Bishop,_Carly_-_The_Soul_Mate.txt Read online

  story."

  "Robyn?" Willetts said, his head jerking up. In the split second

  between hearing her name and seeing her, his shoulders stiffened. In

  the heart, he managed somehow to arrange his handsome, narrow face in

  an expression that might have passed for pleasant surprise. "My God!

  It's been... a year. How are you?"

  His perfectly delivered solicitude galled her, all the more because she

  had expected to see guilt in his eyes, and there was none. She chided

  herself for being so artlessly naive. Michael Massie had warned her.

  Kiel had warned her.

  She knew better.

  She had interviewed more than a hundred murderers, several of them for

  days on end. Not one of them had guilt flashing over them like a

  bright neon sign. So why expect Stuart Willetts to roll over and give

  himself up?

  Because she thought it should have been different with someone she had

  known before? It wasn't at all. If Stuart Willetts had been

  successful in concealing his early attraction to Trudi Candelaria,

  Keller had been deceived as well. But Robyn Delaney wasn't rolling

  over and giving up, either.

  "I'm fine, Stuart. Physically." She left it to his guilty conscience

  to make whatever he wanted of that.

  "Who is this woman, Smart? Do you know her?" Trudi's beautiful

  plastic face creased as she dragged her gaze off Kiel.

  "Don't you remember, darling," he said. "Robyn's husband was--"

  "Nver mind." Trudi's voice was whispery, childlike, but her tone

  matched the icy dw. or. "Send them away. I'm not interested."

  Kiel stepped forward to shake hands with Willctts. "Kiel Alighicri.

  I'm an associate of Robyn." He turned to Trudi. "You may be

  interested. Robyn's husband was Keller Trueblood."

  Trudi's enormous brown eyes narrowed as she turned her head slowly

  toward Robyn. She said nothing. One song after another played on the

  CD. Willetts seemed to hold his breath, waiting on Trudi's response.

  At last she spoke, her whispered voice tinged with melancholy. "Did

  you love him very much?"

  "Yes." Robyn's answer simply spilled out. She had been prepared for

  anything from this woman. Biterness. Outrage. Contempt. Anything

  but that question framed in such sympathy. Robyn crumbled. She felt

  faintly nauseous. She wanted to turn and walk away. Or

  She stood there and held her ground. Kiel sat in a deep-cushioned

  plum-velvet-covered chair. Stuart remained standing, his battleship

  gray eyes fixed on her. His uneasiness seemed to grow in tandem with

  hers, but that couldn't be.

  It didn't even matter whether Tundi's sympathy was genuine or a

  calculated effort to knock Robyn off her pins. The only thing that

  mattered was her choice. Her response.

  She couldn't stand up and fight for what needed to be done if she

  couldn't deal, a year after the fact, with having lost Keller. It was

  a question of deciding once and for all whether she would be defeated,

  crushed by her loss, or if she would rise up again and conquer her

  terrible, cold-sweat fear of darkness... and then find the grace and

  courage to be herself, alone.

  "You're not in this alone, Robyn."

  She turned to Kiel, grateful he could read her thoughts, for this

  sliver of time, at least. But she suddenly had the eerie sense that

  Trudi and Stuart were caught up in some kind of suspended animation, un

  hearing and unseeing. Neither moved. The expressions on their faces

  were static. Frozen.

  Kiel explained. "I've slowed time for them, Robyn." "You can do

  that?" He nodded.

  "They can't hear us?"

  "No."

  She shivered and rubbed her hands up and down the sleeves of her mohair

  sweater, accepting this minor miracle. "What just happened here,

  Kiel?"

  "I'd say Trudi just took a stab at the gaping hole in your armor."

  "Yes." Robyn exhaled sharply. "Maybe. But why wasn't her first

  instinct to come flying at me?" Kiel shrugged. "Any number of

  reasons." "Like what?"

  "Maybe she's innocent."

  "Or maybe she's been clued-in to the fact that it would be double

  jeopardy to retry her. That it would take an act of Congress to bring

  her up again on the charges of murdering Spyder Nielsen."

  "She's cool, Robyn," Kiel agreed. "She was out on bail. She may even

  have seduced Stuart Willetts with the express intention of causing a

  mistrial."

  "But if that was the purpose, why would it be necessary to murder

  Keller?"

  "Maybe he saw what she was up to. Maybe he threatened to take Willetts

  off the prosecution team. The timing was critical. If Trudi already

  had Willetts wrapped around her little finger, Keller's dumping him

  would have been disastrous to his career and his reputation."

  Robyn played unwittingly with the tiny pair of wings at her. breast "I

  don't even know for sure that she or Willetts had anything to do with

  that cave-in."

