Phantom Lover. Susan Napier

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WELL, am I under arrest?’

      Honor stared across the battered wooden table at the irritatingly fresh-faced female police constable. Old age must really be creeping up on her if policemen and women had started to look like schoolchildren. Suddenly she felt every one of her creaking twenty-five years!

      ‘Not yet. Right now you’re simply helping us with our enquiries,’ the constable said, with a complacency Honor found equally irritating.

      ‘So this is entirely voluntary, right? If I want to I can walk out of here without answering any of your questions,’ she said, to emphasise that she wasn’t prepared to be pushed around any longer.

      Her wits were starting to return at last and she bitterly regretted having allowed herself to be bundled into the police car in the first place. But she had been so confused, so utterly mortified that she hadn’t cared how she retreated from the scene of her embarrassment, as long as it was at high speed! The police had been extremely efficient in that respect at least, but now they were being stupidly stubborn about letting her go.

      ‘You could do that,’ said the older, non-uniformed man leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the tiny interview-room. ‘But that would mean that we would have to make a decision as to whether to let you go or charge you. And I can tell you that on the evidence so far I would have to come down on the side of an immediate arrest. In that case you’d be held in custody until tomorrow’s court sitting. Your lawyer could then apply for bail but we would naturally oppose and you could well find yourself a guest of the government until your trial. Given the backlog in the Auckland Courts, that could be months...’

      Honor blanched. With the currently uneven state of her finances the idea of involving lawyers was far more of a disincentive than summary incarceration. At least one didn’t have to pay to be in prison!

      She had forgotten the plain-clothes man’s name but he had introduced himself as a detective inspector from Auckland Central and she supposed that she should be grateful that he had hauled her off to a nearby police station rather than taken her straight back to the city. If only Harry, the local constable, had been involved she might have been able to laugh it all off, but this was evidently a city-based operation that had spilled out into the rural fringes of Auckland, and explaining herself to strangers was a great deal more difficult.

      She sighed, and glumly eyed the senior officer. At least he looked on the wrong side of thirty, with enough experience of human life to have a bit of sympathy for people caught up in awkward situations of none of their own making...well, almost none.

      He was watching her now, with shrewd eyes that were neither overtly accusing nor condemning, merely shrewdly assessive. Not at all like the glassy-eyed suspicion that was being directed at her by the ambitious WPC.

      ‘Now, Miss Sheldon, why don’t you tell us why you were skulking about Mr Blake’s house?’

      Trust that young whippersnapper to choose the most offensive way to put her question. Or should that be whippersnapperette? Good grief, now she was even thinking like an old woman!

      ‘I wasn’t skulking,’ Honor told her firmly. ‘I have never skulked in my entire life.’

      ‘Then what were you doing lurking on his property?’

      ‘I was not lurking—’

      ‘I think we’ve established that Miss Sheldon was on the property, Gibbons,’ the DI interrupted, and for a moment Honor could have sworn she saw a glimmer of humour in the cold grey eyes.

      Gibbons. What a good name for her, Honor thought with malicious satisfaction, squinting to deliberately obscure the other woman’s attractive features. Yes, with her shaggy, reddish-brown hair and long arms she might just pass for a female gibbon in the murk of the jungle. Or was that orangutan? Or baboon? All three summoned suitably derogatory images that boosted Honor’s bruised confidence. Being somewhat short and generously rounded, stricken with freckles and thick wavy hair of nondescript brown that refused to obey any cut or style, no matter how professional, Honor had long ago given up worrying needlessly about her appearance, but under that supercilious uniformed stare she was beginning to feel like a total degenerate. In fact, she could feel definite latent criminal tendencies beginning to surface. A desire to indulge in a little police baiting...

      ‘Miss Sheldon?’

      ‘What?’ As usual in moments of crisis, Honor’s thoughts had wandered disastrously from the point.

      ‘Now we need to establish exactly why you were visiting the Blake residence in such a...shall we say, unconventional fashion?’ This time the grey eyes were definitely affable—suspiciously so.

      ‘I don’t see what’s unconventional about a bicycle,’ Honor countered defensively, suddenly wondering if she was victim of a good-cop, bad-cop interrogation technique that was supposed to lull her into a false sense of security.

      ‘You hid it in some bushes,’ the young baboon pointed out as if it countenanced a crime in itself.

      Honor frowned. She wasn’t going to tell this snotty kid that she had been ashamed of her battered bike of dubious vintage and even more dubious brake-power.

      When she had set out from home she had been expecting her destination to be the usual friendly homestead common to most New Zealand rural properties, albeit an up-market one commensurate with the size and diversity of Blake Investments. Instead she had been presented with a view of an intimidatingly pretentious mansion at the bottom of a steeply sloping, thickly gravelled driveway that sent cold chills up her spine. She had had nightmare visions of herself not being able to stop, ploughing straight on through the majestic front door, muddy tyres mowing down the butler and scattering screaming maids in all directions. Oh, yes, that would make a grand first—and last—impression on the man she had come to see!

      ‘I didn’t want it to get stolen,’ she temporised on a half-truth, unable to resist adding, ‘Of course, I didn’t know at the time that there were hordes of police already lurking and skulking around the property.’

      The constable reddened, while the DI coughed, his hand briefly covering his mouth. Having abandoned his laid-back lean on the wall, he sat down on the other spare chair and put his big hands flat on the table.

      ‘Let’s