Stay Dead by Anne Frasier Page B

plantation, and dusk was coming on. All Elise wanted to do was go to bed. Instead, she crutched her way to the couch and lay down, all the while trying to move like someone who wasn’t in extreme pain.
    David picked up a pillow and tucked it behind her head. They’d already had another tedious argument about her staying at the plantation, and Elise convinced him that she had no plans to stroll around the pool again. But she did have other plans.
    “I want to go to his house,” Elise said, looking up at him.
    “Whose house?” David’s hands stopped fluffing another pillow, and his breath caught as he waited for her reply.
    “You know who.” Tremain’s.
    “Elise . . . ”
    “Is it still a crime scene?”
    “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
    “Find out.”
    David carefully lifted her leg and slid the pillow under her ankle. “This is a bad idea.”
    Elise started thinking maybe she could get used to being waited on by the one guy she spent her days bickering with. There was something extremely satisfying about it.
    “What if you missed something?” Her ankle was killing her, but the soft pillow helped.
    “I’ll give it another pass. Just me.”
    “I’m coming too.”
    “Not with me you aren’t.”
    “Then by myself.”
    “How?”
    “I’ll break in if I have to.”
    He knew she wasn’t exaggerating. She’d do it. With or without his help. With his help, he could get a key. Get permission. Without his help, she could end up getting arrested and lose her job.
    “I won’t fall apart,” she promised.
    “Never said you would.”
    “But you’re thinking it. Right? You’re thinking it.”
    “You don’t have to be tough. You don’t have to always be strong.”
    She was thinking of a time long before they’d known each other when David hadn’t been so strong. When he’d shattered. Yes, they couldn’t always be strong.
    “Clues,” she said. “That’s all I’m after. I’m not going back there to relive anything. I don’t care about that. I’m past that,” she lied. “I’m a detective looking for information. That’s all. And I’m going to investigate with or without your help.”
    “I can’t win here, can I?”
    “No.”
    “You’re in pain.”
    “I was trying to hide it, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job.”
    “The casual observer wouldn’t have noticed.”
    He handed her a pill and a glass of water.
    She didn’t argue. She already knew pain interfered with healing, and she needed to heal.
    While they ate the pizza they’d picked up from Vinnie Van Go-Go’s, they discussed the newest murder. And Elise voiced her biggest concern, one she’d originally thought to keep to herself: “Maybe Tremain wasn’t working alone.”
    David looked up from his seat on the other side of the wide coffee table, pizza forgotten.
    “Which is why I want to visit Tremain’s house,” Elise said. “I doubt people were combing it very thoroughly back when we all thought the case was closed and Tremain wouldn’t live.”
    “The Kingfield murder doesn’t really fit Tremain’s MO.” David got to his feet and began cleaning up. With a gesture, he asked if she was done with her plate. She nodded, and he carried it to the sink and began running water. Earlier, he’d kicked off his shoes, untucked his white dress shirt, and rolled up his sleeves a few turns.
    “There are a couple of tangelos in the refrigerator,” Elise told him.
    He looked and shook his head. “No tangelos.”
    “Yes, there are.”
    “No, there aren’t.” He shut the refrigerator door. “Tremain’s a loner through and through,” he said, getting back to the conversation.
    “It’s just weird.” A lot of weird things going on lately.
    David turned around, crossed his arms, and leaned against the counter. “My gut tells me there’s no connection.”
    At one time, David had been one of the FBI’s most promising profilers. Elise trusted his instinct and felt reassured by his take on the recent homicide. But