'Til Death Do Us Part (26 page)

“I have no idea why someone is doing this,” I said after he failed to comment. “I mean, I have a few theories, but they’re in the infancy stage at this point. But as you can see, someone is clearly out to get me. And I think it sheds a whole different light on the other deaths, don’t you?”

“Miss Weggins,” he said at last, “I realize you had a scare last night when your car hit the snowbank. But I must tell you—we have no evidence whatsoever that anyone was after you.”

CHAPTER 13

I
T FELT AS
if my heart were being squeezed in someone’s fist. Could I possibly have
misunderstood
him?

“Excuse me?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“What I said is that there’s no real evidence anyone intended to harm you last night.”

The fist squeezed harder. He couldn’t
possibly
believe this was all just another coincidence. Two officers on the scene last night had announced that they’d found evidence.

“I’m not following,” I said. “Uh—what about the footprints? The officers who came to the scene told me that they could tell someone had gotten out of their car and followed me into the woods.”

“Yes, that’s true. Someone did stop and follow you. But it was a gentleman who lived just up the road, on the opposite side. He spotted your vehicle in the snowbank as he was coming down the hill, and he pulled over to see what had happened. He says he could see you running in the woods and he started to go after you, thinking you might be hurt. But then he decided that the best course of action was to call the police.”

“But what—?”

“We have a record of his call to the police, and we followed up with him this morning. Plus, we examined the footprints and determined that there was only one set other than yours, and they matched the boots this man was wearing.”

I closed my eyes, struggling to sort through the confusion in my mind. I’d seen the taillights disappear last night and then moments later a car coming out of a driveway. I’d assumed the car had turned around. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

“Okay,” I said calmly. “I see now what happened. I thought the driver who struck me had turned around. But it was clearly this—this Mr. What’s-his-name pulling out of his driveway. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the other car ran me into a snowbank.”

Pichowski pursed his lips together again, raising his cheeks and mustache on his face. He was beginning to remind me of a big, blubbery walrus.

“I’m not questioning that, Miss Weggins,” he said, his tone suddenly patronizing. “But if I’ve read the report correctly, you admit that you hit your brakes. I’m thinking that you may have inadvertently caused the other car to ram into you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was treating me as if I’d come in to report that I’d located Amelia Earhart. I knew cops needed to be skeptical, but I couldn’t believe he was being so dismissive.

“But this guy was on top of me,” I protested. “He was incredibly hostile. At the very least, he left the scene of an accident.”

“I’m not suggesting he wasn’t hostile. We have some obnoxious drivers out here, and they get
particularly
obnoxious on these back roads, regardless of weather conditions. I’m thinking what happened is that someone got on your tail and was being very aggressive. When you went into a skid and tapped your brakes, he accidentally hit you. Now, you have every right to be upset. It was a hit-and-run, and we’re going to be looking out for the vehicle. But my point is that the driver was most likely a stranger and was probably as surprised as you were by what ended up happening.”

I hadn’t wanted to share the tale of me being attacked in Manhattan for fear of being viewed as a buttinski, but I felt I had no choice now. I spilled the story, waiting for the look of recognition in his eyes. Instead he shook his head and flipped his palms up.

“I don’t want to make light of the situation, but it sounds like your typical New York story. That’s the city, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, right,” I said, resigned. I could see now that nothing I said was going to convince him. I could hardly blame him, could I? I just didn’t have the evidence to support my claims. Plus, by mistakenly claiming that the driver had turned around and come back for me, I’d undermined my credibility. I wondered even if he viewed me as an opportunist, a crime writer who was conjuring up sinister stalkings so I could hype the story and turn the whole thing into an even juicier article.

All around us was the hum of conversation—detectives droning on the phone or to one another—but I could tell by the way they stood and the cock of their heads that each of them was definitely tuned in to Pichowski’s exchange with me. They were probably getting a real charge from hearing him talk some sense into the girl from the city with the overactive imagination.

“Actually, I thought you’d be
happy
with the news,” Pichowski said. “You were concerned someone was after you—and I assume you thought it might be connected to these other deaths. But as I said, we don’t think that’s the case. You can relax now.”

I slid my arms quickly into my coat and picked up my bag from the floor. It was time to get out of there before I said something I’d regret.

“Well, thank you for taking the time to investigate the situation,” I said, forcing a smile. “Have a good day.” Without waiting for him to say good-bye, I rose from the chair and strode across the gray linoleum floor. As I opened the glass door into the hallway, I could feel about twelve pairs of eyes on me.

I practically bolted down the stairs and over to the parking lot. As I sat there in my Jeep, letting the heater warm the interior before I took off again, I felt my anger begin to morph into despondency. I’d been so sure that the police were finally going to get involved, to come to my rescue. But that wasn’t going to happen. There was a killer on the loose, someone who apparently wanted me out of the way as well, and no one was trying to stop him or her.

My overwhelming instinct at the moment was to point my Jeep toward I-95 and just limp back to New York. But what good would that do? As I’d discovered, New York wasn’t safe for me, either. I couldn’t allow myself to fall into a slump; if the police weren’t going to look for the killer,
I
would have to continue to do it. I needed to stick with my plan and make a few more stops in Greenwich today. And sometime this week I was definitely going to get on a plane bound for Miami. Hopefully a piece of information that could change everything was waiting there for me.

