Sidney Finch flashed into Allie’s mind. Once the idea took hold, it made horrible sense. What if Sidney thought Jean Arbutten would try to destroy his hero—something about the divorce or some personal skeleton the sheriff couldn’t afford to come out? Something, God forbid, about her aunt. Would Sidney kill to protect the sheriff? He had threatened her for just asking questions. Could Sidney have gotten out the door before the sheriff came in? Or maybe he was still in the house. The sheriff was busy wrestling with his son. Sidney could have slipped out a back window—
“What?” Rand asked. “Do you know something?”
Allie had forgotten he was even in the room. “No, nothing,” she said quickly.
Rand stood. He was a full head taller than Allie was, and his looming presence caused her to step backward. “You know something. It’s written all over your face.”
She had also forgotten he was an attorney, but she was used to dealing with attorneys. Rand wouldn’t stop until he thought he had the answer, and there was no way she would share her suppositions—and that was all they were at this point. She shuddered to think of his storming into the sheriff’s office accusing Saint Sidney of murder, but she had to give him something. “I think maybe she killed herself to punish your father,” she blurted out without thinking.
Her words horrified her when they came out of her mouth, but they had the intended effect. His face flushed red to the point that Allie feared he would have a stroke.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed through clenched teeth. “What kind of sick, perverted person would kill herself to punish someone else? And I thought you were different.” The look he gave her cut to her core. He stalked to the door, then spun on his heel and stormed back to her. “I’ll tell you one thing, Allison Grainger. You print something like that in this—” He gestured wildly around the room. “In this rag of a newspaper, and I’ll sue your ass off. You’ll be out of a job, and no newspaper anywhere in the state will hire you. I’ll smear your name across the Internet until you can’t step out in public without a disguise. Do you hear me?”
Allie was beyond speech, not just because he thought she would do such a thing, but because he scared the hell out of her. He had all his father’s force of personality without his control. She could barely breathe.
He glared at her for a moment. Then, he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Allie fell back in the chair, her knees too weak to hold her upright. She felt as if she had just been through a natural disaster and had lived to tell about it—barely. After a minute, she heard a tap on the door. Myrna stuck her head in. “You okay?”
“I don’t think so,” Allie said with a shaky laugh. “I think I might have wet my pants.”
“Take a deep breath,” Myrna said, watching Allie’s face. “Take a few of them. What the hell set him off? I could hear him clear out in the lobby.”
“I said something that made him angry.”
Myrna burst out laughing. “Well, if that isn’t the understatement of all time. I thought he was killing you in here.”
Allie looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t notice you running in here to save me.”
“Me? Uh-uh, girl. I’m a coward. I just came in to retrieve the body.”
“Well, the body’s going home,” Allie said, getting to her feet and starting from the room. “I think I’m through investigating for one day.”
Myrna looked thoughtful. “What was that he was saying about suing the paper?”
Allie stopped and turned back to her. “That was just a threat. I guess he thought I would write an article smearing his mother’s name. I’d never do that.”
Myrna was looking at her as if she’d never seen her before.
“Myrna?”
Myrna looked right through her. “Huh? Oh, sure, you go on. I’ll see you.”
Chapter 14
Allie was halfway home when she realized she was being followed, which said something for her state of mind. Either that or the skill of the person tailing her.
She groaned aloud as she wove in and out of traffic. She emphatically did not need another lunatic tailing her. She almost laughed when she realized it could be anyone—the same person as last time, the construction foreman, even Rand Arbutten. God knows, he was angry enough.
She pulled into Lester’s parking lot just as she had the last time, but this time she didn’t go inside. She didn’t even pull into a parking space. She just waited until the car passed and then pulled back into traffic. Was it the same car? It was a dark sedan with tinted windows, but as both Sheryl and the bartender had pointed out, everyone in Florida had tinted windows. She wasn’t even sure it was a four-door. What did Rand Arbutten drive?
She wasn’t frightened this time. Maybe there was a limit to how much fear you could be made to feel each day. If so, Rand Arbutten had already pushed her to her limit. Still, she kept her eyes peeled for the sedan.
She turned off A1A into her neighborhood. As she did, she saw a dark car parked on the side of the road at a stop sign. The same car? When she pulled up beside it, the driver-side window rolled down six inches. Whoever was inside had on some kind of hideous mask and fright wig. It was silly, but it terrified her. She was about to speed past when the driver formed his hand into the shape of a gun and pretended to pull the trigger.
Allie’s breath caught in her throat. Never mind that it was fingers instead of steel. It felt as if he was shooting at her. She floored the gas pedal and shot through the stop sign. At the house, she jumped out of the car and hurried inside, locking the dead bolt behind her. Only then did she realize her purse and briefcase were still in the car. Summoning up every ounce of courage she possessed, she unlocked the door and crept back to the car, looking around her in every direction. A glance at the construction site confirmed that the Bobcat—and its driver—were nowhere in sight.
She snatched her purse and briefcase off the passenger seat and beeped the car locked before hurrying back inside. She flipped the deadbolt and collapsed against the door. Who? Why? She slapped her forehead. And what kind of ninny was she? Why hadn’t she gotten the license plate number?
