The small talk they made over the next twenty minutes was sporadic, each of them tripping over their feet as they danced around the taboo subject. During the lulls, troubling thoughts bombarded Amy: the cell phone lying beside Hugh, Where had he found it? Why was he calling Gary Bartlett when—”
“Amy? Earth to Amy…”
“Huh?” Her head snapped up in Nicki’s direction. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Listen, Ames,” Nicki said, clearing the table in a single, efficient trip. “Unless you’d like me to hang around, I should get going. You need some alone time so you can catch up on some sleep. I’m not trying to be mean, but the circles under your eyes are getting darker by the minute.”
“Don’t worry; you’re not hurting my feelings. My mirror already broke that news to me. Maybe I’ll lie down and see if I can doze off for a while.” She walked Nicki to the coat rack and
gave her a hug. “Nicki, thanks for coming. You made me feel better just by being here. The sandwich and cocoa were great.”
“Lunch was pretty good if I do say so myself. Hey, if you need me for anything,” Nicki said, pulling on her jacket, “give me a call. Anytime. Day or night, okay?”
Amy hugged her again. “I will. I promise.”
Nicki had no sooner stepped outside when she popped back in. “Um…you might have to hold off on that nap. Larry Benedict just pulled up out front. Want me to get rid of him?”
“I’ve got to talk to him sooner or later; it might as well be now. See you later, Nicki. Thanks.”
Peeking through the window, Amy watched her late husband’s partner of one day get out of his red Audi convertible. The Spyder’s top was up—reasonable for the season. He stepped out wearing a fashionable, charcoal-gray, boucle Pea Coat over a pair of well-fitting jeans. The man had panache. The car, his wardrobe, and testosterone-laden swagger all flashed mid-life crisis in neon. If he was aware of that, it didn’t seem to concern him. If anything, he embraced it.
As Larry Benedict and Nicki passed one another on the walkway, Amy stood in the door as Benedict approached, his arms opening wide.
9
Standing hunched over the table, Ray shoveled the last of his scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Got my thermos ready, Gail?”
“I’ll get it. Give me a second.”
She lifted their son Joey from his booster seat and set him on the floor. The three year old ran to Ray’s side, wrapping both arms around a thigh. “Wanna go up, Daddy.”
“Hey, pal,” Ray said, sweeping him into his arms, “you’re getting heavy, you know that?”
The boy put both chubby hands on Ray’s face and kissed his cheek with buttery lips. The child’s coloring was Gail’s: the same dark eyes and auburn hair. But as time progressed, Ray saw more of Mark Haney in Joey’s face.
Ray kissed the boy’s forehead and raised his voice to be heard in the kitchen. “I swear Joey grew an inch overnight. I think he’s going to be tall.” The thought “Like Mark” echoed in his mind.
Mark Haney’s name went unspoken in the Schiller household. Joey was the only reminder they needed of their son’s birth father. Ray had accepted his share of responsibility for Gail’s brief affair, but he bore an additional, even heavier burden. Now, almost four years later, he still occasionally awoke in a sweat to the dream-induced sound of the gunshot that had taken the life of Joey’s biological father. Although the responsibility for the fatal accident rested solely on Haney, Ray couldn’t absolve himself of the guilt he felt in connection with his death.
Before Joey’s birth, the prospect of raising Mark Haney’s son as his own seemed almost too big a hurdle to overcome. Although he’d resolved to succeed, in his heart of hearts, he feared he might fall short. His self-doubt began to erode the second a nurse laid the newborn in Ray’s arms. In a few short months, the barrier he expected to stand between himself and the child had been ground to dust.
Gail stepped out of the kitchen, holding the thermos out in his direction. “Here you go, hon.” Her eyes lowered from his face to his legs. “Take off your pants, Ray.”
He gave her a wicked grin. “Any chance that’s a proposition?”
“Afraid not. Someone left a greasy handprint on your pant leg.” Tickling Joey’s belly, she removed him from his perch in the crook of Ray’s arm and used a thumb to wipe his greasy kiss from Ray’s cheek. “Go change into another pair while I pre-treat these. While you’re at it, you might want to give the left side of your face a going-over too.”
