The Only Suspect

by Jonnie Jacobs

  A cell phone rang. One of the other women reached into her purse, checked the number, and then turned off the phone. “Do you need the rest of us to stay?”

  “Were you in the wine cellar?”

  “We all went to have a look,” she replied, looking a little embarrassed. “But that’s all.”

  Hannah groaned. Half a dozen additional people tromping through what little evidence there might be.

  “Are any of you besides Season friends with the owner?” Dallas asked.

  “I’ve met him,” Don said. “Season brought me to one of his parties here. But can’t say that I know him beyond that.”

  Dallas looked to the others, who shook their heads.

  “Give us your names and contact information,” Dallas said. “And then the others of you can go if you want.”

  While Dallas took down the information, Hannah resumed her questioning of Season. “You said Ben Albright has been gone two weeks. How long have you been here?”

  “Just a couple of days. I’m staying here while the floors at my place are being refinished.”

  “Was this the first time you’d been to the wine cellar?”

  “Right. Ben told me I could. Told me which section I could take bottles from and which I couldn’t.”

  As if Hannah was there to investigate a stolen bottle of wine. “So you have no idea how long the body has been there?”

  Season shook her head, looking a little green around the gills. “It’s creepy to think I was walking around here, sleeping and eating, and all the while there was a dead body down there.” Then another thought seemed to hit her. “The woman wasn’t like ... like being held prisoner there, was she?”

  Hannah didn’t think so, but she had to be careful what she said. “We’re looking into everything.”

  Season reached for her wine glass and took a large swallow. “Sorry, I don’t do well with stuff like this.”

  “Did anything seem off about the house during your stay?” Hannah asked. “Any sign of a break-in? Any indication that someone besides you had been here?”

  Season shook her head. “I’m out during the day. But everything looked in order when I returned.”

  “How about today?”

  She turned to Don. “You helped me carry the groceries in this afternoon. Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “No, but I wasn’t looking either.”

  Dallas had finished with the other guests and now rejoined the questioning. “Tell us about Ben Albright. Is he married?”

  “Divorced. It’s been a number of years. His ex-wife has remarried, I believe. She lives in Portland.”

  “Kids?”

  “Two girls, both in college now. They lived with their mother growing up.”

  “But they might have a key to Ben’s house,” Hannah noted.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Season said.

  “You had a key?”

  “Right. I’ve had one since he moved here. I sometimes come over and check the place when he’s out of town for an extended period.”

  “Who else has a key?”

  “His cleaning lady, I imagine. He told me not to worry about leaving everything spic and span because she’d be coming in to clean before he got home.”

  Charlie had picked up his plate again and was looking longingly at the food. “We going to be much longer?” he asked.

  Hannah looked at Dallas. “I think we’re about finished for now,” she said. “Go ahead with your meal.”

  Season glared at him. “Honestly, Charlie, I don’t see how you can even think of food right now.”

  Charlie winked at her. “It’s your cooking, babe. It’s irresistible.”

  Season turned to Hannah with a look of alarm. “You all, the cops I mean, you’ll take the body tonight, won’t you?”

  “I imagine it’s already out of there. If not, it will be soon.”

  “And do you ... you know, clean up afterward?”

  Dallas snorted.

  “There’s not much to clean up,” Hannah said. “But I can give you the number of a place that specializes in crime-scene cleanup, if you’d like.”

  “There’s such a specialty?” Season looked disgusted, but she took the number. “No way could I walk on that floor without having it cleaned.”

  The body hadn’t, Hannah noted, kept her from drinking the wine.

  “Do you suppose this Ben Albright had anything to do with it?” Dallas asked Hannah later when they were in the car.

  “If the body is really Maureen Russell, he’s been gone since before she disappeared.”

  “What about Season?”

  “If she’s a killer,” Hannah said, “she’s an awfully good actress. But it’s worth looking into. We should also follow up on the ex-wife and daughters. Maybe one of them harbors a grudge against Albright.”

  “What’s their connection with Maureen Russell though? Assuming she’s our victim.”

  As Dallas approached the curve without hitting the brake, Hannah braced herself for a sharp turn. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? But the killer had to have had a reason for dumping the body there. And it had to be someone who knew Albright was away.”

  Dallas nodded. “Sam would know. The medical community isn’t that large.”

  “So would half the hospital staff, as well as neighbors, friends of the cleaning woman, and God knows who else.”

  “But none of them had reason to kill Maureen Russell.”

  “And Sam did?” Hannah couldn’t keep the irritation from her voice.

  “You said it yourself, Hannah. The killer had to have had a reason for dumping the body where he did. It wasn’t a random thing.”

  “So?”

  “Think about it. Why would he choose a wine cellar?” Dallas didn’t wait for her to answer. “Because it’s cool, right?”

  “That’s one reason.” The cellar had been unusually cool, in fact.

  “And a cool temperature will slow the process of decay.”

  She nodded.

  “Now ask yourself why someone might want to do that.” Dallas didn’t wait for her to respond. “It makes perfect sense if he wants to confuse us about time of death.”

