Cavender’s gaze swings to me, and he offers me his calloused palm. I shake the extended hand, even though I don’t really want to.
“Is that right, Ms. Maison? You don’t know anything about Desiree Harding’s untimely death? Or should I say her gruesome murder in your brothel?”
Hearing him even say her name chokes me up instantly, and Fields thankfully jumps in.
“If you could give her a moment, Detective, we’d appreciate it. This news is understandably difficult for Ms. Maison to hear so abruptly. Some compassion would go a long way.”
Oh, this attorney isn’t here to play, and I’m glad he’s by my side.
“Fine. Take a minute. Would you like a bottle of water? A coffee?”
“Water, please,” I choke out. This time, the tears burning in the back of my eyes are coming forward. I attempt to blink them back as Cavender rises to go to the door.
He opens it and barks, “Water,” at someone outside before closing it again.
When Fields offers me a folded tissue, I take it and dab at my eyes. “Thank you.”
“You knew Ms. Harding well then, I take it?” Cavender asks, and I can feel the pressure of his intense gaze assessing me. Judging me. Likely condemning me.
I blot at the tears I don’t want falling in front of him. Regardless of what he thinks, this is no fucking act. Grief for what happened to Desiree rips me to shreds inside. Because this is all my fault.
No. I can’t think about that right now. It won’t help anything. Instead, I dry my eyes and look Cavender directly in his.
“Yes, I knew her. For years. She bought the house from me. She was still paying on the bond for deed.”
“When was the last time you were at the house?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s been at least a month or more.”
He scribbles a note on his tiny steno pad. “How long has it been since you’ve seen Ms. Harding?”
Time has nearly lost all order in my head. The last week is all one big blur. “A few days ago.”
He clicks his fucking pen. In-out. In-out. In-out. “Where?”
I pause for a second before answering, but I decide I have nothing to lose by telling the truth. “At a private club.”
Cavender’s head bobs, and I sense there’s a good possibility he already knows exactly what club I’m talking about. Especially since he doesn’t ask for clarification.
“Did she give you any reason to think she might have been in trouble or that she was fearing for her safety?”
I shake my head, and it’s not a lie. Desiree wasn’t in trouble. She wasn’t afraid.
What happened to her had nothing to do with her. It was because the sick motherfucker couldn’t get to me. Which isn’t fucking fair. Guilt cinches around my lungs like barbed wire, and Cavender’s next question just twists it tighter.
“Do you have any idea who may have wanted her dead? Or even who might have killed her?”
I pin Cavender with a glare. “If I had a name to give you that you could use to track down Desiree’s killer, I would give it to you. Gladly. Immediately. But please believe me when I say I don’t have one. In fact, while you’re wasting your time with me, the killer could be getting away. Do you want that? Do you want them to get away with this?” My voice rises with the raw emotions hitting me again.
“So, no guesses then? Nothing?”
I almost breathe a sigh of relief that Cavender didn’t pick apart the way I answered his prior question.
Fields jumps in to take this one. “As Ms. Maison said, she’d give you a name if she had one. Do you have any other questions she could possibly answer to help with your investigation? If not, Ms. Maison has appointments this afternoon to get to.”
Cavender gives the lawyer a hard stare before turning his attention back to me. “You’ve had a lot going on lately, Ms. Maison. Someone gets killed in your condo building. You move out the next day. Then there’s the break-in where someone wrote on your wall with blood, explicitly saying they’re coming to get you. Which, by the way, the lab matched the DNA found to yet another ongoing homicide investigation.”
I jerk back in my seat, my mind immediately going to Laura Brandon. Her throat was slit the same night my condo was broken into, and Moses and the guys reasoned out what they thought happened to her.
“Which other homicide investigation?” I ask Cavender, deliberately playing dumb.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to give you more information on that case, unless for some reason you think you have a connection to a third dead body.”
Cavender is fishing, but I’m not taking the bait.
“She doesn’t have any information, Detective. Ms. Maison is self-employed and runs a very successful and completely legal business which should be of no interest to your department in any way. She agreed to come in to talk with you on her own very valuable time, and if you don’t have any further questions that are relevant to this investigation, then we’ll be on our way so Ms. Maison can return to work,” Fields says, sounding so polite as he delivers the equivalent of a fuck you to the cop.
“Just one more thing,” Cavender says, reaching into a manila envelope. He pulls out what looks like an evidence bag and tosses it on the table. “Recognize this?”
It’s a knife crusted with dried blood. Desiree’s blood. I jerk back in my seat as the knife slides to a stop in front of me.
“That was uncalled for, Detective,” Fields says, his tone sharp as he reprimands the cop.
But there’s no need. I understand exactly why the detective is playing this game.
“Is that . . . is that what killed Desiree?” I ask with a very real tremor in my voice.
“One of the murder weapons. The only one we’ve been able to find so far. Why? Have you seen it before?”
I shake my head because I can’t find my voice to lie.
I have seen the knife before. I gave it to Desiree for protection. And it’s a duplicate of the one I used to kill Ortiz in the elevator in my building.
Twenty-Four
Moses
As soon as Magnolia is in the Maybach and on the way to Mount’s, I want to race after her and beat her there, but I can’t.
We have to take another route and wind back and forth around the city, so we can watch for a tail. A tail I want to kill because he’s the reason my woman was in the police station in the first place.
Antonio Reyes is going down, and I’m going to be the one to take him out. He’ll pay for every bit of fear he’s instilled in Magnolia. No one does that to my woman and gets away with it.
When we finally reach Mount’s a half hour later, Jules and I are out of the SUV as fast as we can move. V steps out of the garage. Apparently, he’s been waiting for us. I hand the keys off to him with only one thing on my mind.
“Where is she?”
He jerks his head toward the garage we exited through on the way to the station.
With the driving need to see Magnolia with my own two eyes and make sure she’s okay after the interview with the cop, I charge through the garage and yank open the door that leads inside. The twisting and winding hallways are like a fucking labyrinth, and it takes me three wrong turns to find my way back to our suite.