Killing Stan screwed up her plans somewhat. If Jazzy Talbot had an alibi for tonight, then the sheriff and the district attorney might start questioning whether Jazzy had killed Jamie. But maybe, just maybe, there were enough differences in the two murders that the law would assume this was a copycat killing. She had left Jamie’s body in the cabin. She would burn Stan’s inside the truck. And if that weird mountain girl Genny saw any visions about Stan’s death, she would report that he hadn’t been tortured. At least not much.
I hope you’re alone, Jazzy Talbot. I hope you don’t have an alibi. If you don’t, then this second murder will seal your fate.
Andrea Willis woke with a start. She heard voices. Sitting straight up in bed, she listened. Laura and Sheridan were arguing.
She glanced at the bedside clock. Twelve-twenty-five. Why were their daughters having a shouting match at this time of night? She got out of bed, slipped into her robe and shoes, then quietly made her way out of the room, leaving Cecil asleep. Whenever he took a sleeping pill, he slept like the dead. More and more often, he relied on medication in order to rest, just as she did. But tonight she’d left off her medication.
The girls were standing outside in the hallway, near the back stairway. Both were fully dressed. Odd, Andrea thought. Why would they be dressed? She hurried toward them and the minute they saw her, they quieted immediately.
“What in God’s name is going on?” Andrea demanded. “What if someone overheard you?”
“Nobody heard us, except you,” Sheridan said. “Big Jim stayed at the hospital and it would take a bomb exploding on his chest to wake Daddy.”
“What about the servants?”
“The servants’ rooms are downstairs,” Sheridan reminded her mother.
“Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?” Andrea demanded.
Laura hung her head. Sheridan grimaced.
“Why aren’t you two in bed asleep at this time of night? It’s past midnight.”
“I’ve been out,” Sheridan admitted. “I had a date.”
That fact didn’t surprise Andrea in the least. She looked at Laura. “And you?”
“I was restless, so I went out somewhere…I think.”
“You think?” Andrea’s heart caught in her throat. “Where is Mrs. Conley?”
“I don’t know. Asleep, I guess,” Laura replied.
“She should have awakened when she heard you two screeching at each other.” Andrea turned to Sheridan. “Tell me in one or two sentences why you and your sister were arguing.”
“When I came in, I caught her sneaking up the back stairs, so I asked her who she’d gone out and killed tonight,” Sheridan said.
Acting purely on instinctive rage, Andrea slapped Sheridan, who jerked back and glared at her mother. Then she rubbed her cheek and grinned.
“Admit it, Mother, you think she might have killed Jamie.”
“I didn’t,” Laura told them. “I—I couldn’t have. I loved Jamie. We were going to have a baby.”
Andrea put her arm around Laura’s shoulders, then glanced at Sheridan. “Go to bed. And from now on, keep your opinion to yourself. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sheridan headed for her room.
“Come with me.” Andrea led Laura into her bedroom.
The room lay in moonlit shadows. Andrea flipped on the overhead light. Mrs. Conley, snoring loudly, sat in the overstuffed chair in the corner. An empty cup rested on the floor beside the chair. Andrea left Laura standing in the middle of the room and went to check on the nurse. She called the woman’s name. No response. She tapped on her shoulder. Mrs. Conley continued snoring. Andrea shook her. She grunted, but didn’t awaken.
Drugged! The woman had been drugged.
Andrea whirled around and glared at Laura. “What did you give her?”
Laura hugged herself and looked everywhere but at her mother.
Andrea rushed over, grabbed Laura and shook her. “What did you give Mrs. Conley? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“It was just a couple of Daddy’s sleeping pills,” Laura admitted. “I got tired of her watching me like a hawk. She wouldn’t even let me go pee without leaving the bathroom door open.”
“Laura, Laura…what am I going to do with you?”
“Love me. Please, Mother, love me the way you do Sheridan.”
Andrea wrapped her arms around her elder daughter and held her. “My poor little Laura.”
