"Somehow," she said on a sighing laugh, "I knew you were going to say something like that."

"We've always had a psychic connection. Now, this is a test-what do you think I'm going to say next?"

"'When?'" She guessed with complete conviction.

"I was hoping you'd ask. I think-one month from today."

Leigh was horrified. She didn't want to begin their marriage while they were both tainted with suspicion regarding Logan's murder. Even without that, she was so sleepy at the moment that she could barely stand, let alone think about a wedding date. She closed her eyes and turned her face into his chest, and his hand slid upward from her breast, cradling her cheek against his heart. "I guess we could do it in six months," she whispered, loving the ways he touched her when they weren't making love.

His palm, which had been cradling her cheek, shifted slightly, leaving only the heel of his hand in contact with her chin. Leigh noticed the movement, but she was more intent on hearing his response. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that six months was an awfully long time to wait, particularly if they weren't living together. She was surprised, and a little disappointed, that he was evidently willing to wait so long. She sighed.

"Too long?" he suggested, his voice tinged with knowing amus.e.m.e.nt.

Leigh giggled helplessly. "Yes."

"Want to change your mind?"

"Yes."

"Open your eyes."

She opened her eyes and saw the counteroffer he'd been making since his hand moved. In front of her eyes he was holding up two fingers. Two months.

With a smile of defeat, Leigh turned her face and kissed his palm.

He tipped her face up as he lowered his head. "A kiss on the hand," he warned tenderly against her mouth, "is equal to two nods. Very, very binding."

CHAPTER 51.

Michael looked up from his desk as his secretary walked into his office at nine-fifteen that morning. He'd showered and shaved at the apartment; then he'd taken Leigh home and gone on to his company's offices for a nine-thirty meeting. "Mr.

Buchanan is here," Linda told him. "He said he's a little early."

"Have him come in."

A moment later, Gordon Buchanan strode in carrying his briefcase. The senior partner at Buchanan, Powell, and Lynch, one of New York's most prestigious law firms, Buchanan was immaculately and expensively attired. He had silver-streaked hair, elegant manners, and a pleasant, aristocratic face.

Socially, he was a gentleman; professionally, he was as smooth, and as dangerous, as a cobra.

"Good morning," Buchanan said. Although his firm had successfully represented Michael Valente in every legal action brought against him over the last decade, they were not friends-Valente wasn't a friendly man. But he had two rare qualities that made him a unique client in Buchanan's experience: He never lied to his attorneys, and he never wasted their time. In return, he required that they not waste his time.

For that reason, Gordon went straight to the matter at hand without indulging in any of the customary social preliminaries. "I set up a meeting at Interquest this morning," he said as he sat down in front of Valente's desk. "They have some information for us. Did you tell Mrs. Manning not to speak to the police again unless she checks with me first?"

"I told her several days ago," Michael told him. "They haven't made any attempt to talk to her since they subpoenaed her husband's personal files from the apartment-" He stopped and reached impatiently for the intercom buzzing on his desk phone.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, but Leigh Kendall is on your private line-"

"Kendall?" Michael repeated, savoring the realization that Leigh had evidently switched to her maiden and stage name after last night.

"It's Mrs. Manning," Linda clarified, pretending in her irreproachably businesslike manner that she had no idea he was closely a.s.sociated with the caller in any way. "But she specifically used Kendall,' so I thought I should, too."

"You were right," Michael said, already reaching for the b.u.t.ton on his private line and swiveling his chair around for some privacy. When he answered the call, he used the voice he would use for any ordinary caller. "Miss Kendall, this is Michael Valente."

She expelled her breath in a startled laugh. "You sound terrifyingly cold and abrupt."

He switched to the voice he used with her. "I'm meeting with your new attorney. He thinks cold and abrupt are two of my warmest traits."

On the other side of the desk, Gordon Buchanan gaped at the back of Valente's chair. He was surprised Valente indulged in any form of lighthearted banter with anyone, but he was completely astonished that Valente was indirectly including him in it.

"I don't want to keep you-" Leigh said quickly.

"Oh, yes, you do," Michael said with a smile in his voice. "Furthermore, you entered into a binding, nonnegotiable contract about that three hours ago. Why aren't you asleep?"

"Because Jason Solomon just phoned and insisted that Brenna wake me up."

"What did he want? "

"He wants to meet me for c.o.c.ktails at the St. Regis tonight. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He's going to try to wear me down about coming back to work. I can't walk out onstage with Jane Sebring, knowing I look like a player in some sort of sordid freak show to the audience. Jason can't understand that.

Anyway, you mentioned having dinner tonight, and I wanted to ask you to pick me up there instead of here."

"What time?"

