When Maggie St. John walked into the squad room of the Baton Rouge arson unit, every man who had lifted his morning cup of coffee, including Beau, choked as they took their first swallow. The only difference was that the assistant chief choked quietly in the privacy of his office, which was separated from the bull pen by a glass wall and door. Beau grabbed for a napkin and held the now-dripping mug away from him.
The lady definitely knew how to make a fashion statement, if not a police statement.
Long, creamy legs that were bare and toned were revealed by a short pastel skirt, the color he suspected her nipples would be—the first blush of a ripening peach. But the real problem was the vest, sleeveless and cut from some soft ivory-colored material. He didn’t think she had a thing on underneath it.
She dressed for the Baton Rouge heat. Or to take his mind off the business at hand. He suspected the latter.
“Damnation,” he whispered as he dragged his eyes away and looked down at his chest.
Sloshed coffee had missed his shirt but zapped his favorite silk tie. A gag gift from his fire company when he transferred to arson. None of them thought he’d actually wear it. He wore it. Hand-painted sepia palm trees grew on a person, he found out.
After a couple of halfhearted dabs at the stain, he wiped the mug and set it back on the desk. Outside his office, two of his men were approximating his cleanup actions. The third, Russell Michaels, was smugly asking Maggie how he could help.
Beau pushed away from his desk and walked to the door. Before he’d finished pulling it open, Maggie looked up. Their gazes collided, and electricity that hadn’t been present before crackled. Beau caught himself wishing the tension represented something other than her animosity. He also wished she had on scrubs instead of that vest and skirt.
“The lady’s looking for you, Beau,” Russell said without turning, his voice filled with longing and regret. Using a resigned arm motion, he waved her through the room. “Go ahead on, ma’am. The chief’s obviously expecting you too.”
She gave Russell a dazzling smile, noticeably charmed by his pouting. “Thank you, but I think it’s more like he’s lying in wait for me. I’m this morning’s sacrificial lamb. Will you promise to rescue me if I need help?”
“Just crook one of those little fingers.” Russell had a way with the ladies—any lady, anytime, anyplace.
“Thank you, Russell,” Beau said, his voice both commanding and soft. “I’ll handle it from here.”
“Yes, sir. I imagine you will.”
Maggie stifled a laugh and started toward him. The exchange with Russell seemed to have taken the edge off her anger, but she raised her eyebrow at the .357 automatic in Beau’s shoulder holster. People were always surprised the arson squad carried guns, badges, and had law enforcement authority. He had purposely left off his gun yesterday to maintain a low profile around the hospital.
“Is it true what they say?” she asked, her Southern heritage evident in the soft drawl.
“What is it they say?”
Leaning closer she whispered, “Big gun, little … heart?”
A wry smile twisted Beau’s lips. “I believe that saying is—big gun, big … bang.”
The smile faded from her face as he stepped aside to let her enter first. She took one of the two chairs across from his ancient metal desk while he slipped the gun out of his holster and stowed it in the file cabinet outside his office. After he’d added his cuffs, he joined her.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said as he closed the door behind him.
“Yeah, I did. We have a few rules around here about the interview process. We don’t like witnesses to feel intimidated or coerced when they’re giving us a statement.”
“Checking the gun at the door might work for some of the guys out there, but not for you, Grayson. That firearm has nothing to do with why you scare the hell out of people. It’s those eyes, and I don’t think you can check them at the door.”
“Are you telling me that I intimidate you?”
“If I was intimidated and you couldn’t do anything about it, would that mean I could leave? Or just that you’d forgo tying me tightly to my chair?”
Beau studied her face. She didn’t look intimidated.
At first glance she was gorgeous, but now that she was closer he could see that the magic of makeup hadn’t been able to erase the shadows beneath her eyes. He wondered if they were from guilt. Or just a late night in someone’s arms.
The stab of jealousy rocked him. Beau never mixed business with pleasure, but Maggie got to him on a personal level. Not that he had to worry about overstepping the boundaries of their professional relationship. Maggie’d see to that. She knew exactly which one of them wore the white hat and which wore the black.
“Why do you insist on painting me as the bad guy?” he asked.
“Gee, I don’t know. Is it because you insinuated that I tried to burn down a perfectly good hospital?”
