Juror #3(72)

Shortly after that, the cop left the booth. As I watched his camouflage jacket disappear through the door, I was so frustrated I wanted to spit. The testimony I needed to defend Lee was buried with Detective Guion. Literally.





Chapter 65



SO, IT WAS back to Plan B: Cary Reynolds. Somehow, I had to back him down from the damning testimony he’d given in court. I turned to the window and looked down the highway toward Vicksburg. I wasn’t all that far from his car lot. It occurred to me: what if I surprised him in his office?

I popped a piece of gum, and adrenaline started to hum in my veins. That was just what I needed to do. Time for a smackdown.

Pulling out my phone, I punched in the address of Cary’s business. As I scanned the route on the phone screen, I debated whether I should reveal my knowledge regarding his bad blood with Lee. It might shake the truth out of him, but I didn’t want to give him time to think up a new way to lash out when he returned to the witness stand.

While I drained the dregs of my coffee cup, I toyed with the phone, reviewing Cary’s social media pages to see if he’d posted anything new that might clue me in to his state of mind.

Nothing on his Twitter account, but he didn’t utilize it often, aside from some game-day tweets. I went to his Facebook page and saw that he’d posted a picture of a pulled-pork sandwich that he’d eaten the previous week. No help there. Prior to the sandwich, he’d shared some beach pics from Gulf Shores, but they were old.

Cary also had a business page on Facebook for Cary’s Used Cars & Trux. I hit that next. I’d examined it several weeks before, and it looked the same. Clearly, he didn’t update it often, and the page only went back a few years. But as I gave it a second perusal, I saw something that made me look twice.

Four years back in the timeline, there were photos to mark the grand opening of Cary’s Used Cars & Trux. In one of the pictures, a pretty young woman held a banner that read: GRAND OPENING.

The young woman looked a lot like Monae Prince.

I enlarged the picture on my screen to examine it more closely. True, I’d never seen Monae during her lifetime, and the only pictures I’d had access to were crime scene photos and the driver’s license. But the smile on the driver’s license was the same: dimples in both cheeks and a slight gap between her two front teeth. The more I looked, the more certain I became: Monae was the banner girl for Cary Reynolds’s grand opening.

So what the hell was up with that?

I walked out of the truck stop diner to my car.

The rear tire was flat as a pancake.





Chapter 66



I KNOW HOW to change a tire. My mama taught me the ropes when I was a teenager. The used cars she could afford were notoriously unreliable.

I stripped off my jacket to keep it clean and rolled up the sleeves of my white blouse. The sun had set, but the lights in the parking lot provided fair illumination.

To get to the jack, I had to pull out the spare. When I dropped the spare tire onto the pavement, I knew I had a problem. The spare was flat, too.

I kicked the tire, which didn’t make me feel better and didn’t help the tire any. Then I cussed at it, loudly enough that a man walking to his nearby car let out a shrill whistle.

A trucker saw my plight and jumped out of his rig.

“Can I give you a hand, ma’am?”

“Thanks, but no. I don’t think your tires would fit my old Nissan.”

I sat in the car and called Shorty first. When it went to voice mail, I literally crossed my fingers and called Suzanne.

Forty-five minutes later, her Lexus tore into the lot, spraying gravel in its wake. I grabbed my briefcase and ran to the passenger side.

“Suzanne, I’m so sorry about this,” I began, but she cut me off.

“Don’t even get started with that. This is why you have a partner. To help you when you’re stranded—literally or figuratively.” She put the car in drive. “Where are we headed?”

“Well, I’d planned to drive on down to Vicksburg to see that frat brother of Lee’s, but I expect you need to get home.”

She turned the car onto the highway, heading to Vicksburg, rather than Rosedale. “I’m at your disposal, little sister. Did you get your car towed?”

I’d talked to a lady inside the truck stop who gave me a lead on an automotive repair shop in the area, but they couldn’t help me until the next day. So I was without wheels.

Suzanne drove to Vicksburg in record time, passing so many vehicles that I worried she’d get pulled over. I offered to serve as navigator, but her high-tech Lexus didn’t require my assistance. As we neared the car lot, Suzanne took in the neighborhood and whistled through her teeth.

“What a dump,” she said in a clipped Yankee accent. Then she looked at me and grinned. “Bette Davis.”

“Beg pardon?” I said. I didn’t know a friend of hers named Betty.

Suzanne sighed with resignation, shaking her head. I pointed out the CARY’S USED CARS & TRUX sign, and she wheeled in and pulled up to the office, putting the car in park.

I grabbed my briefcase, but the engine continued to idle. “You coming, Suzanne?”

She grimaced. “I don’t mean to bail on you, sugar. But I haven’t eaten a bite of food since noon. I’ve got the weak tremblies.” She held out her hand; it did have a slight tremor. “My blood sugar is dipping. If I don’t get something to eat pretty quick, I’m going to collapse.”