by Linda Howard
She didn’t know what devil seized her, but she did know that payback was sweet. “Almost,” she murmured, and listened to the sudden fumbling and background cursing as he dropped his cell phone.
Garvey approached Eric’s desk, some papers in hand. “The senator’s alibied tighter than Dick’s hatband,” he said in disgust. “He was at a fund-raiser, with Mrs. Dennison, in Savannah last night. It lasted until midnight. He couldn’t be in two places at once.”
“He might not have done it, but he had it done,” Eric growled. “The fucker screwed up. If he’d just left it alone, we didn’t have enough on him to get a search warrant, but he was afraid Jaclyn could identify him. Now we’re going to look real hard at his girlfriend. Jaclyn just called; a woman pretending to be an old friend called her business yesterday, and her mother told the woman where Jaclyn would be. That was a puzzle, figuring out how anyone knew where Jaclyn would be at any given time, but the answer was simple.”
“The girlfriend.”
“Yep.” Eric pulled up some information on his computer. “Atlanta P.D. sent over their ballistic report. They found one bullet in the Jag’s upholstery; the other one went through the passenger door. The weight of the bullet is consistent with a nine millimeter. Ms. Taite Boyne is registered as the owner of a Glock 26, which is a subcompact nine millimeter.”
“If she’s smart, that pistol is at the bottom of Lake Lanier.”
“Problem is, she thinks she’s smarter than everyone else. People like that make stupid mistakes. We’ll trace the call to Premier’s office, see what pops. Maybe she used her cell phone.”
“She can toss that, too, say it was stolen.”
“Pistol and cell phone both come up missing? I’d say that’s suspicious behavior. Anyway, she might have been smart enough to use a calling card, so we can’t bank on the call leading directly to her. But the Atlanta P.D. didn’t find any shell casings at the scene last night, which means they ejected inside the car. There may be scorch marks, gunpowder residue in the car, on the steering wheel from contact with her hands. At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see if she has an alibi for last night.”
Garvey rubbed his hands together. “I love it when all the details fall in place,” he said happily.
“Jaclyn is on the way in, to look at photographs.”
“Identifying Dennison won’t count for much, with him being all over television these days. Seems like he’s running an ad every fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got another angle I’m going to try. Jaclyn doesn’t know cars. She seriously doesn’t know cars. About all she can tell you is if a vehicle is a car, or a pickup, or an SUV. But she’s really, really good with details, so she might have noticed something particular about the car, even without knowing what make it is.” He’d come in early, started compiling stacks of photographs of cars, of both the kind the senator drove and the kind Taite Boyne drove. He’d noticed a striking detail about the car that the senator drove, and there was a possibility Jaclyn had picked up on it.
He also had a lot of head shots of gray-haired men, including two of the senator, one from each side. He didn’t know which angle she’d seen him from, and one side of a person’s face could be markedly different from the other side. If she picked him out, that was a bonus. Let a defense attorney argue that she’d seen him in political ads; that was the district attorney’s worry. The important thing to Eric was collecting enough evidence that they could persuade a judge to issue a search warrant on that car.
Jaclyn walked in a little after nine. Eric watched heads turning her way. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, because she wasn’t. Objectively, he supposed most people would say she was attractive. She sure as hell attracted him. But what set her apart was her effortless, long-legged stroll, those dynamite legs, and a classy sense of style. Jaclyn couldn’t look cheap if she tried. Everything about her was meticulously put together without being fussy. He hated fussiness, hated a lot of jangling things hanging off a woman. From the gold studs in her ears to the tiny gold chain around her right ankle, she was restrained and classy. It was funny how the very things that attracted him to her were what he most enjoyed messing up; maybe it was the challenge of getting her clothes off and her hair down, her nails digging into his back. Oh, yeah.
He stood up as she approached, directed her to the chair beside his desk. If he’d pushed it a little last night, he thought, they’d have ended up in bed, but what he wanted wasn’t just sex. He wanted Jaclyn to decide that she wanted him. He wanted her to consciously, deliberately decide to give them a chance, because otherwise he’d always feel as if she had one foot out the door and was just waiting for him to do something wrong so she could leave.
