“I know enough not to contaminate the crime scene,” Laredo assured her in a voice that she found as irritatingly patronizing now as she had the night before. The next moment, he reached into his pocket. Every nerve ending went on the alert and she started to reach for her sidearm out of habit.
Laredo noted her reaction. “Relax,” he told her in a voice that could have easily been used to gentle a wild animal. “I’m just reaching for my wallet, not my Saturday night special.”
She deeply resented the smirk she heard in the man’s voice.
“Do you own one?” she wanted to know.
The term referred to a weapon that was the common choice of thugs and penny-ante thieves more than two decades ago, before far more colorful, sophisticated and seductively affordable weapons hit the streets.
“I own a lot of guns,” he informed her easily, placing his wallet, opened and face up, in the middle of her desk.
Taylor looked down at the private investigator’s license he was showing her. The photograph in the corner was a surprisingly good one. But then, the thought whispered along the perimeter of her mind, the photograph was of a surprisingly good-looking man.
“John Chester Laredo, private investigator,” she read out loud.
Taylor raised her eyes quizzically to his. Chester? Who named their kid Chester these days, even as a middle name?
“That’s me,” he responded, taking his wallet back and tucking it into his pocket.
Taylor blew out a breath, trying to put a positive spin on things. At least she didn’t have to waste time with the sketch artist. Now, instead of arresting the annoying man, she just had to get rid of him.
“All right,” she allowed, “for the time being, let’s just say you’re on the level.”
Was it her imagination, or did his grin just get more annoying? “Let’s,” he agreed.
She frowned. “That still doesn’t give you the right to be there, ‘bending rules,’” she said sarcastically, “and poking around.”
“I wasn’t ‘poking,’” he corrected affably, “I was looking. And obviously, if I thought the police would object to what I was doing—” he leaned forward slightly “—I wouldn’t have come out and made myself known to you last night, now, would I?”
For a second, he had her. She was willing to admit he had a point.
But then, the next moment she realized that there was no way for him to have known that she was with the police department. She could have been with the housing management—or even a thief, drawn to the apartment by the yellow crime scene tape to see what she could make off with.
“You’re a little large to hide, even in a place as big as that,” she pointed out. “It seems to me, given a choice, you decided that it was best to take the bull by the horns.”
His grin was really starting to get to her, which made her increasingly uneasy.
“I wouldn’t exactly use the term bull,” Laredo told her. “I have a lot of friends on the force. I didn’t think anyone would mind.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed. Think again, Laredo. She didn’t like anyone even remotely messing with her crime scene. “Well, then you thought wrong,” she informed him tersely.
Laredo had gotten to his position in life by reading people correctly. Innate instincts had trained him to be an excellent judge of character. Consequently, he knew when to push and when to step back.
He also knew when a little extra persuasion might help him wear down barriers. He had a feeling that the sexy-looking blonde with the serious mouth did not respond favorably to being either opposed or coerced.
Moving slightly forward in the chair so that his face was closer to hers, Laredo looked into the woman’s eyes. They were a shade lighter than his own. And very compelling. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they looked at you and her eyes never wavered, never looked away.
“C’mon, Taylor,” he coaxed, “what’s the harm in sharing information?”
She didn’t want him getting familiar with her. He wasn’t her friend, he was an annoying man and she was still debating having him arrested for tampering with evidence.
“It’s Detective McIntyre,” she informed him stiffly, and then added, “and I don’t talk about ongoing investigations with civilians.” And that, she hoped, would bring an end to any further discussion of Eileen Stevens’s murder.
The corners of Laredo’s mouth curved in what she could only think of as a devilish grin. A wicked expression flared in his eyes as he said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Taylor would have felt better if she’d thought that the air-conditioning system had broken down that morning. At least then she would have had something to blame for the sudden overwhelming wave of heat surging through her body, leaving no part untouched.
Stalling for time as she tried to get a grip, Taylor blew out a breath. Laredo’s eyes, she noted, never left hers.
The way she saw it, she had three ways to go here. She could keep sparring with this annoying private investigator and, most likely, get nowhere while taking precious time away from her investigation. That option held no appeal because she was already behind without a partner’s help.
Her second choice was to get someone to eject this overconfident ape from the premises, but she had the uneasy feeling that Laredo wasn’t lying about having friends in the department. If he knew her brother, he had to know others as well. Trying to get him thrown out might make her seem like a shrew—and it probably wouldn’t work anyway.
Or, door number three, she could toss Laredo a crumb in exchange for finding out exactly what he knew. There was the chance that he had stumbled across something. After all, he had managed to get to Eileen Stevens’s penthouse apartment before she had. Who knew how long he’d been there or what he might have seen—and taken?
Door number three it was.
Taylor braced herself. “All right, what do you have?”
She watched as his smile unfurled further. Why did she get the feeling that he was the spider and she was the fly, about to cross the threshold into his open house?
“I believe I said, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’ That means that you go first, as it should be,” he added, “since my mother taught me that it should always be ladies first.”
Try as she might, Taylor just couldn’t form a mental picture of the woman who’d given birth to this larger-than-life, annoyingly sexy specimen of manhood.
“You have a mother?”
The question had slid from her mind to her tongue before she could stop it. What the hell was he doing to her manners and, more importantly, why was she letting him do it? Once this case was over, she was definitely going on vacation. Her batteries needed recharging.
“Had,” Laredo quietly corrected, his seductive grin toning down several wattage levels—and becoming all the more lethal for it.
Taylor did her best to steel herself. For all she knew, Laredo could just be orchestrating this to make her feel guilty. If she felt guilty enough about stumbling onto this sensitive area, he might think she’d fold easily.
It made sense, but even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just stomped across ground she shouldn’t have. She was extremely sensitive when it came to matters that concerned family. Family was, if anything, her Achilles’ heel.
Her