Match Made in Court

He finally settled on the Silver Cloud Inn on Lake Union. Once in a room, he called directory assistance for Linnea Sorensen’s phone number. There were three L. Sorensens, he discovered. He took down all three numbers, then dialed until he recognized her voice on the message.

“You’ve reached Linnea and Safe at Home Petsitting. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“Matthew Laughlin. I’m in Seattle. I’d like to see Hanna.” He gave his cell-phone number, then sat down heavily and stared blankly at the wall.

He finally stripped to his boxers, set his cell phone on the bedside table and crawled under the covers.

NOT SURE IF SHE WAS DOING the right thing, Linnea had decided to keep Hanna out of school the rest of the week. Fortunately, she had the two days after Tess’s death off from work, so she and Hanna went to the library, to the beach and playground at Lincoln Park and to the several petsitting jobs she currently had.

The Miller dogs had a little girl of their own, so they were thrilled to see Hanna. When their long pink tongues slopped over her face, Hanna actually giggled, the first sound of genuine happiness Linnea had heard from her since that awful night.

Mostly, she remained painfully subdued. She watched TV or played a game when Linnea suggested it, and she tried to pretend she cared what they had for dinner, but she only picked at the food. Linnea sat with her every night, gently rubbing her back, until she fell asleep.

Hanna didn’t once ask when her daddy was coming to get her or if she’d be able to go home. Linnea was glad, because, although Finn was out on bail, he hadn’t even called to find out how Hanna was doing. Linnea wouldn’t have known he was out of jail at all if her mother hadn’t told her.

Charges had not been dropped.

“They can’t possibly believe a man like Finn killed his wife,” Linnea’s mother had said incredulously during one of their phone conversations. “Why on earth would they pursue something so ridiculous and put all of us through this?”

What kind of man did her mother imagine Finn was like? Was she referring to his success?

Linnea wished she could share the belief there was no way on earth her brother had killed Tess. But, unlike her mother, she’d been aware of how much anger Finn harbored. Linnea had always been a little afraid of her brother. It wouldn’t surprise her if he was arrogant enough to believe that, as a prominent attorney at a major law firm, he was immune to police suspicion.

Well, he’d been wrong. He might not be convicted, of course; she could imagine a jury refusing to believe that a man that compelling, that handsome and charming and successful, would have committed such a crime.

“He says she fell and hit her head on the coffee table,” her mother reported with bewilderment. “I don’t know if they think he pushed her. But even that’s hardly murder!”

No, it wasn’t. But they had charged him with second-degree murder, not negligent homicide or battery or whatever they normally charged men whose wives died during an argument that had become physical with.

They clearly thought he’d done something much worse than push Tess.

What Linnea did know was that she was going to argue if he tried to reclaim Hanna too soon. There was no way he could give a child the reassurance and routine and gentle affection she needed right now. Especially when he was caught up in the fight against this charge. No, she would do more than argue, Linnea decided despite some inner quavering; she would simply refuse to let him take his daughter.

After coming home from walking the pair of Irish setters, she saw the red light on her answering machine blinking. People seeking a petsitter didn’t usually call so late in the evening. She sent Hanna to brush her teeth and get ready for bed, in case the message was from Finn or even from her mother, who didn’t always think to watch what she said in case her granddaughter was listening. Not until Linnea heard water running in the bathroom did she push the play button.

The voice was terse and hard. “Matthew Laughlin. I’m in Seattle. I’d like to see Hanna.” Except for the phone number he added on at the end, that was all he said.

Her heart sank. Wasn’t Tess’s brother supposed to be in Saudi Arabia or Dubai or Kuwait or somewhere far away? He was a civil engineer for a major international construction company that built everything from offshore structures to transit facilities and dams. She hadn’t met him more than half a dozen times in all the years since Finn married Tess because he was so rarely in Seattle. He had been present for a few holiday celebrations, but otherwise Finn hadn’t gone out of his way to include his parents and sister at dinner parties when Matthew was in town. Linnea suspected the two men didn’t like each other very well.

She hadn’t liked Matthew Laughlin.

No surprise. He was too much like Finn.

