“How do you know about the meeting?”
She slipped her feet out of ballet flats, tucking her legs gracefully beneath her on the sofa. “A friend of mine got wind of it and asked if she could go along. The Orlandos don’t know everyone in town yet.” She pulled rose- colored floss through the canvas, looking pleased with herself.
“Can I change the subject?”
“Not if it’s about that Margaux.”
I watched her stab the needle again, this time with a jerky motion, and asked anyway. “Do you know if Jack met with Valerie Beauvais before she had that accident? The historian who was murdered.”
“I know damn well who Valerie Beauvais was. I read the papers. I would have known if he met her.” More stabbing.
“So he didn’t.”
“I just said so.”
“Then why is he withdrawing the wine?”
She set down her needlework and took off her glasses with some care. The gesture seemed to age her. “I’m going to tell you something. And it better not go any farther than this room. Jack told me that his father got that wine from a friend as a thank-you gift after the war. My father-in-law was sent to France in a Nazi uniform but he was sympathetic to the French because he had so many friends in the wine business. You can imagine what would have happened to him if word got back to Berlin about some of the things he did. Jack’s father took tremendous risks to help old friends and former business associates.”
“Did Valerie know about this?”
“She chose to believe lies. That he betrayed the French during the war.”
I wondered if Sunny realized she’d just contradicted herself about Jack knowing Valerie. She massaged her forehead with her fingers and reached for her drink.
She realized.
“Look, Lucie, you and I have no idea what it was like during the war. My father-in-law did the best he could under impossible circumstances. He still had to obey his superiors. Who are we to judge some of the choices he made—and who was
I waited until she sat down. “I could,” I said, “if somebody hadn’t killed Valerie. You know, don’t you, that this gives Jack a motive for wanting her dead?”
She sat up ramrod straight. “How dare you? I was with Jack all evening. We had dinner at the Goose Creek Inn with Shane, then came home and went to bed.”
“Somebody killed her,” I said.
She looked like I’d slapped her. “Not my husband. You can see yourself out, Lucie. Thank you for dropping off the wine.”
I set my partially drunk glass of Cabernet on her coffee table. As I left the room, I glanced at her needlework. In the middle of a yellow flower she had taken a few stitches with rose-colored floss.
“I think you’ve made a mistake.” I pointed to the canvas.
She was watching the fire and didn’t turn her head. I let myself out. The needlework wasn’t her only mistake.
Chapter 15
A pickup truck with a flatbed trailer showed up in my driveway the next morning while I was still drinking my coffee. The driver was a young, athletic deputy sheriff.
“I’m here for your car,” he said when I answered the front door.
“You’re what?”
He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and looked at it. “Montgomery? Donating a Volvo station wagon to the sheriff’s department?”
“Of course. Sorry,” I said. “Let me get the keys. And the registration.”
One night last summer as I was driving home from the Goose Creek Inn, the front end of Leland’s ancient Volvo collided with the back end of a deer as it emerged from the woods and tried to cross Atoka Road. In all my years of driving it was the first time I’d ever hit anything. I wasn’t hurt—Volvos are built like tanks—but my mechanic took one look at the car, which had more than two hundred thousand miles on it, and told me to put it out of its misery, like Animal Control had done with the deer.
I’d nearly forgotten I promised to give the car to the sheriff’s department after Bobby Noland told me they were always looking for vehicles to use on their training track to add realism to simulated high-speed chases. The SWAT team liked to try out new ammo on something besides a paper target and the fire department sought out opportunities to practice extinguishing vehicle fires or using the Jaws of Life. If the Volvo—the car I’d learned to drive on as a kid—had nearly come to the end of its days, at least it would go out with style.
“It’s not that road-worthy anymore,” I told the deputy. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to use it on your track?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I work at the CRU. Our mechanics are tops. We’ll go over it before we run it. Can I take those plates off for you?”
“Sure. Thanks.” So he worked for the Crash Reconstruction Unit.
He got a screwdriver from a toolbox in the truck. The front plate, which had been on the car since Leland bought it, was rusted to the holder.
“Did you work on the SUV that went into Goose Creek about ten days ago?” I asked as he knelt by the front bumper and tried to unscrew the license plate.
“Yes.” He gave up and went around to the back of the car. “Why? Did you know the victim?”
The back plate came off with no trouble. He got a different screwdriver and worked on the front plate again, this time concentrating on the holder.
“I pulled her out of the creek.”
He stood up and his glance strayed to my cane. “I heard about that. Pretty gutsy.” He handed me my license plates. “Sorry I couldn’t get that front one out of the holder for you.”
“It’s okay. Thanks.”
“Detective Noland told me he’d take care of getting you a donation letter. I’ll call him and let him know we finally picked up the car. I apologize for taking so long to get to you. I think I caught you off-guard when I showed up this morning.”
“A little,” I said. “By the way, did you find anything else when you went over that SUV besides the wheel coming off?”
If he was surprised by my question, he didn’t let on. “We gave our report to the guys who are handling the case, but it’s still an ongoing investigation so I can’t comment,” he said. “And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget to turn those plates in to DMV.”
Bobby called later that afternoon when I was in my office and thanked me again for the Volvo.
“Much appreciated, though it’s going to be weird seeing it out on the track,” he said. “I remember being in it with Eli when we were in high school. And some of the stuff we did—”
For a moment I remembered the high school boy who used to be a regular in detention hall and how I’d tutored him to earn honor society service hours because he was flunking algebra. He was smart enough, but back then he thought algebra was, as he used to tell me, as useful as tits on a bull.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Eli never would.”
“Better not,” he said. “The statute of limitations isn’t up yet.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
