When I got home about fifteen minutes later, I dialed Simon and Angie’s number.
“Hello?”
“Ang? It’s Jeremy.”
“Hey, Jeremy.”
“The Cecelia Johnson fiasco?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re now officially off the hook for that.”
“I know. Goodnight, Jeremy.”
Like I was gonna sleep.
Chapter 27
I managed to wait until two o’clock the next afternoon before calling Laura Fleming. Willpower. My middle name.
She answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Laura, this is Jeremy Barnes.”
“Oh, hi, Jeremy. It’s nice to hear from you.”
“I just wanted to tell you again how much I enjoyed myself last night.”
“I had a good time, too,” she said.
“Okay, woman,” I said, “enough with the niceties. Are you free for dinner some night this week?”
There was a pause. I didn’t like pauses, not in this kind of conversation. However, it turned out not to be that kind of pause.
“I’d love to have dinner with you, Jeremy,” she said, “as long as you don’t mind eating a little earlier than most people do.”
“Anytime from 6:00 a.m. on is good for me,” I told her. “In a pinch, even 5:00 a.m. is all right. We can definitely get the early-bird specials that way.”
Giggling a little, she said, “Well, not quite that early. But I have breakfast at five most school days, so dinner is often around four-thirty.”
“Great,” I said. “What day?”
“How about tomorrow? I have an after-school meeting that should end about four, so I could meet you somewhere afterwards.”
“What about Silvio’s?” I asked, naming a restaurant just a few blocks away from Fairview School.
“Okay. I can be there shortly after four.
We spent a few minutes talking again about the night before, and then we hung up. Talking with Laura was easy. I looked forward to doing more of it.
Tomorrow. She’d suggested tomorrow. She could have said later in the week, or next week, or next year. But she’d suggested tomorrow. Couldn’t wait to see me again. The old charm’s still there.
Now I had another phone call to make, one that I wasn’t looking forward to at all.
Rachel Pendleton answered on the second ring. She must have been right by the phone.
“Rachel, this is Jeremy Barnes. Do you think we could get together for a few minutes sometime today?”
“Have you found something out?” she asked.
Well, yes, Rachel, as a matter of fact, I have. Your husband was cheating on you, and I wondered if you knew, because that might constitute a motive for murder. And I thought it would be nice if I dropped by and observed your reaction when I told you. While you were still grieving and all, you know.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Mostly, I just thought we ought to get together so I can bring you up to date on my investigation.”
“I’m not going anywhere today,” she said. “You could come over right now, if you’d like.”
* * *
Which is how I came to be sitting across from Rachel Pendleton in her living room half an hour later. She was wearing blue jeans again, this time with a yellow, short-sleeved T-shirt and white tennis shoes. As I’d noticed on my first visit, Rachel didn’t have the classic All-American beauty-queen look, by which I mean blonde hair and big boobs, but most women don’t look like that. Doesn’t keep a lot of them from being beautiful and, in many cases, extremely sexy.
She’d offered coffee, and I’d accepted. Taking my first sip, I looked at her and could see that, unlike at our initial meeting, she seemed to have applied some makeup. Not much, but it was a start. I was glad to see it. It was obvious that, with a little makeup and the right outfit, Rachel would be a great-looking lady. I didn’t understand why Terry would cheat on her. Well, at least I was making progress in one area of this case. The Things I Didn’t Understand column was filling right up.
“So, Jeremy,” she said, “what have you learned?”
This wasn’t going to be easy, no matter how I did it, so I might as well just get it over with.
“Rachel, I’m sorry to have to bring this subject up, but were you and Terry having any marital problems?”
“Marital problems? No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”
I took a breath.
“Because in the course of my investigation, I learned that Terry was apparently having an affair.”
Within just a few seconds, her eyes mirrored several emotions. Confusion. Surprise. Shock. Sadness. They were all there, except the anger. That would come later. Her reaction seemed completely genuine.
“An affair?” she said, in a halting voice. “I . . . I don’t . . . I mean . . . an affair? That can’t be. Not Terry. We were happy. We were very happy. Who? I mean, who was he having an affair with?”
“No one you know,” I told her. “A woman he met last fall. I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I had to know if you had any information at all about this situation.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Why would Terry have an affair?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I honestly don’t.”
“Do you think his death was connected to this . . . affair, in some way?”
“I’m almost certain that it wasn’t, but I had to check it out anyway.”
Suddenly, a light seemed to go on in her eyes.
“If I’d known about it, then I might be a suspect. Some people might think I killed Terry myself, in some sort of jealous rage or something. That’s why you had to tell me about it, wasn’t it? To check my reaction.”
“Yes.” There didn’t seem to be any sense in lying to her. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“No, don’t be. I hired you to find out why my husband was murdered. We didn’t have an agreement that you wouldn’t find out anything that might upset me. I want you to continue the investigation. I have to know the truth, no matter what it is. I can’t go on with my life