“Perfectly good?” Beau reached across his desk and grabbed the tape recorder. “According to your colleagues you wouldn’t rate anything in that hospital above ‘adequate’ let alone ‘perfect.’ ”
“You do get around, don’t you? I suppose you’ve talked to everyone in the hospital.” Her tone made it clear the thought of his interviewing people about her background bothered her. “Obviously you believed everything the administration had to say about me. Too bad you didn’t talk to the nurses too.”
“I did. To your friends you’re some kind of crusading hero. Like Joan of Arc.”
“Charming,” Maggie said. “You’ve just compared me to a heretic who was, not so coincidentally, burned at the stake. So … is this the part where you read me my rights, and ask me if I want an attorney before talking to you?”
Something in her eyes, an anxiety that her tough-girl facade couldn’t quite mask, changed Beau’s mind about the interview. Suddenly he was interested in more than a statement of facts. Intuition reminded him that she had something to hide.
“Witnesses aren’t usually given Miranda,” he explained carefully. “That’s not required. But since you’re concerned, I think maybe it’s a good idea. That way there won’t be any misunderstandings later.”
Beau signaled one of the men in the squad room. In front of the witness he read a stunned Maggie her Miranda rights and asked if she understood them. When she nodded, he offered to halt the interview. “You aren’t in custody or under arrest, but I want to be real clear with you. I’m investigating the hospital fire as a set fire. If you would like to have an attorney present, we can stop until you obtain one.”
“No.” The answer was quick and sharp. “Let’s just do this. A lawyer isn’t going to change the truth.”
Beau sent the officer out and put the tape recorder on the desk between them. As he sat down in the second chair, he turned it on and gave the date, time, and subject interviewed before addressing Maggie. “I prefer to record interviews rather than make notes. Do you have any objections?”
“Yeah, but not about the tape.” Maggie recrossed her legs, either accidentally or on purpose angling them so that he’d get the best view of her thigh. She leaned back and rested her arms along the sides of the old wood and leather chair. Her upper body was as far away from him as she could get.
He noticed the mixed signals—open arms but a withdrawn body. Token cooperation. Her posture dared him to take his best shot. Then he realized that her posture, her attitude, the clothes, the whole image was one of subtle rebellion.
Before he could censor himself, he asked the question that had been nagging him since yesterday. “Do you have a problem with authority? Or is it just me?”
“Both. But mostly you at the moment.” She reached over and shut off the tape. Her nails were blunt and buffed; her fingers gripped the recorder as she spoke. “Off the record—I don’t like being ordered down here or accused of things I haven’t done. So you’ll just have to excuse me for being testy.”
Beau reached for the tape recorder, covering her hand with his in the process. Touching her was a mistake, he realized, but he didn’t pull back. Didn’t want to. The contrast of her small, feminine hand beneath his made him forget the suspect and remember the woman he couldn’t have. The forbidden was always tempting and only made more so as she slid her hand away. The movement was awkward and innocently sensual.
“S-sorry.” Her apology underscored the two facets of her personality—one bold as brass, and the other uncertain and vulnerable. Beau wondered how many people saw the softer side of Maggie St. John. And why she felt the need to act so tough.
The vulnerability might be an illusion staged for his benefit, but Beau felt himself falling for it anyway. He did something he never did; he gave her advice. “Okay, off the record—if you didn’t set that fire, stop fighting me and let me do my job. I haven’t arrested an innocent person yet.”
Then he pushed the record button. Pertinent data and the facts surrounding discovery of the fire were easily covered with a dozen short questions. Every answer tallied with Friday’s answers. No embellishments. She said nothing that would trip her up later. Nothing she hadn’t said already.
Then he got to the meat of the interview, and the reason he had decided to offer her an attorney. He had a fire of undetermined cause, and she had the only clear motive for setting the fire—revenge. He wanted her comments about her adversarial relationship with the hospital on record.
“I was told,” he said, “that before the suspension, squaring off with the administration was just another day in the trenches for you.”
“What if it was? There’s no law against being an advocate for your profession.”
“No, there’s not, but according to Dr. Bennett you were more than a nursing advocate, Maggie. He said you took on every cause that came down the pike at Our Lady of Servitude. That is the nickname you coined for Cloister, isn’t it?”