"Could we make it seven? That will limit Jason to an hour of wrangling and hara.s.sment."

"Would you like me to join you at six instead, and be your reinforcement?"

He could hear the relief and wonder in her voice. "Is being my reinforcement part of your 'job,' too?"

"Absolutely. Check the contract you negotiated with me this morning-under Clause 1, Section C, headed 'Someone to Watch Over Me,' you'll see that you've been granted full rights to my diligent services in that regard."

"Michael," she said solemnly.

"Yes?"

"I love you."

Still smiling after they said good-bye, Michael hung up and swiveled his chair around. "Where were we?" he asked Buchanan abruptly.

Buchanan recovered his composure. "I was about to ask you if the police have made any attempt to question you yet about your whereabouts at the time of Manning's murder."

Michael shook his head. "They have no idea whether I can prove I couldn't have done it."

"Then the obvious answer is they don't want any proof that you couldn't have.

They've probably persuaded a judge that you're a viable murder suspect and gotten him to authorize wiretaps, and whatever else they want, in order to look around for any other kind of wrongdoing they can find."

He was quiet for a moment, letting his client a.s.similate that; then he said, "Before I recommend a course of action, I need to know your priorities here."

"I want the police to find out who killed that son of a b.i.t.c.h. Instead of that, they're wasting time and resources on me."

"I can force them to cease and desist." Gordon drew a breath and braced himself for a spectacularly unpleasant reaction to what he was about to say next.

"However, in order for me to do that, you would first have to voluntarily offer the police a schedule of your whereabouts at the time of the murder. Since they clearly don't want any proof of innocence from you, they'll resist a request from me for an informal meeting, but I can threaten them with a deluge of legal action if they decline. Once they have proof of your whereabouts in their hands, if they don't back off you, we can make things very unpleasant for them in court."

The negative reaction Gordon antic.i.p.ated was not vocal-as he'd expected it would be-but Valente's jaw clenched in taut fury at the suggestion of volunteering any information whatsoever to the police. To Valente, voluntarily offering information to the police or prosecutors was tantamount to trying to appease his enemy, and that he wouldn't do under any circ.u.mstances. Time after time, he'd chosen to wage a costly battle in court, rather than attempt to avoid the battle by offering explanations and proof to the prosecutors in advance.

In every other respect, Michael Valente was the most coldly rational man Gordon had ever represented-but not when it came to appeasing the justice system. For that reason, Gordon was somewhat taken aback when Valente nodded and said in a low, savage voice, "Set up a meeting." He tipped his head toward the door of his office and added, "Use the conference room to make the call, and have my secretary type up the schedule I gave you of my activities that Sunday."

Gordon got up, and gave him another piece of news he was sure would further enrage him. "I'll try to get the detectives to come over here, but they'll make you go down to the precinct. It gives them a home-court advantage. And,"

he added, "undoubtedly some petty satisfaction."

"Undoubtedly," Michael said icily, reaching for a doc.u.ment lying on his desk and picking up a fountain pen.

"There's one more thing..."

A pair of frigid amber eyes lifted from the doc.u.ments to his.

"If we can't persuade them in this meeting that it's completely pointless and indefensible to keep after you, then I'll have to go to court to force them to cease and desist. That will take time, and time is what you don't want to waste. Then there's one other issue you need to be mindful of-"

"Which is?" Michael snapped.

"Mrs. Manning is undoubtedly a primary suspect. Her husband was cheating on her, so she had a motive, she had means-the gun-and she had a window of opportunity. I have no doubt the police have some sort of theory that you and she were involved and plotted together to get rid of her husband. If they ask you any questions about your relationship with her, now or in the past, I recommend that you answer them. Don't volunteer, but don't refuse to answer. I have a gut feeling the police are unduly suspicious of your relationship with her, even though it's been out in the open since you flew her to the accident site."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because you said they've never officially questioned her about her relationship with you. When the police refrain from asking the obvious, it's because they think they already know something and they don't want to tip their hand."

After Buchanan left, Michael waited a few minutes while he came to grips with what he'd agreed to do; then he reached for his phone and called Leigh's phone number, but not her private line. When Brenna answered, Michael asked her for Jason Solomon's phone numbers, and he asked her not to mention his call to Leigh.

It took Michael less than thirty seconds to persuade Solomon to meet him at five-thirty at the St. Regis that night for a private conversation before Leigh arrived. The first twenty-five seconds of that time were spent avoiding Solomon's excited inquiries as to Michael's relationship with Leigh.

CHAPTER 52.

With her elbows on her desk and her neck between her palms, Sam idly ma.s.saged her nape with her fingers while she read the last report in Leigh Manning's file-a boring printout listing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every single neighbor Leigh Manning had ever had, at every address she'd ever lived at in New York.

