Thick as Thieves(43)
Her name had been constantly pinballing inside his head for the past couple of days, so it surprised him now to realize that he hadn’t addressed her by it. But he didn’t comment on it. What was he supposed to say? That he’d sighed her name, moaned it, in more than a few lurid fantasies?
She indicated his cheekbone. “That looks more serious than a scuffle.”
He drew a breath, let it out. “It was.”
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s a dull roar. The whiskey helped.”
She pushed her glass across the table toward him. “You’re welcome to the rest.”
“No, thanks. I’ve done all the bingeing I’m going to do tonight.”
“Well, you did have a bugger of a day.”
“Jail, you mean?”
She nodded.
“I was left to stew for several hours. Wasn’t that bad.”
“Did you post bail?”
“No, Rusty had a change of heart. Declined to press charges.”
“That was decent of him.”
He scoffed. “Decent, my ass. It was self-serving.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said grimly. “But I’m sure I’ll find out.”
“Dirty pool.”
“Count on it.”
He wondered if now was the time to tell her that he suspected Rusty of being the party surveilling her house every night. If he did, though, she would press him to explain why he would think that. He couldn’t tell her without wading into the deep end. He could get in over his head real fast.
And he would be inviting more trouble for himself and everyone around him if he pointed the finger at Rusty, and the accusation was later proven to be false.
For a while neither of them pursued the topic, then Arden said, “Back to that night before Easter, were you locked up?”
“For the next several nights, in fact. I wasn’t arraigned until Wednesday of the following week. They kept me in a holding cell. Old-fashioned. Off to one side of the squad room. Uncle Henry came as soon as he was notified and tried to bail me out. They gave him the run-around. He was beside himself.
“For my part, I was livid, because I knew Rusty had set me up. I already had one strike against me. Who would believe me over the sheriff’s son? I spent that first night thinking up ways to eviscerate him. Finally I exhausted myself and fell asleep.
“The next morning, I woke up to a lot of chatter and activity. The squad room was buzzing. Human body parts had been discovered by early-morning fishermen in the root system of a grove of cypresses on the lakeshore. The remains were eventually identified as Brian Foster’s.”
“The man my father allegedly killed.”
“Yeah.”
He couldn’t tell her how anguished he’d been to hear about that gruesome discovery. He’d had a discomfiting intuition that the dismembered parts would turn out to belong to one of his accomplices.
That was, one of the two other than Rusty.
“All day Sunday,” he said, “there was a lot of coming and going in the squad room. Sheriff’s deputies. Game wardens. State troopers. Organized chaos. Nobody had been reported missing, so they didn’t know where to start to identify the victim. Had this been a terrible accident? Or a homicide? Easter ended with nothing concrete to report. No clues.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I was fed, let out to use the bathroom, but otherwise ignored.”
“You weren’t questioned?”
“No. I’d already refused to talk without a lawyer. The one my uncle had called to represent me had begged off until Monday because of the holiday. Besides, my little possession charge took a back seat to the grisly discovery at the lake.”
Choosing not to expand on Foster’s fate, he settled an incisive look on Arden. “Your turn. What are your recollections of that Saturday? Was your dad around?”
She nodded. “All day. Lisa and I had shopping to do for Easter dinner. Dad was in the garage tinkering on something when we left for town, and was still puttering when we got back a couple of hours later. She and I dyed Easter eggs, upholding the tradition in honor of our mother. The three of us had an early supper. Dad left soon after.”
“What time was that?”
“Still light, but not for long.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“To the cemetery to tend Mother’s grave. Before he left, he kissed me on the top of my head and patted my shoulder.” She placed a hand on her shoulder to mark the spot. “That was the last time I saw him. That’s it.”
Quietly he said, “That’s not even close to being it.”
“Well, it’s all I have firsthand knowledge of. We didn’t know he hadn’t returned home until the next morning when Lisa sent me upstairs to tell him that breakfast was ready. He didn’t come home on Sunday. Lisa and I ate the Easter ham without him.”
“Did you report him missing?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“After my mother was killed—you know she died in a car wreck?”
“Heard that. I don’t know the circumstances.”
“Her name was Marjorie. She’d gone to see a former college classmate in Fayetteville, Arkansas. As she was driving back, she ran into a band of freezing rain and sleet, hit an icy patch, skidded into the back of a eighteen-wheeler.”