With head bowed, she kept her eyes trained on the guard’s jiggly butt as she followed her down the long row of cells and out of the holding area.
“Where are we going?” Lia asked as they walked through the maze that made up the first floor of the Charleston Police Department.
“To an interview room,” Jiggly Butt said without making eye contact. “Your attorney’s waiting for you.”
Surprise, surprise! Lia thought. My sister must have come through for me.
The guard opened the door and gently shoved Lia inside the room. A man, wearing a tailored suit that matched his gray hair and tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses, rose halfway out of his chair to greet her.
“I’m Gary Bates, your attorney.” His eyes traveled from the top of her matted head to her feet before resting on her bloody hands. “Are you okay? You appear a little . . . disheveled.”
“I had a fight with a cinderblock wall,” Lia said. When a baffled expression crossed his handsome face, she added, “What can I say? I’m claustrophobic. I don’t like being locked up.”
“I see. Please, have a seat.” He gestured at the empty chair across from him and waited for her to get settled before asking, “It’s none of my business, but are you on any type of prescription medication? Considering your overnight accommodations, perhaps you missed a dose. Detective Hamlin’s coming in from Florida to question you. It’s important you make a good impression.”
Lia glared at him. “You’re right, Mr. Bates. It isn’t any of your business. The only impression I need to make is one of innocence, which should be easy since I didn’t kill my husband.”
“Right.” He picked up his phone and tapped out a text. “We still need to get you cleaned up. I’ll have my secretary rush over some supplies.”
“Who hired you, Mr. Bates?” Lia asked as she picked dried blood off one of her fingernails. “I hope whoever it was explained that I don’t have any money to pay you.”
“Your father hired me. Julian Hagood referred him to me, which is all the assurance I need that I’ll get paid.” He flipped open a leather folder and poised his pen over a yellow legal pad. “We don’t have much time, Mrs. Bertram. Detective Hamlin will be here within the hour. Tell me as much as you can as quickly as you can.”
“Fine, but call me Lia. As soon as possible, I’m ditching my husband’s last name.” She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and allowed her mind to travel back to the last point in her marriage when she could remember being happy—a few months before the twins were born.
“While my marriage had been on the rocks for years, our real problems started last September in Decatur, Georgia, where I lived with my husband and twin three-year-old daughters. May I stand? My ass is tired of sitting.”
“By all means,” Bates said, gesturing at the floor.
She rose from the chair and paced back and forth beside the table while she told him about her husband’s financial trouble, his sudden disappearance, and the goons who showed up looking for him. She told him about Ellie and Abbott and their untimely arrival on the scene. “I had no contact with my husband for seven months until he texted me to come to Key West. He wanted to meet with me to talk about our future.”
“Were these texts from the same phone number he had when you were together?”
“Nope.” Lia stood in front of the one-way mirror and blew whoever was watching a kiss. “The texts were from a new number. I didn’t think it strange at the time. He was on the run from bad men who he owed a lot of money. It made sense that he would have gotten a new phone.”
“Are these texts still on your phone?”
With an annoyed sigh, Lia turned away from the mirror. “Yep, but they took my phone.”
Bates jotted something on the legal pad in front of him. “Tell me about the texts.”
“I received the first one five days before my husband was murdered. On May fifth. I remember the date. I was drinking margaritas at a Cinco de Mayo party with my then-boyfriend, Justin, when I received it.”
“You’re awfully trusting to assume this text was from your estranged husband without proof.”
“I didn’t need proof. He used his pet name for me. No one else knows it. At least that’s what I thought at the time.” She rolled her eyes. “I was Venus to him, his love goddess. Wonder if his new goddess is Aphrodite.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, Bates asked, “And you just jumped on the next plane to Key West?”
“The next bus, actually.” She dropped back down in her chair. “I’d grown tired of my boyfriend and was looking for an excuse to leave him.”
“How did you know where to find Ricky once you got to Key West? Did he mention where he was staying in the texts?”
“We went to Key West on our honeymoon. I took a chance that he would be stupid enough to stay in the same place. Turns out I was right. I didn’t tell Ricky I was in town. I spied on him, hoping to find out why he wanted to meet with me so I would know what approach to take. When I saw him with his new girlfriend, I figured he was going to ask me for a divorce so he could be with her. Which was fine by me. Good riddance, Ricky, as far as I was concerned. Except that custody of our twin daughters was an issue. They turned four last week.”
Jiggly Butt interrupted them to announce the arrival of Bates’s secretary, who was waiting outside in the hallway.
The secretary, an efficient matronly type, carried an overstuffed canvas tote full of supplies. Jiggly Butt escorted Lia and the secretary down the hall to the ladies’ restroom. After washing her face, Lia scrubbed the blood from her hands and raked a brush through her tangled hair. She slipped off her soiled T-shirt and tugged on the white cotton sweater the secretary handed her.
Detective Hamlin had arrived by the time she returned to the interview room. His golden tan gave him away. She considered him a hottie—under different circumstances, she might have hit on him.
