Chapter Eleven
Clearly, Owen hadn’t been expecting Harley to say what he’d just said. Declan could see the surprise on his boss’ face. He hadn’t seen this info coming either, and Declan looked at Cully to get her take on this.
Cully shook her head. “I’d never heard that. Never suspected it. And I don’t believe it.”
Declan didn’t want to believe it either. It wasn’t just the age difference with Brandon being eighteen and Renee in her late thirties. It was the whole ick factor of Renee screwing around with the boy that been in her daughter’s circle of close friends. The boy that her daughter had perhaps loved and eloped with.
But then Declan remembered something and mentally cursed.
Renee had come onto him once during his senior year of high school. She’d groped his ass, and he’d been old enough to see the invitation in her lust-filled eyes. Drunk eyes, too. And that’s why Declan had blown the whole thing off as a one-time mistake.
But maybe the mistake had been repeated.
“What made Alice believe that Renee and Brandon were lovers?” Owen continued.
“She said she saw them together. Just a glimpse. And that they were kissing.” Harley stopped, huffed. “Look, that happened at a party outside the gym at the high school. Alice was a chaperone, and she stepped out for a moment and spotted them. It was dark so she might not have seen what she thought she did.”
“Well, my mom had been convinced enough of it to mention it to Harley,” Cully muttered, and she looked at Declan again.
And this time, she must have seen something that had her cursing.
“The affair’s true?” she demanded.
He had to shake his head. “If Brandon was dicking around with Renee, he never mentioned it to me. But Renee sent me a signal once that she might be interested in having sex with me. I turned her down,” he added.
“Shit,” Cully spat out. “Brandon was having sex with both Jessica and her mom, and I was clueless.”
“ Maybe he was having sex with Jessica,” Declan had to remind Cully. “The whole elopement story could be false, something constructed by the killer to cover up their disappearances and murders. And maybe Renee was having sex with Brandon. We don’t have any proof, and I certainly don’t remember any gossip about that.”
And he would have definitely recalled hearing talk like that.
Declan saw the shock and anger slowly dissolve from Cully’s eyes. “You’re right,” she murmured.
“Will you get off Alice’s back now?” Harley asked Owen, pulling their attention back to the interview room.
“I’ll have to speak to Alice, no way around that, but I promise I’ll do it as carefully as I can,” Owen assured him. “In fact, I’ll bring in an expert who knows how to deal with this sort of thing. In the meantime, I don’t want you doling out any more bogus confessions to protect Alice.”
Harley nodded and stood when Owen did.
“And FYI, you’re a person of interest in these murders, too,” Owen stated. “You’ve got means, motive, and opportunity as well.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Harley insisted.
Owen stared at him for several moments and then motioned toward the door. “You’re free to go.”
Harley wasted no time getting out of there, and Owen followed him out of interview and came into observation. Owen took one look at them and shook his head.
“I’m guessing none of you had heard about this so-called affair between Brandon and Jessica?” Owen asked.
They all agreed that they hadn’t, causing Owen to nod, and he followed it up with a sigh. “All right then, I’ll ask Renee about it.” He shifted his attention to Shaw. “Could you try to get some info from the fire department? I need to know if they’ve found anything in the rubble.”
“Will do,” Shaw assured him, and he stepped out the room, already taking his phone from his pocket.
Owen used the laptop to switch the camera to the interview room with Renee and her lawyer. “You can switch on the audio once I’m in there with them,” he instructed Declan and Cully, and he left as well.
Declan wanted a quiet moment with Cully, to ask how she was truly doing. She’d been bombarded with one shock after another, and he wasn’t sure how she was mentally holding up. But Owen wasted no time going into interview, which meant Declan had to tune into what was about to be said.
Owen sat at the table, and as he’d done with Harley, he recited all the pertinent info needed for the recording.
“My client would like me to read a statement,” the lawyer piped up the moment Owen had finished.
“Go on,” Owen invited.
Crowder picked up a notepad from the table. “My client, Renee Logan, would like to make it clear that she didn’t start a fire at the old Kincade house, nor has she murdered anyone, including her daughter.”
The lawyer’s voice had a definitely Are we done here ? tone to it.
Owen didn’t address the statement at all. He went straight to the big question. “Renee, did you have an affair with Brandon Ruis?”
The woman had several seconds of stunned silence and then she gasped. “No. Absolutely not. I would never do something like that.”
“I have a witness who saw you kiss Brandon,” Owen pressed.
That brought on another gasp. “Maybe a motherly kiss. But definitely nothing sexual. My God. He was a teenager.”
Owen didn’t take his hard stare off Renee. “I also understand you behaved inappropriately with another teenage boy.”
Renee jumped to her feet so fast that her chair fell backward, smacking with a long clang onto the floor. “I did not. Who said these lies about me?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. She whirled around to face her lawyer. “Sue the people who said that about me. It’s slander, right? It’s a barrel of horseshit lies. And I want whoever accused me of it to be punished.”
The words had practically flown out of her mouth, but soon the only sound she was making were hoarse sobs. She began to cry, staggering away from the table and landing hard against the wall.
“Renee,” her lawyer said. He took hold of her arm, trying to soothe her.
But she would have no part of that. Renee slung off this grip with far more force than necessary. “I didn’t have an affair with Brandon!” she shouted. “I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!”
Crowder took hold of her again and tried to have her sit in his chair. This time, Renee shoved up, and she began screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Obviously, this interview needs to be terminated,” the lawyer insisted.
