Part 5 and a titbit
"Rex!" Mimi almost gurgled the world, delirious with happiness as her latest beau delicately kissed her neck. "Stop it, we’re meant to be looking for clues."
"I am," the former suspect-alien muttered, pulling her a little closer. "I’m making sure she hasn’t got to you too."
Mimi slapped him playfully, smiling all the while. "Now come on. She may be back any minute, and we haven’t found anything yet."
Grumbling a little, Rex let her set him to work on going through the desk as she worked on the chest of drawers.
"Nothing," he didn’t sound too upset that he’d finished his search, and already his arms were snaking around Mimi’s waist.
"There has to be something," she sighed, and it changed to a groan as Rex pulled her closer. "Baby, we have to find this first then…" good intentions were about to be thrown out the window when she at last spotted what she had been searching for so desperately. "Got it!"
Rex grinned down at her, wondering how on earth she had become so adorable when nearly every other Salem woman was either so high strung that they made pedigree racehorses look relaxed or, to put it mildly, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know.
"Got what?" His mind was back on the mission, which was what Mimi had insisted on calling their search of his sisters’ room.
"Her diary of course," Mimi wriggled her way out of his arms and leaned down bending at the waist, in a move she borrowed from ‘Legally Blonde’, to lift the locked, green book from the floor. The ‘snap’ part brought her back up to staring into Rex’s stunned face. She quickly thanked whatever teenage deity was looking after them that she hadn’t broken his nose. The idea of not being able to kiss him for weeks because his face was in plaster did not appeal, especially as he had that look on his face.
"Meems," he had a way of elongating her nickname that weakened her wonderfully.
"Help me search for clues." Did he know what he did to her? She took a sly glance up at him. He knew alright. For an alien boy that had crash landed in a space ship the summer before, he was certainly wise to the ways of women. "Read it through and tell me what you find. I’m going to check her jewellery box."
He shook the lock ineffectually. "How do I open this?"
Mimi took it from his hands. "Now I know your not from around here. Any true Salemite would be able to unlock it in a flash. Are you sure Cassie’s your sister?"
Rex sighed. "Definite, I’m afraid."
She gave him back the diary, now opened. "That’s a real shame." Her voice had dropped along with her eyelashes.
Rex gulped, hard. He wasn’t used to being around girls. He tried to remember what Shawn did in these situations.
He licked his lower lip lasciviously, and was surprised to her Mimi’s slight intake of breath.
He lowered his head, inching his lips towards hers. They met, and Rex thought that never before had he felt something so wonderful.
Then he stopped thinking at all.
Unfortunately for them, Rex’s thinking of what Shawn would do next was only too appropriate. Right on time, Cassie barged into the dorm room without any consideration for the feelings of those inside.
"Stop that right now," she began to shriek, then realised that she wasn’t looking at Shawn and Belle making out, but Mimi and her brother. Utterly disgusted, she stared at them in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing in my dorm room?"
Rex shrugged, an expression of nonchalance that belied the fact that Mimi was stuffing Cassie’s diary up his shirt to prevent Cassie from noticing, and gave the answer that he knew would send his sister flying from the room. "Belle was with Shawn in our room," he silently prayed for forgiveness for that particular lie both from Shawn and whatever deity may or may not have been looking out for him, "They made it quite clear they wanted to be alone."
"Over my dead body," Cassie hissed between clenched teeth and stormed from the room.
"Belle wasn’t with Shawn…" the words trailed off as Rex placed a gentle finger over Mimi’s lips, using his other hand to turn on the stereo so that Aretha’s voice could be heard singing ‘Oh Me Oh My I’m a Fool for You Baby’.
"I know," he grinned wickedly and wiggled his eyebrows in a move copied from his uncle John and all too unfortunately not from his friend Shawn. "Now are you going to lock the door, or am I?"
*******
The detective had woken up with a headache the size of Dublin. This had been matched, rather neatly he had felt, by a bruise on his forehead, from when he had fallen against the coffee table passing out the night before, the size of Belfast. With both sides of divided Ireland represented in his head, he wondered about drinking a pint of Guinness reckoning that it was a hair of the dog that bit him.
