The next day, the sun glimmered like pools of glass on the streets of Las Vegas. Roxy turned into the Ridges, a neighborhood filled with million-dollar houses surrounded by trees and grass.
She pointed her car toward the cul-de-sac where Steve Brandt’s house stood. Of course he lived in a monstrosity. Just like his partner had. White stucco. Red tile roof. A glimpse of Spanish-desert architecture among the modern-day black and white sharp-edged designs.
She pulled up to the curb and got the heat shield from the floor in the back seat, stuffing it in the front window. She remembered.
A for-sale sign hung in the front yard. She rang the doorbell and waited as a banging noise echoed from inside. A balding man in a red track suit with yellow piping opened the door. His gray hair stood at attention around a horseshoe of flushed red skin.
“Mr. Brandt?” Roxy asked. Really? This was Mandy’s ex?
“Please, please call me Steve. I’m so sorry. I thought you wanted to cancel.” He rubbed his face with a hand towel and tossed it onto a side table. He motioned for her to come in. Opened boxes were stacked haphazardly along the floor. “I’m in the process of moving.”
He led her through a narrow trail of stuff to what was once the living room. Every square inch was covered with boxes, or stuff waiting to be boxed.
“Where are you moving to?”
He played with his fingers as he bit back a grimace. “To my daughter’s house until I can find a house for myself. This place is just too big for a bachelor. Can I get you a drink?” He moved a pile from the couch and patted the cushion.
“No. I’m fine.” She sat on the white suede couch. It was soft and gorgeous. There was no way anyone could live with this couch. How did you stop the Cheetos dust from getting in the fabric? “Is your wife home?” She hadn’t heard much about Steve, but the pink and maroon curtains and various doilies suggested a woman’s touch.
He sighed. “We finalized our divorce last month, but we’d been apart for a while now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” And she was. It looked like, no matter how he wanted to hide it, he wasn’t quite over that loss.
“Don’t be. She’s happier now. I’m doing well, too.”
“Dad, we need to sell this Chagall. Stop putting it in the keep pile. We need every dollar.” A younger woman stormed in the living room carrying a small painting. Her peach spandex capris were covered with a large darker peach T-shirt and her red hair was pulled into a ponytail. The painting might be small, but that little framed picture could easily go for a couple thousand dollars. An original Chagall could cover a down payment on a new place.
Steve frowned. “I need to keep some things.”
“You need to keep the necessities. This is not a… necessity.” Her eyes widened, like she’d just noticed Roxy was in the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Roxy didn’t mind the interruption. It actually gave her a bit of insight. He wasn’t selling the house because he wanted to. He was selling because he had to.
Steve walked over to his daughter and whispered in her ear. She dipped her head and scurried away.
“I’m sorry about that interruption. She’s really excited to have me close to her. She’s not taking the divorce as well. Anyway, Connie, you’re here to talk about planning for retirement.” He grabbed a pen and paper from a desk in the corner.
She wasn’t, but she should really start to think about planning for retirement. It was something grownups did. She was technically grown. So why not? “I am.” She just had to be Connie.
“I was so disappointed when my secretary said you’d cancelled. But I’m glad you changed your mind.” Steve sat in a chair across from the couch and grabbed a pad of paper from the top of a box.
“Retirement planning is important.”
“What are your goals?” He grabbed a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and settled them on his face. His pen hovered over the pad in front of him.
What kind of goal was there outside of just retiring? Rambling about things she clearly didn’t understand wouldn’t get her the information she wanted. “I was hoping we could talk about your company first. If I’m going to be putting my money with you.”
“Absolutely.” He took off the glasses and set them on a box near his feet. “What questions do you have?”
“I want to know a little more about your partner, Donnie Dunne, if I’m going to invest with you.”
“Donnie is not a part of this.” His voice didn’t seem to change. No anger. No sadness. “He passed away.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. What happened?”
“It was a shock.” His mouth turned down at the edges. Maybe a hint of sadness… or maybe guilt. “He was found at the Imprint Hotel.”
How diplomatic. “Found?”
He ran a hand over his face, obviously uncomfortable with the conversation. She needed to keep it going, though, without making him so uncomfortable he shut her down. That was an interrogation tactic—and she didn’t really have any tactics on her side. What was a safe question? “Were you there?”
“No. I was at my daughter’s for dinner.” His gaze roamed the room. He couldn’t seem to look at her all.
He was hiding something. She was sure of it. “Do they know what happened?”
“The police are working on it.” He motioned to his paperwork. “If you don’t have any more questions, we should probably start defining your future planning.” From the look on his face, if those questions didn’t include talk of his dead partner, he’d be just fine.
The doorbell buzzed.
“Sorry.” He yelled into the other room, “Gretchen, can you get the door?”
Gretchen mumbled something as she shuffled past the living room to the front hall. Her mumbling didn’t sound particularly flattering.
“Where were we?” Steve’s gaze moved from Roxy to the hallway, clearly distracted by the noise at the front door. Roxy had a feeling nothing she said would penetrate the excitement of another visitor.
“There’s someone else to see you.” Gretchen returned to the living room, followed by a man in jeans and a white button-down shirt. His gun hung off his hip. He looked surprised when he saw Roxy sitting on the couch. Not quite as surprised as Roxy, but she did a good job of hiding it. She hoped.
“Mr. Brandt, I’m Detective MacAuley.”
“Detective, I thought we were meeting later this afternoon.” Steve stood and shook MacAuley’s hand.
“I thought I’d stop by and talk to you where you’re more comfortable.” MacAuley’s gaze was still on Roxy.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “This is my client, Connie Dillon.”
“Connie Dillon?”
