by Linda Howard
Mentally he shook himself. What Madelyn Wilde looked like now, and how Jaclyn looked years from now, had nothing to do with him. “Madelyn Wilde?” he asked politely, even though he knew exactly who she was. He flashed his badge again. “Detective Eric Wilder. May I speak with you, please?”
She coldly eyed him, her pretty face taking on a belligerent expression. “What police department are you with?” she asked, though he thought she already knew damn good and well where he worked.
“Hopewell,” he replied.
“Out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
He was willing to cut her a lot of slack, because neither he nor Garvey thought Jaclyn was their perp and this interview was just more i dotting and t crossing, but he wasn’t willing to let her challenge him on his authority. “Yes, ma’am, I am. I’m not here to arrest anyone, though, just ask a few questions. If you aren’t willing, I suppose I could make a call and get a couple of Atlanta squad cars here, if that would make you feel better—or invite you to visit me at Hopewell’s police department, whichever you’d prefer.”
Before she could answer the closed door was jerked open and Jaclyn stood there, her eyes blazing like blue fire in her white, angry face. “You leave my mother alone,” she said in a fierce, stifled tone, as if she was so angry she could barely speak.
Now, wasn’t that interesting? he thought, eyeing her while carefully keeping his expression blank so she couldn’t see his sharp appreciation. Jaclyn Wilde in a temper was pretty damn impressive, not only because of the vividness of her eyes but because she was normally so cool and controlled. Seeing her lose control wasn’t as good as having sex with her, but it sure reminded him of it, and made him think he might want to make her lose her temper more often. Not today, though; he had to keep his focus on the case, because the sooner he could rule her out as a suspect, the better.
“What happens is entirely up to Mrs. Wilde,” he said in a flat, neutral tone. “I don’t care where the interview takes place.”
But there would be an interview, and his voice made that plain.
Madelyn hurried to her daughter and placed a hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” she said, upset in turn because Jaclyn was so upset. “Don’t do anything to get yourself in trouble. It’s just a few questions.”
The four women couldn’t have been more different in style and attitude, but he got the feeling they would walk through fire for one another. They would circle the wagons in any time of trouble, and he imagined if he wasn’t a cop the four of them would even now be pushing him out the door. Of course, if he wasn’t a cop he wouldn’t be here to question one of them in the first place. This was a kind of good thing/bad thing from his point of view: it was good that he got to push Jaclyn’s buttons and watch her flare up, but bad that he had to keep her at a distance right now.
Tension crackled in the air, and if the proverbial looks could kill, he would already be assuming room temperature. He represented a threat and they were mad as hell about it. Maybe Jaclyn had cried on their collective shoulders about what a dickhead he was for questioning her, taking her clothes—in other words, treating her like a suspect, which technically she was. Women tended to close ranks around one of their own anyway, and these ranks had definitely closed.
It made him wonder how they, both collectively and individually, had responded when they learned Carrie had slapped Jaclyn. Carrie’s murder had all the signs of something that happened in the heat of the moment, in an argument that escalated way out of hand. If that were so, then maybe he should take a long hard look at Madelyn Wilde herself, because he could see a mother defending her daughter.
“This way,” Madelyn said in a clipped tone, and without looking at him led the way down the hall to her office, her heels clipping on the runner that protected the glossy hardwood floors. Eric followed her, not allowing himself even a glance at Jaclyn as he walked by. Anger he could handle; hell, seeing her like that had kind of turned him on, but then everything about her had turned him on from the beginning. What he didn’t want to see in her eyes was hate, and he thought she probably hated him right about now.
Madelyn entered a room on the right at the end of the hall. Eric followed her, closed the door behind him, and took a moment to look around. It was a very feminine room, with fringed lamps and ornately framed artwork, and chairs sized for women. “Please,” she said, indicating one of those chairs as she took her own seat behind her desk. “Sit down.”
Eric eyed the chairs, then chose one and cautiously lowered his weight onto it. He breathed a sigh of relief; it was sturdier than it looked, though lower than he liked. He felt as if his knees were about chest high, so he compensated by stretching his legs out some. He looked up to find Madelyn eyeing him with grim satisfaction, as if she knew how awkward he found the low-sitting chair.
He took out his pen and notebook, flipping through it until he found the pages where he’d jotted down the details of his interview with Jaclyn the night before. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” he said politely, hoping to calm some of the troubled waters.
She snorted. It was a ladylike snort, but still a snort. “I don’t believe I had much choice, Detective.”
“Only in the location, ma’am.”
“All right, we’re talking. Ask your questions.”
He leaned back and crossed his ankle on his knee, taking a relaxed position, his body language saying that he was the one in authority even though she was the one who was sitting behind the desk. “Why don’t you take me through what you were doing yesterday afternoon?”
“From when to when?” she asked.
“Say three o’clock on.” The M.E. had put Carrie’s death later than that, but he didn’t say so.
She reached to the side of her desk and flipped open an appointment book. Then she got her BlackBerry from her purse, thumbed through the calls, and began her recital, leading him through every appointment, every meeting, every phone call. She got to the phone call she’d received from Jaclyn, and the time she read off matched exactly the time that had been on Jaclyn’s phone. She handed him the BlackBerry for verification; he duly noted the time and gave the phone back.
