Here was the tricky part. The best lies were always interwoven with bits of truth, and Waters’s memory had not been reliable lately. “Two nights before she died was the last time I saw her in the Eola. That night, I tried to break it off with her.”
“Why?”
“She was becoming obsessive. She thought she was in love with me.”
“You just told us she was seeing other men while she saw you.”
“She told me she was. I don’t know. But I do know she wanted love more than sex. And…” Waters trailed off, so that Jackson would have to pull part of the story out of him. The detective would value the lie more if he had to work for it.
“What?” Jackson prompted. “Go on.”
“I hate to say it, Tom, but I think she was looking to marry up. She told me she was tired of selling houses. She didn’t want to work at all.”
The detective nodded thoughtfully. “Go on.”
“The next day, when she called my cell phone, she asked me to come to the hotel that night. I told her that my wife was going out of town, and I had to baby-sit my daughter. She got very angry. It was a lie, of course, but she didn’t know that. That night I slept on my porch in case she flipped out and came around the house to try to talk to me or to Lily.”
“Did she?”
“A car parked out by the road for a while, but never approached the house. The next morning, I put on my cell phone and saw that I had about fifteen missed calls, all from pay phones.”
“Fourteen,” Jackson corrected. “Fourteen missed calls.”
“Right. Well, she got me on the way to work. It only took a few seconds, but she got me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt guilty, and I wanted to sleep with her. That was the first time in two weeks that I’d gone without her for twenty-four hours. I drove back to my house, and she met me out back, in my home office. It’s in the slave quarters of our house.”
“You had sex with her?”
“Twice.”
“Did you use a condom?”
“No. I never did with her.”
Jackson sighed and looked at the table. “What time did she leave?”
“I don’t really know.”
“But she was there for a while. If you had sex with her twice.”
“Not that long, really.” Waters let himself show a little male camaraderie. “Eve was talented.”
“That’s what I hear,” said Jackson. “What about after that? Why did you go to the hotel that night?”
“I promised her I would. But when I got down there…shit, there were police cars everywhere, it was pouring rain, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I was trying to end it, you know? When I first heard she was found dead, I was scared to death that she’d committed suicide.”
Tom Jackson exhaled like a man completing the first round of some difficult game. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” Waters replied, trying to gauge the effectiveness of his story.
“Penn? Coffee? Coke? Water?”
Penn shook his head.
“Because we’re going to be here for a while.”
After leaving her mother’s house, Lily headed for Linton Hill, her mind ratcheting down from the emotional turmoil she had felt leaving Annelise to cold reason. Using her cell phone, she called Sybil and asked if Cole was in his office. When he came on the line, he brusquely asked what Lily wanted.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “In private.”
“What about?”
“I have a solution to our problem.”
Silence. “You’re leaving John?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“I think you will be, when you hear what I have to say.”
The hiss of the open line continued for some time. “Let’s hear it.”
“Not now. In person.”
“After what you tried last night? You’re crazy.”
“I’m not going to do anything like that,” Lily promised.
“That’s right. You’re not.”
“If you don’t see me, you won’t have a chance of getting John for yourself.”
“I’ve always had John,” Cole said. “And you know it. That’s why he came to me in Eve.”
This dig had no effect on Lily’s emotions, which were now locked deep inside her. “If you really believe that-if you think you can compete with me and win-then you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to me.”
“Compete with you?” Cole snorted. “Come to the office. I’ll be ready for you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Lily pulled up the drive to Linton Hill, parked, and ran inside. Rose stood in the main hall, nearly apoplectic at the mess the police had made of the house. Lily mumbled something about a legal mixup and hurried back to her bedroom closet. There she slipped off her flats and pulled on a pair of red cowboy boots. Then she took the butcher knife out of her purse, slid it down into her right boot, and pulled her jeans leg down over the boot.
Satisfied that her jeans looked natural, she went out the back door and made her way down to a ditch near the back of their lot. While preparing for the search this morning, John had taken the handcuffs Lily had brought into the house under Mallory’s influence and dumped them there. After a couple of minutes, Lily found the cuffs and dropped them into her purse. As she hurried around the house to her Acura, she saw Rose staring at her through a side window, but she did not stop to explain anything. What could she say?
She made the drive to John’s office building in four minutes. She parked in the back lot, removed the handcuffs from her purse, and slipped them under the front seat. Then, before fear could stop her, she got out and marched up the back stairs to the second floor.
Sybil didn’t see her enter, and she was glad. After last night’s near-tragedy, Lily didn’t think she could look the receptionist in the eye without coming apart. She passed John’s empty office and kept walking, but paused just short of Cole’s door, which was half open.
“Come in,” Cole called. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”
Lily stepped into the doorway and froze.
Cole sat with his elbows propped on his desk, both hands gripping a large handgun that was aimed at Lily’s chest. He smiled, and Lily knew from the strange glint in his eye that she was facing Mallory Candler.
“Hello, Lily,” Cole said. “Throw me your purse.”
Lily tossed the purse across the office. It landed in front of the desk. Cole got up and retrieved it, then dumped its contents onto the gleaming wooden desktop.
“Good girl,” he said, finding nothing dangerous. “So why am I talking to you?”
“You think I’m weak, don’t you?”
“I know you are. I’ve been inside you.”
“Are you sure enough to try to prove it?”
Cole’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of interest. “What do you mean?”
“You want my husband? Give me a fair fight.”
“How do you propose I do that?”
“Come back into me.”
This was clearly the last thing Mallory had expected to hear. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“You would let me come back into you.”
“Yes.”
