Complete Mia Kazmaroff Romantic Suspense Series, 1-4 Page 4

  Next time she might not be so lucky.

  Jess looked away from the negotiations between Mia and the woman. She wasn’t selling her horse, just leasing him out. Someday, who knows? If she got a better handle on her abilities she might be able to ride again. It didn’t look possible from this angle, but you never knew.

  After all, if you’d have told me five years ago that my family would be reduced to just me and my youngest child…Jess’s hands tightened around the car’s door handle and she felt a story developing in her mind. A child in the front seat of the car, sticky with juice and candy, unhappy, lost, wanting her mother…Jess snatched her hand from the door handle. She willed her breathing to calm.

  Whoever called it a “gift,” she thought, trying to force the images and feelings of the little girl from her mind, had a sick sense of humor.

  ***

  Burton stood at Kazmaroff’s desk, a cardboard box in front of him. He wasn’t surprised to find few personal effects in the guy’s desk and for that he was grateful. Kazmaroff’s mother and sister had shown little interest in retrieving what personal property Dave kept at the office but it was Burton’s job to deliver it to them nonetheless.

  He thought back to how angry Dave’s sister had been at the funeral—before swooning into his arms. He’d scooped her up and carried her to a nearby burial canopy where she quickly revived before her mother dragged her away.

  He tossed a blank notebook and a handful of mechanical pencils into the box. Burton found the thought of seeing Mia Kazmaroff again surprisingly confusing. On the one hand, he didn’t hate the idea at all. But he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why not.

  “I can’t believe they’re letting you even touch his stuff.”

  Burton turned to see Keith Barnes standing at his desk, his hands on his hips. Barnes worked narcotics but his partner had been recently hospitalized for some kind of intestinal ailment and Barnes was doing general duty in the meantime. Burton always wondered why Kazmaroff hadn’t wanted to partner with Barnes. The two had been close.

  Figuring anything he said was going to piss the guy off, Burton just continued opening and shutting drawers. The last drawer revealed a leather-bound photo of Dave’s mother and sister. Burton hesitated when he saw Mia. Without the patina of anger and grief, he could see she was beautiful. Dave had been blond and big—probably taking after his Russian ancestors. But Mia looked like she stepped out of Brigadoon, as her name might suggest. Her dark hair was thick and wavy around her shoulders, and her smile was so inviting it made him sad to think how far away she’d been from that yesterday.

  “Just get it and get out,” Barnes growled, taking a step closer. Burton glanced up at him and noticed Elliott Johnson was watching the scenario play out.

  So much for the goodbye cake, Burton thought, hoisting the box into his arms—most of it full of the contents of his own desk. True to his word, when the verdict came down that there was nothing to suggest foul play in Dave’s death, Burton tendered his resignation.

  He’d spent some time thinking about why he’d done that, about why it felt right. It was almost like there was another part of him that knew all along he needed to leave, that knew part of his depression was fed by his job. A part of him had prayed they’d find nothing suspicious about how Dave died so he could just go.

  One thing that became clear to him in the days since Kazmaroff’s death was that however the guy died, Burton was more than a little responsible.

  How do you figure that?

  But the feeling in his gut, as usual, knew better than he did. He supposed he’d find out in due time—he usually did. But for now, it was enough that he knew he’d had a hand in it.

  Which was why he was leaving today and why he wasn’t responding to Barnes’ bullying. For a moment the thought came to him he might feel better if he let Barnes nail him a good one across the jaw. But then he’d probably feel like he got off too easy. No sense in sustaining a possible broken jaw for no damn good reason.

  Bringing Dave’s shit to his mother and sister—when seeing them again was the last thing he wanted to do—now that was a penance that just might make him feel a little better.

  After it made him feel a whole lot worse first.

