Justice Delayed

by Patricia Bradley

  He glanced over the simple dress and nodded, then followed them downstairs.

  At the front door, Laura turned to him. “Keep me informed about this case, if you don’t mind. Lacey was a good friend, and if it is murder, which I doubt, I want the person responsible caught.”

  “So do I, Counselor.”

  He walked outside with them, and the skin on the back of his neck prickled when he didn’t see Andi. Where was she? It was unlike her to miss out on anything. As Laura and Spencer pulled away, Brad turned into the drive.

  “Who was that?” he asked as he stepped out of his white Suburban.

  “Laura Delaney.” Will scanned the yard. “She was picking up clothes for Wilson’s funeral. Evidently had a key. Have you talked to Andi? She was in the car when I went in the house, and now she’s gone.”

  Brad’s face flushed as red as a match head, and for a second, Will thought his friend’s head might explode.

  “You brought Andi here? Why? This is police work; she doesn’t belong here. And if Wilson was murdered, Andi might get hurt.”

  He’d known Brad wouldn’t like her being at the house, but his reaction went beyond what he expected. “The director approved—” He stopped when Andi came around the corner of the house. “Where have you been?”

  Andi ignored his question and planted herself in front of her brother. “I heard that. Just what’s wrong with me being here? Stephanie was my sister too. Besides, I’m a volunteer sheriff’s deputy, and I completed the MPD Citizen Police Academy. And if that’s not enough, your director gave me permission to document this investigation for my cold case series.” She stopped long enough to take a breath and then added, “You should have the email in your inbox.”

  Will tried not to laugh. Some sisters cajoled, but not Andi. She got her ducks in a row and laid out her case.

  “This case has nothing to do with Stephanie’s, which isn’t even a cold case,” Brad said, shooting a dark look at Will, “but evidently I can’t do anything about you being here.” He palmed his hands up. “Just don’t get in the way. And nothing leaves this site. No photos, no conversations. Nothing.”

  She saluted him. “Yes, sir.”

  “And try to think before you rush into something,” he added.

  That was a low blow, and Will gave her an encouraging smile as he handed her a pair of latex gloves. “Wear these when we go inside,” he said to her, “and if you find anything, let me know.” Then he turned to Brad. “You were telling me about the investigation . . .”

  His friend took out a notebook. “The woman two doors down went to church with Lacey and confirmed the ex-husband’s statement that she was there every time the doors opened. A couple of the neighbors believe if it is suicide, the husband drove her to it, and if it’s murder, he did it.”

  “I don’t believe she committed suicide,” Andi said.

  Neither did Will. “Did any of them mention the mechanic that Lacey was having problems with?”

  “Yeah, the neighbor who called Adam Matthews. And the neighbor across the street saw a man lurking in the neighborhood this week. But the description she gave would fit about any white male over six feet tall. The one thing all of them mentioned was Lacey’s depression.” He put the notebook away. “How about you. Did you discover anything at the scene of the wreck?”

  “The right tie rod came loose from the steering mechanism, causing Johnson to lose control.”

  “An accident?”

  “Evidently the state trooper doesn’t feel that way. He called in the TBI to look at it.”

  “You’re still trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat, Will. Let’s go in and see if we can find any real evidence.”

  Will followed his friend into the house.

  “Exactly what are we looking for?” Andi asked.

  “A suicide note would be nice. Barring that, anything that gives a clue as to why she died, and evidence she might have been murdered,” Brad said over his shoulder.

  “So you do think she was murdered.” Andi’s voice rose in triumph.

  He turned around. “No, just covering all the bases until the medical examiner makes a ruling. While he confirmed she was intoxicated with a blood alcohol level of .15, that wasn’t enough to kill a woman of her size. I figure she drank to give herself courage to commit suicide. She even rinsed her wine glass when she finished.”

  “Why didn’t she throw the wine bottle away?” Will asked. His gut feeling said it wasn’t suicide.

  “That and no suicide note are why we’re looking for more evidence.”

  Andi pulled on the gloves. “She may have been drinking when she called me Tuesday morning. She didn’t make a lot of sense, other than insisting that I meet her at the airport.”

  Brad gaped at her. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

  “Because when I asked if she was drinking, she said no, that she hadn’t slept in days. Sleep deprivation does that, you know.”

  “Do you remember exactly what she said?” her brother asked.

  “Not really. Something about a journal she had. I assumed it was things she’d written about Steph.”

  “If anything comes to you, write it down. Anything that might give us a clue to her frame of mind.”

  Will slipped his hands into a pair of gloves as he crossed the living room floor. It didn’t make sense that a woman who was flying to Hawaii later that day would commit suicide. He stopped to ask Andi a question, and she crashed into him, losing her balance.

  Will grabbed her by the arms to keep her from falling. Their gazes collided, and for a second, it seemed everything stopped as heat rushed through his chest.

  She rubbed her nose. “What’d you do that for?”

  “What?” Was she talking about the way he’d held her longer than necessary?

  “Stop like that.” Her brown eyes softened as she stared up at him.

