An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (32 page)

I took a seat on the shabby sofa next to him.

“She might be delayed,” I said.

Jack’s head snapped toward me.

“Why?”

There was a brief pause while I tried to decide how I was going to handle him. From sharp look in Jack’s eyes, I decided that I should treat this as a delicate situation.

“Mr. Myers, your wife has called for her attorney,” I said.

Jack Meyers sat up straight and turned his knees toward me.

“Why does she need an attorney? For Chad?”

His tone was almost hopeful, as if he’d been waiting for us to arrest his nephew. I took a deep breath and shifted in my seat.

“No.”

“Then what?” Jack’s spine stiffened and his eyes widened. “You’ve arrested, Linda?”

“No,” I said, without hesitation. “We wanted to ask your wife some questions, and she decided she needed a lawyer.”

“Questions about what?” Anger bit in every word.

Louise shifted his Coke from its place on the coffee table and sat on the edge.

“Mister Myers, Chad claims your wife told him to accuse Katie Dolan of attacking him this morning.”

Jack considered Louise’s statement, like a man weighing a major life decision. Do I take the job or not? Can I beat the train? Should I switch fabric softeners or not? One of those really tough decisions.

“That’s a lie.” The vein at his temple throbbed with the driving beat of a man that was about to have an aneurysm. “You can’t believe anything Chad has to say. He’s lying to save himself.”

“I believe him,” I said.

“Of course you do.” Jack laughed like I couldn’t be more of an idiot. “He’s a good liar. He’s had a lot of practice.”

“What time did your wife receive the call that Chad had been attacked this morning?” I asked.

Jack sat back, disarmed by the question. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?” I was on the scent now. “The call had to come in fairly early this morning, and you don’t remember the phone ringing?”

“No.” He scratched at his head. “No actually, I don’t remember the phone ringing at all.”

“Linda arrived before the first Officer. How do you explain that?”

The creases in Jacks forehead smoothed. “I can’t.”

“Then maybe you can help us with another nagging question.” I edged closer, pinning him with my eyes. “Can you explain how the bullet we pulled out of Jonathan Luther came from a gun registered to you?”

Jack’s wide eyes glossed with tears. He swallowed hard, and then blinked away the tears before they could fall.

“Please tell me that is not true.” He turned to Louise. “Please tell me.”

Louise shook her head. “I can’t. Do you want to wait for your lawyer to arrive before we continue?”

He lowered his chin to his chest and stared at the floor. Deep heaving breaths ratcheted from his lips.

“No.” He shook his head. “I think I want to talk. This family has kept secrets for far too long.”

Jane’s face took on the kid in the candy store look. She was on ground zero for the full airing of the Luther family’s laundry. Scooping the competition didn’t quite cover this, decimating would be a better term.

“Linda became irrational after Susan was killed. I thought she was just in shock.”

Jack rubbed at his temples.

“The other morning, when you came for a visit, I had just realized my gun was missing. I wanted to have it for protection.”

That explained his nervous behavior when we arrived that day.

“Protection from who?” Louise asked.

“I said from Chad, but my Wife insisted we were in jeopardy from Katie.”

He reached for his can of soda and drank a long draft.

“Jesus Christ. Katie is unstable but I never felt threatened by her.” Sad eyes turned up to meet mine. “My wife is a little unstable at times too. The whole family is. There’s a history of mental illness.”

The police reports we’d read about Susan and Jonathan Luther’s background showed their families as more than unstable. I shifted uncomfortably away from him.

“I guess you already know,” he said. “How much of it do you know?”

“All of it, I think.”

Pity throbbed in my heart at the crumpled look on his face.

“I love Linda. More than I even knew until just this moment. She’s a good person, but she gets a little mixed-up from time-to-time. The truth is the phone never rang this morning. I know because I was in my home office at about six this morning. I was waiting for a call, so I would have known.”

“Mister Meyers,” Louise interrupted. “Maybe you should wait to speak with your lawyer before saying anymore.”

“Why? So he can put a glossy finish on what I’m saying?” Jack pushed at his temples again. “No, I don’t need anyone to spin what I’m saying. What I’ve said is the truth as cold and ugly as it is.”

Jane perched on the edge of her seat and wrote so fast, she’d never be able to read the hash marks and swirls that ejaculated from the tip of her pen. The thought that she’d just fill in what she couldn’t read, with her memories of this conversation worried me. Should make for interesting reading, since she was writing too fast to hear what was being said.

Two of the administrative assistants I’d passed in the hallway, but never gotten their names, came into the lounge. They waved a quick hello, and then turned their attention to the vending machines and their coffee breaks.

Louise suggested we move to somewhere more private to continue our conversation. Jack agreed and we moved to an interview room, where we had a tape recorder and a video camera, to document Jack’s bleaching of his family’s laundry.

“Mister Meyers,” Louise said and took a seat across from him. “What you’re telling us is that your wife called Chad this morning.”

He nodded. “She had to have called him. There’s no way Chad called her.

Since the murder, Linda’s insisted that we arrest Katie. She insisted it was the only way. When I asked, ‘arrested for what’, she just smiled and told me everything would be fine.”

Jack fumbled with a button on the right collar of his pale blue, button-up shirt. The fingernails on his right hand were neatly manicured, except for the thumbnail, which had either been gnawed on or run through a grater.

“What would be fine?” Louise’s voice was so gentle she could have been humming a lullaby.

