Never Sorry: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (25 page)

She looked into his reddened blue eyes and saw a kind of grief she hadn't expected. One murdered lover, and Tanner could bounce back. Two was pushing it. Especially when one was the love of his life.

"But the knife being planted is good news, really," she went on, wanting to see his eyes twinkle again, just a bit. How could she continue righteous indignation against a broken man? "The police suspect that the knife was a plant. That's got to help your case, too."

Tanner scoffed. "Tell that to my lawyer. He thinks the police suspect me of planting the knife."

Leigh's eyes widened. "But you were in j—" she stopped, heart sinking. "No, you weren't in jail. You got out yesterday afternoon, didn't you?"

He nodded. "With plenty of time to go back to the cabin, retrieve the knife from wherever I hid it that the police couldn't find it, and take it to your place."

"That's stupid," Leigh argued. "Where could you possibly have hidden it?"

"Don't ask me," Tanner said tiredly. "I'm sure they'll think of somewhere."

A spark of anger ignited. "You're not just giving up, are you?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "Why not? Two of my best friends are dead, I'm facing prison time, and I don't even have a job to go to. You got a better suggestion?"

"Yeah," Leigh said caustically. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself, get your butt in gear, and
do
something about it!  You can't bring Stacey or Carmen back, but you can keep yourself out of prison, and you can get your job back."

"Leo told me I was suspended indefinitely. Unless and until I was acquitted."

"Leo Martin is an ass. If I have my way, he'll be the one out of a job himself before too long."

Tanner's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"I can't get into the details," Leigh said quickly, wishing she could keep her mouth shut once in a while. "But suffice to say, I don't think the board would like what I've found out about him. Not to mention the fact that he stinks as a director. The man needs some serious public relations adjustments."

She wasn't sure, but she thought that for just a second, Tanner's eyes twinkled. "You go, girl," he said, breaking into a ghost of a grin.

"
You're
the one who needs to go," Leigh continued. "Carmen's death wasn't a paid hit. You should be thinking about other motives, other possible killers. And then you should be passing them on to me." She paused. "These cases are one, you know. If we find the real killer, we'll both be free."

His eyes flashed with something that could be interpreted as either inspiration—or desperation. "I already know who did it," he said evenly.

Chapter 18

Leigh stared at Tanner dumbly for a moment. "You
what
?"

"I know who did it," he repeated defensively. "It had to be."

She waited a quarter second, then nudged. "Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to get physical?"

He sniffed, then looked away from her. "I don't have any proof, but it had to be Kristin Yates. Saturday afternoon wasn't the only time that woman on Barber Road saw a tan Eldorado. She'd seen it a couple of times in the days before. That was Kristin's car—it had to be. How many tan Eldorados can there be in western Pennsylvania?" The words were firm, but his tone was unconvincing. He paused, and began fidgeting with an ash tray. "I can't imagine why Kristin would have killed Carmen. They were friends. But it all makes sense otherwise. She knew about the cabin, she could have been hiding out there. Stacey probably ran into her up there and they got into it. Maybe Stacey figured it out, and that's why—"

He didn't finish the sentence, but hurtled the ash tray like a Frisbee. It hit the backrest of a nearby chair and bounced softly onto the seat cushion below. "It just all makes sense. More than anything else, anyway."

Leigh hated her mind for fixating on certain things, but she seemed to have little control over it. "How did Kristin know about the cabin?"

Tanner shrugged. "She'd been there."

"And how would she have gotten in?"

"Everybody knows where I hide the damn key," he said bitterly. "I might as well hang it on the door."

Leigh took a deep breath. She was
not
going to get upset about this. She wasn't. "Everybody?" she said, choking slightly on the word. "So you have wild parties up there, eh?"

Tanner fell into the trap. "No, but I take—" he stopped too late and covered poorly. "A lot of my friends have been out there at one time or another. A bunch of people from the zoo. You know."

She did. Carmen, Kristin, maybe Lisa Moran. Who else? Tonya? Dena the mystery woman? Leo Martin? She let herself smile at the thought.
There, that's better
.

"There were all kinds of prints all over the cabin," Tanner continued. "Which doesn't help me at all. If the knife that was planted in your apartment was my hunting knife, it probably has my prints on it. That doesn't help me, either." He sighed. "But I told my lawyer I think Kristin did it. He's going to go with it."

For a man who might have figured out a way to beat murder charges, Tanner was surprisingly unenthusiastic. Leigh studied him for a moment. "You think Kristin killed Carmen over money?"

His head jerked back, almost as if he were stifling a laugh. "I doubt that."

"Then what?" Leigh persisted.

Tanner's voiced turned irritable. "I told you, I
don't know
."

Leigh looked into his eyes, which were as close to hostile as she'd seen—at least when they were looking at her. Of course, she could do hostility pretty well herself.

"Well,
think about it
!" she snapped. "You don't suppose jealousy could have played a role here?"

Tanner looked half angry, half embarrassed. He said nothing.

She was trying to remain objective, but the idea of Tanner with a woman who had once threatened to beat her up rankled big-time. "Horse-faced Kristin?" she said, voice rising. "It's not enough to go through every other female keeper, you have to get it on with
horse-faced Kristin
?"

Much to her annoyance, Tanner grinned. "She does look kind of like a horse, doesn't she?"

Leigh chose to rein in her anger, funneling it back into its rightful place—veiled disgust. She no longer cared about the extent of Tanner's depravity where women were concerned. But she did still care about wringing the truth out of him. She was tired of pussyfooting. "Someone at the zoo told me that you and Kristin were talking about getting married," she blurted.

