Murder Deja Vu

by Polly Iyer

  Murder Déjà Vu

  Polly Iyer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to actual events or locales is coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Cover design by Polly Iyer

  Murder Déjà Vu

  Copyright © 2012 by Polly Iyer

  ASIN: B006UYD0NY

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  A Meeting of the Minds

  Chapter Two

  Out in the Open

  Chapter Three

  Ignoring the Facts

  Chapter Four

  From Lunch to More

  Chapter Five

  Life’s Outline

  Chapter Six

  Uninvited Guests

  Chapter Seven

  A Day’s Lifetime Change

  Chapter Eight

  Locked Up

  Chapter Nine

  Jeraldine

  Chapter Ten

  The Sleuth Sleuths

  Chapter Eleven

  A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

  Chapter Twelve

  A Little History

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Bombshell

  Chapter Fourteen

  Calling Bluffs

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dana Exposed

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Noose Tightens

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Last Nail in the Coffin

  Chapter Eighteen

  Déjà Vu All Over Again

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty

  Collusion

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Clarence Comes Clean

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Something to Go On

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Not-So Subtle Interrogation

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Reece’s Protector

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Sleeping Giant

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Little Feather Ruffling

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Brotherly Love

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Closet

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Reality Bites

  Chapter Thirty

  Russian Roulette

  Chapter Thirty-One

  What Could Have Been

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Uninvited Guests

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tomorrow

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Dark Side

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Another One Down

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Going Back in Time

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Dana’s Fifteen Minutes

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Revelation

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A Little Undercover Work

  Chapter Forty

  Let’s Make a Deal

  Chapter Forty-One

  Misplaced trust

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Old Angers

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Sweet Thang

  Chapter Forty-Four

  And Then There Were None

  Chapter Forty-Five

  A Hopeless Choice

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Too Late

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Sprung from the Hoosegow

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Good News and Bad

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  One Word Against the Other

  Chapter Fifty

  Hidden Meaning

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A Double Life

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Drifting Off to a Better Place

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  What’s Going On?

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  One-sided Deal

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  More Than Murder

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  A Bittersweet Time

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The Bitter Truth

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Gotcha

  Chapter One

  A Meeting of the Minds

  What did a man born rich and privileged look like after spending fifteen years in prison and another six hiding in these mountains? Dana pondered her question as she parked her Jeep in the gravel driveway next to a rough-looking pickup and skirted around the house to the back.

  Reece Daughtry sat in an Adirondack chair on the dock, reading. A johnboat bobbed in the lake, complete with fishing rod and tackle box. After swiveling around to see his intruder, he turned back to his book.

  She had her answer. Unshaven, leather-tanned, and lean, with dark blond hair heavily threaded with gray brushing his shoulders. Reading glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose. He struck Dana as more interesting looking than handsome, but he could be called that too.

  A booming voice echoed over the water. “What do you want?”

  “A fireplace.”

  “I’m not working now.”

  Undeterred, she kept going, waiting for him to tell her she was trespassing. He didn’t.

  A few well-fed cats poked their heads out of the greenery lining the rock stairs down to the lake. Another snuggled under his chair, and a three-legged mutt hobbled to greet her.

  “Hey, pooch, how’ya doing?” She bent down to rub him, and the dog wiggled his excitement. “Nice dog.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m not building fireplaces right now.”

  “I heard you. Doesn’t make me want one less.”

  “Come back in a year. Better yet, don’t.” He kept his nose in the book.

  She couldn’t help noticing his long, knotty fingers. Laborer’s hands, with rough skin and short clipped nails. Sinewy forearms like twisted rope. “What are you reading?”

  He glanced up. “You still here?”

  “Yup.”

  “Only a few people know where I live. Know why? So trespassers can’t come here and bother me. Let me guess who snitched. Old Harris big mouth.”

  “Don’t blame Harris. I saw the article he wrote on the house that featured your fireplaces. He warned me not to come, but I blackmailed him into telling me where you lived.”

  “You should’ve listened.”

  She moved closer and offered her hand. “Dana Minette.”

  He nailed her with a squinty glare. “Any relation to the prosecutor Minette?”

  She pulled back. “Not anymore.”

  “We had an ugly run-in years ago. He tried to stop the sale of this property to keep a convicted murderer out of his county. My attorney humiliated him; the judge ruled in my favor.”

  “Yes, I know. Robert is always looking for ways to get his name in the papers. He picked on the wrong person that time.”

  “He came here about a year ago. Said he had no hard feelings, and would I build him a fireplace. Can you beat that?”

  “I take it you jumped at the chance.”

