“So, how long have you been seeing Amanda?” She tried the soft approach.
“Since her partner turned up dead.” Sean speared a couple of green beans with his fork.
“You didn’t know her before that?”
“Greer, I’ve been in Broeder for a little more than six months. In that time, I’ve put in sixteen-, eighteen-hour days, seven days a week.” He took a long drink from the bottle of water he’d brought in with him. “So you figure out when I would have gotten around to romancing Ms. Crosby—or anyone else, for that matter—which you obviously think I am doing.”
“I was just wondering if you’d been seeing her, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’ve been seeing her, all right.” He snorted. “Of course, until this morning, I figured that from here on out, I’d be seeing her through the bars of one of my cells. At least until they gave her one of those nifty orange jumpsuits and hauled her off to the county prison.”
“I just thought that maybe you’d been going out with her, Sean. You don’t have to be such a smartass about it.” Greer frowned. “I get it. You’re not dating. Though I don’t understand why not. Such a pretty girl, and she seems like she’s real smart. Owns her own business—”
“Don’t you get it? Amanda has been a suspect in a murder I’m investigating. You don’t get chummy with suspects, Greer. You don’t see them as anything other than that, and you don’t ask them if they’re free on Saturday night. At least if you have more than half a brain, you don’t.”
Greer gave him her iciest stare. “You can’t possibly be serious. You could not have thought that sweet woman could have killed anyone.”
“Greer, I’m a cop. I can’t make assumptions. I can only evaluate the facts, not appearances. And until the facts are in—until the evidence points one way or the other—it has to be played strictly by the book. Cross the t’s, dot the i’s.” He paused to chew and swallow a piece of steak. “Look at Ted Bundy. Lot of people had a hard time believing he could be guilty of the things he did.”
He cut another piece of meat. “The steak is great, by the way. Thanks for fixing it for me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, don’t look at me that way, Greer.”
“I cannot believe you just compared Amanda to Ted Bundy.”
“I did not. But in the beginning—after the first murder—things didn’t look too good for Amanda. She had motive, she owned a gun the same caliber as the murder weapon, the sweatshirt she’d admitted to wearing on the night her partner was killed had gunshot residue on it. Christ, she’d even left a message on the victim’s voice mail saying she was going to kill him.”
“She isn’t the killer type, Sean. Anyone can see that.”
“Sorry to shatter your illusions, but there is no one killer type. Christ, Greer. Derek England’s murder was my first homicide here in Broeder. Everyone’s watching to see what I do. I know that. Especially since my brother-in-law is the one who brought me in here, got me the job.” He took another sip of water. “How would it look for Steve if I did a lousy job? And you tell me what the hell kind of cop would I be if I ignored evidence just because the suspect is beautiful and smart and owns her own business?”
Greer smiled with satisfaction. So he had noticed. . . .
“What?” Sean asked.
“You said beautiful.” She picked up his empty plate and took it to the sink to rinse off. “I only said she was pretty.”
Muttering curses under his breath, Sean thanked his sister for dinner and headed out the door.
Amanda lay beneath the covers in the darkened room at the end of the hall and turned over yet one more time, wishing she could close her eyes and not see the blood. She’d taken two showers already that day, the first in her house, when Dana Burke had so kindly taken her home and let her take off the clothes that were heavy with Marian’s blood. Dana had bagged and tagged each item of clothing as Amanda had removed it, then turned on the shower for Amanda and told her she’d wait downstairs, for Amanda to take her time. She must have known how long it would take to wash away the blood. Amanda had stood beneath the steaming stream of water, mindlessly scrubbing her skin raw, trying to remove every last trace of the morning’s tragedy, every bit of pain, knowing she never really would.
She squashed the pillow under the right side of her head and allowed her body to sink down into the too-soft mattress, listening to the dull hum of voices somewhere far away. Greer and Sean. She knew instinctively that they were talking about her. If she hadn’t been so damned tired, she’d have been tempted to sneak to the top of the stairs to try to listen.
Now, that’s something I haven’t done in a long, long time, she mused. Not since we were all together—Mom and Dad and Evan and I—living in the same house. We’d never given the voices a second thought, Evan and I hadn’t. We thought everyone’s parents argued at night after the kids had been tucked in. Thought all kids fell asleep to the sound of those hushed accusations, those angry voices touched with a quiet civility. There’d been a familiar comfort in the consistency of the hum of voices from the floor below. It wasn’t until after her father left that she began to understand the price of that comfort.
The voices below weren’t raised in anger, but there was a steady flow, a certain rhythm, to the conversation between sister and brother. There’d been questions she’d have asked of Greer earlier if they’d been more than mere acquaintances.
Amanda rolled onto her left side, thinking about her brother. She couldn’t imagine having grown up without Evan, couldn’t imagine having had suffered through her parents’ divorce without his calm, steady influence. He’d always been there for her. Still was. She smiled to herself, recalling his indignation at her being suspected in Derek’s death. Even knowing the admittedly damning facts against her, Evan had been infuriated that Sean Mercer—or anyone else—considered her capable of killing.
