A Murderous Game (27 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

"
W
hat could they
possibly have that's so incriminating?" Abby asked Quentin Robertson, the
attorney who'd flown in from Dallas
two days ago to represent her. She twirled the phone cord around her finger,
keeping a nervous eye on her office doorway.

"Simms wouldn't say, but since
I told him any further contact with you had to go through me, he suggested,
rather strongly, that I arrange a meeting." Robertson paused. "Is
there anything the cops could have stumbled onto that you haven't told me
about? If I'm going to help you, I need to know everything, no matter how
embarrassing it might be."

"I've told you everything. You
know about the property, finding the diary, everything." Frustration
sharpened her tone. She was so tired of having to defend herself. Pushing her
hands through her hair, she closed her eyes and took a moment to regroup.
Quentin was on her side.

"Unless Simms uncovered
something else Dick was involved in that I knew nothing about," she said
more softly, "then I'm afraid I'm clueless."

"All right, try not to worry
about it," the attorney suggested. "We'll just have to wait to find
out what this is all about. What time can you meet me?"

Abby closed her eyes. "I can't
keep leaving the office in the middle of the day to talk to the police. I can
probably get out by six."

"That's fine. Do you want me
to meet you at your office or at the station?"

"The
station.
I think I saw a reporter hanging around outside again yesterday,
and I'd rather not have them find out things have progressed to the point I
need legal counsel."

"It's not a guilty sentence,
you know."

"I know, I'm
sorry.
I just don't want to give them any more fuel for their
fire."

~~~

"What do you mean they've got
a witness?" Gage asked, coming off the couch.    

Abby wrung her hands.
"James," she said, "from the Westville Café."

"Who the hell is James?"

"He's a waiter. He usually
works Tuesday nights when Rachael and I meet for dinner. We almost always get
him as a server."

He studied her a moment, his grey
eyes clouded over, stormy, unreadable. He turned to Quentin, who'd agreed to
meet him at Abby's after they'd left the station so he could fill him in on the
latest developments.

"Is this for real?" Gage
asked the attorney.

Quentin put his hands in his
pockets. "I'm afraid so, and Abby's explanation probably did more harm
than good."

"Wait a minute. What did the
guy say he saw?"

"It's not what he saw,"
Quentin explained. "It's what he heard."

"And what did he hear?"
Gage asked with growing frustration.

Abby swallowed and looked at her
hands.

Quentin cleared his throat.
"According to his testimony, he heard Abby and her friend talking about
how Abby was going to murder her husband."

"That's ludicrous." Gage
exploded. "She's innocent! Someone must have paid the guy to spill that
crock."

"No one paid him," Abby
said. "James was telling the truth."

Gage swung back to stare at her.

"Unfortunately, that's the
same thing she told Simms," Quentin said.

Gage's expression turned to
disbelief. "Why?" He shook his head. "Why would you tell them it
was true?"

"Because it
was."
She threw her arms in the air. "He did hear us talking
about killing Dick, but it wasn't what he thought. I told you about it, how I
used to think up ways to kill Dick whenever he upset me. I told you."

"Oh shit," he said before
looking at Quentin. "Tell me you didn't just sit there and let her answer
their questions."

"I advised her not to say
anything." The attorney looked at Abby and frowned. "She had her own
ideas."

"I thought I could clear
things up," she said in her own defense. "It was a misunderstanding.
I thought it would look more damaging if I refused to answer when there was a
simple explanation."

Gage sat down beside her again and
took her hand.

"I just wanted to clear things
up," she said again, swallowing. "I should have known they'd—"
She closed her eyes a moment. "I should have listened to Quentin. He tried
to stop me, but it seems the police keep finding more reasons to suspect me and
I…I thought this was one thing I could explain."

She'd been wrong, though. They
hadn't believed her. She should have learned from the other times. Baker had
called it a very clever story. Simms had just watched her with those hawk's
eyes that never revealed anything. God, how could she have been so foolish.

Gage wrapped his arm around her
shoulder. "It's all right." He kissed the top of her head. "You
did what you thought you had to."

Over the top of her head, he said
to Quentin, "What if Rachael Gooding verifies her story?"

"I've already considered that.
It can't hurt." He sat down in one of the club chairs and clasped his
hands in front of his chest. "Look, I've got to tell you straight. This
could be serious."

Quentin looked at Abby. "I
believe your story, but I don't think the cops bought it. They're suspicious by
nature; they have to be. They don't know you, so when you tell them you used to
think up ways to murder your ex-
husband,
they're going
to see that as premeditation."

"I tried to explain it was
just a game."

His eyes flicked to Gage.
"Yes, a game, a game in which you murdered your husband who then turns up
dead."

She nodded, knowing he was right.
"So what happens now?" she asked, embarrassed she could have been so
foolish.

"You don't say anything to
anyone—cops, the press, your mother—no one. My guess is Detective Simms is a
step ahead of us. He's probably already contacted your friend Miss Gooding to
try and corroborate your story before we could get to her."

"That should work in our
favor," Gage said. "If Rachael tells him the same thing, and he knows
they haven't talked about it,
then
it proves Abby
wasn't lying."

"
If
he's able to get in
touch with her this evening and
if
he believes she hasn't already talked
to one of us."

Abby groaned. "I'm sorry. I
can't do this anymore tonight." She was so tired. She just wanted to take
a shower, maybe have a glass of wine, and then go to bed and sleep for ten or
fifteen years.

Gage stood up, taking her with him.
"She needs to get some rest," he said to Quentin. "Thanks for
coming back here to fill me in."

"Not a problem."

Abby turned to Quentin. "I
promise to follow your advice from now on. I really didn't mean to make things
harder for you."

"It's not me I'm worried
about." He picked his briefcase up off the floor. "I've got to fly to
Dallas in the
morning. You've got my cell number if anything comes up. I'll be back the day
after tomorrow unless I hear from you sooner."

Gage walked the attorney to the
door. They exchanged a few words but spoke too low for her to hear what they
said. And after everything that had happened, she felt too tired to care.

