“Who did?”
“The police in Indiana. They called me last night.”
“Did they tell you they were keeping me in jail?”
Her eyes went wide. “No. What? No. They just said . . . the detective said that he needed to get your statement and needed me to verify that what you said was true.”
I grinned. “They took their time verifying it. Thoughtful enough to allow me a comfortable cot behind bars while they sorted it out, though.”
She tugged the sleeves of the fancy sweatshirt down past her wrists.
“Lincoln, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. You hadn’t even told me you were going to Indiana.”
“For the amount of money you were throwing around, I thought I should make the notification in person.”
“I understand. I just can’t believe what happened.” Her hands now out of sight, tucked into the sleeves, she folded her arms across her chest, hugged them under her breasts. Her eyes passed over me only in flitting glances before settling on some more reassuring, inanimate object in the room. The base of the floor lamp seemed to be her favorite.
“It was pretty surprising,” I agreed, watching her with a hard stare. “The crazy bastard put the gun in his mouth and blew out a nice chunk of his skull. He was closer to me than you are now when he did it.”
Her eyes rose, surprised by my description. “How awful.”
“Hell of a strange thing,” I said, and realized I was echoing exactly what Brewer had said to me the previous night. I’d taken his role now. We’d see if I had any better luck at it.
Karen didn’t say anything, just sat there, eyes on the base of that floor lamp.
“Imagine,” I said, “killing yourself just before you inherited a few million. I mean, what the hell, you know? Talk about bad timing. The really crazy part, Karen? He knew his father was dead. Told me that as soon as I saw him, sitting there with a gun in his hand and a bottle of whiskey beside him.”
She pulled her head back, gave me the wide eyes. “
“Didn’t know that?”
“No, of course not. How could he possibly have known?”
I looked at her for a long time. She held my eyes, but she wasn’t comfortable doing it.
“You must be pretty damn stupid,” I said, “to think I wouldn’t be able to tell when you’re lying to me, Karen. If there’s one thing I remember about you, it’s what you look like when you lie. That’s pretty well ingrained in my memory.”
She recoiled, pulling back into the couch and releasing her arms from that squeeze she was giving herself. “Excuse me?”
“Do not lie.” My voice was ice. “I watched someone die who could just as easily have shot me as himself, and maybe was thinking about doing just that. Then I spent a night in jail, and now some Indiana detective wants to throw my ass back in there for good. My temper, Karen, is going to be pretty damn easy to trip. So don’t you dare tell me another lie.”
She looked like she was about to cry. “Lincoln, I haven’t been—”
“You knew Alex and his son had been in contact. When I told you the man knew his father was dead, you pretended to be surprised. That was stupid. First of all, because I know when you’re lying, and, second, because the cop that called you would have told you already. He’s a good cop, and he would have been awfully curious about that detail. He would have asked you about it. Asked how the kid might have found out. So why are you lying about it now? Because you already knew they’d been in contact. Yet for some reason you sent me to look for the son, and I’m damn lucky I didn’t end up dead.”
By the end my voice was rising and she was crying. I sat where I was and let her cry. The hell with her. I could close my eyes and see that gazebo again, see the gun moving in the shadows and hear the sound of the hammer pulling back, and I could
My chest was rising and falling, a hit of adrenaline working through me. I sat there, watched her cry, and took deep breaths. Eventually, I spoke.
“Tell me something that’s true, Karen.”
She wiped her eyes. “It was all true.”
“Bullshit.”
“It was true! They’d been estranged. For years. I had no idea where Matthew lived. None. I didn’t have a phone number for him, or an address.”
“You knew they’d been in contact recently. Why didn’t you just check the phone records?”
“All I knew at the time was that he had called Alex. Incoming calls don’t show up on our phone records, only what you pay for.”
We sat and stared at one another. The room was growing dark, but the pale hardwood floors still glowed with a faint hint of red. A clock ticked on the wall, and a mild breeze scattered leaves out on the deck, but otherwise it was silent.
“You’re a very rich woman now that your husband and his only other heir are dead,” I said.
The fear and apprehension went out of her eyes, replaced by anger.
“What? Surely, Lincoln, you’re not trying to say—”
“I’m not. But some other people might try to say some things, Karen. The things that people say when a woman becomes rich amidst a pair of mysterious deaths. And if I believed those deaths were unconnected incidents, and unconnected incidents that you know absolutely nothing about, I’d tell you to ignore the talk and go on with your life.”
“But you don’t believe that,” she said slowly.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe it, because it’s not true.”
“I don’t know what’s true, either, Lincoln. I really don’t.”
“You know more than me.”
“And you want to hear it?”
“I’ve got cops trying to pin a murder charge on me, Karen. Yes, I damn well want to hear it.”
She stood up from the couch and walked into the kitchen. I stayed in my chair and watched while she took a bottle of wine from the rack on the counter. She lifted it free, hesitated, and put it back before crossing to the refrigerator and returning with a bottle of mineral water. I waited while she sipped it, her eyes on the floor.
“There’s something very wrong with this family,” she said.
I almost laughed. No shit, Karen? Something wrong with this family? Where in the last week of torture killings and bizarre suicides did you get that idea?
“I met Alex through work—”
“I know,” I interrupted, and I couldn’t keep the cutting quality out of my tone. I knew awfully well how she’d met Alex Jefferson, though, and I didn’t need to be told again. Karen had been working in records with the district attorney’s office when she’d made the switch to the private sector and taken a nice salary boost to work as a paralegal for Cleveland’s most prestigious business law firm. Yes, I remembered that well, indeed. I’d splurged on champagne the night she took the job, bought a bottle of Dom on a cop’s salary, and toasted to her future success with Alex Jefferson.
She looked at me with sad eyes. “If you want to hear what I can tell you, you’ll have to listen to me talk about Alex. I can’t sit here and give you facts, because I don’t know any. All I can tell you are the changes I saw in my husband.”
I didn’t realize I was grinding my teeth until I had to loosen them so I could speak.
“Tell me, then.”
She took another drink of the mineral water, then put the top back on the bottle and set it on the table beside her.
“I met Alex when I began working with his firm. He was kind, and he paid attention to me. He took me to lunch my first week with the company, and then that became a regular pattern. I remember thinking how busy he was and being surprised that he’d make time for me every week. He asked about you a lot, and at first I thought that was just his way of reassuring me that his interest wasn’t romantic. Then I began to get the idea that it was