She sat up and dangled her legs over the side of the bed. Overtired now, she was unable to sleep, and yet lacked the strength to get up, dress herself, and go back downstairs. Not that she wanted to engage either Sean or Greer in conversation. She’d been living alone far too long to enjoy such intimate contact in the middle of the night. If the truth were to be told, she’d been mildly uncomfortable since the minute she stepped into this house.
For one thing, she wasn’t accustomed to sharing living space with anyone else. Sharing it with a stranger was that much more disconcerting. But she recognized that stubbornly insisting on staying alone, in her house, until questions were answered about the killings of two so close to her would have been folly. She understood that there was safety in numbers, and she was safer—theoretically—here, under the same roof with the sister of the chief of police, but even that knowledge didn’t make her much more comfortable with the situation.
For another, over the past year, she’d learned to rely upon herself for her strength and her safety. Allowing someone else to keep her safe smacked of a cop-out. But there was that little matter of a killer who’d already struck too close to home not once, but twice. In the end, she’d endure the discomfort of living under someone else’s roof, depending on the efforts of someone else to watch her back. She may not like the arrangement, but she wasn’t stupid.
She lay back down, flat on her back this time, and stared at the ceiling, wondering how long she could keep her eyes open. Closing them merely served as an invitation for the nightmare images to return, and she’d seen enough that day to last a lifetime. Marian on the floor, blood smearing her clothes and her chest and her throat and puddling under her head.
Marian, just a few days earlier, bringing Amanda tomatoes from her garden and gleefully confiding that her beefsteaks were a full twelve ounces heavier than the best her next-door neighbor had grown that summer. Marian, proudly showing off the treasures she’d bought at the house sale earlier in the week . . .
It just wasn’t fair, Amanda’s weary brain protested. It just wasn’t fair that good people like Derek
and Marian died so terribly when the person who killed them was out there somewhere.
She got out of bed and raised the shade on the window that overlooked Greer’s backyard. Now, at half past ten, the yard lay in semidarkness, the lamp from the patio casting just enough light to throw shadows across the flat expanse of lawn. Somewhere out there was someone with blood on his hands. If Sean was right, this someone was watching for her, waiting for her. Maybe right now, at this minute, this someone was cutting the glass in one of the panes in her back door, sliding the glass out carefully and quietly, then lifting the latch. Was he already inside, treading carefully across her kitchen floor, maybe in bare feet, pausing every few steps to listen for sounds of her stirring on the second floor? In his pocket did he carry the same knife he’d used to butcher Marian, or the gun he’d used to put a bullet through Derek’s head?
And what, she wondered as she chewed on a fingernail in the dark, was the point? What had he, this faceless, nameless someone, wanted from Derek, from Marian, that he might now want from her?
Hard as she tried, though she lay awake several more hours thinking about it, Amanda could not come up with one good reason why anyone would want her—and Derek, and Marian—dead.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Humming along with the radio, his fingers tapping out the beat on the steering wheel of his car, Vince Giordano sat in the cool shade of a sweet gum tree, watching the cars that buzzed by, waiting for Dolores to arrive home from work and hoping she wouldn’t be too late. He had a surprise for her. Oh, did he ever.
The white compact slowed, then pulled into the drive and disappeared around the back of the house. Still humming, thinking how it was a shame that some car company had started using that particular song in their commercials, because now every time he heard it, he thought about pickup trucks, he craned his neck, hoping she’d come back around the front. And just as he thought it, there she was. He got out of the car and started across the small patch of grass that had gone too long without water in the late summer sun.
“Hey,” he called amicably.
“Vinnie.” Dolores’s face brightened. “What are you doing here?”
“I was passing along the street, and I looked at the clock and said, ‘Hey, Dolores should be just about getting home right about now.’ And you know what?” He took one of her hands in his own and watched her blush. “Just as I was thinking it, didn’t you pull right into the driveway?”
“No way.”
“Oh, yeah. So I’m taking that as a sign that you don’t have plans for dinner tonight, and that you’d come out for dinner with me.”
“Well, I . . . I just got home.” She blushed again, brushing off her dark pants. “And I’m not really dressed up. . . .”
“You look great, Dolores. Better than great.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward to touch her forehead with his own. Richard Gere had done that in some movie, and Vince had been hoping that someday he’d have occasion to use that move in real life.
“If you could give me a minute, maybe to fix my makeup, feed my cat . . .”
“Sure. Whatever time you need.”
“Okay, then. Yes. I’d love to have dinner with you tonight.” She backed toward the sidewalk, still beaming, the faint blush still tingeing her cheeks. “Would you like to come in, just while I . . .”
“Sure. Sure. That would be nice.” Vince smiled gently, as if he were a simple man being invited into the home of a friend.
The small twin house had a porch with an old-fashioned swing at one end. A row of geraniums in plastic pots that were supposed to look like clay were set along the perimeter of the porch, where a railing had once been. There was a rusty black mailbox attached to the front wall and a wreath of bright plastic flowers on the door.