“You’re very organized,” he said.
She sniffed. “I’m an events planner. Organization is what I do. Every detail has to be controlled and overseen.”
“So I see. What did you do after talking with your daughter?”
“Then I drove to Claire’s, ordered our muffins, and was waiting at one of the tables when Jaclyn got there.”
“Do you have the receipt?”
“No. Do you have the receipt from your lunch yesterday? But I put it on my credit card, so there’s a record, if it becomes an issue.”
“What did you do then?”
“We sat and talked. I had a wedding to do last night, and I didn’t have time to go home and relax.”
“What did Jaclyn tell you?”
“She told me that Carrie slapped her, if that’s what you’re asking,” Madelyn said sharply. “Carrie was a bitch. I regret the day I took her booking. She was hands down the worst client Premier has ever had, and it wasn’t even because of her unreasonable demands. A lot of brides are demanding, and a lot of them are unreasonable, but they’re under stress, so when they freak out it’s understandable. What made Carrie stand out was how mean she was. She enjoyed causing everyone a lot of extra trouble. She enjoyed insulting people and keeping them upset.”
“What did you do when Jaclyn told you Carrie had struck her?”
“I didn’t actually do anything, because Jaclyn wouldn’t let me. She’s very levelheaded. What I wanted to do was hunt down the bullying little low-life heifer and beat the sh—snot out of her.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No, Jaclyn pointed out that Premier had the legal high ground, and best of all, Carrie had fired us. We were free of her.”
“What about the fee she’d paid?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. The trick was to keep asking
the same questions over and over, to see if you got the same answers. If you didn’t, that was a clue to where to look, where to keep picking.
“She wouldn’t have gotten much money back. Our contracts state that, in case of termination, our fees are prorated according to the amount of work the agency has done. With Carrie’s wedding, the vast majority of planning and arrangements had already been made.”
That jibed exactly with what Jaclyn had told him, but she and her mother had obviously talked, so it was possible they’d gone over that detail and rehearsed what to say. “May I see a copy of the contract?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
Madelyn opened a drawer, flicked through the files, and withdrew a moss green folder. “Here it is.” She placed the file on the desk and slid it across to him. Eric leaned forward and took the file, opened it. He leafed through the thick stack of paperwork until he found the contract. Finding the pertinent clause took only a few seconds, and it was exactly as they’d said. Carrie Edwards had signed it, and it was dated more than a year before.
“Damn,” he said without thinking. “It takes that long to plan a wedding?” Then he caught himself and looked up. “Sorry.”
She waved away the apology. “Do you want a copy of the contract?”
“If you don’t mind.” He didn’t know that he’d need it, but having a copy was one more i dotted.
She took the contract, opened a closet door to reveal a small printer, and copied every page. He waited in silence. When she was finished she neatly stacked the pages, stapled them together in one corner, and handed them to him before repeating the sequence with the original contract and returning it to its file folder, which she then replaced in the file drawer.
He’d bet his badge that if any of these four women ever killed anyone, the murder would be carefully researched, planned, and meticulously orchestrated. There wouldn’t be any detail left to chance, nothing done in the heat of the moment, no messy clues left behind. They’d probably get away with the crime, too, he thought, torn between amusement and irritation, because the cop in him didn’t like the idea of anyone getting away with anything on his watch.
“What time did you leave Claire’s?”
“Five-fifteen.”
“Exactly?” he asked, less than pleased that she’d come back with such a specific answer. In his experience, people might know about when they did something, but not down to the minute.
“Exactly,” Madelyn said firmly. “I’m a clock-watcher. We all are. I told you, I had a wedding to oversee last night. I had to be there well in advance.”
“Where was the wedding?”
She told him, and he knew from experience the drive would have taken her at least forty-five minutes. Not only that, it was in the opposite direction from Hopewell. “What time did you arrive?”
“Six oh two. And, yes, there were a number of vendors already at the church, as well as most of the wedding party, so there are people who can verify the time. Would you like a list of their names?”
“Please,” he said politely, and took notes as she consulted her own notes and rattled off names, as well as phone numbers. God, these women were so organized it was scary. Madelyn hadn’t been on his short list of suspects but she’d definitely been a possibility, but this pretty much ruled her out. If she’d arrived at the church when she said she had, there was no way she could have driven to Hopewell, killed Carrie, then made the drive to the church, not to mention she’d have had to go home and change clothes, too.
She’d given Jaclyn a pretty good alibi, too. The t.o.d. time frame the medical examiner had given them put Carrie’s death pretty close to the time Jaclyn had left her—but if Jaclyn had killed her and then calmly went to have a muffin with her mother at a public restaurant, she’d have been covered with blood.
Carrie’s murder had been messy. Whoever had killed her had walked—or run—away from the scene bloody and enraged, likely in a panic. He’d play this by the book and wait for word that no blood had been found on Jaclyn’s clothes, but he was pretty sure none of these women ever panicked. No matter how he played the scene in his mind, he just couldn’t see Jaclyn Wilde losing her cool and killing Carrie Edwards in a rage. He could see her a lot of ways, not least of which was beneath him, naked and flushed, but not as a killer—and he shouldn’t be thinking about her naked, either, not until she was officially off the suspect list.
