Killing Her Softly Read online

  Griffin sat across from her, on the gold brocade wing chair, and dropped his clasped hands between his knees as he leaned forward and looked directly at her.

  "I'm very sorry about your cousin. It's tragic when some­one dies so young, but even more so when murder is in­volved."

  She offered him a weak, agreeable nod. "Yes, you're right. Lulu would have turned twenty-eight in a couple of months. I'm still finding it difficult to believe that she's re­ally gone. And my uncle Louis—Lulu's father—is taking her death very hard. He's an old man, with numerous health problems. I believe the only thing that will keep him alive now is finding out who killed his daughter."

  "And that's where I come in?"

  "Yes. I want to hire you to investigate Lulu's

  urder."

  "Isn't that a job for the Memphis police department?"

  "Yes. Certainly. But I don't want any stone unturned no avenue not taken. The police don't have any real suspects and it's been nearly twenty-four hours. Don't they say that the first twenty-four hours is crucial to solving a crime?"

  "Do they?" Griffin cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

  Not quite sure how to interpret his comment, she chose to ignore it. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to harm Lulu. She didn't have a mean bone in her body. Everyone who knew her liked her on some level. She had an electric type of personality and—"

  "Did you like her?"

  "I beg you pardon?"

  "Did you like your cousin Lulu?"

  Annabelle caught herself before she automatically said yes and gave her reply some thought. "I loved Lulu because we were cousins and very close when we were young. And I did like her, at least part of the time. She could be selfish and irresponsible and I certainly didn't approve of the kind of life she lived. Does that answer your question?"

  He nodded. "You're aware that the media seems to be putting out their own scenarios concerning Lulu's death," Griffin said. "Their favorite appears to be that it's possible her latest lover killed her. How do you feel about that?"

  "I've been ignoring the media as much as possible, but I'm well aware that not only is that scenario a favorite with the press, but also with the police."

  "You know the identity of your cousin's latest lover, the man who discovered her body, don't you?"

  "Yes . . .I. . .uh. . .I met Mr. Cortez this morning, at the police station."

  "Did you? So what do you think? Could he have killed your cousin?"

  Annabelle didn't know how to answer these unexpected questions. How could she tell Griffin Powell that she did not want to believe Quinn Cortez was capable of murder be­cause he had struck a personal chord deep inside her, that her reaction to Lulu's lover had been that of a woman relat­ing to a highly desirable man? The very thought of her re­sponse to Mr. Cortez's protective gestures made her feel cheap and sleazy. It was so out of character for her.

  "I don't know Mr. Cortez well enough to have an opin­ion," she said.

  "Hmm. . ."

  "If you agree to take this case, naturally I'll want you to investigate Mr. Cortez, even though I'm certain the police will put him under a microscope."

  "Yes, I'm sure they will, since he was her lover and he discovered the body. They will want to rule out any possibil­ity that he killed her before they look further and that's the reason he has—" A repetitive knock on the door interrupted Griffin midsentence. "If you'll excuse me." He stood and walked to the door.

  Annabelle turned halfway around and focused her gaze on Griffin as he opened the door. Her heart caught in her throat when she instantly recognized the couple who entered the suite. Kendall Wells, followed by Quinn Cortez.

  What are they doing here?

  "Please, come inside and meet my other guest," Griffin said.

  Kendall Wells stopped instantly the moment she saw Annabelle. Quinn Cortez paused did a double-take, then glared at Griffin.

  "I see you already have a guest," Quinn said. "Did I get the time wrong? Was our appointment for later?"

  "No, you're here right on time," Griffin replied. "Ms. Vanderley was a few minutes early."

  "What's she doing here?" Kendall asked.

  Annabelle's gaze connected with Quinn's. An odd sensa­tion hit her in the pit of her stomach. His gaze was not friendly; it even bordered on hostile, but she couldn't look away.

  "It seems that Ms. Vanderley is in need of a private inves­tigator, just as Mr. Cortez is," Griffin explained. "Imagine my surprise when I realized that both of my prospective clients want the same murder investigated."

  "I see," Kendall said. "So you decided to meet with both Ms. Vanderley and Mr. Cortez and see who's willing to bid the highest for your services."

