Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 02 - Portrait on Wicker (15 page)

“What a good idea,
Delilah. Maybe you can pick up some vibes while you’re here too. Wow, just think, we’re all doing detective work.”

I almost told her about Tracy being alive but
decided against it. I knew I could trust her, but it wasn’t my secret to tell.

I was sampling
Delilah’s gumbo when Bill came in to tell me the judge and Sandy had arrived. Just then Tracy came into the kitchen carrying little Jennifer and I introduced her as Alice, Rosa’s mother. As we were leaving the kitchen, I noticed Delilah eyeing Tracy with suspicion.

“I’ve managed to locate Tricia Hunter,” John announced when we were settled down with wine and
the appetizers Delilah had brought in.

“Patricia Hunter, t
he first victim of Calvin Lessiter?”

“Yeah, she is now thirty two
years old and lives in Virginia Beach. I talked to her briefly on the phone and she’s willing to talk to us.”

“I’ll go,” I said, “it’s a nice safe assignment.”

Bill spoke up, “I think I should go with her.”

“What about your job here?” The judge asked.

He looked at Sandy, “I think my partner can handle everything here. I have so much vacation time coming to me; I’ll never be able to take it all. I was planning to add it to my retirement anyway.”

I felt excited.
I was growing more and more attracted to Bill but, at the same time, I felt guilty about Ben. I knew if I spent more time alone with Bill I was going to end up very involved with him.

“We
ll, I guess that’s settled then.” The judge gave a big sigh of relief. “That’s one thing out of the way. I just hope she can help us.”

“I managed to
get the autopsy report for Beth,” Sandy said. “It looks like she did die of exposure. She had a trace amount of benzodiazepine in her system, but nothing else. That could be from any over-the-counter headache medication.”

“Does a
nyone else have anything?” asked the judge.

When no one said anything she said, “Could we sit at the dining room table to finish this delicious meal?”

We all laughed. The rest of the evening was lighthearted. Tracy helped Delilah serve and I was reminded of the first time I had met Tracy, when she was working undercover as a cook at the Reynolds’. No one seemed to notice the two servers studying them.

A
fter everyone left Delilah said, “That wasn’t the voice I heard. I got nothing but good vibes from this here judge.”

She turned to Tracy.
“You, on the other hand, are not who you pretend to be.”

Tracy laughed, “You’re right,” and pulled of
f her wig and took out her contacts. “I’m Tracy Carr of the FBI. Everyone thinks I’m dead.”

Delilah
looked at Mark and smiled, “No wonder you seem so much lighter tonight. I thought it didn’t take you long to finish your grieving.”

Tracy turned to me.
“You sure you can trust Bill?”

“Yes I am.
Even when he arrested me, when I was sixteen, he was kind to me. He’s always been good to me. What about you, Delilah? You pick up anything on him?”

“Besides the fact he wants to g
et in your pants? No I don’t. He has such a strong attraction to you it drowns everything else out.”

I could feel myself blushing and that’s when Rosa came in.
“She had a good man in Ben, but chose to throw it away,” she said.

That made me kind of mad
, but I didn’t say anything. I knew she was only concerned about me. I turned back to Delilah. “What about Sandy?”

“She been in love with that white boy for years and she didn’t like him volunteering to go with you, no.”

Mark, Tracy and I left to go back to the Hyatt at around 11:00 p.m. We stopped in at Georgie Porgies for a nightcap before going up to our room.

CHAPTER 38

Bill and I got to the airport at 7:00 a.m. The first thing I did when we were airborne was to order coffee. John had given us directions to Tricia’s house and told us she worked as a cocktail waitress at a little bar on the beach.

There is something I
’ve never understood about morning people. We knew we couldn’t see Tricia until later in the day but Bill had insisted on getting an early morning flight. We couldn’t check into our rooms until later in the day either. I could have slept longer.

We ended up walking along the river walk and stopping for breakfast.
As soon as the Hyatt on the river let us, we checked into our rooms. Bill had made reservations and I noticed he had gotten a suite.

We had time to kill and I turned on the TV.
The news was on and they were showing footage of the police pulling up a body out of the river. It was a young woman. They were calling her Jane Doe. She had no ID on her.

Tricia had told John that she usually slept
until around 3:00 p.m. We got dressed and headed over to her apartment. We kept knocking but no one came to the door.

Finally a
girl came out of the apartment next door and said, “Quit knocking. She’s not there.”

“Do you know when she will be back?”
Bill asked.

She had dirty blond hair and was wearing a dirty tee shirt and cut off jeans.
“She didn’t come home all night,” she said.

“Is that unusual?” I asked

“Nah, she works at the same place as I do and sometimes we get lucky, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t feel good about this, Bill,”
I said as we were walking away.

I kept thinking about the
body they had pulled out of the river, the same river where we had breakfast. We walked on the beach for awhile and Bill said he was going to drop me off at the Hyatt. He wanted to go to the local police station and see if they had an ID on the woman they had fished out of the river.

While he was gone, I turned on the TV and surfed through the channels but could find nothing.
I thought about ordering room service, but didn’t think I could eat anything. Instead, I paced.

