Beyond Danger Page 3

  “I was pulling it out!” Beau shot to his feet. “I was trying to save his life!”

  Cassidy’s eyes locked with his. “I don’t know exactly what happened before I got there, but Beau did everything he could to save his father. Unfortunately, it was already too late.”

  Tom eyed him a little differently now. “I’ll need to take both of your statements. I’d like to do that down at the station. You can ride with me or meet me there.”

  “My car is back at the house,” Beau said. Where he’d left it to ride in the ambulance.

  “I can drive you home to get it,” Cassidy said. She looked down at her blood-stained clothes. “Would it be all right if I went into the guest house to change?”

  “You can go in and get some clothes, change at the station. Take one of the officers in with you. What about you, Beau?”

  “I’ve got an overnight bag in my car.”

  “So you planned to stay in town?”

  “Actually, no. Just force of habit. Always better to be prepared.”

  Cassidy stood up from her chair, hesitated, then released a breath. “Before we go, there’s something I need to tell you, Detective Briscoe.”

  Setting her purse on the table, she opened it, took out a leather badge wallet and flipped it open. “I’m a private investigator. I work for an agency called Maximum Security in Dallas. The senator hired me last week. He wanted me to do a little digging. He was worried. He said he thought someone was following him. He said people had been asking questions. He wanted to know who it was and why. He specifically said he didn’t think his life was in danger. Obviously he was wrong.”

  * * *

  Cassidy studied Beau as Detective Briscoe took his leave. Strong biceps filled the sleeves of his blood-stained sweater. His forearms were tanned and corded with sinewy muscle. Despite the circumstances, he looked good. Too good, she thought as the two of them walked out of the hospital into the sunlight.

  Two months ago, her relationship with Richard Shelton, a successful Dallas attorney, had come to an end. She had enjoyed Rick and he had enjoyed her, but they weren’t in love, and when work began to hold more appeal than an evening at home with Rick, it was clearly time to move on.

  Since then she hadn’t dated. Which was probably the reason Beau Reese pushed all her hot buttons. Or maybe it was just because he was hot, an extremely good-looking, incredibly sexy male.

  Whatever the reason, now wasn’t the time or place, and a wealthy celebrity with dozens of women chasing after him wasn’t worth the trouble.

  Cassidy opened the door of her silver Honda hatchback and slid in behind the wheel. Beau climbed into the passenger seat, pushing it back to accommodate his long legs. They buckled their belts and she started the engine.

  The late January weather was chilly, but a blue sky curved overhead. Still, it was Texas. It wouldn’t be long before the weather changed.

  “So you’re a private detective,” Beau said as she pulled out of the parking lot.

  “I’m mostly an investigator. I rarely carry a weapon. I specialize in digging up information, asking questions, figuring things out. Sometimes I work with a bounty hunter friend of mine. I do the tracing, he brings in the skip, and we split the fee. One of my least favorite jobs is finding out if a spouse is cheating, but it pays the bills.”

  Beau didn’t smile. She knew his mind was still back at the house, going over and over what had happened to his father. Her instincts said he hadn’t done it. And when she replayed the scene, the timing seemed slightly off. She trusted her instincts and her judgment, but she needed to be sure.

  “I wish I’d had a few more days,” she said, regaining his attention as the car rolled down the road. “Maybe I could have found something that would have given us a warning, something that would have prevented his death.”

  Intense blue eyes went to her face. “He must have told you something, said something that could lead the police to the killer. He hired you because he was worried. What did he say?”

  “He gave me a couple of names, business associates. There was also a woman. He said their relationship hadn’t ended well.”

  Beau scoffed. “His relationships rarely ended well. My father wasn’t the sort of man who stayed friends with the women he dated. He used them, then discarded them like old shoes.”

  Cassidy filed the information away. “I know the two of you didn’t get along. I read that in more than one account. I got a firsthand look yesterday when I heard you arguing.”

  He scoffed. “He was a terrible father and a rotten husband. My mother wasn’t any better. I think she got pregnant because she thought it was a necessary part of being married, but she didn’t really like kids. She and my dad believed as long as they gave me money, they could go on with their lives as if I didn’t exist.”

  “Was that the reason you got in trouble in high school? Nobody around to take care of you?”

  He cast her a dark look. “Hey, I didn’t kill him, so you don’t need to be investigating me.”

  “Sorry.” But she wasn’t really sorry at all. Yesterday Beau and his father had had a vicious quarrel. Today Stewart Reese was dead. Was it possible Beau had lost his temper and stabbed the older man in a fit of rage?

  “How’d you get interested in becoming a PI anyway?” he asked.

  “Lot of cops and military in my family. My granddad, my brothers. My grandfather died in the line of duty when I was a kid. I was never interested in joining the force, but I liked the idea of catching bad guys, so I studied criminology in college. I apprenticed for a while with a friend of my brother’s in the security business in Houston. I liked it. Investigative work seemed to be a good fit.”

