Jennifer Greene - Secretive Stranger

The detective took his turn. “Your brother’s next-door neighbor,” he said, “is twenty-eight…”

“That’s the Sophie Campbell you mentioned?” Cord asked.

“Yes. She works as a translator for Open World. She’s been with that organization since she graduated from college. She does extensive translating projects for them, often on-site. For the last nine months or so, she’s been living in Foggy Bottom, gathering stories from women survivors in World War II. She speaks Russian, German, Danish.”

Cord’s head was swimming. “I don’t understand why you keep bringing up this woman-unless you either believe she was one of the women Jon was blackmailing, or that she’s the killer.”

“We don’t know either of those things,” Ferrell said. “But we do believe she’s the key to your brother’s killer in some way.”

“Why?”

“We’re not really at liberty to say,” the detective said cautiously, but again, the private cop proved more frank.

“We’re uncertain to what extent this young woman is involved. What we do know, however, is that she was the only consistent person in your brother’s life. She was in and out of your brother’s place quite frequently. In fact, she’s the only one who had a key, as far as we know.” The older man hunched closer. “We need your help, Mr. Pruitt. We need your help to solve this…and we need your discretion.”

Cord frowned. “I still don’t know what you’re asking me to do. If you need my permission to go through Jon’s place, fine, you’ve got it. I assume you’d have that legal right, regardless, in a crime situation-”

“It’s not that simple. What we also need is you, specifically because you’re his brother, a family member. Once we’ve officially-so to speak-labeled this an accidental death, we need you to go in, act like a grieving brother, look like you’re closing up Jon’s affairs.”

“That’s hardly going to be an act,” Cord said. “It’s what I have to do. There is no one else.”

“Exactly. The thing is, wherever your brother hid his stockpile of information, he hid it well. It’s not as if we haven’t been trying to track down evidence long before this happened. And although we don’t know precisely what role Sophie Campbell plays in this, we do know she had more access to his place, to him, than anyone else. We haven’t been able to dig up any incriminating background on her, but we all believe she knows more than she’s saying. Someone who wasn’t connected to the law might have a significantly better chance to get her talking.”

Cord grabbed his jacket and folio of student papers and notes. Enough was enough. He’d had more than he could take. “If you’re asking me to spy, as I said before-forget it.”

“We’re asking you to talk to her. Which should naturally happen if you’re in your brother’s apartment-she’s right there. If she happens to tell you information that you judge as valuable, we’re asking you to communicate-preferably to me, first.” This, from the detective.

But it was Ferrell who was looking at him. Ferrell who wanted anything he dug up. First.

Cord motioned them all to the door. This party was over. He wished he could hurl something. Even though he was two years younger than Jon, he couldn’t remember a time he wasn’t cleaning up Jon’s messes…but this was by far the most disturbing and ugliest.

As far as this Sophie character, though, Cord already had her pictured, because he knew the kind of woman his brother went for.

Jon liked sluts. Lookers with long legs and spongy morals. Often enough, Jon pursued women who were married or already committed, because he found it more fun to seduce a woman who was supposed to be faithful. His favorite types had money, or looked as if they did. He preferred long-haired brunettes who had that look at a party-like they were prowling the gathering for men, like a cat hunted for meat.

Not that Cord minded wildcats.

He’d even tamed a few in the past. But at the moment, he was off women altogether-the hurt from Zoe still stuck like a blade-and beyond that, any woman who appealed to his brother never could, never would, ring his chimes.

“You’ll help us?” Bassett pressed again.

“Maybe.” Cord couldn’t think anymore. Not right now. “I need to get my brother buried. I need to deal with my father. I need to find out what I’m supposed to do as executor, and all that nonsense. I assume you don’t want me near the place until you’ve done whatever investigating you plan to do. So give me the word when I’ve got the freedom to go in, handle the place and my brother’s things. I’ll be happy to give you anything relevant I run across.”

Ferrell looked as if he could finally breathe. “That’s all we’re asking.”

Cord shot him a dry look. “Right.”

When he’d finally ushered the two men out the door, he stood in the lecture hall a moment longer. Rain was still drizzling down the windows, highlighting the loneliness of yellow lamplight on scarred desks. Out of nowhere, he felt the crushing weight of grief. He and Jon had always been polar opposites, but damn…

Maybe there’d never been respect or even liking. But they had been brothers.

