Arlene James - The Detective's Dilemma

Ty looked at Beth. “What about that? You know any reason Ms. Velasquez could be coerced to give testimony against you?”

“It could have to do with Frankie,” Beth suggested.

“Her son?” Jester clarified.

“Yes. I know Brandon helped him enter the country once after he’d been deported. I don’t know how Brandon worked it. I just know that Letitia was weeping and thanking him one day. Her English was all jumbled together with Spanish, but it was all about Frankie. I know that.”

“Okay. That’s where we’ll start then,” Ty said.

“Maybe I should go with you,” Beth suggested quickly. “My Spanish is pretty good, and—”

“No.” It was a flat refusal, no room for compromise, and it hit her as patently unfair. It was her neck in the noose, after all.

“But—”

“No,” he repeated. “Officially, you’re still a suspect. I can’t let you tag along on an investigation. Jester will take care of the Velasquez question.”

“What about you?” she demanded.

He slid his hands into his pants pockets. “I want to take a look at Brianne Dumont’s background.”

“She had some socially prominent friends,” Beth pointed out quickly. “I could—”

“No!” Ty reiterated strongly.

Beth felt like a little girl being scolded for requesting a cookie. She shot to her feet, arguing, “They won’t tell you anything. They’ll speak more readily to someone they know.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just that I know these people. I know how their minds work. They’ll talk to me.”

“But not me,” he said, “because I’m not one of the club.”

“They’ll talk to me because they know me,” she argued.

“You’re one of their own, you mean!” he accused, jerking his hands from his pockets to snap up the folder on the table.

Paul made a sound that told Beth she’d overstepped, but she wasn’t sure how exactly. She glanced in his direction, then back to Ty. “Well, yes, if you want to put it that way.”

A flash of temper lit those midnight eyes. The mask slipped away, revealing his disdain. “I may not get my name into the society pages, but I know what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. You’re misreading me completely.”

“Leave the detective work to the professionals, Ms. Maitland,” he snapped. “Social standing doesn’t figure into this in any way.”

“I never said it did.”

“No, but you meant it,” he told her, striding toward the door. He threw it open and slid a scathing look over one shoulder. “I know exactly what you said and exactly what you meant. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”

He was throwing her out. She considered, for a moment, digging in her heels, but a glance at Paul Jester told her that he wouldn’t recommend it. Another time then. Coolly, she snatched her purse and lifted her chin.

“I trust you’ll keep me informed, at least,” she said regally, sweeping toward the door.

“We’ll be in touch,” was the cool reply.

She meant to walk out without a backward glance, but she couldn’t do it, not after what had almost happened in this room only moments earlier. At the last second she stopped and turned, seeking his gaze with her own.

“Ty?” she said softly, imploringly.

For an instant, that icy disdain seemed to melt a little, but then he swept back the sides of his coat and parked his hands on his hips in a gesture of sheer implacability. “Go home, Ms. Maitland,” he ordered, “and let us do our jobs.”

Angrily, she whirled, fleeing a deep disappointment. But he was more than just wrong if he thought she was going to sit on her hands and wait for him to slowly dig up what she could uncover in a twinkle. It wasn’t the only thing about which Ty Redstone was wrong, but it was the one in which she was going to rub his handsome nose.

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