Trick or Deadly Treat (20 page)

“I think she's hiding something. She's bound to know more than she's been letting on. Even if Susan let her off work a lot so Carlyle could meet her there, Raylene must have seen or heard
something
that would help us. I'm wondering if Carlyle went to the office yesterday to warn her to keep her mouth shut.”

“I reckon we could go see her again,” Sam suggested. “Maybe ask her some more questions.”

Phyllis nodded slowly. “That's about all we have left,” she said.

There was no need for them to divide their forces anymore, so after lunch they got into Sam's pickup and headed for the hospital district and Susan Baxter's office. Sam drove, and as they pulled into the parking lot, Phyllis was able to take a look around for the mysterious woman she had seen there the day before.

All the cars in the lot were empty, though, and Phyllis didn't have a good enough eye for vehicles to know if the car she had seen the woman in was there or not.

Anyway, she had decided there was a good chance she'd been mistaken about the woman being Meredith Carlyle. She couldn't think of a good reason for Meredith to have been spying on her own sister's office, especially now that Susan was dead.

Sam's cell phone rang before they could get out of the pickup. He looked at the display, said, “It's D'Angelo,” and opened the phone. “Hello?”

Sam listened for the next few minutes as the lawyer talked, saying “Yep” or “Uh-huh” every so often. A frown creased his forehead, and Phyllis couldn't help but wonder what Jimmy D'Angelo was telling him. Finally, Sam said, “Well, I appreciate you lettin' me know . . . Yeah, I'll tell her.”

He said good-bye and ended the call. As he slipped the phone back in his jacket pocket, he told Phyllis, “That was D'Angelo.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, trying not to sound impatient. “Did he have new information?”

“Yeah. He told Latimer what we found out about Woods bein' at Susan's office . . . bein' right here . . . on the day she was murdered. Latimer didn't want to, but he had Woods brought in for questionin'.”

“Was he as obstinate about talking to Detective Latimer as he was with us?”

“I don't really know. D'Angelo didn't say. But whether it was sooner or later, he gave up the story to Latimer. He came to see Susan for medical reasons.”

Phyllis frowned and said, “Woods doesn't look like he's in very good shape, but he's a big, strapping man. What did he claim was wrong with him?”

“Not with him,” Sam said, shaking his head slightly. “His daughter.”

“Wait a minute,” Phyllis said. “Woods has a daughter?”

Of course, there was no reason why he shouldn't, she thought. They didn't really know anything about Woods
except what they learned about his dog-breeding business from the Internet, Sam's visit to the place, and their subsequent encounters with Woods. His personal life was a blank slate to them.

“Yeah, he does. She's seventeen. She doesn't live with him because she and her mom, Woods' ex-wife, moved out several years ago when the mom filed for divorce. But I guess Woods didn't stop carin' for the girl. I've got to give him credit for that. She's got some problem with the bones in her legs that makes it hard for her to walk. She'll probably wind up in a wheelchair by the time she's thirty if it's not corrected. And evidently Susan Baxter was one of the best orthopedic surgeons in these parts. Woods bein' here didn't have anything to do with his shady dog-breedin' business or his connection with Hank Baxter. Woods has even got an alibi for the time Susan was murdered. After he left here, he met his ex-wife for lunch to tell her about the meetin' with Susan. Their divorce wasn't what you'd call amicable, so she doesn't have any reason to lie for him.”

“Was Mr. D'Angelo sure about all this?” Phyllis asked.

“He got it straight from Latimer, who claims to have checked it all out after talkin' to Woods. I got the feelin' that Latimer was sort of rubbin' it in D'Angelo's face, lettin' him know that the so-called suspect we'd come up with hadn't panned out after all.”

“Why didn't Woods just explain about his daughter when we confronted him at the vet clinic this morning?”

Sam shrugged and said, “I don't know, unless he's just a stubborn, obnoxious varmint. Maybe he's got a few good qualities, but he's still a crook and a jerk. But he's off the hook for Susan's murder. That leaves the bull's-eye still square on Hank.”

“So we're back to having Jack Carlyle as our only other real suspect,” Phyllis said.

Sam's eyes narrowed as he looked across the parking lot. He said, “Maybe so, but here's somethin' odd.” He pointed. “That's Carlyle's car right over there. I just recognized it from tailin' him before. He's here now.”

“A
re you sure you're not mistaken?” Phyllis asked. “There could be more than one car like that in Weatherford.”

“Maybe so, but I memorized the license plate when I was tailin' him the other day. That's Carlyle's car, all right.”

Phyllis reached for the door handle. “We're going to confront him.”

“We don't have any concrete evidence against him,” Sam pointed out. “We don't even have much circumstantial evidence.”

“He doesn't know that,” Phyllis said.

