She stared for a moment, eyes kindling. "Just wanted a reaction? I hope I satisfied you."
Jenner cocked a brow. "Miss Reynolds, did you visit Miss Perkins at her hotel on the night she was murdered?"
"No." Frustrated, Deanna raked a hand through her hair. "Why should I have? We were meeting at the studio."
"You might have gotten impatient." Jenner knew he was reaching. Deanna's fingerprints hadn't been found in the suite, certainly they weren't on the extra champagne flute.
"Even if I had, Angela told me that she'd be busy until midnight. She had meetings."
"Did she mention with whom?"
"We weren't chatting, Detective, and I had no interest in her personal or her business plans."
"You knew she had enemies?"
"I knew she wasn't particularly well liked. Part of that might have been her personality, and part of it was because she was a woman with a great deal of power. She could be hard and vindictive. She could also be charming and generous."
"I don't imagine you found it charming when she arranged for you to walk in on her and Dr. Pike, in compromising circumstances."
"That's old news."
"But you were in love with him?"
"I was almost in love with him," Deanna corrected. "A very large difference." Oh, what was the point of all this? she wondered, and rubbed at the headache brewing dead center of her forehead. "I won't deny it hurt me, and it infuriated me, and it changed my feelings about both of them irrevocably."
"Dr. Pike tried to continue your relationship."
"He didn't look on the incident in the same way I did. I wasn't interested in continuing anything with him, and I made that clear."
"But he did persist for quite a while." "Yes."
Jenner recognized the emotion behind the clipped response. "And the notes, the ones you've been receiving with some regularity for several years. Did you ever consider that he was sending them?"
"Marshall?" She shook her head. "No. They're not his style."
"What is?"
Deanna's eyes shut. She remembered the photographs, the detective's report. "Perhaps you should ask him."
"We will. Have you been involved with anyone other than Dr. Pike? Anyone who might have been so disturbed by the announcement of your engagement to Mr. Riley that they would break into your office, or Mr. Riley's home?"
"No, there's been — what do you mean, break in?" She gripped the wing of the chair she stood beside.
"It seems logical that whoever sent the notes is also responsible for the destruction of your office and the house you share with Mr. Riley," Jenner began. And, he believed, for Angela's murder.
"When?" Deanna could barely whisper the word. "When did this happen?"
Intrigued, Jenner stopped tapping his pencil on his pad. The rosy glow anger had brought to Deanna's cheeks had drained, leaving her face white as bone. Riley hadn't told her yet, he realized. And the man wasn't going to be pleased to have been scooped. "The night Angela Perkins was shot, Finn Riley's house was broken into."
"No." Still gripping the chair, she shifted, lowered herself before her legs buckled. "Finn didn't — no one told me." She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the kick of nerves in her stomach. When she opened them again, they were dark as pitch and burning dry. "But you will. I want to know what happened. Exactly what happened."
There was going to be more than a little tiff when Finn Riley returned, Jenner decided. As he related the facts, he watched her take them in. She winced once, as though the words were darts, then went very still. Her eyes remained level, and curiously blank until he had finished.
She said nothing for a moment, leaning forward to pour more tea. Her hand was steady. Jenner admired her poise and control, particularly since he'd seen the ripple of horror cross her face.
"You think that whoever's been sending the notes, whoever broke into my office and my home, killed Angela."
It was a reporter's voice, Jenner noted. Cool and calm and without inflection. But her eyes weren't blank any longer. They were terrified. For some reason he remembered a report she'd done years before, a woman in the suburbs who'd been shot to death by her husband. Her eyes hadn't been blank then, either.
"It's a theory," he said at length. "It makes more sense for only one person to be involved." "Then why not me?" Her voice broke, and she shook her head impatiently. "Why Angela and not me? If he was so angry, so violently angry with me, why did he kill her and leave me alive?"
"She was in your way," Jenner said briskly, and watched as the full impact struck Deanna like a blow.
"He killed her for me? Oh Jesus, he did it for me."
"We can't be sure of that." Jenner began, but Deanna was already shoving out of her chair.
"Finn. Good God, he could come after Finn. He broke into the house. If Finn had been there, he would have…" She pressed a hand to her stomach. "You have to do something."
"Miss Reynolds—"
But she heard the sound of tires on gravel. She whirled, racing the dog to the door, shouting for him.
Finn was already cursing the other car in the drive when he heard her call his name. His annoyance at the intrusion faded as he saw her sprint out of the house. She leaped trembling into his arms, choking back sobs.
Finn gathered her close, his eyes hot and lethal as they skimmed over her shoulder to where Jenner stood on the porch. "What the hell have you done?"
"I'm sorry." It was the best Finn could think of to say as he faced Deanna across the living room. Jenner had left them alone. After, Finn thought bitterly, he'd dropped his bomb.
"What for? Because I found out from Jenner? Or because you didn't trust me enough to tell me in the first place?"
"That it happened at all," he said carefully. "And it wasn't a matter of trust, Deanna. You're barely out of the hospital."
"And you didn't want to upset my delicate mental balance. That's why the television is conveniently on the blink. That's why you wanted to go to the store alone, and didn't bring back the paper. We wouldn't want poor little Deanna to hear any news that might upset her."
"Close enough." He plunged his hands into his pockets. "I thought you needed some time."
"You thought. Well, you thought wrong." She spun around, headed for the stairs. "You had no right to keep this from me."
"I did keep it from you. Damn it, if we're going to fight, at least do it face to face." He stopped her on the landing, grabbing her arm, turning her around.
"I can fight when I'm packing." She shook him off and stalked into the bedroom.
"You want to go back, fine. We'll go back after we've settled this."
She dragged an overnight case out of the closet. "We don't have to go anywhere. I'm going." She tossed the case onto the bed, threw open the lid. "Alone." In quick, jerky moves, she plucked bottles and jars from the dresser. "I'm going hack to my apartment. I can get whatever I've left at your house later."
"No," he said, very calmly, "you're not." She heaved a perfume bottle toward the open case. It bounced merrily on the bed.
"That's exactly what I'm doing." With her eyes on his, she pried his fingers loose. "You lied to me, Finn. If Jenner hadn't come out here for some follow-up questions, I wouldn't have known about the break-in, or that you'd interviewed Dan Gardner and that hotel maid. I wouldn't have known anything."
"No, and you might have gotten a few nights' sleep."
"You lied," she repeated, refusing to see past that. "And don't tell me keeping the truth from me is different than lying. It's the same. I won't continue in a relationship that isn't honest."
"You want honest. That's fine." He turned, shut the door with a quiet click. A final click. "I'll do anything and everything in my power to protect you. That's a fact." Eyes steady, he walked back to her. "You're not walking out on me, Deanna. That's a fact. And you're not using some bullshit about rights and trust as your escape hatch. If you want out, then at least be honest."