Jenn Vakey - Rilynne Evans 07 - Revenge with Murder (9 page)

Perez nodded.  As he walked back toward the car, his cold demeanor started to
come back.  By the time he pulled the door open, he was back to harsh man he’d been since their meeting.  “The daughter will be here too.  Her business partner is going to try to make it down, but I might end up having to do a video conference with him.  His daughter’s having a baby, and he didn’t want to leave before it happened.”

“Are you sure she didn’t have anything to do with it?” Ben asked, motioning to the bed and breakfast as he climbed in and pulled the car door shut.

Rilynne and Perez both turned around to face him.

“Holly didn’t have anything to gain in the victim’s death,” Perez stated firmly.  “The property is closed to the public during the renovations, which have to be overseen.  If they don’t get completed and the bed and breakfast closes, Holly will be out of a job.  The only reason she came here from the states a few years ago was to run it when the current owner decided turn it into a business.  If it’s closed down, she will pretty much have to start over again.”

“Why do you ask?” Rilynne asked.

Ben seemed to be mulling over something for a moment before finally shrugging.  “Something just seemed off.  I can’t really put my finger on it, though.”

“Was it something about the renovations that seemed odd, or was it Holly?” Rilynne pushed.

Ben shrugged again.  He didn’t seem to have an answer.  After a few seconds more, Rilynne turned back around and left her husband with his thoughts.  When she did, she tried to think back over everything herself.  The house was a bit of a mess, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary for a renovation.  Holly showed genuine shock when they told her the victim had been killed.  She was also had a fairly petite figure.  Even if something had happened between her and the victim, Rilynne didn’t see her as capable of being able to move the body around, let alone when it was chained to the refrigerator.  If she had seen the same thing her husband had, it didn’t have the same effect on her.

Perez didn’t ask where they would like to go before driving straight to their house.  While Rilynne hadn’t intended on going back to the station, the fact Perez felt the need to take the option out for them was deeply satisfying.

He didn’t say a word as they climbed out of the car.  The moment the doors were both shut, he wiped back out of the driveway, sending gravel flying as he sped away.

“I don’t really know what to make of him,” Rilynne said as they watched his tail lights disappear around a curve.  “Does it seem to you like he’s trying way too hard to get us off this case?  It seems like more than just the normal resentment for someone else butting in on an investigation.”

Ben slid his arm around her waist and steered her toward the porch.  “I’ve seen you do worse.”

Rilynne looked up at him, trying to make sense of his statement.  She’d had several cases that turned into joint investigations over the years, many that she wasn’t pleased about, but none of them had been during her time in Addison Valley.  Even then, she had always fought hard to keep from letting her frustrations show.

“Selena Young,” he said, smirking at the dumbfounded look she donned.  It didn’t last long on her face, though.

“You’re joking!” she exclaimed, laughing at the absurdity of his claim.  “First of all, that situation is nothing like this one.  Selena Young wasn’t in law enforcement.  She was a psychic, and a fake one at that.  Second, I didn’t act anything like the way Perez has been acting.”

It was now Ben who held the look of disbelief.  “I honestly thought you were going to up and drag her out of the office by her hair.  I don’t think anyone would have been surprised if you had.  If you were actually trying to hide your dislike for her, you were incredibly unsuccessful.”

“I…” Rilynne started, but couldn’t even start on an argument.  “Was I really that bad?” she asked, feeling guilty when she looked at it from his perspective.  If she had been anything like Perez had been during the past two days, she was both embarrassed and ashamed.

Ben reached out when they crossed the deck and unlocked the front door.  “Don’t worry,” he said, taking in the horrified look on her face.  “She appeared to be completely oblivious to your attitude toward her.  Either that, or she’s just so used to it that she didn’t care.”

