Читать книгу His Only Defense - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 11

“DADDY,” COLLEEN SAID, “who was that lady, the one you arranged to have breakfast with? She’s not one of your clients.”

Jud turned his truck into the parking lot of Hamilton’s Academy for Young Ladies and joined the line of SUVs, crew-cab pickups and fancy sedans also dropping off girls for school. He debated whether to tell her the truth and let her stew all day, or make up something he’d have to refute later. “How’d you know she’s not a client?”

“Those slacks came from someplace like Target, for one thing. And ladies who can afford your houses always wear gynormous diamond rings and carry Coach handbags for every day. She’s not married.”

He glanced at his daughter in amazement. She was fourteen! How could she possibly identify where the woman’s slacks came from, or be aware of purses and jewelry? “What do you study in that fancy school of yours?” He pulled into the unloading zone, stopped and turned in his seat.

“You always say it pays to know quality,” she said with a cheeky smile. Leaning over, she gave him a kiss, slid out of the car, waved at a couple of other girls with long blond hair and ran up the stairs to the front door.

She’d forgotten to ask him again about Liz Gibson, but she’d remember sooner or later. He’d have to respond, but he’d have a better idea of how much he needed to tell her after breakfast.

When he walked into the diner, Liz was already sitting in a booth. She was reading the morning newspaper and drinking orange juice. He took a moment to assess her from the doorway.

Good-looking. Maybe late twenties, early thirties. Probably divorced, probably children. Well-spoken. He wondered how long she’d been a detective, because she obviously worked out. The homicide detectives who’d ridden roughshod over him seven years ago had not, but they’d been older. One dyed his hair blue-black, the other carried his paunch in front of him like a baby bump. Why were they not the ones reopening the investigation? Did they think he’d respond better to a woman?

In her case, they might be right. He’d liked her forthright hazel eyes, and the brown locks she pulled back in what his daughter called a scrunchie. Made him want to ease if off and find out what she looked like with her hair down. He’d also be willing to give his business partner, Trip Weichert, good odds that there wasn’t a single drop of silicone in what Trip would call her “rack.” Nice rack, too. Just about the right size to fit into the palms of his hands.

Altogether a very beddable specimen. If he were in the market, and if bedding a detective wasn’t about the most dangerous notion he’d ever had.

She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked up, saw him, folded the paper and set it beside her cup. No welcoming smile, however. Very serious lady.

They greeted each other, but she didn’t offer to shake hands. He sat opposite her, and before he spoke, Bella, his regular waitress, put a cup of coffee in front of him. “Morning, Jud. Your usual?” she said.

“Did you order?” he asked Liz.

“Yeah, she did,” Bella answered, and turned back toward the kitchen.

“I don’t think she approves of me,” Liz murmured.

“She doesn’t approve of anybody that hasn’t been eating here for at least ten years.”

Liz took a business card out of her pocket and shoved it across the table. “This is my extension and my cell phone. If you need to speak to me, don’t hesitate to call.”

“You mean if I want to confess?”

“I didn’t say that. You might think of something you didn’t tell the other detectives. So, shall we get down to it while we wait?”

Jud shrugged. “You’ve undoubtedly read the files. I don’t have anything to tell you that wasn’t in them.”

“Humor me. For example, why was your wife driving home by herself at eight o’clock at night?”

“Sylvia was branch vice president of the Marquette National Bank. She usually worked late on Friday nights. The bank stays open until seven on Fridays, then she made certain whatever bankers do after hours got done.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not precisely, no. She liked working alone after everyone left. She wasn’t a morning person, so she didn’t go in to work early. She blamed it on her internal clock.”

“Your daughter wasn’t home?”

“She was spending the night with my in-laws. She frequently does that on Friday and Saturday nights. They live in Germantown.” He grinned. “That means closer to malls and movies.”

“She was only seven?”

“At that age she conned her grandmother into shopping and the latest Disney.”

“I’m speaking to Mrs. Richardson later this morning.”

That sounded vaguely like a threat. “Irene will tell you the same thing, Miz Gibson.” But Herb wouldn’t. She’d get a real earful if he was home.

Bella plopped a big glass of iced tea down in front of the detective and filled Jud’s coffee mug. They waited until she was out of earshot again.

“Listen, do you mind if we switch to first names? Seems more informal,” Liz said.

Jud was a bit surprised. “Sure. I’m Jud.”

“And they call me Liz that do speak of me.”

“Certainly not Liz the cursed?”

She laughed—the first time he’d heard her laugh. He loved it. A Shakespeare-quoting detective with a laugh like warm honey, and a smile that would melt icebergs in the Bering Strait. It definitely melted him, and warmed parts of his body that he’d rather keep dormant, thank you very much. He’d known she was dangerous, but not this dangerous.

