Enoch Tate had begun the proceedings by demanding iced tea, whose sugar content had to be adjusted three times until it met his standards. Every half an hour he wanted more tea, wasting time while with infuriating slowness he varied amounts of artificial sweetener, refusing to continue until the drink was perfect.
To make matters worse, the insurance company’s lawyer had been sharp, asking each question in a slightly different way at least five times so Sloane couldn’t object by saying, “Asked and answered,” to speed things along. Tate had been enraged but helpless in the face of the legal maneuver. Every time he answered, he got louder and more verbose. He’d ended up bellowing and burping all through the last half of the exhausting session, both his temper and his indigestion worse after their lunch break than in the morning. Sloane could not believe one shriveled little man could harbor so much gas.
But this day Sloane had dreaded for weeks was finally over. It had been hectic and he felt drained, but he’d managed to successfully handle everything and now he could reap the benefits—an evening with Monique Lawson, an associate at the law firm. They hadn’t been seeing each other for long. Sloane found Monique a bit too direct in her speech, and both her manners and her general demeanor were in need of polish, but she was beautiful and smart, and he felt the relationship had potential.
He’d taken his second sip of scotch and decided to put a relaxing CD selection on the stereo when the doorbell rang. Monique was meeting him here, but it was too early for her. He had few visitors, although he’d decorated his house with care and hired a cleaning lady to come by twice a week to keep it spotless. Unfortunately, he wasn’t home much. He was determined to take Ames Prince’s place someday, and he worked long hours at the office to prove he was worthy of the position.
He set his drink on a coaster on the oversize oak coffee table and went to the door. Outside stood a tall, slender man with dark hair and eyes. His coat hung open to reveal a police uniform.
“Mr. Caldwell, I’m Deputy Sheriff Michael Winter,” he said in a deep, pleasantly resonant voice. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but I haven’t been able to reach you all day. I wonder if you have a few minutes to talk to me.”
Sloane cursed inwardly. He was tired. His nerves were strung so tight his neck hurt. Monique would be here within the hour. The last thing he wanted was a police interview. But it was better to get it over with now than to try to arrange something for tomorrow, which Sloane expected to be another busy day.
“Certainly I’ll speak with you, Deputy Winter, but I only have about an hour.” Sloane opened the door wider.
“Oh, I won’t take up that much of your time, sir.” Michael Winter wiped his feet on the rough-woven WELCOME mat and stepped inside. “As I said, I wouldn’t be bothering you at this hour if I could have reached you earlier.”
“I won’t even try to describe the endless and tedious deposition that took up some of the morning and all of the afternoon,” Sloane explained. “Sometimes I hate my job, and this was one of those times.” He smiled. “Don’t mind me. I can gripe along with the best of them. Let me take your coat and come into the living room, where we can be comfortable and I can put up my feet.”
Sloane hung Michael’s raincoat on a hall coat tree, then led him into the big living room done in shades of cream, brown, and forest green. Indian print rugs lay on hardwood floors and oil paintings of deer, bears, and moose hung everywhere. Carvings of ducks sat on end tables and a mantel. “Comfortable room,” Michael said, at a loss for a more flattering description.
“I decorated it myself.” Sloane frowned. “I worked really hard on it, but I’ve been told a couple of times it looks like a hunting lodge. That wasn’t the look I was going for. Guess I should have hired a professional decorator.”
“What’s important is that you like it, not what anyone else thinks.”
“So true,” Sloane said, but Michael heard the doubt in his voice and immediately knew other people’s opinion mattered a great deal to this man. “I was having a scotch. A double.” Sloane grinned. “I earned it today. How about you? Care for something alcoholic, or are you on duty?”
“On duty for another half hour,” Michael said. “But I could use a soft drink. Anything will do.”
While Sloane went behind the small bar and removed a Coke can from the refrigerator, Michael took another glance around the room. The walls were paneled in knotty pine. In the corner sat a curio cabinet filled with what looked like sports trophies. “Did you play sports in college?” he asked.
“Football in high school in New Orleans and college in Massachusetts.”