“My wife has a problem.” He held his hand in the air between us, and then rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “With money. She gambles. She spends. I don’t even know how or where, but the money disappears. A few weeks ago, I found bills for credit cards she’d taken out in my name, stuffed in one of her winter boots.”

“How much?” I asked.

He lifted his left shoulder in a defeated shrug. “I have no idea. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.”

His fingers set to the task of attacking his button again.

“That’s why I was up this morning.”

Jack let out a resigned breath and pressed his palms flat on the table in front of him.

“I hired an investigator to find out exactly how much Linda had spent. How far in debt we are. He was supposed to call this morning, but Linda must have been on the phone with Chad.”

A question that should have been asked days ago finally occurred to me.

“What kind of car does your wife drive?”

Jack Meyers blinked at me. The question had put him off the rails of his story, and his mind was searching for the direction of my little red wagon.

“Her car is an old Buick Regal.”

“What color?”

“Dark blue.”

It fit. Bernice Leigh, the Luther’s neighbor across the street, had said she’d seen a dark car, one she thought was dirty green. She could have been mistaken. Even with her binoculars, a trick of fall light and the veil of dirt could have fooled Bernice’s vision.

He rolled his hands around each other. “We’ve been saving for a new car for her, but now . . .”

His voice trailed off then he pressed his hands flat on the table again, almost as if doing so steeled him against reality.

“Depending on how much Linda owes, it might be a long time before she gets a new car. Mine’s paid for by my company so we’ll at least have one decent vehicle.”

While Jack was distracted with his transportation concerns, Louise’s telepathy had kicked in.

“Do you know where Linda was the day of the murders?”

Jack went ramrod straight. He edged to his feet, sliding the chair backward, with a slow grind of the metal tipped chair legs on the Linoleum.

“No, I don’t.”

His answer was deliberate and his voice had taken on a menacing edge.

“I know what you’re implying Detective, but you are on the wrong track. My wife and her sister were close. When we first got married, I would have said too close, but they went through a lot of shit together as kids. All they had was each other.”

“Please, Mister Meyers, sit.” Louise fanned her hand in the air, as if he were being silly. “No one said she killed anyone. We need to cover all the bases or some slick defense attorney will. He’ll uncover your wife’s money problem, and out her in court if we don’t prove beyond any question that your wife wasn’t involved.”

He considered her for a moment, and then dropped into his chair. He lifted his hands to his head, and rubbed his temples.

“This whole situation is a fucking nightmare.”

Jane Katts flipped her notebook page and continued to scratch like mad. Jack turned his eyes toward her.

“What are you writing? Isn’t the tape recorder and the video camera enough? What the hell could you possibly be writing.”

Trapped in the intense scrutiny of Jack Meyers’ gaze, Jane tightened her grip on the notebook, as if he had lunged for the tight spiral of the header. She averted her eyes from his.

“I’m here to observe. I’m just noting my observations.” She lifted her eyes. “I tend to overthink things if I watch a video or listen to the tape. I like to capture my insights as things are happening.”

The anger on Jack’s face fizzled. What an adept liar she’d become in the last twenty minutes.

“I can stop if you’d like,” she said.

“No. Sorry. I’m just having a bad day.”

Jane smiled. “I understand.”

“I can find out where Linda was the day of the murders,” he said. “I know her and she won’t tell you. Hell, our lawyer is going to tell her, not to tell you anything.”

An offer we couldn’t pass up. Louise took Jack to the room where we had plunked Linda. I went to still the throbbing in the side of my face by taking two of Doctor Dave’s magic pills.

I swallowed the pills, with a mouthful of day-old coffee, and then rested the undamaged side of my face on my desktop. Dave had prescribed rest, so I felt no guilt in taking a breather while Louise and Jane did the legwork.

There was however, the slightest twinge of guilt at the sight of all the filing stacked on the edge of the desk. The files on top were recent cases, but the ones further down were a bit fuzzy.

With the backlog in the courts, they’d be in the file drawers before anyone needed them.

The Luther case would never make it to the stack, too high profile. This case would hit trial quickly. Thanks to my big mouth, the case was more sensational than it warranted.

My cell phone blipped to life in my pocket. I pulled it out, flipped open the case, and pressed the phone to my ear without lifting my head.

“O’Brien here.”

“Here too.”

Just the sound of Gavin’s voice made me smile.

“Hi, honey,” I said. “You must have known I needed to hear your sexy voice.”

“Yep, my wife-dar went off right before I dialed your number.”

“Ha-ha. Whoever told you, you were funny lied. I keep trying to tell you.”

“What do you mean?” he said. “This stuff is pure tarnished tin.”

I gave him a complimentary laugh.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Any better?”

“Like someone drilled through my face.”

The piercing whine of a table saw chewed through the phone lines.

“Where are you working today?”

“Same place,” he said.

I hesitated. “That’s good.”

Gavin gave a low chuckle. “You never hear me when I talk about work, do you?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Gavin always listened to me talk about my day. He gave support when I needed and even helped work through difficult cases, not to mention the best foot-rubs on earth. For some reason every time he talked about his construction jobs, I tuned out.

“Of course I listen.”

“Liar.”

I groaned and sat up. “I’m sorry, honey. I really am. I’m listening now.”

The Luther’s file lay on the paper mound to my right. I pulled it from the stack and flipped it open.

“I’m working on the mall project,” he said.

“Oh, right. The school to strip mall conversion.” I flipped to the forensic reports and scanned the page. “Seems like that’s taking forever.”