  "You won't know, either, until you just plunge in and do what you do

  best. Ask the questions. Find the inconsistencies. Cross reference

  every answer with every other answer and every other witness." He

  smiled encouragingly. "You know your own drill, Robyn. You just have

  to trust yourself."

  "I hardly recognize myself anymore, Kiel." She swallowed hard. "I let

  Trudi derail me with one simple question inside sixty seconds. How can

  that be? A year ago it wouldn't have happened."

  "A year ago, you hadn't already lost Keller." He remained seated in

  the deep plum-colored chair. "Step back and make her play your

  game."

  The advice sounded so much like something Keller would have said that

  it stole her breath away. No matter what Keller played at, he had made

  it into a mental game, a test of sticking power and wits.

  "It's your move." He didn't offer to hold her or put an arm around her

  shoulders or bolster her in any physical way.

  "I know." Did he know that's what she craved more than air, to be

  held? She thought he did know. She even thought he wanted to hold her

  too. Something stopped him, some greater strength than she

  possessed.

  She would have to make do with her own resources now, and she was tired

  of waffling, tired of feeling needy. Needing to be rescued. "Okay.

  Let me at her."

  Giving her a thumbs-up, Kiel sat back. Trudi's eyes darted to Stuart,

  then back up at Robyn.

  She touched the wings at her throat once more and went on as if no time

  had intervened, this time without missing a beat. "I'll be Straight

  with you Ms. Candelaria. I don't believe my husband's death was

  accidental."

  Trudi blinked. "This has something to do with me?" "I believe it

  does, yes."

  "How utterly extraordinary!" Trudi raved. "Please, by all means,

  continue,"

  "Don't bother, Robyn," Stuart snapped. "Trudi didn't kill Spyder

  Nielsen, and she sure as hell didn't have anything to do with Keller's

  death."

  "Did you, Stuart?" Robyn asked, sitting in the club chair opposite

  Kiel, turning her attention to
Keller's former second chair and

  assistant.

  "Look," he said, sinking back down onto the foot of Trudi's chaise

  longue. A low, three-foot-square beveled glass table sat between them.

  He and Trudi had already knocked back half a bottle of a wildly

  expensive rose. He rapped on the gleaming surface of the table. "Let's

  cut

  'to the chase. I know how this must look. "Associate counsel blows

  away special prosecutor, drops charges, shacks up with wealthy

  murderess." Am I doing the theory justice here?"

  "It plays, Stuart."

  "In Peoria, maybe." His attractive mouth shaped itself into a sneer.

  "An interesting Hollywood script idea, Robyn, but it didn't happen that

  way."

  She sat back, ready to listen. "Then suppose you tell me how it did

  happen."

  "Why should we talk to you at all?" Trudi asked, leaning into her

  cushions, still somehow amused.

  "Because I want to know what happened, and I don't intend to stop

  looking for answers until I'm satisfied--and until my husband's death

  is avenged."

  "Get a life instead, Robyn," Willetts advised, his voice edged with

  something not quite disdainful, not quite fearful. "My God, how

  self-destructive can you get? Keller died. It was tragic. But your

  reputation will drop like a stone if you try to make anything more of

  his death than a terrible accident. Do you seriously think that's what

  Keller would have wanted to become of you?"

  Robyn exchanged glances with Kiel. She felt so in control of herself

  and her intentions that she wondered if Kiel had somehow kicked every

  endorphin-producing cell in her brain into hyperactivity.

  "Keller isn't here, Stuart," she said. "And my reputation is my

  business. I don't intend to ruin my own credibility or libel anyone or

  make up wild-eyed stories or try to prove that someone succeeded in

  murdering Keller."

  "Unless that is what happened," Kiel added.

  Stuart scowled. "Who the hell are you, anyway?

  What's your interest in all of this?"

  "JUstice."

  Kiel's body language looked about as angelic as Ram-bo's. She imagined

  if Willetts provoked him much further Kiel might fly off his heavenly

  handle and clap his mortal counterpart between a mighty pair of

  wings--if only to put the fear of God into him. She directed a

  quelling look at Kiel, then turned back to Smart and Trudi. "Please.

  Talk to me."

  "You already believe the worst, Robyn." Stuart shot Kiel another ugly

  look, as if what Robyn believed must be his fault.

  "No one has ever dictated what I think, Stuart--not even Keller."

  Especially Keller. He'd been in love with her from the first because

  she was a woman with a mind of her own and the backbone to speak it.

  "All I want is the truth. Frankly," she said, "I won't settle for

  less. But I will listen."

  "That's what your husband said, too." Trudi tossed her mane of blond

  hair and reached for the wine bottle. "He didn't believe a word I

  said." She sloshed the rose into her wineglass, then swallowed

  two-thirds of it in one toss. "Tell them, darling."