  The entrance to Country Club Estates loomed ahead. She pulled into the area of luxury homes and drove along the golf course to the big white house with the columns out front. Several white-and-blue police vehicles were parked on the street, and yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the porch, reminding her that a man had just died here and that man was Beau’s father.

  Silence fell inside the car.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Beau said a little gruffly, his features drawn and grim as he opened the door and ducked out of the car. He and his father weren’t close, but the senator was still his dad.

  Cassidy watched him walk toward the Ferrari she had spotted parked out front when she’d left to follow the ambulance. With his long, lean-muscled build, wide shoulders and narrow waist, the man was definite eye candy.

  She knew he was in great physical condition. She had read he trained in mixed martial arts, and apparently he was good at it—like pretty much everything else he did.

  She went around to the guest house, walked up to the uniformed patrolman standing out front and told him Tom Briscoe had said she could get something to wear. The officer escorted her inside and waited while she grabbed a pair of jeans, a yellow scooped-neck sweater, and a pair of sneakers.

  “We should be done with the guest house in a couple of hours,” said the patrolman, a skinny young guy with light brown hair. “You’ll be able to come back then.”

  “Great.” Because she planned to stay for at least a few more days—unless Beau Reese threw her out. She had only begun her investigation into the three names the senator had given her. She needed more information, needed to look into the senator’s personal records, into his life.

  By now the police would have taken his computer and the folders in his file drawers, but she had a hunch there was more. From the little she had gleaned since she’d met him, the senator was a secretive man, not the sort to leave his personal information lying around.

  If her hunch was right, there would be a place he kept his important documents, his personal records, and she intended to find it.

  Carrying the change of clothes, she returned to where her car was parked, surprised to see Beau Reese sitting in his Ferrari waiting for her. Apparently Beau was a gentleman, the last of a dying breed.

  As she started the Honda
and turned it around in the street, Beau fired up the powerful Ferrari engine, waited for her to drive in front of him down the road, then fell in behind her.

  She knew where to go. When she had first arrived in Pleasant Hill, she had passed the police station, downtown on a side street off Main. Most of the buildings were false-fronted brick structures, the drugstore had dark green awnings out front, and the streets all had angled parking.

  She pulled into the lot next to the station and got out of the car, waited for Beau to park and catch up with her, and they walked inside together, both of them cordial and friendly.

  Cassidy planned to keep it that way—unless Beau Reese had cold-bloodedly murdered his father.

  Chapter Four

  The police station was busy today. Murder had a way of stirring things up. Men and women in dark blue uniforms strode in and out with purpose. Tom Briscoe was waiting when Beau walked in with Cassidy Jones. Opening the swinging half door attached to the counter, Tom motioned for them to follow him down the hall.

  “You can change in the ladies’ room,” Tom said to Cassidy.

  “Thank you.” She pushed open the door and disappeared inside, came out a few minutes later in clean jeans and a yellow sweater, her bloody clothes in the bag she had brought with her. Briscoe didn’t take them as evidence, since it was clear whose blood was on the clothes. Instead, he ushered the woman into an interview room, leaving Beau to cool his heels out in the hall.

  Cassidy was a private investigator—he still found it hard to believe. Then again, maybe his dad was just working a con that backfired on him, hiring a woman he wanted to seduce, figuring he could get a little work out of her while he was at it.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  Beau couldn’t help wondering if Cassidy had been attracted to his dad. She was somewhere near thirty, which meant the senator was almost twice her age. With her classic features, heavy dark curls, and those big green eyes, she was a beautiful woman. His dad had always liked a woman with substantial cleavage, and it was clear Cassidy Jones had more than her share.

  But she obviously had brains, too, and that was a big negative to a man who needed to believe he was the smartest guy in the room.

  Beau wondered what she was in there telling Tom Briscoe. So far she had done her best not to convict him with her words. Why, he had no idea, but he hoped that didn’t change. He was a well-known figure in the community, well liked by most. He gave to a number of local charities and had always been supportive of police.

  He figured those things would help. He didn’t think the cops would rush to judgment, which would give him some time. Exactly what he would need if he was going to find the man who had murdered his dad.

  The image of his father’s ashen face and blood-covered body appeared in his head. What did you do, Dad?

  Who had his father cheated? Who had he pissed off enough to get himself killed?

  It was going to take time to dig through the maze that was Stewart Reese’s life. Beau thought of Cassidy and what she might be telling the police. Finding his father’s killer could be even more important now. It might be necessary to prove him innocent of murder.

  * * *

  Beau decided not to call an attorney—at least not yet. Instead, after Cassidy Jones had finished her interview and left the station, Beau had given a clear and concise statement of events leading up to and including the discovery of his father’s body. Exactly the same story he had told before. The only thing he’d glossed over was why he had come to Pleasant Hill in the first place.

  On the phone yesterday, Josie had told him that Missy didn’t want anyone else knowing the name of her baby’s father. She was ashamed of having been duped by a man old enough to be her grandfather.

  If the girl wanted to keep the name secret, Beau sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone. Not unless he had no other choice.

