by Marta Perry
No good answers. She had to move...had to...
The pressure against her back ceased. She turned, prepared for anything.
Hanlon stumbled back away from the door, shaking his head, muttering incomprehensively. Quickly she closed the door, snapped the dead bolt and ran for the phone. Even as she called Jason, she raced to the nearest window. If he tried to get in a window...
She couldn’t see him. Where...? There he was. He almost fell down the porch steps, then stumbled onto the grass and dropped to his knees.
“Deidre.” Jason’s voice in her ear.
“Hanlon’s here. He was trying to get in. He’s out on the front lawn now.” Her stomach clenched. If he tried again...
“I’m on my way. I’ll call Carmichaels. He’s already out looking for him. Deidre? Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Go to a room with a door you can lock. Stay there until you know it’s me or the cops outside.”
“Kevin...” Her ears picked up the smallest sound from upstairs. “I’ll be with Kevin.”
Clutching the phone, she darted up the stairs and into Kevin’s room. He was half asleep, murmuring and tossing from side to side.
She closed the door, then wedged a chair under the knob. None of the old-fashioned doors had locks, or if they did, the keys had long since vanished. There had been no point in telling Jason that. He’d get here as fast as anyone could.
Hurrying to Kevin’s bed, she sank down beside him, wrapping her arms around him. She murmured softly, soothing words he didn’t need to understand. If only someone were saying those soothing words to her.
Jason, please. We need you.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HEART PUMPING, JASON called Carmichaels again, explaining the situation tersely as he raced toward Deidre’s house.
Carmichaels responded with a muttered oath. “We’re all clear out on the Greentown road responding to a tipped tractor trailer that never should’ve been on this road to begin with. I’m on my way. If you get there first...well, don’t do anything I’ll have to arrest you for.”
Jaw clamped, Jason tossed the cell on the seat and took the next corner. If Hanlon had hurt Deidre or Kevin...
He could see Deidre’s property now, the house hidden by the heavy shrubbery at the corner of the lot. And there, unless he was mistaken, was Hanlon’s SUV, maybe a quarter mile down the road, tilted into a ditch. He clutched the wheel. Go after Hanlon?
No, not until he’d checked on Deidre. He spun into the driveway, grabbing his phone and punching in the number as he ran.
She answered immediately, and relief flooded him at the sound of her voice.
“I’m outside. Are you all right?”
“I’m coming to let you in.” Her tone was hushed, and he guessed she was in Kevin’s room. He heard a scraping noise through the phone, and then her feet on the stairs. In another instant she pulled open the door, her gaze darting around the yard.
“Is he gone?”
Jason pulled her against him, succumbing to the need to hold her, even if just for a moment. “His car is in a ditch just down the road. I’ll go look for him, but tell me what happened. He didn’t get in?”
A shudder went through her, and he tightened his grasp. “No. He was trying, though. And he was too drunk to listen to reason.”
“Okay.” He forced himself to release her and put his hands on her shoulders instead, focusing on her face, still pale with shock or fear. “We’ll go over everything when Carmichaels gets here. I’m going after Hanlon.”
“No!” She grasped his arms. “Jason, please. Leave him for the police.”
“I’ll be careful. But the cops are all on the other side of town. I have to at least check out the car. He could be trapped in there.”
She sucked in a shaky breath and nodded.
Jason touched her face and moved a step back onto the porch. “Lock up again. I’ll come back as fast as I can.”
He stood where he was until he heard the snap of the lock and the rattle of the chain. Then he sped back to the car. If Hanlon was running around unharmed, the police would be better equipped to find him than he would be. But he had to check and see if the man was in the wrecked vehicle.
Jason drove toward the SUV, putting his high beams on. Not much traffic on this road, and he’d guess no one had been past here since it happened, or there’d be flares out. He pulled up, grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and put his flashers on.
Steeling himself, he approached the tilted vehicle and shone his light inside. Nothing. Hanlon wasn’t there. He shone the beam around slowly. No blood, so there was no obvious sign that he’d been hurt. So where would he go?
He turned toward his car, intending to get a couple of flares from the emergency kit in the back. His gaze caught a dark shape at the very edge of the range of his headlights. It could have been something thrown from a passing car, but he didn’t think it was.
Jason approached, shining his flashlight on what remained of Mike Hanlon. The cops wouldn’t have to mount a search for him. He hadn’t gotten far.
Pulling out his cell again, he studied the body as he dialed the chief.
“What?” Carmichaels snarled the word, and Jason could hear the wail of sirens through the phone.
“Deidre and Kevin are okay. Hanlon’s car is ditched down the road, and he’s lying in the middle of the road another fifty feet or so away. Dead. Looks like he’s been hit by a car.”
“We’ll be there in a minute or two. Don’t touch anything.”
“No.” He didn’t have the desire to do so. Alive, Hanlon had been a threat. Now he was just an oddly vacant figure huddled on a dark road.
By the time he’d set up the couple of flares he had, he could hear the sirens without the use of the cell phone. He went back to his car and waited as two police cars shrieked to a stop.