Sally Talbot showed up at Jazzy’s apartment promptly at six o’clock. Caleb was in the kitchen preparing coffee when she knocked on the door.
“How’s our girl?” Sally asked.
“Still sleeping,” Caleb said. “It was after four before she finally fell asleep again.”
“Dallas called me right before I left the house.” Sally glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “They found another vehicle burning down in a hollow, not half a mile from where they found that other one.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“I think I’ll drive up there and see what they know.”
“Figured you’d want to. That’s why I’m here. To look after Jazzy. She don’t need to go with you.”
“I agree.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Coffee’s on. I’ll grab a mug before I head out.” Caleb walked toward the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” Sally asked. “ Don’t wake her up or she’ll want to go with you.”
“I won’t wake her. I just…” He felt awkward admitting his feelings to Jazzy’s aunt. “I just want to take another look at her before I leave.”
Sally grinned, then turned and headed for the kitchen.
Caleb opened the door and tiptoed into the semidark room. Jazzy lay under the sheet, curled in a ball on her side. He crept over to the edge of the bed and looked down at her. God, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.
Admit it, McCord. You’re in love with her.
Unable to resist the temptation, he reached out and ran the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She sighed and turned over on her back, but didn’t wake up. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. She murmured something incoherent in her sleep.
“I love you,” he whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear him.
Her breathing was deep and even. Restful. Her lips parted and she said one word plainly. “Jamie…”
Chapter 23
While Genny slept on the collapsible bed in Jacob’s office, recovering from their early morning search, he and Dallas sat in the outer office with a couple of his deputies, Moody Ryan and Bobby Joe Harte. Although Genny had been able to point them in the right direction and helped them find the spot where the truck had been abandoned and burned, she’d been unable to pick up the location where the murder had actually been committed. Before she’d passed out from exhaustion, she’d told them definitely that the murder hadn’t occurred nearby.
“Farther up the mountain,” Genny had said. “Near a thickly wooded area. Isolated. Maybe only one cabin anywhere close.”
Jacob had left the forensics team going over the fiery truck site. And he’d put in a call to Knoxville. A second murder in a week’s time was all too reminiscent of the serial killer that had stalked Cherokee County three months ago, so he was damned and determined to do his best to stop this killer before another man fell victim to her black-widow tactics. From the charred remains of the body inside the truck there was no way to tell for sure who the man had been, and Pete Holt had said it had definitely been a man. The body would be shipped out to Knoxville by noon today. Until then, they could only speculate as to who the victim was. But the truck was another matter. Although badly burned, the truck was still intact enough to make out the model. And as luck would have it, the car tag, which apparently had been held in place by a decorative plastic frame, had fallen off on the ground and escaped being blackened when the plastic frame melted. They’d immediately run a search on the tag and found the truck belonged to Stanley Watson, a maintenance man who worked for Cherokee C
abin Rentals.
Propped on the edge of Moody’s desk, his legs crossed at the ankles, Jacob held the list of job assignments Stan’s boss Hoot Tompkins, the manager of the rental cabins, had given them.
“Hoot said his men took their assignment sheets from him every morning, then decided for themselves which job to do first, unless told otherwise,” Jacob said. “We’ve got a couple of guys from our department and from Dallas’s going from cabin to cabin to find out if Stan finished up on all these jobs.” Jacob tapped the assignment sheet he held. “If one was left undone, that might mean it was the last place he stopped before he was killed.”
“Do you think it was her?” Bobby Joe asked and when all eyes focused on him, he swallowed hard. “Not Miss Jazzy. I didn’t mean her. I’m talking about whoever really killed Jamie Upton. You think the same woman killed Stan Watson?”
“We’re only guessing that it’s Watson,” Dallas said. “It was his truck and the guy isn’t at home and nobody’s seen him since around lunchtime yesterday.”
“If it is the same person—the killer, I mean…” Bobby Joe paced around the room as he spoke nervously. “Doesn’t that put Miss Jazzy in the clear? If she’s got—got an alibi this time, then maybe we should—should be looking elsewhere for Jamie’s killer.”