Garvey came up as Eric turned to get the stack of photographs he’d put to the side. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said to her. “That was a close thing last night.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Garvey. Yes, it was. That was the most frightened I’ve ever been.”
“We’re making progress in the case. With luck, this will all be over pretty soon.” He pulled up a chair and sat down—evidently he wanted to be involved in the process.
“I hope so.” She glanced at the clock, then at Eric. “Ready?”
He gave her the head shots first. She flipped through them, taking maybe two seconds on each one, then shook her head and set them aside. “Nothing, but let me look through them again in a few minutes. Sometimes my impressions need to simmer.”
“Take your time.”
She gave a tiny smile. “Today? Time is the one thing I don’t have.”
Next she went through the photographs of cars in the same measured way. She went all the way to the end of the stack, but instead of setting the stack aside the way she had with the head shots, she went back to the beginning and started again, a tiny frown knitting her brow. She went more slowly this time, her head tilted to the side.
Eric and Garvey sat silently, watching and waiting. Eric almost stopped breathing. He was putting a lot of faith in her attention to detail. She might not know cars, but she knew style.
She pulled a photograph out of the stack and tossed it on the desk. “This one,” she said. “The car was like this.”
He glanced at the photograph. He wanted to smile with satisfaction, but he kept his expression noncommittal so he didn’t inadvertently influence her. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. It had that same doohickey sticking up on the hood.”
Eric picked up the photograph. The car she’d selected was a Mercedes S-Class, the S600, which ran about a hundred and fifty thou. Only the S-Class vehicles had the Mercedes emblem standing on the tip of the hood; on all of the other models, the emblem was made into the grill.
Senator Dennison drove a silver S600.
He gave her the other stack of photographs. These had been harder to come by, because they were photographs of the taillights of several different makes and models, taken at night. “Do any of these taillights look like the ones on the car you saw last night?”
“You’re asking a lot,” she murmured. “I was scared out of my head. I barely remembered to look for a tag number, and fat lot of good that did.”
“Just see if anything rings a bell.”
She did the whole methodical thing again, but when she reached the last one she shook her head. “Sorry. Nothing there.”
That had been a long shot anyway. Still, she’d pulled out a piece of information that might sway a judge. She hadn’t identified the senator, but she’d identified his car.
She picked up the head shots again, went back through them before finally shaking her head. “I don’t recognize anyone.”
Eric took the pictures back. “That’s okay. Thanks for coming in.”
She stood, gave him a quizzical look. “That’s it? You aren’t going to tell me if that hood doohickey means anything or not?”
He smiled. “It means a lot.” It also meant a lot that she was being cordial, that she was keeping her hostility firmly
under wraps in front of Garvey.
“Good. I’d hate to waste a trip here when I have a million other things I have to be doing. I have to run now. Have a nice day.”
Everyone in the room watched her leave. Garvey heaved a sigh. “If it wasn’t for my blushing bride, I’d give you a run for your money with that one.”
Eric snorted. “Your blushing bride would cut your nuts off.”
“I know. That’s what I meant.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“I HAVE TO TAKE NOTES,” BISHOP DELANEY SAID GLEEFULLY. “Forget notes; I have to take pictures, otherwise no one will ever believe it. I did the flowers for Hee Haw Hell.”
“Hush,” Jaclyn said in an undertone, casting a sharp look around. The last thing she needed was for anyone in the wedding party, or any of the guests, to hear him. But no one was close by; he’d had the good sense to wait until they were alone to share his observation. She wasn’t worried about hurting anyone’s feelings, but she was definitely worried that someone—like half the people there—would take umbrage and pull out their pocket knives. She didn’t have anything against pocket knives; she carried a teeny one in her purse herself, and it was forever coming in handy. But if she had to vote on the wedding party she considered most likely to be in a knife fight, this one would win hands down.
