Edie Swihart - Never Kissed Goodnight: A Leigh Koslow Mystery

NEVER KISSED GOODNIGHT

Copyright 2001 by Edie Claire

Originally published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

Digital edition for PubIt published in 2011 by the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Dedication

For Laura Rose, who was born in the middle of Chapter 14.

Chapter 1

It was cold, there was an annoying sound somewhere, and Leigh wanted both things to go away. It had been frigid the last few daysunfairly so for early November, even in Pittsburgh. And though her first few months of marriage had, for the most part, been delightedly blissful, the war over the thermostat remained contentious. Case in point: it was 5:00 AM, her warm-blooded husband was sound asleep, and she was freezing to death. Evidently her covert 11:00 PM adjustment had not been the last.

She pulled the covers up tight under her chin and muttered into her pillow. She could get out of bed and turn up the heat, of course, but that would mean getting colder before she got warmer. It would also require rousing to full consciousness, which was even less appealing. Instead she snuggled closer to Warren J. Harmon III, who wrapped his arm around her obligingly, despite the elbow that jabbed absently into his ribs. She was just getting comfortably warm again when the soundlong since forgottenrepeated itself.

Reluctantly, she disengaged the warm arm and sat up. Someone was knocking on the apartment door.

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. A knock on the door in the predawn hoursno preceding buzzer. There were two choices. It was either a neighbor from the complex, or a family member to whom she had foolishly entrusted the building key. The gentle rapping came again, this time in a uniquely modified rendition of "shave and a haircut."

Cara? Leigh swung her feet over the side of the bed with a shiver. Nobody but her cousin could recreate their childhood code so perfectly. And Cara did have a key to the building, though not to Warren's apartment. Only to Leigh's bachelorette pad cum storage unit upstairs, which she couldn't afford to part with until their house hunt was over.

So what was her cousin doing here?

Leigh grabbed a fuzzy bathrobe from her closet and went to open the door, adjusting the thermostat on the way. Cara March drifted in with an almost ethereal air, her long, strawberry-blond hair flowing unchecked around her china-doll face and petite shoulders. She looked at Leigh apologetically, then spoke in a whisper. "I'm sorry. I didn't wake Warren too, did I?"

"Not much does," Leigh answered groggily. Only after she had blinked a few more times did she notice her cousin's red-rimmed eyes and streaked cheeks. "Are you all right?" she asked quickly. She knew plenty of women who went half their lives with tear-stained faces, but her cousin wasn't one of them. She was more the type to blunder into a hornet's nest and insist she was having fun.

Cara nodded. "I'm fine, really. I know you must think I've lost my mindcoming here in the middle of the night like this, but I just wondered ifwell, if we could talk."

Leigh gave her cousin a long, considered, look, then made a beeline for the coffeemaker. Warren had given her a nice one with a timer for her 31st birthday, but since waiting three more hours for caffeine wasn't an option, she shut off the autopilot and hit "brew" with a vengeance. "Sure," she said mildly. "What are cousins for? Just give me two swallows before I have to be coherent, okay?"

Cara laughed awkwardly and slipped into a kitchen chair. "It's the least I can do, isn't it? I am sorry. Barging in on newlyweds when they've barely had their six month anniversaryI should be shot." A smile spread over her face. "I still can't believe that whirlwind wedding of yours. No notice, no frills. If your Mom didn't like Warren so much, she'd have had a cow."

Leigh grinned. "You know I hate a fuss. Besides, Warren refused to live in sin, and I'm not a patient person."

Her cousin grinned back, no doubt still amused by how long Leigh had insisted she and her old college buddy were just friends. Though Cara had been quite vocal in her suspicions otherwise, she had so far managed to refrain from I-told-you-sos. Extreme niceness was just one of several traits that made Cara hard to hate, despite the fact that she was both smart and gorgeous.

The cover-girl face turned penitent again. "I don't intend to make a habit out of this again. Really, I don't."

Leigh waved a hand dismissively, remembering how, when growing up in brick row houses side by side, she and her cousin used to lean out over the alley in the middle of the night and tap on each other's second-story windows with fishing poles. They had shared all their dreams and nightmares; and in later years, detailed accounts of their dates. In the latter category, of course, only Cara had had much to talk about.

Their after-hours chats had eventually converted to phone calls, which Cara made first from the Rhode Island School of Design, then later from Manhattan, where her career as a graphic artist had blossomed. Leigh had stayed in Pittsburgh, graduating from the city university and enjoying a considerably less flourishing career as an advertising copywriter. Despite their separation, however, Leigh had remained her cousin's chief confidant up until a few years ago, when Cara had returned to Pittsburgh a happily married woman. Then the nighttime conferences had ceased.

Until now.

Leigh looked at her cousin worriedly. Flawless bone structure aside, there were rather ghastly looking bags under Cara's eyes, and her peaches and cream complexion was unusually sallow. What on earth had happened? "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked again. "Where are Gil and Mathias?"

Cara's eyes glimmered heavily with mother guilt, then fixed on her hands. "They're home together. Mathias is sleeping like an angel, I'm sure." Her face hardened. "As for Gil, he's probably pacing the floor, wondering when I'll come home."

Leigh's own eyes widened. Such reckless disregard on Cara's part for the feelings of her sainted husband was definitely a red flag. The world's most obnoxiously happy couplehaving a lover's quarrel? She glanced desperately at the coffeemaker, which chugged along at a snail's pace, oblivious to her distress. Resisting the urge to position her mouth directly under the filter cup, she instead stuck a soup spoon into the stream and brought a few precious drops to her lips.

"It's just" Cara began more weakly, her voice cracking. "It's just thatI can't talk to him anymore."

Leigh inhaled two more spoonfuls of coffee before settling down at the table. So Gil was in the doghouse. What on earth could he have done? Granted, his primitive machismo and total lack of humor has never endeared him to Leigh, but aside from that, he was pretty near perfect. Rich, gorgeous, successful, generousand absolutely crazy about his wife and son. "What do you mean you can't talk to him?"

Cara shifted her gaze from her hands to the table top. "He's hiding something from me."

Leigh sat still, her mind performing a little psychological triage. Cara had always trusted Gil implicitly, and even Leigh had never doubted his integrity where his wife was concerned. Perhaps Cara was overreacting to something? It was no secret that all the women in Leigh's familyexcluding herself, of coursewere prone to melodrama. This could all be about something as innocent as a surprise party.