Romancing the Crown: Nina & Dominic

“That means I must see… the body.”

“I wouldn’t advise that.” His voice gentler now, thoughtful. “It shouldn’t be necessary.”

“I want to,” she said, steadying her voice, making up her mind to do it. What help could she be to this investigation if she allowed her emotions and her fears to rule every decision she made? “Yes. I should.”

McDonough shook his head and heaved out a deep breath. “You’re that afraid I might miss some clues?”

“Have you even looked for any?” Nina asked.

“I haven’t seen the body yet, if that’s what you’re asking. The king only put me on this late yesterday. I’ve been catching up on what the police have done so far.”

“A second pair of eyes never hurts, does it?” she asked.

“Your eyes will hurt if you insist on this,” he said, betraying a little of that emotion he had just warned her to bury. “I’m afraid yours will. It’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, Nina, to forget the victim was your brother.”

“I can do it,” she said as convincingly as she could. “I can be objective if that’s what it takes. Couldn’t you, if the victim was a relation of yours?”

He gave her the strangest look, then tore his gaze from hers. Well, let him be angry, she thought. This wasn’t about Ryan McDonough’s pride anyway. It was about Desmond and finding out who killed him.

She probably would be able to handle seeing Des. At least, she could fake it for the short time it would take. She’d never been squeamish. And she knew very well that a person’s essence left the body when that person died. It wouldn’t be Desmond she was seeing. Not really.

Suppose McDonough did miss something? Would she know enough to find it? And if she did, would he admit the error? At least if she was courageous enough to see what a real investigator should, he might take her wish to help more seriously.

“I won’t faint,” she assured him. “I’ve seen bodies before.” He nodded and offered no further argument. Nina only wished she had convinced herself as easily as that.

Chapter 2

Ryan wished he could insist on taking Nina to her apartment before going to the palace as he had planned. Her arrival had thrown a monkey wrench in his schedule.

Strange as it seemed, that old adage about criminals returning to the scene of the crime did hold true occasionally in homicides. Consequently, Ryan had stationed one of his best men, Joseph Braca, at Desmond’s house at night to keep watch. The back doors purposely had been left unlocked for easy access, and Ryan had hidden two motion-activated cameras in strategic locations to record the image of any intruders.

In addition to bringing Joe up to date on the preliminary forensics report, Ryan needed to make him aware of the new wrinkle in the investigation. Nina. While Ryan kept her busy later today, Joe would be running her background, checking the alibi and going over the victim’s phone records to see if there had been any contact other than what she’d admitted.

Ryan could have phoned Joe instead of coming over, probably should have, given the circumstances. Or he could have requested that Joe report to him at the office before going off duty. The truth was, Ryan employed any reason he could think of to get out from behind that desk and into the field. Also, this might satisfy Nina Caruso that he was allowing her to assist him.

A scant quarter hour later, they drove through the gates of the palace. Ryan scanned the royal compound, realizing how many hundreds of people must be residing, employed or visiting there. Any one of them might be responsible for killing Desmond Caruso. And it was up to him to discover the needle in this palatial haystack.

The landscaping prevented driving right up to the front. There was a large paved parking area for vehicles situated between the wing of the palace that contained the heritage section and the wing housing the throne room. In deference to Nina, who must be tired and was wearing high heels, Ryan decided to forgo the walk from there. The flagstones and graveled paths would be hell on her feet in those shoes.

He pushed a button and gave the driver his orders. “Bypass the regular parking area. Pull around and park as near the guesthouse as you can. Once you let us out, you can drive Mr. Pavelli back around front. I’m sure he has a report to make.”

He turned to Nina. “The guesthouse where your brother lived is virtually isolated,” he explained, pointing as they rounded the heritage wing of the palace. “It’s there, just beyond those trees. As you can see, the gardens between the palace and the guesthouse conceal it from view. Even if someone had been looking out the windows of the throne wing, which is usually deserted late at night, they wouldn’t have seen anything.”