  "Humph." The sound that came from Griffin was a com­bination of amused chuckle and disgusted irritation.

  "I think you insulted Mr. Griffin," Quinn told Kendall. "Perhaps you should apologize."

  "If I'm wrong, I'll say I'm sorry." Kendall shot Quinn a withering glare, then focused on Griffin with glowering in­tensity. "Am I wrong?"

  "You're wrong," Griffin told her, a cold indifferent ex­pression on his face. "I set up this meeting to see if Ms. Vanderley and Mr. Cortez would be willing to work together to find Lulu Vanderley's murderer."

  "You what?" Kendall glanced back and forth from Quinn to Annabelle, then said to Griffin, "You're suggesting that they both hire you and the two of them join forces to track down Lulu's murderer. Is that correct?"

  "No, I—I don't think that would work," Annabelle said. The last thing she wanted was to spend anymore time with Quinn Cortez than she already had.

  "Why wouldn't it work?" Kendall asked. "I think it's a brilliant idea."

  "But only if Ms. Vanderley believes I'm innocent," Quinn said as he walked toward the sofa. Stopping when he was less than two feet away from Annabelle, he looked right at her. "And you're not sure, are you? You believe there's a pos­sibility that I killed your cousin."

  Aaron shoved the naked girl over and positioned her so that she had to catch herself from falling by bracing her open palms flat against the bed. While she gasped and shivered he ran his hand over her sleek butt, then lifted his penis and rammed it into her. Damn, what a feeling. Grasping her hips, he maneuvered her back and forth, quickly increasing the speed and the pressure. Their naked flesh slapped together and that friction combined with her feminine moisture cre­ated a smacking sound. Despite the fact that this was their third time tonight, he was on the verge of coming. But hell, he was twenty-six and hadn't been with a woman in weeks. He'd built up a lot of steam and it was going to take awhile to blow it off.

  The louder her grunts and groans, the more excited he be­came, the closer to losing it. He slid his arm around her, eased his hand between her legs and fingered her clitoris. Within a couple of minutes, she keened deep in her throat, then cried out when her climax hit. That was all it took to send him over the edge.

  In the aftermath, sweaty and panting, they fell across the bed. As he lay there looking up at the dark ceiling, he sighed. He'd met Gala in a downtown bar this evening and they'd hit

  it off from the first hello. It had taken him all of thirty min­utes to talk her into coming back to his apartment with him. They'd practically ripped off each other's clothes the minute they got here and he'd humped her on the sofa the first time. The second time had been an hour later and he'd taken the missionary position, with her lying under him in bed. "I'm hungry," she said.

  "I don't think I have anything," he told her as he worked the condom off his deflated penis and dropped it on a maga­zine lying on the floor beside the bed. "I've been out of town and haven't had a chance to restock."

  Gala cuddled up against him. "Do you really work for Quinn Cortez?"

  "Yeah, I really do." He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket up and over them, covering him to just above his waist and her to the top of her tits.

  "And you were with him in Nashville during the Terry McBryar case?"

  "Every day
he was there, I was there. I told you, I'm part of his personal staff."

  "What's it like being that close to a man like Quinn Cortez?" She curled several strands of his chest hair around her index finger. "I mean the guy's like famous and all."

  Gala wasn't the first woman he'd impressed by telling her that he worked for Quinn and she sure wouldn't be the last. He'd told Quinn about using his name to get chicks and his boss had just laughed and said "If it gets you laid go for it." Quinn was that kind of guy. When it came to scoring with a woman, nothing was off-limits. All was fair in love and war. And Quinn always won at both. Aaron figured there wasn't a woman alive Quinn couldn't conquer. And the man never lost when it came to courtroom warfare.

  Gala propped herself up with her elbow and gazed down at Aaron. "You know, you look like him a little. Same black hair and brown eyes. You're Hispanic, too, aren't you?"

  "You guessed it, sweetie. Me and Quinn are like two peas in a pod."