“Certainly not the prettiest Liz in Christendom,” she said.

“Who says?”

The silence was deafening, the look lasted too long and the connection was too sudden. She broke eye contact first, stirred two packets of artificial sweetener into her tea, squeezed the lemon and drank greedily. He did the same with his coffee and burned the roof of his mouth.

“Uh, what’d you fix?”

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“The file says you cooked dinner that night. What’d you fix?”

No one in all those hours of interrogation and interview had asked him that. “It was seven years ago.”

“Come on, Jud, you might not remember what you had for dinner last night, but I’ll bet you remember the menu that night.”

As a matter of fact he did. The other detectives had asked him why he was the one doing the cooking, but not the menu. He took a breath as though trying to remember, then said, “I picked up a roast chicken at the grocery on the way home from the job I was working. And some fresh asparagus.”

“Expensive in November.”

He shrugged. “Sylvia liked it. I poached it in chicken stock until it was just crunchy, and thawed some brown rice in the microwave. I make it in big batches and freeze it in portions. Takes forty-five minutes to an hour to steam from scratch and only ten minutes to heat up in the microwave. That’s it.”

“What about rolls?”

He shook his head. “Two starches at one meal.”

“Dessert?”

Again he shook his head. “Watching our weight. Sylvia never has a problem, but I have to be careful.”

“To drink?”

“We’d opened a bottle of pinot grigio the night before and stashed the rest in the refrigerator. There was enough left for a couple of glasses each. I poured myself one when Sylvia called to tell me she was on her way.”

“Then?”

“There was boxing on Showtime. I sat down to watch it. I’d been out on the site most of the day in the cold rain, so that one glass of wine put me right to sleep. The boxing must have been boring. I really don’t remember who was fighting, but it wasn’t a championship match or anything. When I finally woke up, I realized Sylvia wasn’t home yet. It was nearly midnight.”

“What did you do?”

“Tried her cell phone. No answer. There are a couple of places along that road where you can’t get decent reception, particularly during bad weather. I figured she’d had a flat or something and couldn’t reach me. I dashed some cold water on my face to wake up, grabbed my coat and headed out to find her.”

Bella slapped down two plates in front of them. Jud’s held at least three eggs, bacon and wheat toast. Liz’s held a toasted English muffin.

Jud might worry about his waistline, although Liz couldn’t see that he had any problems in that department. Obviously he wasn’t bothered about cholesterol. She wished she’d indulged in at least an omelet or an order of bacon.

His answers had been interesting. He’d said Sylvia has, not had. Did he really believe she was still alive, or had he coached himself to use the present tense?

Liz would be willing to bet nobody had ever asked him what he’d cooked for dinner. The original detectives, Sherman and Lee, whose names had no doubt given rise to a million jokes during their partnership, were both middle-aged, had probably been horrified to find that Jud did the cooking for his family and had abandoned the subject.

He could have fixed the entire meal in ten minutes, leaving more than enough time to commit the killing and hide the body. The one call that had been logged from Sylvia’s cell phone that night had originated from the tower closest to her office. In his original interview, Jud had said that she called every night as she was leaving to give him her ETA so he could get dinner ready. She had not attempted to phone him again, but that call alone would have told him approximately where her car would be and where he could intercept her.

One of the most damning items against him was that his partner, Trip Weichert, said he’d tried to reach Jud at about ten and had gotten the answering machine. Jud had said in his original statement he must have slept through the call.

Maybe. Liz—who couldn’t bear to let the answering machine pick up even if she knew the caller was from a magazine subscription service—had never slept through the ringing phone. He must really have been dead to the world.

Or simply not there to pick up.

“So, Jud, between us, what do you think happened that night?” She leaned forward and gave him her full attention.

He, on the other hand, leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. She’d been taught to read people’s body language. His signified avoidance, protecting himself, distancing himself. When he spoke, however, he lowered his eyes and took a deep breath, but did not look down and to the right. That was a liar’s look. Dead giveaway. Either he was trying to tell the truth, or he’d practiced so long it had become the truth to him.

“I think she had arranged for somebody to pick her up, and left her car that way so we’d think she’d been abducted, and would stop looking for her quicker.” He raised his eyes. “It worked.”

“We couldn’t find evidence of a pickup by any of the rental-car agencies or taxis, even the ones that will drive that far out,” Liz responded. “With all the publicity at the time, surely any taxi or rental-car company would have come forward.” She shrugged. “The alternative is a colleague, a friend or a lover. No evidence was ever found for any of those.”

