5 Bodies to Die For Read online

  Peter lifted his head, abruptly ending the kiss. “Good night, Carly,” he said. Then he walked to his bedroom door and disappeared inside.

  Carlotta stood there for a few seconds, perplexed and zinging all over. She wondered briefly if this was what it felt like to be zapped with a stun baton.

  She was still breathing hard when she closed her bedroom door behind her. Was Peter not leaping at the chance to bed her out of a sense of nobility…or was he simply playing hard to get?

  She reached up and massaged an aching breast. Whatever he was doing, it was working.

  After changing into pajamas, she moved aside her father’s file and pulled out the high-school diaries she’d brought with her, each one of them padlocked. She used the tiny tasseled key that fit all of them to unlock the first one, imprinted with the year that she’d been a freshman. The silly, girlish entries made her smile as she relived her anxieties about high school and fitting in. There were names of girlfriends she vaguely remembered and girls whom she thought would be lifelong friends, but that hadn’t happened.

  There were cheerleading tryouts and sweetheart dances and tests to take. Shopping excursions with her friends, birthday parties, vacations with her family. She especially enjoyed reading about her parents and noticed that she’d written about them as if they were older friends rather than authority figures.

  She skimmed the first-year diary, then moved on to her sophomore one and found the entry that she’d been looking for.

  Dear Diary,

  Today I met a boy named Peter Ashford. Isn’t that the grandest name? Peter Ashford. He’s so handsome I can barely write about it, my heart is beating so fast. He could have any girl in the school, and he wants me. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

  Carlotta closed the diary and hugged it to her chest. Peter was arguably the most eligible bachelor in Buckhead. He could still have almost any woman he wanted, and he wanted her. She was incredibly lucky.

  From the nightstand her phone rang. She glanced at it and sighed.

  Jack.

  She wasn’t ready to be pulled back into the real world, but she’d told him she’d help him. Carlotta set aside the diary, then connected the call. “Hi, Jack.”

  “Did I interrupt anything?”

  “I wouldn’t have answered if you had.”

  “So Ashford hasn’t made his move yet, huh?”

  “That’s so none of your business.”

  “I know, but I have to ask. Okay, what do you have for me on the murder?”

  She told him everything Officer Childress had relayed, from the description of the charm left, to the fact that the scene had been sanitized, plus what she’d found out about the victim and time of death from Abrams.

  “Damn, you’re good,” he said at one point. “All I’m missing are pictures from the scene.”

  “I took some on my phone—do you want them?”

  “Christ, did anyone catch you?”

  “Marquez almost did. She threatened me against leaking anything. I think she suspects something.”

  “As long as she can’t prove it. Bring your phone tomorrow when you come down to take the polygraph. I’ll off-load the photos and get it back to you before you leave.”

  “Okay. Listen, Jack, I’m concerned about Coop—he seems to be M.I.A. Will you check on him?”

  “Will do. Frankly, though, I’m more worried about you.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I’m fine.”

  “I could come over to tuck you in. In that big house, Ashford will never know.”

  She laughed into the phone. “Thanks anyway, Jack.”

  He made a rumbling noise.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Rubbing your red panties on my face.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  Carlotta disconnected the call and groaned, thinking about the men in her life. One guy was willing to bed her, but offered no commitment. One guy wanted a commitment, but was hesitant about the bedding part. And one guy had seemingly withdrawn from the competition altogether.

  Minus ten. Minus ten. Minus ten.

  15

  Carlotta walked into Peter’s kitchen humming a happy tune, but stopped short when she saw Angela Ashford sitting on the granite counter, dressed in a black trench coat and tall black boots.

  “Good morning,” Angela said sweetly. “I made coffee.”

  “Thanks,” Carlotta murmured warily, then walked to the pot.

  “So, Carlotta, how does it feel?”

  She looked back to the beautiful, green-eyed blonde while she poured. “What do you mean?”

