A Murderous Game (24 page)

"Why? What happened?"
Gage was already standing, putting on his suit jacket.

"I don't know. She just said
she had to cancel lunch because the police needed to talk to her. They're going
to try to pin Dick's murder on her, Gage. I know it. You've got to do
something."

"All right, listen. I'm going
to get down there and find out what's going on. And don't worry. I won't let
anything happen to her." He hung up and shot around the side of the desk.

"Something's come up. I've got
to go. Mel, get the name of the best defense attorney in the country and set up
a meeting for later today. Do whatever has to be done to arrange it. Tell him
I'll handle all his expenses. You can reach me on my cell if you need to, but
make it happen."

"Who am I supposed to tell
them they're meeting with?" Mel called after him.

Gage turned in the doorway.
"Me. Oh, and tell them they've got to come to Philadelphia. The cops have asked me not to
leave town."

"What the hell!" Brett's
explosive curse rang out as Gage ran for the elevator. He didn't have time for
explanations. Abby needed him.

~~~

"In a subsequent search of
your husband's house, we found some very interesting evidence," Detective
Baker informed Abby a few minutes after she'd been escorted into the interview
room to meet with him and Detective Simms.

"What evidence?" She
glanced nervously between the detectives.

"We'll get to that in a couple
of minutes." Simms's gaze darted toward his partner, almost in silent
reprimand. "Do you mind if I record this interview?" he asked
politely.

The request set off her internal
alarms. She searched the detective's face looking for the trap. Maybe it was
just standard practice, she thought, and tried for a calm she didn't feel. If
she refused, they might think she had something to hide. She didn't. She relaxed
a little. She was overreacting to something that was no doubt department
procedure.

Abby folded her hands in her lap
and nodded her assent.

Simms pressed a button on the
recorder he'd placed near the center of the table. "We only brought you in
to ask some clarifying questions. When we're done, you're free to leave."

She nodded. "Okay."

"Your divorce was finalized
about a month ago. How long were you separated before that?"

"A little
over a year."
Surely they'd seen some of the articles that had chronicled
the whole humiliating affair.

"Why did you separate?"

Abby lifted her chin a notch but
kept her eyes down. "Is this really necessary?"

"I believe it is," Simms
suggested, and she thought she might have heard sympathy in his tone. She
glanced at him again but failed to see anything in his expression to clue her
into his attitude one way or another.

"All right," Abby agreed
softly, "you'll find out anyway, if you don't already know. I discovered
Dick had been unfaithful. It was a character flaw I wasn't willing to
overlook." She heard Baker snort.

Simms crossed his arms over his
chest and watched her closely. "And yet the two of you were on the verge
of reconciling right before he was murdered."

"That's not true," Abby
denied without pause. "I don't know where you got that idea, but the last
thing I wanted or would have agreed to was reconciliation."

"Didn't your ex-husband visit
your office several weeks ago and call you out of a staff meeting to ask you to
dinner in order to work out your differences?"

She stared at him, amazed he knew
about Dick pulling her out of any meeting, but more so that he'd jump to the
erroneous conclusion it was to patch things up.

"He pulled me out of a
meeting," she said with more emotion than intended, "to say he wanted
a piece of property I owned. He promised if I gave it to him, he'd sign off on
the divorce papers."

"That would be the Florida property you
inherited from your grandmother?" Simms asked.

"Yes, that's correct,"
she said, surprised again. "I agreed to his demand. I didn't even care why
he wanted it. I'd had all I could stand of property battles and delays, and I'd
only been to the place a couple of times when I was a child, so I didn't have
an emotional tie to it."

She wrung her hands, uncomfortable
at having to confide anything so personal to virtual strangers.
"Truthfully, though, I probably would have agreed to almost anything at
that point to get my life back. I had my lawyer draw up the paperwork the next
day, signed it, and then forgot about it. Dick stopped fighting me, and the
divorce went through with amazing speed considering how long it had dragged out