  “Oh.” He swallowed the grin that wanted to spread across his face of its own volition as her lips parted. For a second, he forgot everything except how much he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her. Brad’s footsteps on the stairs brought him to his senses.

  “You never said where you were when I came out of the house.”

  17

  JIMMY PACED THE SMALL ROOM where he waited for Jillian Bennett. In seventeen years, she’d never come to see him. Why now? The door opened, and she stepped inside the narrow cubicle and sat on the other side of the glass window.

  “Jillian?” He tried to find some resemblance to the woman he remembered, but everything about her had changed. Her curly blonde hair was now mousy gray and secured with a band. Nondescript gray clothes covered what had been a shapely body but was now gaunt and straight. She reminded him of photos he’d seen of women during the Depression.

  “Yes. Sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she said, her voice low, hesitant.

  He asked the question that had been on his mind ever since the warden told him she wanted to see him. “Why now?”

  She blanched. “Believe me, I didn’t want to.”

  His hope that she would help him evaporated. From the looks of her, Jillian couldn’t seem to help herself, much less him. When she continued to sit and say nothing, he said, “Are you all right?”

  She gave a shrug. “Haven’t eaten hardly anything in two weeks, not since I read that your . . . execution date had been set.”

  That made two of them. “Did you know Lacey Wilson wrote me a letter saying that I didn’t kill Stephanie?”

  He didn’t think it was possible for Jillian’s face to get any whiter, but it turned a ghostly shade of pale.

  “I shouldn’t have come.” She tried to stand, but her knees buckled, and she sat down hard.

  “What’s going on? What do you know?”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said and struggled to her feet. “I thought if I saw you, I could . . .”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t you see, he may have followed me here . . . or . . .” She l
ooked over her shoulder. “How could I be so stupid? He’ll have people working here, watching you. They’ll follow me home.”

  She rushed to the door and opened it. “God forgive me, but I can’t help you.”

  The door slammed shut behind Jillian, and the tiny ray of hope he’d had that she might know something and help him dimmed. She knew something, all right.

  But she wasn’t going to tell.

  Andi’s stomach did the flipping thing she hated as she caught herself staring into Will’s eyes again. Even when she was a sappy thirteen-year-old following him and Brad around, she’d noticed those blue eyes.

  “Where were you earlier?” he repeated.

  She gave herself a mental shake. Getting lost in his eyes was not on her agenda. “Next door. The neighbor was working in her yard, and I thought I’d ask her a few questions. Did Laura Delaney tell you what she was doing for over an hour in the house?”

  “What? She told me they’d just gotten there.”

  “So she wasn’t alone.”

  “No, her husband was with her. They came after clothes for Lacey’s funeral.”

  “I checked out Lacey’s Facebook page last night, and she was friends with Laura. She left comments sometimes.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Facebook was usually the first place she went to get information on people. She glanced around the house. The area they were standing in was similar to hers with an open concept design—living room, dining room, and kitchen all together—except Lacey’s was on a grander scale. “Brad went upstairs. What room do you want me to take?”

  “How about the kitchen, and I’ll take her bedroom.”

  After Will disappeared down the hallway, Andi turned in a slow circle, deciding where to start first. It was hard not to compare this house to the one she’d been in yesterday. Walter Simmons’s house had exuded warmth, comfort, even . . . hominess. That was the word she was looking for. It wasn’t a word she’d use to describe Lacey’s place.

  Andi flicked her gaze over the combination kitchen and living room. The person she’d talked to occasionally over the years had more personality than this house reflected, and it was hard to bring the two together.

  If Lacey was the decorator, she must have been going for sterile with the modern black sofa and glass and steel tables. Reminded Andi of her own apartment, except . . . She examined a grouping of Grant Wood numbered lithographs on the wall. Lacey Wilson had a much larger budget, and the minimal look was on purpose. There was a difference.

  She walked to the kitchen island and pulled out a drawer. Utensils neatly arranged. She moved on until she found the drawer that was in every kitchen, even this one. The junk drawer. Except this one was neat. She took everything out and piece by piece returned it to the drawer. Halfway through, Brad came back downstairs.

  “Find anything?”

  Her brother shook his head. “I got to thinking about the fireplace.”

  Andi followed his gaze to the living room, where charred logs reminded her someone had lived . . . and died in this house. “What about it?”

  “I remembered while I was upstairs that someone had started a fire recently. Coals were still hot the night she was found—that was the reason I didn’t check it out then.”

  She nodded and turned back to her task. She finished the drawer without finding anything—although she wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for. She figured she’d know it when she found it.

  Andi took a step back when she opened a pantry door. She’d never seen anything so neat and orderly in her life. Lacey was definitely OCD. Not one can or box was out of place. And in order from large to small. And every can faced out with the name brand showing. A woman this compulsive would not kill herself and not leave a note behind.

  “Look what we have here,” Brad said from the living room.

  She hurried to the fireplace, and Will joined them. “What is it?” she asked.

  Brad held up a three-inch fragment of paper. “Nice stationery. This piece was against the brick at the back of the fireplace. Can you make out the letters on it?”