She concentrated, leaning forward and looking up, stretching within the seat belt as far as she could. “And the second floor?”

“It’s called the first floor here. Ground floor, then the first,” Ryan informed her. “Those are the princesses’ bedchambers above the throne room, and there would be a better view of the guesthouse from there. If anyone had been up there and looking in that direction. Unfortunately, none of the princesses are in residence. I haven’t had a chance to question their staff yet.”

“I’ll do it,” she volunteered, sitting back and clasping her hands in her lap. “I’m not afraid.”

Ryan chuckled. “Well, neither am I, but it probably won’t prove useful. You can bet your favorite lipstick the king has already determined whether anyone on duty has any information to add to the investigation. If they did, it would have come to me through channels already.”

“Channels?” she questioned. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Protocol. I’ll be given a list of who was on duty and work from there.”

She shook her head and gave a disgusted huff. “This whole thing is going to get buried in bureaucracy. Mired down and unsolved. I just know it.”

Ryan let that go as the car came to a stop, glad to change the subject. Protocol was a sore point with him, but one he had to live with. In this instance, he trusted Lorenzo would make sure he got what he needed. “Here we are.”

His fellow passenger was frowning, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth and eyeing the guesthouse now like she might be dreading this. Wait until we get to the morgue, he thought with a reluctant pang of sympathy.

He could keep her from viewing the body if he chose to, but he wanted to see her reaction. It would tell him more about the relationship between Nina and Desmond Caruso than hours of interrogation.

Ryan couldn’t envision Nina Caruso actually killing anyone. If she had anything at all to do with her half brother’s death, she had probably hired it done. And if she had, that would mean Murder One, premeditated, conspiracy, not the crime of passion indicated by the evidence.

God only knew there were plenty of wackos out there greedy enough for a buck to kill anybody anywhere. Though security was fairly tight, someone with a little ingenuity might gain entrance into the palace grounds. Service people came and went, as did numerous tour groups. But Ryan was pretty sure that the victim had known the person who killed him. That narrowed the field considerably. He assisted Nina out of the limo and kept a grip on her elbow as they marched down the pathway that led to the building.

There was no yellow-tape boundary visible out here to mar the beauty of the fairy-tale setting. Outside, all looked right with the world in happily-ever-after land.

“This is it,” he announced. On the door was a discreet sign clearly printed with Entrance Forbidden in both English and Italian.

Ryan pushed the doorbell and heard the muted chime inside. The door opened almost immediately. Joe Braca, built like a refrigerator, dressed impeccably in silk suit and tie, gave them that little leaning-forward nod with head inclined that Italians used when they wanted to look subservient or greeted ladies they wanted to impress.

“Good morning,” he said, his dark gaze roving over Nina as if she had answered his call to an escort service. Natural for Joe, of course.

“This is Nina Caruso, the victim’s half sister. She just flew in early this morning. Nina, Joseph Braca, my right-hand man.” Ryan called them both that, Joe and Franz. Truth was, they were a crackerjack duo and he was being sincere.

Joe effected his most sympathetic smile and took the hand Nina offered. “I am so sorry for the loss of your brother, Ms. Caruso,” he said gently.

“Thank you, Mr. Braca,” she replied, her gaze slipping past him to the foyer and a partial view of the living room.

Joe stepped back and allowed them to enter. He glanced at Nina’s back, then raised an eyebrow at Ryan in unspoken question.

“You know the drill,” Ryan ordered. “Get Franz going on the computer. You make the calls.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe agreed, fully understanding who the subject of inquiries would be. “I’ll phone you tonight if anything turns up.”

“You’ll phone me in either case,” Ryan said. “Before six o’clock.”

Braca nodded. Ryan passed him and followed Nina to the arched entrance to the living room where she had stopped. She was staring at the stain, black on the patterned Persian carpet. Her eyes were wide and her face bone-white.

