Same Place, Same Time Read online

  Courteous, courageous and commanding—these heroes lay it all on the line for the people they love in more than fifty stories about loyalty, bravery and romance. Don’t miss a single one!

  AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2010

  A Vow to Love by Sherryl Woods

  Serious Risks by Rachel Lee

  Who Do You Love? by Maggie Shayne and Marilyn Pappano

  Dear Maggie by Brenda Novak

  A Randall Returns by Judy Christenberry

  Informed Risk by Robyn Carr

  Five-Alarm Affair by Marie Ferrarella

  AVAILABLE MARCH 2010

  The Man from Texas by Rebecca York

  Mistaken Identity by Merline Lovelace

  Bad Moon Rising by Kathleen Eagle

  Moriah’s Mutiny by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Have Gown, Need Groom by Rita Herron

  Heart of the Tiger by Lindsay McKenna

  AVAILABLE APRIL 2010

  Landry’s Law by Kelsey Roberts

  Love at First Sight by B.J. Daniels

  The Sheriff of Shelter Valley by Tara Taylor Quinn

  A Match for Celia by Gina Wilkins

  That’s Our Baby! by Pamela Browning

  Baby, Our Baby! by Patricia Thayer

  AVAILABLE MAY 2010

  Special Assignment: Baby by Debra Webb

  My Baby, My Love by Dani Sinclair

  The Sheriff’s Proposal by Karen Rose Smith

  The Marriage Conspiracy by Christine Rimmer

  The Woman for Dusty Conrad by Tori Carrington

  The White Night by Stella Bagwell

  Code Name: Prince by Valerie Parv

  AVAILABLE JUNE 2010

  Same Place, Same Time by C.J. Carmichael

  One Last Chance by Justine Davis

  By Leaps and Bounds by Jacqueline Diamond

  Too Many Brothers by Roz Denny Fox

  Secretly Married by Allison Leigh

  Strangers When We Meet by Rebecca Winters

  AVAILABLE JULY 2010

  Babe in the Woods by Caroline Burnes

  Serving Up Trouble by Jill Shalvis

  Deputy Daddy by Carla Cassidy

  The Major and the Librarian by Nikki Benjamin

  A Family Man by Mindy Neff

  The President’s Daughter by Annette Broadrick

  Return to Tomorrow by Marisa Carroll

  AVAILABLE AUGUST 2010

  Remember My Touch by Gayle Wilson

  Return of the Lawman by Lisa Childs

  If You Don’t Know by Now by Teresa Southwick

  Surprise Inheritance by Charlotte Douglas

  Snowbound Bride by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  The Good Daughter by Jean Brashear

  AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010

  The Hero’s Son by Amanda Stevens

  Secret Witness by Jessica Andersen

  On Pins and Needles by Victoria Pade

  Daddy in Dress Blues by Cathie Linz

  AKA: Marriage by Jule McBride

  Pregnant and Protected by Lilian Darcy

  C.J. CARMICHAEL

  SAME PLACE, SAME TIME

  C.J. CARMICHAEL

  Hard to imagine a more glamorous life than being an accountant, isn’t it? Still, C.J. Carmichael gave up the thrills of income tax forms and double-entry bookkeeping when she sold her first book in 1998. She has now written more than twenty-eight novels for Harlequin Books, and invites you to learn more about her books, see photos of her hiking exploits and enter her surprise contests at www.cjcarmichael.com.

  For my husband, Michael, with thanks and love.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PROLOGUE

  “EXCUSE ME,” she called to the desk clerk. He’d watched her walk in the motel entrance, but hadn’t stirred from his chair by the television screen. “My husband’s locked us out of our room. Number 14.”

  The clerk had colorless hair and skin, and a long lean body that looked as though it might snap in half if he moved too quickly. There seemed to be no danger, however, of that happening. He unfolded himself and stepped slowly to the counter, his pigment-free eyes fixed on the buttons of her trench coat.

  “Your husband, hey?”

  He was leering, the pervert. Would he think it was so funny if he knew what she had in her pocket? Wouldn’t it be fun to show him… But she had to play this cool.

  “That’s right. My husband. John Doe.” She forced herself to smile, then held out a gloved hand. Was it her imagination or did he pause before dropping the large brass key into the cup of her leather-clad palm?

  Perhaps he thought it strange that she was wearing gloves in May. But the air was cool today, reminiscent of the cold winter Toronto had endured this year. She felt his gaze between her shoulder blades as she turned to leave, and it was a relief when the door finally closed behind her.

  There. That had gone well enough. Now she felt a calm sense of inevitability. The pangs of nervousness and anxiety she’d suffered last night were gone. She dug her right hand into the pocket of her coat and gripped her gun reassuringly. Mentally, she reviewed the remaining steps of her plan. The worst was almost over.

  Room 14 was located conveniently at the end of the motel, down a long concrete walkway and as far from the office as possible. Traffic on the Gardiner Expressway was loud and constant. The perfect backdrop for murder.

