Reluctant Witness (19 page)

But there were other questions that only
seemed to add to the mystery. Eve went into premature labor after
she fell on those steps. What if someone caused her to fall? And
what about that terrible car accident Shaun’s wife was in, the one
that forced him into an earlier retirement than planned? Did that
mean the hired killer got sloppy when he beat the living daylights
out of Shaun? What if a professional killer was deliberately
stalking my WitSec team?

I considered my current situation. Whenever
the WitSec team moved me prior to Jared’s murder, it was a very big
production, with precision timing and back-up. But Tovar simply
drove me up to Lake Placid, as if he wasn’t worried about me or my
safety. That was the start of a very big change in my witness
protection plan.

This, too, was so different. Why had Lincoln
arranged for me to have only one bodyguard? What chance did I have
to survive this quasi-protection game? Was someone actually trying
to get me killed? Is that why Rocky wasn’t close enough to stop the
assailant in the dog park?

He steered the SUV onto the
entrance ramp for I-75, accelerated, and swung into traffic going
north, slipping in between a freightliner and a milk tanker.
Working the pedals as he rode the back end of the long white
tractor trailer, he waited for an opening in the left lane and fell
in behind a chartreuse-colored KIA Soul. As we sped past the truck
in the right lane, I read the lettering on the cab door.
J. J. Jardina, Forest Park, Georgia.
It was a stark reminder that my life had changed
once again. No more Lake Placid, with its glorious water views that
seemed to go on forever. No more Adirondack mountains. No more
Gilded Nest with its twinkling lights or Arturo and Lily. Those
all-too-fleeting months of building my new life were now just a
faint memory. What would Georgia offer me?

“Do you think there will be another attempt?”
I finally summoned the courage to ask.

“Oh, that goes without saying. Bad guys don’t
just walk away as long as they think the opportunity to complete
the hit is survivable. Besides, Linc never would have sent you here
unless he thought you were in real danger.”

“You didn’t seem too concerned at the dog
park. How come you let the guy get that close?” There it was -- the
question of the hour. Did I want to know? What if Rocky was the guy
who was supposed to get me killed? He had me right where he wanted
me, like a rabbit in a hutch. Or was I just feeling a little on the
paranoid side of the equation?

“Honestly? I was hanging back because that’s
what Tom asked me to do.”

“Tom? What does he have to do with any of
this?”

“You don’t really think Linc would allow you
to get on a plane all by yourself, do you? Tom sat four seats
behind you. He was watching out for you the whole time.”

“But the creep still got too close in the dog
park,” I pointed out. “Nobody stopped him from trying to grab
Kary.”

“They had a reason for it, just like they had
one when they let that guy with the black poodle talk to you.”

“Dave?”

“Tom wasn’t worried about you being in the
dog park. No doubt we’ll find out why at the meeting, when we get
to Jeff’s place.”

“Great,” I grumbled.

“I think you’re looking at this all wrong.
You assume you’re the target because someone tried to take the
pooch.”

“Aren’t I?” I fired back. Rocky shook his
head, fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

“It sounds to me like someone wanted this
little guy, not you.” Rocky paused, deep in thought. I let the idea
sink in as the silence wore on. What if he was right? What if this
wasn’t an attempt on my life? It had been so long since something
ordinary had happened to me. Could it really jut be that someone
wanted Kary? “What’s so special about him?”

I hadn’t known the little guy very long. What
could I tell Rocky about him?

“He’s a nice dog. And a good boy,” I
insisted, scratching the appreciative Shih Tzu under the chin.
“Well-trained, house-broken, sweet disposition.”

“Okay. We’ve established he’s a likable dog.
How did he come to be in your possession?”

“He’s Lincoln’s dog, and he just got him back
from his ex-wife....”

“Deirdre. Boy, what a piece of work she is!”
Rocky snorted. “That has to be the coldest chick to ever walk the
planet. What she did to that boy was criminal.”

“You know her?”

“Know her? Oh, yeah! I know her. I warned
Lincoln not to marry her, but he was sure that underneath all that
rot was a nice girl trying to get out.”