  Andi looked closer at the paper. It was a corner piece, and there was a down stroke of the pen. “Could be half of a capital A . . . and it’s blue, like Jimmy said his letter was.”

  “I think you’re right,” Will said. His cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it while Brad took a paper sack from his satchel and bagged it.

  “Find anything in the kitchen?” Brad asked.

  “Not yet. Lacey was a neat freak. I still have the cabinets to go through.”

  Will returned. “That was Lieutenant Raines. He’s on his way.”

  “Why?” Brad asked.

  Will hesitated. “He agrees with me that this case is possibly connected to your sister’s death.”

  Uh-oh. When Brad clamped his jaw like he just did, someone was in for an argument, and this time it was Will.

  “So do I,” she said before her brother could jump down his friend’s throat.

  “Him, I understand. Jimmy is his cousin,” Brad said, jerking his head toward Will. “But you? How can you be taken in by someone who confessed?”

  “If you’d just go see Jimmy and then look at the facts, you—”

  “No! Lacey Wilson’s case has nothing to do with our sister’s death.” He sliced the air with his hand. “I looked at the reports from eighteen years ago again today, and I didn’t see anything in them that contradicted the evidence. But you—you let your emotions get in the way. You always fight for the underdog, and right now, Jimmy Shelton is the underdog.” He turned to Will. “And I blame you for it.”

  She clamped her jaw to keep from saying something she’d regret. When Brad believed he was right, she didn’t think even God could change his mind. She wheeled toward the kitchen. Pain stabbed her in the back.

  “Ahh!” She grabbed for the counter.

  Both men jumped to help her into a chair by the desk.

  “What’s wrong?” Will said.

  She pressed her lips together to keep from crying as sweat popped out on her face. “It’s my back,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Andi fumbled in her pocket for the small pillbox she’d stashed there, then stilled her hand. If Will saw them, he’d bug her. “Give me a minute. I’ll be okay. Can one of you get me a glass of water?”

  Will obliged. “You really need to get that fixed,” he said.

  “Get what fixed?” Brad asked.

  “My back.” Reluctantly, she explained how she’d hurt it and waited for the sermon.

  “You should have called me instead of climbing the fence. I would have taken care of it. Besides, what you did was trespassing.”

  Leave it to Brad to stick to the letter of the law.

  “Well, I’m fine now.” And she was, or would be as soon as she could take the pills. When she had time, she’d have the operation, but right now she had to rely on the pills. “Go back to what you were doing—but not the arguing. Let’s save that for later.”

  The corner of Brad’s mouth twitched. She didn’t think he was going for it, and then he shook his head. “I’m not wrong about Jimmy.”

  He was never wrong. She didn’t know how Will put up with him. She let his remark pass. There’d be time later to argue. Right now all she wanted was for them to leave the kitchen so she could take the Lortab before the pain hit again.

  Why not take them now?

  How did Treece get in her head? Because that’s what her friend would say if she were here. Andi shoved the thought away. She needed the medication, and she didn’t want to defend herself or explain her actions, something she shouldn’t have to do anyway. Besides, she’d been taking the Lortab for three months now, and she wasn’t addicted. If a doctor thought she needed them, that should be enough.

  As soon as they went back to their tasks, she took out the pillbox and took out two, quickly downing them. Gingerly she put one foot on the floor and breathed a sigh of relief. Very little pain.
>
  Since she was already seated at the desk and going through it wouldn’t require her to stand, Andi started with the drawers. When did one tablet become two? The question came out of nowhere, and she paused in her search. When had she increased them? She’d only taken one Lortab earlier this morning. Hadn’t she? Or was it two? Not that it really mattered—the prescription said one to two as needed for pain, so there shouldn’t be any problem.

  Andi refocused on the top drawer, where she found a sheet of paper with a list of items and serial numbers, and she scanned it. Laptop, tablet, printer, cell phone, TV. In the margins were notes where Lacey had contacted technical support for the printer. Andi needed to make herself a similar list—she always had to look up a serial number whenever she called for technical support.

  Twenty minutes later, energy surged through her as endorphins released in her brain. That’s what she’d been waiting for. She reached for the square wicker basket on the corner of the desk. Her heart kicked up a beat as she realized the basket was where Lacey kept her writing supplies.

  She picked up a pale blue box with a ribbon around it. Inside was light blue stationery, just like what was in the fireplace . . . and maybe Jimmy’s letter. She imagined Lacey sitting at the desk writing letters. Would she take out several sheets or one at a time?

  Several, she decided, and examined the top sheet. Sometimes people pressed hard enough that impressions were left on the underlying paper, but this sheet looked clean.

  She’d read about the technique of shining light across stationery at a low angle. Supposedly, it created shadows on the paper. There had been a flashlight in one of the drawers. Andi found it, then looked for a spot in the room with low lighting. She tried it, and her shoulders slumped. The stationery was smooth as satin. Maybe Lacey was like Andi and didn’t like to use the first sheet of a tablet. She tried the second sheet.

  A minute later, Andi caught her breath when letters appeared under the light. Her heart leaped into her throat as she made out a name. Jimmy.

  “Will! Brad! You better come here. I think I found something.”