  “Maybe the killer just didn’t want the body to smell until he figured out what to do with it.”

  “They go hand in hand, Hannah. Sam wanted us to think she was killed after the ransom call. He was probably planning on moving the body in another day or two outside in the elements. This whole kidnap thing is a ploy. You’ve got to see that. As soon as it’s clear we’re looking at him as a potential suspect, he comes up with the kidnap story.”

  “But he didn’t know he was going to run into me at a bar,” Hannah protested. “And I didn’t get the feeling he’d planned on telling me about the kidnapping.”

  “Maybe the timing was fortuitous. But Sam’s been saying all along that she was dead, don’t forget.” Dallas hit the brakes for a stop sign. “You’ve got to admit that Sam looks good for it.”

  Hannah silently conceded that he did, and she couldn’t figure out why that bothered her. “First things first,” she said. “We need to ID the body.”

  “We’ll have Sam take a look. And if it’s Maureen Russell, we’re guaranteed of getting our search warrant.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Maureen was dead. Murdered. Another woman I’d loved, gone. My body was numb, but inside the pain was so raw it took my breath away.

  Rain from a rare late-spring storm pounded the kitchen window. The wind whipped branches, and thunder sounded in the distance. Aptly bleak weather for my bleak mood.

  The rain would pass. Maureen would be dead forever.

  “You going to be okay, Sam?” My father stood behind my chair, one hand resting lovingly on my shoulder.

  With my head buried in my hands, a minimal shrug was all I could muster. Besides, I wasn’t sure how to answer.

  For the moment, I was managing. Barely.

  But when I looked beyond the pres
ent, either forward or back, I was so overwhelmed with despair I thought surely it would rip me in two.

  Maureen was dead.

  I’d known when Dallas and Hannah Montgomery showed up at my door shortly after ten last night. Before they said a word, I knew in my gut what they’d come for. Even when they said they weren’t sure and needed me to identify her, I knew.

  I’d accompanied them to the cool, dark basement of the morgue to make a formal identification. I rode in the backseat, fighting tears and nausea and praying for a miracle. Just as I had when I’d gone to identify Lisa’s body a lifetime ago.

  “Do you want to take a moment to prepare yourself?” Hannah asked before the coroner’s assistant pulled open the drawer.

  How could you possibly prepare for something like this? There was no way I’d ever be ready. I shook my head. The sooner I got it over with, the better.

  The assistant wheeled a gurney out of storage, and Dallas pulled back the sheet to reveal her head.

  There’s nothing that brings home the harsh reality of death like standing next to the bloated, battered, and partially decomposed face of your wife. I felt lightheaded. Sick. Visions of Maureen, vital and animated, flashed in my mind then blended with those of Lisa, dead. A man should never have to witness a woman he loves so violated. And I’d had to do it twice.

  The body on the slab was Maureen’s, but I had trouble recognizing the woman I’d known and loved in life. And now this last image of her would be forever imprinted in my mind.

  “It’s her,” I mumbled.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said.

  I nodded numbly and managed to make it to the restroom before breaking down. Huge, shivering sobs racked my body until I could barely breathe. With the tears came a wash of guilt and self-loathing and a frightening black hole of unanswered questions.

  I splashed water on my face. Studied my reflection in the mirror. It was my fault. I’d done everything wrong from the start. And there was no way to undo it now.

  Dallas was waiting when I emerged. “We need to go over a few things.”

  I could barely think, much less talk. But I tried. Yes, I knew Ben Albright. Our paths sometimes crossed at the hospital, and we’d served on an outreach committee together. No, I didn’t know he’d gone to Italy, and I’d never met Season Connell. And yes, dammit, I was sticking to my kidnap “story.”

  “You told us the last time you saw your wife was the Sunday morning she disappeared,” Hannah said. “Is that true?”

  I hesitated, but only for a second. If I started changing my story now, I’d be in deeper trouble than I was already. I nodded.

  They’d finally driven me home, where only my father’s vigilance kept me from drowning my pain in booze.

  Now I sat at the kitchen table while the rain pelted the windows. My eyes were bloodshot and puffy, as much from lack of sleep, I suspected, as grief. I wondered if I’d ever be able to sleep again.

  Molly and Chase were in the other room. He’d come last night with Dad to stay with Molly while I went to the morgue. She was already asleep by then, so I hadn’t told her about Maureen until this morning. She’d taken the news quietly. I figured it probably hadn’t fully sunk in yet.

  For her sake, I vowed to be strong. But I wasn’t doing such a good job of that today.

  Dad refilled my coffee cup, though I couldn’t remember drinking any. “You want some toast or an egg?”

  I shook my head.

  “You have to eat.”

  The thought of food turned my stomach. “Later,” I mumbled.

  Dad gave my shoulder another comforting squeeze. “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” he offered kindly.

  Bullshit. The way I saw it, God had nothing to do with what life dealt, and people handled what they had to. Either that or they went off the deep end. I wasn’t sure which was going to happen to me.

  “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t followed the van, if I’d paid the full ransom—”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Sam. It was the kidnapper who took her in the first place. He’s the one who killed her. You did everything you could.”