After a round of introductions, they sat down together at the table. “We’ve been searching for you for some time.” Hamlin offered her an insincere smile. “You’re a difficult woman to find.”
Her smile reflected his. “It seems you were looking in all the wrong places, Detective.”
“Apparently so.” He opened a manila file in front of him. “Let’s get started, then. Your case has logistical challenges, since you were arrested in South Carolina for a crime you’re suspected of committing in Florida. I’m here to determine if there’s enough evidence to extradite you back to Florida. In the interest of time, why don’t you tell me your side of the story?”
Lia gawked. “Again? I just told Mr. Bates most of it.”
“You may have to tell it again and again before we’re through,” Hamlin said. “Start at the beginning, please.”
“Ugh! Whatever.” For the next thirty minutes, she walked him through the previous four years, including the events leading up to her husband’s murder. Hamlin attempted, unsuccessfully, to poke holes in her story along the way. Her responses were all honest, because she was telling the truth.
When she was finished, he said, “Let’s go back to the part where you left your children in your sister’s care. How long did you stay in Charleston before you left?” Hamlin asked.
“Hmm.” Lia cocked her head to the side and stared up at the ceiling. “A few days.”
Hamlin’s eyeballs popped out of their sockets. “Let me get this straight. You left your three-year-old children with a woman you’d only known for a few days?”
“Have you met my sister, Detective?”
“I have,” he said. “When she flew to Key West, looking for you.”
“Then you know she’s the quintessential mommy.”
“I can see where that would be true about her, although I would never render such a character assessment until I’ve known a person for much longer.” His accusatory tone hung in the air and sent a message that was loud and clear: he was condemning her for abandoning her children with a woman she barely knew.
“Ellie has a big house, plenty of money, and servants to take care of Mya and Bella. Plus, our father lives nearby.”
They moved on to talk about the first text she’d received from her husband, her trip to Key West, and the subsequent days of her spying on him from his hotel lobby that followed.
“Tell me about the night of the murder,” Hamlin said.
Lia clasped her hands together to stop them from trembling. “My husband asked me to meet with him in his hotel room at nine o’clock that night. I found him dead when I got there. It’s as simple as that.”
The detective exhaled a breath of frustration. “Maybe so. But I need details.”
Lia stared at her hands as that awful memory came back to her. “There was a bad storm that night, and I was running late because of the weather. I arrived at his hotel about five minutes after nine. I walked through the lobby and rode the elevator to the third floor. When I located his room, room number 550, I noticed his door ajar. I knocked, but no one answered. I pushed it open, and when I stepped over the threshold, I sensed something was not quite right. Maybe it was the smell. I don’t know. I can’t say for certain. I reached for the light switch. When my fingers came into contact with what I now know was blood, it surprised me. I reached for the doorknob for support—if you’re wondering how my fingerprints got on the knob. Concerned for Ricky’s safety, I walked farther into the room and found him dead in a pool of blood, with a knife sticking out of his heart.”
Hamlin looked up from his writing. “Was he wearing any clothing?”
Lia’s jaw dropped. “Why does that matter?”
“It matters in determining his activities at the time of his death.”
“Of course he was fully clothed. He was dressed for a meeting with me. But you already know that, don’t you?”
Ignoring her question, Hamlin returned his gaze to his notepad. “Can you describe the knife?”
“It had a black handle, like the kind professional chefs use.”
His pen flew across the notepad as he wrote. “What happened then?”
“What do you think happened? I freaked out. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.”
“At any point in time did you consider contacting the police?”
“Nope. And before you ask me why, I’ll tell you. My first thought was, the loan sharks he owed a bunch of money had killed him and would come after me next. But later, when I got back to my room and had a chance to process what had happened, I realized that somebody, for whatever reason, may have been framing me.”
Hamlin sat back in his chair and tapped his pen against the table as he studied her. “Why do you think you were framed?”
“Because I stumbled into my estranged husband’s hotel room only minutes after he was murdered. That’s a little bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Hamlin leaned across the table toward her, staring deep into her eyes. “Who do you think was framing you?”
“The woman Ricky was sleeping with, who else?”
“What motive would she have had to kill her boyfriend and frame you?” Hamlin’s face was so close to hers she smelled coffee on his breath.
“I have no idea. You’re the detective. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’ve questioned Carrie Doyle extensively,” Hamlin said. “You have more motive to kill your husband than she does.”
Lia’s heart pounded against her rib cage. She couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. “What motive could I possibly have—aside from the fact that he walked out on me, leaving me with thirty dollars in my bank account and a platoon of goons harassing me?”
“His million-dollar life insurance policy, for starters.”
Lia froze. It took her thirty seconds to recover. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Am I the beneficiary to this million-dollar life insurance policy?”
“You are, according to Ricky’s brother, Joey. He should know. He sold him the policy.”
“I promise you, if I’d known that bastard had a million-dollar life insurance policy, I would have killed him with my bare hands while we were still living together.”
Bates rested his hand on her arm, cautioning her to tread lightly.