“Th-that’s where it happened?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Yes. Tests confirm he was struck with a statuette that was found sitting on the credenza there.” Ryan pointed. “He died instantly. One of the sharp edges made contact with the left temple area. If it had struck anywhere else, it probably would only have knocked him unconscious.”

“So it wasn’t planned.” she guessed.

“Probably wasn’t,” Ryan said, not certain of that by any means. Maybe whoever had hit him had fully intended to beat him to death with the thing and had hit a home run on the first swing.

She started to walk into the room but Ryan caught her arm. “Not yet,” he told her. “I’ve ordered Forensics to make a final sweep before anyone else goes in. We can walk around back. That could have been the point of entry.”

“Someone broke in?” she asked as she walked back to the front door.

“No sign of it. The French doors to the patio were probably open. Either that, or Desmond knew the killer well enough to invite him or her in the front door.”

She picked up on the pronouns. “Her? You think it could have been a woman?”

He shrugged. “Entirely possible.” In fact, Princess Samira Kamal of Tamir, Desmond’s former lover, had said in her statement that when she’d dropped by to see him a couple of weeks ago, Desmond had been getting cozy with an unidentified woman.

Farid Nasir, the princess’s bodyguard, had threatened Desmond’s life publicly. Fortunately for Farid, he had an ironclad alibi, as did the princess herself.

Rumor had it those two had just revealed they were married. Ryan had already decided he needed to interview Samira again to determine just what her relationship with the victim had really entailed and how Farid figured into the equation.

They might not be guilty, but they could have useful information that they hadn’t given the police.

“Let’s go,” he said, placing his hand at Nina Caruso’s back to usher her out. Touching her was a mistake. She tensed beneath his palm as a current passed between them. Not a good sign at all, and Ryan was sure she felt it, too. Still, he didn’t break the connection. He didn’t want to think about why that was.

The three of them went out the front, Joe closing and locking the door behind them as they headed around the side of the building. Ryan guided her past the tiny, landscaped fishpond that decorated the garden directly in back of the dwelling.

There were large windows in the living room that allowed a broad view of the garden. Conversely, anyone interested would have a terrific view of those rooms from the garden if the lights were on. French doors between the windows allowed access into the room.

“It looks so…safe,” Nina murmured, staring into the room where the murder had taken place. She moved out of his reach and walked over, almost touching the glass-paned doors that were now shut, a yellow band taped across them.

She stooped a bit and examined the levers that served as door handles. Ryan watched, thinking idly how much he missed the land of round doorknobs. But he wouldn’t go back there. Not for anything.

What was she thinking about? he wondered. Was she bemoaning the loss of a brother, or gloating over the fact that she’d gotten her money’s worth from a hired killer? He exchanged a look with Joe, who pursed his lips as if he was wondering, too.

When she crouched farther down, ostensibly to examine the flower bed next to the window, Ryan stepped back just out of hearing and motioned for Joe to accompany him. Quickly, he related what new information he’d gotten from Forensics, which was little more than they had already guessed.

There was no need to reiterate what he wanted done in the way of investigating Nina. Joe was an expert at that and needed no direction.

“You want me back here tonight?” he asked Ryan.

“No, we’ll have to let the regulars handle security. The cameras are all set, right?”

“Maybe we could have used a couple more, but at least we’ve got the doors covered,” Joe assured him.

“Good. I need you on the BI.” Background investigations were Joe’s specialty, and God only knew there were enough of those to run.

Joe nodded, smiling slightly at the sight of Nina Caruso on her knees, bending over to part the foliage in the flower bed. “Searching for tracks,” he observed. “You should hire her. She seems quite thorough.”

“Bite your tongue,” Ryan said, turning so that he blocked Joe’s view of Nina. That cute little behind of hers was enticing enough when she was standing up. “Why don’t you go phone for a guard to get over here?” he suggested. “You need to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and then get started on the other business.”

As soon as Joe started around front, Ryan stepped across the flagstones nearer to Nina. “We might as well go unless you’ve found something we overlooked.”

