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Nine

Madison was driving with Terry to Bill Carson’s when her phone rang. She silently cursed. She’d escaped all talk with Sergeant Winston down at the station—a miracle—but she might have gotten excited too soon. She glanced at the caller ID. It wasn’t Winston, but it was someone else she really didn’t want to talk to right now.

“You going to get that?” Terry prompted from the passenger seat.

“Didn’t think you liked it when I talked on the phone and drove.”

“Since when does what I think stop you from doing anything?”

“Fair point.” She’d smirk if her stomach wasn’t clenched tight. With each trill of her phone, she felt stabbed with remorse. It was Troy, and she was ignoring him. She’d never done anything like that before. The ringing stopped, and she took a deep breath. “See, they’ll get voicemail, leave a message…”

“Please tell me that you didn’t just ignore Winston.”

“The guy might irritate the shit out of—sorry, crap—out of me, but I’m smart enough to take his calls.”

“If it wasn’t him, then who was it?”

She pulled into Carson’s driveway, shut off the ignition, and got out of the car.

“So?” Terry was at her heels.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?” She really wanted to tell her partner to mind his own business, but then he’d immediately go to her personal life, and she didn’t want to shine the spotlight there.

The house was a gray-brick mansion with a two-story entrance and columns banking each side of the door. Large windows yawned into the night, and light from inside pooled out to the front lawn. Anyone in the front room would have been on stage, but no one was there now.

She pressed the doorbell and tapped a foot.

“It couldn’t have been a business call,” Terry said, prattling on. “If it was Cynthia or someone else from the lab or— Oh.”

She pushed the ringer again, refusing to look at Terry.

“It was your mother?”

Good guess. She and her mother didn’t see eye to eye on most things—most being marriage and babies.

“Was it—”

“It’s none of your—”

The door cracked open, and a woman was standing there in a black-and-white maid’s uniform.

Madison held up her badge. “Detectives Madison Knight and Terry Grant of the Stiles PD. We’d like to speak with William Carson.”

The woman’s brow pinched, and she looked back and forth between them.

“Bill Carson, ma’am,” Terry said.

She slowly looked at Terry, and her face softened. “Yes, just one minute, please.” She closed the door in their faces, and Madison glanced at Terry.

Madison said, “I just assumed that Bill was short for—”

“That’s the problem with assume. You make an ass out of you and—”

The door opened again, and a trim man in his fifties stood there, dressed in formal slacks and a white, collared shirt. The top three buttons were undone, and his tie was loosened around his neck. He studied the two of them and slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Mr. Bill Carson?” she asked to confirm.

“That’s me, and you are police detectives?”

“Yes. I’m Detective Knight, and this is Detective Grant.” Madison gestured to Terry. “There’s something we need to tell you. Do you have someplace we could sit?”

“Sure.” He stepped back to let them inside.

A tiered chandelier dripped over the entry, its lights twinkling through the crystals and casting small rainbows on the walls. The flooring was travertine and polished to a high shine. She could use her missing sunglasses again.

“Someplace to sit?” she prompted Bill when he hadn’t moved.

Bill Carson regarded them with curiosity but relinquished with a nod and led them to the “stage.” He sat on a cream-colored sofa, and Madison and Terry dropped into two facing chairs.

“We have some bad news about your ex-wife, Chantelle.” Madison stopped talking when a teenage girl entered the room. Madison glanced at Terry. He’d said that Bill and Chantelle didn’t have children.

“Tiffany, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bill told the girl, his voice stiff.

Tiffany let her gaze linger on Madison and then Terry, but eventually she left in the direction from which she’d come.

“Sorry about the interruption,” Bill said, matching gazes with Madison.

“Beautiful girl,” Madison began. “She’s your—”

“Stepdaughter. Well, not legally yet, but I’m engaged to her mother. We all live here together, so I think of her as—” Bill waved a hand. “Never mind all that. You said you have bad news about Chantelle?”

“She was found stabbed to death this afternoon.” Notifications were best delivered without any sugarcoating. The worst responsibility of the job, and she and Terry used to take turns, but lately it always seemed to be her.

Bill blew out a puff of air and leaned forward. “I don’t know what to say.” He met Madison’s eyes, and his were full of tears. “When was she—” He pinched his nose, sniffled and dropped his hand.

“She was stabbed between nine last night and two this morning.” Though if Carson had tried the Bernsteins’ door, that timeline would more accurately be between midnight and one thirty. “From what we could see, you’re her next of kin. Her parents are dead, and she didn’t have any siblings, and you never had children together.”

“No.” Bill raked a hand through his hair and bit his bottom lip. “Not for the lack of trying. She wanted kids, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. She couldn’t have them, and she was devastated by that.”

“Is that what led to your separation and eventual divorce?” Madison was trying to paint a picture of Chantelle Carson’s life.

“It would be easier on me if I said yes, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Maybe it curdled under the surface, existed in the words that went unspoken, but that time of our lives passed us by. I poured myself into work, and Chantelle managed the organization of numerous charity events and benefits.”

“For business or…” Madison prompted.

“Personal interest. She took her responsibility toward the community seriously. She often said that we all need to do our part, and if we don’t, we have no right to complain.”

“Sounds like she was a smart woman,” Terry interjected.

Bill looked at him. “She was.”

“Then why did you end up getting divorced?” Madison asked.