Then he remembered he had a murder to solve, swore violently, and pulled himself together. This meant four cups of coffee, a quantity of bacon, eggs and buttered toast, and a lot of blinking in the harsh light of day.
He was, therefore, in no mood to be pleasant to any of his co-workers.
"Good morning, Irving," Abe was grinning. Irving hated him for looking so cheerful.
"Is Murphy’s murderer in the cells?" He snarled.
Abe looked surprised. "No."
Irving nodded, once, satisfied. "Then what’s so good about the morning?"
"The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the coffee’s hot and my wife is beautiful." The Commander grinned even more widely than before.
"The sun always shines when the sky is blue, the coffee’s decaf for some damn reason and your wife isn’t my wife, so it doesn’t do me any good that she’s beautiful." Irving rubbed face roughly, feeling the light stubble he hadn’t shaved away.
"And Mrs Horton sent us another box of doughnuts this morning." Abe watched, amused, as Irving’s entire aspect changed.
He glanced up, his face filled with suspended emotion. "With chocolate sprinkles?"
"Yep," Abe’s smile couldn’t get much wider as he watched the young detective straighten up, the change in him startling and magnificent.
"Well why didn’t you say so before?" Irving started whistling ‘Doctor Feelgood’. "It’s a damn fine morning. Now give me one of those doughnuts and bring in Mr Kiriakis for questioning. Just ’cause there’s doughnuts going doesn’t mean I’m going to get soft."
*******
"Victor," Nicole had her slender arms wrapped around the tycoon’s hefty throat. "Darling…"
"The answer’s no, Nicole." He didn’t even look up from his newspaper.
She pouted, the dark pink of her lips gleaming in the morning light that poured like golden syrup through the French windows of the mansion. "You don’t even know what I was going to ask."
"Don’t I?" He was still reading the paper. The fact that he wouldn’t even look at her upset Nicole more than the coldness of his voice.
"I was going to ask," she sat fully in his lap, wriggling closer, moving the newspaper out of the way so that he could not ignore her any longer. "Did you have Colin killed for me?"
His eyes were the frosty blue of the Rocky mountains. "Did I?"
Genuinely startled, her eyes widened involuntarily, making her look much younger than her real age and far more innocent. "Didn’t you?"
*******
Cassie burst into Shawn and Rex’s dorm room, indignantly expecting to find Belle all over her man. Instead, she was greeted by the smell of teenage boys’ rooms everywhere, and no greater sign of Shawn than his discarded blue shirt which lay where it had been tossed on the rumpled sheets of the bed. She sniffed the air, regretting it when the distinctive odour of old trainers filled her nostrils, but noted no hint of Belle’s rose perfume.
"Cassie?" The girl spun around to find house-mistress Caprice standing in the doorway. "What are you doing in Shawn-Douglas’s room?"
She was a Dimera, and so did not hesitate to lie. "Looking for a book he borrowed. I need it for my next class and Rex said it was fine for me to come in here."
The fact that no one ever locked the dorm room doors meant that her lack of keys could easily be explained away.
Caprice watched her suspiciously, but couldn’t think of any new reason to reprimand the ex-alien. "Find the book and leave the room." Her gaze was admonitory. "I don’t want to see you in here alone again."
The Dimera muttered something under her breath, and was reproved by Caprice’s stiff glance at her. "Yes, Caprice." She added dutifully, with the correct demonstration of obsequiousness.
"And Cassie?" The girl had walked past the woman and was half way back to her own room when the words made her turn.
She looked up, her eyes full of seemingly guileless innocence. "Yes?"
Caprice was staring at her hard. "Don’t think you can fool me with your air of innocence, young lady. I’ve seen Marlena possessed by the devil, Stefano die countless times, John in mercenary mode and, most harrowing of all, Pop-Shawn shirtless. Nothing you can say or do can shock me."
The girl stared at her speculatively, eyes narrowed, hands on hips, head tilted to one side slightly. "Really?"
