Justice Delayed (Memphis Cold Case #1)(50)

Will grabbed her by the arms to keep her from falling. Their gazes collided, and for a second, it seemed everything stopped as heat rushed through his chest.

She rubbed her nose. “What’d you do that for?”

“What?” Was she talking about the way he’d held her longer than necessary?

“Stop like that.” Her brown eyes softened as she stared up at him.

“Oh.” He swallowed the grin that wanted to spread across his face of its own volition as her lips parted. For a second, he forgot everything except how much he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her. Brad’s footsteps on the stairs brought him to his senses.

“You never said where you were when I came out of the house.”





17


JIMMY PACED THE SMALL ROOM where he waited for Jillian Bennett. In seventeen years, she’d never come to see him. Why now? The door opened, and she stepped inside the narrow cubicle and sat on the other side of the glass window.

“Jillian?” He tried to find some resemblance to the woman he remembered, but everything about her had changed. Her curly blonde hair was now mousy gray and secured with a band. Nondescript gray clothes covered what had been a shapely body but was now gaunt and straight. She reminded him of photos he’d seen of women during the Depression.

“Yes. Sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she said, her voice low, hesitant.

He asked the question that had been on his mind ever since the warden told him she wanted to see him. “Why now?”

She blanched. “Believe me, I didn’t want to.”

His hope that she would help him evaporated. From the looks of her, Jillian couldn’t seem to help herself, much less him. When she continued to sit and say nothing, he said, “Are you all right?”

She gave a shrug. “Haven’t eaten hardly anything in two weeks, not since I read that your . . . execution date had been set.”

That made two of them. “Did you know Lacey Wilson wrote me a letter saying that I didn’t kill Stephanie?”

He didn’t think it was possible for Jillian’s face to get any whiter, but it turned a ghostly shade of pale.

“I shouldn’t have come.” She tried to stand, but her knees buckled, and she sat down hard.

“What’s going on? What do you know?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said and struggled to her feet. “I thought if I saw you, I could . . .”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t you see, he may have followed me here . . . or . . .” She looked over her shoulder. “How could I be so stupid? He’ll have people working here, watching you. They’ll follow me home.”

She rushed to the door and opened it. “God forgive me, but I can’t help you.”

The door slammed shut behind Jillian, and the tiny ray of hope he’d had that she might know something and help him dimmed. She knew something, all right.

But she wasn’t going to tell.



Andi’s stomach did the flipping thing she hated as she caught herself staring into Will’s eyes again. Even when she was a sappy thirteen-year-old following him and Brad around, she’d noticed those blue eyes.

“Where were you earlier?” he repeated.

She gave herself a mental shake. Getting lost in his eyes was not on her agenda. “Next door. The neighbor was working in her yard, and I thought I’d ask her a few questions. Did Laura Delaney tell you what she was doing for over an hour in the house?”

“What? She told me they’d just gotten there.”

“So she wasn’t alone.”

“No, her husband was with her. They came after clothes for Lacey’s funeral.”

“I checked out Lacey’s Facebook page last night, and she was friends with Laura. She left comments sometimes.”

“Good thinking.”

Facebook was usually the first place she went to get information on people. She glanced around the house. The area they were standing in was similar to hers with an open concept design—living room, dining room, and kitchen all together—except Lacey’s was on a grander scale. “Brad went upstairs. What room do you want me to take?”

“How about the kitchen, and I’ll take her bedroom.”

After Will disappeared down the hallway, Andi turned in a slow circle, deciding where to start first. It was hard not to compare this house to the one she’d been in yesterday. Walter Simmons’s house had exuded warmth, comfort, even . . . hominess. That was the word she was looking for. It wasn’t a word she’d use to describe Lacey’s place.

Andi flicked her gaze over the combination kitchen and living room. The person she’d talked to occasionally over the years had more personality than this house reflected, and it was hard to bring the two together.

If Lacey was the decorator, she must have been going for sterile with the modern black sofa and glass and steel tables. Reminded Andi of her own apartment, except . . . She examined a grouping of Grant Wood numbered lithographs on the wall. Lacey Wilson had a much larger budget, and the minimal look was on purpose. There was a difference.

She walked to the kitchen island and pulled out a drawer. Utensils neatly arranged. She moved on until she found the drawer that was in every kitchen, even this one. The junk drawer. Except this one was neat. She took everything out and piece by piece returned it to the drawer. Halfway through, Brad came back downstairs.