She glanced up at him, frowning. “Did you check for footprints around here?”

“We found the head gardener’s, but he has an alibi. Would you care to question him?” Ryan reached down and helped her up.

She brushed the soil off her hands and straightened her short jacket and skirt. Her dark, silky hair had fallen forward over one eye. Ryan had the craziest urge to brush it back in place for her. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead and backed off.

“I’d like to see him now,” Nina said, taking a huge breath as if to fortify herself.

“The gardener?”

She rolled her eyes, then closed them. Probably praying for patience. “No. I would like to see Desmond.” Ryan watched her swallow hard and brace her shoulders in defiance of her fears. “His body.”

Ryan’s hand, acting independently of his better judgment, took Nina by the elbow as he escorted her around the building. The driver had returned with the limo, minus Pavelli, who was probably giving the king an earful about the uncooperative American investigator.

Though Ryan knew it might help him gain information about Nina, he wished she would change her mind about going to the morgue. Hell, he wouldn’t even go there if it wasn’t necessary. It was, however, and he would be going anyway, whether she went or not. “I could drop you at the apartment. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She snatched her arm away from him. “Yes. I have to see him. If nothing else, I need to say goodbye.”

For a long, tense moment, Ryan held her gaze, trying to judge how she would hold up. “This is not like viewing the dearly departed in a funeral home, Nina. He’s on a slab. In the morgue.”

“Has… has there been an autopsy?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper again as if she couldn’t bear to ask the question out loud.

“No, not yet.” But there would be. Probably late this afternoon. “If we’re going, we’d better go now and get it over with,” he suggested. “Sure you’re up to it?”

She nodded, clutching her purse with white-knuckled hands. He wanted to take them in his and warm them a little because they looked so cold. Damn, she was tying him in knots. What was with him, wanting to touch her every chance he got?

He hated that she dredged up his protective instincts. Hell, she was a suspect, for crying out loud. How was he supposed to stay objective when she was batting those big brown eyes, pursing her lips and making him want to do a caveman act? This was not like him, not at all.

Damn Lorenzo and his bright ideas anyway. Why hadn’t he sicced her on the police? They probably weren’t doing diddly down at the station.

In the States, a private investigator would never have been put in charge of something that so obviously fell under official police jurisdiction, but the cops here hadn’t had the experience he’d had and the king and Lorenzo knew that. For the first time, Ryan regretted the royal appointment. More to the point, he resented its unwritten other duties as assigned clause.

“Come on, then,” he said to Nina. She got into the car and he followed her. At least he got to ride in style when she was along. He was sorely tempted to break open that fancy bar and try to get her drunk before the next stop. He could use a shot himself, but he’d sworn off.

As they cruised through traffic toward the new part of San Sebastian and King Augustus Hospital, Ryan felt obliged to give her some preparation. “When we get there, you’ll wait in the corridor. There’s a camera, so you won’t actually have to go into the lab. You’ll be able to view—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I need to see him. Up close.”

Ryan leaned his head back against the seat and pressed his lips together to stifle a curse.

She laid a hand on top of his. It felt delicate. Cool. None too steady. “Please?”

He caved, knowing it was a mistake. “Okay.” God, he was such a pushover. He was never like this! Never. What was the matter with him today?

Ryan reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and punched in the number of the morgue. Ryan figured the least he could do was notify Doc to clean up things as best he could for Nina.

Dr. Angelo answered the direct line himself.

“McDonough here,” Ryan said and skipped right over the usual pleasantries in the interest of time. “Look, Doc, I’m on my way over there now with the sister of Desmond Caruso. We won’t be using the viewer. Our ETA’s around twenty minutes. Can you manage?”

As he’d expected, Angelo tried to dissuade him, using the same arguments Ryan had used with Nina. Ryan cut him short in the middle of a sentence. “She insists. Set it up, will you?”