He’d do what he could.

He just dreaded the days ahead.

“You know how much I love Caviar…” Sophie had been bubbling on for the last few minutes, but her voice faltered when she reached the apartment door. Even days later, it was hard to open that door, hard to step into the front hall without reliving the vision of Jon’s body lying there.

Thankfully, the Sunday coffee klatch group had insisted on walking her home. Now the three women all crowded into the cramped hall, no one planning on staying, just keeping her company for a few more minutes.

They weren’t just supporting her, Sophie knew. Jon’s death had the whole neighborhood in morbid thrall-especially the women. Crime wasn’t new in D.C., but this was someone they knew. Every female in a three-mile radius-except Sophie-had lusted after Jon.

Quite a few had sampled his sexual talents-or so they claimed.

“Don’t start about that Caviar business, Sophie.” Jan Howell was the tallest of the three brunettes, the trust funder who loved a party, artsy clothes and anything to do with gossip. Still, she had a good heart, and automatically started handing over the debris Sophie had dropped on the walk-her fuzzy gray scarf, her mitten, her half-eaten muffin in a bag. “You’d take in every stray critter in the city, if we let you.”

“Not every one,” Sophie said, defending herself. When the women laughed, she tried a different defense, since they obviously weren’t buying that one. “The thing is, I really do love Caviar. And right now, it’s such a relief to have him. I come home from work and it’s so silent in here. At least I can curl up on the couch with some kind of warm body…”

Again, her voice trailed off.

Damn, but she couldn’t seem to stop reliving it. That night. The cops. The detective with the cheap coat and hound-dog eyes, hunkering over her, asking her slow, patient questions. Her, blurting out that she had to find Caviar. Him, acting like she was a rich, spoiled-and suspicious-fruitcake. The flashing lights and lobby full of strangers and then that horrible silence after they all left and she was alone, with a rotten case of the jitters.

“You called your sisters, didn’t you?” Hillary Smythe looked more like a bar waitress than a doctor. Shiny dark curls stretched down her back, accenting gorgeous skin and boobs that tended to exuberantly burst out of anything she wore. For the next year, she was studying under some fancy gene research doc at GW University, just a few blocks away. Sophie had long wondered if Hillary had some troubling secret in her past, because she was always so quiet-but she never missed a Sunday-morning coffee with the rest.

“I called both sisters the day after it happened,” Sophie assured her. “I almost wish I hadn’t. They’ve been calling nonstop ever since. Sooner or later, I’ll get a tougher skin about this. It’s just…right now I still have that image of Jon every time I walk in the door.”

“Well, of course you do. It was a god-awful thing to go through!”

Penelope Martin leaned against the thin row of mailboxes. She was stare-at beautiful, Sophie’d always thought. Breathtaking eyes, fabulous figure, dark hair rich and lustrous. The others sometimes whispered that she was harder than nails-Sophie could see she was a little manipulative, but she always stuck up for her. Penelope worked as a lobbyist, after all, and you just couldn’t be cupcake-sweet and do that kind of job. More than the others, though, Penelope was enthralled with “the Jon situation,” as she called it. “I just can’t believe that the police decided it was an accidental death instead of murder. I mean, from how you described it, Sophie-”

Sophie unzipped her jacket and sank down on the third step. “Well, they seemed to decide that he was naked because he’d probably been taking a shower. And then maybe he ran downstairs for his mail, thinking no one was there. I’m the only other tenant in the building right now, and Jon knew I rarely get home before five.”

“Actually, that sounds logical to me.” Jan invariably took the authoritative voice in these conversations, because she was the only one in the group who claimed to have nailed Jon-not that Hillary and Penelope hadn’t tried.

Jon would undoubtedly have fit them all in, if he’d lived long enough. With the exception of Sophie, of course. No one believed Jon would ever have come on to Sophie. Including Sophie.

Jan was still immersed in speculations. “Heaven knows, I can picture Jon running around naked without a qualm. He didn’t have a modest bone in his body. But it was freezing and rainy that afternoon. Logically, I’d have thought he’d have pulled on a jacket or something, even if he was only running downstairs for the mail.”