Deadline (14 page)

Amelia was too heartsick to respond.

Bernie pulled up to one of the village’s few stop signs and looked across at her. “I hate now that I told you.”

“I needed to know.”

“It’s not my place to butt in.”

“You didn’t butt in. I pried it out of you.”

“Who you spend time with is your business.”

“It was only circumstances that brought Dawson and me together.”

“That may be,” Bernie said, “but I think you like him.”

She turned her head aside so he couldn’t see her face. “We’d better hurry or we’ll miss the ferry.”

D
awson left the interior of the sheriff’s administrative offices through a doorway that opened into a small lobby. He was shocked to see Amelia there alone. She was sitting in one of a row of preformed plastic chairs lined up against the wall. She seemed just as surprised to see him. Her eyes widened fractionally, then she looked away.

He walked over and sat down in the chair next to hers. “Are you all right?”

She turned her head and gave him a droll look. “I can’t remember a Labor Day I’ve enjoyed more.”

For asking such a stupid question, he figured he deserved the putdown. “Hunter and Grant?”

“They’re with George Metcalf and his wife. I talked to them on the phone a few minutes ago. They’ve had fun, but they’re ready for me to come get them.” She glanced toward the door through which he’d emerged. “I don’t know when I’ll be free to do that. And maybe it would be better if I left them there overnight. I have to be in court early tomorrow morning.”

“I’m sure Lem Jackson would speak to the judge on your behalf.”

“When he heard about Stef on the news, he called and offered to ask for a postponement, but I told him not to.”

“Can you bear up to a cross-examination?”

“I’m tired of dreading it, and want to get it over with as soon as possible.”

He understood her wanting to have the court appearance behind her, but he questioned the wisdom of her decision. She looked completely wrung out. “Have you told Hunter and Grant about Stef?”

“I don’t know how to tell them when I can’t believe it myself.”

He waited for a moment. Then, “You know her death wasn’t caused by flying debris.”

She swallowed hard before murmuring
yes
.

While being “interviewed” by Deputy Tucker and his partner detective, the ME’s initial finding had been reported to Dawson: Stef was killed by a blow to the back of her head. It had fractured her skull. The depression indicated that brute force had been applied.

“How did you find out?” he asked Amelia.

She folded her arms across her midriff and tucked her hands against her sides. “When I got to the morgue, I was asked to positively identify her. The autopsy won’t be performed until her parents have seen her, but the medical examiner has examined the wound. He told me what killed her.”

“Have her parents arrived?”

“A short while ago. They were brought straight to the morgue. I talked to them. They’re devastated. I left them to grieve.”

“That’s where I would expect you to be,” he said. “Somewhere grieving.”

“Now that homicide has been confirmed, Deputy Tucker called and asked if I would come here and answer some questions. When I arrived, I was told to wait.” She nodded toward a uniformed officer who was manning the reception desk from behind a window. “That was half an hour ago.”

The crime scene on Saint Nelda’s Island was still cordoned off, but it had been determined by someone in charge that, due to the serious nature of the crime, the investigation be conducted from the main sheriff’s office rather than from the precinct that served Saint Nelda’s.

The headquarters shared a campus with the county jail, a sprawling, industrial-looking complex wrapped in concertina wire. Maybe the decision to center the case here was an intimidation tactic.

Dawson had spent the entire day there, being questioned off and on by the pair of detectives. It was getting dark outside, and he had only now been released, with the stipulation that he keep himself available for further questioning.

To bring Amelia up to date, he told her all that. “Tucker and his partner, a guy named Wills—‘Tucker and Wills’ sounds like a magic act, doesn’t it? Anyway, when they weren’t questioning me, singly or together, they left me alone in the interrogation room. I guess I’m a person of interest. They did the whole bad-cop/good-cop routine, which might have been scary if it hadn’t been so obvious. Bad cop, Tucker, told me that they got a search warrant for the beach house.”

She looked at him with concern. “They’re that serious about you?”

“They won’t find a murder weapon. I just hate that the rental company had to notify the home owner that his house was about to be turned inside out. I doubt they’ll provide good references if I ever want to rent again.”

