Dying to Get Her Man

by Judy Fitzwater

  "That's fast," Jennifer observed.

  "Hovey worked in the fast lane," Belle assured her. "I figured my best bet was to let DeSoto think there was a man in my life, that I wasn't interested anymore, and that it wouldn't just be me if he came calling."

  "But it was," Jennifer stated.

  "Yep, but that's because they let him out even earlier than I thought they would. Hopefully he's got the message by now."

  "You said you didn't expect Sam to see the announcement. Why would you expect DeSoto to see it?"

  "I told my coworkers and my neighbors it was coming out. They all think it's legit. If he asks around for me, they'll mention it to him."

  Great. Just in case anyone had missed it in the newspaper, Belle had made sure that all of Atlanta thought Sam and Belle were engaged.

  "Is there any real reason to believe he'd be a threat to you?"

  "I told you. Her apartment was trashed. And the man killed his wife. What more do you need?" Sam stated.

  "Allegedly killed his wife," Jennifer reminded them. "I thought you said there was an actual threat."

  "It was a cut-and-paste thingie put together from newspaper headlines," Belle explained. "It was mailed to my house."

  "Why do you think it's from him?" Jennifer asked.

  Belle shrugged. "Timing. And who else would it be from? Interviewing people about aliens landing in their barns and ghosts in their attics who do the laundry every Tuesday doesn't usually create an I-want-you-dead response."

  "But you said he has no reason to be angry with you," Jennifer said.

  "None except for not answering his letters from prison," Sam pointed out.

  "And not waiting for him until he got out. Why don't you go back home to your family in North Carolina?" Jennifer suggested. That seemed like a perfect solution, at least to her.

  "I certainly don't want him following me there. I can't take that risk."

  The fake engagement might have worked, but only if the threat hadn't been serious. It wasn't something Jennifer would ever do, not even in a novel, but, hey, she wouldn't befriend some wife killer either. Or woof down a burger like that. Or move in on somebody else's man. But the break-in had moved the action to a whole other field. "What if he doesn't buy the story?"

  "DeSoto is not a maniac. I should be fine, once he calms down. He's a reasonable man, or at least he always was to me," Belle assured her.

  "Right. A reasonable man who paid to have his wife murdered and sent you a death threat," Sam said.

  Belle sighed. "May have sent. I wouldn't even be here if Sam hadn't insisted I come back with him. If DeSoto shows up again and threatens me, I'll change my identity and leave—at least until they nail that sucker in the retrial, which they'll do now that Hovey's not around to defend him. But I'm a journalist and that's a last resort. I want my byline to read Belle Renard."

  Finally. Something Jennifer could relate to. She'd never consider letting a publisher put out her books—assuming she ever sold one—under a name other than her own.

  "When I found Belle—" Sam began.

  "How did you find her?" Jennifer asked.

  "Oh, Sam knows where I live," Belle offered.

  "As I was saying," Sam rushed on before Jennifer could comment. He obviously didn't like the look in her eye. "When I found Belle, she told me DeSoto was already loose and she showed me what had happened to her apartment. I couldn't leave her in Atlanta."

  "You should have moved," Jennifer said. "And gotten an unlisted phone number."

  "Do you know how hard it is to find a decent apartment in Atlanta? I'm not going to let that jerk force me to give up where I live and certainly not my job, not until I've tried everything. Don't you see? If I move, all he has to do is follow me home one day."

  Attractive, foolish, and stubborn—a deadly combination.

  "Okay, but why choose Sam as your fiancé?" Jennifer asked.

  "The last thing I remember Sam saying to me when we broke up was, 'If you ever need anything, I'll be there for you.'"

  Broke up. Which meant there had been a relationship. She threw a none-too-friendly look at Sam.

  "And when was that?" Jennifer demanded.

  "Almost fifteen years ago," Sam said, meeting her eyes.

  "But you meant it, didn't you?" Belle asked.