Carmichaels looked grim in the reflection from the flashers. “This is how you found it?”
He nodded, a flash of irritation going through him. He’d been a prosecuting attorney. He knew the ropes.
“The two flares are mine. I spotted the car when I drove up, but went to check on Deidre and Kevin first.”
“Sure they’re okay?”
“She had a bad scare, but he never got in the house. She said he was drunk and not making much sense.”
Carmichaels held up his hand. “Okay, I’ll get all that from her. Just tell me what you did after you checked on them.”
“I thought I’d better have a look in the SUV, just in case he was trapped or hurt. I didn’t touch anything—just looked. Nothing to see. I was going back to my car when I spotted the body.” He glanced toward the figure, spotlighted now by the police lights. “I got close enough to be sure he was dead. Called you. Set up the flares and waited.”
Jason suspected Carmichaels would want him out of the way while he investigated the scene, and that was okay by him. He’d much rather be with Deidre.
“I’ll have questions for you and Deidre once I’ve gotten things under way here, so don’t go anywhere.”
“I’ll be at Deidre’s.” Jason turned to his car. Carmichaels would probably prefer to keep them apart until he’d had a chance to talk to each of them, but that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, the chief didn’t have enough staff to handle what he had going. And for another, Jason had no intention of leaving Deidre alone.
* * *
THANK HEAVEN JASON had come back at last. Deidre flung the door open at his call.
“You’re all right? I was worried.” He looked fine, except that his face had a grim expression—jaw set, mouth a firm line.
He clasped her hand for a moment before coming through into the living room. “Fine.” He glanced up the stairs. “Kevin okay? Did this wake hi
m?”
“He stirred but didn’t wake up entirely. Not even when I was moving furniture around.” She tried for a smile and didn’t quite make it.
“Good.” He turned to her and took both her hands in his, and she knew something bad was coming. “Hanlon is dead.”
“Dead?” Deidre’s mind grappled with it. “How can he... He was okay when he was here. He’d been drinking, but otherwise he seemed all right.”
“It looks as if he was hit by a car.”
Her gaze sharpened at the way he phrased it. “Do you doubt it?”
Jason’s frown deepened. “I’m sure a car hit him—obviously a hit-and-run. I’m just wondering if his death is not a little too neat.”
“You mean you think it was deliberate.” Her nerves started quivering again.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I’d guess that Carmichaels will seize on Hanlon’s actions as proof that he killed Dixie. Everything wrapped up nice and tidy.”
For an instant she thought wistfully of a moment when all of this would be behind them. But she didn’t want it at the cost of not knowing what really happened to Dixie.
Jason ran his palms down her arms. “You’re shaking. I shouldn’t be throwing all this at you at once. Let’s go into the kitchen, and you can make us some of that mint tea you like so much.”
“I don’t think mint tea is strong enough to calm me in this situation,” she said, but she led the way to the kitchen.
Once she had the kettle on the stove and the teapot warming, she let her thoughts edge back to the problem of the moment. “I heard the sirens when the police cars came by.”
“I called the chief back again when I found the body.” Jason stared down at the tabletop as if visualizing the scene. “When I stopped by Hanlon’s car to check it out, my headlights just picked out something farther down the road. He must have driven the car into the ditch, gotten out and started walking.” He frowned. “But it’s odd. Why would he be heading away from town?”
She set mugs, spoons and sugar on the table. “Maybe he was disoriented. He’d been drinking, and then with the accident...”
“That seems most likely.” He frowned. “Once past your house, it’s all fields on either side of the road. A dark stretch to be walking along at night.”
Deidre tried to remember what Hanlon had been wearing when she saw him. Jeans and a black T-shirt, she thought. “He was wearing dark clothing. That wouldn’t help.” She repressed a shiver. “Hard to believe someone would hit a person and just drive off. The driver couldn’t help but know he’d hit something, even if he didn’t realize it was a person.”
“It happens.”
Deidre felt his gaze on her and tried not to look as rattled as she felt. Somehow she’d always imagined herself enjoying a little excitement in her life. But not this kind of excitement.
“What will Carmichaels want from me?” She glanced toward the road, half expecting to see the police car approaching. But all she could see from here was the reflected red glow beyond the trees.
“Just tell him what happened. You can’t do more. But see if I’m not right. He’s going to be sure Hanlon killed Dixie. After all, it would solve all his problems.”
There was a bitterness in his voice that Deidre didn’t miss. Was he thinking about the business that had ended his career? Maybe that DA had gone for the easy answer that would solve all of his problems, too.
Jason shook his head, as if shaking off his thoughts, whatever they were. “Looks like we’ll have a little time before Carmichaels gets here. You feel like telling me what Hanlon said to you?”
Deidre rose to silence the kettle that had started to shriek. She focused on pouring water over the mint tea in her favorite teapot—the blue glazed one she’d picked up at a crafts show.
“I’ve been trying to get it straight in my mind.” She jostled the teapot gently to encourage the brewing. “He insisted I must have something of Dixie’s, and he wanted it. But he never said what it was.”
