plane and flown back to Florida with the new gentleman friend she’d hooked up with. She couldn’t wait to show him (him being ‘Frankie Dear’) off to the girls at the Retirement Residence. Gentleman friend, my eye. More like a sleeze bucket in a bad toupee. But I hadn’t been too worried about Mother; she could handle herself.
“Dickhead will kill them when he finds out you gave them the slip.”
“He won’t find out. When I leave here, I’ll double back to the club and come out the front door again.”
“With a grin on your face and a swagger in your walk, no doubt?”
“Is there any other way to exit Camillia’s?”
This thought left both of us finally smiling easily as we sat and sipped our coffees. The tension had eased a bit. I could feel the release of it in my shoulders and reached up to rub my right one. The coffee was unjangling my nerves.
“Why do you think you keep having that dream, Dix?”
“I thought we were going to forget about that. I don’t dream of you that often.”
Dylan’s lips twitched in a grin. Lips I’d felt beneath mine, tasted…. Oh, damn. He meant the sleeping dream, not the waking one.
“I meant, why do you keep dreaming of the Flashing Fashion Queen? With that intuition of yours, it always means something.”
“Oh, that.” My throat burned with the large gulp of coffee I tried to hide behind. “I’m dreaming because there’s something I’m missing. There has to be. The damn woman just keeps teasing me, flouncing around in her puff of purple dress. And I can never, ever see her — or his — face clearly.”
“That day she came into the office, she was hiding her face too. The big glasses, the make-up, the blond wig.”
“Of course she was. She didn’t want us to know she wasn’t Jennifer Weatherby.”
“Agreed. But that was the easy part, since Mrs. Weatherby stayed well out of the spotlight despite the attention her husband got from the media.”
“True,” I said.
“And it was a pretty safe bet that a PI with our address wouldn’t move in Jennifer’s circle, so there’d be very little chance you’d know her socially.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Did you just call our office a
He grinned. “Your word, not mine. But what I
I frowned. “This dream woman … she told me she wanted to
“Rich bitch wannabe?” he offered.
“A rejected mistress of the former philandering Ned Weatherby?” I countered.
“Transvestite lover?”
We sat there a moment in silence. My mind whirled, rearranged things, then did it again. Nothing. Dammit. With a fisted hand I punched my pillow. “Argh! This is so goddamned frustrating!”
“It’ll come to you. Just give it time.”
“Unfortunately, time is something we seem to be running out of.” I wasn’t worried about Dickhead’s 48-hour time limit. That kind of went out the window when he’d found me holding the murder weapon. Or rather what I suspected was the murder weapon. As if reading my mind, Dylan spoke.
“I did some calling around about the gun. Called in some favors.”
“You called Rochelle?” As secretary to Judge Stephanopoulos, Rochelle had her fingertips on the pulse of whatever was going on in the various law enforcement departments in Marport City.
“I tried, but she’s away this week. Her sister got re-married and she flew down to Hawaii for the wedding.”
“So who did you call?”
“My mother,” he answered sheepishly.
Marjorie Foreman, Dylan’s mother, was not only a well-loved politician in Marport City, she was also known for being tough on crime. Without a doubt, she’d have been kept abreast on what was happening on such a high profile case as the Jennifer Weatherby murder.
“You were right about the gun. Initial ballistics tests confirm that the 9mm you were holding was the same one that killed Jennifer.”
“Unregistered?” I asked, suspecting it would be.”
“Surprisingly, it
I sat up straight. Was a bubble of hope beginning to form? “To whom?”
“That’s the problem. It’s registered to Talbert K. Washington.”
“
He nodded.
Pop goes the bubble.
The name Talbert K. Washington was a name everyone in Marport City remembered. And would remember for a long time to come. About five years ago, there had been a double homicide. The only double murder in Marport City’s history. Washington’s car had broken down on the highway just inside the town limits. An elderly couple had stopped, offered to help, and he’d murdered the two and stolen their brand new Lexus. He’d driven it clear to Toronto before the police had caught up with him. Caught him and the fifteen-year-old girl he’d picked up along the way. In other words, Washington was a real slime bag.
There was plenty of evidence against Talbert K. Washington — the stolen Lexus, traces of the victims’ blood on his clothing and under his fingernails, the testimony from the girl whom Washington had amused himself with by relating again and again the details of the murder to the terrified kid. But most damning of all had been the 9mm handgun he’d used to kill the couple. It was registered to Washington and had his prints all over it when the cops found it in the glove compartment of the Lexus. You’d think the case would be a slam-dunk.
But nothing is ever that simple.
Talbert K. Washington’s father was Harland Washington, a rich lumberman from Maine. He hired a team of lawyers with specific instructions:
It became a legal and media circus. The Washington team of ten lawyers — five from New York and five from a local law firm — had marched into court every day to face the frazzled team of two crown attorneys. The local paper had carried pictures of Talbert K. Washington in his younger days — doing everything from selling apples to raising money for Boy Scouts to petting puppies at the local animal shelter. There were glowing testimonials about his character from everyone from his high school drama coach to his earliest Sunday school teacher — who was photographed wiping a tear from her eyes as she held a picture of Talbert K. close to her chest. Not to mention the smear campaign that Harland Washington started against one of the crown lawyers, Carrie Press. Marjorie Foreman had made it clear that in Marport City, Talbert K. Washington would get a fair trial, but no one was going to be intimidated. Actually, I’d always suspected that’s why Carrie had gotten the case. Judge Stephanopoulos had heard the matter. Too bad for Talbert K. Rochelle told me that the defense’s posturing had backfired, especially the trash that was dished out against Carrie Press. The young Crown Prosecutor had been embarrassed, sure. But worse for the Washington team, she’d been extremely pissed off.
But the media frenzy peaked when it became public that key evidence had gone missing — the 9mm that had been used to kill the old couple.
The lawyers for Talbert K. Washington had wanted the case thrown out, but Judge Stephanopoulos held firm. And fortunately, there was enough other evidence to convict. And the jury wasn’t too impressed with the defense argument that Talbert K. Washington had been too rich to steal a Lexus; he could have just bought one himself. And that the kidnapped girl was lying and perhaps the killer herself. And that the blood all over Harland Washington’s boy was just bad luck when he tried to help out the poor little hitchhiking girl. It must have flown from her and onto him.
Talbert K. Washington was now doing life with no chance of parole for 25 years.
And that was a very good thing.
