“If you think I’m heading in the wrong direction,” I said quietly, “I need to know. I just want the truth.”
She sank into the chair. “Ken wouldn’t have killed Sandra.”
I slumped back. That wasn’t even a vague suspicion. Not only did she know about the affair, she knew his name.
If she’d been a confrontational witness, I’d shoot her you can’t know that back at her. But she wasn’t. She was sad and scared and grieving. “You knew him?”
She scrubbed her fingers across her knees. “We had them over for dinner more than once. Sandra…”
Her voice broke, and she turned her gaze away, toward the window over the sink.
My eyes burned in sympathy. This part I hated. Intruding on people’s grief. It never got easier.
She swallowed hard. “Ken was the opposite of every guy Sandra ever dated from high school on, but I think that’s what finally appealed to her. He wasn’t a bad boy that she was convinced she could reform and save. It was like she’d finally learned.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. She leaned back and grabbed a paper towel from the holder on the counter. “I told her she should leave Dean and marry Ken. It didn’t matter that Dean was finally making money. Sam and I didn’t want Dean’s charity anyway. But Sandra was so determined to help us save this place, and she thought she could talk Dean into giving us the money or loaning it to us at least.” She gave the slow head shake that said foolish girl better than words ever could. “One of the last conversations we had, she told me Dean wasn’t going to come around, and she’d made a decision about what to do.”
All I could think was oh, crap. If she’d told the police that, then the prosecution was going to argue Sandra told Dean she was leaving him and he killed her in anger. I couldn’t even argue that the reverse had been true—that Ken killed Sandra because she refused to leave Dean. Not if Sandra specifically told Nadine she was leaving him.
My stomach felt like I’d eaten a chunk of ice. “Did Sandra tell you she was leaving Dean and planned to tell him so?”
A beat of silence. “No.”
Not that it mattered. That had to have been the decision Sandra made. Or, worse, she’d decided to take Dean’s money first from their bank account—which I knew from Hal’s report was a joint account—and then leave him. Hal hadn’t said there was a large withdrawal, though, thank goodness, because unless Griffin decided to alibi Dean, we were in big trouble.
It was possible Ken still had some weird fetish and Sandra’s smothering started as accidental at first, but dating “bad boys” wasn’t the same as dating men who had weird fetishes, and Sandra hadn’t likely switched from one to the other. Based on Nadine’s description, she was someone who finally wanted to settle down with a normal and stable man. On top of that, Sandra was fully clothed. Although I’d never tried it, I had to imagine that re-dressing a dead body wasn’t easy, especially if the clothes were wet or muddy.
“But she’d talked about leaving Dean before,” Nadine said. “And this time she sounded different. She wasn’t going to change her mind.”
My mind snapped back into focus on Nadine. Ken wouldn’t have killed Sandra if she was leaving Dean, but he might have killed her if she said she was going to and then changed her mind at the last minute.
Problem was, I had to be able to prove Ken was over at Sandra and Dean’s that night. Since no one had seen anyone coming or going, that included Ken. The only way to prove he’d been there would be to get him to admit to it.
“I told you that if you could convince me Dean killed Sandra, I’d drop the case. I meant it. Help me talk to Ken so I can find out the truth. Is there something you could tell me that I couldn’t have known unless it came from you? If he knows I have evidence of the affair, he won’t feel like he needs to hide it anymore.”
Nadine glanced back at the kitchen doorway. I could almost see her thinking about what her husband would say. “You think talking to Ken will help prove Dean killed Sandra?”
More or less. It’d help prove which one of them killed Sandra. “Yes.”
Nadine did one more my-parents-will-be-home-any-minute type look over her shoulder. “I’ll call him and ask him to talk to you myself.”
22
I had Nadine set up a meeting for the next Saturday afternoon at a local café since I knew Ken would be harder to talk to during the work week.
Even though the meeting was set up for a public place, I didn’t want to go completely solo. I also didn’t want to call Anderson again, despite his offer. I couldn’t expect him to keep bailing me out when there was nothing in it for him. Besides, he’d have expected to sit in on the meeting, and now that I had Nadine’s seal of approval, Ken would be more likely to be honest with me if I seemed to be by myself. Nadine hadn’t told him to talk to everyone who asked, only to me.
All I needed was someone who could sit at a table at the same café and then walk back to the car with me after we thought Ken had gone to make sure he hadn’t hung around to kill or abduct me. It was essentially the same trick Mark and I pulled back in DC when we were investigating my best friend Ahanti’s stalker, only this time Mark couldn’t go. Despite it being Saturday, he had to work.
Which left me needing to find someone who wouldn’t mind sitting in a café, doing nothing other than waiting for me to finish and making sure Ken didn’t find some way to force me to leave with him against my will. The person wouldn’t be in any danger, so that opened up a few options. I considered Mandy, but she’d be sure to find a way to butt into the interview. Russ wouldn’t do it even though it was for a job, since he disagreed with anything that required me to even speak with a potentially dangerous person.
I decided to call Stacey. It’d be a free lunch, and we’d get to spend time together on the ride. I called her. We opted to spend the morning together as well, and were settled into the café in plenty of time before Ken arrived.