"They said
what
?" Tanner scooted up to the edge of his chair, his voice escalating to a yell. "Who the hell said that?"

Leigh stared at him a moment, trying to figure out the next step in this impromptu lying game. The comment had come totally out of left field, but evidently she'd hit a nerve.
Onward
.

"I thought that's what they said," she replied uncertainly, thinking fast. "Maybe they were talking about Carmen. I don't remember."

Tanner glared at her, his bright blue eyes fiery. "I never said I'd marry anybody, you understand? Carmen lived in a fantasy world—she thought what she wanted to think. As for Kristin, she'd be dreaming. She wasn't anything to me."

Leigh could believe the last part, at least from his perspective. The other women he'd pursued had at least something going for them….if not Carmen's animalistic seductiveness, then petiteness, pretty hair, or a sense of humor. (The latter category she had created for herself.)  Kristin had nothing. She was average in height and average in weight, with dull light-brown hair and a particularly unattractive face. "So, why did you invite her to your cabin?" Leigh asked shamelessly.

Tanner looked flustered. He changed the subject. "It doesn't matter. The point is, she killed Carmen and she killed Stacey. Maybe she had some weird thing for me, I don't know. But if she did, it was one-sided. I never encouraged her. And if I find her, so help me I'll—"

He cut off the phrase, and Leigh was glad. She wasn't afraid of him, but the beer on his breath and the hostility in his eyes were far from endearing. It was interesting that he couldn't bring himself to admit to her who he had or hadn't been involved with, even though they both knew her status as girlfriend-to-be was over. Way over. Perhaps it was some Southern chivalry thing, or perhaps he was just a no-guts weasel. Either way, Leigh was quite certain he
had
been involved with both Kristin and Carmen. And come to think of it, she could remember one reason why an oversexed cowboy such as himself might have a weakness for horse-faced Kristin. There were two reasons, really. And they'd been prominent ever since Kristin hit puberty.

"Well, apparently Kristin
thought
she was going to marry you," Leigh said deviously, launching off into uncharted waters. "I bet that's why she wanted to kill Carmen, and Stacey." She took a breath. "After all, everyone knew how you'd never really gotten over  Stacey, despite what was going on with Carmen."

Leigh waited for a protest, but none came. "I think you might as well be honest with the police about that," she said with a sigh. "It could help your case, you know."
And mine
.

Tanner ran both hands roughly over his face, then got up and went into the kitchen. He returned with another beer and sat down. Leigh noticed he didn't offer her one. She hated beer, but that wasn't the point.

"Look, Leigh," he said calmly, his anger suddenly replaced with weariness. "I know you're facing murder charges too, but you're barking up the wrong tree. Women don't go around killing each other over men like me. I don't believe it. There must have been something else going on. And Kristin wasn't the type anyway. She had a better head on her shoulders than half the other keepers. I don't believe she killed either of them."

Now he was openly contradicting himself. "You just said you knew that she
did
do it!" Leigh said with annoyance.

He threw back his head and groaned. "I know! I know!  I did tell the lawyer that. I wish it was her. I keep trying to convince myself it was her. But I just don't believe it. Something else happened."

"Like what?"

"
I don't know
," he said slowly, pounding out every word.

"Well neither do I!" she railed. "And this isn't getting us anywhere. Look, Mike. I didn't know these women. I knew girls. The Kristin I knew would have killed her own mother, so you tell me she's the one and I'm happy as a clam. But if you really did know Kristin, and I presume you did, Biblical sense and all, and you don't think she's a murderess, then maybe the lawyers are wasting their time. And we don't
have
much time!"

Tanner looked at her thoughtfully. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You're so quick to assume the murders are all about me. What if
you're
the link?"

Leigh stared at him, uncomprehending. "Say what?"

"You start working at the zoo, and two women you've never liked die violent deaths."

She bristled and started to interrupt, but he stopped her.

"I'm not saying you killed them. But what if someone killed them on your behalf?"

Leigh stared at him as if he'd gone mad. She supposed he could be drunk, at the very least. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. You mean like in
Strangers on a Train
?" She scoffed. "I assure you, I never gave any hit man a list of my rivals. Furthermore, they weren't my rivals. I didn't even know you and Carmen were involved until after she died." Leigh wondered if he knew about the possession incident. How could he? "And as for Stacey—"

Tanner suddenly laughed. "You always hated her. Even when you were a teenager."

What's not to hate
? Stifling the words on her lips, she took a deep breath. Had her dislike of Stacey always been so obvious? "There's no link through me," she said firmly. "That's nonsense. Maybe there's no connection with either of us. Maybe there's no connection at all. But let's get real—that's pretty unlikely. We've got one murder at the zoo and one at your cabin. You're involved. Kristin Yates is my new prime suspect number one, and if you have some
real
reason to think someone else did it, you'd better tell me now."

Maddeningly, Tanner just shrugged.

Leigh gave up. The more he drank, the less help he would become. He'd admitted a few things she already knew, and confirmed a few she suspected. But he didn't really think Kristin Yates was a murderess, and that bothered her. She rather liked seeing evidence pile up against the old schoolyard bully. Between the tan Eldorado at the scene of Stacey's murder and the knife frame-up, Kristin made for a credible defense theory. If the woman was innocent, it would be hard to convince the prosecutors that she did it. But then, Leigh thought wryly, stranger things had happened.

"You sit here and drink," she quipped. "I'm going to keep trying to get my butt off the hook. And yours too, if you act nice. I'm glad you told your lawyer you suspect Kristin, because as far as I'm concerned, she's guilty. If you decide otherwise, give me a call."