by Rebecca Deel
“Plenty of time for you to kill Sherri, then drive home and climb into bed,” Ethan said.
“When we test your coat, will it have Sherri’s blood on it?” Rod asked. “We found it hanging in the hall closet, Senator. Planning to take it to the cleaners?”
Drake, his complexion gray, deflated before Rod’s eyes. He propped his elbows on the table and dropped the weight of his head into his hands. “Okay. All right. Enough, Rod.”
“You have something to tell me, Senator?” Rod’s hands clenched under the table. Was the father of his old friend guilty of murder and attempted murder?
“I did it. I killed Sherri.” The words were muffled behind his hands.
Rod stiffened. A slight movement from Ethan shifted his attention to the police chief. Ethan shook his head slightly. Rod stayed silent. Something seemed off. Too easy, maybe.
“Do you want to make a statement?”
Drake nodded.
Ethan turned on the tape recorder sitting in the middle of the table. “I want to remind you again, Senator Drake, that you have the right to an attorney. Do you want one present before we go any further?”
Drake’s hands dropped to the table. “No.”
“What happened Sunday night, Senator?” Rod asked.
“Sherri heard me talking to another senator on the phone.”
“What did she hear that upset her so much?”
“You have to understand, Rod. Sherri loved me, looked up to me as a father figure. Her father might have been there in body while she was growing up, but he checked out mentally before he came home from active combat.”
Rod stared at him. “She loved you like a father, yet you shot her?”
Drake flinched. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“What did she overhear, sir?”
“Blackmail. She overheard me blackmailing another senator.”
“You asked for money in return for not divulging a secret?” Ethan asked.
Drake shook his head. “I never asked for money, just votes to help pass bills or endorsements of De Marco Water Works.”
“Let me get this straight.” Rod crossed his arms. “You’re telling me you killed Sherri so she wouldn’t expose you, for discovering something a good private investigator or reporter could dig up at any time?”
“Kyle’s running for my senate seat next fall. I didn’t want the scandal to hurt his chances.”
“What scandal?” Ethan said. “That’s good old boy politics at work. No one would be surprised by those allegations. Your being charged with murder will hurt his chances more.”
“What did you do after Sherri heard you on the phone?” Rod asked.
“I confronted her, tried to reason with her, but Sherri was idealistic about right and wrong, especially after she joined Cornerstone Church. She ran to her suite and locked the door.” He shrugged. “I thought she’d cool down and I could try again in the morning. I went on to my suite. Within a couple of minutes, I heard a car crank. I looked out my window and saw Sherri driving away in a great hurry.”
He sipped more water. “I ran to my car and followed her. She drove straight to the trail. I circled around to the far side of the trail and parked. I waited in the bushes near the entrance to the park. When she came back to her car, I begged her to reconsider. She refused.” Drake hung his head. “I panicked and shot her.”
“What about Megan?”
“I didn’t know she was at the trail until after I killed Sherri. I was afraid she had seen me. I was going to shoot her, too, but a car drove up the street and I didn’t want to be seen. I shoved her into the stone entrance and ran.”
“You were behind the attempts on Meg’s life?” Ethan asked.
Drake nodded. “I was afraid her memory would return and she would identify me.”
“What did you do to her cars?” Rod asked.
He licked his lips. “I didn’t do anything. I hired someone else to do it for me.”
“Who?” Ethan asked.
“I don’t know his name or what he looks like. I only talked to him on the phone.”
“Then who was your contact?”
Drake remained silent.
“What do you know about Sherri’s mother’s death?” Rod asked.
“I shot her, too.”
“Quite a killing spree for a man who doesn’t even have parking tickets on his record. Why did you kill Mrs. King?”
“She called. Said Sherri had told her everything before she died, even told her she was afraid I would hurt her or Ty to keep the blackmail scheme quiet.” A wry smile graced his lips. “Claimed to have evidence proving my guilt. She offered to sell her silence.”