“Interview paused,” Owen said for the sake of the recording.
He stood, no doubt waiting for Renee to settle. But that wasn’t happening. She continued to scream and claw at her lawyer until Owen swooped in to help restrain her.
“It was Declan who told you these lies, wasn’t it?” Renee wailed on. “And Cully. They both hate me. Well, I hate them, too. I wish they were dead like my little girl. Cully should be in that wall, not Jessica.”
“Renee,” her lawyer said, getting right in her face. “You need to calm down and quit talking.”
“I need a gun,” she shouted, fighting both Harris and Owen.
Declan was about to go in to help, but Renee stopped and finally dropped down into the chair. Her breathing was way too fast, and Declan was pretty sure she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Maybe an act. But if so, it was a damn good one.
“My client needs to go to the hospital,” the lawyer insisted.
Owen didn’t argue or hesitate. He took out his phone and requested an ambulance. Even if this was a pretense on Renee’s part, at this point she’d need to be medically cleared before the interview could continue.
“What the hell’s going on in there?” Declan heard someone shout.
Roscoe.
Declan opened the door to observation and saw Roscoe now in the hall standing outside his wife’s interview room. Owen came out as well. However, Crowder spoke before Owen could say anything.
“Renee’s going to the hospital,” the lawyer called out to Roscoe. “She’s having some kind of breakdown.”
Despite the earlier argument he’d had with his wife, that put some concern on Roscoe’s face, and he peered over Owen’s shoulder into the interview room.
“What happened?” Roscoe demanded.
“The sheriff accused Renee of having an affair with Brandon,” Crowder was quick to say.
Scowling, Owen reached behind him and shut the door, muffling whatever else the lawyer was saying.
“An affair with Brandon?” Roscoe questioned, and then he laughed. “Not a chance. I’d know if my own wife was cheating.”
Maybe. Or maybe Renee had just hidden it well. Not well enough though from Alice since she’d witnessed that kiss.
“Go back to interview,” Owen told Roscoe. “I’ll be in after I get a search warrant for your house.”
That stopped the amusement on Roscoe’s face. “What the hell do you expect to find? A smoking gun? Used condoms with my wife’s and Brandon’s DNA?” He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Look, but you won’t find anything.”
With that, Roscoe walked away and returned to the interview room.
Owen stood there a moment, gathering his breath before he shifted his attention to Declan and now Cully, who had moved next to him. “Wait here until the EMTs get here for Renee. I’ll get started on that search warrant. And arranging that expert for your mom. Cully, I’m going to have to bring Alice in for an official interview.”
Cully nodded. “I understand,” she muttered.
Declan knew she did indeed understand the necessity of getting a formal statement from Alice. But that didn’t make it easy for her.
When Owen went toward his office, Declan took hold of Cully and eased her back into observation. It wasn’t exactly private since someone could come walking by at any moment, but he wanted to give her a moment to try to settle. Hell, he needed a moment, too.
“I don’t know what’s true,” she said, the frustration causing her voice to crack. “I don’t know what to believe. But I can’t think of my mother being a killer.”
“Same,” he agreed.
It was a risk. Touching Cully always was. But Declan pulled her into his arms anyway. He expected her to tense, maybe even back away.
She didn’t.
Cully slid into place right against him, burying her face against his neck. She stayed there a moment before she slowly lifted her head and looked at him.
Hell.
He was toast.
Just being with her like this put some serious dents in that armor he’d erected between them. Armor, he realized, that he no longer wanted.
Declan went with another mistake, that didn’t feel like a mistake at all, and he touched his mouth to hers. Barely a kiss. But it was one. Mercy, was it. And it quickly turned into something much, much more.
Her mouth came to his. Not a touch. Not this. It was full-on. Hot, hungry, and filled with way too much need.
Especially considering where they were.
That didn’t stop them though. Nope. The kiss raged on, going deep until the taste of her was knifing through him. Until her body was pressed against his.
The memories came. Damn good ones. Of when kisses like this had landed them in bed. When the pleasure had overridden everything, including common sense.
Like now.
Declan suddenly wanted much more than this kiss. He wanted all of Cully. And that couldn’t happen. He had to repeat that a couple of times to himself before it finally sunk in, and even then he still might not have moved away from her had her phone not rung.
She stepped back from him, clearly jarred by how fast the heat and need had soared between them, and she fumbled for her phone.
“It’s my mother,” she said when she saw the screen, and in a blink the arousal left her face, replaced by some alarm. “Mom,” she answered.
Cully didn’t put the call on speaker, but Declan watched as that alarm grew by leaps and bounds. “What? He called you?”
Shit. This couldn’t be good, and he thought of maybe Renee’s attorney phoning Alice to harass her if Renee had told him that Alice had been the one who’d witnessed her kissing Brandon.
“Hold on a second,” Cully instructed her mom, and then she went to the table to grab a pen and some paper. She jotted down a number. “Did he say anything else?” Cully pressed.
Again, Declan couldn’t hear Alice’s response, but whatever it was, it didn’t please Cully.
“All right,” Cully said. “I’ll call you back when I know something.”
“What happened?” Declan asked the moment she ended the call.
“Noah Kincade just phoned my mom,” she explained.
“Noah?” he repeated. “Well, I guess he’s alive then. Is she sure it was actually him?”
“She said it sounded like Noah. But I guess we’ll soon find out for sure.” Cully held up the note she’d written. “Because that’s apparently his number, and Noah wants to talk to me right away. He says he can help us ID the killer.”