The Begonia Bribe
Page 26
“I owed you some information. Is now a good time?”
“Sure.”
“I’m out front.”
“Oh. Your driving leg is better then?”
“No. I’m with Benny. Can we come in?”
“Of course you can.”
When she hung up, she pointed at the blender and supplies and looked at Annie. “You get a couple more ready?”
“We having a party or something?”
“Or something,” Cam said as she headed to the front door.
* * *
When Cam got back to her kitchen with Benny and Dylan in tow, she caught Annie’s expression, but Annie distributed margaritas and the men sat at the table.
Cam picked up her margarita and stared at Dylan.
“So I have a success and a failure on that proof about Jessica.”
“We have the killer anyway, but let’s hear it.”
Dylan frowned. “No further proof when Telly might have been poisoned—just the telethon records, but the night Judith was killed, Jessica was with me all afternoon and evening. And the poison was in her coffee, which means it had to be put in very close to when Judith drank it.”
Cam rolled her hands, indicating he should go on. There was nothing new that she hadn’t heard.
“And Jessica has been talking to Barry.”
“So this is what? Thirdhand?”
“Pretty much. But what he said was all the evidence pointing at Mindy, she told him I planted—so he thought I was threatening his wife. He really did the lights and beating-up stuff, but because she’d misled him so he was trying to protect her.”
“Still, he can’t do that.” Cam wasn’t sure how Dylan thought that made it fine.
“Look. I just want it done. I dropped the charges.”
She wondered if maybe he was getting a nice, big payoff for it. She hated it, but she hated the idea of Lizzie and Lauren in foster care more, so she didn’t press the issue.
She was just glad to have the killer caught. It would make her public relations tasks significantly easier. She hoped the media flurry over the matter would die down soon.
With that in mind, she’d put the money from the pageanting project in the bank, hoping in a few months’ time—well before winter—she would be able to put it toward the car she’d been saving for. She knew just the one.