“Stop!” Wilson held up his hand, and I stopped.
“We did ask, Captain,” Russell said quietly.
We waited until Wilson could speak again.
“Okay,” he said in a mostly-calm voice. “Continue.”
I cleared my throat. “As I was saying, I thought Dianne was Jimmy Beak, and so I buzzed her in. But when Gabby and I realized she was a she, and not a he, we knew it wasn’t Jimmy, and so Gabby decided to leave. So it was only Snowflake and me when Dianne finally got upstairs to my condo.” I shrugged. “I didn’t know who she was until she introduced herself.”
Russell actually gasped. “Then what did you do?”
“I fainted. I mean, what would you have done?”
Wilson had no answer, but Russell did. “I would have fainted, too,” he said.
Chapter 30
Wilson started muttering incoherently. While Russell and I struggled to comprehend, he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Advil. He slammed that onto the desk, stood up, and walked over to his filing cabinet.
Russell and I exchanged a meaningful look as a bottle of bourbon emerged from the bottom drawer.
Still muttering, Wilson found his seat and unscrewed the cap. He looked back and forth between the two of us. “Anyone care to join me?”
Well, what do you think?
We passed around the bottle, Russell divvied up the pills, and Wilson asked me to please continue.
“Believe it or not, Dianne wasn’t all that scary,” I said as the bourbon hit my stomach. “For instance, she wasn’t carrying a broomstick.”
“You’re the one that’s scary.” That was Wilson of course.
“She wasn’t scary, but she was rude.” I pointed to the bottle sitting on the desk. “She demanded a bourbon on the rocks.”
“You gave her a drink!?”
“Nooo! You know I don’t stock hard liquor. I don’t even have a filing cabinet, for Lord’s sake.” I huffed indignantly. “I didn’t offer her any champagne, either.”
Wilson had started mumbling to himself again, so I spoke to Russell. “Call me ungracious, but I refused to serve her anything.”
“Way to be tough, Jessie.”
“What did she want?” Wilson demanded.
“She seemed kind of interested in Sensual and Scintillating.”
“What?” both cops asked.
“The book on my coffee table.” I turned to Wilson. “I actually have two copies right now, remember? From when Roslynn came over to brainstorm?”
Wilson groaned and spoke to Russell. “This was on Sunday, you realize. The day after the murder.”
Russell bit his lip and silently got up to return the bourbon to its filing cabinet.
Wilson took a deep breath. “What did Dianne want?” he asked again.
I thought about it. “She was trying to intimidate me. She told me not to trust you.” I made sure I had his eye. “But I do trust you. So it didn’t work, okay?”
“No. It is definitely not okay. Why was she even in town? She tell you that?”
“She was visiting her uncle,” I said as Russell returned to his seat. “Apparently he’s the only person in her family who’s still speaking to her.” I shrugged. “Since she was already in town, she decided to visit me.”
Both the cops were shaking their heads.
“I’m sure she’s gone back to Raleigh,” I said. “She mentioned something about her parole.”
I lost track of the expletives Wilson began spouting. Especially when Russell Densmore joined in.
“What’s wrong?” I asked to interrupt the flow, and at least that stopped Russell.
He told me Dianne would have needed special permission from her parole officer to leave the Raleigh area at all.
“Well then, she must have gotten permission,” I said.
“And pigs fly,” Wilson said.
I again appealed to Russell, and he explained that no parole officer would have given Dianne permission to visit Clarence. “Captain Rye works here, Jessie.” Russell tilted his head toward his boss. “He’s her former fiancé, the guy she tried to set up for murder, and her arresting officer.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
“What was the uncle’s name?” Wilson asked.
“Dianne’s?”
“No, Willow LaSwann’s!” He threw his hands in the air. “Yes, Dianne’s!”
I squinted. “You mean, you don’t know?”
“Why would I know? I’m not the one who’s been chatting with her.”
“But you were engaged to the woman. Surely you met her family?”
“The name, Jessie,” Russell said, quietly but firmly.
The name. I tried to think as Russell looked at a database of Clarence residents—under C for Calloway.
“Dave?” I said, and he clicked a D.
“No,” I changed my mind. “But it was something simple like that. Something common—John!” I exclaimed. “Dianne’s Uncle John.”
“John Calloway.” Wilson pointed at the computer and Russell resumed clicking.
“It’s possible they don’t have the same last name,” I suggested as the three of us scanned the list.
Russell pointed. “Three John Calloways, Captain.”
“What are you waiting for?” Wilson asked, and he shot up.
“Get Sass for back up,” Wilson called after him. “And contact the parole officer.”
***
I collapsed into the chair the lieutenant had vacated and sighed wearily. “Why, oh why, didn’t you tell me she was out of prison?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Forewarned is forearmed, Wilson. I was completely unprepared when she showed up at my doorstep. And I’m sorry if I didn’t do the right thing.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. You’re right.”
“I am?” I shook my head. “I mean, I am. Married people shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”
Wilson almost grinned. “Married people?”
“Almost-married people.”
“Almost?”
I rolled my eyes. “Can we just concentrate on the fact that I was right, and you were wrong? You should have told me Dianne was out of prison.”
