Sandra Brown - Ricochet

“Hear me out.”

He shrugged and indicated for her to continue.

“She confronts Napoli, who, we know, has the morals of a maggot. She pays him more than her husband does. He returns to Cato empty-handed… What?” she asked when Duncan began shaking his head.

“Laird told me that Napoli brought him evidence of the affair, but he refused to hear it or see it, remember?”

She gnawed on that for a moment, then said, “Okay, then maybe Napoli went to her. Later. After the judge had dismissed him. He shows her pictures, video, some kind of proof of her cheating. Tells her that maybe her husband is no longer interested in the material, but others would be. Media, perhaps. Coleman Greer is news, et cetera. He blackmails her. It’s not beyond Napoli to double-dip like that.”

“No, but where does Gary Ray Trotter factor in?”

“Messenger boy.”

“She shot the messenger?”

“Something like that.”

Duncan was reluctant to admit that all day yesterday, after his conversation with the judge, his thoughts had clicked along the same track. Cato Laird had lied about knowing Meyer Napoli outside the courtroom. Elise could have lied just as easily, and perhaps more convincingly.

“Your scenario isn’t without merit,” he said. “But as long as we’re being creative and playing make-believe-”

DeeDee made a face at him.

“-let’s look at it from another perspective. Let’s say that Napoli had been blackmailing the judge. He’s got the goods on the judge’s wife and her famous baseball-player lover. The judge may not want to know the lurid details, but you can bet the public does.”

“To avoid exposure, the judge pays Napoli to keep his wife’s affair a family secret,” DeeDee said.

“Exactly. His Honor is playing both ends against the middle. He doesn’t want the dirt on his wife to become public, and he doesn’t want his wife to know he’s got the dirt.” He closed his eyes to better concentrate.

“What?” DeeDee said after a time.

The scenario he’d constructed moved him only a hair’s breadth away from believing Elise’s allegation. But he had to be very careful how he presented it to DeeDee. “What if…”

“What?” she pressed.

“What if Judge Laird isn’t quite as forgiving and forgetful of the affair as he wanted me to believe? What if it’s been eating at him? A cancer on the marriage, on his love for his wife, on his ego and manhood?”

DeeDee frowned. “He’d have to be one damn fine actor. He seems to worship the ground on which she treads.”

“I’m only playing ‘what if?’ ” he said irritably.

“Okay. Go on.”

“The night of the shooting, he kept her in bed, didn’t let her set the alarm.”

“We don’t know that he kept her in bed.”

He did. At least that’s what Elise had told him. “Let’s assume.”

“Wait,” DeeDee said, holding up her hand like a traffic cop. “Are you saying…? What are you saying? Where are you going with this? That Trotter wasn’t simply Napoli ’s go-between? That he was there for a more nefarious purpose?”

Duncan shrugged as though to say it was possible, wasn’t it? “He had a pistol, which he fired.”

“Gary Ray Trotter? An enforcer? Some kind of hired gunman sent to put pressure on Judge Laird?”

“Or Mrs. Laird.”

“I hate to speak disrespectfully of the dead, but, Duncan, come on. Gary Ray Trotter, hired assassin?”

“You don’t think that idea has legs?”

“Not even stumps.”

Actually, neither did he. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that a man of Cato Laird’s intelligence and resources would hire a chronic screwup like Trotter to do his killing for him. Elise Laird was playing him for a chump. He just didn’t know why. And he was furious with himself for giving her any credence at all.

But why would she make up a story like that? To protect herself from prosecution, stupid.

Why would she come to him with it? Even stupider. He had lust in his heart and she knew it.

But, dammit, she’d seemed genuinely scared when he said he might simply ask Cato what motive he could have for wanting his wife dead. Was that motive her affair with Coleman Greer?

“Shit!”

“What?” DeeDee asked in response to his expletive.

“I don’t know what. I’ve gone round and round on this thing and still all we’ve really got is a fatal shooting that doesn’t add up. It’s…”

“Hinky.”

“For lack of a better word. But the deeper we go, the less-”

“It looks like self-defense.”

“But nothing we have contradicts self-defense.”

“Then why are we spending so much time on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Yeah, he did, but he wasn’t yet willing to tell DeeDee about Elise Laird’s note, her visit to his town house, and her allegation that her husband had hired Gary Ray Trotter to kill her.

“We’re not closing the book on it because of our intuition. We both feel we’re missing something,” she said. “And that something could mean the difference between A: a woman protecting herself from a home intruder.”

“Or B: a homicide.”

“A significant difference.” She watched the waitress serve another diner a slice of coconut cream pie. “If Elise Laird eats like that, I’ll kill myself.”

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“I hate her,” she said bluntly. “Isn’t it enough that she looks like Helen of Troy and lives a life of luxury in a frigging mansion? It’s just too much to take that she also got to see Coleman Greer naked.”

“That’s not hate, that’s jealousy.”

“Before, it was jealousy,” she said. “It’s graduated to hate now that I know about her and Coleman Greer.”

“We need to confront her about that.” Duncan swore to himself that his interest in Elise’s affair with the baseball player was strictly business. It could be integral to their investigation. He needed to see her reaction when Greer’s name was mentioned. But only because her reaction could be telling and therefore important to the case. Honest.

“I couldn’t agree more,” DeeDee said. “We need to ask her about it, let her know that we know.” Her eyes narrowed the way they did when she was at the shooting range, taking aim at a target. “I particularly want to know if she was responsible for his suicide.”

SHORTLY AFTER NOON ON MONDAY, DEEDEE BOUNDED INTO Duncan’s office. “I just got off the phone with her. She’ll be here in five minutes.”

“That soon?”

“That soon. I got her on her cell. She was out running errands, said she’d come straight here.”

After breakfast, they had decided to give themselves, as well as Elise Laird, a free Sunday. DeeDee had gone to her parents’ home for dinner. She called it “paying penance.”

He’d gone to his gym in the afternoon and worked out, including fifty laps in the pool. He spent the remainder of the day at home, which the electronic surveillance guy had told him was bug-free. He was only mildly relieved to hear it.

Savich hadn’t sent the woman to plant any bugs, but to send a message: Savich could get to him whenever he was good and ready, and, as Duncan had feared, he probably wouldn’t see it coming.

He’d watched TV, worked a crossword puzzle, played the piano. These pastimes didn’t require one to be armed with a lethal weapon. Nevertheless, he’d kept his pistol with him. He’d slept with it.

He’d thought about Elise. More than was good for him.

When he and DeeDee arrived at the office this morning, they’d discussed how they were going to handle the upcoming interview with Elise. It would be tricky to question her about her affair with Coleman Greer without revealing that they’d learned of it through her husband. Duncan didn’t want to incur the judge’s wrath if he could avoid it.