Not angry, necessarily. She sat looking at the phone number she’d written on a notepad, analyzing her reaction to him. No, she’d never heard him raise his voice or even make the kind of slashing gesture Finn used so powerfully to convey his impatience and disdain. Tess’s brother was much more … contained than Finn. Almost, she thought, more unnerving because of the lack of bluster. But, like her brother, when Matthew Laughlin spoke, he expected everyone to listen. She could imagine that he was used to giving orders and being obeyed. Tonight’s message was typical. He probably didn’t even want her to call; it was Hanna he expected to hear from.

And that, she admitted, was another of the reasons she didn’t like him. From the first time he’d set eyes on her, he’d dismissed her. She wasn’t worthy of his time. Linnea doubted they had exchanged ten words with each other. His gaze seemed to skate over her. And, okay, she knew she wasn’t beautiful. But she wasn’t nothing, either, of so little consequence his behavior was acceptable.

It bothered her how well she could picture him. He was nearly as tall as Finn and broader in the shoulders, more powerfully built, as though he did actual physical labor rather than computer-aided design. He wasn’t beautiful like his sister, or like Finn for that matter. Matthew Laughlin’s features were blunt, pure male. He kept his dark hair short, as if he didn’t want to be bothered with it, and his eyes were dark gray, rather like the steel girders on the projects he designed. Whenever she was around, she was painfully aware of him, almost—but not quite—as if she were afraid of him. She could have her back turned and know when he walked into a room. But she wasn’t afraid of him, and she didn’t understand why she reacted to him the way she did. And, no, that wasn’t his fault, but she didn’t have to be fair, did she?

Well, she wasn’t going to let Hanna call him until she knew better what he wanted. Hanna did like him, Linnea knew; his gentleness with her and even with Tess was his most appealing quality in her opinion. She’d seen the way Hanna’s face lit with delight after he murmured in her ear, and how he touched his sister’s arm after Finn had been carelessly cruel. Just a quick grip that turned Tess’s flash of anger into a rueful smile for her brother. Unlike Finn, who went at the world as if he were a bundle of dynamite with a lit fuse, Matthew was quite good at defusing. A couple of times, after seeing his smile or a light, perfectly timed touch, Linnea had had a sharp pang of something uncomfortably like envy even if she didn’t like him.

But she still wasn’t letting him talk to Hanna until she’d heard what he had to say first.

“Aunt Linnie!” her niece called. “I’m ready to be tucked in.”

“Hop into bed,” she called back. “I’ll be right there.”

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and dialed the number he’d given. It rang five times, then went to voice mail.

“Laughlin,” his voice said curtly. “Leave a message.”

“This is Linnea Sorensen returning your call. It’s—” her gaze sought the clock “—eight-ten. I’m tucking Hanna into bed right now, but if you call back in the next few minutes I’ll get her up to talk to you. Otherwise, we won’t be home tomorrow because I have to work. I’ll try you again tomorrow evening.” She hung up quickly, as if he might still pick up. She hoped he didn’t call back tonight, that at least she had a reprieve until tomorrow evening. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again, especially under the circumstances.

And she was wary of finding out what kind of relationship he imagined having with Hanna, who hardly knew him given the rarity of his visits. Probably he only wanted to see her a few times while he was in Seattle to bury his sister, after which he’d go back to … wherever it was he’d come from.

What scared Linnea was that … if he disliked Finn as much as she thought he did, and was convinced that Finn actually had killed Tess, how would he feel about Hanna being raised by her father? Linnea knew how she’d feel.

How she did feel.

If Matthew Laughlin was angry enough, would he try to take Hanna?

“Over my dead body,” she whispered, then went to sit at Hanna’s side until the little girl fell asleep.

CHAPTER TWO

“YEAH, THEY FOUGHT,” Matt told Detective Delaney. “Finn is a son of a bitch. I tried to talk my sister out of marrying him. She didn’t listen.”

The two men sat in a small conference room at the police station. Matt reserved final judgment, but his first impression of the investigator was of competence and dispassion, both of which struck him as positives. He was pissed enough himself to keep the pressure on. He needed a smart cop investigating his sister’s death, not one who jumped to conclusions.