“
And you think this incident
in the dog park was about Kary?” Even as I said it, I instinctively
knew the answer. So did Rocky.

“Deirdre!” We both said it at the same
time.

“Whoa!” I posed the question as the little
dog sat up on my lap, no doubt curious as to why we were talking
about his former mistress. “What if she’s setting Lincoln up?”

“Meaning what?”

“Lincoln said his ex-wife’s boyfriend didn’t
want Kary around, so we had to stop and pick up the dog on our way
to Virginia. This is the same dog she wouldn’t let him have when
they split up. Does that make sense to you? First she wants the
dog, fights tooth and nail to keep him, and then she meets a man
and is suddenly willing to give the pooch up?”

“The proverbial gift horse?” Rocky considered
the possibilities. “Deirdre only gives something away when it
yields results. In this case, what could that be?”

“Lincoln,” I replied confidently. “She made a
pass at him.”

“It might have just been because you were
there. She’s notoriously competitive. That’s why most women hate
her. Men who aren’t sleeping with her hate her because she’s a
career-buster. Men who are sleeping with her hate her because she’s
a royal...er, let’s just say Jeff was lucky.”

“About what?” I glanced over at him. There
was so much I didn’t know about the Cornwall family.

“You didn’t know? She made a play for both
brothers. Linc somehow thought that when she married him, he was
the winner.”

“It’s amazing that didn’t cause a feud
between brothers.”

“In a way, it did,” he confided.

“How so?”

“Jeff was so angry after
Linc and Deirdre eloped, he headed to Hawaii and wrote his first
thriller,
Deadly
Ride-Along
, about brothers and the woman
who comes between them.”

“That sounds suspiciously like real life,
Rocky.”

“Well, Jeff changed a few details. Instead of
the femme fatale being a lawyer, she’s a cop, and she winds up
nearly killing the hero. I think that book is the reason Linc held
onto Deirdre for so long. He doesn’t want to admit that Jeff was
right, that Deirdre’s no good.”

“That would be a bitter pill to swallow,
wouldn’t it?” I thought about Lincoln’s poorly concealed excitement
when his ex-wife made a pass at him in Philadelphia. “She could be
using the dog as a ploy to force Lincoln to pay attention to her
once more.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her. This is the kind
of stunt she’d pull. She probably figured they’d have plenty of
conversations about the missing dog before Kary was recovered, and
she’d no doubt play a role in that effort.”

“Maybe she doesn’t even have a boyfriend,” I
suggested. “That could have all been a ruse to drag him down to
Philadelphia. Deirdre certainly showed too interest in me. She
tried to insist that I come into the house, but I refused, and I
got the impression she was annoyed about that.”

“She must think you are a romantic couple,”
Rocky decided. “When he showed up with you in the car, it probably
threw her off her game and ruined her strategy.”

“Perhaps that’s why the guy tried to take
Kary from the dog park. Maybe Deirdre wanted me to take the blame,
so Lincoln would stop liking me.”

“
It’s possible.” Rocky
nodded, as we dawdled at a traffic light. “She was probably trying
to assess you as a contender for Linc’s affection. She’d want to
know how serious he is about you.”

“It gave me the willies to see her watching
me like that,” I admitted. “She struck me as pretty ruthless.”

“That’s Deirdre. She’s a predator.”

‘But how did she know about my flight to
Atlanta?”

“Good question, Susan. Or should I go back to
calling you Marigold, now that you’re here?”

“Marigold’s fine,” I told him. I was still
stuck on Deirdre’s cunning plan to set me up at the dog park.

“It’s not really that hard to explain. She’s
a lawyer. She uses private investigators all the time for her
cases. It looks like she’s been stalking Linc, maybe tapping his
phones, monitoring his activities, all in the effort to manipulate
him. He bought your ticket to Atlanta, paid for your clothes, and
sent Kary with you. To Deirdre, that would suggest you’re his
girlfriend. She wouldn’t necessarily have realized Linc was doing
it as part of an unofficial investigation.”

“If you find the guy, does that mean you can
get him to confess?” I was already picturing Deirdre in the hot
seat, trying to explain to detectives why she thought it was okay
to send someone to snatch little Kary. “Would he implicate
Deirdre?”