Nina had focused all her attention out the car window as if she were trying not to listen to the conversation.

Ryan couldn’t help himself. He reached down and grasped the hand she had fisted on the seat between them. To his surprise, she didn’t jerk it away, but opened her hand and clutched his fingers like a lifeline. She didn’t look at him or acknowledge his gesture of comfort in any way whatsoever. But she was damn near cracking his knuckles.

“It’ll be okay,” he told her, inane as it sounded.

She didn’t answer, and neither of them said another word for the rest of the ride over to the hospital, but she kept that death grip on his hand.

Damn. He knew what this felt like to her and wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. Well, at least it wasn’t a husband she was going to have to look at. It wasn’t her child.

The sudden image and echo of a laughing little girl, blond hair flying in the breeze as she ran, skittered through his mind. Ryan gritted his teeth and forced his mind away from the past. Six long years had given him lots of practice, and he should have been more successful at avoidance by this time.

When the car stopped in front of the hospital, Ryan exited with a calmness he did not feel. He knew his face showed nothing that would betray the roiling in his gut.

He focused on the nearby man-made lake, the precision of the landscaping surrounding King Augustus Hospital, the pink marble of its unusual structure. All the beauty that disguised an approaching nightmare.

Automatically he opened the car door for Nina Caruso and gave her his hand again, this time to assist her out. He let her go as soon as she was steady.

But he needed the connection, even if she didn’t, and placed his hand under her elbow. Yeah. Gentleman to the core, official as the day was long, a steady rock to lean on. A consummate liar and a fraud. He was shaking inside like he had d.t.’ s. He was dreading the morgue, possibly more than she was.

He had been there before in the course of his duties. The reaction was nothing new. He had dealt with it and would again, but he knew it would always be the same. The memories would flood right through that dam he had laboriously constructed. And then he’d have to rebuild it.

Maybe if he concentrated on her reaction, he wouldn’t be dwelling on his own so intensely. With that in mind, he was maybe a bit too solicitous on the way through the hospital and in the elevator that led to the lower level.

“Just try to focus on the fact that what you’re going to see is not really your brother,” he advised, still holding on to her arm. “It’s just a lifeless shell he once used. Disassociate if you can.”

She frowned at him, her dark eyes curious. “Are you all right?”

Ryan took a deep breath and tried a smile that felt unsuccessful, more like a grimace. “Yeah, sure. You?”

“I’m okay,” she replied, still frowning as they stepped out of the elevator.

The smell hit him, and they weren’t even close to the lab. She looked as if she’d noticed it, too. “Chemicals,” he explained. A lie. It was the smell of death. “Breathe through your mouth.”

Her lips opened as she complied. Full, tremulous lips that begged him to draw closer, to warm them. To warm his own.

Yeah, he thought, go ahead and think about that, fight the other thoughts. No, he reminded himself, her lips were definitely off-limits. Better lock on to something else.

But what? The odor of the place seemed to seep into him, to permeate his sinuses, to leave its taste on his tongue. Nothing was audible but their determined breathing, the echoes of his footsteps and the click of her high heels on the tiles.

Someone had placed pictures along the corridor, perhaps to distract visitors from what was to come, but the paintings were made up of shapes he didn’t recognize, done in vapid tints that reminded him of badly colored Easter eggs.

Nina removed her elbow from his grasp and took his hand as if she, too, were looking for a port in a storm. He laced his fingers through hers.

They halted in front of a door marked Laboratory, next to which was a window set into the wall. The window had kept distance between the viewer and the body before modern technology, with its camera equipment, had made it unnecessary. The blinds were drawn on the inside.

He gave Nina’s hand a bracing little squeeze and then released it as he tapped on the door with one knuckle.

Doc opened it and stood back to allow them entrance. Ryan forced himself to enter before Nina, as if he could police up the area and make it less terrible if Doc had not. Of course there was nothing he could do about it at that point, but he’d have acted the same upon entering any room with a woman where there was a chance of anything threatening. The urge to run interference for a female had been ingrained from childhood, and he’d never been able to shake it. Thank you, Mama.