The problem was, though he could make his actions objective, his mind kept going back to the night they’d spent together, and he didn’t feel objective about that at all.
On the good side, he was one step closer to clearing Jaclyn. On the bad side, he was back to square one in finding Carrie’s killer, with a victim almost no one liked, and ass-deep in potential suspects.
There wasn’t anything more he could find out from Madelyn. She was clear, and she’d provided a damn good alibi for Jaclyn, though until he got the report back on Jaclyn’s clothes he couldn’t say anything. He’d be better off spending his time chasing down the other possibilities. He studied his notes for a moment, trying to think of any angle he might have missed, but everything was pretty straightforward. Finally he flipped his notebook shut and rose to his feet. “Thank you for answering my questions, Mrs. Wilde. I’ll be in touch.”
Again, she made that disgusted little snorting sound. It was almost like a feminine grunt.
The two other women were still in the outer office, their expressions closed and hostile. Jaclyn’s door was firmly closed again. Eric said good-bye to the two women, smiling warmly at them just to tweak them; the older redhead narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together.
Soon enough he’d have Jaclyn cleared, but by then it might well be too late, might have been too late since last night when he’d questioned her. As he got into his car he remembered the skunk comment, and inwardly winced. Like the two women who had just glared at his back as he went out the door, he figured Jaclyn was going to carry this grudge for a long time.
A thought occurred to him: Had Jaclyn told her mother that they’d spent the night together?
Naw.
For one thing, she wasn’t the kiss-and-tell type. For another, Madelyn hadn’t tried to gut him.
Chapter Fifteen
WHEN JACLYN HEARD MADELYN’S VOICE OUTSIDE HER door, with Peach and Diedra’s voices running over each other as they asked simultaneous questions, she paused for a moment to listen harder. Not hearing Eric’s much deeper voice, she huffed out a quick breath of relief and jerked her door open, though she took a quick look around to make sure he was gone before she asked, “What happened?”
“He asked questions about what I was doing yesterday afternoon, and took a lot of notes,” Madelyn replied. “I think he was making certain I didn’t kill Carrie, but there was no way. After we had muffins at Claire’s, I didn’t have time to go back and do the deed, then get to the wedding.”
“You had muffins at Claire’s?” Peach asked.
“Yesterday afternoon, after Carrie fired us,” Jaclyn said.
“Well,” Diedra humphed. “Number one: you could have bought enough muffins for us to have today. I’m just saying. Number two: more than likely, he was verifying that you were where you said you were. Madelyn is your alibi.”
“Maybe,” Jaclyn said unhappily. She should have known he’d have to question Madelyn. If she’d thought of it beforehand she might have been better prepared for the shock. Instead, sudden rage had roared through her like a wildfire, and she was left feeling shaky in the aftermath.
“I don’t know,” Madelyn added. “He asked what I did from three o’clock yesterday afternoon until I got to the wedding, so—” She lifted her shoulder in a “who knows” gesture. “Did anyone get a newspaper this morning? The news on television didn’t give many details. Maybe the newspaper will tell us what time they think the murder happened.”
No one had. “I’ll go get one,” said Diedra. She grabbed her bag and car keys, and hurried out the door.
“I need more coffee,” Peach said. “And another brownie.” She turned and headed toward the kitchen area.
“Why?” Madelyn demanded as she followed. “You weren’t questioned.”
Thinking she needed to soothe her jangled nerves with chocolate more than she needed to worry about the empty calories, Jaclyn decided to join them. She was in time to hear Peach say, “I’m consoling myself because I wasn’t questioned.”
“What?”
“Lord have mercy, Madelyn, are you dead from the waist down?” As Jaclyn came through the door, Peach shot her a guilty look. “Sorry, honey. But you do know your mother has a love life—”
“Peach!” Madelyn said in a threatening tone.
“Actually, I do.” Jaclyn poured herself some coffee and got another brownie from the tray.
“See, you don’t have to act as if you’re the Mother Superior in a convent.” Peach gave Madelyn an “I told you so” look and took a bite of her brownie. “As I was saying, that man just oozed testosterone. The chemical reaction almost made me go into heat—and I was mad at him, so just imagine what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been!”
Jaclyn almost choked on a sip of coffee.
“I’m a good twenty years older than the detective, and so are you, Peach Reynolds. I didn’t notice his testosterone and you shouldn’t have, either.”
“Older women can go after younger men now. Personally, I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with it. Old codgers go after young airheads all the time, so why can’t women of our age have a little fun every now and then? It actually makes sense, because we don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Celibacy should be for the young and stupid, not the mature and wise.”
Run or stand her ground? Spill the beans about knowing Eric—though not about sleeping with him—or keep quiet? Jaclyn had no idea what to do, but she did know she didn’t want to listen to her mother and a woman who was like an aunt to her talk about Eric’s testosterone level. “Uh …” she began, not knowing exactly what she was going to say, but it didn’t matter; she might as well not have made a sound, for all the attention they paid her.