“And you didn’t want to pay?”
“She would have been a leech, bleeding me dry even after I retired from public service.”
“Why did she resort to blackmail?” Ethan asked.
Drake frowned. “How should I know? Maybe she wanted to go on a cruise. I didn’t ask her how she was going to spend my money.”
“How much money did she want?” Rod asked.
“Fifty thousand.”
Rod studied the old man’s drawn face. Fifty thousand dollars wouldn’t cause much more than a ripple in the Drake account. Bank records showed his balance at well over $10 million.
“So how did you do it, Drake?” Ethan folded his arms across his chest.
“He’s lying, Ethan.” Rod scowled at the Senator’s back as an officer escorted him to the holding cell. “Somebody shoved Meg from behind before he shot Sherri, not after.”
“Protecting one of his sons.”
“Yeah, but which one? They both had motives.” He dragged his hand over the night’s beard growth, exhaustion washing through him. “What should we do about Meg?”
“Escort her out of town before the sun rises. I’ll hold Drake as long as I can without charging him.” Ethan slanted a look at him. “Have a change of clothes handy?”
“In the car. Why?”
“Why don’t you shower and change in the locker room while I make a few calls. I’ll drive you to Meg’s. You can leave your car in the lot.”
Rod returned to Ethan’s office, feeling marginally better. At least more alert for a short time. From past experience with all-nighters, he guessed he had about two hours before exhaustion would force him to sleep for a while.
Ethan hung up the phone and pulled out his keys. “Let’s go.”
They walked into the pre-dawn darkness in silence. Inside Ethan’s SUV, Rod said, “What’s the plan?”
“Check out Meg’s angle on Ty and the adoption. I’ll work on Kyle. Maybe we’ll uncover something new.”
Rod stiffened as Ethan turned the corner to Meg’s street. A red Camaro occupied the space behind Josh’s cruiser.
“Recognize it?” Ethan asked.
“No.” Rod scanned the sleeping neighborhood, alert for changes, but detected none. Josh hadn’t called in with a problem. Neither had any other patrol officer.
“Jot down the license plate and we’ll check the house.” Ethan parked on the street.
Rod handed him the information and climbed from the SUV. He approached the house, his hand sliding to his side and unsnapping his holster. Behind him, he heard Ethan draw his weapon.
The front door swung open and light spilled onto the porch, framing Meg in the doorway. “Hey, guys. Like my new wheels?”
Rod relaxed a fraction and stepped onto the porch. “You promised not to ditch Josh.”
“I took him with me.”
He speared the rookie with a glare. “And you didn’t call it in?”
“Didn’t see a need.” Josh shrugged. “You told me to stay with her, not keep her in a cage.”
Ethan shut the door. “She’s a protected witness.”
“I can protect her as well as you can.”
Irritation welled in Rod. “Not if you’re outgunned and outmanned, Cahill.” He glanced at the gym bag by the door. “Is that all your luggage, Meg?”
“Except for my laptop.” Her blue eyes studied his face. “No arrest during the night?”
“No. We need to get out of here before sunrise.”
“Sounds like a bad western.” Muttering under her breath at his abrupt response, she hurried down the hall.
“What happened?” Josh asked
“Senator Drake’s in the holding pen,” Ethan said, fastening the snap on his holster. “Confessed to both murders.”
Josh’s gaze shifted from Ethan to Rod and back. “You don’t believe him.”
Rod paced to the living room window and parted the emerald curtain. “He’s protecting one of his sons.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Not yet, but we will.” Rod turned away from scanning the street as Meg re-entered the room, computer in hand. “Ready?”
“There’s no other way?”
“You took other options out of our hands when you put that editorial in the paper,” Ethan said. “Check in every two hours, Rod. Miss one call by so much as a minute, and I’ll have cops from every berg within a hundred miles on your tail.”
Rod grinned, not doubting Ethan’s sincerity for a minute. “Yes, sir.” He grabbed the gym bag straps and strode to the door.
