Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (20 page)

I pulled over to the shoulder, stopped the car, and apologized. Then I got out, went into the 7-Eleven across the street and bought two cans of Coke. I held mine to my neck and savored the sensation of cool metal against my sticky skin. After a moment, I took a long, slow swallow.

“We need to talk,” I told Jannine, who had opened her can and then done nothing but stare at it. “This probably isn't the best time for it, but I can’t do anything more to help you until we do.”

Her fingers traced the letters on the side of the can.

“I talked with Benson yesterday.”

She bit her lower lip and focused all of her efforts on the letter “O.” Slow, concentric circles. “I can tell from your tone it isn’t good.”

“He says you got your car washed Saturday afternoon. "

 
“That’s a crime?”

“Under the circumstances, he finds it suspicious. Any car that had been down by the South Fork would show traces of dust.”

She swallowed hard as recognition dawned. “I hadn’t had it washed in months,” she protested. “It needed it.”

“Benson also told me you and Eddie had an argument Saturday morning.”

Jannine nodded. “I told you about that.”

“You told me you had a bit of a spat. That’s different than a fight so heated the neighbors could hear you through closed doors.”

“How did he find out about that?” Her voice sounded hollow.

“From one of the neighbors.”

“Probably Mrs. Willard. She’s the neighborhood busybody. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had binoculars, too.” At least Jannine had looked up and met my gaze.

“What was the fight about?”

“You know, everyday stuff.”

“Give me some examples.”

Her eyes shifted back to the Coke.

“Mrs. Willard, or whoever it was, said you threw a vase and told Eddie he was going to get what he had coming.”

“What is this, the Inquisition?” The words may have been sharp, but there was nothing sharp about Jannine’s voice. It was thin and broken.

“If I’m going to help you, I need to know what happened.”

There was a long silence.

“Jannine?”

She pulled in a long breath. “I had an abortion,” she said, addressing the soda can. “And I didn’t even tell Eddie I was pregnant.” She let the breath out slowly and looked at me. “He wanted a son so bad, he would have kept me having babies forever. But I just couldn’t go through all that again. I want to go back to school and finish my degree. I want to do something with my life, be someone in my own right. I should have gone on the pill, but I was afraid Eddie would find out, so I just kind of tried to work around the fertile days. My period’s always been regular as clockwork, so it was pretty easy.”

I don’t think I said anything, but something in my expression must have shrieked loud and clear.

“I know,” Jannine said. “It’s the kind of thing a feather-brained teenager would say, but sometimes I think that’s about where my mental development stopped. Anyway, Eddie was going through the stack of bills. He’d
never
paid the least attention to them before, but I guess he wanted to check on something . . . and he found the invoice.”

“This was Saturday morning?”

She nodded.

“So you had a big fight, and he stomped out of the house.”

“Not exactly. We yelled and screamed for awhile until the kids came downstairs. Then we didn’t talk. Eddie puttered in the garage while I cleaned up around the house. About eleven, he came into the laundry room to tell me he had to go out. That was it. He didn’t say good-bye or when he’d be back or where he was going, just ‘I’m going out for a bit.’ ”

“That was after he got the telephone call, right?”

She nodded. “But I can’t say for sure there’s any connection.”

“He apparently stopped by school. Any idea why?”

“No. That’s not unusual, though.” A smile appeared, then vanished. “Football is more than a sport, remember. It’s a way of life.”

I swished the soda around in my half-empty can, thinking.

“Jannine, I have to tell you something I’ve learned. Something unpleasant. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I needed to.”

Jannine had stopped tracing the letters on her own can, and had begun rolling it between her palms instead. Brown froth trickled down the side of the can and dribbled onto her lap.

“Eddie never spent nights at the tavern. The upstairs apartment is rented to one of the bartenders, a young man who swears Eddie never slept there. In fact, he says Eddie wasn’t around much at all.” I spoke slowly, making my voice as gentle as possible, then waited for the rush of raw emotion.

Jannine’s response wasn’t what I expected. She looked me level in the eye for a moment, then dropped her gaze. “I know,” she mumbled.

“You
know?"

“Going to the tavern was the excuse he used when he would spend the night with Vicky.”

“You knew he was seeing another woman?”

She nodded. “I found out about a month ago.” The words came out slowly, with effort. “They say the wife is always the last to know, right? We had a big scene. I’m sure Mrs. Willard was in seventh heaven listening to us. Eddie swore it was over; he said he loved me and didn’t know what had gotten into him. He actually cried, Kali, and begged me to forgive him.”

“And you did?”

“I forgave him. Part of me even understood. But I was having a devil of a time forgetting.”

“Who was she?”

“Does it matter?”

