completely out of line. She was the victim’s sister and his father’s assistant, nothing else.
At least, not right now.
Logan caught himself hoping that there would be a later.
Destiny heard the detective’s voice as if it had originated in an echo chamber. It sounded as if it was coming at her from a great distance.
She blinked, forcing herself to stay focused. If she let her mind wander, she wouldn’t make it out of this room without coming apart. She’d already cried once. That was all she could afford to grieve. She had work to do.
“Yes, it’s my number. I called her back almost immediately after she sent the message, but she didn’t pick up.” She pressed her lips together, taking a breath before continuing. Her voice sounded strained. “I’d been calling her all day without a response, so I got worried.”
“Why?” Logan asked. “Was she unstable? Were you afraid that she was likely to harm herself?”
Destiny stared at him. What was he talking about? He didn’t know Paula. He had no right to his assumptions. She took offense at the implication behind his questions.
“I got worried because I’m her sister,” she retorted angrily. “Because Paula normally keeps in touch. And she doesn’t send short text messages.” The three-word text was out of character for Paula. “She goes on and on, whether it’s a phone call, a text or in person. My sister is—was,” she corrected herself painfully, “not a person of a few words. She never said anything in three words that she could say in forty.”
He thought of pointing out that distraught people, especially people about to commit suicide, didn’t always conform to their normal behavior, but he had a feeling she wasn’t in the mood to be contradicted.
Instead, he focused on another piece of the puzzle. “Who’s this ‘him’ she’s referring to?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Destiny took a deep breath, angry with herself for not having pushed when Paula had opted to keep the man’s name a secret. If she’d badgered Paula enough, she knew Paula would have finally caved in. Why hadn’t she pushed? Why had she just elected to respect her sister’s boundaries? At the very least, this mystery man of Paula’s could give them insight to her frame of mind the last time he saw her as he left.
If he’d left her, Destiny amended, ruling out nothing.
“You don’t know?” Logan echoed, more than mildly surprised. “Then you two weren’t close?” That was the only conclusion he could draw.
“No, we were,” Destiny insisted. “Very close.” They had been that way once and they had gotten that way again just in the past couple of years.
“Then why don’t you know the name of the guy your sister was seeing?”
Because I’m an idiot.
“Paula was a little superstitious. She said she didn’t want to jinx the relationship by saying anything about it too soon.”
God, that sounded so lame, so childish now that she said it out loud, Destiny thought, on the edge of exasperated despair. Why hadn’t she pushed? Insisted? Maybe if she’d known more of the details, she could have somehow prevented this. Even though she didn’t believe in her heart of hearts that her sister had done this, had committed suicide, a tiny part of her was afraid she had.
“All she’d tell me was that he was someone ‘important.’ And, that for now, he wanted to keep their relationship ‘special’ by keeping it out of the public eye. Apparently, I was part of the public eye,” Destiny said with barely controlled frustration.
Most likely, the guy was married, Logan thought, and when he’d decided to go back to his wife, the victim had killed herself.
“And you don’t think that this is a suicide?” Logan asked again. It was obvious from his tone that he felt that the evidence they’d reviewed so far clearly pointed in that direction.
“No,” Destiny said with feeling. “If this ‘important’ bastard had left her, she wouldn’t have killed herself. Paula was the type to have gone upside his head, to have raised a stink, not taken the breakup docilely, given up all hope and killed herself.” She raised her chin defiantly as she added, “I know my sister. That’s just not like her.”
Did anyone really know anyone else? Logan wondered. Of late, since the big revelation that had jolted his family down to their roots, he’d faced that question more than once.
“That’s what you think,” Logan pointed out. And, as far as he was concerned, there was an entire world of difference between prejudiced perception and actual fact.
“No,” Destiny said flatly. “That’s what I know. My sister believed in revenge,” she was quick to add, seeing the suspicious light coming into the detective’s all-but-magnetic green eyes. “And by that, I mean she would have dolled herself up, found the first good-looking male she could and deliberately shown up somewhere where she knew that ‘Mr. Special’ would most likely be. Then she would have flaunted the fact that she was having an exceptionally good time with someone new and gorgeous. Paula was not the kind to just give up,” she insisted. “She was stubborn that way.”
How long was it going to take to get used to referring to Paula in the past tense? Destiny wondered, her heart aching in her chest.
“I take it stubbornness runs in the family?” Logan surmised, watching her. There was just a hint of an appreciative smile on his lips.
Her blue eyes narrowed into slits. “Damn straight it does.”
“You might be right,” Sean interjected as if there was no other conversation taking place. Having completed his preliminary examination of the dead woman, he straightened up.
“About which part?” Logan asked, just taking it for granted that his father was talking to him and not to the sexy, headstrong woman before him.
Instead of answering his son immediately, Sean focused his attention on the person in the room who needed him the most.
“Was your sister right-handed?” he asked Destiny.
She shook her head. “No, Paula was left-handed. Why?” Had he found something to substantiate her gut feeling that her sister hadn’t taken her own life? Without realizing it, Destiny began to pray.
“Just trying to get my facts straight,” Sean said thoughtfully, never one to give away anything too soon. Pausing a moment longer, he then said, “I don’t believe she killed herself.”
Yes!
The relief that flooded through her limbs just about took Destiny’s breath away. At least she wasn’t going to have to fight everyone tooth and nail about this. If the head of the crime lab backed her up, the battle over that at least was over. Now the major one began: finding Paula’s killer.
“Thank you,” she said to Sean. The words came out on a nearly breathless sigh.
While he knew that his father wouldn’t just say something like that to put his assistant at ease, Logan still wanted proof.
“What makes you say that?” he asked his father.
“When a person slashes their wrists, depending on whether they’re right-handed or left-handed, the cut is deeper on the opposite wrist since they’re using their good hand.”
If the person followed regular procedure, Logan thought. Maybe this one hadn’t. “She might have slashed her right wrist first,” Logan suggested. “That would have made her right hand weaker when she was delivering the final cut.”
“True,” Sean allowed.
Concerned, Destiny immediately asked, “Then you’re changing your mind?”
Again,