When Ken came into the café, his hair was wet like he’d recently gotten out of the shower. If I’d had to guess, he’d probably been working on his house or garden again before coming here.
As much as I hated to admit it, the fact that he bothered to shower for the meeting hinted, just a little, toward innocence. It showed a certain level of baseline respect for me as a person because he didn’t want to come sweaty to our meeting.
He sat across from me in the booth. Stacey had positioned herself inside my peripheral version—her idea in case I needed to signal her to call for help because I felt threatened. She winked at me, the signal she’d come up with to say she was watching. If I was in trouble, I was supposed to wink at her. She opened her magazine in front of her, but she angled it in such a way that I could tell she wasn’t actually reading.
In the six months I’d known her, I’d come to think she was born without a funny bone. I’d been proven wrong today. All the way here, she’d been calling herself 006 and me 007. Because there wasn’t any danger as long as we stuck together in a public place, we’d been cracking secret agent jokes the whole way.
Ken didn’t even say hello until the waitress filled his coffee cup and walked away.
He folded his arms on the table, a barrier between us. “I came for Nadine’s sake, but I think you’re a liar who’s willing to do anything to get her guilty client set free.”
If I could have physically reeled back, I would have. My brain felt like it turned to pudding, and my whole planned approach evaporated.
I sucked in a slow breath. “I guess Nadine told you I’m looking for evidence against Dean. The truth is I’m looking for evidence period, wherever that might point. If it points at Dean, I’ll use it to convince him to plead guilty.”
He raised his eyebrows in a way that said do you think I’m stupid or something?
Okay, if that’s how we were going to play it, then I’d lay my cards out on the table and see how he reacted. At present, I wasn’t going to get anything useful from him anyway. “Truth is, I think you might be the one who re
ally killed Sandra.”
His arms relaxed slightly. “Now that I believe. That’s what I figured was going on when you and the other guy came to my house.”
Go figure. I wouldn’t have expected accusing him of murder to set him at ease.
Unless he’s innocent, the little voice in my head said. An innocent person wouldn’t like you trying to trick them into admitting to something they didn’t do.
Innocent or not, he seemed to respect the straightforward approach. “So why should I believe you didn’t kill her?”
He almost seemed to shrink in the seat. “I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t want to talk to you. Sandra and I were having an affair, and I’d been asking her for months to divorce Dean and marry me. I don’t have an alibi. I know how that looks. You could argue in court that I killed her because she wouldn’t leave Dean.”
“Did she say she wouldn’t leave Dean?”
“No.”
“Did she say she would leave Dean?”
“No.” He looked down at his hands. “But Nadine told me after she died that she planned to.”
Except she hadn’t told Nadine that. Nadine guessed. It was a good guess, but a guess nonetheless, and it seemed strange that Sandra wouldn’t have gone straight to Ken once she made her decision.
Unless she planned to make it special. She’d purchased ingredients for an expensive meal the night she died. Perhaps she’d intended to cook Ken a nice dinner and then accept his marriage proposal, such as it was.
If that was the case, he’d have had no reason to kill her. My “he accidentally killed her” theory looked pretty flimsy as well. Sandra wouldn’t have told him her decision prior to dinner, and certainly not during the prep work for the meal.
It looked like I’d dragged Stacey along for nothing. All my instincts honed by my time working for my parents said Ken wasn’t a killer, and Stacey looked suddenly exhausted. She hadn’t even touched the cheese Danish on her plate. Stacey loved Danishes. She’d been craving them for months. The Burnt Toast Café back in Fair Haven practically kept a box at the ready for her. I’d pick her up a box on the way home so she could have them later when she wasn’t so tired.
I watched Ken finally take a drink of his—probably lukewarm—coffee. One thing still bothered me. If Ken was supposed to go over that night, why hadn’t he? If that special dinner was meant for him, he should have gone over and either found Sandra dead or encountered Dean or been worried about her because she didn’t answer the door. The last option didn’t seem likely. Had Sandra not answered, Ken would have called Nadine. They clearly interacted regularly before since Nadine had his cell phone number.
I thought about asking him if he’d seen Sandra that day, but that could sound like I was trying to trap him. This whole conversation had been frank so far. I might as well continue and see if his demeanor changed at all.
“Had Sandra invited you over that day?”
Ken shook his head. It happened so quickly that I was certain he was telling the truth. His body reacted the instant his mind processed the question. There wasn’t a gap where he had to decide what the best answer was.
“I never went to Sandra and Dean’s house. She always came to my place, or we went to visit Nadine and Sam.”
That brought the finger directly back in Dean’s direction. If Sandra hadn’t planned for Ken to come over, she’d likely been preparing it to take over to his house and Dean came home and caught her. She’d told him she was leaving him for Ken, and he killed her. At least, that’s what the prosecution could argue.
And unless I could produce Dean’s alibi, I had no defense against it. While I could counter that Ken could be lying and he did go to Sandra’s house that night, Ms. Nosy Neighbor had been specific. People came to see Dean at their house when Sandra wasn’t home. Sandra went to Ken’s house when Dean wasn’t home. She hadn’t said Ken came to Sandra and Dean’s house. Any good prosecutor would know the avenue I’d try and be ready to block it by calling Ms. Nosy to the stand.