Questions and impressions skittered across her mind like water bugs on a pond. Was she really being threatened, or was this just some sick attempt to intimidate her? Maybe it was innocent, some kid out for kicks.
Spook stared up at her, his little pink tongue trembling with his breath. Allie reached down and scooped him up. “Don’t be scared, little puppy,” she told him. Then, she laughed. “I’m scared enough for both of us.”
She stroked Spook’s head, as much to soothe herself as to calm him. Odds were that it wasn’t a kid having fun, although that brought a particular “kid” to mind—Sidney Finch. He had always been a sneaky little worm. Back when they were kids, he loved to jump out of hiding places and scare her and Sheryl. Sheryl had beaten him up more than once for that. The only reason they’d played with him at all was that he made an even fourth for their games. His parents had moved out of the neighborhood when Allie was sixteen, and she remembered feeling nothing but relief. Thinking about scrawny, sneaky fifteen-year-old Sidney made her feel better. Unless— She took a deep breath and moved away from the door. Unless it was something more sinister.
Could it have been Rand Arbutten taking revenge on her? God knows he’d been furious when he stormed out of the newspaper office. She tried to imagine him in a fright wig and mask, but it was too big a stretch. Besides, what self-respecting man drove around with a fright wig and mask at the ready?
She also hadn’t noticed whether the person in the car was large or scrawny. Fear—and an effective disguise—had a way of obscuring little details like that. She didn’t see what the shooter wore; the window hadn’t been far enough down, and she didn’t know what Rand drove or what Sidney drove, for that matter. If someone else had killed Jean Arbutten, it could be that nameless killer. That was way too much for Allie to grapple with. Besides, whoever it wa
s, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
It was too early to feed Spook or head over to Sheryl’s for dinner. Sheryl was still at work, and if Mrs. Odum—Libby, she corrected herself—if she was cooking, she probably had her hands full without surprise company. Instead, she changed into her favorite working clothes, shorts and a T-shirt, and headed into her office.
She wanted to type her conversations with the sheriff and his son while they were still fresh in her memory. While she was talking to Rand, the idea of Sidney Finch as a killer had taken shape; but if Sidney had killed Jean Arbutten, why had Cord said the house was empty? Would Sidney have had time to run out of the house? The sheriff had come in through the garage. He said that his son burst through the door. Which door? That could make a difference. If the son had come through the front and the sheriff through the garage, someone could have run out the back without being seen.
Or was he seen? Was it possible that Cord Arbutten was covering up for his protégé? She knew from what Sheryl had told her that the sheriff had single-handedly kept Sidney out of reform school—or worse. Was it possible he felt responsible for Sidney’s actions? Maybe he realized that it was too late to do anything for his wife, whom he was divorcing. Was that part of it? A simple solution to a complex problem? She sat up straighter, remembering how the sheriff had grasped Sidney’s shoulder. He had called him son. How deep did that affection go? Had Sidney become a substitute for the son who scorned him?
Allie heard kids playing outside on the street, yells and hoots and whistles. She wanted to go out and play with them. She wanted to do anything, except what she was doing.
She dropped her head in her hands, rubbing her forehead. As much as she hated to acknowledge it, she needed to know more about the sheriff, preferably from someone who had known him long and intimately. All she’d seen was the face he chose to show her and his neighbors, casual acquaintances at best. According to Sheryl, his officers all admired him, but she wasn’t questioning his ability as a sheriff. He’d long ago proved that. She needed someone who might slip up and tell her something helpful.
Allie remembered the woman in the wheelchair, Jean Arbutten’s mother. Cord had treated her with affection. She might have some answers, and she didn’t look so sharp that she’d measure every word. Whether she’d be willing to talk to Allie was another matter, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Cord had said she was in a nursing home, but Allie didn’t know which one. She didn’t even know the woman’s name—Frenchie, Cord had called her—let alone how to contact her. She couldn’t ask Cord, not now, not if there was any basis to what she was thinking, and she didn’t want to question people around the sheriff’s department. Odds were that Sidney would get word of it immediately, and she didn’t have a death wish. Moreover, she needed to know if Sidney had been in the house that day. She could hardly ask his fellow officers.
There was only one person she could ask who was in the house that day, and there was no way Rand would tell her anything, with good reason, she had to admit. She had pretty much called his mother a suicidal maniac, intent on punishing his father with her death. She would have to think of some other reason to talk to him, and then she’d have to try to make amends. Now, though, she was too exhausted to give much thought to questions or even to reasons why he should answer them. Maybe working eighteen hours a day for the last several days had taken its toll, or maybe it was a delayed reaction from her run-ins with Sidney and Rand and her masked avenger, but her brain felt like mush. Wearily, she left her office and went into the bedroom, dropping down on her bed. In seconds, she was asleep.
***
She was running down the beach. The sun beat down on her. Why didn’t it rain? If it would just rain, everything would be all right. She could see them ahead of her, but something wasn’t right. Rupert Cornelius was chasing Marc instead of the other way around. She saw the sun flash on the butcher knife in Rupert’s hand. Her breath came in short gasps. She should have locked the door. Why hadn’t she remembered to lock the door?