“Yep. And you should have told me about her visit.”
Darn if that wasn’t a good point.
“Okay, so I’m sorry, too,” I said.
“Great. Now move.” He pointed to the computer behind me, and I actually laughed.
“Are you feeling well?” I asked. “You’re not going to try to use this thing? Without Russell?”
“I do know how. It’ll just take a little longer.”
“A little?” While we switched chairs, I asked why he had sent Russell to check on Dianne. “Shouldn’t you be doing that?”
“Nope. I need to sit this one out.”
“Russell will lead?”
“He knows how.”
I pointed to the computer screen. “What are we looking at?”
Wilson showed me the document he had pulled up and clicked to two others that looked about the same. “Parole records of the three people I’m most suspicious of.”
“Other than Dianne?” I said, and his shoulders visibly stiffened. “Do you really think she’d commit murder again? Just to get back at you?”
“That woman is capable of anything, Jessie.” He stopped what he was doing and twirled his chair around to look at me. “Take a guess what I would have done if she’d shown up unexpectedly on my doorstep.”
“You would have fainted?”
“Bingo.”
I took a long deep breath. Maybe several long deep breaths. At some point I asked how Dianne could have known where my car was that night.
Wilson admitted he had no idea, but he was also quick to point out that Dianne had plotted another murder quite successfully. “She only did time for manslaughter. But I know for a fact she planned it. It was first degree murder, Jessie.”
I shudde
red as he continued to enlighten me. “It’s no great secret where you live, and your license plate is no secret at all.”
I shuddered again. “She’s been spying on me?”
Wilson reached out both hands. “I don’t know, okay? And I don’t want to scare you. But Dianne’s dangerous. Trust me.”
“I do trust you. But what about size?” I asked. “You told me no woman would have the strength to carry Miriam across that parking lot. Dianne didn’t have the strength to do this, did she?”
He stared straight into me. “That’s what everyone said last time.”
***
Waiting.
I am not good at waiting. But unless I wanted to dive into the filing cabinet’s stash of bourbon, I had absolutely nothing to do.
Wilson kept busy enough. First he called the police commissioner to report what was going on. Then he worked with those parole documents and made a few notes.
I sat around, twiddled my thumbs, and desperately tried to concentrate on Willow LaSwann’s water and well issues. When the phone rang I jumped ten feet in the air.
Wilson picked up, and with much wild gesturing from me, he put the conversation on speaker.
Dianne’s parole officer informed us she had last reported in the previous Wednesday, and that he was coordinating with Lieutenant Densmore and the Raleigh Police Department to verify her alibi for Saturday.
“You with her now?” Wilson asked.
“Oh, yeah,” the parole officer said. “We’re having ourselves a little tête-à-tête at the county jail. We’re bonding, here. Waiting for a call from your lieutenant to decide what charges to book her on—breaking parole or murder.”
Dianne Calloway let out a string of obscenities in the background.
I closed my eyes and prayed for strength.
***
“I don’t know if this is good news, or bad news,” Lieutenant Densmore said as he walked in.
“What?” Wilson and I asked in unison.
“She has an alibi, Captain. It’s solid.”
I ignored the ringing in my ears to listen to the particulars Russell was reporting.
Evidently Dianne had been seen—or at least heard—in Raleigh on Saturday night when she visited her mother. Ms. Calloway senior corroborated Dianne’s claim, and several of her neighbors had heard the heated argument between the two women.
“They sure it was Dianne?” Wilson asked, and then corrected himself. “Never mind,” he said. “There’s no mistaking that voice when she’s angry.”
Russell told us the Raleigh police were certain. “Mother and daughter argued about a car. Dianne wanted to borrow her mother’s car to come here. Mom said she wouldn’t have any part in Dianne breaking her parole, no matter how misguided her Uncle John was. Daughter took the bus.”
“You talked to the driver?” Wilson asked.
“We woke up everyone,” Russell said. “The drivers, to and from, the desk clerk who sold her the round-trip ticket, and five of the passengers.”
By all accounts, Dianne Calloway had arrived in Clarence late Sunday afternoon and left on Monday afternoon.
“She wasn’t here at all on Saturday,” Russell summarized the main point.
“That agrees with what she told me Sunday,” I said. “She claimed she was only in town for the day.” I felt relieved at this small bit of good news, but the two cops frowned.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t it good she has an alibi?”
“Think about it,” Wilson said, and I shuddered from head to toe.
If Dianne Calloway wasn’t the killer, who was?
Chapter 31
“You don’t happen to know anything about water rights in the Wild West?” I asked Wilson as we finished our Cheerios.
At least that got a chuckle out of him. And Lord knows we needed some levity that morning. Wilson had spent the night with Snowflake and me. I told him I would sleep better that way. He told me the same. Neither of us had slept at all.
I yawned excessively and stood up to pour more coffee. “I thought maybe Gabby could get Willow out of this pickle,” I said. “But no such luck.”
Wilson gave me the same puzzled look he used every time I mentioned Gabby Yates.
