I deliberately turned my mind away from my past to consider Mike Bristol’s strategy. He was looking for leverage, using my history to get me to talk. I needed to stay cool, find out what he was thinking about Theo. It shouldn’t be that difficult. I’d learned how to endure goading comments when I’d been questioned by tougher cops and god knows how many intimidating lawyers.
Those dark blue eyes had deep creases around them. Caused by what? Either he had a good sense of humor and laughed easily, or he’d weathered some pain. There was a faint five o’clock shadow on his jaw. He was definitely going to need a shave if he had to appear in front of tv cameras at a press conference today. The blue eyes were looking amused now. I hate men who are amused at women. He’d try to pat me on the head next.
“What does that file have to do with Cutler Mead’s murder?” I asked.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “But it is illuminating about you, Ms. Pickering.”
“You can call me Ann Audrey.”
“Huh?”
“My name. Ann Audrey. Two names, but that’s what I’m called.”
“Okay, Ann Audrey, let’s forget the past and talk about the present. Why shouldn’t I arrest your friend right now for the murder of Cutler Mead?”
“She’s not capable of murder.”
“I’ve heard that a lot.”
“No, really. Theo can’t squash a roach on her patio. Much less smash in a man’s head.”
“She was covered in his blood.”
“Smeared with—not splattered. Your crime lab will confirm that probably happened when she found him. Theo is not an idiot. If she’d killed him and gotten splattered with blood, don’t you think she’d have changed her clothes before she called the police? Get real.”
His bristly jaw moved back and forth as if he were chewing over that idea. Since he wasn’t arguing with me, I decided to press on.
“She had no reason to kill him,” I said. “They’d just had lunch and spent the afternoon together.” None of this information was news to him, but I figured repeating it wouldn’t hurt.
“What about you?” Bristol asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“How do I know you didn’t kill him? I only have your word that you’d arrived on the scene just before we answered the 911 call.”
“Why would I kill him? I barely knew the man.” I was agog to be considered a suspect. But on reflection, I had to admit Bristol was justified in asking.
“Maybe you were jealous?”
“You think I had a thing for Cutler Mead?” I laughed. “Good Lord, no. He’s not my type.” I regretted my flip answer, as soon as I said it.
Bristol favored me with a tight-lipped smile. “I can barely resist asking the obvious follow-up question, but under the circumstances, I’ll move on. Were you jealous of the victim?”
“What are you implying? Get that out of your head right now. Theo and I are old friends—not lovers.”
He was definitely amused now. I realized I’d been yanked from my carefully constructed isolation and dropped into the rat’s nest of the criminal justice system. I had to regain the upper hand in this conversation.
“It’s not Theo.” I said. “You need to look around. Whose fingerprints are on the murder weapon? Was the security system on or off? Was there someone else in the study with Cutler Mead? Who are his associates? Was he involved in something illicit?”
Bristol pretended to search for a pen and pad of paper. “Let me write some of this down, Ms. Pickering. What else would you suggest I do?”
His mockery of me stung. I was contrite, not because of what I’d said to him, but because it might aggravate him and that wouldn’t be good for Theo. To cover my embarrassment, I tried to pretend the whole conversation was a joke. “Well, I have watched a few episodes of Law & Order.”
“It’s hard to trump a suspect who was alone with the victim right before his death, and when we arrive, she’s covered in his blood.”
“She is not capable of it. I’ve known her for decades. It’s impossible.” I scraped my chair back from the table. “Are you finished? I’d like to take Theo home.”
“Take her home?”
His tone of incredulity was well done. I would need to watch him carefully to figure out what he was truly thinking when he asked questions.
“Are you arresting her?”
He rubbed his thumbs back and forth across the tips of his fingers. He had every right to take Theo into custody and charge her, but I was gambling there were enough questions unanswered—and he was an honest enough cop—for him to hesitate. I saw him decide.
“Not right now.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath while I waited for his answer. Now I let it out and gathered up my purse. “May we go?”
He let the question go unanswered for several beats before he said. “I’ll have her sent out to you in the waiting room. You might want to leave the back way through the police garage.”
As I rose the exceptional blue eyes looked up at me. “In the interview, she told me that you’re her best friend.”
My throat tightened and I blinked back tears. The emotional onslaught was unexpected; I could have argued with him all night about timing, motive, blood splatter—all the usual policeman’s weapons. But his simple statement defeated me, reminded me of the debt I owed Theo. I was going down the rabbit hole again. Only this time, instead of fighting to prove that my husband was a thief who’d defrauded clients of their life savings, I was going to prove my best, my most-loyal friend was not a murderer.
4
Theo’s Story
A uniformed officer led Theo from the interview room. She kept her head high and was gracious to the cop, thanking him for escorting her to the waiting room. I wondered how often he got that kind of polite acknowledgement. I could tell Theo was holding on to her composure with both hands, and I hoped her grip would last until we could get out of here.
