“We use the cameras I just bought, and then we see if we can catch a glimpse of who’s after you. I have one thought,” he added, “but I’m willing to bet you aren’t going to like it.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You two move into a hotel while I stay out there and watch your place.”
“Forget it,” Jenny said. “If I run, he wins. I’m staying right where I am.”
Zach glanced over at me. “Savannah, talk to her.”
“Okay.” I turned around in my seat and said, “Good for you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Zach said.
“I know, but it’s the best I can do. She’s right, you know. If she leaves her own home, this loser wins.”
“There’s no use arguing with either one of you, is there?”
I looked at Jenny. “Not me. How about you?”
“My mind’s made up.”
Zach sighed, and then said, “Then I guess I’ll just have to do the best I can. Let’s get back to Jenny’s so I can install these cameras. Maybe they’ll show us something.”
Chapter 8
ZACH HAD THE CAMERAS INSTALLED IN NO TIME, AND even though I knew where he’d placed them, they weren’t that easy to spot once he was finished.
“You did a good job, honey,” I said.
“I’ve done this a time or two in the past,” he said as he made a few adjustments. He called inside to Jenny, “Start the DVD player.”
“Got it,” she said.
We walked out to the sidewalk, and then Zach approached the porch from every possible direction.
I said, “Aren’t you worried about warning Charlie about what we’re doing? I know he doesn’t seem like that likely a suspect, but he calls her Jennifer.”
Zach shrugged. “I think we’re safe enough. His car’s not in the driveway. Didn’t you notice that as we drove up?”
“Of course I did,” I said, lying through my teeth. “I was just testing you, and you passed with flying colors.”
At that moment, we saw Charlie drive up, and as Zach waved to him, he said, “Testing time is over. Let’s go see what we’ve got.”
Once we were inside, Jenny hit the stop button on her DVD recorder, and after hitting play, we watched as Zach and I left the porch, and then he approached it from several different directions. “There’s a small gap from the motion detection to the taping, but unless you want to spend a great deal more money, it’s going to have to do.”
“It’s perfect,” Jenny said. “I feel better already.”
“You know this won’t stop anyone from coming up to your front porch. The only thing it does is give us a record of it.”
“That’s more than we had before.” Jenny reset the DVD player, and then she said, “Now that we’ve worked on my problem, what are we going to do about Derrick Duncan?”
“Let me make a few telephone calls,” Zach said. He got out his cell phone and as he began to dial, he walked back outside. I hated when he did that, since it meant that I couldn’t listen in to his side of the conversation, but he needed privacy when he talked so he could speak freely.
“There’s got to be something we can do in the meantime,” Jenny said.
“Don’t worry. If Zach runs into a dead end, I have a few ideas of my own.”
He came back inside three minutes later, scowling.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“Zach, what happened? Talk to me.” My husband had a way of clamming up when news wasn’t to his liking, and I’d seen it enough in the past to be able to recognize it with no problem now.
“I checked our messages at home,” he finally admitted.
“What’s so bad about that?” A sudden, dark thought came to me. “Nothing happened to either one of my uncles, did it?”
He raised one eyebrow as he looked at me. “What? No, they’re fine, at least as far as I know.”
“Then what is it? Trust me, nothing you can say is going to be able to touch what my imagination can provide, and you know it.”
“That’s true enough. It’s about a job.”
I smiled at him. “What’s wrong with that? I thought you were eager to get another consulting job.”
“It’s not that kind of job,” he said. “Savannah, you remember Greg Starks, don’t you?”
“Sure, he’s the sheriff in Asheville. Hang on a second. He didn’t have the nerve to call you for another consultation, did he? The last time you helped him out, your pay ‘got lost’ in the mail for six months until I started raising a fuss about it at City Hall. I told him you weren’t going to work for him ever again, and I meant it.”
“Apparently Greg delayed more checks than mine. They just fired him for embezzling from his department.”
“Then why is he calling you about a job?” Something clicked at that moment. “Does he seriously want to come work for you? I can’t believe you’d even consider it. You can’t afford to take anyone on, and you and I both know you can’t trust him.”
“Savannah, if you’d let me finish, I could tell you what is going on, instead of you just guessing.”
Jenny started to smile, and I asked her, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.”
“Good.” I turned back to Zach. “Go ahead,” I ordered my husband. “I’m listening.”
“The mayor called the house looking for me. He wants me to take the job.”
“Hang on a second,” I said. “He knows about your heart, right?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my heart,” Zach said forcefully. While it was true that technically he could have gone back to work after the shooting, his doctors hadn’t recommended it.
“You’re retired, remember?”
“Savannah, people come out of retirement all of the time,” he said.
“And they usually pay for it, don’t they? What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea,” he said.
Zach headed for the front door and then added, “I need to take a drive.”
“You’re just going to walk out? Can’t we even talk about it?”
He stopped and looked at me. “Savannah, I need to figure out what I want to do myself before we have any conversations about it one way or the other.”
Almost as an afterthought, he bent over and kissed my forehead. “I’ll see you later.”
After he was gone, I looked at Jenny and asked, “What just happened?”
“Give him a break, Savannah. He needs some time to think before you discuss it. That’s not a bad thing, is it?”
I frowned as I bit back tears. “It’s not a good thing, either. Trust me. If he’s thinking about it, then there’s a chance he’ll take the job.”
Jenny touched my arm lightly. “He said you’d discuss it. Give him a chance to wrap his head around it.”
“I really don’t have much choice, do I?” A few tears had escaped down my cheeks, and I dabbed them away.
“Well in the meantime, we’re not going to just sit around here waiting for him to come back,” Jenny said with renewed fire in her eyes.
“What do you propose we do?”
“We’re going to go interview our suspects,” she said as she grabbed her car keys.
I knew Jenny was right. I might not be able to do anything about my husband at the moment, but that didn’t