He started to say something, then stopped.

“If you know of any lover, or even a possible lover, I’d suggest you give me a name.”

“I don’t. To the best of my knowledge, Sylvia was not having an affair at the time she disappeared.”

“Were you?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“But you’ve had affairs since she disappeared.” Liz made her comment a statement, not a question. She didn’t know whether he’d slept around or not, but he would assume she’d traced his lovers. Or she hoped he would.

The man actually blushed. With shame or guilt?

“Lady, it’s been seven years since my wife disappeared. What do you think?”

“I’d like to talk to the ladies.”

“You find them, you talk to them. I’m not giving you any names. Believe me, there are damn few of them to find. What difference does it make, anyway? I was a completely faithful husband until long after Sylvia disappeared.”

It made a great deal of difference to Liz. She’d find those women and interview them—no, interrogate them, until they admitted their liaisons with Jud. Who knew what he might have let slip to a lover? “I don’t need no stinkin’ divorce,” for example. She pushed her empty plate away. Jud pushed his plate back, as well, although most of his farmer’s breakfast lay congealing on it.

So she’d rattled him.

“You’re telling me you had a good marriage?”

“About average.”

This time he did look down and to his right. He was lying.

“Money troubles?”

He dropped his fists onto the table on either side of his plate. Not exactly a slam, but close.

Good, he was losing his cool.

“Lady—uh, Liz, we moved into the new house in July, before she disappeared in November. Five months is not a long time to get the kinks out of a new house, not even one I designed and built. Colleen had just started second grade at her private school, with much longer travel time, plus after-school care until either I or her grandmother could pick her up.

“Sylvia had made vice president a year earlier and was working sixty hours a week or more. So was I, trying to get my construction business on a solid footing. We were all under a lot of stress. Sure, there were strains on the marriage, but I swear to God I never picked up on any signals that Sylvia was going to run away.”

“I thought your business was having money problems.”

“Half the time we’re having short-term money problems. Trip and I knew we could weather them. We did, as you could see yesterday. We’re going great guns. We were a little overextended, that’s all.”

“Nothing a million dollars wouldn’t have cured,” Liz said.

Without warning, he was furious. His skin grew mottled, his jaw set and his shoulders hunched. So he did have a temper. Not altogether Good Neighbor Sam, Mr. Easygoing.

“Miz Gibson, if I killed my wife for a million dollars, don’t you think I would have arranged to have her body found so I could collect?”

“You’re going to collect now.”

He slid out of the booth and stood. He loomed over Liz, and for a moment she thought he might actually hit her with one of those huge fists.

He took a deep breath, however, and loosened both his shoulders and his hands. He sat back down and waggled a finger at Bella, who was watching them from behind the counter, for another cup of coffee. He pointed at Liz’s tea. She shook her head.

Drat! Waiting for his coffee to be poured and for Bella to move out of earshot again gave him the breathing space he needed to get himself under control.

“Sorry. Sometimes all the suspicion gets to me.” Good Neighbor Sam was back. He grinned at her sheepishly, and her heart turned over and went into overdrive. Uh-oh.

“Look, Liz, I’m going to say this one more time. I did not kill my wife. I did not hide her body. I do not know what happened that night. I would never have risked my own neck, my freedom and my daughter’s happiness by depriving her of one parent, much less two. I won’t help you railroad me into jail for a crime I didn’t commit.”

Liz nodded. “Okay. Now, let me give you my response.” She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but he hadn’t heard it recently. Might shake him up a bit. “Sherman and Lee, the two original detectives on the case, firmly believed that you killed your wife and hid her body somewhere.”

He started to speak, but she held up a finger to stop him. “I am not Sherman and Lee. I am starting from scratch. For every mystery murder case, there are ninety-nine straightforward killings where we know immediately who did what to whom.

“Our homicide squad had a solve rate of over ninety percent before all the stranger-on-stranger and gangbanger killings started. It’s now down around eighty-four percent, which is better than most counties our size. Some cops just want to close the file, put somebody on trial whether they are convicted or not. I’m not like that, and I doubt Sherman and Lee were, either. If you are innocent, I’ll prove that, if possible, and find the real bad guy.

“If you are guilty, however, I am your worst junkyard-dog nightmare. It doesn’t matter that I like you and want to believe you. I won’t feel a bit guilty if I decide to arrest you and deprive your daughter of her one remaining parent. You did that, not me.”

He stared at her silently for a long moment, then he nodded. “Fair enough.” He leaned forward and smiled that beatific smile that would melt a statue’s heart. “So, you like me?”

Liz laughed so hard Bella came over to see if she needed a thwack on the back.