Bill’s face became hard angles and shadows. “I fell in love with Stephanie. I’d like to say it was because things between Chantelle and I were rough, but…”

Madison clenched her jaw. She’d learned the harsh truth that finding a faithful man was like sighting a unicorn. She wasn’t as emotionally charged around the topic as she used to be, but it had taken years to move forward after finding her fiancé in bed with another woman. She knew of a few men who didn’t stray. At least three—her father, Terry, and Troy—unless they had her fooled.

“It takes two,” Terry said, responding in a far more diplomatic manner than she would have.

“It does,” Bill said remorsefully. “I really do think part of what did us in was not being able to have children. It was like cancer killing us beneath the surface.”

“I can appreciate that would have been difficult,” Terry—the good cop—said.

“Is Stephanie here?” Madison asked.

Bill’s gaze snapped to hers. “She’s at work.”

“And where’s that?” Madison tossed back.

“Stiles Insurance.” Bill glanced across the room, then back at Madison. “She was my boss.”

That was a flip on the typical cliché that had the man falling in love with his female secretary.

Bill went on. “It was a little tense around the office at the beginning.”

As much fun as this trip down memory lane might have been for Bill, Madison had some other lines of inquiry to make. “Chantelle got a job at Southern Life not long after you two separated. Do you know if she was still working there? We haven’t had a chance to verify with the company.”

“Unfortunately, we didn’t keep in touch. I’m sure you can understand that would be awkward.”

“You were married for twenty-three years,” Madison countered, imagining that would afford some amicability. Then again, if Bill had cheated on Chantelle, Madison could understand if their connection completely fell apart, and it wasn’t like they had kids to bring them together.

“We were, and the decision to stay out of each other’s lives was a tough one, but it made it much easier to move on.”

For her or you? Madison thought, although it would seem Bill had already left before the marriage dissolved.

“And I heard that she found someone,” Bill continued.

Flapping jaws always followed in the wake of any breakup. “From whom?”

“Steph. She just mentioned it in passing, but she goes to the same gym as Lana—that’s Lana Barrett, Chantelle’s best friend since public school.”

What a horrible picture he was painting of his ex’s friend being buddies with his soon-to-be new wife. Talk about a spy in the ranks. “What’s this guy’s name?”

“Paul…I think.” Bill knotted up his face.

“Paul. You think. We’ll need to talk to this guy. You sure you don’t know—”

“I don’t, but Stephanie might. I don’t think he would have done anything to hurt Chantelle. From what I heard, Chantelle was happy.”

“Would you be able to reach your wife right now and just ask her quickly for his name?” Madison asked. “It might help us.”

“I’ll try her.” Bill pulled his phone from a pocket and placed the call. “Hey, Steph… Just a quick question… I’ll explain more when you get home. I know you’re busy. But do you remember Chantelle’s boyfriend’s name?” Time passed, and Bill’s face showcased shock and sadness, then landed on anger. “Told you, I’ll explain once you’re home.” With that, he put his phone away. “She couldn’t remember. And I’m in the doghouse because Steph has it in her head that I’m sitting here reminiscing.”

“Do you do that often?” Madison latched on.

“No. Anyway, I’ll straighten that out. But Lana would know the boyfriend’s name for sure.”

“Okay, just another question before we leave,” Madison started. “You said you weren’t in contact with Chantelle, but do you happen to know of anyone who might have wanted to harm her?”

“No. I can’t imagine, honestly. Though she was what some might call a Goody Two-shoes. Always saw things black-and-white and made no secret of how she felt. It’s why she was good at her job for the brief time she was at Stiles Insurance. She had no problem rejecting applicants.”

“Why would they be rejected?” Madison asked.

“Well, when it comes to health or life insurance, a nurse goes out to a person’s home and conducts an interview. That information is then reviewed before it’s put through to different insurance companies. If a person’s score is low… Say, for example, an applicant is very obese and looking for disability or critical care coverage. Statistically, overweight people are more of a health risk. A black-and-white assessment, to be sure, but there have to be some sort of guidelines in place. Anyway, Chantelle never had a problem telling people how things were.”

Madison inched forward on her chair. “So she’d tell people they were rejected because of their weight?”

“Uh-huh. No qualms about it either.”

“That must have made a lot of people angry.”

“Absolutely. Some of them got out of control too. They really took it personally, but at the end of the day it wasn’t Chantelle rejecting them; she knew what the company would approve and reject.”

“She stopped the application process before it got all the way through?” Terry asked.

“That’s right, and that was part of the job.”

“You said, ‘Some of them got out of control,’” Madison stated. “How’s that?”

“Oh, threatening phone calls. They’d show up at the office with dead rats for her. It got pretty bad sometimes. I asked her to quit—we certainly didn’t need the money—but she stayed on a little longer. It wasn’t until one of the rejected applicants showed up at our door yelling for her, that I insisted she quit.”

“Wow.” Some people really took rejection hard. “How long ago was this?”

“Over twenty-some years ago.”

Madison nodded. “One more thing. Do you have any idea what Chantelle might have meant by the letters GB?”

“In what context?”

“These letters were present where she was found.” That’s all Madison was prepared to give him.

“Well, in the world of insurance, GB would stand for group benefits.” Bill raised his brows. “Does that help?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Madison replied. Bill had discussed rejected personal applicants becoming enraged, but did someone behind a company have reason to want Chantelle Carson dead? It was a lead worth pursuing, but first, she and Terry would talk to the best friend and see what she had to say. Maybe they’d find out about the boyfriend while they were at it. In the least, he deserved to know what had happened to Chantelle. At most, he was the one that killed her. Both needed to be ruled out.