Jacob studied his deputy. Bobby Joe was stuttering and acting like a worm in hot ashes. He sure wasn’t his usual laid-back, easygoing self. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
At the sound of Jacob’s roar, Bobby Joe froze in his tracks. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“You sure are acting peculiar,” Dallas commented.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Jacob said.
“Ah, his mind isn’t on his job,” Moody told them. “He’s got himself a new sweetie. A real hot little number and—”
“Shut up, will you!” Bobby Joe glowered at Moody. “Hell, can’t a man have a private life without everybody sticking their nose in his business?”
“You’re overreacting to a little innocent ribbing,” Jacob said. “That’s not like you. Something is wrong or you wouldn’t be acting this way.”
Bobby Joe stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him after he marched into the hall. Jacob glanced from Moody to Dallas and then back at Moody.
“Who’s the girl?”
Moody grinned. With those big blue eyes and curly blond hair, he looked like an overgrown kid. “It’s that Willis girl.”
“Laura Willis?” Dallas and Jacob said simultaneously.
“Nah, the other one.”
“The teenager?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah. Her name is Sheridan and she’s only nineteen, but from what Bobby Joe says, she sure doesn’t act like a kid, if you know what I mean.”
Jacob nodded. So Bobby Joe was screwing the younger Willis girl. Considering that Bobby Joe wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man and not known for making the first move, Sheridan Willis must have put the moves on him. But why was he acting as if he’d committed a crime? If she was nineteen, she was legal.
“Maybe he’s embarrassed about dating somebody that young,” Dallas said.
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. There’s something more. Something to do with these murders.”
“You think Bobby Joe knows something we don’t know?” Dallas asked.
“How’s that possible?” Moody’s smooth brow wrinkled.
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out,” Jacob told them.
When he exited the office, he looked up and down the hall. He spotted Bobby Joe at the end of the corridor by the cola machine. As if sensing Jacob’s presence, his deputy glanced up from where he’d just deposited coins into the slot. Their gazes met for an instant. Then Bobby Joe looked down to where the machine had deposited an ice-cold can of root beer into the metal bed. Jacob took some quarters out of his pocket so that when he reached the cola machine, he dropped the coins in the slot and hit the Orange Crush button. After retrieving his drink and snapping the tab, he lifted the can to his lips and took a long swig.
“I guess Moody told you who I’ve been sneaking around seeing.” Bobby Joe deliberately didn’t look at Jacob.
“Sheridan Willis.” Jacob wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand, then turned and put his hand on Bobby Joe’s shoulder. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Bobby Joe harrumphed. “Want to tell you—no. Need to tell you—yes.”
“Just spit it out. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad you’re making it out to be.”
“It’s not that. It’s just I should have already said something to you about it, especially considering it might be something that could help Miss Jazzy.”
“Tell me now.”
“Well…” Bobby Joe shuffled, then motioned for Jacob to follow him. “Let’s talk outside. Okay? I don’t want nobody overhearing us.”
When they walked out the back door of the courthouse, Bobby Joe looked around. After he saw that they were completely alone, he said, “Right after Jamie was killed, Sheridan said she thought maybe her sister had killed him.”
“Laura Willis?”
“Yeah.”
“What made her think that?”
“She said her sister had problems. You know, mental problems. It seems Laura had a nervous breakdown when she was sixteen.”
“Any history of violence?”
“I don’t know. Sheridan didn’t say much more, but…she called me just a few minutes ago. You know…that personal call I took.”
Jacob forced himself not to jump to any conclusions about Laura Willis. Not yet. Just because he knew Jazzy was innocent didn’t automatically make Laura guilty. But if anyone other than Jazzy had a reason to hate Jamie, to wish him dead, it was probably Laura.
“So what about that call?” Jacob asked.
“It was Sheridan. She’d heard about the second murder. Seems it’s already all over the TV and radio.”