  "It seems to me the operative phrase here is 'broke up,'" Jennifer interrupted, "as in the relationship was over, done, kaput. Haven't you met someone since Sam?"

  "Lots of someones, but none like him."

  Jennifer rolled her eyes. Sam may not get it, but there was more going on here than some death threat. "And the photo?"

  "Was taken at UNC's homecoming dance our sophomore year," Belle stated. "It was the only one I could find with me and some good-looking fellow in formal attire. We haven't changed so much since then, have we, Pepper?"

  Oh, please. And Belle still knew exactly where she kept that photo, even after her move to Atlanta and however many in between.

  "Okay. Now explain to me what you were doing in a bathrobe in Sam's apartment." Jennifer folded her arms and settled back against the padded bench. She'd never claimed any hold over Sam, but she wasn't about to let some woman snooker him away from her, especially not under these circumstances.

  Jennifer reached over and smoothed Sam's hair down. He grabbed her hand and kissed her palm, but she jerked it back. His fault or not, she was not in a particularly affectionate mood, especially not with Belle sitting there staring at them.

  "I got a call early Sunday morning," Sam said, "from one of the guys at the Telegraph asking what the heck was going on, why I hadn't told them about Belle, and if I needed a place to hide when you found out. I thought he was kidding until I opened the style section of the Constitution. I put in a call to a friend who works there. They don't normally give out information about who puts what in the paper, but as I was the prospective groom, he told me it was Belle. I drove up and found her. When she explained what was going on, I insisted she follow me back to Macon. At least if she's with me, I know she's safe."

  Sam slipped an arm behind Jennifer.

  "I hate to be a bore," she said, "but I still haven't heard an explanation for the bathrobe."

  "Better the bathrobe than nothing at all." Belle winked at Sam and Jennifer came straight up in her seat. "Look, I only grabbed a few of my things. The place was a mess. I forgot pajamas."

  That would be the first thing Jennifer would pack if she planned to be away overnight, especially in some strange man's apartment.

  "So now you've moved in."

  "It was late when we got back," Sam said. "I planned to settle Belle someplace safe today, but I've been busy tracking you down. I need to check out what's going on with DeSoto, see if I can find out exactly where he is. As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you might let Belle stay—"

  Jennifer narrowed her eyes at him. Surely he didn't mean...

  "That wouldn't work," Belle insisted. "You don't want to get Jennifer mixed up in all this, Sam. He's been talking about you nonstop since he picked me up. I know how crazy he is about you."

  Jennifer sighed. What kind of answer could she give to that?

  "You're right," Sam agreed. "We don't want to endanger anyone else."

  "But won't DeSoto find Sam?"

  "I doubt he'll look further than my apartment. This is a man who hired his dirty work done. And Sam's address isn't listed anywhere publicly. Surely DeSoto's legal defense dried up most of his money. I should be just fine here in Macon."

  "So what are you planning to do while you're here?" Jennifer asked.

  "I thought I could help Sam." She turned toward him. "I heard through the grapevine that you were coauthoring Hovey's autobiography."

  Every fiber of Jennifer's being went on edge. It was one thing for Belle to move in on her man, but now she was trying to move in on her work with Sam, too.

  "That can wait," Sam told her. "We need to get your situation settled first. I'll alert the authorities th
at you're—"

  "No!" Belle shouted and then lowered her voice. "That wouldn't be a good idea. We shouldn't draw anyone's attention to us. This should all blow over in a few days, a couple of weeks at the most."

  "A couple of weeks?" Jennifer said.

  "Days. I meant days." Belle smiled that little-girl smile of hers.

  Chapter 10

  Thank goodness Belle was gone, tucked safely away at Sam's place. Out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. And Jennifer and Sam were alone, finally, for the first time all evening, with more to talk about than they could possibly have time for.

  Jennifer grabbed a beer for him and a ginger ale for herself out of the fridge, and they sat on the floor, their backs propped up against her sofa, legs stretched out. They were miles away from where they'd been Saturday night, dancing in each other's arms. Now they were as awkward as two sixteen-year-olds on their first date with no idea of what to say to each other.

