Cuff Me(89)

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Dorothy was saying as she took another sip of her own tea. “I was just so darn angry, Detective. That was my role. I was supposed to be Cora Mulroney. I was supposed to be the star. But then she convinced me that she should get her break first. Because she was older. And that she’d help me get another role. A bigger, better one.”

Dorothy’s laugh was brittle. “We all know how that goes, don’t we? I let it go. For years, I let it go. Let her have the spotlight. Told myself I didn’t want it. But then… then I couldn’t.”

Dorothy’s voice faded to quiet, in a sort of crazy-person way. Or maybe that was Jill’s head, which wouldn’t stop spinning.

She couldn’t see Dorothy anymore, and Jill had a moment of panic until she realized that she’d closed her eyes. Just for a moment. She was so tired.

“Why?” Jill wasn’t sure she’d actually managed to speak the word, or if it just rattled around in her brain, but either Dorothy had heard her, or she was still rambling on, because she answered.

“Lenora promised that we would go to the anniversary showing of A Love Song for Cora together. She was supposed to accept an award—some iconic woman in Hollywood nonsense—and she said she’d call me up on the stage. To give me the recognition I deserved. To acknowledge my sacrifice…”

Jill heard Dorothy stand. Heard the soft pad of orthopedic shoes come closer, before a hand gently touched her head. “She decided not to go, Detective Henley. Jill. She said it sounded boring, and that she was just going to have her agent accept the award…”

Stupid, was all Jill could think. What a stupid, petty reason to kill someone.

“I hope you’ll be okay, Detective. I don’t really know what effect poor Jensen’s sedatives will have on you, but I certainly don’t want you to die. But… either way, honey, I’ll be long gone when you wake up, and I doubt you’ll be finding me. You’d be surprised how easily old people fly under the radar. People don’t see us.”

Jill tried to make her mouth move. Tried to tell Dorothy Henley that she would find her. That she would make her pay for her crimes. That she would—

She would—

And then there was nothing.

Only darkness.





CHAPTER FORTY


By the time Vincent bounded up the front steps to Jill’s apartment, he was completely beyond knocking.

He’d called her at least a dozen times on the way over, and she hadn’t picked up once. If he barged in and found her mad, and screening his calls, fine. If he barged in and found her naked and in the bubble bath, fine. If he barged in and found her with another man…

Not fine. Not fine at all.

But they’d deal with it. He’d win her back.

He just needed her to be okay.

He knocked once with his fist even as he shoved his spare key into her lock and pushed the door open. “Jill! Henley, so help me, God—”

She wasn’t there. He knew the moment that he stepped inside that Jill wasn’t in the apartment.

Vincent checked anyway. Checked every corner. The tub, the bedroom.

She wasn’t there.

“Fuck.”

He stood in the middle of her apartment, hands plowed into his hair as he tried to think. Tried to tap into the strange buzzing that was roaring through him, trying to tell him… something.

Something important.

Vincent’s instincts were never wrong, and right now they were telling him that Jill was in trouble, and that she needed him, and he didn’t have a f*cking clue—

His eyes locked on the stack of papers on the living room floor.

Jill always did her case research on her living room floor. Said it was where she thought best.

Vincent fell on them like a dying man, but forced himself to pause before diving into the content. To remain perfectly still as he assessed.

A quick scan of the stack in the middle showed the name Lenora Birch several times.

No surprise there. He’d been doing some research on his own as well.

But something about the way these were arranged—one big stack in the middle, two individual sheets on either side.

As though she’d held one in each hand, separate from the pile.

Slowly, Vincent picked up the papers on the right and left, separate from the main pile. Both were scanned newspaper articles. He read the older one first, silently cursing the terrible quality of the image because it took him twice as long.

By the time he reached the end, his heart was pounding.

The second article, the newer one, confirmed his fear.

His Spidey sense—the one that had refused to kick in during the entire Lenora Birch case—was now going off in large, whooping alarms.

He was on his feet and racing toward the door even as he raged out loud at an absent Jill. “Goddamn it, Henley, why didn’t you wait for me?”

Vincent’s car was in motion even as he reached for the radio to call for backup.

The uniforms would beat him there, but that was fine. As long as someone got to Jill, he didn’t care about anything else.

Vincent’s breath was ragged as he sped all the way back to Manhattan.

Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay, and I’ll do anything, everything. I’ll hire a sky writer, and write poetry, and go on bended knee, and I’ll eat Goddamn fondue on Valentine’s Day…