Dangerous Alterations (15 page)

At least Dixie had given her a heads-up. Allowed her to prepare, at least on some mental level.

Dixie …

The elderly woman had looked so distraught when she saw her that evening, her large eyes looking over Tori’s shoulder again and again, as if hoping the fire truck and acrid smell of smoke hovering around the library was some sort of bad nightmare.

“Miss Sinclair?”

The chief’s voice snapped her back on track. “What? Oh, I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere for a moment.” She toed the porch floor, jump-starting the swing into a slow and gentle sway. “Okay, as for the first item, I am not responsible for Jeff’s death if, in fact, someone
is
responsible.”

The chief’s left eyebrow rose upward but he said nothing.

“Jeff and I broke off our engagement about six months prior to my moving to Sweet Briar. It was unexpected, it was heartbreaking, and it was cruel. But I didn’t go after him at that time as I could have—
should have
, according to many of my friends at the time. And why? Because I was heartbroken. And unlike some people who lash out under those circumstances, I retreat. Into myself. Right or wrong, that’s what I do.”

“Go on,” the chief said even as he jotted notes on his pad.

“After a few months of licking my wounds I realized it was time to stand back up. Only I wanted to do it somewhere new. Somewhere that didn’t have memories in so many of the restaurants or theaters or streets I frequented.”

“Which is how you came to Sweet Briar, yes?”

She nodded. “Exactly. I saw a listing in a library publication for the director job. I applied, I interviewed, and, obviously, I got the job. So I packed up my apartment and said good-bye to Chicago and Jeff, once and for all.”

“How did he take that good-bye?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

His hand paused over top of his paper. “You wouldn’t know?”

“I didn’t tell him. I just moved. In fact, from the moment I left the hall where our engagement ended, I never spoke to, or saw, Jeff again.”

“Until last week,” Chief Dallas corrected.

He’d done his homework that was for sure.

“Yes. Until last week.”

The chief’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me about that.”

She shrugged. “Not much to tell, really. I was with Rose Winters while she was receiving outpatient treatment for her rheumatoid arthritis. While I was there, I saw Jeff’s great-aunt, Vera Calder. The woman died of a massive heart attack shortly thereafter.”

“Shortly thereafter?” He snorted. “That’s an understatement, don’t you think?”

Feeling the first hint of anger rising to the surface, she willed her voice to remain steady. “It was a coincidence and nothing more. There’s a substantial history of heart problems in Jeff’s family. And Vera looked to be in very poor health.”

“So you ran into Jeff when he was here for the funeral?”

She bit back the urge to challenge the question, to demand that the chief admit to what he knew, but she resisted, opting, instead, to walk him through the details she was confident he already knew.

The
how
behind that knowledge, though, was anyone’s guess.

“Actually, I’m the one who called Jeff to tell him. I knew the relationship between Jeff and Vera’s stepson wasn’t always on the best footing and I was afraid he wouldn’t find out any other way.”

Like a dog in search of a bone, his ears perked. “Why the sudden concern for a man who’d broken your heart, humiliated you in front of your family and friends, and whom you hadn’t seen in what? Two and a half years?”

Any speculation as to whether someone was feeding information to the chief had become fact. The humiliation comment tied it up in a nice little bow. The
who
behind the information, though, was still a mystery.

Not one to shirk from the truth, she faced his question head-on. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it concern so much as the right thing to do. Two wrongs don’t make a right, Chief. I knew Vera was dead. I suspected Jeff wouldn’t be told. To say nothing would have placed me on a level of cruelty not much different than his.”

“What happened when you called him?”

She pushed a little harder with her foot. “He asked if I would pick him up at the airport. Which I did. And then, other than dropping him off at his hotel, I didn’t see him again until his great-aunt’s wake.”

“That was it?”

“That was it.”

He pinned her with a stare. “Are you
sure
?”

Something in his tone made her stop. Think.

“Until the wake, yes. Then, a few days later, he showed up. Right here. On my porch.”