  Angela lifted her hands. “To be living in my house, with my husband.”

  “It’s only temporary.”

  “Right. That’s what you keep telling yourself so you’ll feel better about stealing my life.”

  “I didn’t steal your life.”

  Angela’s smile vanished. “Yes, you did, shopgirl.”

  “You don’t have to get nasty about it,” Carlotta said, sipping from her cup.

  “But I was the one who picked up the pieces after you and Peter broke up. I was the one who ate alone while he went to dinners to build his client list. I was the one who endured his indifference and his coldness.” Angela began grooming herself with her tongue.

  “I’m sorry the two of you weren’t happy together,” Carlotta offered.

  The blonde lifted her head and growled. “We could’ve been, if not for you. When I found that picture of you in his wallet, I thought I would die.”

  Carlotta winced. “I hate to point out the obvious, but you are dead.” She nodded to her mug. “Great coffee, by the way.”

  “Thanks. I put cyanide in it. You should be feeling lousy any second now.”

  Carlotta’s eyes went wide, and her lungs began to squeeze. “You didn’t have to kill me.”

  “If I can’t have Peter,” Angela said with a feline smile, “neither can you. Meow.”

  Carlotta’s throat convulsed. She couldn’t breathe. She gasped for air, but the cyanide was bleeding through her system, paralyzing her organs…

  Angela purred with happiness. “Meow…meow…meow.”

  Carlotta sat up in bed with a start, clutching at her neck. Her chest rose and fell sharply, her heart thumped against her breastbone. Predawn light filtered through the doors leading to the veranda. A familiar scratching noise sounded. Carlotta looked down to see the stray Persian pawing frantically at the door. It was raining outside, and the creature was wet and shivering. She must have climbed a tree to get up there and was afraid to go back down.

  Meow…meow…meow.

  Carlotta shook the remnants of the disturbing dream from her mind and climbed out of bed. “I’m coming,” she muttered.

  When she stood, a headache shot to her temples, reminding her of the wine she’d drunk the night before at the auction event. All the details of the crime scene came back to her in a torrent, and she realized wryly that her subconscious had managed to blend The Charmed Killer’s latest cause of death with her obviously unresolved guilt over betraying Angela.

  She limped over to the door and opened it. The cat yowled as if scolding her for leaving it out in the rain, then darted inside and bounded up onto the bed, trailing mud and water onto the pale sheets.

  “Not the Egyptian-cotton sheets! Shoo!”

  But the bedraggled cat simply bared its teeth and hissed at her.

  She shrank back, then frowned. “You ungrateful little…”

  The big, sad eyes of all the animals from the shelter in last night’s film came back to her and she tamped down her irritation.

  “Never mind,” she said with a sigh. “I was planning to leave my nice comfortable bed at the butt crack of dawn and give it over to a grubby stray.”

  The cat growled back from where she crouched in the covers.

  Carlotta went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She wasn’t looking forward to taking that polygraph exam this morning. Maybe some
development overnight had broken the case, or maybe Michael had turned himself in, and it would be a moot point.

  She flipped a switch to release aromatherapy oils into the air, chose blues on the stereo system built into the wall, then stepped under the dual-massage showerhead.

  Of course that meant she’d have to go back to the cramped town house with the broken television and shabby furnishings. Not that she wanted the killing spree to continue simply so she could have an excuse to live in Peter’s house. She leaned her head forward and moaned at the sensation of a hundred fingers massaging her skin, while imported French conditioner fortified her hair. That would be selfish and unconscionable…

  She gave the faucet handle a yank until icy water blasted her, rousing her from her luxurious stupor. She quickly rinsed her hair and stepped out of the shower shivering. After wrapping herself in a towel thick enough to sleep on, she stepped onto the floor that was nice and warm because of the heating coils beneath the tiles.

  Which explained why the stray cat was now curled up on the floor near the door.

