Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (30 page)

Had the driver been some reckless teenager out for a wild Saturday night? Or had he deliberately swerved in my direction?

Was I right in thinking the car had been a white American full-sized model like the one I’d noticed at Carla’s? And the one that had doubled back and nearly collided with me earlier that same day.

After my experience with the fish guts I was understandably nervous. Was I also paranoid?

I let myself into the house, stripped out of my clothes and took a long, hot shower. The water stung my face and hands, but it felt wonderful on the rest of me. I dried myself gingerly and applied ointment to the scrapes and cuts. Then I pulled on a pair of loose-fitting sweats, gave Loretta another once over, checking for injuries I might have missed, and sat down with paper and pencil to see if I could make sense of the day’s events. I doodled my initials in the right-hand margin, a flower in the left, got up to get a glass of wine, then changed my mind and put on a kettle for tea instead. My mother had been a tea drinker. I could remember coming home from school winter afternoons to a warm house that smelled of lemon and spice. She would fix us a snack and then sit at the table with us, sipping her tea and listening to the chronicles of our day.

I paced the kitchen, checked the lock on the back door, hugged my arms across my chest. The water was taking forever to boil. I picked up the pencil, doodled some more, then put it down again when I noticed my hand was trembling. Despite the heat of the day, the house seemed suddenly, inexplicably, cold. In fact, I was shivering so hard I was actually shaking. Then it dawned on me that what I felt was scared. Scared and alone.

I turned off the stove, reached for the phone and invited myself to Jannine’s.

Chapter 22

“Holy cow, Kali, what happened to you?”

I hadn’t told Jannine about my encounter with tree limbs and hard granite. Now I thought maybe I should have prepared her.

“I was walking the dog,” I explained. “A car almost ran me over.”

“Are you okay? What did the doctor say?”

“I didn’t call a doctor. I’m fine, just sore is all.”

She looked dubious. “Was the guy drunk or something?”

“I don’t know. I never saw him.”

“You mean he didn’t stop to help?” She let the screen door flop shut behind us. “That’s a hit-and-run, isn’t it?”

“He didn’t exactly hit me. It just seemed like he was about to.”

“Still, you should report it.”

I’d seen enough of police headquarters, and I thought they’d probably seen enough of me. I wasn’t anxious to go waltzing in with still another complaint. Besides, there wasn’t a lot I could tell them.

“It all happened pretty fast And it was getting dark, so I didn’t see much anyway.” I considered sharing my suspicions about the driver aiming for me, then decided against it. Jannine had enough to worry about.

“I’m fine,” I told her. “Really. I just didn’t feel like being alone right now.”

“Of course you didn't,” she soothed. “Come on, I’ll make you a drink, a stiff one.”

She settled me into one of the kitchen chairs, guiding me as though I were a decrepit old woman. “How about food, have you eaten?”

I remembered I hadn’t.

Jannine set a glass of straight Scotch in front of me, then poured herself a heavily watered version of the same. “The kids and I had boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner. There’s some left. Or I could make you a sandwich. The only bread we have is the squishy white stuff, but I’ve got some good salami.”

“A sandwich sounds wonderful.”

She opened the fridge and began pulling out ingredients. “I hear you were out with Tom Lawrence last night”

“How’d you hear that
⁵
”

“Eddie’s uncle.” She began shaving off thin slices of salami. “He said you stopped by the tavern for a drink.”

“He called just to tell you that?”

“Of course not. He dropped by this afternoon to see how we were getting along. He offered to lend me money until I get my feet under me. Isn’t that generous?”

I’d spent a good part of the last two days thinking about George Marrero. Generous was not a word I’d have used. In fact, it made me wonder about the timing of his visit.

Jannine handed me my sandwich and took the seat across from me. “So tell me,” she said, elbows on the table, an eager, school-girl expression on her face, “was it a
real
date or an old friends kind of thing?”

That was a question I’d asked myself, although not in quite those terms. “A little of both, I guess.” I bit into the sandwich hungrily. The bread formed a layer of paste on the roof of my mouth, and I had to pry it loose with my tongue. Even so, it was delicious.

“I see him around town now and then. He’s a good-looking guy, kind of sexy in a way.”

My mouth was full so I smiled blandly. I thought it was a bit more than “kind of.”

Jannine stared off into space while I chewed. “You know,” she said, after a moment, “there’ve been moments when I really envied you. Single, no one to answer to, all those glamorous and exciting men, the fascinating adventures.”

I laughed. “It’s not quite the way you make it sound.”

She laughed back. “Maybe. ’Course I never did have your pizazz, and now, on top of that, I’m fat and dumb, and I’ve got four kids.”

“You’re not—”

Jannine cut me off with a feeble smile. “You can’t deny I’ve got four kids.” The smile vanished, and her face closed down. She stared hard at the golden liquid in her glass. Finally, she sighed. “Now that I’m single, I can’t imagine why I ever found the idea attractive.”