Maggie leaned forward. “Yes, sir. To the best of my knowledge that nickname originated with me, but there’s no law against sarcasm either. Where are you going with this?”
He didn’t answer, but he leaned forward, matching her posture, holding her gaze. “Do you think the administration listens to you?”
“Only when I yell, ‘Fire!’ ” she deadpanned, and settled back in her chair.
Beau bit the side of his jaw to keep from laughing. God, why did he have to like the woman? This one had a mouth on her. No question. It was bad enough she had a body hotter than chemical fire, but she had to be sharpwitted too? Beau was a sucker for a woman who gave as good as she got when cornered. Humor was sadly missing in his life, he realized, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed before.
Sighing, he leaned back and tried to get his interview on track again. “Would you describe yourself as burned-out?”
“Why? Did someone else describe me that way?”
Beau didn’t comment, but his pregnant silence told her everything she needed to know.
“Great!” Maggie shot to her feet and paced away from him to stare through the open vertical blinds. “You listened to Bennett, didn’t you? Or Donna. She worries about me.”
When she turned, her hands were on her hips.
“Look, Grayson, burnout goes with the territory. Cloister is a thousand-bed public facility. We get people through our ER with blood sugars over eight hundred every day. Every day. In a private hospital ER a blood sugar over six hundred will cause a staff riot. I’m talkin’ a thermonuclear meltdown. At Cloister that same patient would have to hit nine hundred before we broke a sweat. Crisis medicine is the norm for us. You get used to it.”
She flung an arm out as if trying to pull just the right words from the air. She found them, and her hand settled back on her hip. “Working for Cloister is like joining the Peace Corps to work with third world countries. Altruism only takes you so far before reality sets in. It’s true that nurses don’t last long at Our Lady of Servitude, but I’ve been there eight years. I can handle it. It’s not the work that burns you out. It’s pigheaded administrative policies that cut patient care and short staff the place. Not to mention doctors like Thibodeaux who think nurses are a fringe benefit.”
“So you are burned-out.”
“Everyone at Cloister is burned-out. It doesn’t make me special.”
Beau could have disagreed with her, but he didn’t. “Is there anyone else who worries about you? Someone who might have wanted to get even with the hospital on your behalf?”
“No. I don’t have any family, and I doubt any of my friends would deliberately set a fire for me to find.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“No—you don’t have one? Or no—he wouldn’t have set the fire?”
“No.” She swept a hand through her hair. “I don’t have one. I haven’t had a boyfriend since I was sixteen. I’ve had the occasional male friend since then, but nothing serious and nothing for a while.”
So far this answer was the only one that satisfied Beau. Forcing himself back to the topic, he asked, “Have you ever smoked in that closet?”
“No.”
“To your knowledge does anyone on staff smoke on the premises or use that closet to smoke?”
“Oh, joy! An opportunity to shift suspicion from myself by knifing my friends in the back. Thanks, but no thanks, I don’t know anyone who uses that closet to smoke.” She folded her arms around her midriff. “Look, Grayson. How long are we going to do this? The answer to everything is no. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Or the wrong pyromaniac.”
Beau clicked off the recorder. “Then I guess that does it for now.”
“You and I are done?” Maggie asked, relieved that she could escape. Sitting so close to Grayson had made her conscious of her every movement, every word, every expression. The man had the eyes of a hawk.
“Done for now,” he said as he stood up.
A shiver crept through her. He made everything seem so intense, so important, yet he never raised his voice. Maggie wondered if the man ever lightened up or lost his temper. A couple of times she’d seen the beginning of a smile, but it always disappeared. Especially when he looked at her.
“Don’t I have to sign a statement or something?”
“I’ll have it typed up and bring it around to the hospital for you to sign this afternoon.”
Maggie plucked her purse from the back of the chair and settled the thin strap on her shoulder. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“I’ll be over at the hospital for the polygraph results anyway,” he explained as he walked to the door and opened it for her.
“W-what polygraph results?” A dark lump of dread settled in Maggie’s stomach.
“Didn’t you know? The board’s taking the fire very seriously. You said there were … what? A thousand beds? That’s a lot of dead people if a fire got out of hand. A lot. The board decided to polygraph everyone who worked in the morgue, ER, and the outpatient clinic on Friday.”
“They can’t do that.” Maggie shook her head. “They can’t force employees to take polygraphs.”