  Daughtry pushed his reading glasses onto his forehead and focused on her for more than a split second. “You’re a smart-ass, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told.” Was that the beginning of a smile on his face?

  “If he’s your ex-husband, you’re well rid of him. He’s an asshole.”

  “He’s my ex, and you’re not the first person to describe Robert in those exact words.” She plunked down on the dock, crossed her legs, Indian style. “You’re all excellent judges of character.”

  “He didn’t have nice things to say about you, whi
ch I thought rather ungentlemanly, since I didn’t ask. Said he was redoing his house after he dumped his ungrateful wife.”

  “He said that? Ha!”

  “Yup. His county, his house. Probably pissed you weren’t his wife anymore, even though it was his idea. Or so he said.”

  “It’s a long story. Twenty years long.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Me either. Will you build me the goddamn fireplace? The two pictures I saw in the Regal Falls magazine were the most unique works of art I’ve ever seen.”

  Daughtry stared at her a long time with the clearest, most intense blue eyes. “Your ex wanted a fireplace in the worst way. Said he’d double whatever I charged.”

  “I bet when you held out, he doubled the amount again.”

  His smile was unmistakable now. “How would your ex feel if I built one for you?”

  “Talk about being pissed off.”

  * * * * *

  Reece went into the house as soon as Dana Minette left. She was a piece of work. A very nice-looking piece of work. He could go for a woman like her, but a woman’s what got him twenty to life, and he sure as hell didn’t need any more trouble. Whenever he felt the urge, he drove to one of the larger cities within a hundred-mile radius—Asheville or Charlotte—put up in a motel, and found someone to satisfy his sexual needs. No entanglements. No emotional attachments. He could do it by himself—he had years of practice—but he never found that a satisfying substitute for the warmth of a woman’s body or the touch of soft skin. That was the way it had been for the six years since he got out of prison and how it would be from now on. He’d even adapted to the loneliness. Had plenty of practice with that too.

  The three-legged dog nuzzled his leg. Reece never named any of the dogs or cats roaming his property. They were there, and he fed them. “Hey, Pooch. She gave you a good name, didn’t she?” He leaned down and rubbed the dog’s neck. He’d found the beagle cross lying on the side of the road, near death, taken it to his vet, and had it treated and fixed. He did that with every abused or emaciated animal he came across. Electronic fencing and collars kept them inside his property so they couldn’t wander off and wind up like Pooch, or worse. Reece debated whether he was imprisoning them, but dead was more of a prison than contained, though he disliked the thought of either.

  The phone rang. He let it go to the answering machine. When he heard the voice, he picked up. “Hey, Carl.”

  “Deciding whether you feel like answering your phone, big brother?”

  “I couldn’t check the number in time.” Sometimes Reece answered, sometimes he didn’t, depending on his mood. Carl knew that.

  His brother laughed.

  “What’s up?” Reece noted the hesitation. “Carl?”

  “Dad’s in the hospital. He had another heart attack.”

  Reece stiffened at the mention of his father, a reaction over which he had no control. “What do the doctors say?”

  “It doesn’t look good. He’s conscious but weak. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Well, keep me informed.”

  “Jesus, Reece. That’s cold. Your father is dying and all you can say is ‘keep me informed’?”

  “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. Sorry, but I can’t fake that I care. Wish I could, but that’s not my style.” He pulled a beer from the fridge.

  “You’re still his son.”

  Reece wanted to laugh, but the humor eluded him. “He should have thought about that twenty-one years ago.” He took a long draft from the bottle. It did nothing to cool his heat.

  “He could have handled it differently, I agree, but―”

  “Look, I’ve gotta go. Let me know when it’s over.”

  Reece clicked the off button before Carl could argue. He finished the beer, then took another. He’d worked hard over the years to control his anger and sense of betrayal, but times like these brought them back like a knife twisting in his belly. How could he forget? One day he and Carl were drawing up plans to expand the family’s home-building business—Reece, the architect, designing a new type of energy-efficient structure; Carl the business head, making them affordable. The next day he was locked in a cement cell with the echoing sound of steel doors clanging shut to keep him rotting inside. One day he had dozens of friends; the next only Carl and his mother stood in his corner. When he saw the toll it took on his mother to sneak away and visit, he asked her not to come any more. That, more than anything, had torn him up.

  Now she was gone, and he hoped the old bastard would soon follow, freeing him of at least part of the rage that consumed him and, yes, the hatred for the old man he carried in his chest like one of his stones. How could he feel anything for a man who believed his son capable of slicing a woman’s throat, almost severing her head from her body? Who probably still believed it with his dying breath?

