Reclaim My Life (36 page)

Oh no
. That could only mean Ian had killed their two friends. “But how?”

“Oh, Liz, you’ve been around Ian. Even you had trouble believing he was capable of spying on me. Admit it.”

“He did fool me.” But she was easily deceived, not that she cared to go into that particular character flaw with Sunny. “Listen, it’s your word against his. You have to fight this.”

“Sorry, Liz. I can’t trust the police. If you can’t help me, I guess I’m on my own—”

“Wait. Let me see what I can arrange and I’ll call you back.”

“Why can’t you just pick me up yourself? I’d do it for you in a heartbeat.”

“I would if I could.” Before Sunny questioned her further, she rushed on. “I promise I’ll help you. Stay there at the Nite Owl, and I’ll call you right back.”

She’d stalled for time, but what did it buy her? The chief deputy was en route to pick up Sunny. Could she catch him and insist on going with him? But she’d promised Wilson she’d stay out of sight. Walking past Zelda’s desk, she caught her in between calls.

“Do you know how to reach Chief Deputy Fischer?”

“That was him on the line just now. He said to tell you he had to take a call on his way to the Nite Owl and wouldn’t be able to pick up the woman. I assume you know what he’s talking about.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thanks.” She headed toward Wilson’s office, then hesitated. “Could you give Sheriff Drake a message for me when he comes back?”

“That I can do.” She grabbed a pad of message slips just as the telephone rang again.

“Tell him I’ll be right back, that I’m picking up Sunny Davis at the Nite Owl and bringing her back here.”

Zelda stopped writing. “Sunny Davis, the one reported missing?”

The telephone persisted, and Elizabeth spoke quickly. “That’s right. She needs my help. I’ll return probably before he knows I’m gone, but I need for him to know my whereabouts.”

“I’ll tell him.” Zelda scooped up the phone to answer the call.

Damn!
She shouldn’t be doing this. Leaving now was wrong on so many levels, but Sunny needed her help. She redialed Sunny at the public phone. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Even as Elizabeth slipped out Wilson’s private door to jog to her truck, warning bells sounded in her head. She hated breaking her promise to Wilson, but she couldn’t let Sunny down. Sunny was the only girlfriend she had in Drake Springs who hadn’t been murdered, and Elizabeth had no intention of turning her back on her.

Imagine finding out your husband wanted you dead! Elizabeth knew that kind of betrayal. She’d been the victim of a lying sociopath who claimed to love her while leading a double life. They were two months from their wedding day when she found out he was not the man she loved. She and her family would suffer from his treachery for the rest of their lives.

She’d shed enough tears over Brendan Price. Now she needed to pick up Sunny. Just because Ian had been brought in for questioning didn’t mean they had enough evidence to arrest him. But if she brought Sunny to the station, she could press charges before he’d be released. Then surely Wilson would forgive Elizabeth for putting herself at risk.

The Nite Owl, less than half a mile from Wilson’s office, took fifteen minutes to get to because of road hazards and a county work crew cleaning up storm debris. She pulled past the store and stopped. Sunny darted out from behind the ice machine rolling her yellow bicycle, which she hoisted into the bed of the truck. She yanked open the door, then hopped into the cab.

“Thank you for coming.” Sunny slid down low in the seat. “It’s been a helluva night.”

“You’re safe now.”

“What’s with the baseball cap? I almost didn’t recognize you.”

She pulled out onto First Street and shifted gears. “Wilson gave it to me.”

“Wilson, eh? Well, I’m happy for you, Liz.” Sunny looked up with a sad smile. “I hope you have better luck with your love life than I have.”

“Tell me what happened. And how’d you get away?”

“Oh, boy. Where to start?” Sunny scrunched low in the seat, her arms wrapped around her knees. “I went home to get my car after lunch because of the weather. But Ian was home, so after locking up my bike on the rack, I went inside. He fixed us each a cup of coffee, but mine must have been doped. Next thing I knew, I woke up locked in my trunk.”

An orange-vested flagger stopped traffic long enough to allow a bucket truck to back into First Street. “How’d you get out?”