  Chapter 5

  Mia had been to Dave’s condo two times since he moved there last year. This was the second time she’d walked across the threshold knowing he would never again open his own front door. She stood in the doorway and paused a moment to feel whatever vibes might still be in the air. She hadn’t expected to feel much after the police had finished their sweep, ending with a thorough sanitization of the place.

  She’d been wrong.

  The presence of her brother felt strong and immediate. She took in the view from the threshold. This had been his lair, his sanctuary. He’d cared enough to furnish it with items that were specific to his tastes and styles. It was all Dave.

  The feel of him was everywhere.

  Mia took a steadying breath and let the door shut behind her. Dave had moved into the fashionable residential area of Atlantic Station and had instantly felt at home with the clean, cold lines of the condo’s wire and brick interior. Mia shivered. She liked a few more textiles in her nest.

  Forcing herself not to look in the direction of the bedroom where she’d discovered her brother’s body, she dropped the keys to the condo in a dish on a sideboard as she entered the living room. A modular, white sectional framed a square coffee table with a stark bowl of colored pebbles and faced a large flat screen television on the cream walls. She walked to the couch, surprised to find her legs about to give way, and sat down on it, dropping her purse to the floor.

  Get a grip, she thought, taking in another long breath and hoping she wasn’t going to hyperventilate. He’s not here any more. You won’t find him here. He’s gone.

  Her mother had begged her not to come today. And maybe she’d been right.

  The sensations that throbbed around her seemed to slowly fade and dissipate like heat waves in the face of an advancing cold front. She closed her eyes and waited for her environment to calm. When she could hear only the ever present buzz of traffic from the Connector, the intersection of I-85 and I-75 as they joined south of Midtown, she opened her eyes.

  He’s not here, she thought. But he was and so was someone else.

  She placed her hands on the coffee table and waited for the familiar jolt of sensation to jerk up into her shoulders. She felt a palpable cacophony of people who had touched the coffee table in the last several weeks. She felt the officious, careful and firm touches of the police techs who’d dusted and measured the table, moved it from the carpet and carefully replaced it.

  Leaving her purse on the floor, she stepped over to the lamp table and picked up the glass snow globe, white against white, in her hand. She felt him then, too. Dave. He must have picked this up often and shook it, delighting in its childish tumble of fake snow over the scene of a little village. She remembered the Christmas he’d gotten it. She put it down and moved into the kitchen.

  The kitchen looked more like a stainless steel abattoir than a place where someone might create meals, she thought as she reminded herself to look before touching. The counters were brushed steel and wiped clean. The cabinets were glass fronted, displaying white ceramics and simply styled drinking glasses. Ignoring the feelings when she touched the cabinet knob—it must have been touched by no fewer than thirty different people in the last month—she put her fingers on the first drinking glass on the shelf.

  A woman had touched it. A female cop? A maid service? She looked around the kitchen and set the glass on the counter. That made sense since the glass was right in front. She reached in and took all the glasses out of the cabinet and lined them up on the counter. Some felt like Dave, but not all. Some felt like they’d been handled by the same woman—very likely the police tech—but one had been handled and washed by a different woman.

  Mia brought Dave’s girlfriend to mind and closed her eye
s as she wrapped her fingers around the glass. Not that Heather struck her as the kind of girl who’d wash up after herself. The feeling through her hands was strong and undeniable. She didn’t know who it was but it wasn’t Heather and it wasn’t the female police tech.

  The glass was an old-fashioned tumbler, squat and heavy, the bottom made of lead crystal. It was one of a set of six others in the cabinet.

  Dave was into possessions, Mia knew. And he had style. He wouldn’t offer a date a hi-ball in an old-fashioned glass, or vice versa. She smiled ruefully. Heck, he wouldn’t make himself a drink in the “wrong” glass.

  So a woman, not his girlfriend, drinking a cocktail out of a glass. And not just drinking it but washing it up afterward, which felt a little too domestic for a casual date.

