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 really 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.