Jacob groaned. Yeah, Brian MacKinnon would see to it that the sheriff’s department and the local police were held up to ridicule. That guy had it in for both Dallas and him.
“Go on. What did she have to say?” Jacob sipped on his Orange Crush.
Mimicking his boss, Bobby Joe took a couple of swallows from his root beer. “She said Laura could have killed this guy, too…that when I dropped her off last night and she was heading up the back stairs at the Upton house, she caught Laura sneaking up the stairs, too. Laura had been out somewhere for hours and hours and nobody knew where.”
“Sheridan must really hate her sister to share this type of information with a sheriff’s deputy,” Jacob said. “Even if he is a deputy she’s screwing.”
Bobby Joe’s face flushed. “What do you think?”
“I think we should ask Laura Willis to come in and talk to us,” Jacob said. “And I want Wade Truman here when we question her. If he sees there’s someone else with motive and opportunity, he might be persuaded to drop the charges against Jazzy.”
Caleb pulled his T-bird in at a Dairy Bar, got out, ordered coffee, and got back in his car. When he’d left Cherokee Pointe this morning, he’d just started driving, and had ended up on Highway 321 and kept going all the way to Greenville before he realized where he was. Originally he had planned on meeting up with Dallas and Jacob to get all the info he could about the most recent murder in Cherokee County. His goal had been to help Jazzy.
I want to protect you and take care of you and make you happy, he’d told her. And he’d meant every word.
Why the hell had he gone back into the bedroom for one last look at her this morning? Why hadn’t he just left as soon as Sally got there? If he hadn’t touched her, kissed her, hadn’t felt the overwhelming need to whisper that he loved her while she slept, he never would have heard her murmur Jamie’s name.
God, it had been like a knife in his heart. He had just spent the most incredible hours of his life making love with a woman who had come to mean everything to him. He’d been stupi
d enough to think she felt the same way. But it wasn’t his name she murmured in her sleep. He wasn’t the man in her mind and in her heart. That sacred spot was reserved for a man who had never been worthy of her.
Maybe if Jamie were still alive, he’d have a chance to win Jazzy away from him. But how did he fight a ghost? Had he really thought he was such a stud that one night in bed with him and Jazzy would forget about all those years she’d been in love with Jamie?
Caleb squeezed the half-full foam cup so hard that the contents sloshed out over the top and spilled onto his hand. He cursed loudly. The coffee was still hot. Hot enough to make him cringe, but not hot enough to burn.
What are you going to do, McCord? Just keep going. Don’t look back. But what about his things back there at the cabin? Okay, so go back long enough to get your stuff, then hit the road.
You can’t leave without checking on Miss Reba, without talking to Big Jim Upton and telling him who you are. After all, that’s why you came to Cherokee County. To find out about your mother’s family.
If he went to Big Jim with the truth, the odds were the man wouldn’t believe him. So show him your birth certificate. Show him the pictures of you and your mother when you were a kid. Tell him you’ll take a DNA test.
Is that what he wanted? Did he want to be Big Jim Upton’s grandson—the heir to the Upton fortune? If he was filthy, stinking rich would Jazzy want him? Would she love him?
Caleb laughed at himself, at his own foolishness. He had known and pitied lovesick fools, never dreaming that someday he’d join their ranks.
If you love Jazzy so damn much, how can you desert her? How can you let your stupid pride keep you from being there to take care of her? You made her promises. You’re a man of your word, aren’t you?
He had unfinished business back in Cherokee County—with Big Jim Upton and Miss Reba. And with Jazzy.
Caleb got out of the car, dumped his smashed foam cup in the trash bin outside the Dairy Bar, and made a decision. If he went back and proved his identity to his grandparents and pursued a relationship with Jazzy, some people would say that he’d stepped into Jamie Upton’s shoes and taken over the man’s life. Hell, a lot of people would say it. But they’d be wrong. He didn’t want any part of Jamie’s life. But you do want everything that had once been Jamie’s, an inner voice told him.
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