  “I see you found a warmer spot after running me out of my bed,” Carlotta muttered.

  The cat meowed a retort, as if they were having a conversation. Carlotta frowned, recalling how Angela and the cat had seemed to be one and the same in her dream. She’d probably had the dream because she’d subconsciously heard the cat meowing and pawing at the door before she was fully awake. And because when Angela was alive, she had struck Carlotta as being catlike, with her lioness mane of blond hair, her green eyes and her twitchy, aquiline nose.

  Carlotta stared at the cat and the cat stared back with such loathing intensity that Carlotta blinked first. If she didn’t know better…

  Then she truncated the idea and scoffed. But she did know better.

  The cat blinked lazily and resumed her bored, blank expression.

  Carlotta downed a couple of aspirin to help clear her head, then turned her attention to getting ready. If she got the polygraph exam over early enough, maybe she’d have time to ride over to Coop’s place to check on him. She wanted to see for herself that he was okay. Being tucked away in Peter’s house was a double-edged sword—it made her feel more safe, but also left her feeling insulated from the outside world.

  Carlotta pinned up her hair in preparation to dry in sections, then plugged in the blow-dryer. Her thick dark hair was a trait of her mother’s for which she was normally grateful, but it was a pain to dry thoroughly. She’d once asked her mother if they had Native American heritage because of their shared coloring and bone structure, but her mother had insisted they had European ancestors. Carlotta wished she’d pushed her mother for more answers at the time because she knew next to nothing about her deceased grandparents. Maybe they were Italian, she mused as she held a hank of black hair straight up with a wide-tooth comb to speed its drying.

  She progressed from section to section and had nearly finished when a movement at her waist startled her. She looked down to see that the matted cat had jumped up onto the counter and despite the noise of the hair dryer, was nudging Carlotta’s arm and pawing in the air.

  “Scat,” she said, fanning the hair dryer over the cat.

  But instead of running away, the animal rolled its shoulders and leaned closer.

  Carlotta pursed her mouth. If the creature was chilled to the bone, the warm air probably did feel good. “You could use a comb out,” she murmured to the bedraggled feline, then rummaged for a metal comb in the drawer where she’d stored her toiletries.

  She set the blow dryer on the lowest setting, but still expected the cat to run away when she started to comb and fluff her matted fur. But not only did the animal stand still, she closed her eyes in pure delight, her whiskers trembling orgasmically.

  “You’re accustomed to being groomed,” Carlotta said wryly. “Which means you’re someone’s pet. Too bad your owner didn’t declaw you.”

  By the time she’d combed out its luxurious blond fur, the cat was three times its original size. When Carlotta turned off the hair dryer, the poufed cat walked up and down the counter, rubbing against the mirror.

  “Pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Carlotta said.

  The morning rain had yielded to the summer sun, so with the scooter in mind, Carlotta dressed in slacks, a silk shell and a cropped jacket. When she left her bedroom, she glanced at Peter’s bedroom door and her face burned. She would’ve slept with him last night, but he’d been the one with the level head. Hopefully things between them wouldn’t be awkward this morning.

  From the kitchen below she smelled coffee and heard him moving around. He was talking on his cell phone. The fluffed cat bounded down the stairs in front of her, almost tripping her. When she walked into the kitchen, the cat was twining herself between Peter’s legs, meowing for attention and licking his shoes. Peter was jacketless and had his back to her, but seemed engrossed in his phone conversation. “I’ll ask Carlotta about it, Will, and I’ll get back to you. Bye.”

  He closed the phone and sighed.

  “Ask me about what?” she said lightly.

  He started and turned with a smile. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning. Ask me about what?”

  “You’re up early. I made coffee.”

  She experienced a shot of déjà vu from her dream, and moved toward the pot. “Ask me about what?” she said again.

  Peter crouched down to idly pat the cat’s head. “I see the cat has returned.”