  He wasn't Hispanic—not even half—and any resemblance to Quinn was purely superficial. They were about the same height at six one and they had similar coloring, although without a tan, Aaron was several shades lighter than Quinn. He owed his ethnic heritage to his maternal grandmother, a Navajo who still lived on the reservation. But since he'd probably never see Gala again, why spoil the image of him she had in her mind?

  A loud aggressive pounding at the door brought Aaron up out of bed and sent Gala scooting toward the bathroom, picking up some of their discarded clothing as she went.

  "You expecting somebody?" she called to him from the bathroom.

  "Nope." He'd deliberately unplugged his phone after they'd done it the first time and turned off his cell, too. He didn't want anything interrupting what he'd hoped would be an all-night love-a-thon.

  "Whoever it is, get rid of them." She winked at him be­fore she shut the door.

  Aaron grabbed his jeans off the floor, shimmied hurriedly into them and headed out of the bedroom. The knocking grew more intense.

  "Hey, man, if you're in there, open the damn door," Jace Morgan shouted.

  What the hell was Jace doing here? After returning to Houston, Jace, Marcy and he had gone their separate ways, as they always did after the end of a business trip. Quinn's personal staff worked like a well-oiled machine when to­gether, despite the difference in their personalities; but the minute a case ended they didn't make contact again until Quinn called them together. He usually gave them at least a week's downtime after a big case. And the Terry McBryar case had been one of the biggest. He expected to get a really nice bonus, something else Quinn did after winning a case. He was the kind of guy who took care of his people.

  "Hold your horses," Aaron said as he raced through the living room. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Marcy Sims with Jace. He knew instantly that something was up. "What's wrong?"

  Not waiting for an invitation, Marcy swept past him and into his apartment. "Quinn's in trouble. He wants us in Nashville by tomorrow."

  "What kind of trouble?" Aaron asked.

  "That Lulu Vanderley he was going to Nashville to see got herself murdered last night." Jace closed the door and came inside behind Marcy.

  "You're shitting me?"

  "Quinn found her body," Marcy said. "So you know what that means."

  "He's a suspect," Aaron replied.

  "He didn't do it. He didn't kill her," Jace said emphati­cally. "The boss would never murder anybody."

  "Yeah, you're right, he wouldn't," Aaron agreed. "But I'll bet there are a lot of people who're getting a big laugh out of this. The most famous criminal lawyer in the country, who's gotten dozens of accused murderers acquitted might get charged with murder himself."

  "They can't arrest Quinn for murder." Jace's cheeks flushed with emotion. "We gotta do whatever we can to help him."

  Sometimes Aaron found it amusing the way Jace hero-worshiped Quinn. But then the kid owed Quinn a lot, didn't he, even more than he and Marcy did? They were all three misfits, kids who'd been in trouble, heading for a life of crime. Marcy had been abused by her father and wound up on the streets, ready to turn tricks at sixteen. A cheerleader-type blonde with big brown eyes, she could have made a for­tune as a prostitute. Her salvation had been that the first guy she'd approached on her first night on the job turned out to be Quinn Cortez, a real crusader for kids in trouble. He'd gotten her placed in a good foster home, helped her attend junior college and then hired her as his personal assistant.

  Aaron's story wasn't much different, except he'd wound up at the Judge Harwood Brown Boys' Ranch, a place built and run by Quinn and several other guys who'd been boys in trouble themselves way back when and had been saved by old Judge Brown. When Aaron turned eighteen, Quinn had encouraged him to go to college, but he'd known college wasn't for him. He wasn't stupid but he was no Einstein ei­ther. He made Quinn understand that he didn't have the smarts for college. He'd been working for Quinn as his chauffeur and all-around gofer ever since. The pay was good the bene­fits great.

  Jace, another Judge Harwood Brown Boys' Ranch alum­nus, had been working for Quinn for the past year. He was a pretty kid with hazel eyes and curly sandy brown hair that he kept short to control the curls, but Jace's story wasn't a pretty one. He'd admitted that he had been molested by a priest when he was twelve, which had screwed him up pretty bad. And it didn't help that he'd grown up without a dad and had lost his mother, too, only a couple of years ago.

