Deadly Deceptions (19 page)

I closed my eyes, swayed slightly.

Jolie caught hold of my hand and pulled me down to sit beside her on the couch. She looked sick, and considering that she was a crime-scene technician by profession, and before that she'd worked in a sophisticated forensics lab, weighing vital organs and picking bone fragments out of brains, her reactions gave me pause.

Numbly she handed me the phone.

Tucker shook his head. “Don't,” he rasped.

I had to listen. If I was going to help Greer, or even try to protect her, I needed to know everything there was to know about the situation.

I sat through it, shivering.

And then I ran into the bathroom and sat on the edge of my tub, in case the gagging escalated to something a lot messier.

When I had the reflex under control, I splashed my face with cold water, straightened my shoulders and returned to the living room.

Tucker was on his cell phone, talking in terse undertones.

“Who's he calling?” I asked Jolie, who was pacing, jingling her car keys in one hand. I was still a little rattled, or I might have worked it out on my own.

“The Feds,” she said impatiently. “Greer's over there
alone,
Moje.”

My heart lurched.

Tucker ended the first call and made a second, to 911.

I couldn't bear to think about what we might find when we got to Greer's, so I went with the next-worst worst case scenario. I pictured government agents swarming over the main house, simultaneously invading peaceful Shiloh, Montana, and I was alarmed. While I knew the FBI
might
protect Greer—since the advent of terrorism, they'd been hard up for manpower—I was still scared to death. The blackmailers weren't just blackmailers anymore—they were ruthless extortionists. And they might get to my sister before the good guys did. Considering the things they had planned for her, I couldn't let that happen.

Except, they might
already
have gotten to her.

I snatched the Glock off the coffee table, where Tucker had laid it down, and he immediately took it from me, slipped it into the waistband of his jeans. He was still on the line with the emergency dispatcher as he, Jolie, Dave and I all rushed down the outside stairs.

We piled into Tucker's SUV and laid rubber getting out of there.

Tucker snapped his phone shut. Pulled a light-bubble from the floorboard beneath his feet and reached out the driver's window to attach it to the roof of the vehicle.

He didn't say anything, but I knew what he had to be thinking—that I should have told him about the throwaway cell phone and the threat on Greer's life immediately, not when I got around to it. I was thinking the same thing. My mind was so busy, in fact, that I completely spaced Vince Erland and the bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

Jolie fumed silently in the back, where she and Dave were sharing a seat belt. She exuded fury, most of which seemed to be directed at me.

It wasn't the time to remind her that she'd known Greer was being blackmailed as long as I had. It was just that there was a lot of other stuff going on when we found out, and Greer had refused to tell us anything. Refused to call in the police, too, no doubt because of the blackmailers' graphic threats of reprisal if she did.

She'd been terrified—and with good reason.

When I'd taken the call on the throwaway that morning instead of Greer, the creeps had probably panicked, thinking she'd decided to call their bluff. As long as she'd paid them, and kept the police out of the equation, they'd had no reason to slaughter the golden goose. Now, figuring the goose had squawked, they'd stretch her neck on the chopping block and sharpen the ax blade.

I began to rock in the front seat of Tucker's SUV, willing him to drive faster. We were zipping through traffic as it was, weaving in and out, and though most drivers had the good sense to get out of the way, there were a few who remained oblivious to a swirling red light in their rearview mirrors.

Two squad cars were parked in Greer's driveway when we arrived, behind an unfamiliar convertible Jag, gold, with the top down. One police car bore the county insignia, and one was Scottsdale PD. Light bars flashed blue and then red and then blue again. The colors splashed dizzyingly against the garage. The front doors of the house gaped open, and light spilled golden into the portico.

Leaving Dave in the SUV, Tucker, Jolie and I hit the ground running.

Tucker got there first, and Jolie and I wedged through behind him, then almost crashed into his back because he stopped so suddenly.

A body lay in the center of the entryway, arms and legs askew.

I knew immediately that it wasn't Greer or Carmen, but I didn't have time to be relieved.

One of the deputies turned, acknowledged Tucker with a nod. “According to his ID,” the man said, “his name was Jack Pennington. That's his Jag parked out front.”

My knees sagged. I glanced at his face—a younger version of Alex's—but Greer was uppermost in my thoughts, so I bolted for the stairs, Jolie beside me.

Tucker caught us each by an arm and easily held us back.

For some reason, neither of us struggled.

“My sister,” I managed.

“There's nobody else in the house,” someone said.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I was about to add, “They've got her” when Tucker shut me up with a subtle motion of his elbow.

“Are you sure?” Jolie asked. She'd had a lot more experience with the police than I had, of course. She was looking at Jack Pennington's body as she spoke, and I knew she was cataloging details, noticing things I probably wouldn't have registered. All I knew was he was dead. “Did you check the guesthouse?”

“Not yet” came the slightly terse answer. “We haven't been here that long, and our first priority was to look for the shooter and any other victims, then keep the scene secure.” The man's gray eyes rolled back and forth between Jolie and me, like pinballs bouncing off plastic flippers in a grudge game. “Do either of you live here? Do you know this man?”

I swallowed. “I've been staying in the guesthouse. The property belongs to our sister—Greer Pennington.”

A deep shudder went through me. Where
was
Greer? Where was Carmen? Had one of them shot Greer's stepson and then fled the scene? Or had the extortionists done it? Perhaps they'd come for Greer, and Pennington had been there, or arrived in the middle of some scuffle?

I put a hand to my mouth.

The cop was still studying Jolie and me.

“I've met Jack before,” Jolie said, in belated answer to his question.

