Murder Notes (Lilah Love #1)

“Kevin Woods,” he states, still looking at me, not her. “A man with a violent history who dated the deceased.”

Eddie cuts Beth a sharp look. “Your job is to examine dead bodies,” he snips. “Mine is to make sure we don’t have any more. You do your job. I’ll do mine.” He returns his gaze to me. “Cut to the chase, you said. Here it is. This isn’t your case. We have our man. Go back to Cali and enjoy La-La Land. We don’t need you here.” He stands and starts walking. I watch him cross the diner, my gaze catching on the empty table where Alexandra was a minute ago before lifting and following him to the exit. He disappears, leaving me with one thought: this isn’t a simple turf war. There’s more going on.

“I thought this wasn’t official business, Lilah?” Beth demands, pulling my attention back to her.

“It’s complicated,” I reply.

“Clearly,” she states, holding up her cell phone and indicating her text screen. “I’ve been ordered back to the main office. I’m to return immediately, which I suspect has something to do with Eddie showing up here. Just as I was supposed to stay here and say nothing to anyone about this case.”

That the locals want to keep this quiet doesn’t surprise me. That her boss, in the vastly larger Suffolk County, is involved, on a nonelection year, feels worthy of investigation to me. “When you said you were asked to stay here and do the autopsy, but you originally declined that request,” I say. “Who asked?”

“Your brother.”

“My brother,” I repeat, his connection to Samantha Young’s corruption returning to the front of my mind.

“Yes. And I know he is your brother, but if he lets Kevin Woods take the blame for this—”

“Who is this Kevin Woods person?”

“He’s Ciara Matthews’s boy toy. And by boy toy, I mean he’s twenty years younger than her and runs a construction company that’s doing work here locally.”

“Not only did Ciara do several movies with my mother, they were close friends, and my father knows her husband, John, well. A woman with a boy toy doesn’t process to me as accurate.”

“Oh honey, you’ve missed so much. John started drinking and was violent. Ciara let her boy toy Kevin lick her wounds. John found out and it was bad. They fought. Boy toy held a gun on him.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Between the eyes.”

“Yes.”

“And what happened?”

“Rumor is he was let off, paid off, and left the city.”

“You said he wasn’t a killer. Explain what brings you to that conclusion.”

“He didn’t pull the trigger. He’s not a killer.” She grabs her bag. “I have to go.”

“Wait. You know as well as I do, just because someone doesn’t kill someone the first time they think about it doesn’t mean they aren’t building confidence and working up to it.”

“I do know this. But I’ve looked into that man’s eyes and I’m telling you. He’s not a killer.”

“So you know him?”

“I met him once.”

“How?”

“A party, and while it was brief, when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you get to know people. You see things in their eyes.”

She’s right. You do, but those who are master killers only let you see what they want you to see. She should know this. She has to know this.

Her phone buzzes again and she glances at her screen, then at me. “I need to go. Call me if you need me.”

I give a nod and she slides out of the booth. I follow her progress as I had Eddie’s, wondering how anyone in the business this long, as she’d noted, could make a statement as wrong as the one she just made. I know from experience that just because you don’t pull the trigger the first time doesn’t mean you won’t pull it the next. Kevin Woods interests me. Her defense of him interests me. But Eddie’s desire to make him the catalyst that gets me out of town interests me the most. Too bad for him, and me both, that I have reasons to stay. My potentially corrupt family. Junior. And the fact that no one who masterfully killed four people without a trace of evidence would implicate themselves in a personal scandal that connects them to murder. Kevin Woods is not the killer I’m hunting. And the idea that my family would let an innocent man take the fall for a crime for political or personal reasons doesn’t even sound like my family. Maybe I don’t know them any more than they know me. But I will before I leave. Of that, I am certain.





CHAPTER TWELVE

I grab my phone and dial Tic Tac, who is actually Jeff Landers. And right now, it’s Jeff that I’m looking for, not Tic Tac.

“You do know it’s only been a few hours, right?” is his greeting.

“I need everything you can give me on Kevin Woods of East Hampton,” I say, my tone all business, another side of Lilah Love those who work with me know and know well. “He’s the suspect for the murder I’m investigating here.”

“Meaning he’s the suspect for all the cases.”

“No. The locals are trying to isolate this case, which ends our opportunity for jurisdiction. Supposedly Woods was dating the victim. I’m not buying it.”

“Hold on,” Jeff says, and proving he’s learned a few things about me in the years we’ve worked together, his tone is no-nonsense, the sound of a keyboard clacking in the background. “Thirty-two. Born and raised in Manhattan.”

Which could represent a connection to the first New York victim, but it feels wrong. “What else?”

“He inherited a construction business from his father,” he continues. “The focus being on high-end, custom-built houses, then and now, but once Kevin took over—”

“When was that?”

“Three years ago,” he says. “That’s when Kevin managed to land a job for a Hollywood type, and the business took off from there.”

“What does Hollywood type mean?”

“Keith Miller.”

A powerful film director who worked with my mother. “Where does Keith Miller own property?”

His fingers click on the keyboard. “LA, Southampton, and New York City. But hold on.” More clicking of the keyboard before he says, “Woods has had five Hollywood-type clients in the past five years. Two with homes in the Hamptons and Los Angeles. Three with places in New York City and LA. They all have a link to both states.”

“And the locations of similar murders,” I state, any hope that Miller is my singular connection now gone. “I need—”

“A full list of everyone in the Hamptons with that crossover. You told me.”

“I actually think I e-mailed it to you.”

“All right, smart-ass. Whatever the case. It’s a big list. You need information. I need time.”

“Fine,” I concede. “What about Woods’s arrest last year sometime?”

“There’s no record of an arrest.”

“Huh. Dig deeper on that.” I move on. “I need to know if the newest victim connects to any of the previous victims.”

“No. I checked.”

“What about a connection to one of Woods’s clients? Look there and look fast. Like I said, Woods is a—”

“Jurisdiction issue. I’ll get you what I can by bedtime.”

“That works. Does Woods have living family?”

More clacking of keys before he says, “None.”

“Send me everything you can find on him. And I mean everything, no matter how insignificant. I want to know who the man’s hairdresser is.”

“I know how you work. Again. Give me until bedtime. My bedtime, Lilah. I’m still on LA time even though you’re in New York, and I have a meeting I’m headed into.”

“Find me a connection between these victims that isn’t Woods, and I swear I’ll bring you doughnuts every day of the rest of your life, even when you’re in a retirement home, forgotten by everyone but me.”

“Oh, well, now I’m motivated.” He snorts and hangs up, and I immediately begin scribbling notes.

—KEVIN WOODS: FALL GUY—MEANT TO KEEP THE FEDS OUT OF TOWN OR SOMETHING BIGGER?

—EDDIE WANTS ME OUT OF TOWN. EDDIE WANTS TO ARREST WOODS. IS HE JUNIOR?

—WHERE WAS EDDIE LAST NIGHT AND THEN TODAY WHEN NOTES WERE LEFT FOR ME?

—WHY IS KANE SO DAMN ADAMANT I DON’T ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT TATTOO?

—WHY DID I LET HIM GET AWAY WITH NOT TELLING ME?

—KANE CAN’T BE THE MAN BEHIND JUNIOR, AND YET, I’M THINKING IT AGAIN, OR I WOULDN’T BE WRITING THIS DOWN.