Excerpt: Ashes at the Edges: A Valentine Covington Novel

Dahlia never liked receiving calls before eight AM. For some reason, they never seemed to come bearing good news. Probably because they came at such an ungodly hour. Never mind that, with such circular reasoning while being half asleep, Dahl could debate with herself about it for hours.

This particular call was one that she was getting used to, having had repeats of the same one for three or four days in a row now. She'd lost count. But when she saw Mrs. Edwards' number come up on the caller ID, she wasn't any less irritated.

She picked up the phone, and was only halfway through "hello" when Mrs. Edwards broke in sounding panicked and terrified.

"Detective Vanderbilt, I found something that I think you should see," she said, her words tripping over each other in her haste to get them out. "Michael is out on business right now, so could you come over here? I... I'm afraid that what you've come up with about my husband is worse than we both thought. ...I'm really scared."

The Edwards case had started out as a simple suspicion of infidelity on the husband's part. What made Dahl nervous was that it had spiraled out of control from there. There was no evidence of cheating, but what the detective had found suggested something far more sinister.

Dahl was out of bed and pulling on her clothes before Mrs. Edwards was even done speaking. "Should I call the police? Get them on standby?"

"I... I think that maybe, that would be a good idea..."

"All right. I'll give them a call, let them know that we might be needing them. I'll be there in a few minutes, okay? Just hold tight. Do you want me to bring Val?" She shoved her feet into her shoes, grabbed her holstered Beretta 90-Two and Sauer P232, and shoved her wallet into her back pocket.

"I don't know that that would be such a good idea. If it were just you and I if Michael came home early, than we could easily pass it off as just some sort of girl's time or whatever. If Val's here, he'll get suspicious."

Pushing out of her bedroom, Dahl tapped on Val's door. "All right. I'll be there in just a minute. Call me if you need me." She clapped her phone shut and, at the sleepily mumbled "come in," slipped into Val's room.

"I'm going to go see Mrs. Edwards. She's apparently found something that's made her very nervous, so I'm going to see what she has for me. I'm getting the cops on standby, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mind doing the same. I'd feel safer knowing you're close by."

Val sat up and rubbed a hand over his eyes before fixing her with a worried look. "Yeah. I'll head out to the station now, grab the detective on the new case, and we'll go park up someplace not too far from the Edwards' house while we discuss what he's got."

"Good. That sounds good. So get your ass out of bed and get going." She gave the blankets a tug and flicked on the light on her way out. "I'll call it in if things go sour," she said over her shoulder as she made her way down the hall. "If I can, I'll call you too." She grabbed her coat and slid it on, jumping when she turned back to see Val standing in the doorway between the main room and the kitchen. "Jesus. I swear, I'm going to start making you wear a bell around the house..."

Val smirked and leaned against the wall. "Be safe out there, okay? That case makes me nervous. That man makes me nervous. So be careful."

Dahl moved back to smooth his hair back out of its sleep-mussed fluff and into a more respectable tousle. "I'll be careful. Just make sure you're there in case careful isn't careful enough." She turned back to the door, patted herself down to ensure that both sidearms were in place, and pulled her car keys out of her pocket. "If things go well, I'll see you at lunch."

"Hopefully things go well, then."

She tossed one last smile at her partner over her shoulder before slipping out the door and own the stairs, narrowly avoiding a tumble down them when she skipped a step. When she emerged into the office at the bottom, she was met with yet more Christmas music, and Nan busily working through backlogged files and carefully entering information from the hard copies into the computer.

She glanced up when the door opened, flashing Dahl a bright smile. "Good morning, detective Vanderbilt. Where are you off to so early?"

"The Edwards'. Guess the missus has found something that's got her nervous. And given the nature of the case, I'm just hoping it's something minor. We can't deal with two many more big upsets. After those security tapes of him going through Alexander and Associates' private files, she hardly gets any sleep at night as it is. So here's to hoping that this is something small."

