Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(73)

“I know.”

“Trust me, Jimmy is innocent. He’s a great guy.” She hesitated. “He was with the group who tied me to the tombstone that night, but he kept trying to talk the others into letting me go. And after everything, after the police, after the trial, after everything that went on, he spent years apologizing to me. He even quit the club he was in—he said they were nothing but a bunch of jerks.”

“People grow up. They see how tough life is. They change.”

“We all change, and, yes, most of us get tougher. But we don’t suddenly become homicidal. Certainly not Jimmy,” she said.

He was quiet. She could sense that he wasn’t convinced but simply didn’t want to argue with her, and that scared her.

Not that she could entirely blame him.

If someone didn’t know Jimmy the way she did, he might well look like a viable suspect.

“You don’t know Jimmy. He could never murder anyone,” she said with complete certainty.

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her seriously. “Okay, so it’s not your father—we agree on that, although he lied and there are factors that point in his direction, to the point that I’d guess the police probably still consider him a suspect. So...who? For the sake of argument, let’s say it is someone working on the film.” He put up a hand to stop her when she started to protest. “Though I can’t be absolutely positive, I tend to put Brad and Mike Thornton in the innocent pool. Certainly neither one of them threw a knife at you, because they were both with me, though, of course, either one of them could have conspired with someone else. We never found the knife, and no prop knives are missing, as far as we know. That would leave Jennie McPherson—”

“Jennie? You can’t be serious.”

“Unlikely, I agree. Then there are the tech guys—George, Luke, Barry—and then the actors and extras, Harry and Blane, Grant. So you tell me—which one of them do you think might be involved?”

“None of them!” Charlie protested. “It’s someone else. It’s got to be. You really do think it’s someone from the film, don’t you? Why? Why are you so sure?”

“No reason—other than proximity and logic,” he said in a flat tone. “Charlie, the bayonet that killed the men was most likely the one that disappeared from props. The same is probably true of the knife that was thrown at you,” he explained. “We know people from the film were closer to both Corley and Hickory than they wanted to admit. And we know people other than Hickory were in some kind of a confrontation with Albion Corley on the Journey before he was killed. And, yes, we know about Shelley now, too, and I’m not forgetting that both men were heavily involved in charities and environmental issues.”

“So that could point to someone else,” Charlie suggested. “You don’t understand what it’s like in the movie business. People are focused on their own careers, and that’s their only interest.”

“Charlie, I don’t care what anyone does for a living or even if being an actor becomes not just what someone does but who that someone is. There’s always another interest out there. And when someone isn’t bat-shit crazy—my own term, by the way, nothing official—the motive generally comes down to love, hate or money. Sure, there’s spur-of-the-moment murder, carried out in a fit of emotion. But these murders were planned carefully. We have to find out why, and I’m sorry, but what evidence we have so far points to it being someone you know.”

She nodded slowly and rose. “Natchez,” she said simply. “See what you find out in Natchez.” And then she headed into the bathroom to shower and get ready for the day. She felt awkward, as if they’d just had their first argument as a real couple.

He followed her. In a few minutes she felt the argument was over.

Yes, definitely.

They were very good at making up.

*

Ethan stood on the dock with Thor, listening as Jonathan talked about the excursion he would be leading later that day. There were numerous shore excursions on offer, but he would be taking a group to explore several of the various nearby Civil War sites, as well as the city of Natchez itself.

Once he had finished and the buses were loaded, Ethan and Jude would head into town and the offices of Doggone It.

“Natchez is the county seat of—and only major city in—Adams County, Mississippi,” Jonathan said, his deep, rich voice commanding attention without trying. “She sits nice and high on a bluff, as you can see. Natchez is ninety miles south of the Mississippi state capital of Jackson and eighty-five miles north of Baton Rouge. At one time Natchez was both the capital of Mississippi and one of the most important cities in the South. The local planters engineered new breeds of cotton, and at one point she had the highest per capita income of any city in the United States—pre–Civil War, of course. The French established Fort Rosalie in 1716, and the area became known as the Natchez colony, named for the Native American tribe that lived in the area. History is rarely peaceful, however, and many French colonists were slain by the Natchez tribe and vice versa. After the Seven Years War, the French ceded the colony to the British. Meanwhile, other local tribes took in the remnants of the Natchez, though today their descendants have reorganized under the Natchez name. So, French, British—and then Spanish/American. This is because a treaty gave it to America, but the Spanish had helped the Americans, and they had their fingers in the pie, trying to keep control as long as they could. Eventually the Americans gained the upper hand, but today visitors to the city are greeted by a uniquely charming combination of Spanish, French, British and American architecture and culture.