“Would you like another cup of coffee, honey?” the waitress asked from beside me.
I hadn’t even heard her come up. I shook my head. We were basically done here, and I wanted to get Stacey home to rest.
The waitress looked at Ken. “How about you? Coffee? Or we have fresh strawberry-peach cobbler.”
“Do you have any other kind?” Ken asked. “I’m allergic to strawberries.”
“Nikki!” Stacey’s voice called.
I jumped in my seat, and my cup of coffee tipped over, sending the last quarter of a cup of liquid shooting across the table at Ken. He jumped to his feet as well. The waitress spun around toward Stacey.
“Nikki!” Stacey called again. Loudly. Her voice had a strained, panicked quality to it.
My first thought was that Ken had a gun on me under the table and Stacey spotted it.
Then I saw the way her hands clutched at her belly.
23
I pushed my car faster. I would have welcomed a police officer pulling me over at this point in time. He could have escorted us the rest of the way to Fair Haven, and maybe even delivered the baby if we didn’t make it in time. The waitress at the café gave us the bad news that Fair Haven’s hospital was the nearest one, and Stacey’d been too panicked to wait for an ambulance. She wanted to go. Immediately.
Stacey huffed in the passenger seat. “It’s too early.”
The memory of Mark’s story about his first wife’s premature labor and the death of their baby danced through my head. I definitely could not tell Stacey that. “Only four or five weeks. That’s barely premature. It’ll be okay. You’ll both be okay. Why don’t you try calling your mom again?”
Stacey’s mom and dad had planned on taking a canoe out on the lake this afternoon. With how patchy Fair Haven’s cell signals were in the center of town, I’d nearly hyperventilated when she told me. But they’d thought it’d be safe. As Stacey kept repeating, she wasn’t due for a month yet.
She held the phone up to her ear, then shook her head. “No answer. It goes straight to voicemail. Dad’s phone, too.”
Think, Nicole. Think. “Call Russ. He’ll know someone with a boat, and he can go out looking for them.”
My cell phone rang in my pocket, and the Bluetooth display showed Elise’s name. I let it ring. Having Stacey in labor in my car while I drove was enough of a distraction. I couldn’t talk to Elise as well without risking a wreck.
“Russ is going,” Stacey said, “but the contractions are getting worse. Closer.”
If she’d told me she’d gotten an arraignment date, I could give her an idea of where she was in the legal process and how long she’d have to wait. I had no idea what contractions meant, especially since we hadn’t been timing them. I didn’t even know if there was a standard.
“We’re almost there,” I said.
“We’re not almost there!” Stacey growled. “And it hurts.”
It was probably going to hurt a lot more before the baby came, but I wasn’t about to tell her that, either. I added another ten miles per hour to our speed, and prayed instead that a police officer wouldn’t spot us. At the speed I was going, he’d give me a ticket for reckless driving and then finish escorting us to the hospital.
Elise called me again as I made the final turn into the hospital parking lot and laid on my brakes. I shoved my phone in my pocket so I could call her back later—and, more importantly, keep in touch with Russ and Stacey’s parents—and dashed into the hospital to get a nurse and a wheelchair.
When they had her moved over, she refused to let go of my hand. My phone vibrated in my pocket as we moved down the hall.
Elise usually left a message and waited for me to call her back. Something had to be wrong, but I couldn’t call while Stacey needed me. Tears were running down her face, more from fear than from pain I suspected. If she lost this baby, it’d be like losing Noah all over again.
Nothing I could say would help her. All I could do was hold her hand un
til her mom got here, and I wasn’t going to do anything to make her feel like she was alone. For the foreseeable future, Stacey had to be the most important thing.
Every few minutes—or at least that’s what it seemed like—my phone rang. With every ring, my stomach tightened further until I could barely breathe. Not even Stacey turning the bones in my hand into pulp drowned it out.
At one point, I checked the call log to make sure it wasn’t Russ calling. They were all Elise.
Stacey’s mom arrived right as the doctor was telling Stacey she needed to push. I fled.
Russ sat with Tony outside the door. I nodded to them as I went by, and Russ mouthed the words I’m going to stay with him.
On any other day, I would have stayed with them as well. If it turned out nothing was wrong with Elise, I could come back. But my gut said something was very, very wrong.
Call me, I whispered back to Russ.
He nodded.
I went around the corner and took out my phone. The time on my screen couldn’t possibly be right. It said I’d been with Stacey at the hospital nearly three hours. My phone now not only had missed calls from Elise—none with a message—but also a frantic message from Mark and multiple texts. He didn’t know why Elise was trying to contact me, but he was worried that she hadn’t been able to.
I sent him a quick text letting him know I was at the hospital with Stacey because she’d gone into labor early.
Then I called Elise.
“Where have you been?” she snapped.
A snarky response sprang to my lips, but I bit it back. She sounded odd. I’d expected the kind of anger that a parent feels when their child misses curfew and they don’t know if they’ve been in an accident or not. I hadn’t expected the kind of angry-scared that happens when you come home and find someone’s broken into your house.