  As he walked out of the interview room, relieved to be finished, he glanced up at the sound of high heels clicking on the linoleum and saw his former stepmother walking toward him down the hall. Two years after his mother died, Stewart Reese had remarried a forty-five-year-old woman from Dallas named Charlotte Mercer. They had divorced last year.

  Though she was as elegantly dressed as always, Charlotte’s dove-gray designer pantsuit looked slightly rumpled. Her mouth was tight, her blond hair not quite as perfectly groomed as it usually was. She looked . . . shell-shocked was the word that came to mind.

  “Oh, Beau, I’m so glad you’re here.” Charlotte’s eyes welled as she approached. “The police called. They wanted to let me know what had happened before I heard it on the news. They said they had some questions. I told them I would be happy to help in any way I could. I told them I would drive down right away.”

  Beau closed the distance, leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”

  She took a shuddering breath, but didn’t hug him. She wasn’t the hugging type. It was strange how much she reminded him of his mother.

  “You know we still cared about each other,” she said, pressing a linen handkerchief beneath her nose.

  He nodded, though he had no idea one way or the other. Maybe they actually had.

  “It’s hard to imagine him dead,” Charlotte said. “Stew was a lot of things, some of which I despised, but he was a man who knew how to live.”

  “I’m going to find out who did it,” Beau said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  Her head jerked up. Hazel eyes zeroed in on his face. “What are you talking about? You have to let the police handle this. I want this over as quickly as possible. In the three years we were together, your father caused me enough grief to last a lifetime. I don’t need any more scandal.”

  “He was murdered, Charlotte. That isn’t going to change. I’m going to find the man who did it. I won’t rest until I do.”

  Her lips thinned. “You listen to me, Beau Reese. Your father is gone. There’s nothing either of us can do to bring him back. It’s best for all of us if this whole thing disappears as quickly as possible.”

  “You’ll only be marginally involved, Charlotte. Your marriage has been over for more than a year.”

  “I know how this works. Your father was an important man. Reporters will show up at my door. They’ll be trying to dig up dirt on Stewart, and that will rub off on me.”

  She wasn’t wrong there. Their divorce had been messy, to say the least. Infidelity was always a juicy subject for the tabloids. In this case, the tables had been turned on his dad. The senator had come home to find his wife in bed with a much younger man.

  “I’ll be attending the funeral, of course,” Charlotte was saying. “But after that, I’m going to disappear for a while. Betsy Durant has invited me to stay with her for as long as I want.” Betsy Durant was a mega-wealthy patron of the arts, a Dallas socialite who owned a house as big as a palace in the exclusive Highland Park district.

  “Betsy knows how trying all of this is going to be for me,” Charlotte said. “She insists I stay with her at least for the next few weeks, perhaps longer.”

  Relief filtered through him. Charlotte would be busy in Dallas while Beau planned to stay in Pleasant Hill. He’d get a room at the Holiday Inn for the night and hope the crime scene was released sometime tomorrow. As soon as that happened, he would move into the house.

  He needed access to his father’s study, to his private personal files. He knew where they were, had walked in on his father once when he was a kid, while his dad had had his special hiding place open. Beau had gotten a good talking-to for coming in without knocking, and neither of them had ever mentioned it again.

  He’d decide whether to turn the information over to the police after he had looked at it. He needed to find out who benefited from Stewart Reese’s death. He needed to know the names of his father’s associates—and enemies.

  Which one of them had hated the senator enough to kill him? Or hire someone to do it?

  He thought of the pret
ty lady investigator and hoped to hell she didn’t cause him too much trouble.

  “What about the funeral service?” Charlotte asked, regaining his attention.

  It had to be done, but he wasn’t ready to think about it. “I’ll take care of it.”

  She took a step closer, rested her hand on his arm. “I could take care of it for you, Beau. Get things lined up and then get your approval. I know how difficult this must be.”

  It seemed like a cop-out, letting someone else make the arrangements for the last major event in his father’s life. On the other hand, finding his killer was far more important than handling inconsequential details.

  “I could make sure it’s done in a tasteful style, something befitting a senator.” Of course she would think of that. “I could call his former assistant in the senate,” she said, “get a list of all the people who need to be invited.”

  He nodded. “All right. When you have everything tentatively set up, let me know and we’ll go over it together.”

  “Of course,” Charlotte said.

  Beau looked up to see the door open and Tom Briscoe walk into the hall. Tom spotted Charlotte and headed in her direction.

  “Mrs. Reese. I’m Detective Briscoe. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  She dabbed her handkerchief against her eyes. “Thank you, Detective. You know, even after our divorce, the senator and I remained close.”

  “I appreciate your coming so quickly. The sooner we can find out what happened, the sooner we can get justice for Senator Reese.” Tom glanced at Beau over Charlotte’s head. “You can go now, Beau. I have your cell number. But don’t leave town just yet.”

  “I’ll be staying out at my dad’s,” Beau said. He’d be busy. Along with finding a killer, he had a company to run.

  He still hadn’t called Linc. His business partner would take care of things back at the office, he knew. He was a man you could count on. Truth was, Beau hadn’t called Linc because his best friend was the one person in the world who would hear the pain in his voice.