No River Too Wide (42 page)

Taylor was trying to put the puzzle together. “Could there have been some reason he needed money? Something more important than his reputation or his agency?”

Jan slowly shook her head, but Harmony glanced at her mother. “You said in the months before you left he started to act differently. Remember? Like he had something on his mind?”

Jan looked the way she had in her first weeks here, cheeks pale, shoulders hunched. “He was at the office longer hours. When he was home he seemed preoccupied. That was one of the reasons I decided to leave when I did. He was every bit as critical, but he wasn’t concentrating on me in the same fanatical way. I thought maybe I’d just managed to fade into the background so much he was finally beginning to lose interest in tormenting me.”

Taylor poured milk and sugar into Jan’s cup and held it out to her. “Drink this.”

“I can’t absorb it all.” Jan took the cup and obediently raised it to her lips, but the movement was robotic.

“On the way back we talked this over,” Harmony said, “and Mom thinks she needs to go to the local police and tell them who she is and what she knows. If she doesn’t tell somebody, she’s going to look guilty. Now that Dad’s dead, she doesn’t have a reason to hide.”

“If Adam found me, the Shawnee County sheriff will find me.” Jan set down the cup, and her hands weren’t quite steady. “It seems even more necessary to go to the police and let them know my side of the story before anybody else comes looking.”

“First, shouldn’t we check with somebody who knows about these things?” Taylor mentally paged through friends and acquaintances to find a lawyer or a connection to law enforcement, but the only person she could come up with was Sully, and while he might give Jan advice, this problem was way out of his jurisdiction.

“Brad’s a lawyer,” Harmony said. “Rilla’s Brad. He’ll help.”

“No, I don’t want a delay.” Jan got to her feet. “I know you’re both trying to help, but I’ve spent most of my life letting somebody else tell me what to do. This time I have to decide. I’ll talk to Brad after I go to the police, but right now I’m sure this is what I need to do next.”

Taylor suspected the local authorities would be bored by Jan’s story, since what happened in Kansas was no concern of theirs. They would probably send her statement on to their counterparts in Topeka and wash their hands of it, but Jan was right, at least she would be on record as having stepped forward. No one could accuse her of hiding now.

Harmony got to her feet, too. “I can’t believe all this time Adam was watching us and waiting for my father to show up.”

“He was doing his job,” Jan said.

“He was lying through his teeth.” Taylor heard the bitterness in her voice, but she didn’t care.

“He said he wants to help,” Jan said. “I’ll need to think about that.”

Taylor didn’t have time to form a response before somebody knocked on the front door. She realized it was the first time since Jan had moved into her house that she’d heard a knock and not thought immediately that it might be Rex Stoddard.

“When this is all cleared up, your life is going to be better,” she told Jan as she got up to answer it. “You can really move on without being afraid.”

Jan just closed her eyes.

Chapter 33

Adam leaned back in the driver’s seat, still parked in the same spot where he had often done surveillance, and stared out the windshield. The morning’s weather had held such promise, but now the afternoon sky was stormy, which seemed fitting.

“Yeah, well, nobody regrets not picking up your call more than I do, Philip,” he said into his cell phone.

Philip Salter sounded harried. Sunday should be a day of rest, but apparently this one didn’t qualify, not for either of them. “I got the call about Stoddard last night. I called you right away. I called you this afternoon. You don’t check your messages?”

Adam had spent yesterday hiking in the mountains and considering his life. The fact that he had forgotten to check for messages when he got home, that he had even turned off his phone today when Taylor was telling him about her morning, said everything about where his head was.

“I check my messages,” he said. “It’s the weekend. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Let’s move on.”

“They found the body just before dark, or I should say a front loader moving logs uncovered it. He wasn’t buried very far in, like it was done by somebody in a hurry, or somebody without much oomph. Maybe a woman.”

“That’s a lame assumption.”

“I’m just telling you what they told me, okay? The grave was about a mile and a half from what used to be the Stoddards’ home. And they don’t know when he died, but it was some time ago, for sure.”

“How did they identify the body?”