Caprice nodded firmly. "Really."
"OK," Cassie Dimera smirked a little. "Then I guess you really won’t mind that a total stranger is getting me drunk, naked and horny while my brother plots to take over the world, my father attempts to seduce my mother, a woman he has never slept with, to the Dark Side, my stepfather is keeping various people under surveillance and hindering a murder investigation, my half sister is making out like a Discovery Channel animal with her half brother’s cousin, and," having run out of ideas, and seeing Caprice so far completely unimpressed, Cassie finished pathetically, "the fairy lights in my dorm room aren’t checked for safety wiring!"
"No safety wiring?" Caprice’s face was a picture of aghast shock. She ran past the young alien-twit crying, "I must call the Principal! You could all be electrocuted by unsafe wiring!"
Shaking her head at the madness of the average Salem resident, Cassie hurried on down the hall, scheming to seduce Shawn, devastate Belle and frame that interfering twit Mimi for murder. All in a day’s work for the female half of a pair of Evans twins, really…
*******
"Damn it!" Tony Dimera threw down his cravat in frustration. He was attempting to achieve the difficult Mathematical Tie and was failing horribly. It seemed that while crime paid certain dividends when it came to hired help, it did not extend itself to assisting him in his arrangement of his clothing. "Eliana! ELIANA!" He shrieked down the stairs.
The long suffering maid trod slowly up, complaining under her breath about the change in regime that had occurred after the Stef’s departure. Under his rule at least she could depend on his being able to dress himself and not expect her help before he had finished his daily cackle. Tony showed no such courtesy. The fact that he was also a secret fan of the movie ‘Grease’ had driven her to seek refuge in the Kiriakis mansion on more than one occasion.
"Yes, oh great leader?" She muttered as she came into his overly ornate bedroom and watched as he struggled in yet another attempt at tying his cravat. "What is it this time? Has the Chihuahua been sick again? Or is it merely that you can’t find your Tomb Raider poster?"
"It’s my cravat!" Tony was whining pettishly now, a sulky childish look on his face.
"Come here." Eliana tugged at the material and in a few moments she had it perfectly arranged into a Mathematical knot. "Your father always used to do these himself," she murmured thoughtfully.
"Stefano? Really?" Tony’s brow crinkled with the effort of thinking about something that wasn’t chess or Marlena.
"No, not Stefano," Eliana chided him, giving his lapels a stiff brushing. "Your real father." She sighed wistfully, "He truly was a gentleman."
"And is no more?" Tony was fascinated, but didn’t want to scare her off. Eliana had seen far more than she would ever tell and apparently knew just whom Daphne had had her fling with all those years ago.
"He left America, oh so long ago." If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn their were tears in Eliana’s eyes. She pulled back her emotions forcefully. "But that’s all over now."
"Eliana," Tony’s voice sounded charming, but held the note of command that told her that her job depended on her answer to the coming question, "Who was my father?"
She stared at him speculatively, "You truly want to know?"
Exasperated, Tony answered curtly, "Yes!"
"Well," Eliana prevaricated no longer. "The truth is he’s…"
*******
"Commander Carver!" An errand boy from the crime labs that Bo would have recognised as Kevin Lambert on his work experience placement ran up to the Commander and gave him a package to sign for. The envelope was thickened by a huge wad of papers inside and new photos. Having been given back the signature form, Kevin nodded his head quickly and went on running.
"What’s that?" Sergeant Louise Cruise, code-name Fontella, came up behind him to peer over his shoulder.
Abe grinned as he examined the documents. "The evidence we need to nail Murphy’s murderer."
The detective on duty at the time, Roman Brady, wandered past them in search of Mrs Horton’s doughnuts and lots of strong black coffee. He growled at his old friend in the manner of a bear with a sore head. "Who’s been blowing sunshine up your ass, Abe?"
"We got him," Abe, ignoring the familiarity that was breeding contempt, was almost chuckling with pleasure, cracking his knuckles in anticipation of the arrest he longed to make.
Roman Brady growled something incomprehensible and took the papers from Carver. "Well I’ll be damned. Maybe we’ll get to hang the son of a bitch after all."