Neal Delaney had risen from his desk in the bullpen to meet Matt. He was a big guy, maybe fifty, with steady brown eyes, a firm grip and a tie he’d already tugged loose at ten in the morning.

Matt hadn’t objected when Delaney wanted to start by questioning him. He was happy to tell anyone who would listen what he had thought about his brother-in-law.

“I could never understand how he hid his temper at the law firm,” he admitted. He’d disliked the idea that Finn saved his nasty streak for the people who loved him most.

“I don’t think he did,” Delaney said, then looked sorry he’d opened his mouth.

Matt raised his brows.

After a moment, Delaney shrugged. “The partners are shocked. His secretary isn’t. An intern told me Mr. Sorensen flayed him alive when he made a mistake.”

Being fair stuck in his craw, but Matt finally said, “Not the same thing as killing someone.”

“No, but interesting.” The investigator cleared his throat. “Had he been physically abusive to your sister?”

Matt frowned. “If so, she wouldn’t admit to it. I had my suspicions. A couple of bruises she laughed off. A broken wrist she claimed she got by slipping on an icy sidewalk. Broken collarbone that was supposed to be a ski injury.”

Delaney scribbled in his notebook. “We’ll follow up. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her doctor yet.”

Matt braced himself and asked, “What does Hanna say?”

“A female patrol officer spoke to her while they waited for Ms. Sorensen to come get her. The little girl says Mommy and Daddy yelled a lot and sometimes things crashed. She apparently scuttled for her bedroom whenever they started to fight. She was pretty scared, and Officer Babayan didn’t push it. I’ll need to talk to Hanna myself, maybe with her aunt present so she feels comfortable.”

“Or heads off any honest answers.”

Delaney sat back in his chair, contemplating him. “That your impression of her?”

Matt was ashamed of how little impression he actually did have of Linnea Sorensen. “No,” he said finally. “But it stands to reason she’d want to defend her brother.”

“Maybe.” His eyebrows pulled together. “I saw her when she arrived at the house as Mr. Sorensen was being taken out in handcuffs. She didn’t exactly rush over to hug him, and he talked to her like she was the family maid. Not real warm and fuzzy.”

Matt thought back to those Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners when they’d all been in that ugly, ostentatious house that was Tess and Finn’s pride and joy. Offhand he couldn’t remember brother and sister ever talking; in fact, he’d seen her quietly slide from a room when Finn entered it.

Okay, maybe she didn’t like him, either. That would be a point in her favor.

“I don’t know how they feel about each other. His parents think he walks on water, I can tell you that.”

Another note.

“When did you last see your sister?”

“Thanksgiving a year ago. I was here for a week. Finn was midtrial and hardly home. Tess took the week off and she and Hanna and I did tourist things. Rode the ferry, went up the Space Needle. We’d intended to ski, but there wasn’t enough snow for even Crystal to open.”

Delaney nodded. The previous winter had been wet but warm, a disaster for winter sports businesses.

“Finn was cordial enough when I saw him. We both … tried. For Tess’s sake.” Finn, Matt sometimes thought, disliked him in part because he felt obligated to be on his best behavior when his brother-in-law was in residence. Tess told him he was imagining things.

“I’d like a few answers, too,” he said, voice implacable. “You say Tess hit her head on the coffee table. What makes you think she didn’t stumble and wham into it wrong?”

“The medical examiner says there was too much force applied. Her skull was shattered.”

God, Matt thought. I didn’t want to know that.

He frowned. Yeah, he did. He owed it to his sister to find out the worst. He hadn’t been able to protect her, but he could be sure justice was served.

“He’s going to bring in an expert to testify that if she was hurrying when she stumbled she could have flown forward and hit hard enough.”

“Uh-huh, but here’s the compelling part. If you fell, you’d hit the top edge.” Delaney ran his hand along the rim of the conference table. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed.

“Your sister didn’t. Tissue and hair embedded in the wood shows that the force of the blow was along the side and the sharp edge at the bottom of the tabletop rim. The only way that could happen is if she rose up from beneath the table and hit her head—”

“In which case there isn’t enough force.”

“Right. The alternative …”

“Is if somebody lifted the whole coffee table and swung it at her,” Matt finished softly.

Tissue and hair. Goddamn it.

