“Why should I bother?” I said, tossing my head back and exhaling a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m sure you know everything there is to know already. Flannagan has obviously kept you clued in.” I was acting as cool as Lauren Bacall, but I was feeling as hot as Scarlett O’Hara during the burning of Atlanta.
“You’ve got it wrong, Paige,” he said. “It’s the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m the one who’s been keeping Flannagan in the know, not vice versa. I’ve been in charge of this case since the day after Gray Gordon was killed.”
“What?!” I shrieked, shocked to the bone. “That’s impossible! You were in Maine at the time! And this isn’t even your precinct!”
Dan’s coal-black gaze stayed fixed on me. “
You are my precinct,” he said, and the way his forceful voice echoed against the walls of the tiny room made my skin dance.
Dan took a swig of his coffee and continued talking. “As soon as I read the reports of the murder in the Maine papers and saw that two young women who lived near the victim had discovered the body, I called Flannagan to find out who they were. And I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he named you and Abby. And I knew damn well your involvement wouldn’t end there. So the minute I hung up with Flannagan, I called the commissioner and got myself assigned to the case. After that I called Flannagan back, appointed him my second in command, and told him to put his best man on your tail to watch over you and keep you safe. Then, after making arrangements for Katy to stay with my parents for another week, I jumped in the car, and drove all night to get to you.”
“But why didn’t you
tell me?!” I cried, trembling with curiosity, gratitude, and outrage.
“Because
you didn’t tell me,” he said. “When I saw how far you were willing to go-how many lies you were willing to tell so you could keep me in the dark and stay involved in the case-I knew I couldn’t trust you to back off and let me handle things my way. And since I couldn’t trust you to tell me the truth, I was afraid I would jeopardize the investigation and cause you to put your life in more danger if I told the truth to you. You put me in a real bind, Paige. I was so mad I wanted to kill you myself.”
The gross absurdity of our deceitful duet suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. “Good grief, Dan!” I sputtered. “If I had known that you’d been assigned to the case I would have told you the truth immediately! I swear! The only reason I lied to you was because I knew you’d order me to stop looking for the killer, and I simply couldn’t do that as long as Flannagan was in charge. He’s a horrible detective, Dan. You’ve got to believe me! He was trying to pin the murder on Willy Sinclair just because he’s gay!”
Dan nodded and took a deep drag on his Lucky. “I realized that myself after working with him for one hour.”
Aaaargh! “Then why didn’t you come back and tell me what was going on?”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like I said before, I thought the truth would hurt you instead of help you.”
Uh oh. Dan was beginning to sound as shifty and slippery as somebody else I knew (i.e., me). “But how on earth could it possibly hurt me?” I asked, growing more confused by the second.
He gave me a challenging smirk. “You want examples?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” I said, wondering what I’d let myself in for.
“How many?”
He was being too cute for comfort. “One will be quite enough,” I snapped.
“Okay, how does this one strike you? How do you think you would have reacted to the knowledge that Dash was following you? Would you have been glad that he was watching your every move and working to keep you safe, or would you have dreamed up an elaborate scheme to ditch him so you could conduct your secret investigation in secret?”
“I, er… um, I…”
“Never mind,” Dan said. “You don’t have to answer that. I knew exactly what you would do, and that’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. It was for your own good.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I busied myself putting out my cigarette and lighting another one.
Dan stood up from his chair and began pacing the floor in front of me, giving me a good look at his powerful physique and devastatingly sexy walk. “This would all be funny if it wasn’t so damn serious,” he said, raking a wave of unruly brown hair off his forehead with his fingers. “Do you realize how much trouble you’ve caused? Do you have any idea how close you came to sabotaging the whole case?”
“No way, Doris Day!” I huffed. “In fact it seems to me that the opposite is true. I mean, I
solved the damn thing, didn’t I? Nobody suspected that Barnabas Kapinsky was the murderer but me! Nobody even knew who Binky was!” To say that I was irked would be like calling a heart attack uncomfortable. Would credit ever be given where credit was due (i.e., to me)?
Dan stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me with a look of pure fury on his face. “Yes, and why do you think that was, Paige? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it was because you
stole the only piece of evidence that showed a connection between Kapinsky and Gordon? Did it ever occur to you that you were hiding important information from the police-that the list of phone messages Rhonda Blake took down for the victim on or around the night he was killed might be indispensable to the investigation?”
My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and stayed there. “So you knew about that,” I mumbled, staring down at the floor in shame.
“You’re damn straight, I did! Rhonda told me about it when I questioned her at the theater. She said two extras from the
Bus Stop cast had come to see Gray, and to get her autograph, and she thought they must have taken the message pad with them when they left because she hadn’t been able to find it since. I knew right away she was talking about you and Abby.”
I wasn’t two people anymore. Now I was just one-the bad one.
“I’m sorry, Dan,” I whimpered. “I never would have snatched the list if I had known you’d be taking over the case. Flannagan was in charge at the time, don’t forget, and I couldn’t be sure that he would ever find the list, or follow up on all the names if he did. So I felt I should take it home and study it carefully, and then turn it over to Flannagan later.”
“But you never got around to enacting the last part of your plan,” Dan growled.
“No, but I
told Flannagan about the message pad,” I stressed, “and I gave him all the names that were listed. All except one.”
“The most important one, it turns out.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time! I kept Binky’s name and number to myself for only one reason: because I didn’t want Flannagan to screw up my visit to the Actors Studio. I thought it was important for me to meet and talk to Gray’s fellow acting students-see if any of them were the homicidal type-and Binky was my passport inside.”
Dan’s face turned from furious to afflicted. “Yeah, and he was almost a passport to the end of your life.” He sat back down in his chair and released a deafening sigh. “I don’t know what to do with you anymore, Paige. You’re impossible!… You were right not to trust Flannagan-he’s a bigot and a bungler. And I know your motives for getting involved were good. They always are. But you came to within a split second of having your throat slit open!” he cried, throwing his hands in the air. “How am I supposed to live with the knowledge of that? No matter how hard I try to keep you safe, you’re always working your way toward another disaster. And nothing I can say or do will make you stop! You’re addicted to danger.”
“I prefer to think I’m addicted to the truth,” I stiffly replied, feeling righteous again.