by Jean Thomas
“I suppose so. It’s funny, though.”
“What is?”
“If it’s the same car I noticed on the road before we stopped at the café, and I’m fairly sure it is, that means it stopped when we stopped and then managed to catch up to us again.”
“So?”
Mark wasn’t concerned. He thought it was nothing but pure coincidence. Clare didn’t, which was why she kept her eye on the sedan, hoping to catch a glimpse of the driver. But whoever was at the wheel—and she had the impression it was a man and not a woman—kept just enough distance between himself and the SUV to prevent her from seeing his face.
They had entered St. Boniface Parish, where Terry made her home, when Clare became conscious that Mark was regularly checking his rearview mirror. So he was concerned about the sedan.
Neither he nor Clare tried now to put it into words—that the blue sedan was deliberately following them. If the blue sedan was deliberately following them, then who was it? And why?
It was unnerving, keeping her tense. It was only when they approached the parish seat where Terry was being held that she felt relief. The sedan that seemed to be shadowing them turned off on a side road and disappeared from view.
“You see,” Mark said. “He just happened to be going our way.”
Clare supposed he was right, except she’d never trusted coincidences.
* * *
The jail was located in a back wing of the St. Boniface courthouse. After explaining to the burly officer behind the desk they were here to visit Clare’s sister, they were asked to produce IDs, checked for weapons and required to sign in.
Another uniformed officer was summoned. She conducted them along a corridor into a small, cheerless room that had no windows and was furnished with nothing more than a table and several straight-back chairs.
“Wait here,” she instructed them. “I’ll bring Mrs. Riconi to you.”
After the door had closed behind her, Mark observed dryly, “If she’s the matron of this place, she looks too young and frail for the job.”
“Don’t underestimate her. She has a reputation for being tough when she has to be.”
They seated themselves at the table.
“Hard as a rock,” Mark complained about the chair under him. “Guess they don’t want visitors getting comfortable and staying too long.”
Clare worried her bottom lip as they waited for Terry’s arrival. “I’ve been thinking about why Boerner wouldn’t provide Terry with an alibi. If he denied she was ever in his shop, then the police wouldn’t look elsewhere for Joe’s killer, which was exactly what happened.”
“How would that have benefitted Boerner?”
“Suppose he was involved himself somehow in Joe’s death and that it had to do with your amulet. Maybe his own as well, and if the police started to investigate him and learned about the amulets—”
“Clare, what was I saying back in New Orleans about a lot of speculation?”
“I know, but there’s something else. What if Boerner had a partner, and they had a falling out, and that’s why he was murdered? If there was a partner, it could also explain why Boerner didn’t enlist me right away to go after you. Could be he needed to consult first with that partner before he offered me his deal.”
“Again the speculation.”
“But don’t you see—”
She didn’t get to finish her persuasive effort. The door opened. The officer escorted her sister into the room.
The sight of Terry in an orange jumpsuit looking more forlorn than she had on Clare’s earlier visit saddened her. But there was more than just the jail garb that troubled Clare. The sisters shared the same coloring, fair hair and blue eyes. Terry’s hair, however, had a lankness about it. And surely there were lines in her face that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen her.
She shouldn’t be in this place. Clare stood up and the two sisters embraced, clinging to each other for a long moment.
“I’ll be just outside,” Clare heard the officer say. “Rap on the door when you’re finished.”
The woman left them, shutting the door behind her. Clare felt Terry stiffen in her arms. When she stepped away from her, she saw that Terry’s bewildered gaze had discovered the presence of Mark, who had risen to his feet behind the table.
She’s wondering who he is and what he’s doing here.
Clare hastily introduced him. “This is Army Lieutenant Mark Griggs. He’s a friend who’s here to help us.”
Terry’s puzzled gaze turned to Clare. “How did you come to—”
“Let’s sit down, and I’ll explain everything.”
She led Terry to the table where they settled side by side across from Mark, who seated himself again after reaching over to shake her sister’s hesitant hand.
Scooting her chair around to face Terry, Clare launched into the story of where and how she had met Mark. And, of course, why. She tried to lighten the tale without omitting the essentials, but the distressed expression on her sister’s face told her that Terry wasn’t happy about any of it.
When Clare ended her account with their discovery of Malcolm Boerner’s body and their decision to visit Terry, her sister’s face registered a look of serious alarm.
“What have you gotten yourself into? And all on my account. No, Clare, no!”
“It’s all right, Terry. I’m not going to stand by and see you convicted of a murder you didn’t commit,” she promised her fiercely.
Mark added his assurance that he would look after Clare, do his best to see to it that she came to no harm, but Terry just kept shaking her head. Without waiting for her to compose herself, he leaned toward her with an earnest “Mrs. Riconi—Terry, we need you to help us help you.”
She didn’t answer him at first, and when she did it was with uncertainty. “How?”