“How can you joke?”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Because if I don’t, I’ll get really pissed off for even being considered a suspect. You’ve got to know that I had nothing to do with it.”

She searched his eyes, finally saying, “The estimated time of her death coincides with when you were seen talking to her in the village.”

“True. Which sucks. But I’ve explained to the detectives how that came about. Stef and I bumped into each other in the general store. She had bags. They were heavy because she’d bought extra bottled water. It was raining buckets. I offered to carry her purchases to the car for her. Which I did.

“I left her there and drove over to the dock to fill up my car with gas. Then I headed back to the beach. I expected her to be ahead of me and was surprised when I reached your house and saw that your car wasn’t there. I figured she’d ducked into Mickey’s, as she’d said she might, to see if he had any carry-out food. You know the rest.”

“This encounter with Stef slipped your mind? Even though we talked at length about the unlikelihood of her returning soon, you forgot to tell me that you’d just seen her?” He was about to reply, when she stopped him. “Don’t bother inventing an explanation. I know why you didn’t tell me. You didn’t want me to know that you and Stef were…friendly.”

“‘Friendly,’ spoken in that tone, sounds like a euphemism.”

“Bernie saw the two of you together.”

Bloody hell.
He could kick himself for not telling her before. The omission made him look as guilty as her glare indicated he was. “It was innocent.”

His disclaimer made it sound anything but innocent and did nothing to assuage her suspicion.

He drew in a long breath. “Thursday, the day after my arrival, I had gone for a run and was on my way back to the house. Stef was on her bicycle, returning from the store. We crossed paths, exchanged names. She asked where I was staying, and when I told her, she remarked that we were neighbors and told me not to be a stranger. She said, ‘Maybe we’ll catch each other on the beach tomorrow.’ We parted.”

“You helped her with her bicycle basket.”

“That’s right. The clamp was loose. She was afraid the basket was going to shake free of the mounting and dump her purchases. So, yeah, I tightened the clamp for her. It took thirty seconds, max. That was it.”

“If that was ‘it,’ why did the two of you pretend that you hadn’t met? When I caught you spying Friday afternoon, you asked me who she was, when you already knew. Friday night at Mickey’s, when she brought you over from the bar to our table, she didn’t say, ‘This is our neighbor, who was kind enough to help me with my bicycle basket yesterday.’”

“I asked you who she was because when we met, she hadn’t specifically explained her position in your household. I didn’t know that she wasn’t a relative. At Mickey’s, I suppose she was sensitive to the tidal waves of hostility you were radiating. I can only guess, but I
guess
she didn’t want to rile you.”

“You took your cue from her and went along with the pretense of never having met.”

“Something like that.” She continued to look at him, making him wonder if she also knew about that other time. Whether or not she did, it would be better to come clean about it now. “I was alone with her one other time.”

“When?”

“Also on Thursday.”

“The same day you met?”

“Late that night. I went over to leave your wristwatch on the porch railing. As I was skirting around the back of your house, Stef drove up in your car and caught me in the headlights. I had no choice except to brazen it out. I told her that I’d heard something and had come to check for an intruder. Which wasn’t such a stretch of the truth. I’d been keeping an eye on your house, particularly late at night, for reasons you know.”

“You were sneaking around my house in the middle of the night, and she didn’t think that was the least bit suspicious? She didn’t raise a hue and cry and ask what the hell you were doing?”

“She was in no condition to do anything. She’d been drinking. Quite a lot. I had to help her from the car to the back door. She begged me not to tell you. Since I didn’t want you to know that I was staying in the house next door—”

“Spying.”

“—I promised that you would never hear it from me, in exchange for her promise never to drive again in that condition.”

“You two formed a pact.”

He wished he could deny it, but that was more or less the truth of it. “It was a nonissue.”

“Was it? The authorities might disagree. Do they know about these secret meetings between you two?”

“Yes. I told them.”

That calmed her a little, but she was still looking at him with anger and suspicion. “Did you see her as an excellent source of insider information on me? Or as something else entirely?”

“No to the first question. I don’t dare guess what ‘something else entirely’ implies.”

“Come on, Dawson, don’t play dumb. She was a friendly, flirty girl, who also happened to be a head turner, especially in a bikini.”