I thought Jannine had to be pretty addled not to see it. “A scorned lover has the classic motive for murder,” I told her. “At the very least, it will give the police someone else to nose around after.”

Jannine turned to look at me again. “Vicky didn’t kill him,” she said.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Oh God, Kali, this is so sordid.” She squeezed the can between her hands. “I’m sure, because I followed her that afternoon.”

“You mean you didn’t go to the mall?” I thought of the afternoon I’d wasted parading through shops, talking myself hoarse.

“I
did
start for the mall. I was upset about my fight with Eddie, angry with myself for a whole list of things, and I just wanted to get away. You know, wander aimlessly and blend in. But there was something about the way Eddie looked at me when he
left .
. .” She shrugged lamely. “I started thinking maybe it wasn’t over with Vicky after all. That maybe I’d been a bigger fool than I thought and sent him right back into her arms. So instead of going to the mall, I drove to her house and sat outside in the goddamn car eating candy bars and playing like Kinsey Millhone. Only I was crying so hard I went through more tissues in five hours than she probably does in a whole year.”

“You’re sure this Vicky was home?”

Jannine nodded. “She came out to check the mail right after I got there.”

“When was that?”

“A little after noon.”

“And she never left?”

“Not until later. About six o’clock some guy pulled up in one of those customized trucks with rows of spotlights across the roof. He honked, and they drove off. By that time I felt like such a jerk, I went by the carwash just so the day wouldn’t end up being a total waste. And then I went to my mom’s.”

Jannine looked over to gage my reaction, then turned back to her Coke can. “I told you it was sordid. Now maybe you can understand why I wanted to keep it to myself. I’m sorry about the mall though, really. I tried to tell you it would be a waste.”

My head was spinning, trying to sort this new information into neat little piles. So far it all fit. Not that it would hold much water with Benson. “If you knew Eddie wasn’t with Vicky, why weren’t you worried when he never came home that night?”

“I really expected he’d be there waiting for us when we got back from Mom’s. And then when he wasn’t, my imagination started in again. Maybe he’d been there at Vicky’s all afternoon, and the guy with the truck was just her brother or something. Maybe he was seeing someone new. Maybe he was so angry with me he’d just walked out for good. It sounds weird now, but at the time I’d worked myself into a real snit.”

We sat for a moment, neither of us speaking. Jannine went back to squeezing her soda can, sending another cloud of fizz cascading over the side and onto my lovely leather upholstery.

Finally Jannine said, “The thought of losing him was more than I could bear. I spent all Saturday night rehearsing exactly what I was going to say when he came home, how I was going to convince him to give me another chance.” Her voice faltered. “But he never showed up. The police came instead.”

My can was empty. I crushed it with my fist. “Is there anything else you’ve neglected to tell me?”

She shook her head, wiping at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I should have told you the whole truth in the beginning, but it’s just so . . . so embarrassing.”

I thought that being embarrassed paled in comparison to finding yourself a prime suspect in the murder of your husband. In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. The truth was as hard to substantiate as the fabrication. Assuming we’d finally reached the truth.

I squeezed her hand, which was now damp and sticky. “You have no reason to be embarrassed,” I told her. “Human nature isn’t the tidiest force in the universe.”

In return, she gave me a weak smile. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I guess I’ll start by going through that box of stuff you got together for me. And I’ll probably pay Benson another visit.”

“You’re not giving up on me then?”

“Oh, come on, you know me better than that.”

I took Jannine’s can, which hadn’t once touched her lips, and emptied it onto the asphalt. Then I crushed it and deposited both cans in the overflowing trash bin outside the 7-Eleven. Sticky upholstery or not, my car was still new, and I wasn’t about to let it become the littered heap my old VW had been.

“By the way,” Jannine said as we pulled onto the road, “if you find anything in Eddie’s papers having to do with the tavern, would you set them aside? George asked me about them just this afternoon. He’s got a meeting with his accountant or something and wants to make sure his records are complete.”

I made some noncommittal response. My mind was busy trying to align the pieces of the puzzle. I wondered again whether George had wanted the tavern enough to kill for it.

Chapter 15

Loretta met me at the door with her usual tail-thwacking enthusiasm. I started to make excuses — I was too hot, too tired, too grumpy, but she was having none of it. She followed me into the kitchen, alternately dancing a freeform jig, then sitting tight like the star pupil in obedience class.

“All right already,” I grumbled, “we’ll go for a walk, but I have a few phone calls to make first.”

Walk
was the operative word here; Loretta went berserk. I grabbed a handful of Kibbles and tossed them onto the floor to keep her occupied while I placed a call to Lawrence Simpson, attorney-at-law.