He reached for her hand, and she let him. Tonight she needed his strength and, though she might regret it later, she decided that they could share dinner and a glass of wine, and draw the shades. She glanced over at Sara’s house and swore she saw her neighbor peeking through the blinds. As Jack pulled the door shut behind them, she caught a glimpse of the street lamp across the street and wondered if the person she’d seen there the other night would return.
Or was it all a part of her own wild unpredictable imagination?
She carried Beej into the house, heard Jack throw the lock on the door, and told herself that for a few hours she was going to close her mind to all her fears. Tonight, she was going to drink Chianti with her husband, suck up spaghetti with her son, and maybe, hours later, confide to Jack about what she’d experienced today at her grandmother’s house.
“You’re telling me that you found hairs around the screwdriver that was jammed into the gate at Eugenia Cahill’s house, and that they might be Cissy Holt’s?”
“That’s right,” Tallulah Jefferson told Paterno from her end of the phone in the lab. “We had samples of her hair from the crime scene at the Cahill house. Under the microscope, they match the ones from the screwdriver in color and texture. I can’t be certain until I do a DNA test though, and that takes time. There were follicles on both samples, so I’m asking the lab to put a rush on them, but we’re still talking weeks.”
“So this is just your educated guess?” Paterno said, leaning back in his chair, hearing it creak in protest.
“Very educated. PhD educated,” she reminded him, though he could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “The department’s lucky to have you and all.”
“Damned straight. I’ve got to run, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Damned straight.”
She hung up, and he scratched at his chin, hearing the scrape of his fingernails against his five o’clock shadow. What would Cissy Holt’s hairs be doing around the screwdriver? Why would she jam the lock, then call the police?
To fake them out?
Because she was cracking up?
He thought she might be on the verge of a breakdown…but that might be a ruse on her part. Maybe to sabotage the investigation? Tell the authorities she’d seen her mother, when she really hadn’t?
Was she trying to turn the police in the wrong direction?
Was Marla long gone, out of the state, and Cissy the one behind the murders?
His stomach started burning once more, and he thought he should really see the doc again, but right now, he was too damned busy to hang out in a waiting room. He opened the drawer to his desk, sifted through the pencils, paper clips, pens, and rubber bands before he found a bottle of Tums. It was nearly empty. Great. Popping the last two into his mouth with one hand, he tossed the empty bottle into the trash with the other.
So what did Cissy Holt stand to gain by twisting the truth?
More of the family fortune?
Her mother’s safety?
A scapegoat for her own crimes?
He glanced at the open files in front of him. Two dead bodies. Rory Amhurst and Eugenia Cahill, connected by one woman, Marla Amhurst Cahill.
Cissy Holt’s mother.
He decided it was time to do a little more digging into Cissy’s privileged life.
Who knew what he’d find?
Cherise hung up.
Alone in her own home, standing in the middle of the kitchen, she didn’t know what to do.
She’d left three messages on Donald’s cell phone and one in his hotel room, but he hadn’t called back. No doubt he was deep into discussions about the mission the church was planning to create in a small Mexican village. Nonetheless, she wished he would call, prayed that he would. He was such a good, wise husband, and she leaned on him more than she should. They’d had some rocky times in their marriage, but really, what couple hadn’t shared the bad with the good? Recently, though, she and her husband were solid. Right?
Don’t question him! Learn to trust.
Perhaps that was why God, or the Reverend Donald himself, had decided he shouldn’t return her calls. So that she would make her own decisions, be the strong one.