  Mia left the glasses on the counter and moved into the bedroom. Careful not to look at the bed, she opened the door to the bathroom. It was small but efficient. A single shower stall—Dave was so totally not a bathtub kind of guy—toilet and double sinks. There didn’t seem much to see here but she started with the light switch and lightly touched every hard and smooth surface in the room. Here, too, she felt the presence of the invading police techs with their disinfectants and cleansers. But for what she was feeling for, soap had no effect. Even so, while her fingers tingled she was getting no picture, no image on anything. She turned to the medicine cabinet.

  She stared at the three-shelf interior. The cops had taken any and all medicines, even the bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin. Except for a razor, a box of band aids and a small jar of petroleum jelly, the cabinet was empty. Mia ran her fingers along the shelves. Nothing. She closed the cabinet and looked at the bathroom. Aside from Heather, she and her mother had never met any of Dave’s women. But they had been here, in this room, as surely as Mia herself was standing here now.

  Was that what mattered? Should she be cherchezing la femme? Or did Dave really just wash all his glassware, take his clothes off, climb into bed and then die a natural death as the Atlanta police department was trying to tell her he did? A needle of anger began to worm its way between her shoulder blades.

  It wasn’t right. Any intelligent, observant person knew it wasn’t right. He didn’t just die in bed.

  Not without help, he didn’t.

  The sound of her smartphone ringing from the living room served to snap her out of her growing ire. Dashing past the bed, she grabbed up her purse and fished out her phone. She didn’t recognize the number but accepted the call anyway.

  “This is Mia,” she said briskly.

  “Miss Kazmaroff, this is Jack Burton. I was hoping to arrange a time to drop off some of Kaz…Dave’s things with you.”

  Mia sucked in a quick intake of breath. His voice sounded sad on the phone, heavy, as if he was carrying a ponderous weight. Was it guilt? Like she’d felt from him at the funeral?

  “Bring it to my mother’s,” she said brusquely. “You have the address?”

  “I do. What would be a convenient time?”

  “You really think any of this is convenient on any level, Detective? You think you can even imagine a more invasive set of circumstances for my mother and myself? It doesn’t matter when you drop them off. If she’s not there, put them on the front steps.” Mia snapped off the phone and dropped it back in her bag.

  She still had the dining room to do.

  ***

  Keith hung up the phone and turned to watch his wife as she applied the last touches to her makeup. She’d gained weight this year. Enough to move her up a whole dress size, although today it definitely looked like she was attempting to squeeze into last year’s number. All those yoga and Pilates classes didn’t seem to be doing shit but they sure cost enough.

  “When did you say you’d be back?” he said, tossing down his phone on the bed.

  Trish smiled at her image in the mirror with satisfaction, giving her hair a last comb-through. Her hair was her glory, long and blonde. At least that didn’t gain weight from one year to the next.

  “It won’t be a late night,” she said. “Carol wanted us there early because Dave’s girlfriend, Heather, is leaving tomorrow for Cancun.”

  “I guess she’s down there for the heavy-duty mourning?”

  Trish gave him a confused look.

  “Dave’s not dead a full two weeks and already she’d going on vacation? Tell me she’s not going with another dude.”

  “I…I don’t think so,” Trish said, frowning. “I’m sure not. Heather loved Dave, Keith. You know she did.”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind,” he said tersely, eyeing her as she stood up and attempted to straighten her too-snug dress over her hips. “That looks terrible.”

  She turned away from the mirror. “What? The dress?”

  “You in the dress. You look like two pounds of sausage in a one pound casing.” He watched her face flush red and her eyes dart back to her closet as if contemplating changing.

  “I’ve gained a few pounds,” she said, her shoulders slumping, which made the whole presentation even worse.

  “Yeah, babe, if “a few” is ten or fifteen, then, yeah, you gained “a few.”

  “I don’t really have time to change,” she said, the smile and brightness gone from her face.

  “Mia gonna be there?” he asked abruptly as he walked around her, inspecting her outfit.