  She stroked Muffy's fur. The dog lay between them, her head resting on her owner's knee. Jennifer felt as though she should talk to Sam about her feelings toward him, but she couldn't let go of her anger, even if it wasn't his fault. What could she say to him anyway? Heck! She didn't even know what to call him. Pepper? The word made her seethe. Its very existence made her feel as though she didn't know him.

  Even worse was how Belle was manipulating him. Something in her story didn't sound right. The police should have been able to subpoena DeSoto's phone records without any trouble, and Sam would know it, too, if he wasn't so busy protecting her. And what was all that about helping Sam with his book?

  She had no idea how to bring up her doubts about Belle without sounding unreasonable and, heaven forbid, jealous. She opened her mouth to give it a try, but what came out was a safer subject.

  "Suzie Turner was waiting for me when I got home yesterday afternoon. She was looking for you."

  Sam stole a glance in her direction. "Who's Suzie Turner?"

  "Suzanne Gray's niece. Sam, she doesn't think her aunt committed suicide."

  He sighed heavily and took a healthy swallow of beer. "I knew we'd run into at least one."

  "One what?"

  "Doubter. A family member. A close friend. There's usually at least one who doesn't want to accept suicide."

  "Suzie is a reasonable person. She and Suzanne were really close, and she didn't even tell her good-bye. And there's one more thing, Suzie says Suzanne was afraid of death."

  "Most of us are. But most of us don't talk about death unless we're thinking about it. You're not helping your case."

  "But you doubt that it was suicide yourself."

  "We need more than instinct, Jennifer, and more than one relative saying it couldn't be so." He was chugging that beer.

  "Okay, how about Suzanne's lack of a computer or a typewriter? Suzie says her aunt didn't own either."

  "So she borrowed one. The library has them available for public use."

  "She died the night of Hovey's funeral, Sam. If she put together that death scene all by herself, she had lots of preparations to make. I can't see her taking time to run to the library to compose and print up a suicide note when all she had to do was take up pen and paper."

  "I got the coroner's report. I stopped by the police station in between visits to your place."

  No doubt with Belle in tow.

  "It's what we expected," he went on. "There was evidence of an unhealthy ingestion of sleeping pills. There was a lot of the drug in her blood. And she'd drunk a good deal of whiskey. It would have made for a lethal combination. But she died from exposure."

  That made the whole idea of murder less probable. "Then there was no indication of homicide."

  Sam shook his head.

  "I want to see her clothes," Jennifer insisted, drawing her legs up under her and turning to face him.

  "Why?"

  "You said she had on white satin shoes, the dye-to-match kind, I'm sure. Ever walked in those things?"

  Sam raised an eyebrow at her.

  "I suppose not. They're treacherous unless they've been scuffed from walking over pavement. My dad used to run sandpaper over the soles before he'd let me go out to a formal dance. Only here's the hitch. You walk in them too much outside and you ruin them. The frost would have been slick as glass even if she'd scuffed the soles first. Even if she managed somehow not to fall, there'd be wet stains around the edges from walking through that grass, despite its being frozen. The pavement alone would have made the bottoms a mess. So what condition are those shoes in and was there a second pair found at the scene?"

  "I don't know. I'm not sure how we could arrange for a look," he said.

  "If the police don't keep them as evidence, and I don't see how they could if the coroner rules her death a suicide, they'll come back to her next of kin. That would be Marjorie Turner, Suzie's mom and the one who's so fond of you, right? And if you can't get her to let us see them, I'm sure Suzie will find a way."

  "Okay," Sam agreed, "but there's another possible explanation for her death that you don't seem to have thought about."

  "That someone helped Suzanne die? Oh, yes, I have. If this was suicide, Sam, I think she had help. And that's illegal."

  "Exactly my point."