Marc tripped and fell face first on the sand. Rupert stood over his outstretched body and looked back at Allie. But it wasn’t Rupert. It was Sidney, and he had blood on the front of his uniform. When had he been shot? She didn’t remember a gunshot. Then, she heard it, like a machine gun, rat-tat-tat…
At first, Allie thought the sound was part of her dream. She sat straight up in the bed, remembering Marc sprawled across the sand, Rupert with a knife. As she fought her way out of the nightmare, she heard the tapping again. The front door. Someone was at the front door.
A glance at the clock told her she’d been asleep more than three hours. Another at the bedcovers told her it hadn’t been restful sleep. Both pillows were on the floor; the comforter was wadded in her clenched fists. Spook was nowhere around. She’d probably scared the poor pup out of every bit of his recovery.
Another knock on the door brought her to her feet. She was halfway across the living room when she remembered the earlier fiasco with the masked finger gunman, but she could see the outline of her visitor through the frosted jalousies—a woman.
Still, she was cautious when she opened the door. At least until she saw who it was. Then, she swung the door open wide. “Myrna? What are you doing here?”
Myrna looked embarrassed. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I stopped by,” she said, taking a last puff of her cigarette before tossing it into the scrawny bushes fronting the house. “May I come in?”
Allie stepped back. “Of course, you can.”
Myrna stepped into the room and looked around. Allie looked, too, trying to see it through Myrna’s eyes. Small, with worn furniture and rugs. From the living room, you could see into the hallway leading back to the bedrooms.
“It doesn’t look like it’s worth more than a million dollars,” Myrna said.
Allie blinked sleep out of her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I looked up your address on People Find. It said the house was valued at more than a million. One point three, to be exact.” When Allie still looked blank, she said, “On the Internet. I searched you by name.”
Allie’s mouth fell open. “They have information like that on the Internet?”
“Oh, honey,” Myrna said, dropping her handbag on the couch, “you are such a babe in the woods. They have everything on the Internet. Although, sometimes, they get it wrong. They had your salary as eighteen grand a year.”
“That’s what I made at the AJC,” Allie said, her eyes widening.
“Probably the last info they picked up.”
Myrna peeked into the kitchen. Allie wondered if she would have to restrain her forcibly from checking the bedrooms. Myrna answered that question a minute later by heading down the hallway. She stopped at the door of the office. “Nice setup,” she said, nodding. “All this stuff looks new.”
“It is,” Allie said, still a few steps behind her. “It used to be a guest bedroom.”
“I’ll need receipts,” Myrna said, peeking into the other bedroom before heading back to the living room.
It took Allie a minute to catch up, mentally and physically. “Receipts for what?”
“All of it,” Myrna said with a wave of her hand. “Furniture. Equipment. Supplies.”
“What for?”
“So the paper can reimburse you, of course.”
“I don’t want the paper to reimburse me,” Allie said, looking at Myrna in surprise.
Myrna glanced back toward the new office. “You use that stuff for personal, or just for the paper?”
“Well, the paper so far, but—”
“Then, it’s reimbursable.”
Allie sank on the couch. She looked up at Myrna, still standing in the middle of the room. “Myrna, what are you doing here?”
Myrna looked around the room. Allie was sure she was looking for ashtrays. With a sigh, she got back to her feet. “Let’s go out back.”
She grabbed a jar lid on the way out the back door to serve as an ashtray. Her back
patio was tiny, an eight by eight slab of concrete, big enough to hold two chairs and a tiny table. On the upside, it was completely screened from view with sea grape and scrub palmetto on both sides, so it was private—for now. Allie put the jar lid on the table and sat in a chair.
Myrna lit a cigarette. Then, she stood on her tiptoes and peeked over the dunes to the water. “Pretty,” she said.
Allie motioned toward the stairs up to the deck. “Do you want to go upstairs?”
Myrna dropped into the other chair. “Another time. So, you selling?”
“Why does everyone want to know if I’m selling?” Allie asked, her voice irritated.
“Uh, oh. Touched a nerve?”
Allie blew out a breath and sat back in her chair. “A big one. When I first came back, both Sheryl and Joe wanted to know if I would sell the house. They wanted me to keep it. My mother and brother want me to sell it. They tell me I’d get a fortune for it.”
“Probably close to two million for the land, I’d guess,” Myrna said thoughtfully.
Allie ignored her. “My brother even sicced a bunch of land developers on me. I spent days fielding phone calls before they quit. I don’t intend to sell the house, and I don’t know why people can’t understand that.”
Myrna ground out her cigarette and lit another. “Because it makes sense for you to sell.” She raised her hand when Allie started to speak. “You love this beach because it’s beautiful and deserted, am I right?”
Allie studied her, wondering if it was a trick question. “Right.”
“You have high-rise condos going up on both sides of you,” she went on. “Each one is, what, eight? Ten floors?”
LIVE Ammo (Sunshine State Mystery Series Book 2) Page 13
