IN THE PARKING GARAGE, Rachel dialed Sergeant Warren’s number, explained what she wanted, and asked if she could drop by later in the morning. The retired detective acted eager to help. Then she backed her car out of the slot and exited the garage.
Once Rachel turned on Poplar, she glanced in her rearview mirror, half expecting to see Boone tailing her. She appreciated his concern. To a point. She tried to think if the roles were reversed if she’d hover over him. No. She trusted him to be competent and aware of his surroundings. A shot of anger burned her. That meant he didn’t trust her even though he denied it.
Or . . . something had happened in his past that made him overly cautious. He’d mentioned Iraq, and once, when Rachel complained to Brad Hollister that Boone was micromanaging her, Brad told her that Boone had lost someone under his command.
Rachel would like to know a little more about that, but he always evaded any discussion about his time in Iraq. It must have been really hard for him. The memory of the heated gaze he’d given her yesterday at Nana’s tripped her heart. On second thought, maybe she didn’t need to know more about him.
At the condo complex, she parked in the space beside Monica’s car. It was after nine, but once again the curtains were drawn. Surely she wasn’t sleeping. Rachel rang the doorbell and was poised to ring it again when Monica opened the door. No, not sleeping, as she was dressed in a coral shell and white pants. And the oversized glasses were in place, magnifying the fine lines around her eyes. She looked every bit her fifty-plus years.
“What do you want now?”
“I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”
“I have an appointment.”
“This won’t take long. Can I come in?”
“I don’t suppose it’d do any good to say no,” she said and stepped away from the door. “You know where the living room is. I’m going to get me a cup of coffee.”
Rachel detected a faint odor of alcohol on Monica’s breath as she walked past her. Nana may have been right about Monica having a drinking problem. Rachel chose to sit on the red sofa again. With the curtains drawn and the blinds shut, the room had a dungeon effect. She took out a pencil and pad and then flicked on a lamp.
A low rumble from the kitchen startled her, and she touched the pistol on her belt. The noise turned to gurgling, and heat crawled up her face. A pod coffeemaker. She heard the same sound every morning in her own kitchen. She would have been mortified if Boone had been there to read her body language.
Coffee sounded pretty good right now. Probably too much to hope that Monica would offer her a cup. She hadn’t guessed wrong when Monica returned with a single cup and sat on the piano bench like before.
“I don’t know what you expect me to tell you that I haven’t told you already.” She picked up the almost empty pack of cigarettes, but she didn’t take one out.
“I’d like you to take a look at photos taken the night Harrison won the Elvis contest at the Cook Convention Center,” Rachel said, taking the package from her bag. “You are in quite a few of them.”
“I never said I wasn’t there.” She drank from the mug and then pulled a cigarette from the pack. “Look, I didn’t kill Harrison.”
“Did you love him?”
The question rocked Monica back. She set the cup down hard and fumbled for a lighter. Without looking up, she raised the cigarette to her lips and flicked the wheel of the lighter. Flicked it again when it failed to ignite.
“Did he return your love?” Rachel pressed.
“I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to.” She waited.
Monica stared at the end of the cigarette as though it would magically light up. Finally she returned it to the package. “Yes, he did. Unfortunately, there weren’t many women he didn’t love.”
“Did that make you angry?”
“I was thirty-five and had spent the last five years waiting on Harrison to propose. Time was running out if I wanted children. And then I realized he was in love with someone else. Wouldn’t that make you angry?”
She did not want to think about just how angry it would make her. Angry enough to stay home when her husband wanted her to go fishing with him. Angry enough to feel nothing when she learned he’d drowned on the trip. She attributed her lack of emotion to shock, and later she did feel something. But instead of grief, what she felt was guilt.
“You’re thinking about someone who hurt you right now, so you know how I felt.”
“We aren’t talking about me.” She focused on the pencil in her hand. “How did it make you feel?”
Monica snorted, drawing Rachel’s gaze. She wished she’d kept looking at her pencil. The oversized glasses magnified the glint in the older woman’s eye. Rachel hadn’t fooled her.
“Whatever.” She pushed the glasses up on her nose. “Made me angrier than a wet cat, but I didn’t kill him. You know why? He swore it was just business. And like a fool I forgave him.” Her eyes turned misty. After a few seconds, she shook her head, as if to clear it. “And then someone killed him.”
“Did you catch him with someone?”
“More or less.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard him talking to someone on the phone. Pledging his undying love. I confronted him. That’s when he said it was only business on his part.” Her lip curled like she’d tasted something rotten. “I demanded the five thousand dollars he owed me. ‘Aw, baby, don’t be like that,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot more than five grand involved. This pigeon is loaded.’”
“Are you saying you have no idea who the woman was?” She would not let herself even think Monica was talking about her mother.