  “She woke me up this morning, meowing at the veranda door. When I let her in, she jumped up on my sheets and got them muddy.”

  “The housekeeper will take care of the linens.”

  Carlotta angled her head. “Peter, you’re stalling.”

  He winced. “That was Will Plank on the phone. He said that another purse went missing last night.”

  She looked up from pouring her coffee. “And what are you supposed to ask me?”

  His mouth flattened into a line. “About your friend Hannah.”

  Irritation spiked in her chest, but Carlotta tamped it down. “The police questioned Hannah last night and they were quite satisfied that she didn’t have anything to do with Bebe’s purse being stolen.”

  “Okay. Are you satisfied she didn’t have anything to do with Bebe’s purse being stolen?”

  “Yes, I am.” But she couldn’t look him in the eye because before she’d interrupted the interrogation last night in the manager’s office, she’d had some misgivings about Hannah herself. Now she realized her doubts had more to do with acknowledging that she hadn’t reached out to get to know her friend than anything Hannah had done.

  He set down his coffee and came over to loop his arms around her waist. “Then that’s good enough for me.”

  She softened toward him, although she was still feeling awkward about the way the previous nights had ended. But she accepted his kiss, and didn’t retreat when it deepened and he pulled her against him. A yowling noise sounded and they parted as the cat practically climbed up his leg.

  “What the—” Peter carefully extricated the cat from his trousers.

  “Watch out for the claws,” Carlotta warned, but the cat simply licked his hands as if it couldn’t get enough of him.

  “Er…it must be hungry,” he said, setting the cat back on the floor.

  “She.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “It’s a she,” Carlotta said, studying the cat. “Are you sure this wasn’t Angela’s cat? She seems…I don’t know—familiar with this house.”

  “Angie didn’t have a cat, although she loved them. She always said she was going to get one, but never got around to it.”

  “I found a broken silver cat pin in my bedroom.”

  He stopped, then nodded. “It was probably Angela’s. You can toss it.” He walked over to the cupboard. “Let’s see what we can find to feed her. I wonder how we can find her owner.”

  “If you don’t mind me using your computer, I could put
together some flyers.”

  “Feel free to use the computer in the den anytime you want,” he said, then pulled out a tin. “I think I have just the thing.”

  Carlotta made a face. “Sardines?”

  “Angela ate them like popcorn. I could never stomach the things and was thinking the other day that I should toss them.” He smiled as he peeled back the opening and dumped the contents onto a saucer. “Guess it’s a good thing I kept them.”

  He set the saucer on the floor and the cat pounced on the tiny headless fish, devouring them in seconds, then licking the plate hard enough to move it across the floor. Peter laughed when the feline came over to lick and nudge his hand, meowing and begging for more.

  “That’s enough for now,” he chided, standing. Then he looked at Carlotta. “I don’t normally eat breakfast, but I have time to watch you eat.”

  She smiled, but shook her head. “I have to run. I have another appointment at the police department this morning.”

  His mouth twitched downward. “Again?” He walked backward as he tried to elude the cat that was purring and rubbing herself on his legs.

  “I was asked to take a polygraph exam to clear myself.”

  He looked alarmed. “Do you need a lawyer?”

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just a formality, because I was on the scene when the first victim was found. The GBI wants to eliminate the possibility that the charms were inserted in the mouths of victims after the fact.”

  “All the more reason for you to stop the body moving,” Peter said lightly. He reached for the newspaper on the counter and turned the headline so she could read it:

  The Charmed Killer Takes Fifth Victim.

  She skimmed the story, written by Rainie Stephens, who cited her “source inside the morgue” as saying that the charm pulled out of the victim’s mouth was a woman’s shoe. Carlotta bit her lip—that differed from the description of the handcuffs charm that the chatty police officer had given her. The same sources reported that the cause of death had been strangulation rather than poisoning, although granted, the M.E. might have altered his opinion after a preliminary examination at the morgue.