“I’d like you to tell me just what happened that day after you came back from New Orleans.”
“I’ve gone over all of this before.”
“But not for me.”
Terry’s gaze swiveled to Clare, as if needing some form of confirmation from her. Clare nodded her encouragement.
“All right,” she complied.
She went on to give Mark what he asked for in a flat, mechanical voice. The kind of voice, Clare thought, that you used to keep your emotions in check in strained circumstances. It was her sister’s familiar method for handling stress that threatened to be unbearable otherwise.
“When I got home, I was a little surprised to find Joe’s van in the carport. His shift wasn’t supposed to end that early. Not that it worried me. Not then. It was only after I parked my car next to his and entered the kitchen from the carport that I started to wonder if something was wrong.”
“Why?” Mark asked.
“Why? Because his service revolver was sitting on the kitchen counter. Joe was never careless like that with his gun. That’s when it occurred to me that...well, that he might have been drinking.”
“What then?”
“I picked up the revolver, meaning to lock it back in the case where it belonged in our bedroom. I never got to the bedroom. I only got as far as the living room. Joe was there on the floor. I thought he might be drunk and passed out. It had happened like that once before.”
“Only he wasn’t passed out.”
“No, he wasn’t passed out. He was dead. The police found me there kneeling beside his body. I still had the revolver in my hand. Joe’s revolver that turned out to be the gun that killed him.”
“Terry, who called the police and sent them to your house?”
“Oh, that.”
She frowned, as if searching her memory. As if, Clare thought, she was in the same dazed state that must have gripped her that afternoon when the police arrived to discove
r her waiting there next to her husband’s body.
When Terry finally answered Mark, it was in that same wooden voice. “The woman next door. Yes, that’s right.” She went on to explain it. “They told me Joe must have left the hose running out front to water one of our flower beds. The neighbor came home from shopping to find the water spilling over onto her property.”
“She shut it off?”
“She’s a crank. She wouldn’t have done that. She would have done what she did do before I got home myself.”
“Which was?”
“Marched up to the door and banged on it to complain. When she didn’t get an answer, she looked through one of the windows and saw Joe’s body on the floor.”
“And rushed back home to call the cops, huh?”
Terry nodded.
Clare remained silent, satisfied to let Mark do the questioning. He was very good at it, handling it smoothly. It made her wonder if he was experienced with interrogation, perhaps with insurgents in combat zones.
She kept her gaze trained on her sister, her concern deepening. Terry had always been thin, but was she even thinner now? Or was it just the shadows under her eyes that made Clare imagine that?
I’ve got to get her out of here.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Mark said. “If, as Clare told me, the M.E. fixed the time of your husband’s death approximately two hours before you arrived home, how could you be charged with your husband’s death?”
No longer willing to keep still, Clare answered for her sister with an angry “Because they’re imbeciles, that’s why. They theorized that Terry must have fled the house in a panic after she killed Joe and wandered the back roads for those two hours in a daze before she realized she had to go back and destroy the evidence. They even managed to back it up with a witness who swore he saw her speeding toward home on one of those roads.”
“Is that true?” Mark asked Terry. “Were you on one of those back roads?”
“Yes, but only because it was a shortcut home on my way back from New Orleans.”
“So, even with your fingerprints on the gun, it’s all circumstantial evidence.”
But enough to convict her with an aggressive prosecutor and an unsympathetic jury, Clare thought fearfully. That fear must have registered on her face. It’s why Terry, playing the big sister, must have placed her hand over Clare’s. It was an action meant to comfort her, even though Clare knew Terry had to be sharing the same fear.
Mark had another question for Terry. “You ever learn why your husband came off duty before his shift was scheduled to end?”
“They told me he wasn’t feeling well and asked to be relieved.”
Mark looked thoughtful for a moment. “What if that was just an excuse?” he said. “What if he had another reason for going home early? Like maybe there was someone he was going to meet back at the house, and he didn’t want anyone to know about it.”
Now who’s speculating? Clare thought. But Mark had a good argument. Someone had managed to murder Joe with his own gun. Someone he must have trusted.
“I don’t know,” Terry said. “Joe never mentioned anything like that to me, although he did know I was going to be gone all afternoon. But not to New Orleans and Malcolm Boerner’s shop. I told him I was going to Baton Rouge to do some shopping.”
Clare continued to think about that unknown someone. Asking herself if it could be the same someone who had murdered Boerner. Another possibility began to form in her mind, but she waited to express it until Mark finished questioning Terry.
She listened while he asked her sister about her husband’s years as a mercenary, seeking that bit of useful information that had brought them here. The something that could link the past to the present, provide an explanation for two murders.
Mark’s effort was wasted, though. Terry could tell them nothing that would spark a worthwhile connection. Joe Riconi had been unwilling to reveal anything to his wife about those years except vague references to his existence then.