“Ian’s smart, but he doesn’t know everything. I just used the trunk release. The struggle came from lifting the trunk when my bike was attached to it, but I managed. He’d parked us out near that fire. I think … I think he was going to leave me and the car to burn.”

“Oh no.” Elizabeth’s brother had come close to dying in an arsonist’s fire. The memory still shook her. “I’m so glad you escaped.”

“Thanks to my bicycle. I couldn’t find the car keys. He took them, the bastard.”

“You’ll be safe now. I’m taking you in to the sheriff’s office.”

“Oh, God, no! I can’t go there. You don’t know how persuasive Ian can be. You do know what a genius he is with computers.”

Elizabeth inched the pickup truck forward in traffic. “They won’t believe him, not if you press charges—”

“You believe me, but they won’t. He’s set this whole thing up brilliantly. I think he planned it from the time he married me, so don’t be so sure the police will take my word against his.” Sunny raised up enough to see over the dashboard. “You’re going to have to take a detour around this mess.”

Elizabeth’s spirits sank. This quick trip shouldn’t have taken so much time. Instead of rescuing Sunny, she may have put them both in danger. Who knew where the hit man lurked, or what he looked like? She needed to be the one slinking down in the seat instead of Sunny. That thought gave her pause.

If Ian was in custody, from whom was Sunny hiding?

Wil straddled the wooden chair backwards and crossed his arms over the back. Ian Davis gave him a sullen look from behind a can of Mountain Dew. The guy stuck to his crazy story that he—not Sunny—was the victim in her disappearance. He also had strong alibis for both homicides. He’d been working at the college data center.

“But what does Sunny have to gain by killing you or setting you up? She’s the one with the trust fund.”

Ian seemed to have a ready answer for all their questions, which only raised Wil’s suspicions. “I told you, I don’t know about any stinking trust fund. If she has one, it’s news to me.”

“You two have been married how long?”

“I married her a year ago. We just celebrated our anniversary.” He slouched back in his chair and harrumphed. “That’s a joke. Legally, we aren’t even married.”

Wil masked his surprise at this bit of news, but Ian was clever. He could be playing them. “You aren’t legally married?”

“I’m not legally married to Sonya Leigh Duncan, because Sonya Leigh Duncan died thirty years ago.”

“Sunny used an alias? Why would she do that?”

“That’s what I been trying to tell you yo-yos. I found several fake identities. She thought by deleting her files, I couldn’t access them. But I know my way around a hard drive.”

“Excuse me a minute.” Wil motioned for Brady to join him outside the interrogation room. After they closed the door, Wil flipped through the file until he came to Jamie’s report. “Here it is. Jamie couldn’t find anything on a Sonya Leigh Duncan, but she searched for living persons.”

“I’ll get Jamie to check out the deceased Sonya Leigh Duncan.”

“You can reach her in the field. She has her laptop.”

“If Jamie checks it out, are you buying his story?”

“I’m keeping an open mind, Brady. There was always something a bit too slick about Sunny Davis. Could be one of those ‘black widows.’ Let’s ask him about life insurance policies.”

Brady left to call Jamie, and Wil returned to the interview room. Ian had emptied his soft drink and crushed the can with both hands. He looked up when they entered the room, and held up the can. “You guys recycle?”

Recycle? Most savvy suspects wouldn’t accept a drink or smoke, knowing the police might use it to check DNA. Could Ian be clueless, or very, very confident?

“Yeah. I’ll take it.” Wil relieved him of the can. “Before we continue, would you like another soda or anything to eat?”

“No, thank you.”

Brady slipped back into the room, giving Wil a single nod. So Ian told the truth about Sunny’s alias. Excitement filled Wil’s gut, the same sensation he had when working puzzles and was closing in on a solution. Was he?

Reclaiming his chair, he met Ian’s gaze. “Did you and Sunny buy life insurance?”

“Not that I know of. She might have forged my name on some, but I couldn’t afford anything but the bare minimum of car insurance.”