“She probably offered the creep free legal
services in exchange for snatching the dog. Most likely, he’s just
some run-of-the-mill criminal who got caught for burglary or
breaking and entering. What kind of crime can we charge him with,
trying to pet a pooch? He didn’t actually grab the dog.”

Chapter
Eighteen

“He punched Dave,” I pointed out.

“That was more of a shoving match than a
fight. And any good defense lawyer might argue that Dave started it
by stepping in without witnessing an actual crime. It’s all very
circumstantial.”

“That’s rather sleazy,” was my answer.

“And yet, it’s unfortunately true,” Rocky
shrugged. “No, I think catching the creep at the dog park is the
least of my concerns at the moment. I’m worried about the Cornwall
boys and how this will all play out. It’s not going to be pretty,
especially because now you’re down here with Jeff. If I know
Deirdre, she’ll pit brother against brother in her effort to get
what she wants. And we don’t really know what she wants at the
moment, although we might know who.”

“It sounds like you’ve known them a long
time.”

“I’m a Catskill boy myself. We all used to
play ice hockey together after school. When we weren’t skiing, we
were skating. And the rest of the year, we spent swimming, hiking,
and fishing.”

“It sounds like a good way to grow up.” I
replied.

“It was. It was wonderful. We spent a lot of
time hanging out together. Jack’s the oldest. He’s always been Mr.
Responsibility, and he married one of the good women of the world.
He and I went to the police academy together. He became a state cop
and I took a job with the Albany Police Department. Lincoln’s the
baby of the family. He spent most of his time trying to outdo his
big brothers. That’s why he applied to the FBI. It was his way of
being a bigger big shot than Jack. Jeff, on the other hand, decided
to be a writer, like his mother.”

“I thought his father was the writer in the
family,” I cut in, remembering what Tom and Jojo had told me, “and
a presidential scholar.”

“He is. But Mom happens to be Lisbeth
Causley.”

“The mystery writer? She does all those
Inspector Samuelson books?”

“One and the same. She’s also Serena Duvall,
the romance author.”

“Serena....” I laughed.
“That explains it! Jojo gave me a copy of
The Secret of White Jasmine
to
read.”

“Jojo is one of her biggest
fans,” Rocky smiled. “She’s also one of Lisbeth’s favorite sources
in law enforcement. They met when Lisbeth was researching,
Walk Away Before You Die!
When Lincoln wanted to join the FBI, he went to Jojo, who
introduced him to her FBI friends. That’s how he met
Tom.”

“They certainly do know the art of
networking,” I smiled.

“When the Cornwall boys were growing up, they
accompanied Liz on her research trips, and she encouraged them to
use what they learned for school projects. How many kids can say
their mothers took them on ride-alongs in the Bronx or to the state
forensic lab to learn about fingerprint analysis? Doc Cornwall
might be able to tell you all about the presidents, but Lizzy was
the one firing up their imaginations with the ‘what ifs’ and the
‘whodunits’. Those boys were destined to investigate.”

“But Jeff decided against a career in law
enforcement. Was that because he wanted to do his own thing?” I
posed the query out of curiosity. “Or was it because he just loved
writing so much?”

“You haven’t met Jeff yet, have you?” Rocky
glanced over at me.

“No, I haven’t. Why?”

“No reason.”

Even as he said that, I could see he was
holding something back. Those lips were drawn tight to prevent
words from spilling out. I wondered what it would take to loosen
them.

“What aren’t you telling me,” I prodded.

“It’s nothing. No big deal. Not
important.”

“If you have to tell me three times that it
doesn’t matter, it must matter a lot. What is it?”

He drove in silence for another thirty
seconds or so. I could see that he was conflicted. Was it loyalty
or his position with Jeff’s production company that was getting in
the way?

“Can I give you a piece of advice when it
comes to the Cornwall boys?” He glanced over at me. “Don’t let them
sweep you off your feet.”

“Excuse me?” I admit that I was shocked by
the comment, especially since I was so clearly unable to find any
kind of lasting romance and had pretty much given up on it. “What
does that mean?”