Death in Her Eyes (A Mac Everett Mystery Book 1) (18 page)

“The police have their man,” she said with defiance.

“Yes and the police are still investigating. If you help me, we could identify the real killer. If it is Cary Hunt, well that’s fine with me, but if someone else is responsible…” I let the thought hang in the air between us.

After a few moments, she took a deep breath and began, “Stephanie was…flirtatious.” She waved her right hand with a flourish. “She enjoyed teasing people…teasing men. Sometimes they took her too seriously and, well, she slept with them to avoid a problem.”

“She piss off anyone in particular?” I asked.

“I guess,” she admitted. “There were a few people who weren’t too happy with her.”

“A few men she ‘teased’,” I made air quotes around teased. “Who were these men?”

“Well I don’t know…”

“Come on.”

“All right. You know, you’d make a good ad account executive Mr. Everett. You’re persistent.” She took a deep breath and began, “Howard Neal was upset she wouldn’t see him again. I don’t think they were together more than a few times. Derrick McArthur, the basketball player, threatened her at the clubhouse one night, but he was drunk, as usual. He said some awful things. Oh, and Luck Taylor, he tore up the…”

“I heard. So you see there are a couple suspects besides Cary Hunt.”

“Have you to spoken to Sharon Greer?” she asked. Her tone was almost cooperative.

“What was their connection,” I replied.

“They were very close of course. Steph introduced her to a few of our friends. Not everyone was happy with that.”

“Do you know what she’s doing?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied.

It was a lie.

“I think we’re through here Mr. Everett. You can see yourself out,” she said, abruptly ending the interview.

I went to la Cosina, a little Mexican cafe on East Colonial to talk to Libby Davis. She’d agreed to meet me there for an early dinner, rather than at her office at Loch Haven Park’s Orlando Science Center. She’d said she didn’t want her bosses to know about her involvement. The statement made me wonder what she had to hide.

I asked for Ms. Davis and the hostess lead me to a woman sitting alone in a dark corner. In contrast to the almost masculine Tawni Williams, Libby Davis was the embodiment of femininity. An attractive woman in her thirties, her delicate features gave the appearance of a much younger woman, but the age lines around her eyes and mouth told another story. Long chestnut hair hung loose to her bare shoulders framing brown eyes. Her sleeveless dress took advantage of her curves and offered more cleavage than the office dress code should allow. She offered her hand without standing as I introduced myself. Her dark eyes held fathoms of pain.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice Ms. Davis,” I said as I took my seat.

“As I told you on the phone, I have to get back to the museum. I have a fundraiser tonight. I’ll have to eat while we talk, if that’s all right.”

“Fine,” I replied.

“You’re welcome to join me,” she said breaking into her best smile. She crossed her legs flashing more than a little thigh. I bet she raised a lot of money for the museum. Yeah, with those legs I was sure she did.

“Thank you, no,” I said. I was reconsidering when Libby’s steaming chile relleno arrived at the table.

“This place is still family owned, three generations, but that’s not what you want to talk about is it? Mr. Everett, I’m married and like most people I’ve done some things I wish I could take back.”

“Ms. Davis, I’m not out to hurt anyone, but there’s been a murder and things have a way of coming out. What do you have to tell me?” I said gently touching the back of her left hand as it rested on the table. I looked into her dark sad eyes. They were pretty and held painful secrets.

She bit her lip. Her eyes flitted from side to side for a moment then went down and to the left. She was working herself up to talking to me, rationalizing. Finally, she put down her fork, leaned toward me, and said, “Stephanie’s husband couldn’t have killed her. He loved her. I … I tried to get him to take me home with him twice. Stephanie put me up to it of course. I tried hard and he was a dear. He turned me down so sweetly. He loved her despite what she was.”

I took her hand, and she didn’t pull it away. We sat there, holding hands, looking at each other, and then I broke the spell.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Do you know who Stephanie was seeing?”

Her eyes washed over my face. I felt her heat.

“I know she slept with several men at the club. There was nothing to it, of course. There was…” She stopped midsentence. I could see her mind whirring. “She was bored with Cary,” she continued, “Lord knows why. He’s wonderful, a hunk, kind, handsome, and rich, but she wanted something more,” she wrinkled her eyes in concentration trying to find the right word, “no not
more
, maybe different. She never seemed to be satisfied and was always looking for more.”

Her thoughts were confused, but I could see the truth in what she said.

“Were you surprised when Cary Hunt was arrested?”

“Yes I was. As I said, Stephanie had me test him. I felt dirty doing it, but he passed. I never heard Stephanie say they had problems. She was just bored.”

“Why do you think that might be?”

“Oh I don’t know. You know, she liked going to parties, getting into the social scene, and having fun. He was more a…”

“More a workaholic?”

“Oh no, he had regular hours. He traveled a good deal, but he was home a lot too. It was Stephanie who was always doing something or gone off some place.”

“How’s that?”

“She traveled a lot. She went to China, Peru, spent a couple weeks in Europe more than once…”

“She did all this with her husband and was bored?”

“Oh no, she didn’t travel with Cary. She went with Sharon. I think he was too busy to go off with her, or maybe she just didn’t want him along.”

“That’s helpful, what else can you tell me?”

“Stephanie was a flighty sort, who enjoyed flirting. She slept with a lot of men when we were in school. It was an obsession at times, a game. She kept score. I warned her more than once she would get hurt one day. If she saw a guy she wanted, she’d have him. That’s how she met Cary.”

“The thing at the football game?”

“You heard about that?”