“Of course not. It’s voluntary.”
“So is open heart surgery, but it’s not like the patient has any real choice!”
“What’s the problem, Maggie?” he asked gently as she passed him. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”
Maggie turned to face him. She would have told him to go to hell, but surely any number of people told the cocky son of a bitch that on a regular basis.
“Give it up, Grayson. You’re not going to rattle me.”
A raised brow silently called her a liar, and Maggie thought of her hand beneath his rough one, of the scrape of his palm across the back of her hand as she pulled free. They both knew he had the power to rattle her anytime he chose.
She could pretend the chemistry wasn’t there, but it didn’t change the truth. Beneath the carefully choreographed dance of the investigation was something more elemental than she wanted to admit. Men weren’t a hobby of Maggie’s. She didn’t collect them like Carolyn. Especially not dangerous men like Beau Grayson. He could devour a woman for lunch and be hungry again by dinner.
Unexpectedly Maggie was thankful for her role as a suspect. Beau couldn’t add her to the menu. She was safe from the sensual undercurrent that swirled through her.
Until he figures out you didn’t set that fire.
Without saying anything else—even good-bye felt risky—Maggie walked away. Four pairs of eyes watched her leave, but she was aware of only one. They were dark brown. Intense. Suspicious. Powerful.
Maggie wasn’t certain which she dreaded more—the polygraph that awaited her, or the man she was leaving behind, watching her every move.
Maggie shifted uncomfortably and wondered why they couldn’t have picked an office with plump chairs. The chief of surgery’s favorite period for furnishings was early Stonehenge. Uncharitably Maggie decided the austere decor was the chief’s way of discouraging long consultations.
“Just relax.” The polygraph technician bent over his equipment, totally oblivious to the irony of that statement. His hair was buzzed short in one of those swat team wanna-be cuts, but he was a nice guy. If a bit dense.
Just relax. Yeah. Right.
Maggie sucked in a couple of breaths and tried not to think about the pain in her rump or the gizmos and wires that hooked her up to his infernal machine. She’d already taken this test twice. A polygraph, she discovered, was actually a number of tests instead of one. Multiple results were better for accuracy, and she was all for that. Even if she hated the idea of the polygraph to begin with.
She wouldn’t have consented to this witch-hunt if they hadn’t promised her the test was extremely narrow in scope and that results would be sealed and given to Grayson. The hospital got nothing from the tests but the bill. Not even a list of volunteer participants. That seemed fair even to her.
After a final adjustment, the technician asked, “Are you ready? This’ll be the last one.”
“Shoot.”
“Just like before, I’m going to ask you a series of obvious questions to establish a baseline, and I want you to answer with a simple yes or no.”
He bent back over his machine as he began, marking occasionally on the paper scrolling by. The questions were easy. Was Mary Magdalene St. John her name? Did she live on River Road? Was she employed by Cloister Memorial Hospital? Was her birthday in January? And a number of other simple questions taken from her personnel sheet. Interspersed with the innocent queries were the tricky questions, phrased a little differently each time he gave the test. Maggie knew the drill well enough by now to recite the important ones from memory.
Do you smoke?
Do you smoke filter tip menthol?
Have you ever smoked in the utility room?
Did you cause the utility room to catch fire?
She was ready for them. No, no, no, and no. Only this time the last question tripped her up.
“Have you caused a fire?”
Maggie froze, her conscience caught between the past and the present. The heartbeat she waited to answer was too long, and she knew she’d failed the test.
“No.” It wasn’t really a lie, but it wasn’t really the truth either.
The technician never looked up, never gave any indication that she’d lied. Instead, he asked another question in the same monotone. It was a variation of the previous question. “Have you caused a fire in the hospital?”
“No.” Maggie’s answer this time was sure and quick, but she knew it was too little, too late.
“Do you hold a valid driver’s license?”
“Yes.”
“Is nursing your profession?”
“Yes.”
He looked up finally and gave her an all-clear smile as he flipped off the machine and reached to help her strip off the bits of electronic hardware. Maggie imagined he’d caught a lot of liars over the years, so many that his poker face never slipped.
“Thank you.” Maggie didn’t know what else to say. The man knew she was a liar. She knew she was a liar. And pretty soon Grayson would know it too.