Dial Om for Murder Page 21

  AUU 2574 . . .

  Shaking, heart thudding in a rush of adrenaline, A.J. watched the car retreat into the deepening twilight.

  Lydia had been crouching under the window waiting . . . waiting for what? To attack A.J.? To kill her?

  Whoever Lydia was, this changed everything because . . . that woman was nuts. A.J. had no trouble imagining her in a fury, grabbing the first available weapon and striking out.

  The sound of sirens grew closer—and then faded away again, and A.J. guessed that the approaching police car had spotted Lydia’s car racing down A.J.’s private road and given chase.

  She made it to the phone, informed the 911 operator that help had arrived, then disconnected and tottered over to the nearest chair. She collapsed on the cushions, waiting numbly.

  It wasn’t a long wait. A second police car arrived and a pair of uniformed officers got out.

  A.J. went to meet them, taking them around to see the damage. They took her statement and confirmed that the driver of a silver Toyota Camry had been arrested fleeing the scene. But more than that, they didn’t vouchsafe, and A.J. could only imagine what kind of story Lydia Thorne (whoever she was—the police had presumably got a real name) told.

  After the officers finally left, A.J. went outside once more to re-examine the damage to her property. Besides the broken window and battered door, flower pots had been broken or emptied, furniture tipped over, a statue of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, had been knocked down. Lydia had trampled through the flower and herb beds in her desire to peer through windows.

  It was terrible—frightening. And yet it could have been so much worse.

  A.J. went inside and fixed herself a calming cup of chamomile and lemon grass tea. It was too dark now to see to repot the flowers and plants. She would have to take care of that in the morning before leaving for work—right after she called someone to come and fix her window.

  Luckily it was relatively warm at this time of year.

  Monster sat beside her and rested his head on her lap, a sure sign that he was still upset. She stroked his head.

  “Thank you for coming to my rescue,” she said, and he licked his chops, giving her an expressive look. She chuckled. “You think you deserve a reward for that, do you?”

  She rose and got Monster a dog biscuit and then settled with her tea in the old tree swing while the dog crunched away in the shadows. The quiet peace of the garden, the fragrance of the evening gradually calmed her shattered nerves although she was sure it would be a while before she was tranquil enough to sleep. Even the idea of her nighttime yoga routine seemed too . . . defenseless.

  She thought of calling Elysia, but she wasn’t ready to hear a dozen new theories about how Lydia Thorne was involved in Nicole’s murder, and how they must continue to do everything in their power to get Jane Peters freed. She thought of phoning Andy to warn him about what had happened, but Andy was safe enough in New York under the protective eye of Nick Grant.

  The shadows lengthened, the darkness now complete except for the stars overhead. A melancholy loneliness settled on her as she listened to the soft sounds of the world settling for another night.

  And then from down the road she saw a pair of headlights gradually approaching, heard the rumble of a familiar engine.

  She rose from the tree swing and went around to the front as Jake’s SUV pulled into the front yard and parked. Jake got out.

  Twenty-four

  A.J.’s heart was beating nearly as fast as it had when Lydia Thorne had come after her. “I’m out here,” she said over the wedge in her throat.

  Jake turned, fast and easy. She must have startled him, but his voice was even as he said, “I heard what happened.”

  “Just don’t say I told you so.” She managed to say it lightly, although she felt anything but flippant.

  Monster brushed past her, greeting Jake with snuffles and wagging tail—finally someone Monster was glad to see. Jake patted the dog and then came toward A.J., who still stood by the corner of the house.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and he took her into his arms. She hugged him back fiercely.

  Maybe it was just a hug between friends, but it was a start. Jake’s arms felt strong and warm and reassuring, and it was absurdly good to know that he cared. That if something bad had happened to her that evening, it would have mattered to him.

  For some reason A.J.’s throat had closed up, so she couldn’t answer without making a fool of herself. She settled for nodding, and Jake said softly, “Are you sure?”

  Tears started to her eyes, she blinked them back fiercely. She nodded again, and got out a gruff, “Sure I’m sure.”

  He tilted her chin up, studying her face in the moonlight. His own silvered expression was inscrutable, but moonlight suited him. Then again, so did daylight. A.J. was once again painfully conscious of what she had lost by playing detective.

  So it came as kind of a shock when Jake’s mouth found hers. His lips were warm and surprisingly sensuous—he was so straightforward, so blunt, that his sexual expertise still caught her off guard. His mouth moved on hers, deepening the kiss, and A.J. felt a tingling shock of pleasure.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said softly against her, and he gave her another tiny kiss.

  Neither of which felt like good-bye.

  “I miss you, too,” A.J. said. “I’m so sorry for what happened.”

  “I bet.” He loosened his hold—a fraction—and his smile was one of not unfriendly mockery.

  “That’s not what I mean. Well, it’s partly what I mean. I can’t say I enjoy entertaining psychos on the patio, but what I meant was . . . I’m sorry, really sorry, for putting you in that position.”

  She could feel him studying her. “Which position are we talking about?”