“The previous owner took the rails off,” she explained as if she needed to. “I want to put them back on someday. But I had to put money into the kitchen—”
“Hey, don’t feel like you have to make excuses to me. Please.” He held up one hand as if to halt her words in their tracks. “I think it’s wonderful that you own your own home. I’m really impressed. I mean, how many thirty-year-old women can say that they bought their own house?”
“Vinnie, I’m thirty-seven,” she laughed.
“Get outta town,” he scoffed. “Thirty-seven. Right. What do I look like, huh?”
“No, really, I am.” She unlocked the door, and he took note of the type of lock. Just in case he needed to know at some future date. “I was thirty-seven last month.”
“Now you’re telling me that I missed your birthday.” He put on a sad face as he followed her inside. “Well, I’ll make it up to you. I know just the way.”
“Oh, Vinnie, you don’t have to do anything. Just”—she smiled, her entire face lighting up—“just . . . well, just dinner out tonight, that will be enough. More than enough.”
“I can do better, but we’ll let that go for now. You go on and do what you have to do, and I’ll just wait for you.”
“I’ll hurry, I promise.” She paused on the bottom step and called, “Cujo, where are you?”
“Cujo?”
“Cujo’s my— There’s my baby.”
A large gray cat ambled out from the dining room, pausing on his way to Dolores to give Vince the once-over. He did not appear to like what he saw.
“That’s my baby,” Dolores cooed, and bent down to scoop up the cat. “Say hello to my friend Vinnie.”
Cujo glared imperiously in the general direction of the intruder.
“What a nice cat,” Vince said, thinking he was expected to say something. He didn’t like cats, never had, but figured that wouldn’t be the appropriate thing to tell her. “He’s . . . big, isn’t he?”
“Huge. Weighs almost forty pounds. But he’s a sweetie. Oh, I should feed him before I run upstairs.”
“Oh, hey, I can do that. Just tell me what to do.”
“You wouldn’t mind? I’m just thinking that it’s already so late, since I got home so late and everything . . .”
“I wouldn’t mind at all.”
“Well, then, there’s a can of cat food on the counter in the kitchen—that’s straight through here, straight ahead through the dining room—and the can opener’s mounted under the cupboard closest to the sink.”
“I’m sure I can find it. You run along.” Vince thought momentarily about giving her backside a tap as she turned to the steps, but decided that might be a bit premature, all things considered. He was going to do a little something a little later to speed up the progress of their relationship as it was. One thing at a time, he cautioned himself as he went to the kitchen.
Dolores’s house was a lot like Dolores. Nothing fancy, but sturdy, practical, functional. Few flourishes, but tidy, with the occasional attempt at decor. A few pots of plants here, a crystal bowl there, colorful candles in assorted holders on the sideboard in the dining room. A nice enough package—as was Dolores—but nothing to get too excited about.
“Come on in here, cat,” he muttered as he turned on the overhead light, and failed to notice that the cat had declined to follow him into the near-dark room.
He found the can, located the cat food, then dumped it unceremoniously into a ceramic dish with raised purple fishes on the bottom and around the rim.
“Hey, cat. Dinner.” He went to the doorway and looked down at the cat, who glared up coolly, calmly whipping his tale snakelike on the hooked rug. “Okay, have it your way. Personally I don’t give a shit if you ever eat again.”
He rinsed the can out in the sink the way his mother used to do, then looked for the trash can, which he found near the back door, which gave him an opportunity to look around. Scope out the yard, check out the back door, the basement door. You just never knew.
He took a minute to play with the lock, listening to the little cylinders tumble, thinking how easy it would be to break in.
“Vinnie?”
“Oh. Hey, that was fast.�
�
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, I was just checking the lock on your back door. Making sure it was tight, you know.”
“It should be fine. I had them changed after I moved in last year.”
“Never hurts to keep track,” he told her with a comforting smile. “You gotta make sure your home is secure. Jeez, don’t it seem that every night you hear about another home invasion? It’s on the TV just about every night.”
“I don’t watch the news.” She shook her head, her permed blond curls barely moving. “It’s too depressing. Rapes. Murders. Robberies. Little kids being abused. Little sick kids selling lemonade to help pay their medical bills.”
Dolores’s mascara-darkened eyes brimmed with sympathetic tears. “I know all those things happen every day. So I don’t watch. And between you and me, Connie drives me nuts some days. Noon news, news at four. News at six. I tune it out. I just don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about ignorance being bliss. Not that I think you’re ignorant,” he hastened to add. “I mean, you’re smart, Dolores. Maybe the smartest woman I know. And you’re right. There’s so much bad stuff going on in the world that we just don’t have any control over. It hurts to watch that stuff.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly my point.” She peered behind him to see if he’d fed the cat. “Cujo. Come on in here, now. Vinnie’s got dinner for you. Isn’t he a nice man?”
Cujo continued to stare from the safety of the dining room.
“Maybe he’s not hungry right now,” Vince offered, hoping that he wasn’t going to be expected to stand here and wait for the cat to eat. “Cujo might not be hungry, but I sure am.”
“Oh, of course you are. It’s almost eight o’clock. We can go. We don’t have to wait.”
Like I was gonna . . .
Dead Certain Page 15