up to then. Everyone got what they wanted."

"You just forgot about
it?" Baker asked with what sounded like sarcasm. "It's hard to
believe you just
forgot
about a twelve million dollar property."

"Twelve
million!"
Abby burst out laughing at the ridiculous notion.
"Believe me,
Detective,
if that property were
even worth one million, I'd still be fighting with Dick over the divorce. It's
just a small summer cottage on a few acres of land. I doubt if it's even worth
a couple of hundred thousand." She shook her head. "Please don't take
this the wrong way, but if you're relying on whatever sources you've gotten
your information from so far, you might want to look for some new ones. They're
not very good."

Like a hawk stalking its prey,
Simms kept his attention focused squarely on her. "Are you saying you
weren't aware a developer approached your husband a couple of months ago when
he was vacationing there and offered to buy the property for that amount?"

Abby's mouth fell open in stunned
surprise. "N-no, I didn't know about any offers." She frowned, her
brow wrinkling with confusion. "And I'm sure Dick hadn't been out of town
in the last few months. Even if he were to have gone on vacation, which I'm
positive he didn't, it wouldn't have been there. He didn't even like the place.
That's why I was surprised when he said he wanted it." She shook her head.
"No, this can't be right. Someone's given you erroneous information."

"Very nice performance,"
Baker said from beside her. "But according to the developer, he approached
your husband while he was there, and they discussed the sale. Either you or the
developer is lying. In case you weren't aware, once the final deed transferring
the property from you to your ex was filed, you lost any claim to it."

"Son of a—" Simms threw
his tablet on the table. "Would you excuse Detective Baker and me for a
minute?" He got up and stalked away from the table, glancing at Abby as he
held the door and waited for his partner to precede him out of the room.

Apprehension clutched her in a firm
grip when the door closed behind them. They had to be mistaken. It wasn't that
she couldn't believe Dick capable of swindling her out of her inheritance if he
discovered the property was worth so much money. He'd been capable of that and
more. Still, she knew he hadn't been to Florida
because for the last year she'd had to put up with his taunting and tricks on a
weekly basis. She would have known if he'd been away for more than a couple of
days.

It didn't make sense. Something
wasn't right about their claim. But why would they make up such a crazy story
if it weren't true? Could they be trying to trick her somehow?

She closed her eyes and pushed her
hands through her hair. Baker thought she was guilty of killing Dick. She knew
it. Not only that, she had begun to sense Simms didn't believe her, either. He
wasn't as obvious as his partner, but she'd seen the way he studied her, as if
sifting truth from lies.

The door swung open again, and the
detectives came back into the room, a definite tension entering with them. Once
seated, Detective Simms addressed her. "Ms. Carpenter, I apologize if my
partner became a little overzealous in his questioning." His gaze rested
momentarily on Baker, whose expression did nothing to mask his displeasure at
being called to task.

"For all our sakes,"
Simms went on, "I hope you'll allow us to proceed, with your
permission?" He raised his eyes in
question.         

"Yes. I want to
continue." More than wanting to continue, she needed to know what they had
that made them so suspicious of her. How could she hope to defend herself if
she didn't? "Go ahead, Detective."

Simms gave a tight nod. "Thank
you. My partner will sit in as a silent observer to ensure I conduct the
remainder of this interview by the book."

"Let's forget about the
property in Florida
for the moment. No one is accusing you of anything here, but we've received
conflicting information, and I hope with your help we can uncover the
truth."

"I'm not afraid of the truth,
Detective Simms. It's a lot less scary than anything that's come up in this
interview so far."

Despite the dig, the corner of
Simms's mouth turned up in a lopsided grin.
"Duly noted,
Mrs. Carpenter.
Getting back to my earlier point, you've denied you and
Carpenter
were
trying to reconcile. Yet, your ex
confided to a friend that the two of you were getting back together. That same
