Free Enemies Closer by Ava Parker Page B

help.”

Chapter Seven
    P romising to call later in the afternoon, Ben took his leave. It was a five-minute walk to his office and he spent the time considering what he’d just heard. He had underplayed Madeline’s money concerns because he didn’t want to scare Clara more than she already was, but he was going to have to come clean when he saw her again. Taking out his phone, he tapped on the telephone number that Clara had sent him. When a woman’s voice answered he introduced himself to Detective Carlisle. Listening for a moment, he said, “I have a meeting in ten minutes. It’ll probably go on for an hour, but after that I’m all yours.”
    In spite of his fears for Maddy, he couldn’t get Clara’s face out of his head. She and Maddy looked a lot alike, and both were undeniably beautiful, but the snapshots she’d shown him of her sister didn’t do her justice. Clara looked like a Russian ballerina. She had a long, graceful neck, high cheekbones and huge blue eyes. Her posture and movements were graceful even though she had seemed completely unaware of herself. Even when she cried, looking at him with a bewildered expression, eyes red and splotchy, a smudge of mascara on her cheek, she was stunning. Maddy had been right. He could definitely fall for Clara.
    At the meeting he managed to focus completely on the matter at hand – in this case, a biotech start-up out of San Francisco. RD Investments was a successful venture capital firm, focusing mostly on emerging pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. That Ben had managed to start a company that used both his undergraduate degree in biology and his master’s in business and finance was still a marvel. He and his partner, Jack, had started the fund five years ago with a lot of hard work and a heavy dose of nepotism, both having come from long lines of Wall Street success. But even though Ben was born under a lucky star in that regard, his parents had always insisted he work for what he had. Apart from a few well-placed recommendations, they had left him to make his own success. This was the last meeting with the San Francisco people before the board of RD Investments met to decide whether to put money behind their research. Afterward, Ben told Jack about Maddy.
    “Jesus!” was his only intelligible response.
    “I’m going to the police department now. And they might want to check you out too, since you dated her.”
    “Yeah,” he replied, looking pale and devastated. “Give them my number.”
    Ben left the office wondering if he had underestimated Jack’s affection for Maddy, or if his partner’s response had just been shock and concern for a one-time girlfriend. He knew that Jack had been disappointed when he and Maddy called it quits, but neither of them ever confided their feelings about it.
    He took a taxi to the police station and got there at quarter to three. The receptionist told him to have a seat and two minutes later a tall, athletic woman in her mid-forties called his name.
    “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Radcliffe,” said Judy Carlisle without shaking his hand. She led him through a large, clean room of new cubicles and cluttered desks, each distinguishable from the other only by its occupants until finally they approached a redheaded man in a decent suit with a powerful red pompadour rising above his forehead. He was younger than his partner, but not as fit, and he didn’t bother to rise when Carlisle made the introductions but simply looked Ben up and down.
    “Do we have an open interview room?” he asked his partner, still looking at Ben.
    “Room two. Why don’t you bring Mr. Radcliffe in and I’ll get us some coffee.”
    Detective Kincaid stood, taking a folder and a notebook from his desk, and silently led the way to interview room two. Good cop, bad cop? Ben followed and took a seat in the windowless room.
    Opening the folder, Kincaid said, “So you’re Madeline Gardner’s friend ?”
    He asked as if the word ‘friend’ was code