“She has a degree in history,” I said as I sat back down. “But in European history, not American. 99 percent of Adelé’s books are set in Europe, so tell me why I chose now to try a western?”
“Because you were getting bored with medieval Europe,” Wilson said. “What did you call them? Dreary dukes and dismal lords?”
I sipped my coffee. “Maybe. But now I may have to break down and do some actual research.”
I curled my lip at that altogether unpleasant prospect, and Wilson chuckled again. “Adelé Nightingale never worries about facts,” he reminded me. “Do what you usually do, Jessie. Twist the history to fit your story, and concentrate on sex scenes.”
“But I can’t write sex scenes anymore. So here I am. Reduced to obsessing about the facts.”
“What is the world coming to?”
“You mean what’s Adelé Nightingale coming to.” I frowned at my cereal bowl. “Unemployment is what.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Perpetual Pleasures Press is threatening to dump me.”
“No way! You just made the Hall of Fame.”
“But only for my past work.” I studied my cat, who had finished eating her own breakfast and settled onto Wilson’s lap. “Maybe I really should try writing children’s books.”
Wilson choked on his coffee. “Would you stop doing that?” he pleaded. “Warn me next time.”
I told him to be thankful he wasn’t driving and kept hallucinating out loud. “My pen name could be Auntie Abigail Nightingale. And Snowflake could be my protagonist.” I reached over to pet my protagonist. “She could solve crimes or something equally ludicrous. Mother could do the illustrations.”
Snowflake seemed to like the idea, but Wilson wasn’t convinced. “Auntie Abigail?” he said. “You really do need to get some sleep.”
I yawned in agreement, vowed to tackle a sex scene before the day was through, and asked Wilson about his own plans for the day. “I have a hard time imagining you sitting on the sidelines during any murder investigation.”
“Unfortunately, I can say the same about you.”
I smirked. “Your plans, Captain Rye?”
“Act irritated while Densmore and Sass track down the whereabouts of every perp who might have it in for me. Willow LaSwann has a better chance of finding water in her well than we have of finding the murderer this way.”
“What about those three men you were looking at last night?” I asked, but he insisted they were only remote possibilities.
I remained positive and suggested that most of the “perps” were still in prison. “That should narrow down the possibilities, correct?”
“What about family and friends?” Wilson insisted prisoners often have connections on the outside, making the list of suspects almost infinite.
He shooed Snowflake down and got up to fill our cups again. “There is another possibility,” he said. “What if my enemy isn’t a criminal? Or wasn’t a criminal until Saturday?” He set my cup in front of me and sat back down. “What if it’s another cop?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I hope so. But every cop in North Carolina knows the Dianne Calloway story. Maybe someone thinks I don’t deserve my job. Maybe Jimmy Beak and Alistair Pritt aren’t alone in their logic.”
“That’s impossible.” I shook my indignant head. “You’re a great cop. You absolutely deserve your job.”
“You want to hear this or not?”
I shut up, and Wilson reminded me how he had become the chief homicide investigator on the Clarence force. He applied right after the Dianne Calloway fiasco because he’d become the subject of far too much gossip down in Raleigh.
I knew all that, but then he gave me a bit more history. “I was the only applicant not a
lready on the force here,” he said. “Some other people were hoping for the promotion.”
I writhed uncomfortably. “Russell?”
“Didn’t even apply.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Everyone knows Densmore will go far,” Wilson said. “But he’s young. Three years ago he wasn’t even thirty yet.”
“What about the people who did apply?”
“Any one of them could be mad at me. Especially the other two finalists.”
“It’s like the Focus on Fiction Contest,” I said. “Maybe one of the finalists is bitter.”
“Which is where this whole idea falls flat. Neither of them is bitter.”
Apparently candidate number one, Gene Fagan, had left the police force, moved back to his hometown in Knoxville, and was doing very well for himself as a private investigator.
“Fagan’s one of the best PIs in the whole southeast,” Wilson said.
“And the other finalist?” I asked “Is he bitter?”
“She.” Wilson took a deep breath. “Darla Notari is dead.”
“Dead!? What!? Where? When? How?”
Oh, yes. I had lots of questions. But my infuriating fiancé chose that moment to inform me he needed get going.
Yeah, right.
Snowflake and I followed him toward the bathroom, and watched while he brushed his teeth. And then we watched while he rummaged around in the closet, looking for a tie.
I finally got the full story once he was standing in front of the mirror tying said tie.
“Lots of people were surprised Notari didn’t get the job I now have.” He looked at my reflection behind him in the mirror. “She was stellar.”
“So are you.”
“Maybe, but Darla Notari was a groundbreaker on the Clarence force. She was one of the first women to make sergeant, and the first woman to be promoted to lieutenant. And she was married with two kids. She was one of those super-women.
“But she died in the line of duty,” I said quietly.
He turned around. “How do you do that?”
I chalked it up to intuition, but considering Wilson’s behavior, it wasn’t very difficult to figure out.
“Well, you’re right, Jessie. When she didn’t get the promotion, Darla moved her family and took a job as the sheriff of one of the counties outside Atlanta. It was a great job.” He frowned. “Until she got killed.”
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