Sandra Brown - Ricochet

Elise returned, dressed. She passed him his jeans. He thanked her and pulled them on. “To have done that, Laird has to be dirty.”

“He was overwrought, wrung out,” DeeDee countered. “In his distress, he made a mistake.”

“He didn’t make a mistake.”

“The dental records-”

“Matched the teeth of the corpse. The X-rays may have been labeled with Elise’s name, but they weren’t her X-rays.”

DeeDee ruminated on that while eyeing Elise up and down. “You look awfully rosy-cheeked for someone who’s supposed to be dead.”

“I believe you wish I were.”

DeeDee’s own cheeks turned pink. “I just don’t like being dicked around. And before Duncan went soft in the head-and hard in the crotch-over you, he didn’t like being dicked around, either.”

“That’s enough, DeeDee,” he said.

“Not by a long shot,” she fired back. “I want to know what the hell is going on, or I’m calling Gerard and telling him about your little scam, or whatever the hell this is.”

“I’ll explain everything if you’ll calm down, sit down, and listen.”

Looking mutinous, she clumped to the sofa and plopped down. He moved an armchair closer to her. Elise sat on the piano bench.

Duncan began by asking DeeDee how she’d found him. “If you found us, others might.”

“I called your mother.”

“My mother?”

“I told her you’d gone away for a few days of R-and-R after the Laird fiasco, which she’d read about. Not that she or anyone knows the full scope of the story,” she added, shooting Elise a hostile glance. “I told her something important had come up and I needed to see you, told her I couldn’t reach you by cell phone, and asked if she had any idea where you might have gone to relax.

“She gave me the phone number here, but I never could get an answer. I called her back-by now she’s worried about you. She gave me directions and I volunteered to drive up here and check on you.”

“You could have kept calling my cell.”

“You ignored the calls.”

“I would have called you back.”

She glanced toward the bedroom then looked at him sourly. “When you got around to it.”

He ignored that. “Did something important come up?”

She removed a folder from her oversized handbag and passed it to Duncan. “Your hunches of yesterday were correct.”

Elise reacted with surprise. “Yesterday? What hunches?”

“Duncan asked me to check out some things.”

Elise looked at him. “You did? You talked to her? You told me you’d left a voice mail message.”

“A white lie,” he admitted uneasily. Then to DeeDee, “Napoli’s secretary?”

“Paid off like a slot machine. She distinctly remembered sending Savich an envelope by certified mail. She even gave me the receipt, signed by Savich’s secretary. The guy with the perfect coif and false eyelashes? Anyway, Napoli gave his secretary the envelope sealed and ready to mail, but she believed it contained photographs.”

“Let me guess,” Duncan said, turning to Elise. “The photographs of you and Savich. The same ones he sent to Cato. Double-dipping as usual. Except it pissed off Savich enough to kill Napoli.”

DeeDee jumped as though she’d got an electric shock. “Excuse me?”

Duncan turned to Elise. “Tell her.”

Elise gave DeeDee a detailed but concise account of what had happened on the Talmadge Bridge, including seeing Savich shoot Napoli. When she was finished, DeeDee looked at Duncan. “You believe that?”

“I do now that I know Napoli was stupid enough to try and blackmail Savich.”

Looking both affronted and puzzled, Elise said, “You didn’t believe it until now? You didn’t take my word for it?”

He had no time to address that before DeeDee said, “There’s more. You suggested I run background checks on the men we know Savich has hit. Unnecessary busywork to keep me occupied, no doubt. But, as it turns out, not a waste of time.” She paused, looking smug. “Guess who’s related to Chet Rollins?”

“Elise is his half sister.”

His knowing that took some of the starch out of DeeDee’s posture, but it only increased the animosity with which she regarded Elise. “You heard him asking me to check out Rollins’s background, so you covered your ass and told him before I could.”

“Actually, Elise didn’t overhear me asking you to do that.”

“Why did you ask her to do that?” Elise asked, raising her voice. “Why, Duncan? Unless…” Her perplexity turned to anger. “You wanted to be sure I was telling you the truth,” she accused. “That’s it, isn’t it? After everything, you still don’t trust me.”

“Go figure,” DeeDee muttered sarcastically.

“Put yourself in my place, Elise,” he said. “I had to be certain.”

They shared a long look, which he was the first to break. He turned back to DeeDee. “What else did you find?”

She hitched her chin toward Elise. “She and Savich go way back. They were cozy friends long before she married the judge.”

“We weren’t cozy friends.”

“I’ve seen the pictures,” DeeDee said hotly. “The ones you killed Napoli over.”

“Savich killed Napoli.”

“How convenient to blame it on a reputed criminal,” DeeDee said, coming to her feet. “I don’t believe your bridge story any more than I believe you shot Gary Ray Trotter in self-defense.”

“It’s true, DeeDee.”

She spun around to Duncan. “How can you-”

“Sit down.”

“She-”

“Sit down!” He waited until she was once again seated and silent, although still fuming. “Trotter wasn’t there that night to burglarize their house. He was there to kill Elise. He’d been hired to kill her. By her husband.”

Her dismay apparent, DeeDee looked from Duncan to Elise, then back to Duncan.

Taking advantage of her momentary speechlessness, he said, “Remember the night in Smitty’s, I told you Elise had come to me early in our investigation with a story I didn’t believe?”

“That’s the story?” DeeDee asked with a chortle of disbelief. “The judge hired Trotter to kill his beloved, beautiful trophy wife? How many blow jobs did she give you before you started believing that?”

He heard Elise’s gasp of outrage, but he remained fixed on DeeDee. With more restraint than he knew he possessed, and than his partner deserved, he said, “Do you want to hear this or not? If so, apologize to Elise. If not, there’s the door, and I’ll find another partner.”

“Partner? If you ally yourself with her, you’ll be lucky to have a job.”

He stood up. “You can let yourself out.”

“Okay, okay,” DeeDee said. “I want to hear the story.” He looked at her hard, reminding her of the condition under which she would hear it. She sighed, looked at Elise, and grumbled an apology.

Duncan returned to his chair and began talking. It took a half hour for him and Elise to explain everything. DeeDee asked frequent questions, questions Duncan expected because he had asked them himself.

“Who was the dead woman in the morgue?”

“My guess would be Lucille Jones,” he replied. “She was of similar height and weight. On paper, her and Elise’s physical descriptions would be interchangeable. Savich needed to get rid of her. Laird needed a body so we would close the case. Savich told Laird about the distinguishing birthmark. All he had to do was pretend to recognize it, and nobody could dispute it.”

Except you. That’s what DeeDee’s look said, but she didn’t say it out loud.

“A few days after Elise’s disappearance, when her body failed to surface, Judge Laird and Savich must have got nervous. Savich thinks, how lucky is this? I’ve got a woman whose disposal would serve two purposes. So he drowned Lucille Jones in the river, probably weighted her down so she wouldn’t be found for several days, and when she was, she would be a mess and identifiable only by her birthmark and dental records.”