Alone (Detective D.D. Warren, #1)(22)

“More Whistler?”

“No, more privacy.”

They mounted the wide, curving staircase to the top level of the museum. They passed by more people, then several guards standing stony-faced in designated rooms. Fourteen years ago, two thieves disguised as Boston police officers had stolen thirteen works of art from this museum. The theft gave the museum a certain level of notoriety that the security guards didn't forget. Now they scrupulously studied each person walking by, causing Bobby to avert his gaze.

When they finally arrived on the third floor, he found that he was breathing harder than necessary. Catherine Gagnon wasn't as cool as she'd like to pretend either. He could see both of her hands trembling at her sides. As if sensing his gaze, she stopped the motion by curving her fingers into fists.

She walked all the way to the back and he followed, noting things he didn't want to note. Like the smell of her perfume, rich, almost cinnamony, like barely suppressed heat. Or the way she walked, lithe, graceful, like a cat. She worked out. Yoga or Pilates would be his guess. Either way, she was stronger than she looked.

In the back room of the third floor, no one was around. Bobby and Catherine positioned themselves at random, close but not too close, and Catherine started to talk.

“I loved my husband,” she said softly. “I know that must sound strange to you. When I first met Jimmy, he was . . . amazing, generous, sweet. He took me on whirlwind weekends to Paris and grand shopping tours. I . . . I had some trouble earlier in my life. Some sadness. When I first met Jimmy, for the first time, things felt right. He entered the picture and literally swept me off my feet. He was my knight in shining armor.”

Bobby wondered what some sadness meant. He wondered, for that matter, why Catherine Gagnon was telling him any of this. He'd killed Jimmy Gagnon; he didn't want to hear stories about the man now.

“I was wrong about Jimmy,” Catherine said abruptly. “Jimmy wasn't a knight in shining armor. He was drunk and abusive, a manipulative, charismatic man who would smile at you when he got his way, and go after you with a knife when he didn't. He was everything I swore to myself I knew better than to marry. But I didn't see it. I didn't understand until it was much too late, and then I could only wonder. . . . I knew better. How had I still ended up married to the likes of him?”

She stopped abruptly, a person biting off an unspoken curse. She turned away again, but her steps were hard now, agitated as she paced the tiny room.

“He beat you?” Bobby asked.

“I can show you bruises.” Her hands moved immediately to the belt of her dress. He held up his palm to stop her.

“Why didn't you tell the cops?”

“They were Boston cops. Jimmy's father, Judge Gagnon, had already handed down an edict: If Jimmy was in trouble, cops were to call him and he'd personally take care of it. Jimmy liked to brag about that. Shortly before he'd knock me unconscious.”

Bobby frowned. He didn't like these kinds of stories, cops turning a blind eye, yet it fit with what two BPD cops had already told him. Jimmy Gagnon was a wild one, and he used his father as his own personal get-out-of-jail-free card.

“And your son?”

“Jimmy never touched Nathan. I would've left him if he had.” She said the words too quickly; Bobby knew she lied.

“Seems to me a man knocking you around should be reason enough to grab the kid and run. Of course, life on the road wouldn't involve so much money.”

“Oh, Jimmy didn't have any money.”

“Yeah? What do you consider a home in the heart of Back Bay?”

“Jimmy's father bought it. His father bought most of the things we used. Jimmy's money is still tied up in a trust. His father is the executor and he doles out the money at will. It's from a clause dating back to Jimmy's great-great-grandfather on his mother's side. He hit it big in oil, then grew obsessed that future generations would squander the family fortune. His solution: he tied up the assets in trusts that don't dissolve until the inheritor turns fifty-five. Each successive generation has kept it that way. So the family has money—Maryanne inherited a positively filthy amount of money when she turned fifty-five—but Jimmy . . . Jimmy didn't have any wealth of his own yet.”

“And now that Jimmy's dead?”

“The money goes straight to Nathan, also in a trust. I don't receive a cent.”

Bobby remained skeptical. “But there are provisions for the boy's guardian, I'm sure.”

“Nathan's guardian will receive a monthly allowance,” she acknowledged. “But you're assuming I'm his guardian. This morning, I was served with court papers. James and Maryanne are officially suing me for custody of Nathan. They claim I'm trying to kill him. Can you imagine that, Officer Dodge? A mother trying to harm her own son?”

She moved toward him, coming to a halt closer to him than strangers normally stand. He became aware of her perfume again, and the pale curve of her slender neck and the way her long, dark hair draped down her back, a rich, black curtain as erotic as the blue fabric in the Whistler portrait had been.

She made no other move, said no other word, and yet there was something about her that invited touch. Something about her that reached out to him as a man, and begged him to conquer her as a woman.

She was playing him. She was using her body as a weapon, deliberately trying to befuddle the brains of the poor, stupid state cop. Funny, even knowing that, he was still tempted to step forward, to press his body against hers.