth.

“I, uh, haven’t dated in the past two years, I swear,” she said, lowering her voice. “To be honest, it’s been a lot longer than two years.”

Malone allowed his gaze to drift upward. “There must’ve been someone.”

Cleo shook her head. And felt guilty for not telling Malone the truth when he’d asked about the roses. Knowing what she knew now, she had no choice.

“I have had a secret admirer sending me notes and flowers for the past four months,” she said, trying to sound casual. “It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time when—”

“A secret admirer?” Malone asked, shooting up off the desk and standing tall, and menacing, before her. “And you just now tell me about it?”

“I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t.”

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Malone had every right to be peeved, but there was no reason for him to lose his cool. She was certain the man who had written her those innocent letters couldn’t possibly be a murderer. “The letters are very sweet, and he sends me flowers about once a month. That hardly makes him an obsessed madman.”

Should she tell him about Eric and her stray thought that he might be the man sending her notes and roses? No. Eric didn’t have a violent bone in his body. Turning Malone on him would be downright cruel. And senseless. There was no way Eric could have killed Jack. Oh, but she was going to have to talk to Eric and Edgar about lying for her! Their intentions had been good, she knew, but sooner or later the truth would have to be told. Sooner would be better.

“Tell me you kept the letters,” Malone muttered.

Cleo sighed. “Yes. They seemed more like fan letters than any kind of threat.” She slid open the bottom drawer of her desk and riffled through the small stack of bills there. She kept the notes and other fan letters she got on occasion, just beneath the bills. As she searched, a sharp discomfort grew. “They’re not here,” she said.

“What?” Malone rounded the desk and dropped down to his haunches to search the drawer himself. He pulled out his pen and used it to lift the bills and other papers in the drawer, being careful not to actually touch anything.

“I’m telling you,” Cleo said, “they’re not here.”