“Did you ask?” Jason took the teapot from her hands and poured the tea.
She pushed her hair back, trying to concentrate. “I think so. I was so afraid he was going to break in, and he was so drunk. It wasn’t exactly a logical conversation.”
“I can imagine.” His fingers closed on hers again. “You did the best you could.”
“He did seem to imply that what he wanted was something in writing. A paper of some sort. He talked about insurance, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Honestly, he was rambling and muttering so much that I’m not sure whatever he did say had any basis in fact.”
“Insurance,” he repeated. “Is it possible he thinks Dixie had a policy that benefitted him?”
Deidre shook her head helplessly. “If so, she never mentioned it to me. It doesn’t seem likely. I didn’t find any life insurance paperwork in her belongings. And even if she had taken out insurance benefitting him at some time, she’d have changed the beneficiary when they were divorced.”
“If he wanted something he thought you had, we’d better go through the box again. You haven’t sent it to her mother yet, have you?”
“No. I suppose I should make a decision about what to send her.” Her thoughts flickered to the necklace. But surely that rightfully belonged to Deidre’s mother-in-law, didn’t it? But if Frank had given it to Dixie... Her head throbbed with the ramifications of that action.
“Don’t let anything leave your hands,” he said quickly. “Not until all this is settled. We don’t know what might be significant.”
“I’d like to be rid of it.”
That sounded heartless, but the boxes that sat on the worktable in her office were a constant reminder of the unanswered questions about Dixie’s death.
“It’s got to be over soon.”
He answered the feeling rather than the words. How had they reached the point of reading each other so well in such a short time?
A knock on the door heralded the arrival of the chief, and a few minutes later there were three of them sitting around her kitchen table.
Carmichaels had made a face at the offer of mint tea but accepted coffee. Even though it meant extra effort, Deidre welcomed the chance to do something so normal in the face of so much craziness.
“So you don’t have any idea what Hanlon wanted with you?” The chief asked the question once she’d told her story. He held his mug between his hands, but his shrewd gray eyes focused on her face.
Deidre shook her head. “He wasn’t making much sense. I’m fairly certain there was no insurance policy among Dixie’s papers. In fact, she had very little of that sort of thing.” Her nerves twitched, remembering.
Always travel light. That way nobody can catch up to you.
Poor Dixie. She’d traveled light, but in the end someone had caught up with her.
“Way I see it, most likely Hanlon was afraid he’d missed something that would tie him to Dixie’s murder.” The chief shrugged. “Whatever he thought it was probably didn’t exist, but I guess you can imagine most anything if you’ve got a guilty conscience plaguing you.”
“So you’re assuming Hanlon killed Dixie.” She could feel Jason simmering, so she spoke first.
“You ask any cop, and you’ll hear the same thing,” Carmichaels said, with the air of one repeating a self-evident truth. “The person most likely to have killed someone is a spouse or ex-spouse. If Hanlon had come to your door that night, Dixie would have let him in, even just to see what he wanted. Wouldn’t she?”
“I guess she might have.” Deidre’s answer was reluctant. Dixie hadn’t been afraid of anything. She probably would have thought there’d be no harm in talking to her ex here.
“You figure he shows up out of the blue after over a year and suddenly decided to kill her?” Jason’s tone made his doubt clear.
<
br /> Carmichaels’s heavy face tightened. “Not just like that. But if the talk got heated, he could have acted impulsively and then panicked when he saw what he’d done.”
“So you’re going to close the investigation?”
The chief shoved his chair back with an irritated movement. “You know better than that. It’s open until we have proof one way or another. But I imagine the DA is going to figure it can go on the back burner unless and until something else turns up.”
“So you think it was Hanlon who broke into Deidre’s house and went through the box. That makes sense,” Jason conceded. “But what about shooting at us up at the old mill? How would he have known where we were going? Or where to get a rifle? Or how to get the best sight line on the mill?”
“I don’t know.” Carmichaels’s irritability increased. “But it could have happened. Or that might have been something separate all together—a kid stealing the rifle and trying it out.”
“I can’t buy that,” Jason said flatly.
She felt as if she were watching a tennis match where each of them was trying to hit the other with the ball. But she didn’t know how to stop it.
Carmichaels made a chopping gesture with his hand. “I can’t help that.” He turned to Deidre. “It’s small comfort for losing your friend and having your boy hurt, but at least you can get back to normal life now.”
She managed to smile, managed to nod. Jason had been right. The police would seize on Hanlon’s actions as a way of wrapping up the case. It seemed logical, she supposed. But she couldn’t help feeling that it was all wrong.
And a glance at Jason told her he was thinking exactly the same thing. The chief’s explanation was logical, but it was dead wrong.
* * *
JASON HADN’T CHANGED his mind by the next day, but he’d had time to consider. The assumption of Hanlon’s guilt in Dixie’s murder might actually help Deidre, whether it was true or not. If Dixie had let her ex-husband in the door and a subsequent quarrel had led to her death, there was surely no way in which the judge could use that as leverage against her.