Josh swept Meg into a hug. “Watch your six, sweetheart.”
The Watcher hurled the mug across the room. The clay slammed against the wall and shattered, coffee dripping from the logs onto the wood floor.
Megan Cahill had gone too far. She was challenging him. Daring him. An act of defiance that would climax with her death. And if Rod Kelter got in the way, the Watcher would gladly send him to his wife and daughter.
He grabbed the phone and punched in a number. “I have a job for you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Outside, Meg pulled the Camaro keys from her pocket and dangled them in front of Rod’s face. “Want to drive?”
“Nope.” He opened the passenger door and tossed his bag in the back alongside hers. “I need to recharge for a couple of hours.”
Meg sank into the leather driver’s seat and cranked the engine, a sigh of satisfaction escaping. The leather seat molded perfectly to her body, the rumbling engine a pleasure to her ear. The machine under her hands went a long way toward soothing the irritation at running from her problem.
She glanced at the man beside her, his face illuminated for a few seconds as they passed under a streetlight at the edge of town. A scowl still wrinkled his forehead. She wanted to ask what happened overnight, but figured she’d eventually get the information she needed.
Meg swung her attention to the black and yellow ribbon unreeling in front of her. All in good time. Maybe if she let Rod sleep until they arrived in Kingsport, then plied him with breakfast and coffee, the information might slip out during casual conversation. Her lip curled. Right. None of the cops she knew told anything without careful deliberation.
She merged onto Highway 18 and pressed on the accelerator. The little sports car lunged forward, sending a shot of adrenaline through Meg’s body. If Rod weren’t with her, she would roll down the windows and let the morning breeze blow through the car.
“Speed limit’s 55 on this road.”
Meg narrowed her eyes and glared at her passenger. Rod’s eyes remained closed, but one corner of his mouth twitched. “You think I’m speeding?”
Rod snorted, slouching further into the seat. “You’re driving, aren’t you?”
Scowling, she eased off the accelerator until the speedometer hovered closer to 55 than 75. She sighed. Plow horse speed for a thoroughbred racing machine.
When she merged onto Interstate 40, the first spear of sunlight pierced the gloom. She pressed the accelerator until the car reached the new speed limit. After a peek at her companion, confirming his sound sleep, Meg urged the speedometer a few more ticks past the posted speed limit.
Meg shifted her focus to the upcoming interview with the lawyer’s secretary. Would she remember all the details about an adoption thirty years in the past? Arnie Castlebaum must have handled many adoptions over the years. She hoped Senator Drake’s name attached to the adoption might spark the secretary’s memory.
An hour later, Meg cruised Interstate 40 through Knoxville and formulated questions to ask the older woman. When Maeve called last night, she’d indicated the woman had medical tests scheduled for this morning, but could see her and Rod later in the afternoon.
Squinting at the sunlight streaming through the windshield, Meg dug her sunglasses from her bag and slid them on. None of this made any sense. Why kill Sherri? What could she know worth killing over? Something about the Senator? Was the phone call Sherri overheard the key or just a coincidence in a string of horrific events?
If only she’d had more time to talk to Sherri. Meg’s vision blurred. Tears slipped down her cheeks. She didn’t deserve to die. Could Meg have thwarted the killer’s plans if she had done something different? Miles of blacktop disappeared in the rearview mirror as Meg contemplated Sherri’s last few minutes of life.
She shifted in her seat and dug in her pocket for a tissue, sniffing.
“What’s wrong?”
Meg stiffened at the sound of Rod’s sleep-deepened voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Rod scooted up in the seat. “Do you need to pull over? Are you sick?”
“Sick at heart.”
“Sherri?”
She nodded.
He sat in silence a moment. “Losing someone you love hurts.”
