Drip Dead (15 page)

I knew how much he liked his little recorder.

The sheriff returned quickly and motioned for me to follow him. He led me to an area where I had never been before: the jail cells.

The Pine Ridge sheriff’s station was a modern facility. The cells were more like rooms, except the doors had heavy locks and the glass in the windows was reinforced with steel wires.

The furnishings left a lot to be desired, however. A sturdy metal bunk was bolted to the wall, its legs embedded in the concrete floor. There was a stainless-steel plumbing unit on another wall with a sink and toilet. Everything appeared unbreakable.

Mom sat on the bunk, her hands in her lap. She had on the clothes she’d worn to work that morning, all except her shoes. I guess letting a prisoner keep her stilettos was a bad idea, but somehow Mom’s feet in a pair of too-big white crew socks brought tears to my eyes.

Or maybe it was the sting of the harsh disinfectant that pervaded the building.

I stood in the doorway. I didn’t know where to look or where to put my hands. I settled for sticking them in my pockets.

“How are you doing, Mom?” Stupid question! She was in jail charged with the murder of her fiancé. How did I think she was doing?

“Get me out of here, Georgiana. I can’t possibly stay in this place. It’s ridiculous.”

Mom was back to issuing commands and expecting them to be followed.

As much as I hated to admit it, she made me proud.

“I’ll do what I can, Mom. But the first thing we need is a lawyer. Is there anyone you would like me to call?”

She never got a chance to answer.

Sheriff Mitchell came down the corridor and took me by the arm. He walked me quickly back toward the front of the building, and I heard the cell door close behind us.

“Your mother’s arraignment will be Monday morning,” he said. His voice echoed loudly in the empty corridor, with no sign of the fatigue I’d seen earlier. “We don’t have any women’s jumpsuits in our stores, so you may bring her some clean clothes if you wish. No belts, no laced shoes. My advice would be to bring jeans, T-shirts, warm socks—”

He stopped suddenly as the door at the end of the corridor opened. In the doorway stood a young man in an off-the-rack charcoal gray suit, a crisp white shirt, and a paisley silk tie. I guessed his age at about thirty, though his pale hair—only slightly longer than the sheriff’s military buzz—made him look younger.

“Vernon.” The sheriff nodded curtly. He wasn’t surprised to see him, whoever he was.

The younger man continued toward us, oblivious to the chill in the sheriff’s attitude. “Evening, Sheriff. Is she here?”

The sheriff nodded.

“Douglas Vernon, Deputy Prosecutor.” He extended his hand to me. “And you are?”

“Just leaving,” the sheriff said, his voice tight. He shoved me ahead of him and marched me through the open door.

Before I could speak, he turned and went back through the heavy security door, slamming it firmly behind him.

The deputy at the front desk pointed me toward the interview room where I’d been before. I shrugged and went that direction.

Sue was waiting.

“Time to go.” She took my arm and pulled me toward the front door.

I looked around for Wade. “He’s in the car,” Sue whispered, dragging me as fast as we could without running.

We ran to Wade’s car and Sue dove in the backseat. Wade pulled out into the empty street while I was still fastening my seat belt.

“Am I a fugitive or something?”

Wade’s laugh wasn’t amused. “Now we know why your mom was arrested on a Saturday evening. Douglas Vernon.” He looked over at me, then back at the road. “Did he see you?”

“Yeah. The sheriff grabbed me out of Mom’s”—I swallowed hard—“cell and marched me down the hall about the time Vernon came in. He introduced himself, but the sheriff hustled me out of there before I could tell him who I was. Which was kind of weird and uncomfortable. I got the impression the sheriff doesn’t like the guy very much.”

“What was the first thing I ever told you about Fred Mitchell, Georgie? Do you remember?”

I forced my thoughts away from the image of my mother in a jail cell and tried to remember my conversation with Wade the first time I had encountered Fred Mitchell.

“That he doesn’t like people interfering with his work? Something like that.” It was coming back to me now. I’d wanted Wade to talk to the sheriff about Martha Tepper’s disappearance. “But I was right about that, Wade.”

Wade nodded. “He didn’t exactly welcome your involvement, did he? Now imagine how happy he’d be about that if you were someone he couldn’t brush off or ignore.”

A light bulb went off in my head. “Like the Deputy Prosecutor?”

“Yeah. Like the Deputy Prosecutor.”

I got the picture and it wasn’t a pretty one.

Besides being a suspect in a murder, my mother was caught in the middle of a testosterone battle.

“We need to figure out what to do next,” I said. “You guys want to come back to my place?”

When I unlocked my front door I was met by the unmistakable scent of Joy. In just two days Mom had managed to imprint her signature fragrance on my house and my life. For one insane moment I expected her to come sailing out of the bathroom on a cloud of Joy-scented steam.

Instead I was mugged by a pair of Airedales looking for a doggy bag of dinner scraps. How they knew I had gone out for dinner was unclear, but they obviously did.

Daisy and Buddha were disappointed on the leftovers front, but Sue’s arrival with a pocketful of treats more than made up for it. Sue was a sucker for every dog she met, and doubly so for the ones she knew well.