She and Bishop were sitting in the back row on the groom’s side, and since the venue, otherwise known as a barn, wasn’t filled to capacity, there was no one seated in the two rows of folding chairs in front of them. At that precise moment the groom’s mother, who remained silently horrified by her son’s choice of bride and everything to do with the wedding, was being seated—to Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places”—by one of the ushers, though that term was a little glorified when applied to this particular usher, the bride’s mullet-headed brother. At least he was wearing a tie. No jacket, and his pants were khaki, but he had on a tie.
Jaclyn kept trying to put herself into a party spirit and have some fun, because most of the people there, barring the groom’s mother and two sisters, were having a blast. Fun didn’t have to be color-coordinated. Fun didn’t have to have a background of classical music. But what kept her from relaxing was the strong impression that this group’s idea of fun didn’t fit within the definition of “legal.” She frequently handled guests, and wedding party participants, who drank too much or breathed through a joint, but she was afraid this group leaned more toward crack, meth, and a variety of crimes that made the words “warrant for arrest” of importance to them.
This wedding teetered on the edge of disaster; she could feel it. So far everyone seemed to be on his or her best behavior, but “best” was subjective. To call this Hee Haw Hell was insulting to Hee Haw.
The wedding was being held in a barn located in the middle of a field a good forty-minute drive from Premier’s offices. The bride’s grandfather owned this land, and though it was no longer worked as a farm, it remained the home place, the family stomping grounds. To get to the barn, one had to leave the paved road. The directions had read: Turn in PawPaw’s driveway, drive around the house, and follow the tractor road down the left side of the field until you get to the barn. Maybe at one time the tractor road had looked like a real road, albeit a dirt one. Now it looked like a half-grown-up trail, with deep ruts that had threatened to rip the undercarriage of her rental car.
After driving down the dirt/grass road, everyone had to park on a grassy field, which made Jaclyn fervently thankful that the weather had cooperated. She was prepared to contact a vendor and order sturdy tents for the outdoor reception, if necessary, but she couldn’t do a damn thing about a muddy field of cars and ruined shoes.
The interior of the barn was lit by open windows and a multitude of white Christmas lights, as well as a number of off-white candles. Arrangements of white and off-white flowers, along with the lighting, made for an almost quaint setting—“almost” being the operative word. There was old straw on the floor, which the bride insisted was “authentic,” and while there were no animals present, the faint, lingering odor of past residents remained. The fans she’d arranged to be brought in were silent and effective, but maybe moving the air around so much wasn’t a good thing. On the other hand, without the fans everyone would be swimming in a sea of sweat. While this wasn’t the hottest day of the year, the temperature was still close to ninety.
Many of the guests on the bride’s side were in jeans and T-shirts; they hadn’t even bothered to brush off the dressy jeans or, heaven forbid, drag a dress or a suit out of the back of the closet. On the other hand, the running shoes most of them were wearing might come in handy.
The groom’s relatives had made an effort, and were dressed nicely. Jaclyn was wearing the lightest-weight business suit she owned. Bishop, of course, was immaculately dressed and, as always, fashionable and cool … seriously cool. Did the man have sweat glands?
“Why are you still here?” she whispered. The bouquets, corsages, and floral decorations, all paid for by the mother of the groom, had been delivered and set up to Bishop’s specifications. He rarely stuck around for the ceremony.
“Honey, you couldn’t pry me out of here with a crowbar and a quart of Vaseline,” he observed, his voice low.
In spite of the events of the past few days, Jaclyn smiled. She was here, and as long as no blood was shed she couldn’t deny the entertainment value before her. She might as well enjoy herself while she could. There was no telling what kind of challenges the reception might bring.
“It’s like the Beverly Hillbillies meet Boss Hogg, with poor June Cleaver thrown into the mix,” Bishop rhapsodized under his breath. “I’ve never seen anything like it. What the hell were you thinking when you took this job?”