Turning to the Sergeant, Commander Carver could not suppress his satisfaction. "Get a warrant for the arrest of District Attorney Palmer drawn up. We’ve got his fingerprints all over the murder weapon and we know he was at the scene at the time of the crime because one of the caterers ID’d him. He’s got the motive. We know he was trying to get Murphy to write phony death certificates for the guys who died during the last big rumble between the drug gangs of Salem that knocked the Mathias boys clean off the face of the planet, but we couldn’t get him for it because with Murphy dead, we had no proof. At last," Abe’s eyes were alight with an almost diabolical glee, "we’re going to throw his blackmailing, scum bag ass in jail!"
Louise ‘Fontella’ grinned back. "Damn right," she quickly added the missing ‘sir’ but Abe hadn’t noticed her slip up. Walking into his office, soon to be vacated by the Chicago detective he loathed so much, he picked up the phone and called Bo Brady. It was party time at the Brady Pub alright. Carson Palmer, rightly or wrongly, was going down.
*******
Detective Irving, thankfully full of coffee and doughnuts that had held chocolate sprinkles, leaned back in his desk, slowly taking in the face of his latest interviewee. The tape rolled on, already having recorded the necessary information for the police files, and Irving paid no attention to it. "I was talking to Mr Henderson yesterday. He was telling me about your thieving caterers, his own strict moral code and the affair between Nicole Kiriakis nee Walker and Dr Colin Murphy having come to a rather sticky end."
The impassive face didn’t so much as flick an eyebrow upwards, a feat greater than even the famous John Black could have managed under the circumstances. No emotion was expressed, but Irving thought he could see the slightest display of intrigue in those fathomless eyes.
"Detective - Irving, wasn’t it? Would you care to explain to me why you need me at this point in the proceedings? Are you any closer to catching the killer?" His eyes were as hard as adamantine, crystal blue and piercing.
So were Irving’s. "I need you because this is a murder investigation and a man died on your property on the night of your wedding to Miss Walker. I’m collecting statements."
"Shouldn’t a sergeant be doing that?" He was scornful.
Irving let a slow grin spread across his face. "Ah, but I accord special honours to such important figures as you, Mister Kiriakis."
The detective had a habit of making the word ‘Mister’ sound as insulting as any curse word. Victor didn’t react, but recorded its use in some dark recess of his mind. "Thank you for the courtesy." He intertwined his fingers and stared over the desk at the younger man, making it perfectly clear he knew no courtesy had motivated the detective.
"You’re welcome," Irving refused to be out done in politeness. "Now," abruptly his manner changed and he leaned forwards, "tell me, how long did you know about the affair that was going on between Dr Murphy and your then fiancee, Miss Walker? Or had you been orchestrating the whole thing in order to bring her under your thumb?"
Victor let a rare smile cross his lips. He liked this young detective. He was smart, intuitive and most of all, perfect for his plan. "You were right. I orchestrated the affair. I needed to be able to control Miss Walker."
"Would that have anything to do with your scheme to get Miss Chloe Lane out of the Kiriakis boys’ lives and Sami Brady away from your step-grandson Will?" Irving watched his opponent for any telltale reaction, and had to admire his self control. "Or possibly you just couldn’t stand the thought of anyone in Salem not being in your power, including Tony Dimera. I know you’ve been, well, I would say blackmailing him, but blackmail is such a dirty word, don’t you think? Shall we say that you’ve been using your considerable powers of persuasion to convince Tony to help you."
Another cold hearted man would have shrugged. Victor stared harder. "You have remarkable power of deduction there, Detective, it’s a shame your imagination clouds it so much."
"Mister Kiriakis," Irving’s tone became confiding, almost affectionate. "I have no interest in the power plays between Salem’s residents, or what secrets your wife’s past holds, or even what you’re plotting against John Black not only as a business rival but also as the man who married your daughter and didn’t spend the rest of his life mourning her death. The only thing that interests me is who killed Colin Murphy and why. So I have one question for you, Mister Kiriakis: on the one night when, surely, security was even more than usually desirable, why were the security cameras in the grounds switched off?"