Daisy fluttered and flirted like her fictional namesake, while Buddha waited patiently for his share of the treats. I am convinced animals live up—or down—to their names. It’s one reason I’ll never have a dog named Muffy.

We settled around the kitchen table after I let the dogs out into the backyard. The evening was cool but not cold and I left the door open for them. In Airedale world that was a huge privilege.

Mom’s laptop was where I had left it that afternoon, but I couldn’t work at unlocking its secrets while Wade and Sue were there. It could wait until after they left.

I filled the two of them in on the little bit of information I had gained from my visit to Paula, which wasn’t much more than the promise of a name, if her guy agreed to talk to me.

My mother had left her mark on my kitchen again. In the middle of my normally bare table she’d put a metal holder with paper napkins and salt and pepper shakers.

Wade took a napkin out of the holder and folded it into smaller and smaller squares as he listened. He unfolded it and flattened it on the table, then began to accordion-pleat the soft paper.

His fidgeting continued as we talked, until he suddenly wadded it into a tight ball and pitched it at the wastebasket. It bounced off the rim but he ignored it. He slapped his palm against the table and cursed softly.

“Wade?” Sue looked at him, her brow furrowed.

“I wish I could help, Georgie. I really do. But Gregory never told me who else was part of Veritas. You were right, by the way, it is about the wine. Gregory and several other individuals formed an investment group to buy wine. Gregory put a cellar in his new house and they were going to store it until the prices went up, then sell it at a profit.

“Gregory was quite pleased with himself about the wine cellar. He planned to bill the partnership for the storage so he’d get a bigger slice of the profits. Not that that’s going to happen now.”

“But if it was supposed to be stored in his cellar, what were those cases doing under Sandra’s house?” Sue asked.

It was the same question we’d all been asking each other and ourselves since I found Gregory’s body.

And we were no closer to an answer than we had been then.

I found some cookies in the cupboard and made tea.

The conversation continued, but we soon realized we were talking in the same circles over and over. No one had anything new to add. We went over the same ground, trying to figure out what kind of evidence could implicate Sandra. None of us had an answer, and we were all sagging in our chairs. Even the dogs had given up their outdoor explorations and wandered off to their beds.

Sue yawned and stretched. “I give up,” she said. “I need to go home and get some sleep. Unless,” she added hastily, “you need me to stay.”

I considered her offer and shook my head. “You’ve already done a lot, and I appreciate it, even if I don’t act like it sometimes.” I gave her an embarrassed grin. “You’ll be happier in your own bed. But thanks.”

“Do you want me to take the dogs? You could be pretty busy tomorrow.”

I turned her down, and she dragged herself out the door, promising to call me in the morning, and extracting my promise to call her anytime day or night, if something important happened.

Wade left a few minutes after Sue. He hesitated, as though he, too, was going to offer to stay, then thought better of it. Instead, he asked if I wanted him to take some clothes to my mother.

I’d forgotten about the clothes in our hasty retreat from the sheriff’s station. Mom would need something to sleep in, and something to wear in the morning.

Wade stood discreetly in the hallway while I packed a bag with Mom’s casual wear. I found underwear, a couple pairs of designer jeans, and some canvas espadrilles, but nothing even close to a T-shirt.

“I don’t think my mother knows what a plain old T-shirt is,” I hollered to Wade as I pawed my way through the cashmere sweater sets and silk blouses that hung in what used to be my closet. “There isn’t anything in here that doesn’t need to be hand washed or dry-cleaned.”

“Is there something I can do to help?” he called back.

“Nope.” I dragged the little gym bag into the hallway and opened the storage closet. “I’m bigger than she is,” I said. “But she’ll just have to cope.” I pulled a three-pack of plain white T-shirts out of my stash and added them to the bag. That would hold her for a couple days. By then she should be home.

I hoped.

I found a clean sweatshirt stacked in my workout room and put it on top of the T-shirts before zipping the bag closed and handing it to Wade.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “I could take it myself.”

He shook his head. “It’s practically on my way home,” he fibbed gallantly.

It was actually a couple miles out of his way, but I didn’t argue. If he delivered the bag I could start on the laptop that much sooner. And it meant I didn’t have to risk running into Douglas Vernon.

When I closed and locked the door behind Wade, I was finally alone in the house for the first time in three days. And it felt lonely.

That was the real reason I had turned down Sue’s offer to take the dogs: I needed some company. With Mom missing, the house echoed in ways it never had before. As irritating as she was, I had quickly grown used her presence.

Not that I wanted her here all the time. It would only take a day, probably less, for us to drive each other nuts again. But I wanted her in her own house, not one owned by the county.

I wanted her out of jail.

And it looked like I was going to have to be the one to get her sprung.

I made a pot of coffee and put the package of cookies in easy reach on the table before I opened Mom’s laptop.

It occurred to me that the sheriff and the prosecutor probably would want to seize the computer as evidence if they knew where it was. I might have only a few hours to crack its secrets.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down.

It was going to be a long night.

Acid burned in my stomach, a combination of too much coffee, too many cookies, and exhaustion. My eyes burned and itched with lack of sleep and my back ached from the immobile hours hunched over the stubborn laptop.