Jeremy’s mother had seemed almost excited at the prospect of others helping to keep her from her routine with her husband, though she still gave the man the side-eye every time they were in the same room together.
As long as she could remember, the Lawrences had always had a turbulent relationship, but with Robert’s death it was doubtful that their marriage would survive. The resentment that surfaced after a child died, even an adult child, rarely brought a couple together. In all honesty, it was a wonder they were still married, but it made sense as to why Jeremy seemed to steer away from anything approaching a relationship—with the exception of last night.
She licked her lips. She could almost still taste his kiss.
Looking over at him as he talked on the phone, she watched as his mouth moved. The simple action made her warm with lust as she thought of all the places his lips had traveled in the moonlight.
Jeremy hung up and turned his attention back to the road. “I told Judith we’d be there in less than five minutes. You get an update on the APB on Todd’s truck?”
She shook her head. No one had seen the truck or the woman they were looking for. It was like they were chasing a phantom—and maybe they were. If Tiffany Lawrence was dead, their investigation was, as well. Even though they could prove Todd was land grubbing, there was no proof that he had killed Robert. They had only a few leads, and even fewer people who seemed to have any usable information.
This was her last hope to save her career. If they didn’t solve this case, she had no doubt that not only would she be fired from the department; it was unlikely that she would ever be hired in law enforcement again. She would end up right where she had started, a single mother without a dependable income, left to find a path in life that would keep her and her family above water.
“You okay?” Jeremy reached over and touched her neck, gently stroking his strong, callused thumb over her skin.
She melted at his touch. “Absolutely.”
Her mother would have called out her lie in an instant, but Jeremy just looked at her. Perhaps he didn’t know she was lying, or else he had decided to delve no further. Either way he remained silent as they slogged down the road.
They pulled to a stop in front of a big, beautiful log cabin and walked up the slate path. The impressive structure had a green metal roof and a hand-carved alder front door complete with a horse’s head door knocker. The place oozed wealth.
She pressed the doorbell, and chimes sounded. A woman in a black maid’s uniform answered the door. In all of her life, this was the last kind of place she would have expected to find a friend of Tiffany’s. The last time Blake had seen Tiffany, she had been strung out on liquor and taking wide, drunken swings at her husband. To say she was an alcoholic was an understatement. But was it possible that Blake had gotten her all wrong? Had she just seen the woman at her low point, the recipient of a ticket for disturbing the peace?
“May I help you?” the maid asked, looking them up and down.
“We’re here to ask the lady of the house a few questions about Tiffany Lawrence. Is she around?” Jeremy asked. He looked as taken aback as she was at the juxtaposition between Tiffany’s lifestyle and her best friend’s, but he kept quiet.
The maid looked back over her shoulder. “I can see if she’s available, sir.” The door clicked shut behind her as she left them standing there to wait.
“Are you sure we have the right place?” Blake asked.
Jeremy shrugged. “I got this woman’s name from my mother. She said she had seen Tiffany and this Judith woman running around as thick as thieves.”
“But your mother didn’t tell you she was loaded?”
He shook his head as the front door opened and a slim blonde stood before them. Her perfectly coifed hair reminded Blake of one of the cover models that adorned Vogue.
“How do you do, ma’am,” Jeremy said, acting the gentleman. “Do you mind if we come in?”
The woman nodded and motioned for them to follow her inside. Her stilettos tapped on the marble floors, echoing in the cavernous entrance. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been so worried about Tiffany,” she said, her voice carrying the lilt of the well educated. “Is it true that she may have been murdered?” She stopped walking as they entered the living room and turned to face them.
“We aren’t at liberty to discuss that, ma’am,” Jeremy answered.
For some reason, Blake couldn’t help the feeling of jealousy that crept through her. Just because the woman was well kept, skinny and beautiful didn’t mean that Jeremy wanted her. Though, admittedly, he was being more formal than she had ever seen him. Her jealousy grew, making an angry knot form in her stomach.
“Are you friends with Mrs. Lawrence, Mrs....” Blake waited for a moment as the woman looked her over.
“It’s Ms. Judith Davy,” the woman said, thumbing the heavy-looking diamond and matching wedding band on her left hand.
Of course she was a Davy. Marcus Davy had been one of the founders of the mines in their city. It made perfect sense that the woman before them would be related.
She glanced over at Jeremy, but he seemed focused on the massive river rock fireplace that ran from the ceiling to the floor of the living room.
“Nice painting,” he said, motioning above the mantel at an oil painting of an elk bugling as it stood in a running brook. Snowy mountain peaks dotted the background.
“Thanks, it’s my husband’s. He’s more of an outdoorsman than I am. Tiffany and I bonded over that,” she said, perching on the edge of the leather sofa. She motioned for them to take a seat across from her.
“What do you mean you bonded over that?” Blake sat down. The pedestal of the coffee table between them was a bronze statue that looked like fish swimming through a stream.