“You got it.” The two men looked at each other, and Matt saw pure determination in Delaney’s eyes. He wasn’t going to let Finn walk.

Reassured, Matt held out his hand. “Thank you.”

One shoulder jerked. “Just doing my job.” But they shook, and Delaney walked him out. “Where can I reach you?”

“The Silver Cloud on Union Bay. I’m going to look at rentals today, though. I figure I’ll be staying in Seattle, at least through the trial. I intend to have Hanna with me.”

Those eyebrows rose again, but Delaney didn’t comment. “I’m going to ask you to stay away from Mr. Sorensen.”

“I have every intention of doing so.” Matt’s tone hardened. He’d been furious to find that Finn had walked out on bail within twenty-four hours of killing Tess. “Unless he tries to take Hanna home with him.”

Matt had been relieved by Linnea’s phone message, which made it clear that she still had the six-year-old. He was annoyed at himself for apparently sleeping through the ringing phone last night, but God knew he’d been exhausted. He’d see Hanna tonight. With a little luck, he’d have a house to move into within the week.

Normally if he’d planned to be in the area for a few months, he’d have gone for a condo. Why take on mowing and weeding? But a child should have a yard. A swing set, a playhouse, someplace to kick a ball. His ideas were vague. He didn’t actually remember seeing Hanna play outside in the yard in Laurelhurst. When he and she kicked around a soccer ball, they’d walked down to a nearby park.

His guess was that Hanna hadn’t had many opportunities to hang out during the day at home. Both her parents tended to work six days a week minimum and, except during the summer, probably picked her up from after-school care and got home after dark. She’d told him once that she was practically always the last kid picked up. She had sounded wistful, but when he tried to talk to Tess about it, she rolled her eyes and said, “Have you seen her day care? It’s an amazing facility with great teachers. Saturdays they go on field trips, and the rest of the time they do art and put on plays. She’s learning to speak Spanish and about architecture from walking tours and …”

She’d gone on and on, extolling the virtues of Rolls Royce of day-care centers. His guess was that a kid who’d been in school all day probably didn’t want to then go straight to language lessons or be organized to put on a play or do anything else supervised. That was not how he and Tess had grown up. They’d had a stay-at-home mom. Sometimes they’d been in organized activities—Little League for him and dance lessons for her. But mostly they’d been able to get off the school bus, have a snack then go to a friend’s house or read or watch TV. Their entire lives hadn’t been organized the way Hanna’s was.

But he also knew that Tess’s interior-design business had been her dream. It was important to her. What was she supposed to do? Close it down until Hanna was a teenager? She’d actually gone to part-time Hanna’s first year and had sounded restless the entire year, Matt remembered thinking. When he asked her once if she and Finn intended to have another baby, she’d shaken her head emphatically.

“We adore Hanna. How can we not? But look at us. We both love our jobs. We thrive on pressure, on being busy. Especially Finn. He was next to no help when she was little. And did I tell you how much I hated being pregnant?”

She had, although he’d forgotten.

“No.” Another shake of the head. “Hanna’s going to be an only child.”

He’d been dismayed, maybe because he remembered how important he and Tess had been to each other after their parents died in a car accident. He’d been in college and his sister a sophomore in high school, but he had managed to keep her with him. He hated to think how much more devastating the loss would have been if he hadn’t had her.

His jaw tightened at the realization that she was gone now. She’d been the one person in the world he knew loved him, always and forever. Until Finn Sorensen’s temper got the best of him.

Was the bastard even sorry? Did he wish he could call back the burst of rage that had him lifting the whole coffee table and slamming it into his wife’s skull?

Or was he self-serving enough to blame her because she’d provoked him? Or even to convince himself it had happened the way he was trying to tell police, that Tess was ultimately to blame because she’d somehow slammed her own head into the table?

Despite having been related to him by marriage for eight years now, Matt had no idea how Finn really thought. Despite Tess’s exasperation, they’d both resisted playing a round of golf together or even sitting down with a beer. Eventually, he’d thought, she’d become resigned to the fact that her husband and her brother would never be friends without really understanding how deep the chasm was.

Matt bought a Seattle Times in front of the station and took it to his car. He’d look at online classifieds later, when he got to his hotel, but he could start with what was in the newspaper.