“Or she doesn’t have the intelligence to recognize when someone is less than excited about her presence,” Rilynne snapped.  She quickly clasped her hand over her mouth, shocked by the meanness of her statement.  Ben grinned at the look she held.  “I’m standing by what I said, though.  She wasn’t a professional.  She was a con artist just trying to get attention.  That’s completely different than working with someone who might know something more about a certain area than you do.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” he said.

The warm, amused smile on his face did little to settle the rage she was feeling.  “She was a liar!  She was feeding off of the fear and using it to help herself.  I would have been justified if I had pulled her out by her hair, not that I would have actually done that.  She was a con artist who was using my best friend’s grief.  Besides, there was a child missing.  Her little quest for attention could have ended up putting her in even more danger than she was already in.”

“I don’t think anyone would have blamed you if you had,” Ben said.  His tone was softer than it had been before.  He was trying hard to reassure her.  “You don’t need to worry about it.  You didn’t come off at all the way Sergeant Perez is.  There are very few people who actually treat psychics with the same level of respect as other professionals.”

“She isn’t a psychic!” Rilynne exclaimed, dropping down hard on the sofa.  “If she had been, we would have had a very different encounter.  And you are right about that.  It’s one of the main reasons I will never out myself.”

Ben sat down on the sofa next to her and wrapped his arm around her.  “Don’t think for a second that anyone in our station would treat you that way.  There isn’t a single person who doesn’t respect you.  If you can out and told everyone what you could do, that wouldn’t go away.”

“You have a much higher faith in people than I do,” she responded.  “Did I ever tell you about the dream I had shortly after moving to Addison Valley.  They had me displayed in front of the entire town like a side show attraction.  They then assured the people of Addison Valley that I would never work there again.  I’d rather live with my secret than risk being chased out of town by an angry mob with pitch forks.”

“No more horror movies for you,” Ben chuckled as he stood up.  “Why don’t you just sit here and I’ll go get us something to eat.  No more thinking about angry hordes, though.  I don’t want to have to fight back a crowd carrying fire and sharp objects, but I would if it ever came to that.”

Ben walked toward the kitchen, leaving Rilynne sitting in thought on the sofa.  She feared allowing people to know what she could do more than almost anything else.  It didn’t matter how close she was to the people she worked with, Rilynne didn’t think any of them would accept her for what she was.  Even if there was a possibility they would, it wasn’t a chance she was ever going to be willing to take.  Her fellow homicide detectives were her family.  She was going to protect them from the consequences that would inevitable arise, as well as herself.

She was still deep in thought when Ben walked back in ten minutes later to tell her dinner was ready.

“Having to wear this is going to drive me crazy,” she said, trying to pull her chair back with her left hand.  She cringed as pain shot up her arm and she reached out with the other.

“We’re actually pretty lucky,” Ben said.

Rilynne wanted to pop him when she turned back toward him.  “I’m sorry.  What part of this is lucky?  This really hurts.  And I don’t even want to think about all of the questions I’m going to face when I go back to work with this next week.”

“We’re lucky he had an x-ray machine,” Ben explained.  “I’m actually really surprised he does.  I thought we were going to be on the first boat out to get your wrist examined in Hawaii.”

Rilynne let out a quick laugh.  “You know I wouldn’t have gone,” she stated firmly.  “I would have just let you wrap it until our trip was over.  I know I haven’t been using the last few days of our honeymoon the way we should have, but there’s no way I would spend a full day of it going to a hospital to get my wrist looked at.  You couldn’t have dragged me onto that boat.”

Ben looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew she was right.

After they finished eating, Rilynne grabbed a couple beers from the refrigerator and retreated to the front porch.  The temperature cooled after the sun went down, but only slightly.  There was a sweetness in the breeze that moved past them.  It smelled like fresh fruit and salt water.

“It really is beautiful here,” she said when Ben walked out behind her.  She tried to open her bottle before giving up and handing it to him for help.  “It’s the kind of place you see in movies, but you don’t actually think they could really exist.  I don’t think you
could have found a better place for us to come.  It even beat my idea of traveling around Ireland, although I definitely still want to do that.”