She had thought that the groom’s mother had a point when she said no one in the bride’s family had any idea what they were doing; that she could help in some small way; that this bride and groom could use a little guidance. Unfortunately the bride and her mother had rejected most of Jaclyn’s ideas, though some had stuck.
It wasn’t necessary to have the bride’s family and friends on one side and the groom’s on the other to tell who belonged where. There was the inappropriate dress and abundance of mullets, shaved heads, and prison tattoos on the bride’s side, and most of the groom’s people looked shell-shocked. The groom’s poor mother looked like she might pass out at any moment, and his sisters and their families were all but in shock, except for one brother-in-law, who wasn’t trying very hard to hide his amusement.
“Imagine what this wedding would be like without us,” she said to Bishop.
“Hootenanny,” he whispered.
Someone entered the row from the far side and instead of sitting down at that end moved toward Jaclyn. Startled, she looked up as Eric took the folding chair next to hers, and instinctively she stiffened. She thought she had handled herself well when she’d gone to the police department that morning. She hadn’t betrayed any of the tension and angry confusion, the hurt, that she felt every time she simply thought of him; actually being in his presence was worse. But this was her territory, and his intrusion in it was jarring.
Bishop leaned around her and gave Eric an appraising look. “Well, well,” he drawled. “Hee Haw Heaven.” She had to admit, in his jeans and boots and lightweight jacket thrown on over a collarless shirt, Eric kind of blended with the crowd, though on him the look was sexy.
Eric draped his left arm around the back of her chair and leaned around her. “I’m with the wedding planner,” he said to Bishop.
“I got that,” Bishop said, and winked before sitting back. With a small sense of shock, she realized that they knew each other. Well, not knew, but, of course, Eric had interviewed all the vendors who’d witnessed her scene with Carrie.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Eric in a sharp whisper.
“Watching over you,” he whispered back.
Shock vibrated through her. Surely he didn’t think there was any danger
here? No way would Madelyn—or Peach or Diedra, either—tell anyone where Jaclyn could be found, not after last night’s shooting. She was safe here. Well, as safe as one could be when at least half the people around her were armed with some manner of weapon.
She appreciated his concern, and his effort. Still, having him sit so close to her, his arm lying against her back, one long leg touching hers, was nerve-racking. She shifted her legs to the side, away from him and closer to Bishop. Why couldn’t Eric wait outside? Did he have to put himself right here?
She supposed she could insist that he leave, but she already knew how much her insisting would gain her, so she saved her breath. He was stubborn and probably didn’t give a rat’s ass what she wanted. Not only that, she wasn’t stupid. Like it or not she knew she was safe with him. She was afraid she might not be safe from him, but that was due to her own weakness, and that acknowledgment carried a sting.
The position of his arm meant she was almost in his embrace. For a brief moment their gazes met. He had on his cop expression, keeping all his thoughts to himself. Almost. He dropped his gaze, letting it slide down her body and linger too long here and there. She tensed again, because that look made her skin feel too hot and tight.
Then he turned his attention to the altar, and his shoulders heaved as he almost choked on laughter. The minister, the big bald guy who owned Porky’s BBQ, wore a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and a black do-rag with a white cross positioned in the center of his forehead, so everyone would know his role in the proceedings.
The groom, at least, was dressed appropriately. A tuxedo would be out of place in the barn, but he did have on a nice black suit. He had a baby face and a new haircut, and he looked incredibly nervous. Not like he was about to run, but still … nervous. If he had any brains at all, she thought, he’d rabbit.
Evidently he was brainless.
Normally at this point in the ceremony Jaclyn was with the wedding party, making certain that everyone entered the aisle at the appropriate time, that they walked at the proper pace and were spaced correctly. However, the bride’s aunt, who hadn’t been at all happy that the groom’s mother had hired Premier, had insisted that was her job, and she didn’t need any help. Wouldn’t accept any help was more like it. Still, it was Jaclyn’s job to do what she could and resign herself to gracefully accept what she couldn’t do. Some days that was easier than others.