  At the door, she paused. There was no one else around. No sounds other than engines and the incessant rumbling of wheels over concrete and asphalt.

  The key slid easily into the doorknob. As she twisted, a tantalizing cooking odor seeped out the crack around the door. What in the world…?

  She held her ear to the small space between door and frame and thought she heard singing. A man’s voice, attempting opera. Clearly the song was coming from another room.

  With her gloved hand she pushed on the knob and slipped into the room, closing the door behind her. She walked around the king-size bed, where a red rose lay on one of the white pillows. Such a romantic touch.

  The sleeping quarters were separated from a kitchenette by a ceiling-hung set of cupboards and a long, waist-high counter. Between the two, she could see the midsection of a man. His clear, tenor voice worked its way to the climax of “The Music of the Night” from The Phantom of the Opera.

  She stepped forward cautiously. Her gun was ready and so was she.

  A creaking hollow in the linoleum gave her away as she stepped off the carpet into the kitchenette. The man turned, obviously expecting someone, but his smile of welcome slipped down from the corners of his mouth as he stared at the barrel of the gun pointed at his chest. He stiffened and stepped backward, pressing against the metal edge of the stove where the contents of a large iron pot boiled. It was tomato sauce, she saw now.

  “What are you doing with that gun? What do you want?”

  Dispassionately, she watched the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed once, then again.

  Calmly she uttered five carefully chosen words.

  His eyes widened. Good. It was important that he understand why this was happening. She pulled the trigger.

  He jerked backward with the impact of the bullet, knocking th
e pot of tomato sauce over on its side. Then his body slowly slid down and forward, until he collapsed on the floor. Sauce from the overturned pot poured unchecked off the stove, landing precisely on the small balding area at the back of his head. There was no reaction from him as the scalding hot sauce hit his bare skin.

  She allowed herself a slight smile. It had gone according to plan.

  Jerry Walker was dead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “SOMETIMES I FEEL like taking that gun out of his night table and shooting the television! Right in the middle of Star Trek!”

  Chartered psychologist Trista Emerson pressed the stop button on the tape recorder, cutting off Nan Walker’s explosion of rage toward her husband, Jerry. It marked the first time Nan had been anything but meek and agreeable, and Trista had taken it as a very good step forward. But now Jerry and Nan had missed their four o’clock appointment and Trista didn’t know what to think.

  The Walkers were relatively new clients, part of a recent trend that she’d been trying to avoid.

  Marriage counseling.

  Trista preferred individual therapy, but often it was impossible to separate the two. A client might come to her initially because of personal problems. If that client was married, however, often the problems spilled out into the relationship.

  When that happened, she was honest about her own history.

  “I have training and counseling experience in this area. But you should know that my own marriage ended in divorce.”

  For some reason that knowledge turned very few of them away.

  “Your own trauma has made you wiser, more sympathetic,” a trusted colleague had told her—a man she’d gone to for therapy following the breakup of her marriage.

  Certainly the results she’d seen in her practice gave testimony to his opinion.

  But sometimes, she wondered. Was she the best person to advise these people? Like Nan and Jerry Walker. She’d been seeing them for a couple of weeks now, and she was determined to do her utmost to help them in the one-month trial period they’d all agreed upon. But it wasn’t a good sign that they’d missed this session.

  Trista put the Walkers’ file in her out basket for her secretary, Brenda, to file later. She might as well go home—theirs had been her last appointment of the day. But she didn’t want to leave her office. She never did.

  For three years now, since her separation and divorce, she’d been alone, and she still couldn’t get used to facing an empty apartment at the end of each day. Not that it had been any better than the last year of her marriage. Neither counseling nor time seemed to lessen the pain of her losses, the memories hanging like dark storm clouds on the horizon of her mind. The past. Her present. The eternity of a future that stretched unendingly before her.

  When she concentrated on the problems of others, her malaise lifted. Her work, in this way, had become her salvation.

  After work—that was the problem.

  Expelling a breath, Trista stood up from behind her desk and walked over to the window. Her office building was located just south of King Street, and her suite on the south side of the top floor had a nice view of Lake Ontario. Usually the sky was hazy, and the lake broody and gray.

  But today the spring sun shone, and the water sparkled, blue and inviting. A deceptive appearance, for in fact Lake Ontario was so polluted that swimming was considered dangerous.

  “GOOD GOD.” Detective Morgan Forester considered himself a hardened cop, but he wasn’t prepared for the sight that met his eyes as he stepped inside the motel room at five-thirty Tuesday afternoon.

  The deceased, a large man in his late forties, sat on the kitchen floor by the front of the stove. Thick lumps of meat and tomato sauce covered his head, and had dripped down over his shirt, merging with the dark red stain marking the bullet wound in his chest. The sauce and the clotting blood had congealed into a thick red pool around the body.

  Adding to the scene’s repugnance was the smell. Although the body had only been there for about twenty-four hours, the scent of death in the room was unmistakable. That, combined with the cloying odor of the day-old tomato sauce, was lethal. Morgan shook his head, feeling damn weary of his job.