I reached across the table to squeeze her hand. Before I could say anything, Erin strolled into the room, a set of headphones plugged into her ears. She glanced briefly in my direction, turned away and then turned back. She removed the headphones and draped them around her neck. “You run into Godzilla or something?”

“Erin!” Jannine screeched the way mothers do.

“It’s okay.” I gave Erin one of my all-purpose smiles. “I tripped over a fallen tree and landed on some rocks. It looks worse than it is.”

Erin pulled a can of diet soda from the refrigerator and popped the tab. “Maybe you should get glasses or something.”

“Erin.” Jannine tried again, but Erin had already left. “Sorry,” she said, turning to me. “Erin’s in one of her moods.”

“Don’t worry about it. Seems like only yesterday I used to pull stuff like that myself. Besides, my face
has
looked better.”

“Eddie’s death has hit her pretty hard. Harder than the others, I think. She’s at that age — and the two of them were quite close.”

The photographs I’d seen that afternoon were etched in my mind. Girls only a year or two older than Erin. Eddie couldn’t have had anything to do with it, I was sure. The school envelope didn’t necessarily mean anything. Cheryl could have picked it up while she was working in the office.

But if I was so sure, why did the very idea cause my stomach to knot up?

Jannine took my empty plate and stuck it in the dishwasher. Then she poured us each a second drink and suggested we move into the living room. She directed me to the sofa and settled me into the downy pillows, tucking and plumping them around me.

The Scotch had helped. My body still ached, but the pain was muted, as though it were calling to me from a great distance. Even the growing tightness around my left eye didn’t bother me much.

“Tell me about Cheryl Newcomb,” I said. “She babysits for you, doesn’t she?”

“Occasionally, when Erin is busy. Eddie and I never went out all that often.”

“She a family friend?”

Jannine shook her head. “Eddie knew her through school. One of the few advantages of being a teacher. We never had trouble finding a sitter.”

“Has she been here recently?”

“Not for about a month. She was supposed to help out at that party Friday night, the one you were at. She cancelled at the last minute, though.”

“Did she say why?”

“I didn’t talk to her. Eddie did. I guess she got sick or something. Usually she’s pretty reliable.”

“She’s run away from home. Nobody’s seen her since last Sunday.”

Jannine frowned. “I heard. Cheryl always struck me as an unhappy kid putting up a brave front The kind you worry about because you know she can’t keep it up forever. I feel bad that I didn’t try harder to reach out to her.”

“Did you ever talk to her?”

“A couple of times. She and Eddie got on pretty well, but she never said much to me.”

“She was at school last Saturday morning. One of the students saw her walking with Eddie.”

Jannine nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Eddie also wrote her phone number on his desk calendar that day.”

A simple nod this time. “Eddie was always making notes to himself.”

I paused and took a swallow of my drink. I’d thought I was working up to telling Jannine about the photographs, but I found I couldn’t. Not while there was still the possibility that Eddie was somehow involved.

“You’re sure Eddie knew her through school and not through some tie-in with his uncle?”

“George?” Jannine looked at me as though I’d sprung antlers. “What makes you ask that?”

“George and Cheryl’s mother have a . . . a business connection.”

“Are you sure about that? I remember one time Cheryl sat for us. George dropped something off here just as we were leaving. Eddie introduced them, and George was barely polite. You’d think he’d have said something if he knew her mother.”

I nodded absently. You’d certainly have thought so. Unless George’s connection with Carla was something he wanted kept quiet.

“Did George say anything else about me when he stopped by this afternoon? Other than reporting the latest developments of my love life, that is.”

Jannine gave me another one of those looks. “He just happened to mention it in passing, Kali. It isn’t like he particularly cares who you go out with.” She kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up under her. “He did ask, though, if you’d found anything about the tavern in that box of Eddie’s stuff I gave you. Have you had a chance to look through it?”

Here was another chance. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the photographs, but I could tell her what I’d learned about George.

“Jannine,” I said slowly, “there are some—”

I stopped when Lily walked in. She’d gotten the zipper of her yellow fleece pajamas stuck and needed Jannine’s help. When the zipper was once again free, she climbed into her mother’s lap and pulled Jannine’s arms around her, like a shawl. It was a capture-the-moment picture Kodak would have been proud of, and it touched one of those places deep inside I try to keep hidden.

“I found a couple of loose pages,” I said lamely, looking down at my glass. “They were just copies, but I’ll get them back to you all the same.”

“Did you find anything that was helpful?”

I shook my head, suddenly aware that I felt uncomfortable. It had been a mistake coming to Jannine’s. There was simply too much I wasn’t telling her.

“I may be on to something, though. I’ll know in a day or two.” I stood and yawned. My earlier shakiness had been supplanted by bone-deep exhaustion. “I think I’ll head back.”