“Let’s start over from the top.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Lia sprang from her chair with eyes wild and face flushed red. “I can’t stay in this room another minute. You don’t have enough to press formal charges against me, because I didn’t kill my husband.” She strode across the room and began pounding on the door. When no one came, she moved to the one-way mirror. Banging her fist against it, she hollered over and over for someone to let her out. Finally, spent, she slid to the floor in a heap and sobbed.
Bates and Hamlin looked at each other, and Hamlin gestured for Bates to go to her.
“Why don’t we take a break?” Bates suggested as he helped Lia to her feet. “Lia, can I get you some water?”
She nodded. “And I’d like to use the restroom.”
She took her time in the restroom. When she returned to the interrogation room, Lambert and Bates were standing outside in the hallway. Hamlin was nowhere to be seen. She sipped her water at the table while eavesdropping on Detective Lambert and Bates, who were talking loud enough outside the open door for her to hear. Based on their conversation, she deduced that Lambert had been listening from the other side of the two-way mirror during Hamlin’s questioning.
“She’s a nutcase, that one,” Lambert said.
In his dignified tone that hinted at money and breeding, Bates said, “If ever there was a legitimate opportunity for a temporary insanity plea, this would be it.”
“We found an empty bottle of lithium when we searched her hotel room yesterday,” Lambert said. “Wonder how long it’s been empty.”
“I’m not surprised, considering the behavior we just witnessed,” Bates said. “Interestingly enough, I asked her if she was on prescription medicine.”
“Based on the dosage and the date the prescription was filled, she was taking lithium at the time of the murder but ran out shortly thereafter. She may have had it refilled since then, but we didn’t find any pill bottles in her handbag. The murder took place two and a half weeks ago. If she was prescribed lithium for bipolar disorder, she could be in a manic state.”
How dare the bastards search my room. They want to see manic? I’ll show them manic if they don’t let me out of here soon.
#
The interrogation resumed and dragged on for hours. Hamlin repeated the same questions, and she supplied the same answers. Just when Lia thought they were nearing the end, Hamlin took her down the hall, hooked her up to a lie detector test, and started all over again. They asked things about her personal life that she considered inappropriate and irrelevant to the case. Lia surprised them by answering in detail, with a smug smile on her face.
Teach them to pry into a woman’s private business.
Three more agonizing hours ticked off the wall clock before Hamlin concluded he had insufficient evidence to extradite her.
“I’ll speak to Detective Lambert, and we’ll see what we can do to get you out of here.”
Lia shot to her feet. “How long will that take?” As much as she wanted answers, her desire to get out of that interview room was greater.
Hamlin stood to face her. “Just a few minutes.” He left the room, and five minutes later, Jiggly Butt arrived to escort her to discharge to fill out paperwork and collect her belongings. Hamlin and Bates were waiting for her in the main lobby fifteen minutes later when she returned.
Bates wished her well with the shake of a hand, and Hamlin said, “I’m headed to the airport. Can I give you a lift back to your hotel on the way?”
Lia gave him the once-over, her eyes lingering on his wedding band. She’d already ruined Ricky’s marriage to his first wife. She wasn’t interested in a repeat performance, no matter how hot he was. And he was definitely hot, with sandy curls and a muscular bod. But she drew the line
at banging a cop. On the other hand, the ride to her hotel would give her a chance to get her answers.
“Sure. Why not?” she said, and followed him out to his compact rental car in the parking lot.
Lia waited until the police station was in their rearview mirror before broaching the subject. “So, Detective, who do you think killed my husband?”
He lifted his hand off the steering wheel as if to say, “Your guess is as good as mine . . .”
“My guess is, the loan sharks finally caught up with him.”
“Why not Carrie Doyle?” Lia asked.
“She remains a person of interest, but I don’t think she did it. She was in love with your husband. She wanted to marry him, but Ricky was taking his time in asking you for a divorce. She pushed him along by purchasing a disposable phone and texting you. She confessed her intentions when Ricky spotted you spying on him from behind a potted plant. She arranged the meeting and told him she’d leave him if he didn’t meet with you.”
“Does she have an alibi for the night of the murder?”
“She does. She was in the lounge in the hotel lobby, having a drink at the bar. The bartender has corroborated her story. She stepped outside to have a cigarette seconds before you exited through the side door. She suspected something was wrong when you blew past her.”
“I was in such a hurry to get out of there.” Lia thought back to that night. She knew the hotel floor plan by heart by then. Instead of waiting for the elevator, she ran down the hall to the stairs. She exited the building through the side door nearest the staircase, and raced down the gravel path to the front of the hotel. “I don’t recall seeing anyone.”
“Security footage from the hotel confirms Doyle’s story.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for a group of students on foot to clear the intersection. “Your husband was bludgeoned multiple times with a butcher knife. Whoever killed him would’ve undoubtedly been covered in his blood. Carrie Doyle is willing to testify that she got a good look at you, and there were no bloodstains on your clothing. She’s the primary reason I’ve decided not to press charges against you.”
Beyond the Garden (Magnolia Series Book 2) Page 17