  "You suspect it may have been the sister. No way. Kin only help if the person is terminally ill and suffering. Her sister would have her in therapy or under observation in some hospital, especially considering how close she was to her niece. No, if Suzanne had help, it had to be someone who was as screwed up as she was. In other words, a best-friend type. Have you talked with the co-owner of her business, Kelli Byers? According to Suzie, she's the one with the computer."

  "Not yet. She hasn't returned any of my phone calls. I did get a brochure, in care of the Telegraph, in the mail, so my guess is she plans to continue the business on her own."

  "If she worked with Suzanne on a daily basis, she knows who her close friends were, who might have helped her kill herself, assuming Kelli didn't help her herself."

  "So we've gone from murder to assisted suicide."

  "Nope. I'm still holding out for murder," Jennifer said. "If Suzanne's coat and a second pair of shoes were left in her car, I'll grant you the thin possibility of suicide, but only if the satin shoes are messed up. No coat and no second pair of shoes, it's definitely assisted suicide or murder."

  "On the basis of a coat and a pair of shoes?"

  On the face of it, that did sound rather stupid. "It was really cold that night, cold enough to freeze to death. Suzanne needed the use of her fingers to set the scene, if she was the one who did it, and that would have taken a good bit of time. She obviously wanted everything perfect. Why get cold, fumble around, and mess things up? And why torture herself in the meantime? People commit suicide to end their suffering, not compound it. No, if she did it, she was dressed for the weather right up until the moment she took up those flowers and lay down to die."

  "Not everybody wraps up in a blanket to eat ice cream like you do."

  "I only do that in the winter."

  "July Fourth weekend is not winter."

  "It was particularly breezy that day. Don't try to get me off the subject. Suzanne would have been cold. I'm assuming she didn't have on long johns under that sleeveless dress."

  "Not that I know of."

  "Of course not. It would have ruined the whole effect. And if it was suicide, the person assisting would not have been trying to destroy evidence, only doing as she or he was instructed. Suzanne would have looked around, once everything was set, thrust the shoes and the coat into the hands of her accomplice and told her or him to take them back to her car."

  "Or take them home," Sam suggested.

  "Or take them home," Jennifer repeated. "Darn. But grant me that the lack of a coat and other shoes means we're dealing with a second person on the scene. And she'd need a light source. A flashlight or a lantern. You didn't mention one found at the scene."

  "There wasn't one that I know
of."

  "And when did she take the sleeping pills and drink the whiskey? Before she set everything up? Or after? They'd take some time to work their way into her system. Would she really lie there, exposed in the cold like that, if the drugs hadn't already begun to work?"

  "You do realize you're ignoring one huge problem with your murder theory?"

  She turned and looked him full in the face. "What?"

  "The why. What motive would anyone have to kill Suzanne Gray?"

  "Well, she..." Drat. He was right. She'd been so caught up in the how, she'd forgotten all about the why.

  "The woman was found dead on Hovey's grave," Sam reminded her, "obviously linking the two deaths. I don't think either of us ever seriously considered the possibility of a 'hit.' But if someone was, say, jealous of their relationship, what was the gain in killing Suzanne with Richard already dead?"

  She had no answer for that one.

  "According to Suzie, Suzanne held some kind of fascination for men. Maybe a woman—"

  "Richard was dead. You seem to keep forgetting that fact."

  Right.

  "Go ahead and check into the coat and the shoes if you get a chance," Sam said, offering that much as a peace settlement. "Now do you think we could let Suzanne's death go, at least for one night?"

  "Sure." Jennifer stood up and put her empty can on the dining table. Then she came back and perched on the sofa arm. "You want to talk about something else? I don't like Belle staying with you."

  There it was, out in the open, but he'd asked for it.

  "I'm not all that crazy about it either," Sam said, draining his beer and shifting uncomfortably. Obviously this change of topic was not the one he had in mind.

  She paused, but he didn't offer anything else.

  "When did you find out she'd moved to Atlanta?" she asked.

  "I saw it mentioned in the alumni magazine."