“Yeah, but tell me about it from your point of view.”

“Nothing much to tell,” she said looking at her watch.

“There must be something to it if it stands out in your memory.”

Like a kid caught in a lie, Libby Davis searched around the room for help. There was nowhere to hide. She sucked in her lower lip, fingered her iced tea glass, and avoided looking at me. I knew she’d tell me what I wanted to know. I just had to be patient. Finally, she turned her face my way and I could see her eyes were moist. Her words flowed like molasses on a cold day, but I could see their truth.

“The four of us were up from Columbia for a Harvard football game,” she began. “We were all in grad school by then and met up at the game,” she began. “Tawni and I had dates but they were duds. We ditched them before the game. I don’t think the game had even started when Sharon Greer saw this cute guy in the crowd. She went over and started talking to him.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Yeah, sort of, Stephanie was the flirt of our group, but we all did it from time to time. Go flirt with a good-looking guy and tell the others what he did and said. Sometime we’d…well you know.”

I could guess what they did and didn’t really care.

“Did any of you know who the guy was?”

“No, we didn’t know him.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Sharon went over to the guy and chatted him up. She’s a good-looking woman and we could see he was interested by the way he talked to her.”

There was more she wasn’t telling me.

“Stephanie elbowed me and said, ‘Want to see something funny? Watch this.’ and went right over to him. Without a word, she tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, she laid a big sloppy kiss on him. It was like pledge night at the sorority house. Stealing some random guy from your sister was a game we played. Sharon turned twelve shades of purple. I never saw her so angry. Sharon hit the guys arm. His beer spilled all over Stephanie. He was so sweet he didn’t even notice Sharon had done it on purpose. I thought Sharon was going to erupt when it made him more attentive to Stephanie. It was funny at first, but later…”

“What happened later?” I asked.

“Oh you know, they dated and eventually got married…”

“Yeah I know that part. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing, remember I said Stephanie enjoyed teasing people. It was just her nature.”

“What happened after the game?” I insisted. I could see the lie in her eyes flashing like a neon sign.

She sucked in her lower lip and fingered her glass again. I didn’t have time for her bull. She needed to spit it out.

“Look, tell me what you know. An innocent man’s life is at stake,” I said as I touched her hand again.

“Sharon didn’t kill Stephanie. I’m sure of it.”

“Spill it!”

“It was a onetime thing. I never saw anything like it happen again. You have to understand, we were all drunk…”

“What happened?”

She dropped her head. She only had to find the words.

“Stephanie hung out with Cary through the game. When it was over, she dropped him just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “She really rubbed Sharon’s face in it. We had a couple of rooms, so after the game we went back to the hotel. The plan was to freshen up, then go out to eat. Not long after we got back, I could hear them shouting at each other. They were really getting into it. They’d been like sisters for like, forever. I couldn’t believe it. Then we heard banging and stuff crashing. Tawni and I rushed over to their room. Tawni beat on the door until Sharon opened it. The room was a mess, there was a broken lamp, and stuff tossed everywhere. Stephanie was face down on the bathroom floor. I could see blood trickling down past her ear and she wasn’t moving.”

“Badly hurt?”

“No, Sharon had hit her in the head with a lamp. Stephanie was out cold. Sharon kept mumbling she’d killed her and she loved her. It was messed up.”

“What did you do?”

Tawni took Sharon to our room and I got some water and ice. I was able to revive Steph. She had a cut on the back of her head, but the ice stopped the bleeding.”

“You call the cops?”

“Are you kidding, of course not. We cleaned Stephanie and the room up, got some cash together to pay for the damage, and checked out quick.”

“What did Stephanie have to say about it?”

“Do you really need to know all this? I’d just as soon forget it.”

I gave her a look that approximated one my mother gave me when I was in trouble and she caved.

“She told me she’d hit on Cary to piss Sharon off. They had a lover’s quarrel the day before and she wanted to stick it to her. I knew they were close and were sharing an apartment, but for her to say they were a couple, well that stopped me cold. I never expected it.”

“Did she say anything more?”

“After that she said a lot, but I’d stopped listening.”

“Stephanie left Sharon and latched onto Cary?”

“Something like that, I know she moved out of the place they shared that same week. I talked to Sharon a bit less often. When I did hear from her she was ranting about Stephanie dating Cary. Sharon was always possessive about Stephanie, but I never questioned why. After that night I knew.”

“Were you surprised when Stephanie got married?”

“Nothing about either of them surprised me,” she said without thinking. “Stephanie was my best friend, but I didn’t understand her. I assumed she’d gotten over Sharon and moved on. Funny though, she talked more about Cary’s money than she did being in love with him. What surprised me was that Sharon was in their wedding with the rest of us. I assumed they’d made their peace.”

“So when she moved to Orlando…”

“The four of us picked up like before, strange, I know, but everyone had moved on. Tawni, Stephanie, and I were married and Sharon was a successful researcher.”

“Did you know about Sharon Greer’s sexual harassment complaint?”

“I did,” she snapped.

She was wearing down. Bringing back all the crap from her friend’s past was fueling an inner terror she’d tried to bury. It was the uncertain feeling that one of her good friends had killed another friend.

“Was it true?” I looked at her trying to see what she knew.

“What do you think after hearing that last story? I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I heard Sharon knew the girl so it wouldn’t surprise me. Look, I want to help, but I have to get home to change. I have to be back at the museum in ninety minutes.”

She flagged the waitress who brought over her check.

“Do you know anything about Sharon borrowing money?”