Meg darted a glance at him. His gaze was locked on her face. Her heart flipped in her chest, knowing he’d experienced a loss so deep she didn’t see how he would recover. Would his heart ever mend enough to include her in his life? Another question weighing on her mind sprang to her lips. “Do you still hurt?”
“Every day.” He laid his hand on her knee. “But it’s no longer the first thing I think of when I wake each morning. When I first lost Erin and Kayla, I thought I would lose my mind. Grief ate me alive.” His voice grew rough. “I didn’t know a person could hurt so much and still live.”
Fresh moisture welled in Meg’s eyes. “How did you stand the pain?”
“Booze.”
Rod’s curt reply drew a startled breath from her. Meg had heard rumors, but never confirmed them despite her earlier hurtful remark.
“I worked as many hours as possible, hoping to exhaust myself enough to sleep without the nightmares.”
One hand dropped from the wheel to cover his. “Nightmares?”
“Guess I had a hard time accepting that I wasn’t with them in the car. If I had been, maybe I could have saved them. In the dreams, I’d see Kayla in her car seat, hands reaching out to me. Screaming for me to help her and Erin.”
Rod turned his hand over and laced his fingers with hers. “If I couldn’t work long enough hours to fall asleep from exhaustion, I downed a few beers, just enough to dull the memories. Then Ethan came.”
Meg frowned. She remembered Serena mentioning he and Ethan had some kind of problem in the spring, but she’d always been vague on the details no matter how hard Meg pressed. “What happened?”
“Ethan made me go home.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The house was empty, Meg, except for memories that gutted me as soon as I walked in the door. I had nothing but work to occupy my thoughts. When Ethan forced me to go home, the only thing waiting for me was a case or two of beer. One night, when a six-pack wasn’t enough to drown the pain, I drank a second six-pack. I was off duty at the time, but we were in the middle of the Muehller case. I knew better, that I was taking a chance. Ethan called me to process Serena’s house.”
“That was the night Serena’s house was broken into?”
He squeezed her hand. “Yeah. Somehow I drove to the crime scene in one piece, but Ethan knew as soon as he looked me in the face that I was drunk.”
Meg bit her lip, thinking about her brother-in-law’s probable reaction. “What did he d
o?”
“Drove me home, tossed me in the bed and ordered me to show up at the station the next morning, sober.” Rod shook his head. “I thought my career was over. The next morning, though, he told me he needed a partner he could trust. He gave me one more chance, didn’t even put the incident on record.”
Meg scowled at him. “How come you got another chance at redemption and all I get from him is grief?”
“I didn’t get off without any repercussions. I’ve been on probation since May that includes visits with Marcus Lang every week.”
“Is it working?”
Rod chuckled. “Between Marcus and Ethan, I haven’t touched any alcohol in seven months. Ethan didn’t mince words. Told me if I showed up drunk on the job again, he’d fire me on the spot.”
Meg could imagine the expression on Ethan’s face when he said that, too. Probably looked just like he had last night when he read her editorial. She shuddered. “You hungry yet?”
“If I remember right, there’s a pancake place at the next exit.”
Her mouth watered at the prospect of blueberry pancakes with a side order of bacon accompanied by hot coffee. “Perfect.”
Rod sipped his coffee and watched Meg work her way through the last of her pancakes. He smiled, amused at her enthusiasm. “Do you need another stack?”
She shook her head. “Hey, I was up all night, too, Kelter. I need fuel to replenish the engine.”
The coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. “But the Gazette went to press last night.” If he’d known that, he would have insisted on driving. Rod studied her face, noting the shadows under her tear-reddened eyes.
“And I have another deadline in three days. Plus, I took a few hours off to nab the Camaro.”
Rod caught the waitress’s eye and motioned for the check. “Where did you get it?”
“Friend of mine in Knoxville owns a car lot. I called him after the Corvette blew up and asked him to look around for me.” She grinned. “He found a real gem.”
“Does he pay speeding tickets for his clients?” Rod asked, his tone mild.
Meg scowled at him. “I don’t always speed.”