Клэр Донелли - Hiss And Tell

“I’ve heard bits and pieces, too,” she told him. “So the pink pills are the favor you owe?”

The big guy didn’t so much nod as drop his head. “Rohypnol.”

Sunny stared. “The date-rape drug?”

“I was told to get a supply, something untraceable, from out of the country,” Beau said miserably, still hanging his head. “Nowadays the legit stuff has an additive that turns drinks green if you drop the pills in them.”

“What—?” Sunny began, but Beau quickly cut her off.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on.” The words almost tumbled out of him. “All I was supposed to do was pass them on to Eliza Stoughton. Whatever was going down with her, I have no idea. Guess we weren’t close enough to share our really big secrets.”

“She was being blackmailed, too, I hear.”

“I figured as much, the way she started going off on everybody.” Beau let off a long breath. “I was supposed to lie low until she contacted me. The thing is, even though she was always screaming at me, she never asked for the pills. And then she wound up dead.” He shuddered. “I really wanted to keep my head down after that.” Beau looked at Sunny pleadingly. “How do you think that Wainwright guy would react if I told him the same story I just told you?”

“Better than you might think,” Sunny said, keeping her reporter alter ego’s harsher opinion to herself. Or he may just stamp “case closed” on the file and ignore all the loose ends.

“And how about you? You’re a reporter,” Beau said, remembering that a little belatedly. “What are you going to do?”

“For now, I’ve got to think about it,” Sunny replied. “You have to know this may be connected with the deaths.”

Beau stared miserably at his feet. “I had nothing to do with either of them.”

“If I can keep you out of it, I will.” Even as she made it, Sunny wondered if that was a smart promise.

The minute Will hears about this, he’ll want to turn it all over to Wainwright, and to hell with Beau, she thought. Is that the right thing to do? Beau’s getting clean. And I believe him when he says he’s not involved.

Sometimes, she had to admit, her reporter’s truth radar could be fooled. But Beau had been forthcoming about his drug use and the blackmail. And as for not knowing what Eliza Stoughton was up to, that rang true to Sunny as well.

On the other hand, if I’m wrong, I’ve just warned a killer that I’m onto him, she thought as a chill ran through her. Sunny hated to admit it, but the blackmail angle actually made things look worse for Beau. If Eliza was supposed to contact him, that meant they both knew that the other was being extorted. Sunny had a further uncomfortable thought. What if Sheriff Nesbit, armed with Randall’s blackmailer theory, had raised the subject in a quiet meeting with the prime suspect—Beau? I could end up like Eliza, or Nesbit. As part of his surgical training, Beau would know his way around a knife.

Pushing that thought from her mind, Sunny asked, “How did the blackmailer contact you?”

“Text messages that disappeared from my phone,” Beau replied. “Pretty freaky.”

Sunny decided she needed a bit of time to try to digest this new information. She sent Beau off to his friends at the pool and set off on a walk around the Neal’s Neck compound. Not the most reassuring of considerations after getting old Beau to open up. It certainly piled more into the boxes for motive and means. Opportunity, though . . .

Lee Trehearne’s cameras still placed Beau inside the guesthouse when the murders occurred, a definite alibi. Unless he’d managed to climb up to the roof and grow wings to commit his crimes, Beau had been, if not asleep, then at least in the house. Possibly he could have figured out how to avoid the cameras, but how would he have even known about them? This was his first visit to Neal’s Neck.

Rather than avoiding the cameras, it might be possible to fool them, Sunny thought. You’d just need the technical skills.

That suggested Peter Van Twissel, the computer genius with the strong-looking hands. His alibi depended on the cameras, too. And then there were the disappearing text messages—another bit of techno-magic. Could Peter be the mysterious Taxman? A poor boy lifting money and favors off the rich?

Not to mention an unpleasant drunk. Sunny scowled. Was he the sort of criminal who’d screwed up his own plans? Everybody seemed to be drinking when I passed the pool party the day of the press conference. Did Eliza somehow tumble to the fact that Peter was the Taxman, and he eliminated her? And then did the same to Nesbit? For that matter, would he have been able to see straight enough to go after the sheriff?

She continued to walk aimlessly. Peter could have been playing drunk—or drunker—to give himself an alibi. But Sunny had problems putting him in the middle of the Taxman’s web. Randall said the extortion scheme had been going on for at least a decade, which would have made Peter a young teenager when it began. Where would a high school kid have gotten the kind of information required?

Or maybe, where would a good hacker get the information?

Sunny found herself passing the tennis court, and Priscilla’s brothers’ never-ending marathon of games. How about one of them? Could one of the Senator’s grandsons be supplementing his governor’s salary and influencing people through blackmail? Both were a bit older than Sunny—certainly more used to technology than any of the older generation. Neither had shown himself as a computer whiz, but maybe that was on purpose.

The knife that killed Frank Nesbit did come from Lem Junior’s bedroom, Sunny couldn’t help thinking. And the Kingsburys are surely more familiar with their own security systems than any of the visitors. In fact, aside from the whole technology aspect, Senator Kingsbury would fit quite nicely in the role of the spider running the Taxman’s web, she thought. He probably knows where a lot of bodies are buried, metaphorically or literally. And since he got dumped by his old associates, he’d have motive to make them pay.

The problem was, she was certain that he didn’t have the computer smarts to pull off something as fancy as vanishing text messages and untraceable payments. Of course, he could have hired out the work, but that would’ve meant a partner who could reveal all. And what would any of the Kingsburys want with Rohypnol?

An ugly scenario suggested itself to her mind: Tommy Neal was an up and coming Wall Street type, distant relation . . . and spurned suitor? Robin Lory and others had suggested that Priscilla and Tommy had been considered as matrimonial partners, but he’d ended up marrying Cillie’s best friend. What if he still wanted Priscilla—but wanted to make sure she wouldn’t remember it? A date-rape drug would take care of that.

Sunny shook her head. This is beginning to sound like one of those new nighttime soaps, she silently complained. It certainly didn’t help her to narrow down the circle of suspects.

She suddenly felt very alone.

I’d give a lot to have a friendly face around.

*

Shadow trailed afterSunny, not even sure why he was doing it. First she’d chased him and then ignored him, and then she’d sat watching for the big He to come along. Shadow could smell that He even from the underbrush where he’d hidden. There were made smells on him now, some of them pretty interesting. But underneath that was the same strong male scent that Shadow had detected in the room where Sunny had gone.

Whatever else, though, this one was not Smells Good.