“I’m just glad it didn’t rain the entire time.  I was looking at the weather before we left and it was a definite possibility,” he said.  He opened both bottles before handing one back to Rilynne.  “I’d have been pretty upset if that had been the case.  We would have ended up extending it until the weather calmed.  There are a few things I really want to do while we’re here, and we aren’t leaving without doing them.”

Rilynne laughed and leaned back against the railing.  “And you still won’t tell me what’s left on that list?  I know we’ve had to have knocked out most of them by now.”

Ben shook his head with an amused grin before taking a swig of his beer.  “There’s a thing or two still left to do, and no, I’m not going to give you any details.”

“Not even if I’m really good?” she asked, crossing the deck to sit on the swing.

“Just how good are we talking?” he grinned.  Rilynne shrugged, emptying half of her bottle in one drink.  “Are we talking no more middle of the night runs, or are you going to let Sergeant Perez handle the rest of the investigation?”

Rilynne groaned and let her head fall back.  “Fine.  I guess I can just wait.”

“That’s what I thought,” he laughed.  “In the mean time, let’s get this case wrapped up so we actually have time to do what I have planned.”

“Where do we start?”

“I know what we can do,” Ben said, sitting down next to her on the swing.  “We could play the game.  That way you will know exactly what questions to ask when you talk to the victim’s family tomorrow.  With any luck, one of them will reveal something that will tell you exactly who did it and we can get back to our honeymoon.”

Ignoring his final remark, she took another sip and began running through everything they knew.  After a few moments, she started.  “There were visible stains on her clothes from the blood when we found her.  If those injuries had happened just before she was put in the water, they would have rinsed away without setting in.”

“That means there was enough time between when those wounds were inflicted and when she went into the water for the blood to dry on her clothes.  She was already dead when the stab wounds and gunshot took place, so there wouldn’t have been much blood in the first place.  If it were only partially dry, I don’t think there would have been as
much present.  I would have to run some tests to be sure, but I’m pretty confident saying the blood was completely dry on her clothing before she was dropped into the ocean.”

Rilynne nodded in agreement.  “Call Summers and see if he can verify that, but it makes sense.  I know she was close enough to the shore when the killer inflicted those wounds that I could hear the waves crashing, but it still looked like a pretty secluded area.  Assuming the killer didn’t just have a refrigerator handy to chain her to, he or she would have needed enough time to obtain one.”

“Perez checked into the refrigerator,” Ben said.  “It was one that had been left near the docks to be shipped out and disposed of.  Anyone would have had access to it.  The killer probably grabbed in while in the process of loading the victim onto a boat.”

Rilynne looked out at the stars covering the sky and thought over everything she had seen.  “Although a good amount of planning went into the post-mortem wounds, the rage that I felt when she was being drowned makes me think the initial act was a heat of the moment kind of thing.  Either that or she angered someone enough that they still had a high level of rage coursing through them.”

“Sadly, we both know that it doesn’t take much for people to snap and kill someone,” Ben stated.  “Do you remember that guy a couple months ago who killed the guy in the cubicle next to him because he ate his sandwich?”

Rilynne nodded.  “Yeah, but stealing people’s food leads to some pretty heated arguments these days.”

“He’d just gotten them mixed up,” Ben said.  “They both had sandwiches in the same type of containers.  The poor guy just made the mistake of grabbing the wrong one.  That inspired enough rage for the guy to staple the victim’s lips shut after he bashed his head in.  Who knows what this victim could have done that rubbed someone the wrong way.”

Rilynne finished the last of her beer before dropping her head down on his shoulder and gently running her fingers along his forearm.  “We know she got into a pretty big fight with her husband at some point before she was killed,” Ben offered.  “Maybe he didn’t catch a boat off the island like everyone believed, or Perez was right and he came back after establishing an alibi.  Or he could have hired someone.”