*******
"Shawn, wait," Cassie caught at his arm, pulling him back so that he was forced to face her.
"Cassie," Shawn turned round in fury, a rare Salem storm soaking them both to the skin, "I don’t want to talk about this. You’re an accessory to murder as it is; I don’t want to increase your culpability."
"I don’t care about my culpability," she reached out her hand to cup his face, brushing back a lock of dark hair plastered to his forehead as she did so, "I only care about you."
He pulled her hand down forcefully. "Stop it."
"I can’t," she whimpered in response.
"I can’t go on with this," it was his turn to push his wet hair off his forehead, "It’s too hard. I can’t keep lying to everyone I love. It hurts too much." He stared deeply into her eyes, willing her to understand why he was about to take such a drastic step. "I’m going to confess."
"You can’t!" She whined, grabbing at his hand again, wrapping her fingers around it, unable to comprehend why he would throw his entire life away. "You’ll go to jail."
"I don’t care anymore," Shawn half turned away from her, then looked back, "Go inside, Cassie. It’s raining."
Cassie stared at his retreating form and, with half a smile, unconsciously quoted Andie McDowell in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ as he walked away from her, "I hadn’t noticed."
*******
"Where were you last night?" She didn’t whine, it was a softly spoken question half voicing her quiet fear that he was pulling away from her. She was losing him. She’d never admit it to any one else, but she was losing him, and she could do nothing to keep him by her side.
He looked over at her, and inside his heart broke just a little more because her large eyes were made to look even bigger by the tears that she was trying so hard not to cry. "I went home to see Zack."
It was a lie, she knew it, and he knew that she knew it too. He wondered if she’d tell him she knew. It would be a start. It might lead to an argument. If a year ago you had told him that he would pray to God that he would argue with her, he would have laughed in your face. Now he felt that he needed anything from her right now to show that she still could believe in him, that she could still fight for him, because he felt himself slipping away with no strength left to fight for himself.
She turned her face away. Why couldn’t he tell her the truth? Why did he have to lie to her again and again? The first tear fell, but she wouldn’t let him see her cry. Not again. "I’m leaving Salem."
"What?" The cry was as anguished as any she had caused him to give. "Why?"
She kept her face hidden from him, not letting him see how much he was hurting her even now. "I think you know why."
He reached a hand out for her. "Darlin’…"
The hand dropped unseen and the word died on his lips.
He couldn’t tell her. It would kill if she knew. How could he tell her he was a murderer?
"Go."
Her jaw dropped and her hair slapped against her face as she twisted to stare at him in disbelief. "What?"
"If that’s what you really want, just go. Don’t tell me where. I don’t want to know." He stood up from the park bench slowly, his leather jacket settling over his wide shoulders until it hung as if on a Calvin Klein model. Better, as if it hung on the shoulders of the rebel god himself, James Dean. She was still struck dumb by his words. "Just remember this, I love you. I can’t stop loving you. God knows, I’ve tried. It would be better for us both if I could, but I can’t. Wherever you go, you’ll take that part of me with you, but you don’t have to keep loving me. Leave. Now. Don’t look back. Forget me."
She nearly laughed then, miserable as she was. He was asking her to do the impossible. How could she forget him? It would be like forgetting the sun, or the rain, more apt for all the tears he was making her cry. "I can’t. You’re unforgettable. You’re stuck with me, for better or worse, wherever I go."
At first he just growled something unintelligible. "Then you’ve got to know it will be for the worse. I’m not who you think I am. I can’t be that person." He resisted the urge to sigh. That would only make her feel pity for him. He didn’t need her pity. He didn’t deserve it. Not after what he had done. "You’re leaving. You told me that already. I won’t be here when you come back. Forget me. Forget everything that you thought you saw in me. You were wrong. I’m not who you thought I was."
Her calmness melted away in the heated blaze of his words. "Tell me. Tell me what you did that’s so awful."
He turned his dark eyes upon her. "I killed a man. I shot Colin Murphy."
