Secret Sanctuary

“Out.”

“Cullen—”

“Out.”

He opened the solarium door and gave her an unceremonious little push into the hallway. The door closed firmly behind her.

The Pierces were still in the hallway, and they gazed at her curiously.

“I take it your services are no longer required,” Drew commented.

“Cops can be so…infuriating.” The latex gloves snapped loudly as Elizabeth peeled them off.

“They do tend to have a one-track mind,” William sympathized. “But in this case, I have to agree with Detective Ryan. A murder scene is no place for a young lady.”

“But I teach criminology,” she protested. “I’m not unfamiliar with crime scenes.”

“You can’t be more than a day over twenty years old. Hardly more than a child. If Natasha were still alive, I certainly wouldn’t want her subjected to such a gruesome scene.” Pain flashed in William’s blue eyes, and whatever annoyance Elizabeth had been harboring toward him for his comments about her age vanished. Tasha’s death had affected them all, but especially her family. It was obvious that her father still grieved her passing. That was why he hadn’t been able to forgive David Bryson and probably never would.

But had Bryson been able to forgive himself? Elizabeth wondered. Or had his guilt driven him to do unspeakable evil, as some of the townspeople suspected?

Careful, she warned herself. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you.

They had absolutely no evidence thus far linking David Bryson to Bethany’s murder. Nothing except an innate distrust of the man, and Elizabeth knew she was prejudiced in that regard. Tasha had been her friend.

If she wasn’t careful, such a biased perspective would end up proving Cullen’s point—that she had no place in a murder investigation.

“They won’t find anything,” Geoffrey Pierce murmured in a strange, offhand manner, his gaze on the solarium door. “That girl was dead before she was hanged.”

Elizabeth had come to the same conclusion, but it wasn’t exactly admiration she felt for Geoffrey’s keen perception.

Earlier, when they’d all rushed into the solarium, the other Pierces had been deeply disturbed by the sight of the body, especially Zachary, who’d turned a bit green when his father suggested that he and Drew find a way to cut her down. The same look of horror and compassion had emanated from all the Pierces’ blue eyes—all except for Geoffrey’s.

In his eyes only a cool curiosity had gleamed.

Elizabeth had to wonder about a man, a nonprofessional, who could remain so stoic and unaffected in the face of such horror.

Her gaze on him narrowed. “Why do you think Cullen won’t find any evidence?”

He shrugged. “Because whoever did that knew what he was doing.”

“He?”

“Given your field of expertise, I’m sure you know as well as I do that crimes of this nature are almost always masterminded by white males. Serial killers seem to be a unique affliction to our race and gender.” He didn’t seem especially disturbed by his conclusion.

“Serial killer?” Elizabeth said, feigning surprise. “Who said anything about a serial killer?”

Geoffrey gave her an enigmatic smile. “Don’t tell me the same thought didn’t cross your mind when you saw her hanging there. The way the body was put on exhibition? What else could it be?”

“An act of rage,” Elizabeth said. “A crime of passion.”

He shook his head. “You don’t believe that. You know what we’re dealing with here as well as I do.”

Elizabeth had studied crimes such as this in both her undergraduate and graduate courses. She’d learned a long time ago what it meant when a murderer “signed” his kill.

But she couldn’t help wondering how Geoffrey Pierce knew.

And would another body soon follow that would prove his point?

Chapter Four

The storm had moved out to sea an hour or so earlier, but Elizabeth could still see flashes of lightning in the distance as she sat in her parked car down the street from Krauter’s Funeral Home. The downpour had finally abated into an icy drizzle that glistened on the cobblestone pavement like a scene from a French Impressionist painting.

The hour was very late, after three in the morning, and for a moment, Elizabeth was struck by the eerie silence, the preternatural peace that had settled over the night in the wake of bone-chilling violence.

Cloistered in the leathery confines of her new car, she could almost believe that the last few hours had never happened. But they had. A young woman was dead. A student had been murdered, and Elizabeth had discovered the body. No seminar or classroom or degree in the world could have prepared her for that grisly sight.

She watched nervously as the gleaming black hearse carrying Bethany Peters’s body slowly glided past her. The windows were so darkly tinted in the vehicle that she couldn’t make out any of the occupants, but she knew that besides the driver there was one other attendant. She’d been present at the Pierce mansion when the mortuary people had arrived to pick up the corpse.

Tomorrow, Bethany would be transported to a nearby hospital where an autopsy would be performed, and the cause of death would likely be determined. But for tonight she would remain in a cooler at Krauter’s.

A squad car—flashers blacked out, siren silenced—followed the hearse, and Elizabeth ducked down in her seat even though she was fairly certain Cullen had remained at the mansion. He had hours of interviews to conduct and acres of grounds to search, but he would abandon everything in a heartbeat if he had even an inkling of what Elizabeth was up to.

She tamped down a momentary reservation. Okay, so what she had in mind wasn’t exactly brilliant. Probably wasn’t even a good idea. She would be interfering with an official police investigation. She could be fined, even do some serious jail time if she were caught, but Elizabeth didn’t see that she had any other choice. When she’d approached Cullen again later about examining the body, he’d told her no way. No way in hell, to be exact.

“Just give me one minute, Cullen. That’s all I’m asking for. I need to see the body again. I think I saw something—”

“Saw what?”

“I’m…not sure.”

He ran his fingers through his dark hair, a gesture that was both familiar and endearing—or would have been, if Elizabeth hadn’t been so thoroughly irritated with him.

The feeling, evidently, was mutual. “I don’t have time for this, Elizabeth.”

“Why do you have to be so stubborn? Can’t you just admit you may need my help?”

“With what?”

“The investigation, for crying out loud.”

He gazed down at her for a long, tense moment, his gray eyes cool, remote. Sexy. “Haven’t you ever heard that old saying, Elizabeth? Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

That hurt.

She gave him a disparaging look. “Are you afraid to let me see the body, Cullen?”

“Why would I be afraid?”