Roxy nodded to MacAuley. “Nice to meet you.”
Steve took his seat again.“We were just discussing her retirement planning. Can you give me an hour to finish up here?”
Roxy stayed in the chair. “We didn’t get a chance to start, so if you need to talk to the police, go ahead.” Maybe if she played her cards right, she could listen in. “I can wait here.”
“Are you sure?” Steve looked at her like a cat about to run.
“Sure.”
“Gretchen, is there any space in the kitchen for me to meet with the detective?”
His daughter shook her head and huffed. “There’s barely a path to the kitchen. I’ll straighten up the hallway.”
“Give me a minute to clear off the kitchen table, and we’ll go in there, Detective.” Steve disappeared after his daughter.
MacAuley focused his cop-stare on Roxy. “Connie?”
“My middle name?”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow in the universal I call BS move.
“Fine, it’s not my middle name.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Financial advice?”
His eyebrow arched.
She needed to stop answering his questions with questions. No wonder he didn’t believe her. She sucked at this. “I wanted to ask him a few questions about that night.”
“Which night?”
“The night Donnie was murdered.”
“Why?” MacAuley didn’t give away anything. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t concerned. Just straight curiosity.
Either way, he didn’t seem to have anything against her, even with her listed as a suspect—if she still was. She didn’t even know where she stood. “Am I a suspect?”
“You’re a person of interest.”
Still. “What’s my motive?”
MacAuley smiled. And it was gorgeous. Nice lips. Nice teeth. She almost got lost in the sparkle. “We can’t find one. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell us what your motive might be? Save us some time.”
She decided to give him an eyebrow arch of her own instead of rolling her eyes and calling him an inappropriate word. Total grownup move.
MacAuley huffed. “I’m going to go on a limb and say you have no motive.”
“That’s a safe limb.”
“But that leads back to the question, why are you here?”
“Fine.” A burst of air left her lungs, taking all the fight with it. If he was going to use knowledge as power over her, too bad. She was done. “I’ve been put on leave because of all the press. I need to clear my name and get on with my life.”
He ran a hand along the back of his neck, massaging the base. “This isn’t TV. You can’t just run around asking questions. A person is dead.” Apparently he didn’t like her answer.
“I get that.”
“Do you? You’re here when you should be letting the cops handle it.”
“The cops think I did it.” Anger burned in her veins. “How can I trust someone who is dumb enough to believe I would do this?”
“First, I don’t think you did it.” Finally, a chink in his poker façade. Except now fire steamed from his eyes and he leaned in closer. “Second, you don’t have to trust us. You have to get out of the way so we can do our job.” He wasn’t nearly as cute when he was mad.
She didn’t want to tick him off. She just needed to keep paying her rent. “I have no job until this is solved. No paycheck, but I still have bills. Let me help.”
He sighed and ran that hand down the back of his neck, again. “What did you learn so far?”
“He said he was at his daughter’s for dinner.”
“Do you believe him?”
“He got real shifty when he said it. All of a sudden he couldn’t meet my eyes. So, no. I think he’s hiding something.” No, not think. She knew Steve was hiding something.
“What?”
“I don’t know. You interrupted my questioning. I didn’t even get to ask about the jacket.”
“What jacket?”
“There was a suit coat on the couch in Donnie’s hotel room. I wanted to know if it was his.”
“Suit coat?” MacAuley frowned, but then the light went on. His gaze moved back to her. “The jacket with SBM on the pocket. The initials don’t match.”
“Maybe he has another name he uses. Rich useless guys usually have a bunch of names.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t look all that convinced. “But let me handle it.”
“Will you tell me what he tells you?”
He sighed again. Like he had anything to sigh about. She was the one who was being shut out, here. “Go home. Enjoy a few days off. I’ll ask the questions and get to the bottom of this. Okay?”
She retrieved her purse and passed MacAuley on the way to the front entrance.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home.” She paused at the door.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t answer mine.” She wrenched the knob. She might have sounded a bit perturbed, but she was. Why hide things if she wasn’t a suspect?
He snuck up behind her, pinning her between the cracked open door and his body. She could practically feel his heartbeat on her back. He was so warm, and it took everything inside her to not lean back and seek comfort from the pain-in-the-butt man who made her need comforting. “Let me talk to him, and I’ll see if there’s anything worth sharing.”
If there was anything worth sharing… More like if there was anything he was willing to share. Big difference. One meant he’d give her information to help, the other meant he’d give her the mushroom treatment—keep her in the dark and feed her horse droppings.
“Then let me go home, and I’ll see if there’s any reason to enjoy a few days off.”
His hand rested on the door inches from hers. His body so close, she could practically taste him. “If you need a reason to stay home, I’d be happy to volunteer.”
“Fine. Then you stay home and let me talk to him.” She turned toward him. It might be a big mistake with him being so close and so hot and all, but she didn’t care. If he was willing to play this game, she would call that bet.
He smiled. So pretty. So annoying. “Give me your phone. I’ll call when I’m done.”
She handed him her cell phone and he entered in some numbers. “Really?”
“Really.” He hit dial and his cell phone chirped. After he handed her phone back, he pulled open the front door.
“Thanks.” She slipped outside.
He’d given her his number. He said he’d call. He didn’t seem like the type to lie.
She unlocked her phone and the screen opened to his contact information. At least she assumed it was his. Detective Volunteer. That was the new name in her contacts.
Still didn’t get a first name for the friendly neighborhood detective, but she had his number and an offer that seemed too good to refuse.
Not that she was thinking of taking him up on it. She already had enough male drama with Rafe. Adding another testosterone-filled Neanderthal with a gun would only make things worse. Lord knew—right now—she was as worse as she wanted to be.