  “Of course. She’s the whole reason Carol arranged the evening.”

  “Man, she looked so hot at the funeral, it was all I could do not to take her and bend that gorgeous round ass over my car hood and let her have it good.”

  His eyes caught the moment when Trish’s hands started to tremble.

  “I wasn’t the only one, either,” he said, as if oblivious to his wife’s discomfort. “I know for a fact Maxwell has been wanting to hit that for years. Somehow I’ll bet Carol knows that. Careful, babe, if you cry you’re gonna screw up your makeup.”

  “I’ll be back before ten,” Trish said quietly.

  Keith watched her suck in her stomach and try to regain her composure as she moved past him to the bedroom door. He caught her hand as she moved and put it to his lips. She gasped but didn’t turn to him as he took her finger between his teeth. Not enough to break the skin, he thought, just enough to let her know he was displeased. He felt her trembling which triggered a reaction in his groin. He pulled her roughly to him and slid his hands along her fat hips.

  “You’re gonna be a little late,” he said, feeling his need push against his jeans as he brought another image of Dave’s sexy sister to mind. This time he imagined Mia on her knees.

  Begging.

  ***

  There was a car in the drive, just his luck.

  Jack hauled the box of Dave’s private possessions and carried it to the front door. It was probably too much to ask that his sister had given her mother a heads up about today. If he had any luck at all, the sister at least wouldn’t be home. Or did he hope she would be?

  As he walked up the broken walkway of Mrs. Kazmaroff’s little one-story bungalow, the front door swung open. That meant she’d been waiting for him. Probably just as eager to get this over with as he was.

  “Mrs. Kazmaroff?” he said as he met her on the front porch. “I’m not sure if your daughter mentioned I’d be coming by with some of…Dave’s things?”

  Jess Kazmaroff was still a pretty woman, but her face was lined with pain. Just looking into the face of such agony was pretty much all the punishment Burton figured he’d ever deserve.

  To lose a child…whatever the age…was the worst.

  “No, Detective,” she said. “She didn’t. Please come in.”

  Something about the entranceway made Burton duck his head when he entered. It wasn’t necessary but the interior of the little house was over-furnished, its walls thick with framed photos, artwork, and paintings, making the space feel cramped and small.

  “Just set it down there,” Jess said, motioning to a tabletop in the living room already cove
red with books and magazines.

  There was something about the place—beyond how cluttered it seemed to him—that gave him the illusion that it was difficult to breathe. He glanced to see if there were any open windows and saw that all the curtains had been yanked tightly shut and covered with black-out linings.

  “Well,” he said, as he settled the box on the table. “There you go.”

  “Please, Detective. Have a seat. I’ll make tea. Kind neighbors and friends have brought so much coffee cake and angel food I could open a bakery at this point. You look like a pecan pie man. Am I right?” She turned and left the room before he could reply.

  He wiped his hands against his slacks and looked for a likely place to sit. He had to admit, the thick clutter of the place explained a lot about how fastidious Kazmaroff always was. Jess seemed nice, though. Probably loved the hell out of him. And the sister obviously adored him. Doesn’t look like the guy had too many barriers to overcome.

  He sat down on the couch in front of a coffee table with more books and magazines, catalogs, mail and a few dishes. He drummed his fingers on his knees, wondering how long it takes to drink a cup of tea and get gone.

  She came in with a tray and set it down on the cluttered coffee table. “I’m afraid Mia took the last piece of pecan pie,” she said, smiling as she handed him a plate with a large wedge of angel food cake drizzled with chocolate ganache. “The water takes a minute to boil.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

  “Please call me Jess,” she said, handing him a paper napkin.

  “I know I didn’t get a chance to tell you personally…Jess,” he said, trying to hold her gaze but desperately wanting to look anywhere else, “but I’m so sorry about what happened to Dave.”

  “You were his partner,” she said.