Gail watched him strip, waggled her eyebrows and gave him her best wolf whistle.
“The whistle needs some work,” Ray said. “If you want to practice that tonight, I might be convinced to do an encore.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She shifted his pants from one hand to the other and latched onto Joey’s slippery hand. Tone still light, Gail asked, “Any word on Amy’s case yet?”
Already headed upstairs, Ray answered over his shoulder. “I plan to check with Dick on that this morning. We’re waiting for some results to come back from the lab.”
Gail led Joey into the kitchen. “We’re waiting,” she muttered. She bunched Ray’s pants into a ball and hurled them into the sink.
Fifteen minutes later than planned, Ray walked into the station, glad to see Waverly was still signed in. On the lookout for his partner, he glanced through the open door as he passed Captain Roth’s office. Being big and loud, Waverly was usually easy to find. Today, Ray couldn’t even detect Waverly’s Old Spice aftershave.
“Hey, Burke, have you seen Dick?”
“Not for a while, but I’m know he’s here.”
Ray slipped out of his jacket and surveyed the department every few minutes as he tackled a stack of paperwork. As a last resort, he finally checked the men’s room. Under a closed stall door, he spotted a familiar pair of black Oxfords.
“Dick?”
“Hey, Ray. Morning.”
“Are you camping out in here? What’s going on?”
“Whatd’ya think is going on?” Waverly’s chuckle lacked conviction. “I’m starting to think Phyllis slipped Ex-Lax into that piece of chocolate cake I snuck behind her back last night.”
“Phyllis is clever,” Ray said, “not cruel.”
“Like hell she’s not. Know what I got for breakfast this morning? Half a grapefruit, two poached eggs, and a slice of dry toast.”
“Not exactly grounds for divorce.”
“She was just one egg away, buddy.”
Ray laughed. “Hey, are the lab results back yet?”
“Yeah. I’m not pregnant. It was a false alarm.”
“Good, “Ray said, leaning against the wall, “then I can return my baby shower gift. How about getting serious for a minute, okay? I need to know if you heard from the lab on the Conley case.”
The toilet flushed and Waverly stepped out. “Correction. You don’t need to know; you want to know.”
“Whatever.”
Waverly gave Ray a hard glance on his way to a sink. The splatter from his vigorous hand washing forced Ray to step back. “If you had come in here and found me drowning in that toilet bowl,” he said, drying his hands, “you’d have given me mouth-to-mouth to save me just so I could fill you in.”
“In the toilet bowl? No, I don’t think so. Maybe I’d have gotten someone else to do it. Roth maybe.”
Mustache twitching, Waverly frowned at Ray’s reflection in the mirror.
“How about it?” Ray said. “Have you heard anything?”
The door opened and Hanratty walked in and stepped into a stall. Ray followed as Waverly hurried from the men’s room.
“I’m not gonna discuss it in there, buddy—sure as hell not with Hanratty on the crapper. To be on the safe side, I’m gonna start carrying a gas mask into the john. That guy gives new meaning to ‘carrying a concealed weapon’.”
“What about the lab tests?”
“Rohypnol,” Waverly said, still moving. “There were traces of it in her system
.”
Ray felt a surge of satisfaction. “Damn. I had a feeling it was a date-rape drug.”
“Well, don’t get too excited yet, buddy. They found something else too. There was gunshot residue on the sleeve of her robe.”
“But none on her hands you said.”
“Right, but she had plenty of time to clean up, remember?”
“And just as much time to put her robe through a wash cycle,” Ray argued. “So why didn’t she?”
“Ask her, not me.” Waverly winced. “Forget I said that. You keep your distance.”
“I’m telling you, Dick, someone set her up.”
“Yeah, I know what you think.” Waverly stopped at the coffeemaker. “Captain Roth suggested a new wrinkle.”
“What kind of wrinkle?”
Waverly stalled, pouring coffee into his cup in a slow trickle. “If I tell ya, I don’t want you going all nasty on my ass.”
“Aw crap,” Ray said. “Now what?”
“I updated the captain on the case this morning. He suggested Amy Conley shot her husband, then dosed herself with the Rohypnol.”