“It could’ve been an older woman. I hate to say it, but Harrison was bad to play up to those old biddies.” She played with the pack of cigarettes in her hands, turning it from top to bottom. “He was a sorry piece of trash . . . but there was just something about him that I couldn’t get out from under my skin.”
It hadn’t been that way with Corey. As soon as he left on his fishing trip, Rachel had contacted a divorce attorney she knew. “Randy Culver said Vic Vegas was in a deep discussion with someone Friday night. Was it you?”
“We talked, but I wouldn’t call it anything deep.”
“Did you see him talking to anyone else?”
“I was too busy to follow him around.”
“Randy also commented that a jealous husband could have killed Vic. Was he like Harrison? With the women, I mean. Could he have been killed over a woman?”
An amused smile quirked Monica’s lips. “No, he was nothing like Harrison. Yeah, he flirted with the women—it was part of who he was—but Vic Vegas was a straight arrow. Always kind of surprised me that he was so intent on finding Harrison’s murderer with all the lousy things Harrison was involved in.”
It made Rachel feel better to know that about Vic. That had been the sense she’d gotten about him until Culver made that remark. She put her pencil and paper away and stood. “Thanks for talking to me. I have a better picture of Harrison than I did.”
The event planner nodded. “Look, I didn’t mean anything yesterday about your mother loaning Harrison money. To be truthful, I was always kind of jealous of her and Harrison, even though he always said they were just friends.”
“They’d known each other a long time.”
Monica dropped her gaze. Indecision played out on her face. Rachel waited, letting the silence grow. Most people couldn’t stand dead air and usually rushed to fill it. Especially if they had something they wanted to get off their chest.
“You seem like a nice person. Like your mom . . .” She hugged her arms to her waist.
“Thank you.”
Again Rachel let the silence lengthen.
Monica lifted her chin and removed the glasses. “I’ve never told anyone this, and it’s always bothered me that I didn’t. But something else happened you should know about.”
She stood and walked to the window, where she moved the curtain and opened the blinds to look out. It took every ounce of Rachel’s self-control to not push her. Monica’s shoulder straightened and she turned around.
“Like I said, I liked your mom, went to her funeral. After the service, I went back to get a rose from one of the arrangements.” Monica ducked her head. “It sounds silly now, but I wanted a memento of Gabby because she was so kind to me when others weren’t. Anyway, Harrison was at the graveside, arguing with someone, accusing them of killing Gabby . . . threatening to go to the police with what he knew unless this person made it worth his while to keep quiet. The other person told Harrison he should have gotten rid of him years ago. That night Harrison was killed.”
The hair on the back of her neck raised. “Who was the person he argued with?”
Monica licked her lips and swallowed. “Your father.”
Cold seeped into Rachel’s face as the room tilted. “Th-that’s impossible.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. “I don’t believe it.”
“That’s one reason I’ve never told anyone. Who would believe me over Lucien Winslow? I’d had a couple of drinks, and there was no proof, other than what I’d heard. The police probably would have laughed at me. And if he did kill Harrison, I didn’t want to end up dead too.”
Rachel couldn’t imagine the Judge that angry. He just didn’t lose control like that. She shook her head to clear it. “Getting rid of someone doesn’t necessarily mean killing them.”
“I just know what I heard and who I saw saying it. You’d believe your father could have done it if you’d seen the look on his face—he could’ve killed Harrison right then.”
The dark room closed in on her. She had to get out of here. Rachel stood. “If I have more questions, I’ll call.”
“Sure.” Monica slid a cigarette from the pack and lit it. After a long drag, she blew smoke out the side of her mouth. “You don’t believe me, but I’m telling you the truth.”
Rachel planted her feet, as if that would ground her in the spinning room. Monica Carpenter actually believed her father had killed Harrison. “He may have threatened Foxx, but he would never act on it. He’s spent his life upholding the law.”
“Given the right circumstances, we’re all capable of committing murder. Even Judge Lucien Winslow.”
“No. You’re wrong about my father.” What if Monica spilled this to reporters? “I wouldn’t repeat this crazy story to anyone else. They might think you made it up to divert suspicion away from yourself.”
“Of course not. But if you think about it, you had motive to kill Harrison—he threw you over for someone else. Maybe Vic figured it out.”
“You’re crazy. I thought you wanted to know the truth, but you don’t. You’re not even going to investigate this. You only care about what happened to Harrison as long as it doesn’t inconvenience your father.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t lie. Besides, I’m not going to tell anyone, at least not right now, but not for the reason you think. I don’t have time to deal with the publicity if this hit the news. Now if you don’t mind, I have an appointment.”
The weight of the accusation about her father followed Rachel to her car. She should report what Monica said to Boone. But if she did . . . No. She had to keep this to herself until she knew more. The Judge could not be a murder suspect. The senate would soon vote on his nomination to the Sixth District Court of Appeals.
Rachel rubbed the back of her neck. Her father would never forgive her if she derailed his nomination.