We took the elevator down to the underground parking garage, and I hustled Theo into the car and drove out the exit. A clump of trucks emblazoned with TV-channel logos were parked on the street. Blow-dried reporters from the local news teams surged forward. I avoided running over any of the microphone-wielding press, although Channel 2’s cameraman had a narrow escape.
Any further chance of vehicular homicide was averted when the front door of the police station opened and Detective Bristol strolled out, along with a group of stiff-backed men. They fanned out, and Atlanta’s long-time chief of police, recognizable by his ruddy cheeks and thatch of silver hair, stepped to the microphone set up on the front steps. The reporters swarmed en masse away from the car and toward the impending press conference. I figured they must not know who we were yet, or they wouldn’t have turned away.
Theo leaned her head against the passenger side window in the front seat. Her eyes were open, but I didn’t think she was seeing anything. Once we were away from the police station, she closed her eyes and let her head droop.
“Hang in there, Hon,” I said. “We’ll be at my place in a minute.” I drove home, parked, and led her to the elevator. We rode up the 42 floors in silence. When we were inside the condo, I took her purse and set it on the coffee table.
“Wine?” I asked.
“Please,” said Theo, sinking into the couch.
I poured two glasses and handed her one. “What did you tell the police?”
“Please leave it, Annie.”
I considered what to do. Theo does not panic in a crisis, but her preferred tactic is to ignore it or flee. Neither one of those was an option. I wanted to baby her, but I didn’t think we had time for that.
“Theo, don’t you understand the mess we’re in?” My voice was sharper than I intended, and I saw her flinch at the question.
“We? Since when is this about you?” She clunked her glas
s down on the table. “I need to take a shower.”
She shifted her weight to get up from the couch, but I sat down next to her and put a delaying hand on her arm. “We’re in this together. You’ve got to tell me everything that happened so I can help.” I lowered my voice to assure her I wasn’t angry. She shook her head, but she settled back.
“Theo, we can’t pretend this isn’t happening,” I said. “You had blood all over you. You were the only person at the house. The police think you killed Cutler. They’re not likely to waste energy looking for someone else.”
Tears stood in her eyes as she said, “Just don’t yell at me. I’ve spent the last day being looked at as if I’m some kind of pond scum. That awful policewoman stood over me and watched me undress. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”
I could, actually. She’s always had a weight problem. She’s self-conscious about it. When adolescence gifted her with a generous bust and a provocative nature, she learned to use sex to feel better about herself. Now that weapon had misfired. But I couldn’t get sidetracked into sympathy for Theo. Not yet. I had to find out everything so that I could plan our defense.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” I said. “Let’s go over what happened.” I topped up her wine glass. “You two went out to lunch. After lunch you went back to his house. You went to bed.” I waited for her to pick up the story.
She took a sip of her wine. “He was gone when I woke up. That’s not unusual, ‘cause I sleep like the dead after sex.” She swallowed and said, “I didn’t mean…”
“It’s ok.”
“I pulled on my caftan, and went looking for him. I guessed he’d be in his study.” She hesitated. “And he was. He was lying on his back on the rug, and I asked him if he was okay.” She paused and looked down at her wine glass. “I should have known. I should have known. I was so stupid.”
“No, you weren’t,” I said, even though I really wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I thought he was playing a game, Annie. It was only when he didn’t answer, I figured something was wrong. I can’t believe how stupid I was.”
“You weren’t stupid.” My heart went out to her, blaming herself for—what? For not realizing her lover was dead when she first found him? Or was there something else? “How did you get covered in blood?”
She gave me an agonized look.
“Surely the police asked you. What did you tell them?”
“I just told them it happened when I found him. That’s all.” She pressed her lips together.
I suspected there was more, so I said, “Tell me about it.”
She closed her eyes. “I didn’t see any blood at first. It must have soaked into the carpet.”
I thought back to the study, and the dark red oriental rug where Cutler’s body had fallen. It made sense.
“I knelt down next to him. He was warm, and I reached out and stretched my arm across him and stroked his shoulder. I’m not sure, I guess I thought it would comfort him. You know how baggy that caftan is–all that fabric. That’s why it’s so comfortable. Anyway, the front billowed out when I leaned over.”
She closed her mouth, blowing out through her nose. For a few minutes she struggled to speak, then she picked up the story.
“It got caught around his head. I stood up and got my feet tangled in the caftan. I stumbled back and almost fell. I yanked it and when I pulled free, he started to roll away from me and his head, the back of his head, and it was, it was…”
I had seen the back of Cutler’s head when the coroner’s men rolled him over before removing his body. I could sympathize with Theo’s reaction, being wound up in that gory mess. That certainly explained all the blood on her.
She panted and wept. I hugged her and let her cry herself out. At last she was quiet, and I coaxed her into the guest bedroom to shower and try to sleep.
I left Theo alone there, carefully closing the door so she would sleep undisturbed, and went into the kitchen to turn on the television. Cutler Mead’s murder was the first story on the late news. The reporter did not mention Theo’s name and there was no footage of us leaving the police station. So far, so good, but it was only a matter of hours before someone leaked the information that the victim’s girlfriend had been in the house when he was killed. Once the press made up its mind that Theo was the murderer, the pressure to indict and convict her would be relentless. No more reacting. I needed to make a plan.
