to.
“You lied to a police detective?”
“We didn’t lie,” Reid assured me. “He interviewed us here at Bill’s house and I guess he sort of assumed we drove down to Jonah’s in the same car and came home at the same time. He didn’t ask us specifically and we didn’t volunteer.”
“That’s about the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” I said. “Well, the fourth-dumbest thing,” I amended, instantly remembering his history of leaping without looking. “Call him back and tell him the truth.”
“We didn’t lie,” Reid said stubbornly. “Besides, you know good and well I didn’t kill Pete Jeffreys and neither did Bill.”
“Did you know that Jeffreys took a bribe to give custody of Bill’s godson to the father?”
“Huh?”
“And that the child got so badly burned in the stepmother’s care that he’s had to have plastic surgery?”
Silence.
“
“I—okay, yes, I knew, but that doesn’t mean—Look, Deborah. If we tell that detective that there’s an unsubstantiated half-hour around the time it happened and that Bill had good cause to hate that bastard, he’s going to land on Bill without looking further.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued. “And how’d that half-hour get in there, anyway?”
There was a long pause, and I swear I could almost feel Reid turning red.
“Reid?”
“If you must know,” he said in a sheepish voice, “I was hoping to get lucky. There was this little blonde at the bar…”
Of course there was. And of course, he didn’t like to admit she must have turned him down.
“So promise you won’t rat us out?”
“I won’t lie for you,” I warned him.
“I’m not asking you to lie. Just don’t tell before you’re specifically asked, okay?”
I thought about the look on Hasselberger’s face when I told him and Reid of Jeffreys’s death.
“
“
Men don’t talk about things that matter as easily as women do, but why hadn’t he mentioned his godson when he was railing against Jeffreys this morning?
“Deborah?”
“Okay,” I said, hoping I was making the right choice.
CHAPTER
13
Chelsea Ann and I stopped at a restaurant on the other side of the causeway. We ordered shrimp cocktails, split a steak dinner, and still had time to stop for coffee at a little place on Market Street before strolling over to the shooting site.
On the way we passed a life-size bronze statue erected to the memory of one George Davis. According to the legend on the granite base, this son of Wilmington had been a senator and attorney general of the Confederate States of America. Bareheaded, he wore a nineteenth-century frock coat and his right arm extended in an upward gesture as if hailing a hansom cab or signaling his butler to fetch him another mint julep. He might have looked more statesmanlike had some smart-ass not wedged a beer can between those bronze fingers.
Halfway down the next block stood the building that doubled as the exterior of the club owned by the Stone Hamilton character. The street was loosely blocked off with ropes and a few sawhorses, but even though Hamilton and Jill Mercer were standing on the sidewalk in the glow of spotlights when we arrived, I was surprised to see barely a handful of onlookers. Either all the tourists had gone home or else Wilmington had become blase about cameras and TV stars in its midst.
Evidently this was to be a shot that established their leaving the club. We were too far away to hear their lines, but they seemed to exchange a few parting words, then Mercer walked away and Hamilton stepped off the curb and strolled toward a camera mounted on a dolly.
For some reason, it was deemed necessary to film that little snippet several times. Between takes Mercer spotted me and waved, but Stackhouse was too busy coordinating everything to glance around.
Eventually her part was deemed a wrap and she came over, held up the rope, and gestured for me to join her. Gone were the ball cap and mousy appearance from this afternoon. Now her long auburn hair rippled across one bare shoulder. Her eyes smoldered beneath long false lashes, and expertly applied mascara enhanced their beauty. The enhancement hadn’t stopped with her makeup. What had been a flat chest earlier in the day now looked at least two cup sizes larger.
She laughed as she caught me staring. “Push-ups and padding. What you see ain’t what you get.”