  Robyn got a spiral and pen from her bag and began running a tape

  player. Stuart stared at it a moment, then sighed and rubbed his eyes,

  ending by pinching the bridge of his nose. His features were ordinary

  by any standards, except for long, thick eyelashes most women couldn't

  contrive with mascara.

  He began reciting the facts in the dry, emotionless fashion of

  attorneys. "Spyder Nielsen died on the night of October 12--almost two

  years ago--of a blow to the back of his head while he was sitting in

  the hot tub just outside those sliding doors. The ease against Trudi

  was largely circumstantial. No eye witnesses. Lisa was gone that

  night. '

  "Trudi had been out to a party," he went on, stroking her hand. "Spyder

  refused to go. Trudi got home shortly after midnight, saw a shadowy

  figure slipping away, and then found Spyder dead--floating in the hot

  tub. She called the police immediately. Despite an alibi and the

  shadowy figure, the cops arrested Trudi the next morning. Her

  fingerprints were on the bronze statue--do you remember seeing it?"

  Robyn shook her head. "i never saw any of the physical evidence."

  "Not in person, but Keller sketched it for you on a napkin at the pizza

  parlor, Robyn. The same night he was named special prosecutor and he

  hired me to be his second chair."

  She remembered that sketch. The murder weapon was a casting in bronze

  of a likeness of Spyder Nielsen hurtling through a racing course on

  skis. She'd seen the sketch again, not too long ago--on a night when

  she'd succumbed to loneliness and had been reduced to going through

  Keller's books trying to catch the scent of him.

  She shoved the tattletale memory from her mind. Fingerprints on the

  murder weapon didn't prove anything conclusively. "I knew--everyone

  knew that the case against you was circumstantial. But Keller would

  never have agreed to prosecute if the case wasn't airtight."

  "The air is very thin in Aspen," Trudi said. "My alibi didn't stand up

  because in the hot tub, Spyder's body temperature didn't drop as it

  might have otherwise. The time of death could not be established."

  "And motive?"

  "I had motive to spare," she snapped. "I had very vocal, quite nasty

  scenes with the great and mighty Spyder Nielsen in public places. Yes.

  I had motive and opportunity and his precious bronze at my fingertips.

  My defense attorney tried to suggest to the jury that I am too small

  and fragile to have wielded that bronze hard enough or accurately

  enough to bash Spyder in the back of the head. I could have,

  "But I didn't kill Spyder, Ms. Delaney--and your husband refused to

  believe me."

  Chapter Five

  Kiel watched Robyn's response to the accusation Trudi made against

  Keller Trueblood. She had managed to re-group, to distance herself so

  that she wasn't kicked in the gut by Trud.i Candelaria's recrimination.

  He was proud of her, touched by her. He let her handle the accusation

  her way.

  "Most defendants on trial for murder protest their innocence," she

  said. "Tell me why Keller should have believed you."

  "Because," she said, shrugging insolently, "I did not kill Spyder."

  "Look, Robyn," Stuart interrupted. "This won't get us anywhere. Trudi

  maintains her innocence to this day. Keller believed otherwise until

  the day he died. He was capable of being wrong, you know."

  Checking her tape player, Robyn straightened. She'd never known Keller

  not to own up to making a mistake or to being mistaken. "Was he wrong

  about this, Stuart? Was there any physical evidence inconsistent with

  Trudi's having committed the murder of Spyder Nielsen?"

  Stuart shook his head. "No. There was no evidence implicating anyone

  else. There was a set of fire tracks in the snow that went

  unidentified, but that was all."

  "Keller made every effort to have the authorities match those

  tracks?"

  "Naturally. If you're serious a
bout delving into this case, interview

  the police. Crandall. Ken Crandall. He's a real piece of work,

  Robyn. He has it in for anyone with two cents to rub together."

  "That would include most people who live in Aspen. So anyone else with

  a motive could have killed Spyder, is that it?" Kiel asked. "Not only

  Trudi."

  Stuart grimaced, refusing to look at Kiel. "Just talk to Crandall,

  Robyn."

  "We will." She wrote the name on her notepad and circled it, but she

  didn't let Stuart get away with dismissing Kiel or his point. "It's

  true, isn't it, that if Crandall has a chip on his shoulder about

  wealthy Aspenites, he'd have been happy to nail any one of them."

  "Maybe," Stuart's jaw tightened. "I'm just saying he has an attitude

  problem that you might want to keep in mind."

  She nodded and looked at Trudi. "Ms. Candelaria, you said my husband

  wouldn't listen to a word you said. If the only thing you could say

  was that you didn't kill Spyder in the face of a great deal of

  circumstantial evidence, what was it you wanted him to hear?"

  "I expected to be believed, I am many things, Ms. Delaney, but a liar

  isn't one of them."

  Everything Robyn understood about body language lobbied on the side of