Nan never lost her bright smile. "Well, maybe it will be something to break the case," she said, turning back to her filing. "Wouldn't that be even better than hoping for something small and insignificant? I mean, Mrs. Edwards is so stressed... Wouldn't it be better to close the case?"

Dahlia frowned. "It would, but we don't have enough information to make an arrest. And if this is going to be the big break, I guess we're just going to have to hope that Mr. Edwards' business keeps him away from the home for another few hours."

"Well, here's to hoping, then, detective. Should I make a reservation somewhere for you and Mr. Covington to have lunch?" She pulled out the appointment calendar and eyed the previous days' reservations.

With an irritated sigh, Dahl headed for the door. "Ask Val when he comes down. I can't let you keep me from that poor woman any longer."

Nan glanced up and tried not to look too wounded. "I'm sorry, detective. I didn't mean to keep you. By all means, go, please. I understand that you have more important things to do than talk to me."

Dahl frowned and stalked out of the office. "Damn right I do." Popping the locks on her car, she slid into the driver's seat and strapped herself in, taking off towards the Edwards home out in West Town. The drive took longer than she would have liked, stuck in the congested Chicago traffic, and when she finally pulled to a stop almost a block away, she was afraid that Mr. Edwards would have already returned home.

She killed the engine and slipped out of the car, casually heading down the sidewalk towards the house, carefully checking to make sure Mr. Edwards' car wasn't in the drive or anywhere on the street. Once satisfied, she approached the front door and knocked cautiously, not relaxing until Mrs. Edwards answered the door and hurried her inside.

"Thank you so much for coming, detective. I... I didn't know what else to do. I'm just at a loss." She took Dahl's arm and began to lead her back to her husband's office.

"It's really no problem. It's my job to make sure you're safe, after all." She followed closely, glancing back on occasion to assure herself that this woman's husband wasn't somehow right behind them.

Mrs. Edwards moved around behind the large oak desk in the middle of the room and released Dahl's arm to pull open one of the desk drawers. "I was looking for his phone book, to get in contact with one of his coworker's wives to invite her for dinner, and I found this." She pulled out a thick manilla envelope and held it out to the detective, making sure to note the small handgun hidden beneath it.

Dahlia tried not to jump to any conclusions outright. After all, in this day and age, she was sure that half of the United States owned a handgun that they kept in the home to defend themselves against intruders. But with Mr. Edwards, it made her nervous. The man was cold, calculating, and extremely private, almost to the point of being secretive. He didn't reveal much of anything about himself, and he liked to keep his home life and work life completely and undeniably separate.

With her nerve gnawing at the bottom of her stomach, she pulled open the envelope in her hands and pulled out the stack of papers inside. The top sheet was a simple piece of computer paper with the words, "We know what you're doing. We know where you live," printed in small black letters dead center. The words sent a slice of cold dread straight through her, and it wasn't even her husband being threatened.

She pulled aside the first sheet to reveal a photograph of Mr. Edwards copying Alexander and Associates files. The next photo showed him shoving a thick stack of files into his briefcase, and the one after that showed a close-up of one of the files in his hands: a detailed spec sheet of a brand new piece of technology that Alexander himself had been trying to perfect to put on the market.

"...Have you found any of the files in these pictures?" Dahl asked, glancing up at Mrs. Edwards where she was wringing her hands in front of her.

"His file cabinet is locked. He always carries the key with him."

Dahl slid the pictures back into their envelope and dropped to her knees behind the desk. "He must keep a spare somewhere." She began to search the desk, every drawer, every corner, and beneath every loose piece of wood until, hidden in a gap of wood at the back of the desk and underneath, she managed to find what she was looking for.

"If those files are here, we may have enough to indict him on industrial espionage." She rose and motioned for Mrs. Edwards to follow her to the file cabinet where she unlocked the top drawer and began leafing through the files. It was nothing but tax forms and old papers, nothing important or incriminating.