“What was that about?”

She brought the swing to a stop and stood, desperate for an opportunity to move around, work off some of the stress she felt coursing through her body. “It was about Jeff being Jeff.”

“Jeff being Jeff?” the chief echoed.

“Selfish. Egotistical.”

“How so?”

“He wanted to see if I’d consider giving us a second chance.”

“That doesn’t sound selfish or egotistical to me.”

She walked toward the stairs that led to the sidewalk and then spun around, her feet moving back and forth across the porch. “It does when you examine the motivations.”

The chief followed her every move with eyes that seemed to never blink. “And what motivations would those be?”

“Jeff never showed one iota of interest in making things right after I caught him with a mutual friend during our engagement party. In fact, he never called to see if I was okay, never stopped by to say he was sorry.”

“Would you have wanted him to?”

The question stopped her in her tracks. Would she have? Was that part of the reason she’d moped inside her apartment for so long afterward? Because she’d been waiting for him to come back?

The thought left a sour taste in her mouth.

“I’m simply saying he never tried—an indication he wasn’t that upset over our broken engagement.” She resumed her pacing. “Then … wham! He’s here, because of a funeral, and he suddenly unearths this desperate need to reunite with me? Please.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Jeff hated to lose. Hated to place anything but first in the runs he did, hated to be shown up at work by one of the other trainers at the gym, hated for someone to land a woman he didn’t have.”

“He already knew he didn’t have you.”

“But he didn’t know I was involved with someone else until he got here and I told him.”

The chief dropped his pen onto his notepad and crossed his arms. “You think he was motivated by Milo?”

“Absolutely.”

“So what happened?”

“I told him to go. And he did.”

The chief leaned forward in his chair. “And when did you next see him?”

She leaned against the porch railing and took a deep breath, her final image of Jeff filling her every thought. “On Main Street, lying facedown, with a ring of spectators standing around him.”

“You didn’t see him
before
that?”

“You mean between the time he left my porch and they found him dead in the street? No.”

“Would you be willing to say that for a lie detector test?”

She didn’t bat an eye. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s the truth.”

A blanket of silence covered them as the chief seemed to consider her words, his eyes, his demeanor yielding no clues to his thoughts. When he did finally speak, his words were like a pinprick to a balloon, diffusing the tension between them in mere seconds.

“Which brings us to part B. Do you have any information that might be useful in finding out who
did
kill Jeff Calder?”

“Let me ask you a question, Chief. What makes you think someone killed him? I thought it was a heart attack. Just like so many in his family before him.”

“His doctor in Chicago says he was in perfect health. That Jeff had only a minor hint of whatever flaw his family members had in their hearts.”

So Rose was right.

Someone really did kill Jeff.

“Will they do an autopsy?”

The chief nodded. “It’s being done as we speak.”

“In Chicago?”

“No. Here.”

“Oh.” It was all she could think to say at the moment. Just the notion that someone may have taken Jeff’s life was almost more than she could fathom. Sure, she knew he rubbed people the wrong way, but still,
Jeff
?

“If the autopsy points to foul play, as the doctor suspects it will, Mr. Calder’s death will become a murder investigation.”

“But he was running, right?”

The chief stood, then worked his notepad and pen into his back pocket once again. “He was.”

“How could he have just keeled over if it wasn’t from natural causes?”

The chief raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “In much the same way Tiffany Ann Gilbert dropped dead next to the Dumpster behind the library.”

The chief was right and she knew it.

“So, do you have any thoughts? Any people you think might have wanted to see your former fiancé dead?” he asked.

Suddenly any arm’s-length emotion she’d tried to employ since seeing Jeff’s body disappeared. This time, the victim wasn’t someone she’d only heard about in stories. It wasn’t someone she’d only seen in pictures.

She’d
known
Jeff.

She’d
loved
Jeff.