“She was. All that. She was also half my age. Near enough, at least.”

“That didn’t matter to her. She said the guy she was seeing was older.”

He reacted with a start. “Dirk is older?”

“You know about him?”

“The night she came in drunk, she mentioned him by name. ‘Dirk and I killed a bottle of Captain Morgan.’ The detectives want to question him, but they haven’t been able to track him down.”

“That’s one reason I was asked to come in,” she said. “They want to know what I know about him.”

“What
do
you know about him?”

“Not even his last name.”

Dawson listened with mounting apprehension as she told him what little she knew about the elusive Dirk. “Did Stef tell you why she wasn’t keen on you two meeting?”

“I gathered he wasn’t keen on it, either. He wouldn’t fit into ‘the family scene.’”

“Did she describe him physically?”

“Older than she, but she didn’t say by how much. Tattoos. A beard.”

“Huh.”

“Your brow is furrowed. What are you thinking?”

“Dirk comes across as excessively secretive.”

He got up and walked over to a bulletin board that was papered with Wanted posters, forming a collage of sinister faces. One poster stood out, however, because the wanted individual had the benign countenance of an angel framed by curly blond hair. Not yet thirty years old, she was wanted for armed robbery and murder. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward had been offered for information leading to her arrest. She was considered to be armed and dangerous.

The criminal bent of one’s personality wasn’t always obvious.

He turned back to Amelia. “I didn’t use Stef as a source of information on you. But maybe someone else did. Someone who wanted to keep track of you and your sons, who wanted to know where you were and who you were with. Someone having a great deal of personal interest in your activities, your daily routine, your comings and goings.”

She took a deep, stuttering breath, indicating to Dawson that even though she didn’t respond, she understood all too well what he was leading up to.

In a quiet voice, he said, “There’s the age factor.”

“We don’t know how old this Dirk is.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say his age fits.”

“Let’s not,” she said, coming to her feet. “The man Stef described to me sounds nothing like Jeremy.”

“Tattoos are easily acquired. The beard might take a week or two. He’s been missing for fifteen months.”

“You don’t think I’d recognize the man I was married to, even with a beard?”

“You would, but the casual observer wouldn’t. Furthermore, nobody’s looking for Jeremy Wesson. The general consensus is that Willard Strong fed him to a pack of starving pit bulls.”

She took a reflexive step away from him, but when the back of her knees touched the seat of the chair, she sat back down abruptly. He returned to his seat beside her. He wanted to caress her cheek, at the very least, take her hand. He refrained, largely because he feared a rebuff.

“Something else has been nagging at me.”

She shook her head as though to stave off whatever it was he was about to say, but he didn’t let it deter him. “I haven’t shared this with the detectives because I wanted to run it past you, first.” And Headly. Above anyone else, he would trust Gary Headly’s instincts on this.

“When I ran into Stef in the general store, she was wearing a rain slicker. I teased her about the loud pattern. Red with bright-yellow-and-white daisies. She told me she’d taken it from the trunk of your car.”

“It’s mine. Jeremy and I went to Charleston for a getaway weekend. The weather turned bad, and I needed a raincoat in a hurry. That was the first one I found. It’s not something I would typically choose, so I kept it at the beach house and never wore it except there on the island.”

“Last I saw her, Stef was standing beside your car, wearing your slicker, with—”

“No.”

“—the hood up.”

“Stop!”

“Amelia—”

“Don’t say anymore.”

Just then the door adjacent to the reception window swung outward and Tucker and Wills walked through. “Well, Mr. Scott,” Tucker drawled. “Glad to see you’re still here. You saved us a trip.”

“I ran into Ms. Nolan.”

Tucker introduced his partner to her.

“Thank you for coming in, Ms. Nolan,” Wills said. As tall and thin as Tucker was short and stout, he had the bearing and stooped posture of a tenured professor. He was also the more sensitive of the two, and noticed how shaken Amelia appeared. “Ma’am, are you all right?”

“Yes, fine. It’s been a terrible day.”

“Of course. We realize what an imposition it is to ask you to come down here this time of night.”

“Not at all. If I can help, I want to.”

“We’ll be with you directly,” he told her.