Mayes, Casey - A Deadly Row

“You heard us? Were you eavesdropping, Savannah?”

“I kept the door ajar when I left, and I listened from the hallway.”

Storm clouds crossed Zach’s face. “We had a deal. You were supposed to leave the interrogation to me.”

“I didn’t say a word. You didn’t even know I was out there, so don’t try to say that I interfered.”

He frowned for a few seconds. “He could have caught you.”

I bit back the urge to say that he almost did. That wouldn’t do either of us any good. “But he didn’t. It was better than nothing listening in, but I couldn’t see his face. Was he telling you the truth during your interview?”

My husband was a trained investigator, and I knew there wasn’t much he missed, though I was happy to help from time to time. He stretched back in his chair, and for a second, I wasn’t sure it could take the strain. “There were things he wasn’t telling me, but I honestly can’t say yet whether I believe the things he did say. On the face of it, it’s all pretty convenient, isn’t it? His alibi for the first homicide was murdered herself before the police could question her.”

“Atlanta’s close enough to drive back here and kill her, but it didn’t leave him much time if he did it. There are a thousand things that could have gone wrong during that drive. Is Grady that big a risk taker?”

“You know him as well as I do,” Zach said. “He can be foolhardy if it suits him. What I don’t understand is why he’s trying to hide something from me if he’s innocent. All I want to do is help him, but he treated me like I was the enemy during that interview.”

“So, you can’t cross him off your list.”

“Not by a long shot. I have to do a lot more digging before I’m willing to do that.”

“I thought of something else you might want to consider,” I said.

“You know I’m always willing to hear what you have to say.”

“Willing maybe, but not eager.”

“Come on, Savannah, spill it.”

“I ran into Grady downstairs after he left you.”

“Savannah, this is serious. You can’t play games with him.”

I frowned. “I didn’t mean to run into him, but the stupid door to this floor is locked from the stairwell, so I had to use the ground floor exit. I nearly knocked him over when I opened the door.”

“You told us both you had a puzzle to create. How did you explain being in a stairwell the entire time he was talking to me? Come on, tell me. I really want to know.”

“I told him that I was working on the roof for inspiration,” I said.

Zach smiled. “The fact that you’re afraid of heights doesn’t enter into the equation, does it?”

“I doubt Grady knows that.”

“Maybe we should get a room in the hotel closer to the ground.”

“I’m fine as long as there’s steel and glass around me. It’s being out in the open that freaks me out.” My husband, as far as I knew, wasn’t afraid of anything. He’d run into a burning building or gunfire if it meant saving someone, when anyone with any kind of self-preservation instinct at all would run the other way. As for me, there were lots of things I was afraid of, but that usually didn’t keep me from doing what had to be done. I’d once read a definition of courage that called it bravery in the face of fear, and if that were true, I had more than my share.

“Is that what you wanted to tell me, that Grady thinks you’re okay with heights?”

“Of course not. But as he looked over at his bodyguard, I had to wonder if he resented the man’s presence for a reason different from the one he gave us.”

“Such as?”

“If he’s up to no good, maybe having a cop trailing him around the clock is more than just inconvenient. How much do we know about what’s happened to Grady since we left Charlotte? He could have changed in ways we can’t even imagine, and if Grady’s on a killing spree, having a police escort isn’t the greatest thing in the world for him, is it? Should you tell the officer guarding him that maybe he should watch his own back, too?”

Zach reached for his phone as he said, “It doesn’t pay to underestimate that intellect of yours.”

“Maybe I’m just jumping at shadows,” I said.

“An ounce of prevention, and all of that,” Zach said. After being transferred from the switchboard downstairs, I heard him warn the police officer watching Grady without actually saying anything bad about the mayor. It was a fine line he was dancing, and we both knew it, but if it saved someone’s life, it was worth it.

After he hung up, I asked, “Where does that leave us now?”

Zach looked at the piles of papers on the tables. “I’ve got a lot of reading to do. I might be here late tonight.”

“Why don’t I help? Maybe I can find something in there that could point you in the right direction.”

“No offense, Savannah, but I need to ingest this all myself. It’s the only way I can wrap my head around it. You know how I work.”

“I know; read everything, learn everything, then let your subconscious take over.”

“Hey, it’s worked in the past.”

I nodded. “Then you really don’t need me right now, do you?”

“Come on, I always need you,” he said with that crooked smile of his that I cherish.

“You know what I mean. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll head back to the hotel and work on a puzzle.”

“I thought you had a few in the bank,” Zach said.

“I do, but making a puzzle might take my mind off murder, at least for a little while.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he said.

“Don’t be. Whither thou goest, and all of that.” I gave him a quick peck, and then added, “Call me when you need a ride.”

“I’ll have someone here drop me off. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

I smiled brightly. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“See that you do,” he said.

I left my husband with his head buried in a police file. If I’d stayed, I’d be nothing more than a distraction for him, and he had serious work to do. Not that my job wasn’t important in its own way, but nobody was going to die if I didn’t get my puzzle in on time, whereas he had a great deal more serious things at stake.

As I walked out into the hallway, I found Steve standing there. “You didn’t have to wait out here,” I said. “We’ve been finished for a few minutes.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he said with a smile.

“Don’t worry, if we’re canoodling, I’ll leave a tie on the door.”

“That would be greatly appreciated. I’d hate to walk in on the Chief and do something to merit a chewing out. If you don’t mind me saying so, your husband can really drop a hammer on someone if he wants to.”

“I’ve been married to him forever,” I said. “Do you honestly think you’re telling me anything I don’t already know?”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

“Go on in,” I said as I headed for the elevator. I wasn’t sure what Steve could do to help Zach any more than I had, and if that was the case, I knew my husband wouldn’t hesitate getting rid of him as quickly as he’d dispatched me.

THOUGH I’D TOLD ZACH I WANTED TO GET BACK TO THEBelmont so I could create another puzzle, there was somewhere else I wanted to go first. I drove to our old Dilsworth neighborhood on autopilot, amazed by how familiar and yet foreign the drive had become. A few shops had closed along the way, and I saw that new tenants had taken their place. An old oak tree I’d always admired had been taken down, and a sapling put in its place. I had to wonder if an ice storm or a lightning bolt had felled it, or if it had been something more mundane, and man-made. Things change, and life goes on, whether I was there to witness it or not. Seeing that tree gone gave me an irrational fear that the house I’d shared with my husband was gone as well. I wasn’t sure what kind of catastrophe I was imagining, but in my mind, it was total and complete: where our quaint place had once stood, there was now nothing more than overgrown rubble, from what, I couldn’t imagine. The image in my mind was so real that I nearly overlaid it onto the truth when I drove down our street and saw that it hadn’t been touched. That wasn’t exactly true. The trim was now painted robin’s egg blue instead of the moss green I’d preferred, and a few of the bushes in front of the Colonial had been cut back to the point of mutilation, at least in my mind. Still, the house stood just as strong and proud as the day we’d handed the keys over to the Realtor.