As she moved on to the next drawer however, her heart leapt into her throat. The entire drawer was filled with pilfered ideas from Alexander and Associates, along with notes on how to improve and out-produce them by releasing the products before them.

"...Holy shit..." She pulled out file after file full of stolen information. "This is more than enough to put him away," she said, holding up a file for Mrs. Edwards to see. "Put him away for a long, long time."

She glanced up just in time to see a look of horror spread itself across her client's face, and she didn't even have to look to know that her husband was standing in the doorway.

"I don't think that I can let that happen." His cool voice sliced through the tense quiet of the office, and Dahlia slowly turned to find herself staring straight down the barrel of a vicious looking .45. "Now put down the files."

Dahl slowly set down the papers in her hand and got back to her feet beside Mrs. Edwards. "Now, don't do anything you'll regret, Mr. Edwards," she said, discreetly inching her hand up to the Beretta holstered at her hip. "There's no reason to start trouble here where it's not needed."

Mr. Edwards kept his aim steady and motioned for the two of them to step out from behind the desk. "Get out here where I can see you."

Using the last moment of cover she had from the desk, Dahl slid her sidearm out of its holster and tucked her hand just enough behind her back to hide it from view. "We don't want any trouble," she said, keeping close to her client and slightly in front of her.

"Oh, bullshit. Save it, you meddlesome bitch. If you didn't want trouble, you shouldn't have already started it." He motioned with his gun towards the open file cabinet. "You've gone through my things." He dropped his eyes to the manilla envelope where Dahlia had left it on the desktop. "A lot of my things. I don't think I can just let you walk away knowing everything that you do."

Mrs. Edwards began to tremble. "Michael... Michael, please... What's gotten into you?"

"Shut up!" he snapped, swinging the gun around to point at her. "You shut your mouth, you worthless woman. You brought this on yourself when you started sending people to snoop around in my business. You brought this on yourself."

Ten years on the force had taught Dahlia a lot of things, and at that moment, she couldn't have been more thankful for the time she'd spent walking the beat. In the split second before he fired that .45 straight at his wife's face, Dahlia saw him tense, saw his finger begin to tighten on the trigger, and knew that she had to act.

The whole exchange seemed to move in sickeningly slow motion. Dahlia dove at her client, swinging the Beretta out in a wide arc and firing at almost the same moment as Mr. Edwards. The bullet from the .45 tore through his wife's shoulder and she screamed, muffling the cry from her husband's lips as Dahlia's bullet found it's mark in his thigh. He staggered and tried to take aim again, only to be met with another shot from the Beretta that burrowed deep in his side.

In his moment of blind pain, Dahl pulled out her phone and hit the first number on speed dial, shouting, "Shots fired! West Town, corner of Keystone and Agusta! Man down!"

Two blocks away, where they’d staked themselves out to discuss the newest case, the call came out on the radio of Donovan Vanderbilt's cruiser, and he and Val tensed at the address. Donovan snatched up his radio and turned the engine over. "Officer Vanderbilt responding. Two blocks out." He slammed on the gas, roaring away from the curb and skidding to a stop in front of the Edwards' residence no more than thirty seconds later.

The two men bolted out of the car, Valentine in the lead kicking open the front door and following his nose to the office where Mr. Edwards was standing over Dahlia and his wife, gun in hand, ready to take another shot.

"Police! Drop the weapon!" Donovan shouted as he pushed his way past Val and into the room. Mr Edwards swung to face them as he fired another shot, which blew a chunk out of the door frame behind the cop and narrowly missed grazing his shoulder.

Without a hint of hesitation, Donovan took quick aim and fired two shots into Mr. Edwards' chest and watched him sink to the floor in a heap without even a hint of remorse on his hard-set features.

Dahl glanced over the body before turning to comfort her sobbing client, and noticed something odd.

There was a smear of glittery lip gloss across his cheek.

Maybe he'd been cheating after all.