“Oh are you? Well, that’s not my fault.”
“I know.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a card and wrote something on the back. “I’m staying in town at the Duck Blind Motel until tomorrow morning. If there’s anything you want to tell me, you can reach me on my cell.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“I’m not,” he said stiffly as he hesitated at the door. He turned to look at her, his face a mixture of emotions. “If Esther was murdered, then you could be in danger.”
She bristled. “Are you trying to scare me to get me to keep talking to you?”
“I’m telling you to be careful. That’s all.”
She didn’t even know what that meant.
“She lived in New York. I’m down here in a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.”
He nodded, then asked, “Have you seen a white van parked around here?”
“There are a lot of white vans on the road. I guess the police found that out when they had that sniper case in Washington, DC, a few years ago.
His eyes met hers. “Yeah, well, I saw one parked outside a while ago. When I walked over, whoever was inside drove away. So report anything suspicious to the police. I wouldn’t want something to happen to you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I form quick impressions of people.”
“Apparently,” she snapped. “And I can tell you for certain that this interview is over.”
“You have my number. If you get into any trouble call me.”
He was the last person on earth she was going to call, she thought as he walked through the door and closed it.
Somehow while he was in the room, she’d kept herself together. The moment he was out of the house, she felt her knees weaken, and she had to lean against the door to stay on her feet.
Zachary Grant had taken her in so completely that he’d left her head spinning. And then he’d tried to scare her. Well, at least he was gone.
###
Tony had gone back to the abandoned house in the woods and changed vehicles. Now his stolen car was parked half a block away under the low-hanging branches of a tree where he watched the man leave little Miss O’Neal’s house.
Probably she insisted that people call her Dr. O’Neal because she thought a lot of herself. And why not? She was writing one of the big moneymaking columns in Vanessa.
The editor couldn’t let the column die. When she’d lost Esther Knight, she’d gone looking for another know-it-all bitch. And she’d hit on Amanda O’Neal.
He’d watched her through the window, saw her going through that pile of letters that unsuspecting women were sending her so she could meddle in their lives.
Of course, Vanessa wanted to keep her identity a secret—to protect the guilty. But he’d bugged the editor’s phone. And when she’d driven to Maryland, he’d known she was going down there to hire the next Esther Scott.
His attention switched from the woman inside the little house to her visitor, the guy with a burgundy Honda sporting New Jersey plates.
First he’d come strolling toward the van, and Tony had taken off. But he’d come back to find out what was going on—in time to see the guy disappearing into the house.
Tony had carefully taken down the license number of the Honda. He would have liked to have had a look inside the car, but it was too close to the house for him to take the chance that someone might be glancing out the window.
The car was aimed in the opposite direction from where Tony was sitting in his car now. He was betting that the guy wasn’t going to make a U-turn when he left, because he was already facing toward the main road. And his assumption proved to be correct.
The guy roared away, and Tony breathed out a small sigh. Back to business as usual. Well, not exactly. He’d been planning to wait a few days before he made his big play. All at once he was thinking that it would be a good idea to move up his timetable.
###