  A.J. drew a deep breath. “The position of you having to compromise your integrity in order to keep me—and my loved ones—from facing the consequences of our actions.”

  His brows drew together. “That sounds like you really have been thinking about it.”

  “And sorry for putting you in the position of having to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

  “Now that sounds more like you.” But he was grinning. He glanced meaningfully at the house. “Is the ex still up?”

  “Andy went back to New York.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  There was a definite change in Jake’s tone. Meeting his curious gaze, she said, “You do know I’m not in love with Andy, right? You do know that that’s been over for me a long time?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s just . . . you have a lot of family ties, A.J. You have a lot of commitments to other people. I like that about you, but it makes it hard sometimes.”

  His arm slid around her waist and they walked up the front porch together—only to realize the door was locked. They had to turn around and go back along the side of the house to the kitchen entrance, by which time they were mostly relaxed with each other again.

  “I read the incident report,” Jake said as they closed the kitchen door behind them. He automatically locked the door. “She tracked you down by the phone number here and then she started researching you. There’s way too much information available on the Internet if you know where to look.”

  A.J. nodded. “I want you to know that it was just the one phone call, and really the single question we asked was whether we could talk to her about Nicole.”

  “I take it the answer was no?”

  “It was a definite no. I can’t believe we didn’t pursue—” She caught Jake’s expression and said, “I can’t believe we forgot about Lydia as a possible suspect. It’s just she seemed so . . . remote a possibility.”

  Literally and figuratively. That was the other danger of the Internet. It was easy to forget that there were real people on the other side of the intertube. And not all of them were sane and solid citizens.

  “Her real name is Chris Summers,” Jake told her. “She’s a claims processor for a
n insurance company.”

  “Does she have an alibi for the day Nicole was killed?”

  Jake grimaced. “There’s something hinky there. She’s refusing to say.”

  “Refusing to say what? Whether she has an alibi or not?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, she obviously doesn’t have one then.”

  “I’m not so sure. There’s something . . . smug about her. Like she thinks she’s being clever. Laying some clever trap for us. Definitely an odd duck.”

  “I’d have phrased it a little differently.”

  Jake said, “I’m doing my best not to say I told you so. Don’t push it.”

  A.J. made a face. “Okay, okay. So what does this mean for Jane? Surely it sheds some doubt on her guilt?”

  “That’s going to be up to the DA.” At her expression, Jake sighed. “Look, A.J. I’m not happy with the collar either, but Peters was there, she had means, and a case could be made that she had motive. She ran—and kept running.”

  “There was no DNA evidence on her clothes.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to need corroborating DNA evidence to get a conviction on this. I’m sorry, but I think a jury will draw the obvious conclusion. But I’m not a lawyer. Maybe she’ll squeak out of it.”

  “Jake, you questioned her. Does she really seem like a murderess?”

  “There speaks a civilian. Listen, I’ll give you this much. I’m personally not convinced of Peters’s guilt, but we do have a problem in the fact that there’s a shortage of other viable suspects. Maybe this Summers woman will turn out to have a rap sheet a mile long, but I don’t think so. I think she wants us to charge her.”

  “And you’ve ruled out everyone else?”

  “Everyone else? We’ve pretty much ruled out the principals. The narrow window of opportunity pretty much rules Barbie Siragusa out. No one could place her at the scene, and I personally never thought her motive was as strong as Peters’s. Now if it was the kid—but we’ve tried. His alibi is good.”

  “What about Bryn Tierney and J.W. Young?”

  “What about them?”

  “Could they have worked it together? Maybe they were having an affair?”

  Jake studied her for a moment. “I interviewed Bryn Tierney a couple of times. If she wasn’t genuinely horrified and shocked by Manning’s murder, then she was the real actress in that household. And at the moment she’s five hundred miles away planning her wedding.”

  What better way to hide your guilty passion than behind marriage to another man? Then a year or two later, Bryn could go through the motions of falling out of love and divorcing her husband, meet up coincidentally with J.W. and . . . they all lived happily ever after?

  Admittedly farfetched. Not to mention that it presupposed Nicole’s murder had been planned and plotted from the first, and A.J. didn’t believe that. She didn’t believe Bryn and J.W. had conspired to kill Nicole. The whole method of Nicole’s murder was too haphazard. Everything about it indicated that it had been a violent impulse.

  Jake added, “And if Young is in love with anyone, it’s his not-so-ex wife.”

  “Well, okay then. What about J.W.’s alibi?”

  Jake said slowly, “Now that’s something else. The fact is, we can’t really verify Young’s alibi.”

  “What?”

  “It turns out that he arrived on an earlier flight—and before you get carried away, he volunteered this information early on in the investigation. There was a problem with some of his luggage getting lost, and he claims he was in the airport for a couple of hours trying to get that straightened out.”

  “That can either be proven or it can’t, right?”

  “Have you ever had your luggage lost?” Those ticket counter people don’t remember you an hour later, let alone a week. Young did put in a luggage claim, but it was three hours after his plane landed.”

  A.J. stared at him. “He killed her.”

  “Whoa. We don’t know that, and we sure as hell can’t prove it.”

