Des sighed and lowered the field glasses to the passenger seat of the Jeep. “What is it about you, Taylor Bissett?” he asked out loud. “Whenever you’re around, people have a habit of dying.”
* * *
APRIL JANE COONEY had been robbed and murdered. According to one of the uniformed officers who knew her, she never kept much currency in the cashbox. She was too savvy for that. Her assailant had taken whatever little there was, anyway. The metal box had been pried open and left near the body. April Jane must have put up a fight. What was left of the lamp from the registration desk lay in pieces on the floor near the opposite wall. The lamp’s base was shattered, as if it had been thrown very hard. A small dent at about head height on the white wall supported that theory.
One of the policemen had taken Taylor into a sitting room off the guest-house entryway. He had left the lace-curtained double glass doors ajar, so she could hear them discussing what might have happened to April Jane. Taylor heard the words and even put them together into sentences in her mind. Still, they weren’t entirely understandable to her. She guessed that she wasn’t letting herself fully comprehend what she was hearing, because then she would have to believe it. She would have to absorb the very scary fact that a woman she had spoken with less than two hours ago was now on her way to the city morgue, the victim of a senseless, violent crime.
What if Taylor had been here when the thief came in? She felt guilty thinking such a self-centered thought, but she couldn’t help it. What if her uneasiness about walking the trellis path behind the guesthouse had actually been some instinct telling her there was a would-be murderer lurking in the shrubbery? She shuddered at the thought and wished someone would turn off the ceiling fan. The sitting room had turned suddenly chilly.
Taylor had overheard the police saying there was only one guest in the house when the attack happened, an older man on the third floor in the back. He had stayed in tonight and taken a pill to help him sleep off a sunburn. He hadn’t heard a thing. The other guests were out on the town, like most Key West tourists at this time of night. Consequently, there were no witnesses. A neighbor across the street had heard glass shattering and saw the vestibule light go out suddenly. She didn’t see anybody run out of the house, but she suspected something might be wrong and called the police. By the time they arrived, April Jane was dead. Her killer had fled, probably out the back way. The police had already begun canvassing the neighborhood, both on Amelia Street and one block north on Virginia Street, to find out if anyone had seen anything.
Taylor had heard Jethro’s voice out in the entryway shortly after the policeman brought her into this room. Her knees had gone weak, and she had asked to sit down. She couldn’t make out what Jethro was saying. Then she didn’t hear him anymore. Next, she heard a policeman talking to a guest who had returned to the Key Westian and was demanding to know what had happened here. The policeman said that everyone would have to be questioned. He added that the guest-house residents would not be allowed to sleep here tonight because it was a major crime scene and had to be sealed off to all but official visitors.
Taylor was suddenly very tired. A series of adrenaline charges had kept her nerves tingling, through her arrival on this exotic island, her near escape from being run down and her unsettling encounter with Des Maxwell. This most recent jolt—the discovery of a dead body in her hotel—had sapped her final reserves of even that nervous energy. Now, all she wanted was to sleep. The police weren’t about to let her go to her room and lie down there. They might think it bizarre of her to curl up here on this settee, but she was too tired to care much what they thought. She was almost too tired to care where in the devil she might sleep tonight.
“Miss Bissett is a personal acquaintance of mine, and I would like to talk with her.”
The voice from the entryway had obviously been raised for emphasis. That was why Taylor could hear the words so clearly. But it wasn’t the loudness or even the demanding tone, that cut through her head-nodding stupor and snapped her to full attention. She had met very few people on Key West in her few hours here. Yet, she was certain she knew the owner of that deep, resonating voice. One glance at the opening between the double doors confirmed this certainty.
Taylor had no idea why Des Maxwell was here. Nonetheless, the sight of his brown, muscled arm flexing impatiently as he backed the policeman gradually toward the half-open doorway, told Taylor that she was no longer stranded and alone. A wave of relief swept over her, as deep as it was probably irrational. Taylor reminded herself that Des Maxwell was not a likely candidate for friend in need where she was concerned. Still, he was a familiar face in what felt at the moment like very alien territory. She couldn’t help being grateful to him for that.
There was something else about that face besides familiarity, something that struck her with a blow that took her breath away. It had happened when she had first laid eyes on him earlier in the Beachcomber barroom. It happened again now, with even greater force because he didn’t know she was looking at him and she didn’t have to be so careful to hide her reaction. She tried to tell herself she was only tired, otherwise his handsomeness wouldn’t have this effect on her. Still, she couldn’t keep the thought from crossing her mind that the word “manly” had been invented with someone like Des Maxwell in mind. Meanwhile, Des and the officer had walked out of the foyer and through the lace-curtained doors into the sitting room. The two of them appeared to know each other.
“Come on, Tony,” Des was saying. “What do you think I’m going to do? Abscond with your prisoner?”
“She’s not in custody, Des, and you know it. We’re just keeping her here to talk to Detective Santos. He’s on his way.”
“Does he have to talk to her tonight? Can’t it wait till the morning?”
“She may have been the last one to see April Jane alive. Santos will want to question her about that.” Tony glanced over at Taylor on the settee. “There’s something else too,” he added, barely loud enough for her to hear.
“What’s that?” Des asked, also glancing at Taylor then looking away.
She didn’t like the way they were talking about her instead of to her. She was even less pleased when Tony leaned toward Des and said something in a whisper. Des’s expression remained as unreadable as usual, except for a slight tightening around the eyes.
“Wait just a moment here,” Taylor said, rousing herself from the settee and mustering as much indignation as she could manage in her state of near exhaustion. “If you have something to say that relates to me, I want to hear it.”
Des gave her a cautionary look with “Keep quiet and let me take care of things” written all over it. That made Taylor even more indignant. Suddenly, she didn’t want anybody taking care of things for her, not even this man whose brawny body tempted her to do just that—at least until she wasn’t feeling quite so tired and out of sync with everything.
“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, “but I am perfectly capable of handling this myself.”
“I thought you said she was a friend of yours,” the officer said to Des. “How come she calls you by your last name if you’re such great friends?”
“We’re recent acquaintances,” Taylor said before Des could answer.
She was determined to speak for herself in every way. “Please tell me what you were whispering about with Mr. Maxwell.”
“That’s confidential police information.”
“If it’s so confidential, why were you sharing it with Mr. Maxwell? Is he a member of the police force?” Taylor levelled a steady gaze at the officer. “You can answer that question for me, or for my attorney.”
“I think I can help you out with that one, Miss...” The man who had stepped through the doorway consulted a notepad before going on. “Miss Bissett,” he said. “You are