There was something bothering me but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Okay, we came up to talk to the first victim of Mr. Lessiter. What information had we hope to get really? Lessiter was dead. Maybe she could give us some other names, like Trudy had done.

Now that Lessiter was dead, who could Tricia Hunter be a threat to?
Of course, I was assuming that the body out of the river was her. The timing was just too coincidental.

We had been grabbing at straws to even come up here.
Hoping she had maybe seen someone with Lessiter, like maybe one of the judges. There were only a handful of us who knew about this trip.

Now I knew what was bothering me.
Why had Bill wanted to come up with me? Had he called someone before we were on our way? But this was crazy! I was suspecting Bill. Bill was the man who had been so kind to me, even as he was arresting me when I was sixteen. That didn’t mean anything. He could have been kind to see that I was eventually placed with the Lessiters.

I was still going around in circles in my
head, thinking, when Bill came back to the suite. One look at his face and all my doubts disappeared. He was crying.

“Someone had beat
en her severely, before dumping her in the river to drown. When I told them why we were here and that I suspected who she was, they brought down her neighbor who identified her. I’m telling you right now, Judith, we’ve got to catch those son-of-a-bitches. I can’t believe they could reach up this far.”

I put my arms around him to comfort him but before I knew what was happening,
we were kissing. I had always been attracted to him and now we were finally going to make love.

As he picked me up and carried me to the king-sized bed in my bedroom, I couldn’t help but think,
Rosa’s going to be pissed.

We made love all through the night.
It seemed like every time I dozed off, he was reaching for me. I didn’t know it was possible for a man to make love so many times so close together.

Just before dawn I started g
iggling when he was entering me. “What’s so funny?” He said.

“I was thinking when I get back to Houston
, where all my books are, I’m going to research this.”

“
Research what?”

“How it’s possible for a man to come so many time
s in one night.”

He chuckled, “You should have seen me when I was younger.
Don’t forget, I’m almost 40 now.”

“So, when you arrested me, what, you were like a fountain?”

“I’ve always been highly sexual. That night I picked you up for prostitution? It took everything in me not to let you take me to bed. I almost forgot what I was there for. But you were too young.”

He r
olled over so that I was on top. “I’ll tell you what, Judith; you were well worth the wait.”

When it was over I whispered, “I could get addicted to you Bill Wheeler.”
I bit him on the ear.

“Take it easy or we’ll be here all day,” he said as he rolled off the bed and headed for the shower off his bedroom.
“I would invite you in, but we would never get out of here if I did.”

When I came out of the shower
, wearing the hotel terry bathrobe and a white towel on my head, I heard Bill ordering room service.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said when he hung up.
“I could eat you up, but we’d better have food instead. I ordered eggs Benedict. I hope that’s all right.”

“It’s perfect,” I said as I
sat down next to him on the love seat.

He took my hand, “Do you see any reason for us to stay here?” He asked.
“I vote for going home.”

“Me
too. I’ll call the airlines and change our flight.”

CHAPTER 39

Once we were airborne I asked Bill, “Who do you think warned someone to take care of Tricia before we got there? There are only a few people who knew we were going to talk to her.”

He again took my hand and I liked how he was a touchy-feely person.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” he said, “but for the life of me, I can’t come up with a name. I would trust my partner with my life. The judge, I’ve known her for years and I trust her almost as much. You know John, Rosa and Mark better than I do, and Tracy risked her life and is with the FBI.”

“That leaves only one person, Trudy.”

As we were thinking this over, the stewardess brought our drinks and a snack. We didn’t discuss the case anymore during the trip. We were deep into our own thoughts when we landed. We hadn’t let anyone know we were coming back so soon, and decided to play hooky and go to his apartment for one last lovemaking session. It was an escape in a way. We were at a dead end and didn’t want to think about the case at all.

I think part of the reason we needed to keep making love was to feel alive after the terrible death of Tricia.
I had seen this happen sometimes after the death of a loved one. The plan had been to meet up with everyone at the usual time that night at John and Rosa’s house. We went there from Bill’s apartment.

Trudy was sitting on the porch in the swing when we drove up.

“How did it go?” She asked.

“It didn’t,” Bill said.
“Someone already beat us there.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s dead.”

Trudy looked shocked.
“I wish we knew what was going on. Why would someone kill her?”

Bil
l gave Trudy a threatening look. “How did you know she was murdered?”

“I…I just assumed.”

I gave her a pat on the shoulder as we walked past her on our way to see John. We told him we needed to see him alone and the three of us walked to the park.

John looked at his watch.
“We don’t have much time before the judge gets here. What did you find out?”

“She’s dead…” I began but Bill interrupted me.

“We had an appointment to meet with her at 3:00 p.m. but before we had a chance, she was murdered. She was beaten badly and then dumped in the river. She drowned.”

“Damn.
She must have known more than we figured,” John said. “Something stinks. One of us is dirty.”

“Has Trudy had a chance to contact anyone?” I said.
“Has she been out of your sight at any time?”

“You suspect Trudy?
I don’t believe it. She would never do something like this. Don’t you two remember? She’s a victim. Besides, the only time she was by herself was when I was in the delivery room with Rosa. No, the timing would be off. We didn’t even know about Tricia Hunter at the time.”