It wasn’t until Mark sat back in his chair, clearly disappointed, that Clare found the opportunity to introduce her own idea.
“Mark, show Terry your amulet.”
“What for?”
“Just bear with me, please.”
Mark obliged her by removing the amulet from around his neck and placing it on the table. Clare reached over and slid the amulet in front of her sister.
“Terry, have you ever seen anything like this before? Could Joe have had one like it?”
Terry gazed at her. “This is what you told me Malcolm Boerner sent you to get, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Clare said, not bothering to add that Boerner may already have had another amulet either similar or identical to this one.
Terry bent her head, examining the piece for a moment before shaking her head. “There’s nothing about it that’s familiar. As for Joe having one like it...” She shook her head again. “If he did, I never saw it and he never mentioned it.”
Which, as secretive as Joe Riconi was, Clare thought, didn’t mean that he didn’t have such an amulet of his own and kept it hidden from his wife.
Was Mark thinking the same thing? Was that why, before Terry could seek an explanation for Clare’s interest in a further amulet, for which she had no good answer, he abruptly asked her sister, “Any chance of Clare and I getting into your house? I wouldn’t mind having a look around. That is, if you have no objection.”
“I don’t have any objection, but the police would. The house is still a crime scene, locked and yellow taped they tell me. Something about the forensic team being delayed by another crime scene, and until they can get in...”
“The house won’t be released,” Clare said.
“It was hard enough getting permission for my lawyer to enter with a police escort. She had to bring me the stack of mail that had piled up on Joe’s desk. There are bills that need to be paid. I have to know whether there are sufficient funds in the bank to cover my legal fees.” She expressed her unwillingness for the job with a soft sigh. “I haven’t got around yet to sorting through the bundle, but I’ve got to do it soon.”
“That’s too bad,” Mark said, “but I don’t suppose we would have found anything in there that the cops haven’t already discovered.” Recovering his amulet and stringing it back around his neck, he pushed back from the table and got to his feet. “I think we’d better call it quits here before that matron out there starts wondering what’s taking us so long. Clare, I’ll wait for you outside by the car while you say your goodbyes.”
Thanking Terry for the visit, he left the room, closing the door behind him.
Alone with her sister, Clare was quick to make a promise to her. “Terry, I’m going to do whatever it takes to win your release.”
Including, she thought, helping out with those legal fees if it became necessary. But for now she kept that to herself, knowing Terry would object.
“By doing what? Playing detective on my behalf? I don’t like it,” she said, wearing the role of big sister again.
“Honey, I’m not going to take any risks.”
“That worries me, yes. But there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“Your lieutenant.”
“Mark? What about him?”
“I’m not blind, Clare. I saw the way you look at each other. The sparks flying between the two of you are pretty obvious.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I don’t think so. This guy may be one hell of a man, as hot as they make them, but his kind can also be dangerous to a woman. I don’t want you getting hurt. Just watch yourself with him, will you?”
Chapter 7
She found Mark leaning against the side of the SUV, arms folded across his broad chest, an eyebrow q
uirked as he regarded her.
“A third amulet? That’s a stretch, isn’t it?”
“You were the one who asked Terry about getting into her house,” Clare reminded him. “But, of course, it wasn’t so you could look for a third amulet,” she added dryly, “since we haven’t even established that Boerner had a second one. Right?”
Her sister wasn’t imagining it, Clare thought as she watched a big grin spread slowly across his rugged face. A grin that had her insides quivering.
He is dangerous, and if I don’t watch myself I could end up getting seriously burned.
“Okay, teacher,” he admitted, “so maybe I did have something like that in mind. I still want those answers, and an amulet isn’t the kind of thing the cops would have been interested in turning up and confiscating.”
“No,” she agreed, “it wouldn’t have been considered evidence. Probably got overlooked. If it exists.”
“Not that it matters, since we can’t get into the place. Short of breaking in and risking arrest, that is. The army tends to frown on that sort of behavior from its soldiers.”
“Yes, I can see how they would. Although,” she went on, her tone a casual one, “breaking in wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Oh? How’s that?” His own tone matched hers, but his eyes gleamed with renewed interest.
“I happen to know where Terry and Joe kept a spare key hidden in the carport.”
“In case one of them got locked out, huh?”
“It’s what people do, don’t they? So, if you’d still like to poke around in there...”
“Believe I would.”
It was Clare who suggested as they pulled away from the courthouse that they stop at a drugstore and buy a box of latex gloves. “There have to be fingerprints all over the house,” she explained, “including mine from past visits, but I wouldn’t like to add to them, especially yours.”
“Makes sense.”
Had something like latex gloves also made sense to Joe’s killer? she wondered as they came away from the drugstore.
Clare directed Mark to Terry’s home, which was located at the far end of a housing development a few miles from the parish seat.