“Tell us everything you learned about Sunny from her computer that convinced you she wants you dead.”

“I’m not convinced she wants to kill me, just to set me up to take a fall. I think she had me in mind for a patsy all along.”

Ian was a consummate actor. Or genuine heartache and anger burned within him. Wil needed to know more before he formed any theories. “So tell us what you uncovered about her.”

“You’re not going to believe it. I hardly believe it myself.”

“Just tell us, Ian.”

“She goes on lots of trips. She said she was going to Boston to visit her mother, and I believed her. Then last weekend after she left, I booted up her laptop to run defrag. She knew about it. In fact, she asked me to pull maintenance on it because her CPU had been sluggish. Anyway, before I had a chance to start defrag, she got one of those popup IMs.”

“Instant messages?” Brady asked.

“Yeah. It verified a funds transfer. A large funds transfer.”

“How large?” Wil asked.

“Twenty grand. That struck me odd, so I did some checking into her deleted e-mails. Found out my dear sweet wife has a secret life. She does freelance jobs for thousands of dollars, which is how she affords the travel and the fancy car. I didn’t see anything about a trust fund. Furthermore, when I tried to locate her mother in Boston, there was no mother. No Duncans with a daughter named Sonya Leigh. That’s when I took apart her hard drive.”

“Freelance? Doing what?”

“At first, I thought she was a hooker, but no hooker I ever heard of makes that kind of cash. Then I thought maybe she deals drugs because there was mention of shipments and delivery. But it’s not drugs she buys—it’s weapons. Not large arms deals, just the occasional untraceable weapon for the occasional crime.”

Like the twenty-two found dismantled and tossed into the Suwannee? “Do you have this hard drive that you could show us these files?”

“What would that prove? I could’ve planted it there. That’s what she’ll say—”

“She’s missing, Ian. She’s not saying anything.”

“That’s part of her plan. She wants me to be under suspicion for her disappearance. Then you’ll make the logical leap to those two women who were murdered—”

“I don’t follow you. Why would we suspect you of those homicides?” Brady asked.

“This is the part you’re really not going to believe, but I think Sunny shot those two women. She’s a killer, I tell you. She carries a case of guns in the trunk of that Lexus of hers.”

Wil agreed. He wasn’t going to believe the woman drove with an arsenal in her trunk. “How did you find this out?”

“She rides her bike to work, so I had plenty of opportunities to search her car.” He seemed embarrassed at the admission. “Not that I did, at least not until this week. She has a false bottom in the trunk. After I figured out how to remove it, I found the guns, all neatly packed in foam casing.”

Still, Ian could be describing his own arsenal. “Those two women were her friends. Why would she kill either one?”

“Sunny—or whoever in hell she is—has no friends. She butters you up and uses you, then discards you when she’s through.” Bitterness laced his speech. “Or maybe she just puts a bullet in you.”

Wil kept a noncommittal tone to his voice he didn’t feel. Something in Ian’s story piqued his subconscious. Excitement buzzed through his nerve endings. “Tell us how she arranged these gun deals.”

“It’s mostly in code, which is why it took me time to crack. Sometimes the deals are in chats, which for some reason she recorded. Some are e-mails. Again, she saves them all in a phony file marked ‘Deleted Files.’ I guess she never thought I would peek. She has about a dozen false identities, depending on who she’s interacting with.”

“I’ll repeat my question. Do you have this hard drive to show us?”

Ian shook his head before Wil finished asking. “She grabbed the laptop and took it with her when she”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—”disappeared.”

Wil sighed, unable to mask his disappointment. How convenient. “Well, there’s no way to check out your story unless we know the details.”

“What details do you need?”

“For starters, what are some of these false identities she uses?”

“I remember most of them because I tried to trace them. All I checked out were dead people, usually children. Sonya Leigh Duncan, you know about. That’s fake. Then there’s Rita Redoso, who’s buried in New Mexico. Starr Webster turned out to be buried in Hannibal, Missouri. Morgan O’Hare, buried in Pocatello, Idaho. Melissa Hewitt, buried in—”