“Maybe you'd better sit down,” he said. “Both of you.”

I was rooted to the spot, but Jolie took my hand and pulled me toward the living room, and Tucker gave me a little shove from behind.

More cops came.

Then the crime-scene techs, closely followed by the medical examiner's people.

Tucker brought Dave in from the SUV and Jolie and the dog and I repaired to the kitchen. Jolie gave Dave some fancy lunch meat from the fridge, and filled a bowl with water for him.

And we waited.

The entire house was searched again, along with the guesthouse and the grounds. Tucker reported, in a brief pass-through, that Greer's car was still in the garage.

And then I ran into an acquaintance—Detective Andrew Crowley, Scottsdale PD, homicide division. We'd gotten to know each other during my last big adventure and, frankly, even though he was a nice enough guy, I'd hoped I'd never see him again.

Crowley was middle-aged, mild mannered and smart as hell. He entered the kitchen by way of the dining room, looking rumpled. “Why is it, Ms. Sheepshanks,” he drawled, “that every other time I set foot on a crime scene, you happen to be there?”

Dave, slumbering at my feet, rose far enough out of his doggy dreams to give a halfhearted growl.

“Just my good luck, I guess,” I said.

Crowley nodded to Jolie, scraped back a chair and sat down at the table where Jolie and I had been keeping a mostly silent vigil for at least an hour. He looked tired, but affable.

“Mrs. Pennington,” Jolie said after giving me a shut-your-smart-mouth look, “is our sister. This is her place. We've been worried about her lately, and Mojo has been staying in her guesthouse.”

“Were you here when Mrs. Pennington's stepson was shot?” Crowley asked. He already knew the answer, of course. The uniforms, or possibly Tucker, would have briefed him when he arrived. His tactic was an old standard—ask a lot of questions and hope somebody trips up.

“No,” I said.

Crowley looked to Jolie for confirmation—as if I wasn't credible, or something. I was vaguely insulted.

“No,” Jolie said. “I came by earlier to look in on Greer and nobody answered the door. I tried my key, but the locks had been changed.” Here, she glanced at me, thereby opening a whole new can of worms. If I hadn't thought Crowley would notice, I'd have kicked her under the table.

Crowley turned to me again, one eyebrow slightly raised. He'd caught Jolie's look, and interpreted it correctly. He knew
I
knew about the changed locks, and probably that I wished Jolie hadn't brought the subject up at all. Not that it wouldn't have come out eventually, of course.

I was shaken.

I was scared—make that petrified—for Greer and for Carmen, too.

Crowley would want to know why I'd asked Carmen to call a locksmith right away. And I'd have to tell him about the throwaway phone and the calls from the blackmailers-turned-extortionists. I would rather have consulted the Feds first, or better yet, Tucker. But I wasn't going to get the chance.

I willed Tucker to come through the kitchen door and intervene somehow, but he didn't.

“Ms. Sheepshanks?” Crowley prompted when I was silent too long. “The locks?”

“I asked Carmen—the housekeeper—to have them changed.”

“Why?”

I considered my reply, probably a bit too carefully. I knew by the sudden flicker in Crowley's eyes that he expected me to lie, and he was extra watchful as he waited. Then inspiration struck. “Alex Pennington was murdered,” I reminded him. “I think it's understandable that I'd be concerned for Greer's safety—especially considering that she was assaulted recently.”
Oh,
I imagined myself adding,
and Dr. Pennington's ghost appeared in my kitchen and told me he was pretty sure he'd been killed by his own son. You might want to look into that.

Crowley sighed and his eyes ranged over the tidy countertops in Greer's kitchen, came to rest on the coffeemaker.

Jolie got up, without being asked, and started a pot brewing.

“You know, of course,” Crowley went on, “that Mrs. Pennington is a person of interest in that case.”

“She didn't do it,” I said, with a certainty that obviously intrigued Crowley.

He leaned a little way forward in his chair. “Dr. Pennington filed for divorce only a few days before he died,” he told me. “I understand he was repeatedly unfaithful. Mrs. Pennington was upset that her marriage was ending, wasn't she?”

“Yes,” I said, shaken because I hadn't known papers had actually been filed. “But that doesn't mean she killed him.”

“Right now,” Crowley admitted, “I'm thinking Greer Pennington shot her stepson. Maybe they had a confrontation of some kind. Maybe things got out of hand. Maybe Mrs. Pennington panicked when she realized what she'd done—and ran.” He paused. “And
maybe,
Ms. Sheepshanks, you know where she's hiding.”

Sorrow welled up inside me. Greer had a broken arm. She'd been ill with a migraine, vomiting, doped up because of the pain.
Was
she hiding, guilty of killing Jack? Or was she tied up in the trunk of someone's car, on her way to the slow, isolated and very grisly death the extortionists had promised, via voice mail?

“I wish I did,” I said. I don't know how Crowley read me then, but if he was as good as his reputation, he believed me. I'd never said anything I meant more than that. Under the circumstances, I would have been
relieved
if Greer had been found huddled in a closet somewhere in the house, covered in Pennington's blood, the weapon still in her hands.

Jolie finished starting the coffee, set three crockery mugs on the counter in readiness and came back to the table. “If Greer killed Jack Pennington,” she said, sitting down, “it was self-defense.”

“Why do you say that?” Crowley asked.

I was wondering the same thing. Jolie and I had never discussed Greer's stepson, and I hadn't had a chance to tell her about Alex's ghostly visit to the guesthouse. But perhaps Greer had confided something in her—some fear of Jack—or she'd witnessed an argument between the two.