“How did you end up in Winston?”
Sloane shrugged, handing him a Coke over ice in a tall glass. “I didn’t like the winters up north. I like heat, but I didn’t want to go back to New Orleans. My parents and younger sister were killed in a car wreck when I was a junior in college. I just couldn’t live down there anymore. Too many memories.”
“I’m sorry about your family. And I know what you mean about needing to leave places with memories,” Michael said, hearing the bleakness creep into his own voice. “Sometimes when you’ve suffered a great loss, a change of scene is the only thing that even begins to help you heal.”
Sloane studied him closely, seemed on the verge of asking what his “great loss” had been, then thought better of it. “I’m being a terrible host. Have a seat, Deputy, and tell me why you’ve come to see me. I assume it has something to do with Dara Prince.”
“What makes you think that?” Michael asked, settling down on a dark green recliner. The chair looked like a lump, totally without style, but it was heavily padded and Michael was so tired, he felt like he’d landed on a cloud.
“What makes me think you’re here about Dara, Deputy?” Sloane looked intently at Michael as he took a seat on the sofa and sipped his drink. “Because of all the uproar over her diary Christine gave you. I’ve never seen Ames Prince in such a state.”
“He discussed it with you?”
“God, no. It’s family business. But I stopped by the house yesterday. Jeremy let me in and I heard Ames ranting to Patricia about it. Jeremy whispered to me what Ames was mad about. Poor guy looked terrified and guilty as hell. By then, Ames was threatening to take some kind of legal action against Christine. Patricia was trying to calm him down, but she’s never been much good at that. The only person who ever had any influence over him was Dara. And from what I’ve heard, his late wife, Eve. Anyway, I overheard Ames say Dara had written about one of her boyfriends. Lovers, rather. Said his initials were S.C. He said Christine and Streak Archer were certain that was me and wanted to know if Patricia knew anything about it, which of course she didn’t because it wasn’t true.”
“Did Prince ask you if you were S.C.?”
Sloane shook his head while taking another sip of scotch. “I think he started to, then reason began seeping back in his overheated brain. He knows I’m not stupid, and dating his nineteen-year-old daughter when I was relatively new at the firm would have been extremely stupid.”
“You think he would have fired you for seeing her?”
“Damned right he would have.”
“But he approved of Reynaldo Cimino?”
“Not on your life, but I don’t think he took the relationship seriously. He thought—he knew—Dara would move on. Ames wanted her with someone rich, influential, maybe a potential political candidate. A governor’s or senator’s wife. Or even better. The modern-day Jackie Kennedy.”
“From what I’ve heard, she didn’t strike me as the Jacqueline Kennedy type.”
Sloane laughed. “I’ll say she wasn’t, but parents see their children with some kind of special vision. Anyway, even though I was a lawyer and my family left me quite comfortable, I’m not rich and I have no political aspirations. So Ames considered me out of the running for his prize. Anyway, aside from being a new guy at the firm who had better sense than to mess around with his teenage daughter, I was engaged to Chr
istine Ireland at the time.”
“Who was all of twenty when you proposed?”
“Almost twenty-one.” Sloane grinned. “I know it sounds like I was robbing the cradle, but you don’t know Christine. She seemed a lot older. And she’s beautiful and intelligent. And settled, which Dara certainly wasn’t. At the time she struck me as the perfect wife for a rising young lawyer.”
“Even with a mentally disabled brother?”
“Hey, Jeremy’s great. He’s accomplished a lot for someone with his disadvantages, not to mention that he’s just a damned likable guy. I would have been glad to have him for a brother-in-law.”
“So what happened to the engagement?”
Sloane frowned. “According to Christine, Dara happened. Dara flirted with me a lot. I don’t know why. Maybe because she flirted with all men. Maybe because she particularly wanted to make Chris mad. Dara really hated that her father had taken in Christine and Jeremy.”
“But according to Miss Ireland, you did nothing to discourage Dara’s attentions to you.”
Sloane looked at him narrowly. “So you’ve discussed this with Miss Ireland?”