Sitting in the parking garage, he worked his way through the rental section, making a few appointments to check out places.

By dinnertime, he’d seen a dozen, but nothing that struck him as perfect. He wished he had a better idea how important staying in the same school was to Hanna. Did she have good friends? He’d have to ask her tonight.

At five-fifteen, he called Linnea’s and a woman picked up. “Hello?”

“This is Matt Laughlin.” He’d pulled to the curb and set the emergency brake, even though he hadn’t expected her to be home quite yet.

“Oh,” she said softly. “You didn’t call back last night.”

“I’d had a long flight. I conked out and didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“Oh,” she said again. “Matt, I’m so sorry about Tess.”

He forced out a thank-you. “How is Hanna handling this?”

There was a small silence. He wished he could see her face. “I’m not sure. She’s so quiet. I’ve been trying to keep her busy, even though I don’t know whether that’s the best thing to do or not. Maybe I should be encouraging her to grieve. I just don’t know,” she said again.

“Busy sounds smart to me.”

“Do you think so?”

For God’s sake, wasn’t that what he’d just said? He reached up and kneaded the back of his neck, where tension had gathered. “Yeah. I do.” He paused. “I’d like to see her.”

“I assumed you would.” He could all but feel her gathering herself. “I’m going to ask you not to … to say anything negative about her father. Not right now. I … haven’t even told her he’s been arrested.”

“How the hell are you explaining his absence, then?” Oh, shit. “She isn’t seeing him, is she?”

“No.” The single word was firm enough that he momentarily pulled the phone away from his ear and gazed at it in surprise. Interesting. Maybe Delaney was right that she didn’t much like her big brother. “Finn hasn’t even called,” she said. “Mom tells me he’s out on bail. He must know he isn’t in any state right now to be comforting Hanna.”

Uh-huh. What father wouldn’t want to be the one to explain to his small daughter what happened to Mommy? To hold her and dry her tears and do his damnedest to make her world feel safe again? Matt couldn’t imagine that not being his first priority.

“Maybe,” he suggested, every word dropping with a distinct clunk, “the bastard has enough conscience that he can’t look Hanna in the eye.”

Crap, he thought immediately. That wasn’t the way to assure Linnea’s cooperation.

But after a very long silence, she said only, “I doubt he’s figured out what to say to her.”

Huh. Did that mean she believed her brother was guilty?

“Have you had dinner yet?” he asked. “Can I take you and Hanna out?”

The offer was an impulse; he wanted to spend time with Hanna, not Linnea. But it made sense. His niece hadn’t seen him in almost a year. Despite their e-mails and phone calls, they always had to ease into their friendship. Besides … he found himself more curious than he’d expected to be about this sister he’d scarcely noticed in the past. What was the saying? Still waters run deep. Did hers, or was she the mouse he’d guessed her to be?

After another discernible pause, she said stiffly, “Yes, if you mean it. I haven’t started dinner yet, and I know Hanna would love to see you.”

“Have you told her I called last night?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you first.”

Tone silky, Matt said, “To make sure I wouldn’t rant about her daddy.”

“Um … something like that.” She sounded embarrassed, but had enough spine to add, “I don’t really know you.”

“No. We never bothered, did we?”

“You didn’t seem very interested.”

So. She had teeth. Maybe saying we never bothered wasn’t quite accurate. He’d automatically extended his dislike of Finn to Finn’s family. So no—he hadn’t bothered.

“You may have guessed that your brother and I didn’t much care for each other.”

She didn’t comment.

After a moment, Matt said, “Is this too early? Can I come by now?”

“Now is fine. We eat early. Um … do you need directions?”

“I got them off the Internet last night.” He couldn’t even remember why he’d had her address. Presumably Tess had given it to him, God knew why.

“All right,” Linnea said. “We’ll be ready.”

The drive took him longer than he expected. It was interesting, he thought, that she’d chosen to live so far from either her brother or parents, without having actually left Seattle. Maybe deliberate, maybe a job had determined where she rented or bought. He knew from what Tess had said that she worked at a library. Obviously, from her phone message, she had some kind of petsitting service, too.