  “Any fingerprints?” He turned away from the body and walked over to the table where Kendal, one of the I-dent officers, was finishing up his work.

  “Some. But they’re probably the maid’s and the deceased’s. I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  Morgan raised his eyebrows. “I never get my hopes up. I suppose you guys have already talked to the desk clerk who was on duty?”

  “We have. A Mr. Kyle Litherman. He says that at about twenty past one yesterday afternoon, a woman wearing a tan trench coat, leather gloves, hat and sunglasses walked into his office. He didn’t notice a car, figures she probably took a cab. They usually do. Who wants to risk having their vehicle identified in a motel parking lot in the middle of the day?

  “Anyway, the woman told him she and her husband were locked out of room 14. He gave her the key and says he didn’t notice anything unusual after that. Which isn’t surprising, given how far this room is from the office and the proximity of the expressway.”

  He rolled his eyes, indicating the traffic noise which was clearly audible even with the exterior door closed.

  “You questioned the other motel occupants?”

  “Yup. No one heard a thing.”

  “Of course not.” Even if they had, Morgan doubted they’d be willing to cooperate, on the same principle Kendal had just stated. Who’d want to admit to being in this motel on a weekday afternoon? “So, are you guys finished here?”

  “Just about. We’ve taken the photos. We just need to bag the rest of this stuff and send off the body, but we knew you’d want to see everything first.”

  Morgan gave a short nod of approval. “What about time of death? Does the coroner’s estimate coincide with the timing of the woman asking for the room key?”

  “Yes.”

  “She sounds like the one we want, all right. Now tell me about the deceased.”

  The officer flipped open a notepad and began reading from his notes. “The guy’s name was Jerry Walker, although he booked into the room as John Doe. He runs a chain of five hardware stores, with a main office on Queen Street. We talked to his wife this morning.”

  Morgan shook his head. Arriving late on the scene like this—it was far from ideal. He’d received the call from Inspector Zarowin around eleven, but he’d been out of town tying up loose ends from a previous case. Fortunately the crew on the Identification Unit knew what they were doing.

  “Who found the body?” He stretched his shoulders, fighting the ache from his six-hour drive. No sense thinking about how tired he was. The day that had begun at six that morning would doubtlessly be continuing far into the night as well.

  “The maid. She was doing her rounds and reached this room at about 10:00 a.m.”

  “And how did Mrs. Walker take the news?”

  “She broke down. We couldn’t get much out of her, but she did say her husband wasn’t in the habit of spending nights away from home, and she’d been worried sick.”

  Morgan looked around the motel room as he listened, rubbing his hand over the stubble on his chin, wishing he’d had time to shave that morning. As he scanned the room, he took in details without conscious effort.

  The table was set with flowers and candles. A bottle of red wine sat open beside two clean wineglasses. He picked up one of the white plates from the table and fingered a chip, barely visible to the human eye.

  “The dishes are from the kitchenette,” the I-dent officer told him. “Walker must have brought the candles, flowers and wineglasses himself.”

  Morgan’s eyes settled on a rose that had been placed on the untouched bed. “He went to a lot of trouble here. What did you find in his pockets?”

  “Wallet, with a hundred and sixty dollars, and identification. Some matches, a couple of condoms—pretty optimistic for an older guy.” He p
ointed to the items, already packed away in a plastic bag on the table.

  Morgan ignored the attempt at humor. He wondered about the woman this guy had been waiting for. She must have been something special to warrant all this effort.

  “Well, pack it up. I’ve seen enough.” He nodded to the other officers, then turned on his heel and left the room. Back outdoors, he took a deep, reviving breath of fresh air. He hadn’t eaten in over eight hours, but he no longer felt hungry. And it would be a long time before he’d be able to face a dish of spaghetti again.

  TRISTA’S FINGERS paused over her computer keyboard, the phrase she’d been about to write slipping out of her mind.

  She’d heard something. Hadn’t she? She listened for several seconds, but all was silent. Her gaze slid to the clock on the edge of her desk and she was surprised to see that it was already past nine.

  The building was probably all but deserted by now. Maybe she’d heard the security guard making his rounds.

  She finished her sentence then saved the document. That was enough for one day. If she went home now she’d have just enough time to eat dinner and watch a program on television before going to bed.

  Scooping up the day’s tapes from her desk, she headed for the reception area out front where she dumped them into Brenda’s in box to be transcribed tomorrow. She was about to return to her office for her jacket and briefcase when she heard something that sounded like a chair leg scraping against the floor. The sound had come from the direction of the file room.

  Trista stared at the closed door. Was someone in there? The idea of an intruder was ludicrous—the only money in the place was a fifty-dollar petty cash fund that Brenda kept locked in her top drawer—but she was reluctant to open the door and check.

  If someone was there, the last thing she wanted to do was surprise him. Trista backtracked to her office and shut the door with a loud bang, and locked it behind her.

  She could have sworn she heard the sound of another door opening, then footsteps. Picking up the phone, she called building security. Joe Wilkins answered immediately.