“She brought it up, sir,” Winter said firmly, although he couldn’t really remember whether she had or not.
“I see. Well, it’s old news. At least to me.” He shook his head, smiling. “Women have amazing egos, though. I guess Christine still hasn’t gotten over how much Dara came on to me.”
She didn’t sound to me like she gave a damn anymore, Winter thought, suddenly feeling indignant for Christine’s sake, although he wasn’t certain why. He hardly knew her. Why should he care? Still, it was an effort to say nothing sarcastic and to keep his expression neutral.
Sloane drained his glass and rattled ice cubes around the bottom. “Our past troubles aside, Chris and I have remained friends. I was appalled when I heard about the attack on her at the gym. Any leads on who did it?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Sheriff Teague has pulled in the usual suspects, as he calls them, but none of them strike me as having the intelligence to pull off that attack.”
“The intelligence? Chris wouldn’t describe it to me. What took brains to smack a woman in the head with a metal weight?”
“Someone came to that gym well prepared. Razor to cut a hole in a window, suction cup to attach to the glass so it wouldn’t crash to the ground and draw attention. He used very swift, powerful movements to silence and restrain Miss Ireland.”
Sloane looked slightly ill. “Good God, I didn’t know all that. She could have been killed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I feel like strangling the bastard who did that to her.”
“If we find him, I wouldn’t recommend strangling him. You’d end up in jail yourself.”
“It would almost be worth it.”
Michael tilted his head. “You still seem to be extremely fond of Miss Ireland.”
“It’s hard not to be. She’s a fine woman.”
“No hard feelings over the broken engagement?”
“Deputy, your less-than-subtle inquisition isn’t necessary. I did not attack Christine Ireland.” He smiled. “However, I don’t mind talking about her. Looking back to when we were planning to marry, I realize Chris and I cared a lot for each other, but we weren’t in love. I think she was desperate to get out of the Prince home and didn’t trust herself enough to take care of Jeremy all alone. And I thought she was a great catch. I know how mercenary that sounds, but I was younger then. A little more selfish. I hope the years have deepened my sensitivity. Anyway, it was better for both of us that the engagement ended.”
“Because of Dara.”
“It didn’t end because of Dara. Chris used Dara as an excuse. I knew it at the time, but I didn’t tell Chris I knew. I just let her take control of the situation and end it. It seemed more sporting that way—to let the girl break the engagement.”
“And smarter. She was your boss’s ward.”
Sloane grinned. “You’ve got me there. But even if Chris hadn’t ended it, I would have. My heart wasn’t really in it. We wouldn’t have been happy together. The marriage would have ended in divorce after a few bad years when we might have come to actually dislike each other. And to have hurt Jeremy. Emotionally, I mean. No, Deputy, our marriage just wasn’t meant to be.”
“So what was there between you and Dara?”
Sloane was beginning to look a bit impatient. “Nothing, Deputy. In the weeks before she vanished, or was killed, she was acting pretty wild, even for her. Something was going on with her, but I wouldn’t have any way of knowing what it was. I barely knew her.”
“But even you admitted she was flirting with you.”
“Yes. I told you her behavior was strange, although flirting with men was second nature with Dara. She did seem to be focusing on me, though. Maybe it was to piss off Chris.”
“And according to Miss Ireland, you didn’t discourage her.”
Sloane glanced at his watch. “Deputy, I’m expecting a guest. I only have a few more minutes to talk to you. But I will tell you that Dara was Ames Prince’s daughter. Teenage daughter. I’d only been with the Prince firm for a year. Do you think I wanted to offend the child who had my boss wrapped around her little finger? I would have been out of Prince Law in a heartbeat if she’d complained to Daddy Ames about me. So I endured her because I felt I had to.” He swirled the melting ice cubes around his glass. “In fact, I was pretty damned mad at Dara at the time. She was putting me between the proverbial rock and a hard place, jeopardizing my job and my relationship with Christine. And she didn’t care how much trouble she was causing me. She thought it was funny.”
“You don’t sound like you cared much for Dara.”