  "I've booked us flights for tomorrow morning," Marcy said. "And I've lined up a four-bedroom house and a rental car. I'm hoping the police will clear this up pretty quickly and we can all head home in a few days, but—"

  "Aaron, who was at the door?" Wearing only his rumpled shirt, Gala stopped dead still in the doorway between the bedroom and living room. "Oops. Sorry."

  "We . . . er. . . we were just leaving." Marcy started back­ing toward the door.

  "Don't leave on my account," Gala said. "Stick around. I was just going to order pizza."

  Marcy looked directly at Aaron. "Jace will pick you up at eight-thirty in the morning. Be ready."

  "No problem," Aaron told her.

  "Quinn's counting on us, man," Jace said eyeing Gala disapprovingly. "We can't let him down."

  "I get it, okay," Aaron said. "I'll be ready to go at eight-thirty in the morning."

  As much as Aaron admired and respected Quinn, he wasn't in love with the guy like Marcy was nor did he worship the man the way Jace did. But he'd cut off his right arm before he'd let Quinn down.

  "Let's look at this rationally," Griffin Powell said. "I can't take on each of you individually as clients for obvious rea­sons, even if I assigned one of my employees to handle the case for one of you. However, if you two could work to­gether, you could hire me jointly. After all, I assume you both want the same thing—to discover the identity of Lulu Vanderley's murderer and see him brought to justice."

  Annabelle nodded.

  "Yes, that's what I want." Quinn thought Powell had brass balls for even recommending such an odd proposition. Selling Annabelle on this unholy alliance wouldn't be easy.

  "I believe one of us should simply hire another agency," Annabelle said.

  "Griffin Powell is the best." Quinn looked her square in the eyes. "I hire only the best."

  "Are you suggesting that I look elsewhere?"

  "Yes, I am. Unless you're willing to work with me."

  She stared at him quizzically and he caught a glint of something peculiar in those cool blue eyes. Did the lady want to be persuaded? Was that it? Did the thought of their working together intrigue her as much as it did him?

  You 're a fool, Cortez. The very last thing you need in your life right now is a personal relationship with Lulu's cousin, a woman who thinks it's possible you might have killed Lulu.

  "I believe we have a stalemate," Kendall said. "Apparently neither Quinn nor Ms. Vanderley is willing to accept second best."

  "I'm flattered" Griffin said. "But I thin
k you should know that unless I can take you both on as clients who have consented to work together, I won't take this case."

  "What!" Annabelle whipped around and glared at Griffin. "You can't mean that."

  "If you knew me better, you'd know that I always mean what I say."

  "And say what you mean." Quinn made an instant deci­sion, one that surprised him as much as it did everyone else in the room. He motioned to Kendall. "Let's go. I withdraw my bid to hire you, Mr. Powell. Feel free to take on Ms. Vanderley as your client."

  "What the hell—" Kendall gasped when Quinn grabbed her arm and led her toward the door.

  "Wait!" Annabelle rose from the sofa. "Please, Mr. Cortez, don't go."

  Quinn stopped but kept his back to Annabelle and Griffin.

  "What are you pulling?" Kendall spoke to Quinn so softly that only he could hear her.

  "Why should I stay?" Quinn asked Annabelle.

  "Mr. Powell is right—we do want the same thing. If you can accept the fact that I don't trust you completely, then I believe we might be able to work together."

  "Hmm . . ." Kendall grinned at Quinn before he turned around to face Annabelle.

  "You don't know me well enough to trust me. Not yet," Quinn said. "I'm willing to wait and earn your trust. I didn't kill Lulu and I want to find her murderer as much as you do."

  Annabelle looked at Griffin. "Let's set up some ground rules."

  "All right," Griffin said then glanced at Quinn. He nod­ded.

  "First and foremost, Mr. Cortez and I share all the infor­mation," Annabelle said. "You will be working for both of us, so what you tell one of us, you tell both of us. No secrets. No hidden agenda." She glanced at Quinn. "And we share all the expenses, fifty-fifty. Are you in agreement, Mr. Cortez?"

  "Yes, I'm in agreement. And since we'll be working closely together, don't you think you should call me Quinn?"

  "If that's what you want." "It's what I want."