Ultraviolet. Nancy Bush

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СКАЧАТЬ you can’t quit now, Emmett! My dad’s estate isn’t even close to being settled. We gotta wait.”

      “Too late. I walked. Mike was yelling and screaming. I think he scared two customers out of the showroom.”

      “You should have that dealership,” Gigi stated flatly. “But Mike’ll leave it to those morons, you know he will.”

      “His sons,” Emmett said for my benefit.

      “But you’re the only one who knows anything. Y’see?” she said, turning to me. “And then there’s Violet. She gets her family’s money? And she’s awful. It’s just not fair. Unbelievable! She hit Daddy with that tray and killed him and it’s like it never happened! Why haven’t they arrested her?”

      Emmett gave me an assessing look. “You know Violet?”

      Gigi apparently decided to come clean, saying, “She’s working for her,” then proceeded to put her spin on my role in searching for Roland’s murderer, making me sound like I was just using his death as a means to suck off some of Violet’s money.

      “Violet’s paying me,” I admitted. “She’s fully aware that if I find out she’s at fault, I’ll turn her in.”

      He looked skeptical. “She’s a liar,” he told me.

      “Daddy used to call her Ultra-Violet, like it was a pet name,” Gigi revealed. “Made me want to puke! She always tried to be so nice to us. I never liked her. I just know she slithered back into Daddy’s bed.” She shivered all over. “They were probably screwing while I was supposed to be walking down the aisle.” Her face was suffused with color.

      “She killed him,” Emmett said.

      “I’d like some proof, before I go there,” I said.

      “She hit him with a silver tray in the head and he died. What I wonder is, why aren’t the police doing their job? She should be in jail.”

      His sentiments and Gigi’s were one and the same. “She says he was alive when she left.”

      “But she admits she hit him.” Gigi pounced on that one. “Who says he was alive? Emmett’s right. Violet is a liar!”

      “Can you think of anyone else who might have a reason to want him dead?”

      “Violet hit him,” Gigi repeated stubbornly. “That’s a fact.”

      “The Wedding Bandits were there, too,” I reminded her.

      “Who says? Violet?” Gigi crossed her arms over her chest. “She could have stolen those things.”

      “The police are pretty sure the bandits were interrupted.” I didn’t feel I needed to go over all the particulars. The fact that items had been scattered around the house and yard was well documented.

      “I found the body,” Emmett reminded me soberly. “I know the crime scene.”

      Gigi tossed her head. “I don’t care what anybody says. Violet killed Daddy. I hope she goes to jail forever. I hate her.” She turned to Emmett, her nose turning red, angry tears welling. “It’s so awful!” Emmett cuddled her into his arms, but Gigi turned her head toward me, her cheek pressed up against his shirt. “You’re going to find Daddy’s killer?”

      “I’m gonna try.”

      “Good luck.” Emmett didn’t sound convinced of my abilities and I didn’t blame him. They thought I was wasting my time. Neither of them liked Violet. And both of them thought she was guilty.

      Hell, she probably was.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I spent the next several days making phone calls, going down the list Sean had given me, trying to connect, or reconnect as the case might be, with various wedding guests. Big Jim answered his phone straightaway and this time, when I told him Sean and Gigi had okayed talking to me, he became garrulous to the point of mind-screaming. And he had nothing to contribute. I finally laid my head down on my kitchen table, the phone to my ear, mumbling an occasional “Oh,” “huh,” and “I see.” I was practically in a coma by the time he finally wound down. The other bridesmaids, groomsmen and assorted guests I reached couldn’t offer any further information or insight, either, so I was left knowing little more than I had before. I never reached Deenie but I left her a message, and I put in another call to Dr. Wu’s, where I was told rather curtly that Dr. Wu was out of the country, Ms. Kelly, and he would contact me when he returned.

      I also phoned Melinda Hatchmere, Roland’s widow, and Renee Hatchmere, Roland’s first wife, asking each of them in turn to call me back. To date, neither of them had responded. At another impasse, I wrote up my billable hours for Violet and temporarily dusted my hands of the case.

      Friday evening I joined Chuck and Officer Josh Newell for a ride-along expecting the evening to be an uneventful waste of time. I was right about the uneventful part; wrong about the waste of time. While I rode around in the police car I watched the reactions of the people who noticed our vehicle. It broke down pretty evenly: twenty-five percent looked stricken, as if they’d been caught in some nefarious act; twenty-five percent pretended they didn’t see us—like, oh, sure, that’s gonna help; twenty-five percent reacted as if the police were their good buddy-buddy, waving frantically and smiling and generally being the kind of brownnosing suck-ups that drive me crazy; and twenty-five percent acted cool and hard-eyed and tough, mostly teenagers whose smoldering demeanors were for their friends’ benefits and caused Officer Newell to chuckle low in his throat.

      For my part, I’m sure I would fall in the looking stricken category. I always feel guilty when dealing with the authorities. I kept quiet in the backseat while Chuck prattled on about how he’d always thought he was going to be a police officer but could never quite break away from his daddy’s business, which, from the hints he broadly threw out, appeared to be quite lucrative and given Daddy’s nearness to the brink of death, could be Chuck’s business soon.

      Listening to him, I congratulated myself in forcing a change of plans: I’d boged out of dinner. Yes, he’d offered free food at Foster’s on the Lake, my most favorite restaurant around, but…again…it would be dinner with Chuck. I hadn’t been able to picture myself enjoying a meal with him, with or without Julie and Jenny, as every impression I’d garnered of the man was that he was overbearing, loud and deaf to anything but his own plan. Sometimes a free meal isn’t…well…free. I hadn’t figured out how to squirm out of the ride-along, however, so I met him at the police station parking lot instead of Foster’s. Chuck hadn’t liked the idea but I’d been firm. Either skip dinner, or I was out altogether. Grudgingly, he’d agreed to the plan, so I’d parked my Volvo in the station lot next to various black-and-whites, feeling vaguely uneasy, as if I were in the middle of a criminal act. What does it say about me that merely being around police cars—even when they’re parked in their own lot—makes me uncomfortable?

      Anyway, I’d begged off dinner, saying I had to be somewhere later and though Chuck had pressed me, I’d managed to get things the way I wanted them. I was still planning to meet Jenny and Julie at Foster’s, but much later. Chuck just didn’t have to know.

      “Hey, Jane,” Chuck hollered now over his shoulder. “So, I was reading on AOL that sausages can be good for you. Ease stress.” He leered through the grate that divided my seat from his and Josh’s. СКАЧАТЬ