Deadly Valentine (Special Releases) Read Online Free

see if you could help her?’’ Jack asked.
    Mitzy blinked. ‘‘I could see that she was dead. I wasn’t about to...touch her.’’
    Jack looked to Tempest. ‘‘So that’s when you came on the scene?’’
    She nodded. ‘‘I was on the floor below. I came right up.’’
    ‘‘By elevator?’’ he asked.
    ‘‘No, Mrs. Sanders had the elevator door blocked open with her bags. I took the emergency stairs off the fire escape and entered through the fire exit door.’’ Tempest seemed to read his mind. ‘‘I insisted Mrs. Sanders leave everything just as she’d found it—including the bags she’d used to block the elevator.’’
    The two shopping bags he’d noticed against the opposite wall from the body.
    He turned his attention back to Mitzy, trying not to think about the possibility of working with Tempest Bailey. With luck, she wouldn’t take the job. ‘‘Did you touch anything?’’ he asked Mitzy.
    ‘‘I just screamed and the next thing I knew—’’ she swung her gaze at Tempest ‘‘—she came through my house. It appears Oliver didn’t use the dead bolt on the fire escape exit.’’ Mitzy shook her head in disgust. ‘‘Then she called your office and ordered me to go back down to the lobby.’’
    Jack knew the answer to this one. ‘‘But you didn’t.’’
    ‘‘Of course not,’’ Mitzy said. ‘‘I couldn’t have a bunch of strangers up here unsupervised.’’ Tempest Bailey was far from a stranger to Mitzy even if Tempest hadn’t been the hotel detective. ‘‘There wasn’t any reason I couldn’t wait in the living room and just step around the body if I had to.’’
    He glanced at Tempest. She said nothing, but her expression told him everything he needed to know about her confrontation with Mitzy. ‘‘You called the sheriff’s department from your own cell phone?’’
    Tempest nodded. ‘‘I touched nothing nor did I let anyone else touch anything around the victim or the penthouse until I turned it over to the two deputies and it could be photographed and fingerprints taken. I have been here with both...witnesses the entire time.’’
    ‘‘Good work.’’
    ‘‘I was just doing my job.’’
    Mitzy looked as if she wanted to argue that.
    ‘‘How many keys are there to the penthouse?’’ he asked Tempest.
    ‘‘Four,’’ she answered without hesitation. ‘‘Mrs. Sanders and I each have one. Mr. Sanders has two.’’
    Jack shot Oliver a look.
    ‘‘I have a tendency to misplace mine,’’ he said.
    So it seemed. ‘‘May I see everyone’s key?’’ Jack asked.
    Tempest produced hers. Mitzy had to have her little pink bag brought in from the foyer. She dug around for a moment, then finally came up with it. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Oliver reach into the pocket of his suit pants, frown, then move to the bar where he began to mix himself another drink.
    ‘‘Don’t you have your keys?’’ Jack asked.
    ‘‘No, I guess I left mine at my office,’’ Oliver said after a moment, his back to everyone.
    ‘‘So whose key did Peggy have?’’ Jack asked as if he didn’t know the answer.
    Oliver turned slowly from the bar, another full drink in his hand. He stared down into the frothy liquid for a moment, then glanced at his wife, who’d swung around on the couch to look at him. He let out a long sigh. ‘‘I asked Peggy to drop off the presents I’d purchased for Mitzy. She offered and since she didn’t have any plans and I wanted everything here before Mitzy got home and I wasn’t sure what time I could get off work, I thought, why not?’’
    Oliver had rattled that off a little too quickly. Jack looked at him, wondering why the man would lie about something as innocuous as having Peggy drop off the gifts. Except for the fact that the woman was now dead in his foyer.
    ‘‘So you had already bought all the presents?’’ Jack asked, trying to pin down the lie. ‘‘When was that?’’
    ‘‘What does it matter?’’