“Wallet. Business cards. A photo of Stoddard carrying a bowling ball and wearing the Stoddard Agency team shirt. And no, the ID won’t be conclusive until they do an autopsy, but the man’s been missing long enough for them to make a pretty fair guess.”

“Why did they call you?”

“We’ve been checking in regularly with the detective who had Stoddard’s disappearance and the agency stuff on his plate. Now Homicide’s got the case. The new guy called to see what we knew that they didn’t, if anything.”

“And you told them where they could find Janine Stoddard.” Adam had expected that. This was no longer just about insurance fraud. Wait-and-watch was no longer an option. “Did they say what they’ll do?”

“No surprise, but they don’t really share their strategies with outsiders.”

“If they have the budget, they’ll send somebody here to convince her to go home with them.”

“They sounded awfully pleased I’d told them where to find her.”

Adam wondered how long the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office would wait. In their position, he would have hopped a plane the moment he learned Jan’s whereabouts. Waiting longer could mean another disappearance. And convincing the local cops to intervene might be tough, since there was no real evidence to charge her with a crime.

Not that they would need much with all the circumstantial evidence that pointed her way.

“It’s out of our hands now,” Philip said. “Time for you to write up a report. A couple of new things have come up, and you might like one of them.”

“You don’t want me here when they interview her? You don’t want me looking around the agency in Topeka to find a more likely suspect? I’m still looking for the adjuster.”

“I don’t think you’ll be impartial.”

Adam knew he was right, but did he care?

“Here’s something to think about,” he said. “Rex Stoddard is dead and Janine Stoddard is his next of kin. Consult a lawyer, but I bet that means she can give permission for us to search everything and anything so we don’t have to waste time on legalities. And she will, because I’ll tell her it’s the best way to find out who stole the money, as well as who probably killed her husband.”

“You’ll tell her?”

“I’ll tell her it will be in her best interest
if
I’m right there to make sure nothing’s missed.”

“This is beginning to sound like blackmail. Why do you care so much?”

“I think this woman went through hell at the hands of the man she was married to. For whatever reason she wasn’t able to get out until a couple of months ago. I’m not excited about seeing her go to a different sort of prison for something she didn’t do.”

“If she didn’t do anything, she won’t have to worry.”

“You know better than that.”

“What if you find she
is
the guilty party on one or both counts?”

“I’ll help her find a good lawyer, but I won’t cover anything up.”

Adam could almost hear Philip debating with himself. When he spoke he didn’t sound happy. “No, you’re off this case, Adam. We’ll go through the courts to get the records if we need to. I don’t want any appearance we’re working with or for Mrs. Stoddard.”

“I won’t turn my phone off again, and I’ll be in touch.”

“Be in touch soon, and only to see if there’s another job for you. Don’t go out on your own, or you’ll be going out on a limb.”

Adam disconnected.

He considered what to do next. He had to talk to Jan, but doing it with Taylor in the room wasn’t the best idea. She was hurt and angry. Understandably angry.

What had he hoped? That he could go to her with proof he had tried to help Jan? That he could explain that while he had hated not being honest from the beginning, he had been certain she would see how important it had been for him to stay undercover? That she would understand and be so grateful he had proved Jan’s innocence that she would forgive this minor glitch on the trust continuum?

Taylor had a history of not forgiving easily, something she freely admitted. Her own mother had nearly died without forgiveness. Knowing all this, he had still become involved with her, as if a few words of explanation would fix everything.

They were never going to be all right again. And he felt hollow inside knowing it was true. She was different from the other women he’d had relationships with. And he had been different when he was with her.

He was still trying to figure out how best to talk to Jan and convince her he was on her side when a car pulled into a space in front of Taylor’s house. It was a nondescript, midsize American sedan, this year’s model or last, with New York plates. No bumper stickers, nothing showing through the windows. A rental, he guessed, and probably from a counter at the Charlotte Airport. A man in a navy sport coat got out and consulted something in his hand, looking up at Taylor’s house before he slipped whatever it was in his pocket. Then he started toward the door.