Doc had removed the body from the drawer, had placed it on a table and had covered it with a pale green sheet. There was nothing else in view—no instruments or other cadavers—to cause her any horror, but Ryan supposed the remains of her brother would be enough to do that.

Even though they weren’t touching now, he could feel her tension. Or maybe it was his. Ryan couldn’t tell. She appeared calm enough, though the lights in the lab faded her complexion to white.

Doc stood waiting to be introduced. Ryan jerked his attention to that chore and kept it brief. “Nina Caruso, Dr. Angelo.”

They nodded to one another and Doc spoke in that deep, resonant voice that reminded Ryan of Boris Karloff. “My condolences, Ms. Caruso.” He looked a bit like Boris, come to think of it.

“Thank you,” she said in automatic response. “May I see him now?”

She wanted to do her duty and get the hell out of there, Ryan thought, but no more than he did. He fought the flashes of memory and pain associated with another time, another morgue, two pull-out, refrigerated drawers containing… He shook his head, cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind of his own feelings so he could observe hers. After all, that’s the reason he’d let her come, he reminded himself. She looked up at him, silently asking him to accompany her to the table. Ryan slid an arm around her, his hand at her waist, and guided her to the examination table.

Doc turned back the sheet so that only the head and shoulders were visible. Thank God he’d done everything he could. There was no blood. Even the gash on the temple, deep as it was, didn’t look particularly lethal now that it had been cleaned up.

Contrary to Ryan’s warning to Nina, the body didn’t look radically different from what she might have viewed if it had been prepared for a funeral and lying in a casket, except for the absence of a suit and tie and a bit of flesh putty to fill in the wound. Ryan had not been involved in the case or seen the body at the crime scene before it had been removed and brought here. But even there it wouldn’t have been nearly as gruesome as some he’d seen.

Nina stepped closer and touched the forehead, brushing a lock of dark hair from the brow. “He’s… so cold.” Two tears made tracks down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. For a long moment, she stood looking down at the remains and mouthed the word goodbye.

So much for disassociation. Ryan turned away. He realized he should have done what she was doing six years ago. He should have touched. He should have wept. He should have said his goodbyes and let go. Instead, he’d felt a welling of rage so great he hadn’t been able to contain it.

Hell, he couldn’t even remember what he’d said then, what he’d done, but he knew it hadn’t been anywhere near as dignified as this. The things he did recall he was still working to forget.

His partner, Sam, had gotten him out of that morgue somehow, and when reason had returned—a brief spate of it, anyway—Ryan had been able to do what had to be done. Only when his obligations had been met had he fallen apart. Then had begun that lost year, twelve months of nothingness. Dragging his mind back to the present, now almost thankful for where he was and for any excuse to dismiss the past, Ryan carefully examined the victim’s wound and checked the rest of the body for bruising and lividity. He noted the hands. No trauma there, which meant no fistfight. Hardly a surprise. No needle marks that he could ascertain. “Any evidence of illegal substance?” he asked the doctor.

“None evident. Wait for the lab results. That will be in the autopsy report.”

“I guess that’s it,” Ryan said, backing away from the table as the doctor covered the body. A memory flashed. Another covering up, the finality of it triggering something savage in him.

“I’m ready to go,” Nina said.

“Thanks, Doc,” he muttered to Angelo as he guided her out. “I’ll call you later.”

He would have to come here again, Ryan thought with resignation. After the autopsy, he’d have to come back. It never got any easier.

She appeared to be completely recovered, Ryan thought when they exited the elevator on the ground floor. Dry-eyed and composed now, she seemed to be in deep thought. Not at all the emotional wreck she might have been after seeing a beloved brother’s dead body.

Ryan filed away the impression that the bond of affection between Desmond and Nina Caruso must not have been all that tight if her grief was this superficial.