friend informed us that on a subsequent date, when the two met for lunch, your
ex was incensed because he'd discovered you and Mr. Faraday were carrying on an
affair."

"You're talking about Harold
Billings, aren't you?" Abby crossed her arms tightly.

The detective nodded.

Billings knew damn well there hadn't been any
talk of getting together again. What motive could he possibly have for telling
the police otherwise? It didn't make sense, unless Dick had lied for some
reason and told Harold they were trying to reconcile. No, that made even less
sense.

"I don't understand why he
told you that. It's not true, and he had no business speculating about my
relationship to Mr. Faraday."

Simms sat back, rubbing the tip of
his index finger back and forth over his mouth, watching her. "Billings gave me the
impression that you and he were friends. Aside from admitting to some
disappointment over your husband's claim you'd been having an affair, he had
only good things to say about you."

Abby sputtered.
"Friends!?
Good things to say!
Oh brother."
She snorted her
disbelief. "Are you telling me Harold Billings is the source of your
conflicting information? Detective, Harold and I have never been friends, and I
can't imagine why, but for some reason only he knows, he lied to you about Dick
and me."

Simms tapped his pencil against the
yellow legal pad he'd been taking notes on, continuing to study her as if her
nose might start to grow any second, and he didn't want to miss the spectacle.
It made her want to scream.

"As I'm sure you're
aware," he said, sitting forward again, "we've had you and Mr.
Faraday under surveillance for the last week. This isn't meant as a moral
judgment, only an observation, but it does seem the two of you are more than
business associates."

"I don't understand how our
involvement is relevant," Abby said, tamping down her growing frustration.
"It's got nothing to do with Dick's murder." Gage made her happy,
despite her concerns it wouldn't last forever, she loved him, and she didn't
feel she needed to justify their relationship to anyone, even the police.

"Tell me again, how long have
you known Mr. Faraday?" Simms asked offhandedly.

"A little over a month,"
she said, losing some of her patience. "He hired our firm to develop a
marketing campaign, and I was assigned to manage the account. We've been over
all this."

"And you want to stick with
that story?"

"It's not a story," she
said defiantly, tired of rehashing the same old stuff. "It's the truth. I
don't know why you won't believe me. You can check with my boss, Mr. Norwell.
He'll confirm the date Mr. Faraday came to our firm to discuss hiring us to
manage his account."

Simms picked up the leather
portfolio he'd brought in with him. Reaching inside, he pulled out a plastic
bag containing a little red book and tossed it on the table.

Abby's eyes widened with shock as
she stared at her old diary. "Where did you get that?" she asked in a
strained whisper, feeling her world suddenly tilt off balance.

"Is it yours?" Simms's
tone sounded
less patient
, as if he didn't like games
and thought she'd been trying to play him.

"I thought I misplaced it. How
did you—"

"As I said, we did a
subsequent search of your ex-husband's house and found this. Billings had told us your ex had shown him an
old diary of yours that might shed some light on the investigation."

"Dick stole my—" She
closed her eyes and shook her head. "But…but what does my old diary have
to do with any of this?"

"Considering it details an
intimate relationship between you and Faraday that took place a number of years
ago, it proves you lied about how long you've known each other. It certainly
doesn't mean you're guilty of murder, but it does make me wonder what else you
might have lied about."

"I haven't lied about
anything," she insisted, but it was becoming more and more obvious the
detectives didn't believe her. She was innocent. Why couldn't they see it?
Maybe she should think about contacting a lawyer.

A disturbance started somewhere
outside the interview
room,
and the detectives looked
at each other as heated voices continued to rise in volume.

"I don't give a damn about
your fucking procedures. Show me where she is, or I'll rip this place apart
until I find her."

Abby recognized Gage's voice and
almost came out of the metal chair where she'd been sitting for the last half
hour.

Detective Baker smirked.
"Sounds like someone told your boyfriend we invited you down for a little
visit."