Ms. Davy adjusted the cuffs of her sweater. “Well, Miss—”
“It’s Deputy West,” Blake said, once again wishing she was wearing her uniform.
“Excuse me, Deputy West,” Judith said with the raise of an eyebrow as she looked at Blake’s department-store button-down white blouse.
Jeremy looked over at her and frowned. “Anyway,” he said, turning back to Ms. Davy, “how would you classify your friendship with Tiffany?”
The woman relaxed a bit, easing back into the safety of her sofa. “Tiffany and I have been friends for a long time now. She loves to come over. We often shop for antiques together.”
The tale screamed foul. Tiffany had always seemed more likely to take methamphetamines than to spend a day shopping, but Blake remained quiet. Maybe Tiffany had been a social chimera—able to spend the days in the mine alongside her husband, and in her off time climb the ladder of high society.
“Have you been in contact with Tiffany lately?” Jeremy asked.
“I heard about what happened to her husband. I tried to call her the other day, after I heard, but she didn’t answer.” The woman’s face contorted as if she was angry with herself for talking to them.
Everything about this place and this woman felt wrong.
“Had you talked to her in the days before you heard about Robert’s death?” Blake pressed.
The woman glanced to her left. “Absolutely not.”
The woman was lying. Blake could hear it in her inflection. It was the same sound she had made when she had lied to Jeremy. The sound was too high, the air too flippant. She was certain Ms. Davy was a fraud.
“When was the last time you talked to her?” Jeremy continued.
Blake moved toward him and was going to signal him that it was time to go, but she held back.
“I talked to Tiffany about a week ago. My husband and I had invited her and Robert over for supper. Unfortunately, at the last minute, Todd couldn’t make it.”
“Who did you say your husband was, Ms. Davy?” Blake asked.
“John Davy? Like the golfer?” Blake asked.
The woman laughed, the high sound stinging her ears. “Close, that’s John Daly. No, I didn’t take my husband’s name when we got married. My husband is the mayor...Mayor John Engelman.”
“He’s your husband?” Blake tried to sound assertive, but her voice came out as a breathless squeak.
Judith smiled, her tigerlike fangs reappearing. “Are you friends of his?”
Blake bit her tongue so hard she could taste the iron-rich flavor of blood.
“We’re acquainted. He was at the shooting competition the other day—is that correct?” Jeremy asked.
The woman gave a shrill laugh. “Oh, yes. We hired him to make a speech at the finals.”
“You hired him?”
“Not me, but I’m on the board for the Montana Handgun Association.”
“You’re a sharpshooter?” Jeremy leaned forward, tenting his fingers in front of him like he was calling forth the beast.
She laughed. “I’m decent with a gun, but it’s just a hobby—you know, something to give me a break from work.”
“What kind of work is it that you do, Ms. Davy?”
“I’m the CFO for my husband’s company, Tartarus Environmental Investments.” Her phone rang and she hurried across the room to pick it up. She answered it, saying something in what Blake assumed was Japanese.
She must have asked the caller to hold, because she lowered the phone and turned to them. “Detective, Deputy, I’m afraid I can’t be any more help in your attempt to find Tiffany. I need to get back to my work. I’m sure you know how it is.” She forced a smile as she lifted her phone like it was evidence of her business, but there was a new strain in the way she moved, as if it was crucial they leave.
“We understand,” Jeremy said, holding out his hand to help Blake stand. He gave it a light squeeze, reassuring her that she wasn’t alone in her suspicion.
Every cell in her body screamed for her to slap her cuffs on the woman and take her straight to jail, but there wasn’t room for any more mistakes. Judith was a powerful and dangerous woman.
Chapter Twenty
Blake reached over and turned on the heat in the truck, but no amount of warmth would dispel Jeremy’s numbness. How could they have missed this earlier? There had been so many lines running to the mayor, so many motivations to get Robert’s land and mineral rights. Yet they had written him off. They’d never thought to check out his wife. Was she the killer they had been looking for all along?
Judith hardly seemed like the type who could walk up to his brother and put a round in his head, but if he’d learned one thing in his years as a detective, it was that killers looked like everyone else. If anything, a killer was more likely to be the innocent-looking neighbor rather than the schizophrenic transient. It was always the ones that people didn’t see coming that ended up being the most dangerous—and the hardest to pin down.
Blake looked over at him and shook her head. “What are we going to do?”
He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “It’s more important than ever that we find Tiffany. We need someone...anyone...who can help us figure out what in the hell is going on.”
Blake nodded, but her lips were pursed like she knew exactly how unlikely it was that Tiffany would hold the answers they needed. “Ms. Davy was definitely in a rush to get us out of her house. Who do you think she was talking to?”
“No idea, but something was up.”
His phone rang, the sound making him jump. “This is Lawrence,” he answered.
“This is Sergeant McDonald with the Montana Highway Patrol. I’m just outside of Butte and I believe I have a truck pulled over that matches your description. I have taken the driver into custody. How would you like me to proceed?”