  “But you do know it,” A.J. said. “I can see by your expression, you know it.”

  Jake said warningly, “I don’t know it. Don’t go off on this. As far as I can see, he had zero motive.”

  “Nicole was having an affair.”

  “He didn’t know about it.”

  “Oh, give me a break! How could he not know about it?”

  Jake said shortly, “I’m the one who had to question him about Manning’s involvement with the Siragusa kid. Believe me, Young didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue. In fact, he didn’t believe me at first.”

  “Okay, well . . . you said it yourself. He’s still in love with Jane.”

  “Holy—! You’re like a pit bull when you sink your teeth into something, aren’t you? The fact that the guy still has feelings for his ex doesn’t mean he would commit murder for her. There was no reason to commit murder for her. He wasn’t married to Manning. He could have walked out anytime. He didn’t inherit under the terms of Manning’s will . . . he had nothing to gain by her death.”

  “Murder isn’t always about gain.”

  “Mostly it is. I don’t mean financial gain . . . but gain. Most people—sane people—kill other people because they have something to gain from their death.” Studying A.J.’s mutinous expression, he said, “We’re still investigating. And we’ll continue to investigate.”

  “Not once Jane has been convicted, you won’t.”

  “We’ve got a ways to go before that happens. And if it looks like Peters is going to be convicted . . . we might catch a break.”

  “Like what?”

  Jake said slowly, “A couple of things. The first forty-eight hours are the most important in investigating a homicide, that’s true. But just because we don’t catch the bad guys in forty-eight hours, doesn’t mean we give up. And as time passes people get careless, they start to relax, they don’t realize they’re still being watched. A lot of times that’s when we catch a break.”

  “And meanwhile Jane Peters is rotting away in prison.”

  “Well, that’s the other thing,” Jake said. “If Young is still in love with Peters, and he did kill Manning, then I don’t know that he’ll stand by and let her take the rap if—if—he did it.”

  “Yes, but what if he does? What if he just can’t bring himself to confess?”

  “You’re not listening to me. As of now we can’t place him on the scene, and we don’t have a concrete motive for him. He wasn’t married to Manning, and he doesn’t inherit her property or money. They bought the house together. And he was aware of the terms of Manning’s will. And, yes, Manning was having an affair, but since we’re all agreed that Young is probably still in love with his wife, we’re going to have trouble proving he did Manning in during a jealous rage.”

  A.J. was silent. It was obvious to her that Jake instinctively felt something was wrong with J.W.’s story, even if he wasn’t openly acknowledging it. He had certainly done a lot of checking and double-checking.

  She said slowly, “No one would—or even could—plan to kill someone with a piece of an ice sculpture. Not in those circumstances. A house filled with all kinds of people coming and going in preparation for the party? From the very first Nicole’s murder had to be one of impulse. Which I think means that it had to be committed by someone who had a lot of stored-up anger and resentment and aggression against Nicole. And, as awful as it is to say, the most obvious suspect in such as case is a spouse or lover.”

  “You don’t have to convince me.”

  “Which means—hey!”

  He offered that lopsided smile that never failed to make her heart flip over. “Just pointing out that cops tend to have a jaded view of romance and matrimony.”

  “Well, but I mean . . .”

  “Yes?” he teased.

  “There are exceptions to every case.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’m tired of talking about my case. Let’s discuss the exceptions.”

  Jake turned out the k
itchen light, took A.J.’s hand, and drew her down the dark hallway.

  Twenty-five

  “I think it has something to do with that koala preserve,” A.J. said.

  It was early the following morning and she was on the phone—on hold—waiting to leave a message at Waldo’s Home Window Repair. Not that the brisk morning breeze blowing in over the kitchen sink from the smashed window wasn’t refreshing . . .

  Jake was finishing the last swallows of his coffee. “Yeah? What is it you think Young has against koalas?”

  “Probably nothing. But he and Nicole were supposed to start a film production company, and those plans were suddenly scrapped and Nicole threw herself into establishing this koala preserve. She was the kind of person who had . . . enthusiasms. She’d be totally into something like yoga one minute and then on to . . . kickboxing. I remember for a time she was really into dog breeding and dog shows, but as far as I can tell, when she died she didn’t even own a dog. And she was the same way about gardening and flower shows. When she first moved out here she was very involved in the Garden Club, and then she just lost interest. Something else caught her attention.”

  Jake said, “I hadn’t heard about the production company, but I can’t see either of them wanting to work together.”

  “I don’t know at what point in their relationship the idea first came up, but I can see that J.W.—the one with the talent and vision—would have jumped at the idea of Nicole’s money funding his projects. He’s always on the hunt for grants and financial backing. He’s passionate about his work. You can tell. He really cares. So to have that money yanked out from under him—to have it go to a koala preserve.”

  “This is what a man likes to hear the morning after. His girlfriend speculating about koalas and murder. I’m assuming I had your attention at some point during last night’s festivities?”

  A.J. laughed. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t tell because I’m pretty sure . . .”

  “Yeah, well.” He ducked back behind his coffee cup.