There was a soft triple knock at my door. It was after midnight, but the three knocks told me who it was.
“I thought you might need a drink–or two,” said Flynn Reynolds, cradling a large bottle of Maker’s Mark.
“Flynn, thank God.”
Flynn Reynolds was slim and dressed in Neiman Marcus preppy. His dark, almost black hair was cut very short, emphasizing a widow’s peak that appeared almost painted at the top of his forehead. His small ears curved away from his skull, so that the overall effect was a handsome man with the look of an elf, or, a good-looking demon.
We had been friends since our childhood in Mississippi. I fell in love with him in the first grade, expecting to marry him and have beautiful babies. Then one night in junior high school, we’d stolen some of Flynn’s daddy’s bourbon and gotten drunk under the high school bleachers. My hopes for an evening of heavy petting were dashed when he confessed that he had no interest in me…or any girl.
I kept his secret through high school, providing cover for his interest in other boys. That wasn’t difficult. Flynn was a natural athlete. Too slim to be a threat in football, he lettered in basketball, tennis, and pitched for the baseball team. Half the girls in school were in love with him. In those days, the idea of a star athlete being homosexual was beyond comprehension.
For my part, I had no intention of becoming an unwed mother, having seen the most popular girl in school become a social pariah. None of us knew anything about birth control, which decent girls didn’t talk about, so when my latest teenaged conquest became too demanding, Flynn came to my rescue. I would breakup with the current boyfriend and return to the long-suffering Flynn—so categorized by high school gossips who couldn’t imagine why he continued to carry a torch for me.
It seemed that Flynn was riding to my rescue again. I watched as he tore the red wax seal off the bourbon and poured each of us a large tot.
“I take it you heard about Theo?” I asked.
“Don called me. He thought you might need a friendly face. One of his lawyers was at the station when you came in. He recognized you.” Flynn’s partner, Don Marshall, ran a pro bono service whose lawyers often represented criminal defendants.
He pointed toward the guest bedroom. “How’s Theo?”
“What you’d expect. A total mess.”
“And you?”
“Not much better.”
He reached over and squeezed my hand. “You’ll get through it, just like before, Audrey.” He had dubbed me that in first grade when my double name was too much for his stutter, long since overcome.
“I can’t do this again. Last time, the story was—my husband the crook. This time, it’s—my best friend the murderer.”
“Is she a murderer?”
“Theo? You know better. She’s not capable of it.”
“What is she capable of?”
I thought of Theo’s kindness to me. Her grief over George’s sudden death. Her tendency to cry over the smallest thing. Those were the obvious things. But there was another side.
“She’s smart, that kind of under-the-radar-smart that most men don’t recognize because they’re blinded by her tits.”
He whistled. “Ohh-kaaaay, then. Just tell me what you think.”
“Sorry. I just remembered all the times Theo got us in trouble in college.”
“You’re mad at her.”
I shook my head, my thoughts a mixture of affection and aggravat
ion. “Mad, sad, afraid. Pick one. I’ve spent years trying to lead a quiet life and that’s over as of this afternoon.”
“Then you’d better find the real culprit.”
I cringed to hear that idea out loud. Flynn was voicing what I’d already been considering, but resisting. “Me?” I asked.
“Who else is going to help her? Look, I know she’s your best girlfriend—notice the modifier—but this is your playpen. You’ve been here before and managed to come out unscathed.”
“Hardly unscathed, but I take your point.” I had already come to the conclusion that I was the only one who could drag Theo out of this mud pile. After seeing Theo tonight, I couldn’t avoid helping her, no matter how much I dreaded it. “The question is how to go about it?”
“You’re a trained lawyer. You were good at it, before that mess with Charlie. You know how to gather facts and put together evidence.”
“Thanks, but this is different.” Flynn had always been one of my biggest supporters, but I doubted my legal skills were enough to save Theo.
“Not so much. How bad is the case against her?” asked Flynn.
“If you were a homicide detective with a dead man’s lover found on the scene covered in blood, what would you think? Detective Bristol was polite, but maybe that’s not a good sign.”
“Bristol? Beau Blue Bristol?”
“Mike Bristol. Arrogant and full of himself.” I ground my teeth recalling how the detective had teased me during the interview. “Why did you call him Beau Blue?”
“Oh my lord, Audrey. Didn’t you see those eyes?”
I wasn’t going to admit that I had. Flynn’s imagination didn’t need any encouragement. “What do you know about him? Is he any good?”
“What a loaded question,” Flynn said with a mischievous look.
“Don’t be obnoxious. I’m too tired for gay repartee.”
“Sorry. According to Don, the defense lawyers think Bristol is smart and honest. He’s been known to buck the brass when he thinks they’re railroading someone. And he occasionally bends a rule to look outside the box. That might mean he’s willing to look at alternatives to Theo.”
Whipped Cream and Piano Wire Page 3