The Silent Widow

The detective she’d spoken to earlier had been handsome and charming and as biddable as a puppy. So easy! The LAPD didn’t make them like they used to. Talking to him, and outsmarting him, had felt exciting. Even more so when he’d brought up the subject of Brandon Grolsch.

Ah. Brandon.

If she closed her eyes, Valentina could practically feel his strong, young body pressing down on hers. The firmness of his skin, the confidence of his touch. Such a beautiful boy he’d been back then. What a waste!

Walking back into her suite, Valentina Baden stripped off and stepped into the shower, allowing her own hands to play the part of Brandon’s, losing herself in the fantasy.

She had a lot to do, tonight and in the days to come. But it could wait.

It could all wait.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘So where is he, then? This kid in the red car, who supposedly witnessed everything?’

A small muscle was jumping beneath the sagging skin on Detective Mick Johnson’s neck. Leaning across the desk in the interview room, the same room Nikki had been in the last time she spoke to the police, he thrust his face belligerently towards her, like an angry toad about to spew venom.

‘I don’t know where he is,’ Nikki explained again wearily. ‘I gave you the number he gave me.’

‘Which doesn’t work.’

‘Look, he didn’t “supposedly” witness anything, OK?’ Nikki was angry. ‘He was there. He saw this guy try to mow me down like a damn bowling pin. He saved my life.’

Anger suits her, Lou Goodman thought admiringly, watching Nikki Roberts cross her slender legs and narrow her intelligent almond eyes to slits as she glared back at his partner. Like a beautiful, exotic cobra, ready to strike. And God knew Johnson deserved to get bitten. Despite his promise to keep an open mind, he’d behaved like a total asshole ever since Nikki walked into the room. She’d come to give a more detailed statement about the attack she’d reported the previous day, an attempt on her life, right outside her home. But Mick had been nothing but hostile. This despite the fact that forensics had been up to the Roberts residence yesterday, so he knew full well that skid marks on the road, as well as a large hole in the neighbors’ hedge, bore out Nikki’s version of events. There had definitely been two cars, both definitely traveling at speed, and neither of them had been Nikki’s Mercedes X-Class. Flecks of red paintwork had been retrieved from the shrubbery, bearing out her claims about the color of the witness’s car. Mick’s ‘disbelief’ was nothing but pure pig-headedness and a determination to cast Nikki as a perpetrator, not a victim.

He yawned rudely at her now. ‘So you took down the wrong number. But you never thought to get this guy’s name? Or his license plate?’

&

nbsp; ‘I was in shock,’ Nikki said, through gritted teeth. ‘Someone had just tried to crush me to death, Detective, and they damn nearly succeeded.’ She rubbed her eyes like a tired child. ‘My patient is dead. My assistant is dead. I have other patients in fear for their safety, for their lives. You’re the one who insisted that I’m the link between these murders. And it looks like you were right, because now it appears some maniac is trying to kill me too. So you’ll have to forgive me if I wasn’t at my most clear-headed.’

Johnson gave her a withering look. ‘I’ll tell you what I think, Doctor. I think you made this whole thing up. The SUV, the witness, the race-car driver. It’s all an invention.’

‘What?’ Nikki looked at him, incredulous.

‘Your husband’s gone,’ Johnson went on. ‘You’re all alone. No one’s paying you any attention. So you dream up someone else, some knight in shining armor to come and rescue you. You invent some spurious attack, and then you sit here and tell us all about this handsome stranger, who can validate your story except … oh no!… you happened to take down his number wrong.’

Nikki turned to Goodman. ‘Your partner appears to have lost his mind.’

Goodman, who wholeheartedly agreed, glared at Johnson.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Roberts,’ he began, but Johnson cut him off.

‘Don’t apologize to her!’ he shouted, banging his fist on the table. ‘If anybody’s crazy here, it sure as hell ain’t me. I mean, come on. A mysterious truck. Blacked-out windows. No plates. No injuries. No witnesses. It’s like something out of a bad late-night movie, Dr Roberts. One that casts you very firmly as the victim. Surprise, surprise.’

Nikki stood up. Smoothing down her pencil skirt in a dignified manner, she turned away from Mick Johnson and addressed herself only to Goodman.

‘Please let me know if you make any progress, Detective. In the meantime, I’m going home. I’m afraid I don’t have time for your friend’s bullshit armchair psychology, or for his puerile insults. Good day.’

She really is magnificent when she’s pissed, Goodman thought, watching Nikki strut out of the room, her stiletto heels clacking briskly on the linoleum floor as she walked.

‘“Puerile”!’ He smirked patronizingly at Johnson. ‘You’ll have to look that one up, Mick, eh?’

‘She’s a bitch,’ Johnson grunted, unamused. ‘A bitch and a liar, wasting our time.’

Goodman stood up, exasperated. ‘What is going on with you and this woman? What happened to “open minds”?’

‘She happened,’ Johnson snapped. ‘I’m only calling it like I see it. I don’t believe anyone tried to kill her. I think she’s a fantasist.’