~~~

Gage steered Abby toward the
stairs.

"Why don't you go get your
shower? I'll take care of things down here and be up in a few minutes."

She didn't argue. He couldn't stand
the dejected look he saw in her eyes. He wanted to take her away, get her
anywhere they couldn't hurt her. He recognized it as his need, not hers,
because he hated feeling so damned impotent.

Cursing, he went into the kitchen.
He pulled a bottle of cabernet from the rack and then searched the cupboards
until he located a couple of wine glasses.

He'd built a billion dollar
corporation from nothing but sweat and the brains God had blessed him with. He
put fear in the heart of corporate executives. He'd pulled off mergers Wall
Street had touted as impossible. But he didn't have a clue how to help the
woman he loved right now.

He wasn't sure how much more she
could take before she caved in from the pressure. In the last year she'd had to
endure public humiliation over Carpenter's affairs, a bitter divorce, and
becoming the prime suspect in the guy's murder. On top of that, Harold Billings
had started threatening to cause trouble for her at work.

At least he might be able to do
something about Billings.

He hadn't planned to spend the
night. He had a seven o'clock conference call in the morning that he couldn't
miss. He'd already rescheduled it twice. He hated to leave Abby alone, though,
after what she'd been through today. He could always shower here in the morning
and just wear the same suit he had on. No one would probably even notice.

Taking the wine and glasses with
him he headed upstairs to the bedroom. As he passed the bathroom he heard a
noise that made him pause and listen. Pressing his ear against the door, he
closed his eyes and issued a silent curse.

Cry it out
, he thought as he
absorbed the sound of her tears.
Just cry it all out
.

Knowing she probably needed these
few moments alone, he turned and walked into the bedroom to wait for her.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

"
D
id you hear back from
the developer?" Simms asked his partner late Thursday morning.

"Not yet, but I'm working on
it," Baker assured him.

"What specifically do you mean
by working on it?"

"I sent him an email and asked
him to contact me."

"An
email?"
Gene dropped his head. "And what," he asked,
doing his damnedest to control his frustration, "if he doesn't check his
emails every day? What if he only checks them once a week, or once a
month?"

"I guess I didn't think of
that. I just assumed—"

"Don't!" Gene threw his
pen on the desk and stood up. "Close the door."

"Look, it's no big deal. If I
don't hear back from him by this afternoon, I'll call him."

"Close the door." He
waited for Baker to comply. He did, grudgingly, then turned to face Gene and
crossed his arms over his chest.

"You
assume
nothing." He gave his partner a hard stare until the defiant look in the
rookie's eyes wavered and then took on something more closely resembling
nervousness.

Satisfied, he sat against the front
of his desk. "I told you to get in contact with that developer three days
ago. And since when did emailing someone become acceptable department
procedure?"

"You didn't specify I should
call him."

Gene gave him a look that
communicated clearly the rookie didn't want to go down that road with him.

"
Three
days ago,"
he repeated evenly. "We've got a murder that's threatening to go cold on
us. We've got conflicting information regarding a very pricey piece of property
that could very well be motive for that murder."

To prevent himself from grabbing
the guy by his starched shirtfront, which he was sorely tempted to do, Gene
crossed his arms. "Just so we understand each other in the future. When I
tell you to do something, do it. If I ever hear you say you assumed something
without covering every base, or shrugging something off as no big deal, you'll
be writing parking tickets."

Baker rolled his jaw.

"You want to be a detective,
start thinking like one." Gene pushed off the edge of the desk. "As
soon as you get back to your station, you get on the fucking phone and call the
developer. If you have to fucking
track
him all over
the state of fucking Florida,
you do it."

He walked around to the back of his
desk and snapped his jacket off the chair. "I've got to leave for a
meeting with Wallace Forrester. And Baker," he paused just long enough for
his partner to squirm under the weight of his dissatisfaction, "when I ask
you about the developer tomorrow, don't tell me you left him a message on his
voice mail."

At three o'clock that afternoon
Simms leaned back in his chair, rubbing the two index fingers of his joined
hands up and down over his chin. The more people he talked to, the more
convinced he was that Abby Carpenter was not his murderer.

He'd thought her explanation of the
waiter's testimony a little farfetched at first, but he'd gotten the same story
from Rachael Gooding, and there was no way they'd had time to corroborate what
they'd say before he'd talked to Gooding yesterday.

He'd also been able to verify
Gooding's claim that Carpenter's diary had been nothing more than a young
girl's imaginings. He'd contacted the woman's father, Tom Sheridan, who
basically, albeit reluctantly, confirmed his daughter's diary had been a
ridiculous
fabrication
. If the entries in the diary had in fact all been made up, it
changed a few other assumptions as well.

"Simms, your visitor is
here."

Gene glanced at his watch.
"Show him into my office," he said, wondering how much, if anything,
Gage Faraday would be willing to give up.

~~~

"I'm a little surprised you
didn't bring your lawyer," Simms said after Gage sat down in the vacant
chair on the other side of the desk.

"Are you planning on charging
me with something?"

"Should I be?"

They took each other's measure,
each one sizing up the other as one would an opponent, both men too seasoned
not to realize they had come face to face with a worthy adversary.

"You tell me, Detective. You
called this meeting."

Simms leaned back in his chair.
Gage did the same, propping his right ankle across his knee.

"I had an interesting talk
with the Attorney General earlier today."

"Really?"
Gage lifted his hand and studied his thumbnail. "I've never found
Forrester to be particularly interesting."