Ray’s jaw muscles clenched.
“You’ve gotta admit there’s some merit to the theory, buddy. She leaves the party early, goes home and lures good ol’ Hugh home with that email; he shows up; she plugs him, then takes the Rohypnol. She knows she can claim someone must’ve slipped it to her at the bar. When the case goes to trial, the fact that the drug was in her system could be all it takes to create reasonable doubt. Pretty slick.”
“Okay, theoretically that’s possible, but she didn’t ask to be tested.”
“No, but that’s not to say she wouldn’t have if I hadn’t thought of it first. And I did, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Ray said, “but that’s not proof of anything. It’s guesswork, nothing more. You’ve got to start looking in other directions.”
“And you’ve gotta stop automatically ruling Amy Conley out. As far as branching out is concerned, give me a little credit; I’m doing that.” Waverly led the way to a less busy spot and checked over both shoulders. “I got something interesting on Larry Benedict, Ray.”
“Conley’s partner?”
“Yeah, him. It turns out he was a no-show at the Crowne Plaza in Jacksonville Wednesday night. The concierge says they held his reservation, but he never checked in. Benedict and Conley were booked on the same flight out of Minneapolis Wednesday night. We know why Conley didn’t get on the plane. Now the question is: why didn’t Benedict?”
“He never left the Cities?”
“Not on Wednesday he didn’t.” Waverly looked toward Roth’s office and lowered his voice a few more decibels. “It turns out Benedict rebooked a flight to JAX Thursday morning—5:20 AM, but that could hurt Amy Conley’s case more than it helps.”
“How do you figure?”
“If Benedict was here,” Waverly said, “that strengthens my theory that they’re accomplices. Maybe there was no forced entry because she let him in.”
“Wait,” Ray said. “If Benedict was in her house, why the hell wouldn’t he have just shot Conley himself?”
“Maybe he did. Benedict’s small enough to fit into her robe. He could’ve slipped that on and then shot Conley. With gunshot residue on the sleeve but none on her hands, it makes a set-up look even more credible. I’m starting to think that may be exactly what the two of them had in mind—to make it look like she’d been framed.”
“Dick, come on,” Ray groaned.
“Open your eyes, buddy. They’d have made sure she had a sure-fire ‘out’ after leaving all that evidence pointing straight at her; that’s where the Rohypnol comes in. Your Honor,” Waverly said, hamming it up, “my client was lying drugged and helpless while, only feet away, the killer mercilessly shot and killed her husband and then framed her for his death.” Waverly snorted. “Mark my words, buddy, her defense attorney will have the jury boo-hooing into their hankies before it’s all over.” His expression curdled as he ran a hand over his touchy stomach. “The view looks a whole lot different once you take off those rose-colored glasses, doesn’t it?”
“All right, it’s plausible,” Ray said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m buying it.”
“Okay, don’t buy it. Just lease it and drive it around for a while.”
“Dick, if it happened the way you’re saying, that recording on Bartlett’s answering machine identifying Amy as her husband’s killer would’ve screwed her and Benedict royally. They’d have been forced to come up with a Plan B. Why didn’t they?”
“Maybe they didn’t know he made that call. Maybe they didn’t even see the phone. How do I know?” Waverly said. “I’m methodical, not clairvoyant.”
10
The rain came down in a fine, cold mist as Ray and Gail followed halfway back in Hugh Conley’s funeral procession.
“Judging by the turnout, people must have thought pretty well of Amy’s husband,” Gail said.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good showing.” Ray turned onto Chicago Avenue with the rest of the procession. “His business connections probably make up a good part of the attendees. Some are probably curiosity seekers. It’s not unusual when the deceased is a murder victim.”
“That’s sick.”
“Tell me about it.” He adjusted the wiper setting still lower and pointed ahead to the right. “There’s St. Mary’s cemetery.” Ray reached across the console and took Gail’s hand. “Thanks for coming along. You didn’t have to.”
“I know, but I didn’t want you to have to come alone.”