And regardless of the manner in which they’d parted ways, he’d been a very big part of her life. Sure, he’d been a jerk. Sure, he’d broken her heart—something that continued to affect her life even now. But that didn’t mean he deserved to die by someone else’s hand.

“Can I think on it, Chief? I don’t really know much about his life over the past two-and-a-half years other than the abbreviated version he shared in the car on the way from the airport to the hotel. But maybe, if I think on it, something he said will be a trigger.”

“Do you keep in touch with any of the friends you two had as a couple?”

She shook her head. “No. I retreated more than I should have when I lived there, and once I moved I guess I didn’t want to look back.”

The chief smiled. “I guess that’s understandable.” He walked toward the stairs only to stop at the top. “You know where to find me if anything—or anyone—comes to mind.”

If there was something Jeff had said, or some connection they’d once had that could unearth his killer, she wanted to help.

She owed that to herself as much as Jeff.

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, Miss Sinclair.” The chief nodded farewell. “For what it’s worth, Chicago’s loss was Sweet Briar’s gain.”

“Chicago’s loss?”

“You.”

She blinked against the sudden onslaught of tears that threatened to reduce her to a human puddle. It was the nicest thing the man had ever said to her. But before she could respond, he prattled on, any hint of emotion quickly erased by his back-to-business demeanor.

“As for Mr. Calder’s possible murder, keep this in mind, Victoria. Sometimes the answer is where you least expect it.”

Watching him descend the stairs and disappear down the street, Tori couldn’t help but replay the man’s parting words again and again, her unshared response coming quickly on its heels …

It wasn’t the
where
she was worried about, but the
who.

Her
who.

By the time the first traces of dawn peeked around Tori’s bedroom curtains she was already dressed, her favorite sleep shirt still folded neatly on her nightstand. She’d intended to sleep, she really had, but her eyes—which had remained glued to the ceiling as everything from the library and Dixie, to Milo and Jeff, looped through her mind—had refused to heed her body’s basic needs.

Part of that, she knew, was guilt. Guilt over not fulfilling Milo’s request and calling him the second her chat with Chief Dallas had ended. Part of it, too, was the roller coaster of adrenaline and exhaustion she’d ridden from the moment Georgina’s secretary called with news of the fire to the relief that had come when she’d finally gotten to speak to Fred Granderson. Yet, unlike most roller coasters, she hadn’t been able to disembark from the ride at the end. No, she’d gotten a bonus second ride she’d neither sought nor appreciated—this one taking her from Dixie’s shocking assertion that Chief Dallas was looking for Tori to being questioned in yet another possible murder.

A murder that just happened to have her ex-fiancé as the victim and, at least in her sleep-deprived mind, her almost-fiancé as a possible suspect.

All night long she’d replayed her last conversation with Jeff and the subsequent phone call with Milo. Try as she might, no matter how many times she hit the replay button, Milo’s voice and words didn’t change. He’d been angry, furious even over Jeff’s treatment of Tori on the porch. Toss in whatever Leona may have said to stoke the fire even more and, well, there she was.

At a complete loss for what to say and do.

Under normal circumstances, she might be tempted to call Margaret Louise, bounce her wild notions off the levelheaded woman. But not today. Margaret Louise and the rest of the crew were still at the cabin, laughing and joking and sewing the hours away.

The hours away.

“Hours away …” Tori paused, her tube of lip gloss a mere inch from her lips, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Milo had been
hours
away when Jeff died. Several glorious
hours
away, in fact.

And, just like that, the knot of tension that had taken root in her neck and shoulders and spread throughout the rest of her body during the night was gone.

Milo had been hours away. Which could only mean one thing. If someone did, indeed, kill Jeff, it hadn’t been her Milo.

Her
Milo. Her sweet, caring, loving Milo.

Tension was replaced by disgust at herself as she looked past her own reflection to the photo of Milo in the Cubs shirt she’d bought him for Christmas last year, every facet of his face taking part in the smile his mouth formed as he pulled her close for the picture.