“From what I knew of her, I didn’t like her at all. She was beautiful, sure, but she was also completely self-centered and a troublemaker. That’s what all the flirting with me was about—causing trouble. But before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t dislike her enough to kill her.”
“Killing her for flirting with you would be a bit extreme,” Michael said solemnly.
Sloane looked at him closely for a moment, then threw back his head and guffawed. The sound echoed around the big, badly decorated room. “You’re all right, Winter.”
Michael smiled back. “Thanks. But I take it you do think she’s dead.”
Sloane glanced at him in surprise. “Well, of course. I know the cops don’t consider Ames’s identification of the body official, but it’s her. Right height, hair, the presence of her ring. Why? Do you think there’s some doubt?”
“No, sir, I don’t. But I wouldn’t want you to repeat that to Mr. Prince.”
“Believe me, I don’t say one word to Ames Prince about Dara. If he wants to believe it wasn’t her body found on the riverbank, that she’s off someplace having a high old time and sending home a letter every few months, that’s fine with me. It makes him happy and that makes everything easier for his family and his staff at the law firm.” He glanced at his watch again. “Deputy, I hate to be rude—”
“One more question, sir. Do you know who Dara called the Brain?”
“The Brain? I don’t know. Christine? She was a straight-A student and I think that bothered Dara, although she claimed she didn’t give a damn about grades.”
“This would have been a man she was involved with. Someone she mentioned in her diary. Do you think it could have been Streak Archer?”
Sloane Caldwell looked stunned. “Streak Archer? My God, the guy’s a hermit!”
“And a genius.”
“Maybe. With computers, for what that’s worth. He’s also unbalanced.”
“And good-looking.”
Sloane raised an eyebrow. “You think so? Well, I’m not attracted to men, so I wouldn’t know.”
Michael acted as if he’d missed the faint innuendo: “But you must realize Streak Archer would be appealing to a lot of women. The handsome wounded war hero. And Dara mentioned him by name in her diary
. She said she liked him. A lot.”
“Well . . .” Sloane shook his head as if baffled and amused at the same time. “Well, I’ll be damned. Dara and Streak Archer friends? That’s a shocker.”
“She said she was having an affair with the Brain.”
“Then I know Streak Archer can’t be the Brain. I don’t think he has anything to do with women. I’ve never heard that he’s gay; he’s just . . . I don’t know. Too strange. I mean, what woman wants a guy who throws some kind of nervous fit every time he goes out in public?”
“Does he?”
“From what I’ve heard, yes. I feel sorry for the guy, but come on. Streak a love interest? For Dara?”
“I guess it was a fairly big reach to think the Brain could be Archer,” Michael said affably.
“I’ll say.” Sloane looked at his watch for the third time. “Deputy, I want to be helpful, but I barely knew Dara and frankly, I’m not all that concerned about her love life. I am concerned about mine. I have a lady arriving here in about half an hour. We’re having dinner with Travis Burke and his wife, Bethany, and I haven’t even had time to shower.”
“You’re friends with the Burkes?”
“I’m very good friends with Travis. I don’t know Bethany as well.” Sloane’s smile was becoming strained.
“I really can’t tell you anything else about Dara, but I do have to get ready for dinner.”
Michael stood. “Sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Mr. Caldwell. I’m a dog with a bone about a mystery, and untangling all these nicknames I’ve found in Dara’s diary is driving me wild.”
“I guess it could be fascinating,” Sloane mumbled, although his tone said it could only be fascinating if you didn’t have a whole lot else on your mind. “I’m sorry to rush you off, Winter, but as I said—”
“Young lady coming. I understand.” Suddenly Michael felt unreasonably angry with the man’s heartiness, the dismissive way he’d said his heart wasn’t in his engagement to Christine Ireland, his smugness over the “fact” that Christine still brooded over Dara’s attentions to her exfiancé. The guy had a big ego. So what? Still, Michael decided he didn’t like Sloane Caldwell. Not at all. Perversely, he lingered, talking. “I’m divorced myself. My ex-wife, Lisa, lives in Los Angeles.”
If She Should Die Page 24