  I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup. “Tell that to the cops. They don’t even believe I even got a ransom call. They think I made the whole thing up.”

  “They’ve told you that?”

  “Not in so many words. But I know it’s what they’re thinking. They think I killed her.”

  Dad got that studied look on his face I remembered from when I was growing up. He was searching for a way to put my mind at ease. Finally, he said, “They can’t have evidence of that.”

  But they might, and that terrified me.

  The doorbell rang. Dad shot me a questioning look. “You think it’s the press again?” He’d fielded several phone calls already that morning.

  “It’s not even nine,” I pointed out.

  “You want me to answer it?”

  I wanted to ignore it, but I pulled myself to my feet. “I’ll do it.”

  My gaze focused on the police cruisers in front of the house before it shifted to the three men at the door. Two uniforms and Dallas.

  My gut clenched. They’d come after me already.

  “We’ve got a warrant to search your house and car,” Dallas said, forgoing any preliminaries.

  I yanked the sheet of paper from his hands and scanned it quickly. “Not before I call my lawyer.”

  “Go ahead, call your lawyer. He’s going to tell you there’s not a damn thing you can do.”

  Jesse wasn’t quite as blunt, but the message was the same. The cops were within their rights, and I couldn’t do much except demand an inventory of what they took. An hour later it lay on the kitchen table, where my dad and I were again huddled, nursing cups of lukewarm coffee. Chase had taken a distressed Molly out for waffles when the cops arrived, sparing her the further upset of seeing them tear her home apart, and they weren’t yet back.

  I knew Hannah Montgomery had to be wrong in even thinking that Chase could be behind the kidnapping. Yet ever since she’d raised the possibility, I hadn’t been able to push it completely from my mind. But I couldn’t banish him from my life without explaining, and that was something I couldn’t bring myself to do. Besides, if you couldn’t trust family, whom could you trust?

  Dad examined the inventory sheet. “It’s pretty vague,” he said. His tone made it clear he was hoping I’d dismiss the search as meaningless.

  But I couldn’t. “Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.” They’d taken some clothing—Maureen’s and mine—some financial records, the computer, and stuff from the garage. “What’s worse,” I added, “is I don’t know why they took what they did.”

  The cops had also swabbed the kitchen and bathroom drains and a hodgepodge of odd discolorations on the walls. Memories of the blood I’d washed away Sunday morning settled in my stomach like spoiled meat.

  “When they don’t find anything incriminating,” Dad said, “they’ll have to realize you had nothing to do with it. They’ll be forced to look elsewhere.”

  But what if they found something? My memory of that Saturday was still blank.

  “Maybe they’ll look elsewhere. Maybe not. You saw what happened when Lisa was killed.”

  “Sam, you—”

  I gave a humorless laugh. “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

  Dad was quiet a moment. “Chase used to say that all the time when you two were kids.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I always thought it was stupid. Still do.”

  “Besides,” he said, “this is different.”

  “How so?”

  “They won’t find anything that ties you to her murder.”

  “They’ll make whatever they find fit their purpose. Believe me, I ought to know.”

  When I’d stood trial for Lisa’s murder, the DA made a big point of the similarities between a coil of rope in our garage and the rope that bound Lisa’s hands. He presented expert testimony to back up his argument tha
t the frayed ends of the two samples matched. The DA also found a witness who testified she heard harsh words just before she saw Lisa and me leave the house the day she was killed, though I hadn’t been anywhere near the house. And, of course, there was the testimony of Lisa’s mother regarding the bruises on Lisa’s arm.

  As far as I was concerned, it was all a crap shoot. I’d gotten off once, but only by a lucky fluke. There was no guarantee I’d get off a second time.

  “You need a lawyer,” Dad announced. “Not Jesse. A real lawyer.”

  “Jesse was a real lawyer. A damned good one too.”

  “Was, Sam. You need someone who’s a lawyer right now.”

  “I’ll get some names,” I said just to mollify him. How the hell was I going to afford a private defense attorney?

  I stood up and rinsed my cup in the sink.

  Dad drummed his fingers on the table. “What are you going to do about a funeral?”

  “I don’t know.” I was still having trouble absorbing the fact that Maureen was dead. I hadn’t begun to think beyond that.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to sound hardhearted, but there are practical matters that need to be dealt with. If you’d like me to help—”

  “A memorial service rather than a funeral,” I told him. “And she wanted to be cremated.”

  We’d discussed this only once, in passing, on a drive that took us by the cemetery outside of town. We’d been headed into the country for a picnic, and death was the last thing on our minds. But Maureen said the idea of being buried gave her goosebumps. She’d rather be cremated, she’d said, and her ashes scattered. It wasn’t much to base plans on, but it was the best I had.

  “Any idea where you’d like to hold it?”

  I shrugged.

  “The pastor at the community church is a good man.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Dad looked at his hands. His tone was hushed. “Do you know when they’ll release the body?”

  The body. An image of Maureen’s distorted features flashed into my mind. “The autopsy is set for tommorrow,” I said, “so probably in a couple of days.”