  Reece looked around the house he built with his own two hands. Stone and wood and glass. It fit the new life he’d made for himself. A life he liked. He wasn’t designing the buildings he’d envisioned all those years ago, except for his own, but he was creating something he considered beautiful. Others thought so too, which gave him pleasure. He worked when the spirit moved him, nourished his passion for reading, fished, and ran the mountain roads—all the things he couldn’t do inside, except for the reading, which had saved his sanity.

  His thoughts roamed back to Dana Minette without conscious effort. He couldn’t decide whether she was cute, pretty, or beautiful, though his skill judging women was twenty-one-years rusty. He didn’t score the trifecta in honky-tonk bars, but he wasn’t after looks in those places.

  Dana Minette possessed something quite different. Determination, humor, and warmth, all wrapped up in an attractive package about sixty-three inches in height. Better still, she didn’t appear the type to genuflect for money or position. So how did a creep like Robert Minette get a woman like her to stay with him for twenty years?

  He remembered the first time he saw Minette, with his white-collared, pin-striped shirt, suspenders, and shiny suit. The man had done everything to rally the townspeople against the murderer who wanted to live among them. Reece had run too far and too long to run again. He fought Minette and won. So where did the lawyer find the nerve to drive into his yard, say he had no hard feelings, and act like Reece should fall at his feet and say Yassuh, Masser.

  “No one refuses Robert Minette,” he’d said, slicked-back hair glistening in the morning sun. “Robert Minette gets what he wants.”

  Reece laughed and ordered him off his property. The attorney stormed away in his Escalade, a spray of gravel spitting from its tires.

  Not this time, bub, and good riddance to you.

  Chapter Two

  Out in the Open

  Dana drove home with Daughtry’s promise to meet at eight the next morning to draw up plans for her fireplace. Harris told her Daughtry was a strange man, and he was right. But after he’d spent fifteen years caged like an animal, rarely seeing the light of day or a kind face, she couldn’t blame him for being antisocial. Especially after being wrongly convicted. If he was. But she didn’t believe a man who fitted a menagerie of animals with electronic collars could ever kill. She saw three more dogs roaming the property before she left. How many more were in the house?

  There were many types of prisons. Dana could have walked away from hers sooner, but the penalty would have been unbearable. After her younger son left for college and a TV movie deal for one of her books gave her financial independence, she thrust her middle finger at Robert and left his house with nothing but the clothes on her back. She would have left those too, but walking naked into the cold mountain air didn’t seem like an option. She filed for divorce shortly after. Robert dumped her? What a joke. Yes, Dana knew the freedom Daughtry must feel.

  Robert would blow a gasket when he found out Daughtry was building her a fireplace. A smile curled her lips. No one rejected Robert Minette, and no one called him Bob or Bobby or Rob or any of the pa
t-on-the-back nicknames most Roberts answered to. It was Robert Minette, and don’t you forget it. She hated him with a passion she never thought herself capable of.

  She sat with a glass of wine in her unfinished great room and stared at the fireplace wall. What magnificence would Daughtry construct? The magazine pictures and the breathtaking beauty of his house sparked her imagination. She drank another glass of wine and sat there until dark, then went to bed to wait for morning.

  * * * * *

  Dana usually rose at six, but the wine had put her into a deep sleep, and she woke a few minutes after seven. She hopped out of bed, padded into the kitchen, and ground coffee for a full pot rather than her usual two cups. Maybe Daughtry didn’t drink coffee, but if he did…

  After a quick shower, she fluffed her short wet hair to dry naturally and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She rarely wore more than a dab of lipstick and didn’t put on any more than that this morning.

  With a mug of coffee in hand, she slid open the glass door and went outside to enjoy the morning sun, scaring off a cardinal perched on her bird feeder. Dew covered the blanket of winter turf, interrupted by a few sprouts of green struggling to make an appearance. May mornings in the North Carolina mountains still held the nip of late winter instead of late spring. A brisk gust of wind sent her back inside for a sweater.

  Her house overlooked the picture-postcard view of the valley. Houses and farms peppering the countryside, church steeples, pastures, and barns. No lake like Daughtry’s, but that was okay. She preferred this.

  A truck groaned up the steep drive. A door opened and closed. She waited until he saw her on the patio and joined her, the little three-legged mutt trailing behind. Daughtry wore jeans, a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, and work boots.

  The dog hobbled straight to her and put his two front paws in her lap while he balanced on his one hind leg. “Hey, Pooch.” She glanced at Daughtry. “He’s a cute little fellow.”

  “Got hit by a car near my house. He didn’t have any tags or collar, so he’s mine. Vet fixed him up, but he can’t run after cars anymore.”

  “Because he can’t get off your property without being shocked.”

  “Better than dead,” he said with a penetrating stare.

  She couldn’t argue that. “Coffee?”