Sam had been through all the files once already, but in her spare moments, she was going through the files on Leigh Manning and Michael Valente again, looking for something to connect the two of them prior to Logan Manning's murder. The handwritten note Valente had enclosed with the basket of fruit was some proof of that, but the district attorney wanted to build a case against Valente for either first-degree murder or conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. After five weeks' investigation, however, they still didn't have a sc.r.a.p of evidence to indicate the alleged conspirators had so much as spoken on the telephone prior to the weekend of Manning's death.

Shrader strolled past Sam's desk carrying his daily morning snack-two doughnuts and a cup of coffee. "Hey, Littleton," he gloated as he sat down next to her at his own desk, "did you happen to see your grieving widow on the news last night? She was all dressed up and going out to dinner with her boyfriend."

"I saw her," Sam said. She'd already been through this same routine with Womack this morning, and she was ready to concede that Leigh Manning's behavior at Dr. Winters's office may merely have been a fantastically convincing performance.

"She's brazen as h.e.l.l now, isn't she?" Shrader barked cheerfully.

"They're not keeping their relationship any secret," Sam murmured, glancing at him.

Shrader took a bite of doughnut and a swallow of coffee; then he picked up a piece of paper propped on his telephone. "I got a note here from McCord that says he wants us in his office at nine-forty-five. You know what that's about?"

Sam nodded and turned the last page at the back of the earliest file on Leigh Manning. "The Special Frauds guy is coming over to tell us what they found when they audited Manning's books and records. Forensics sent up their final written report on everything collected at the cabin, but there's evidently nothing we didn't already know from the preliminaries. McCord wants a full review and update of the case with us after that."

Finished with Leigh Manning's "life history," Sam dragged the thick summary file on Michael Valente across her desk and opened it. It was hard to imagine two more opposite people than Valente and Leigh Manning seemed to be. Leigh Manning had never had so much as a traffic ticket, and she was a member of the mayor's commission on fighting crime. Michael Valente had been charged with a series of crimes and he was on the police commissioner's personal "Hit List" of known criminals whose activities he wanted closely monitored.

Beside her, Shrader made a phone call to an a.s.sistant DA who wanted to prep him for trial on an upcoming homicide case that Shrader had handled. Sam picked up a pen and began making a list containing the date of each case brought against Valente, the princ.i.p.al charges filed, and the ultimate outcome each time-one case per line.

She worked backward, starting with the most recent case, occasionally referring to the additional data on the summary sheets to clarify the details of the crimes he'd allegedly committed against city, state, and federal laws. One of the things she noticed was that the prosecutors had frequently gone to the grand jury to get an indictment, which usually meant they didn't have a strong enough case to get a judge to sign an arrest warrant.

When she was finished, she had an impressive list of arrests and grand jury indictments over the last ten years for nonviolent crimes including attempted bribery, fraud, intent to defraud, grand larceny, insider trading, and income tax evasion, along with many variations on those same themes.

The right-hand column, listing the outcome of each case filed, had only three results: "Case Dismissed."

"Charges Dropped."

"Not Guilty."

In every one of those cases, Valente had been represented by arguably the best criminal defense law firm in New York, but it was difficult to believe that even Buchanan, Powell could have gotten a patently guilty man completely off on every single case.

There were also occasional charges brought against him for minor offenses, including possession of a controlled substance, careless and reckless driving, and disturbing the peace. Sam had already read the individual files on each case; and, in her opinion, the controlled substance case had been particularly ludicrous. According to what she'd read, that arrest had evidently been based on Valente's having had a prescription for a painkiller on him when he was busted for speeding-at six miles over the limit.

Once again the right-hand column had only three results for these lesser cases: "Case Dismissed."

"Charges Dropped."

"Not Guilty."

The single exception to all that was the item at the bottom of her list-a charge of manslaughter in the first degree, brought against Valente when he was seventeen, for the shooting death of William T. Holmes. Unlike the other crimes, that one had been violent and Valente had pleaded guilty to it-his first and only time to plead guilty, rather than fight the charges and beat them. He'd been sentenced to eight years in prison, with eligibility for parole after four.

Sam flipped through the folders on her desk, looking for the case file on the manslaughter conviction, interested in the reason he'd done the crime, wondering if perhaps-that time-a female had been in any way responsible for his single violent act.

Unable to find the file, she leaned toward Shrader's desk, but none of his folders had red labels. Womack's desk was directly behind Shrader's, and she swiveled around in her chair.

"What are you after?" Womack asked, returning from McCord's office with a pile of folders in his hands.