He pulled up behind the car ahead of him, parked, and gave Gail a quick kiss. She opened the door and stuck a bright yellow umbrella through the narrow opening. Inappropriate for the occasion, it was the only umbrella she owned. Sighing, she popped it open. “Okay. I’m ready if you are.”
Hurrying to her side of the car, Ray took charge of the umbrella and tucked Gail’s hand in the crook of his arm. “I’m giving you notice,” he said as they walked to the burial site. “When the time comes, I get to die first. Got it?”
“Says you.” She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “Either I die first, or we go together, otherwise we don’t go at all.”
“Let’s talk it over some other time,” he said, rubbing her chilled hand. “Pencil the discussion in for…I don’t know…say thirty or forty years from today.”
“Sounds good to me,” Gail said.
They took a place two rows back across from Amy and her contingent, and Hugh Conley’s family. Waverly stood at the back of the crowd, observing the mourners. Ray acknowledged him with a nod.
Gail sent a smile Waverly’s way and whispered to Ray, “Phyllis didn’t come?”
“Dick’s here on duty.”
“Oh, that’s right…unlike you.”
Ray caught a hint of petulance in her tone, but let it pass as the priest began the service. As somber as the day and occasion, the gaunt cleric started with a promise to be brief.
As the mist continued falling, he looked to the sky and began. “Heavenly Father, we gather today to give you thanks for Hugh Conley’s presence in our lives and to ask that you grant him eternal peace at your side. Although his time among us was short…”
As the priest’s voice droned on, Ray turned his attention to the mourners. In less than a week, Amy’s petite body had begun looking almost frail. Her hand trembled as she raised a linen handkerchief to her drawn face.
A trio of women flanked her. A middle-aged woman stood in a motherly fashion with an arm around Amy’s back. Two other members of Amy’s support system, a blonde and a redhead, were, like her, in their mid to late twenties. Cousins? Friends? Whatever the relationship, Ray noticed antagonistic vibes passing between the two younger women. One stood to Amy’s right, the other to her left maintaining a distance from one another, their apparent unwillingness to meet each other’s eyes, broken only by an occasional angry glance.
Ray turned his attention toward Hugh Conley’s family sta
nding well apart from Amy. Conley’s father, a tall man with a slight paunch, alternately patted and rubbed his wife’s arm. From time to time, either he or she cast a withering look in Amy’s direction as Ray had seen them do during the church service. Like bookends, Hugh Conley’s two brothers stood holding umbrellas over their parents. Similar in appearance and attitude, the four of them looked like a matched set.
A few vaguely familiar faces dotted the crowd—neighbors he’d probably seen outside Amy’s house the morning Hugh Conley’s body was carted off, he decided.
One person in particular captured Ray’s interest. The man was in his mid to late forties, wearing a perfectly tailored, black topcoat. He exuded an effortless air of self-confidence. Maybe the full head of thick, brown hair, solid physique and handsome features overrode any insecurities over his height-challenged stature. But those observations were secondary to what first caught Ray’s attention. Hands clasped in front of him, the man’s eyes flitted to Amy at regular, brief—sometimes not-so-brief intervals.
Either Amy was oblivious to the man’s keen interest or was ignoring it.
Ten minutes later, Ray saw Waverly half walk/half trot away toward his car, his face as pale as chalk.
Gail noticed, too. “Where’s Dick going?”
Ray kept his explanation brief. “My guess…a restroom. The flu.”
“Oh.” She grinned and bowed her head as the priest ended the final prayer with “…forever and ever.”
“Amen,” the mourners responded in unison.
Those planning to attend the funeral luncheon hurried through the chilly mist to their vehicles. The rest remained huddled under umbrellas as they filed by offering their condolences to Amy and to Hugh Conley’s family before leaving the cemetery. Only the man in the black topcoat remained where he stood, attention fixed on Amy, waiting for the crowd to clear away.
Ray took Gail’s hand and pulled her along in Amy’s direction.
“Wait. We’re going to the restaurant, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yes, but there’s…” Ray released her hand and returned the umbrella to her. “Wait for me in the car, would you, hon? I’ll be there in a minute.” Reluctantly, Gail walked away.
Targeted: A Ray Schiller Novel (The Ray Schiller Series Book 3) Page 6