Adam waited until the man lifted his hand to ring Taylor’s bell before he got out, too.

* * *

“Detective Sergeant Rafferty, from the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department. I’m here to see Janine Stoddard. Is she home?”

Taylor considered closing the door in the man’s face. His nose, flat and broad, looked as if it might already have had a few brushes with a door. He was late middle-aged, with a full head of silvering hair and the wind-roughened complexion of an outdoorsman. He looked like somebody who would be more at home in jeans and a flannel shirt splitting logs.

“Why do you want to see her?” she asked.

“That’s between me and her, ma’am.”

“Really? I could swear this is my house. Which makes your presence on my doorstep my business.”

“I can see her outside, if that’s a problem. But I do need to see her.”

“I’m going to close the door now,” Taylor said. “I may or may not open it again. If I don’t, I would suggest you get a warrant if you want to talk to anybody here.”

“I’m not conducting a search, ma’am, so I won’t need a warrant. I just want to talk to Mrs. Stoddard. We don’t have to talk here. Let’s let her decide, okay?” Taylor closed the door, almost surprised she had been allowed to.

Jan, who had clearly heard, was already on her feet, and Harmony with her.

“Well, that was quick,” Taylor said, trying to sound calm. “Jan, I know you want to tell somebody your side, but I really advise you to let Harmony call Brad Reynolds before you say a word. I don’t know what kind of law Brad practices, but he’ll know somebody who can help. Talking to him first is just a step between talking and not talking to the authorities, and now there’s no chance you can give a statement without being asked for one.”

“I don’t have anything to hide.”

“People go to jail even when they aren’t guilty. Cristy did. She’s told you her story, right? She was set up. And even if somebody’s not trying to set you up, you might look guilty enough to get convicted, even though you didn’t do anything.”

The doorbell rang again. Detective Sergeant Rafferty was getting impatient.

“Let me tell him you’re going to talk to your lawyer, so right now you have nothing to say.”

“I’ll look guilty.” Jan sounded as if she were thinking out loud.

“Who cares what one detective thinks?”

“She’s right, Mom,” Harmony said. “If there was ever anything to gain from going to the police and announcing who you are, it’s too late now. They know who you are. They know
where
you are. You need to talk to Brad before you do another thing.”

The doorbell rang again, and before Taylor could do anything the door swung open. There were two men on the porch now, and Adam was the one who had pushed open the door, judging by his still-extended arm.

“Jan is under no obligation to talk to this man,” Adam said without preamble.

As she went to the door again Taylor felt anger thread through every cell. “I asked you to leave.”

He looked past her. “Jan, it’s in your best interest not to talk to the detective here, and certainly not to go back to Kansas, even if he insists it’s the only way you can clear your name. His job is to get enough evidence to arrest you. Why make it easier?”

Jan moved up to stand beside Taylor. She trained her gaze on the detective, not on Adam. “Do I have to talk to you?”

“No, ma’am, but if you do maybe we can get this all straightened out this afternoon. You want to get on with your life, don’t you? I mean, I know you must be grieving the loss of your husband—”

Taylor would never forget the sound Jan made. It wasn’t a laugh; it wasn’t a sob. It was something unholy and still, considering everything Taylor knew, completely appropriate.

“Thank you, Detective,” Jan said after she took a deep, unsteady breath. “But you obviously don’t know anything about me or my husband, and for today, at least, you’re not going to learn more. I’m not going with you. I’m not speaking to you. And for the record, I’m not running away. I’ll be right here if you ever get enough evidence to arrest me. But unless that’s your intention, the owner of this house has asked you to leave. I suggest you do.”

Taylor wanted to applaud. Jan was still pale, but she stood straight and tall, and her gaze didn’t waver.

Rafferty shook his head. “You’re getting some bad advice here.”

“You’ve been told to leave,” Adam said, turning to the man at his side. “You need to go.”

Taylor watched the two men stare at each other like wolves preparing for a battle to the death. When Rafferty finally nodded to the two women in the doorway before starting down the sidewalk, she didn’t think he was giving up as much as regrouping for another attack.