A Share In Death
Page 21
“And Penny?”
Kincaid hesitated, a sense of his own culpability still strong. “We’ll never be absolutely certain. I think Penny saw both Patrick and Eddie go into Cassie’s office.” Patrick nodded assent. “She wanted to be fair, to give both of you a chance to come forward before she spoke. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong man to confront first. Eddie Lyle didn’t play by the rules.”
“I still don’t understand how he knew I’d be here this week-”
“Remember your burglary? You told me you’d felt violated.”
“That long ago?” Hannah stared vacantly into the churchyard as she thought. “Yes. It was just after I’d signed the timeshare agreement. I remember I thought my papers had been gone through, but nothing was missing.”
“And Eddie borrowed the money to buy into the timeshare just weeks afterwards,” Kincaid said.
“Still, it was all circumstantial,” said Patrick, his lawyer’s instinct intact.
“But the prints on the handkerchief. You said-”
Kincaid answered Hannah gently. “The report still hasn’t come back from the lab, but it’s highly unlikely they found anything. It’s a chancy technique.”
Hannah closed her eyes, her face white. “A bluff? It was all a bluff?”
Kincaid nodded. “It seemed the thing to do.”
Patrick shut Hannah’s umbrella with a jerk and reached for Kincaid’s hand. “I wouldn’t like to play poker with you.” He smiled, his charm reasserting itself. “I’ll wait for you, Hannah.” He turned away down the walk.
Hannah looked at Kincaid for a long moment. “I don’t know what to say. I have to thank you. If you hadn’t-”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Gratitude isn’t the best ingredient for a friendship. Do you think we might…” Kincaid trailed off, not quite sure what he wanted to suggest. Lunch when she came to town? A polite exchange of Christmas cards? Hannah had a lifetime’s experience as a very private person-somehow he couldn’t envision her feeling comfortable with him after their forced intimacy.
Hannah hesitated, her expression lacking the assurance that had seemed so natural to her. “I don’t know. Not just yet, I think. Things are going to be difficult enough for awhile.”
“Yes.” Kincaid looked toward Patrick, idling halfway down the walk.
Hannah followed his gaze. “I thought a lot about what I wanted, what I needed, in those months I was looking for Patrick. Somehow,” she smiled a little ruefully, “I managed to leave Patrick’s needs out of the equation altogether, and it may be delicate going at first, finding the right balance. How we’ll end up I can’t say.”
“You’ll be all right.” He smiled at her, then bent forward to kiss her cheek.
“Goodbye, Duncan.” Hannah turned from him and caught Patrick up. They moved away down the walk, fair head bent over dark.
Kincaid made his way slowly toward the car park, absently avoiding the puddles standing in the cobbled street. He felt drained and somehow dissatisfied, as if all the tidying up of loose ends had left him dangling.
He turned the corner and looked up as someone bumped his shoulder. A woman in a bright yellow slicker hurried along in front of him. Her light brown hair curled damply about her head and she swung her handbag in rhythm with her stride.
Kincaid sprinted to catch up with her, his heart pounding. He touched her shoulder. “Anne?”
The woman turned to him, startled. Her face was unfamiliar.
Gemma stuck her head around the door of Kincaid’s office. “Finished?”
“Now I am.” He swept everything off his desk and shoved it in the drawer.
“Great filing system,” Gemma said, eyeing the clear surface dubiously.
“At least it’s out of the way.” Kincaid stood up and stretched. They had driven back to London separately, agreeing to face their accumulated avalanche of paper while still off duty.
Gemma came a few steps into the room and wrinkled her nose in distaste at the heavy odor of stale cigarettes. “Been having conferences in here while you were gone, have they?”
Kincaid grinned. “The evidence is irrefutable. Drink?”
Gemma considered. “Just a quick one.”
They avoided the Yard canteen, with its unavoidable shop talk, and made for the pub down Wilfred Street. Kincaid elbowed his way to the bar and returned to their usual corner table with drinks, wine for himself and lager and lime for Gemma. “Ugh.” He made a face. “Don’t know how you drink that stuff.” Kincaid always criticized, and Gemma never changed her order, probably, he thought, out of pure cantankerousness.
“Practice.” Gemma took a good swallow of her drink and grinned. They sat quietly for a few minutes, the pub’s Saturday night clamor eddying around them, until Gemma pushed her chair back a bit and sighed. “I do need to be getting home, though. Toby will be missing his mum.”
“Yes.” Kincaid imagined the welcome awaiting Gemma, and for an instant envy ran through him. He shook it off and forced a smile. “I wish…” What did he wish? That he hadn’t gone to Followdale at all, in which case Hannah might have died, too?
Gemma thumped her glass down on the table and he raised his eyes to find an unexpected understanding in hers. The corner of her mouth twitched. “If wishes were horses, my old mum used to say-”
“Right.” They smiled at each other companionably.
“Better luck next time?” Gemma suggested.
Kincaid raised his glass. “Cheers.”
Deborah Crombie
DEBORAH CROMBIE is a native Texan who has done graduate studies in medieval literature. She has lived in Scotland and England and is married to a Scot. She and her husband and nine-year-old daughter live near Dallas.
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