"No." The word made him ache. She didn’t believe he’d done it, but he remembered pulling the trigger and watching the good doctor fall.
"I did," his eyes became stormy with pain. "I killed him."
"No." She repeated herself, and this time she stood up and took a single step forwards. Her faith in him was something he would have given his soul to cherish, to keep safe forever, but had to destroy. "You can’t have."
"I did." She touched his cheek gently, laying her hand until it cupped his jaw, noting the way the muscles clenched and how he, in a gesture as unconscious as it was instinctual, he leaned into her. "I pulled the trigger. Now he’s dead."
"You didn’t kill him," her faith was implacable. "I know you didn’t. You couldn’t have."
"I did. Believe me. Walk away now." He, to no avail, was trying to pull himself away. "I have to take responsibility for my actions. Don’t make this any harder than it already is."
"I won’t believe it. I can’t. You couldn’t kill a man. You don’t have it in you. You’re too good." He had never loved her so much as at that moment. He had never wanted to feel the ground swallow him up whole so badly either. Her very faith in him was the thing that tortured him most. It was worse than the guilt that came from killing a man who had threatened to kill his father, worse than the knowledge that he had taken a life, worse even than knowing that when he died an eternity of torment in Hell awaited him, a place where he would never see her again. He had to break the childlike trust she put in him, he had to confess everything.
"I killed Colin because he was going to kill my father, and I couldn’t let him. Not after everything we’ve been through to be together as a family." He paused as he saw understanding dawn in her eyes. "I couldn’t let him take the life of the man I love and admire most in this world. I would rather he killed me."
"No," she wasn’t crying, but her voice expressed the hysteria she was close to. "Don’t say that. Colin was a bad man. He’s dead now. Bo is safe. Nothing else matters."
"Don’t you see?" He was shaking his head, and he took her hand down from his cheek to hold it gently, rubbing small circles on it with his thumb. "I killed a man, now I have to take the consequences." He stared over her shoulder. "Isn’t that right, Detective Irving?"
"I’m sorry." The detective looked as if he had aged fifteen years in fifteen minutes. His dark blue eyes were surrounded by deep lines and his mouth was set in a grim frown as he began to read the boy his Miranda rights. "I’m arresting you for the murder of Colin Murphy…"
Our Hero was barely listening to him, his full attention was turned on our Heroine. "Forget me."
"I can’t." She shook her head gently. Why did he keep asking her to do the impossible?
"You have to. I don’t deserve you." A truth universal to all men who had good women in their lives.
"If we all got what we deserved, the world would be a much sadder place." The good woman’s only answer.
"This is goodbye."
"No. This is au revoir." She just managed a little smile. "I will see you again."
"It’s time to go," Irving interrupted, allowing the hero to stand free without the inevitable handcuffs restraining him, but standing close enough to see the glimmer of tear drops on their eyelashes.
Her lover stared into her face with eyes as dark as storm clouds over the sea. "No, this is not au revoir, love. This is something quite different." He turned away from her so that she couldn’t see the pain in his eyes any longer, so that he wouldn’t have to see her heart break as he told her the truth. "Forget you ever knew me."
She tried to put a comforting hand onto his arm, but he drew back. "Impossible."
"Then remember me as I once was. Not as I am now. Remember me when I was innocent, when I deserved your love." His eyes met hers for the last time, and he could not turn away, no matter how much pain she saw there.
A sudden strength filled her, he needed her. She could be strong for him now as he had been strong for her before for as long as he needed her. "Remember this: whatever happens, I have loved you with every breath in my body, every atom of my being and every particle of my soul."
She would always remember that look in his eyes, the way, search as she might, she could find no hope there. It would haunt her in the years to come. She would blame herself.
Irving tapped him on the shoulder, and he nodded once, still not looking at him. There hadn’t been enough time. There would never be enough time, but perhaps time wasn’t what mattered. Eternity wouldn’t be enough for them. His last word would echo in her mind forever. "Adieu, Isabella."
‘Adieu’ - ‘To God,’ Belle.