He pulled over, the truck’s tires sliding in the muddy grit on the side of the road.
“Do you have an ID on the driver?”
“The woman doesn’t have any form of identification, but she says her name is Sophia Lawrence.”
Lawrence? It had to be Tiffany. “What does the woman look like?”
“Dark hair, about one hundred sixty-five pounds, and a tattoo of a peacock on the inside of her right forearm.”
Tiffany had gotten the peacock tattoo with his brother when they had eloped in Vegas. The sergeant had their woman.
“She’s the one we’re looking for. Bring her into county lockup.”
“No problem,” the sergeant answered.
“And hey, thanks for tracking her down.”
“Wasn’t hard to find her. She was pulled over with a flat tire,” the sergeant said. “Is it true that she’s being investigated for her role in that homicide I heard about? The one in the mine?”
“News travels fast.”
The sergeant laughed. “There are no secrets in our line of work, brother.” The man hung up.
Blake shifted in her seat like she could hear their conversation. Jeremy reached out and put his hand on her thigh.
She looked down at his hand. He’d wanted to be able to touch her like this for so long that it almost seemed too good to be true—like the world was just waiting for the opportunity to strike them down.
Maybe fate’s weapon of choice was going to be Tiffany. It was impossible to know what she would tell them, but if everything went right, she would give them the last pieces of the puzzle.
With the closure of their investigation, it would likely be the end of his time with Blake. Their stolen moments would be the only things left to remember her by when he went back to his life in Missoula. Yet with only memories to keep him, he couldn’t help the feeling that he would go back to a life that would be incomplete.
* * *
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the station, Sergeant McDonald led them to the multimedia area where the soft interrogation room was being broadcast across the monitors. The room on the screens had pictures of trees and birds, magazines were strewn across the coffee table and there was an overstuffed couch. The place had more in common with a doctor’s waiting room than a regular interrogation room, which usually held nothing more than a table and a plastic chair that got hard on the perpetrator’s behind after a few hours of sitting around and waiting.
“How long has she been in there?” Jeremy asked.
“About an hour. Maybe a little longer,” the sergeant said. “She was a spitfire when she came in. Apparently this isn’t how she wanted to spend her afternoon.”
“Did you find out where she was going?”
The sergeant reached up and gripped the top of his bulletproof vest in his resting position. “I caught her at the northern edge of the county, heading toward Canada. There was a gas station map on the passenger’s seat. I bet you money she was trying to figure out a back road that could get her out of the country—that was, until she got the flat. You’re damn lucky we caught up to her.”
They were lucky, but why had Tiffany been running? Only the guilty ran; the innocent stayed put.
“You got her from here?” Sergeant McDonald asked.
Jeremy nodded. “Thanks again.”
The sergeant gave them a quick two-finger wave and left the room, looking happier than hell that this wasn’t his problem anymore.
Jeremy gave a light laugh.
“Something funny?” Blake asked, crossing her good arm over her chest as she leaned against the wall.
“Nope,” he said, pulling himself together. “You want to go in there with me?”
“I’m supposed to be on leave. If I go in there, our entire investigation will be compromised. Anything she says might not be admissible in court. We have to mak
e sure to follow protocol.”
He stepped closer to her and moved in to kiss her, but stopped as he remembered they were in the station. No one was around, but they still needed to keep it as private as they could.
Blake moved away, almost as if she was thinking the same thing—or was she thinking something else? Was it possible she regretted sleeping with him?
“You need to get in there,” Blake said, motioning toward the interrogation room. “If Ms. Davy is involved, then it’s only a matter of time before she runs. She has the money to go anywhere, anytime. If she gets loose, there’s little to no chance that we’ll get her back.”
Blake was right, but he wasn’t ready to let things go between them. He wanted answers. Leaving his heart open and exposed wasn’t something he was used to.
He tipped his head as he forced himself to stay quiet about what was going on inside. Whether he wanted them to or not, his feelings could wait.
Jeremy turned to go out of the media room.
“Wait,” Blake called after him. He turned back. “Good luck in there. I hope you get the answers you need.”
“You mean the answers we need.” He closed the door as he made his way out and across the hall. At the door to the interrogation room, he took a long breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He pushed opened the door, seeing Tiffany seated in a corner of the sofa, her arms crossed over her chest like she was protecting herself from attack.
“Well, well, Tiffany,” he said as he took a seat across the room. “Long time, no see.”
In truth, he’d been in the woman’s presence only a handful of times, and the last time he’d seen her had been a little over three years ago. She had changed. Her dark hair had more gray and her face was now so thin that her tan skin hung loose on her cheeks. She looked haggard. In a way, he found comfort in the fact she was stressed. It proved that she was feeling something about Robert’s death. Whether it was guilt or sadness he had yet to find out.
Dust Up with the Detective Page 15