I wondered suddenly if I should have mentioned the latest development, the male model in Miami who was holding a potentially important piece of information. I’d been so distracted in there that I’d forgotten all about it. On second thought, mentioning the bartender probably wouldn’t have helped much. I laughed ruefully to myself as I imagined the expression on Pichowski’s face if I’d told him that the case might be blown open by a guy who waxed his chest.

I’d parked in a small lot across the street from the police station, and I glanced around in all directions before I pulled out. The most dangerous thing on the road at the moment seemed to be the rich blond mommies in monster-size SUVs.

The one big thing I had left to do in Greenwich today was to drive by the home of Andrew Flanigan, the guy who had been arrested for drunk driving the night of the rehearsal dinner. But first I wanted to pay another visit to the salesclerk at Ivy Hill Farm, something I’d planned to do yesterday before I’d run out of time. When I’d pressed her for information about Robin last week, she’d admitted that she’d been too flustered to think, and I wanted to take another stab at it. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d been following leads related to Peyton and her wedding, but I wasn’t going to overlook the fact that the deaths might be related to something else entirely in Robin’s and Jamie’s lives.

Fortunately, the same girl was on duty when I arrived. I spotted her through the window, listlessly wiping the countertop with a cloth. As I entered she stopped chomping on her gum midchew and lodged it with her tongue somewhere between her gum and her cheek—clearly Peyton had decreed a “no gum chewing in front of a customer” rule.

“Sorry to catch you off guard, but I just wanted to check back in,” I told her.

“Okay, but I can’t talk too long right now,” she explained. Her brow wrinkled in worry, and she stuck her hands in the pockets of the big yellow apron that covered her clothes. “Ms. Cross likes to check the store as soon as she gets to the farm, and if everything isn’t just right, she gets really, really annoyed.”

“It won’t take long. The other day we were talking about how Robin had seemed kind of worried in the weeks before she died. You haven’t recalled her saying anything unusual, have you?”

She shook her head glumly. “No, nothing,” she said. “But she probably wouldn’t have confided anything to me anyway—on account of her being my boss.”

“That’s understandable.”

“You know what’s sad? After you and I talked last week, I was thinking that Robin actually looked pretty happy the day she died. She was looking forward to going skiing. She loved to ski so much.”

“Wait. You saw her that Friday—the day she died?” I asked, my mind racing.

“Yeah—she came by here in the morning for a little while. She needed to take care of a few things before she took off for the weekend.”

That was a major detail, one that Ashley must not have known about. It meant that the “bad” food Robin ate could have been from the farm.

“Did she grab something to eat here? And do you remember who was around—I mean, was it the usual group who works here?”

“I don’t remember anything like that—it was a few weeks ago, and I didn’t have any reason to pay attention.”

“One more question. Robin’s husband. Do you know anything about him?”

“You mean her
ex
-husband?”

“Uh-huh. I heard he works on Wall Street. But he lives around here, right?”

“I think he moved into the city. He still stays in their old house sometimes, Robin told me, but once they split up, he also got an apartment in New York. He works for Merrill Lynch, or maybe it’s Smith Barney. He used to call here after they first got divorced, but Robin would never take the calls. He finally stopped a month or two ago.”

“A month or two ago? Are you sure it was that recent?”

“Uh-huh. Because he asked her to his company Christmas party. I overheard her discussing it with him.”

“Really? Okay, thanks. I— Wait, she wasn’t seeing anyone else before she died, was she?”

“No, I don’t think so. Like I said, she really didn’t discuss her love life with me, but I got the feeling that she had no interest in dating right now. She always used to say she was focusing on getting strong. There was that one guy who seemed interested in her—you know, that guy who works with Mr. Slavin, but she looked like she could have cared less.”

“What guy who works with Mr. Slavin?” I asked, trying not to sound as though I were pouncing. “Trip?”

“Uh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”

“No, it’s fine. Peyton wants me to look into this.”

“Yeah, Trip. Sometimes he and Mr. Slavin come by the farm, and a few times lately that guy stopped by the shop. I think Robin had had a drink with him—just to be friendly—but I got the feeling he thought it was more than that. She seemed totally uninterested when he came by.”

Was that just Trip on the prowl as usual? Or was there something more significant to it?

She looked anxiously over my shoulder at the window, and I spun around, my heart skipping. No one was there. I realized that she was probably just watching for Peyton.

“She really keeps you on your toes, doesn’t she,” I said.

“
Ms. Cross?
Yeah, I mean, I know she believes in perfection, but it can be hard. Sometimes even if you’re doing a great job, it doesn’t count.”

Something stirred in my mind.

“The girl who got fired here recently—the office secretary. Did you know her?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice catching. “She and I were friends even before she started working here. It upsets me to even talk about that whole thing.”

“Why? Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“She got blamed for things she didn’t do. And now she’s stuck without a reference. She went out to San Francisco a few weeks ago to see if she could find a job there.”

“I was told that she filled in dates wrong on the master calendar. Are you saying she didn’t do that?”

“There’s no way she could have done that. Melanie is so amazingly reliable. And even if it did happen once—maybe she goofed like people do sometimes—there’s no way it could have happened
three
times. And you know how she’s sure she didn’t do it? One party, she says, was on her birthday, and she clearly remembers writing it in on the calendar that day. But later it was on another day.”