A grin spread slowly across Sam's face. He said, “No, he doesn't, does he? Let's go.”

They opened their doors and got out. Sam went into the office first, and Phyllis knew it was because if any trouble lurked inside, he didn't want her walking into it. Normally, he would have held the door for her and let her go first, having been raised at a time when such courtesy was commonplace.

The waiting room was quiet and empty when they stepped into it, however. Phyllis looked through the window above the counter into the office area where Raylene could be found most of the time. It was deserted as well. Phyllis looked at Sam and silently shook her head.

Sam pointed to the door leading into the hallway where the exam rooms and the other parts of the office were located. Phyllis shrugged. Sam grasped the knob, turned it as quietly as possible, and eased the door open.

As they stepped into the corridor, Phyllis heard something, quiet sounds that she recognized after a second as gasping and little moans. Sam heard them, too, and his eyes grew wide with surprise as he realized what they were.

With a determined stride, Phyllis went down the hall toward an open door on the left. Sam was right behind her. They stopped outside the door and looked into the room, where Jack Carlyle had Raylene bent backward over the paper-covered exam table as they embraced and kissed. Her blouse had pulled free of her skirt's waistband, exposing some of the skin of her belly.

Neither of them had noticed Phyllis and Sam standing there. When it seemed that they weren't going to notice anytime soon, Phyllis cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Carlyle.”

Jack Carlyle let go of Raylene, yelled, and seemed to go straight up in the air half a foot. As he came down, he twisted toward the door so suddenly that he almost lost his balance and fell. Raylene cringed back against the exam table and hastily started stuffing her blouse back into her skirt.

“I thought you locked the front door!” Carlyle said.

“I thought you did!” she wailed.

Carlyle still looked startled and scared, but he seemed to regain some of his composure as he said to Phyllis and Sam, “You two don't have any right to be here. You'd better get out before I call the police.”

“Go ahead and call them,” Phyllis said. “Ask for Detective Latimer. I'm sure he'd be interested to hear about how you and Raylene have been having an affair. Susan Baxter found out what was going on and threatened to tell her sister. That's why you killed her, isn't it, Mr. Carlyle?”

“No!” Raylene cried. “That's crazy! It didn't happen that way at all.”

“Then you killed your boss,” Sam said. “You came back here after she thought you'd left for lunch, took her by surprise, and walloped her with that dog paperweight.”

Raylene shook her head as tears started to roll down her cheeks. “No, I didn't. I didn't,” she moaned. “I swear. Dr. Baxter didn't know anything about . . . about what's been going on with Jack and me. We didn't have any reason to hurt her. We didn't!”

“It's the truth,” Carlyle said.

“But you don't deny you were having an affair,” Phyllis said.

A hollow laugh came from Carlyle. He said, “It'd be sort of foolish to try to deny it now, wouldn't it? But we were very careful to keep it from Susan. I never came here unless she was in surgery or out of the office for some other reason. You can check on that if you—” He stopped short and frowned. “Wait a minute. Who are you people? It seems like I should know you, but . . .”

Raylene said, “They're helping Hank Baxter's lawyer. They don't think he killed Susan.”

“Who else could have?”

“You, for one,” Sam said. “Either of you.”

“No, we couldn't have,” Carlyle insisted. “We were nowhere near here when Susan was killed.”

“Can you prove that?” Phyllis asked.

“Yeah.” Carlyle looked at Raylene and swallowed hard. “We were together. At a motel. Miles from here.”

“So you both have a possible motive for murdering Susan Baxter, and you're each other's alibis.” Phyllis shook her head. “I don't think that's going to be good enough.”

“The motel's probably got security cameras,” Carlyle said with a note of desperation in his voice. “And there'll be a record of me using my credit card to pay for the room. It's a card that I only use for . . . for us, but it's in my name. The records will back me up.”

“That might clear you,” Phyllis said.

Sam looked at Raylene and added, “But it sounds to me like he's tryin' to throw you under the bus.”

“No,” Raylene said stubbornly. “You can't prove anything against me because I wasn't here when Dr. Baxter was killed. I just wasn't.”

“Did anyone see the two of you together at the motel?” Phyllis asked.

“I . . . I don't know,” Carlyle said. “We didn't get there at the same time. I was there first, and I texted the room number to Raylene so she wouldn't have to come through the lobby.”

“Hear that sound?” Sam said to Raylene. “That's the bus comin' closer and closer.”

“Wait a minute,” Raylene said. “There was a maid. She
saw me there. Remember? I went to get ice and the machine wouldn't work. She helped me. She might remember that.”

“That's right,” Carlyle said. “You told me about it when it happened. I remember now.”

Phyllis said, “You could be making that up. It's not very likely that the maid would remember you.”

“But she might,” Raylene insisted. “The police can find her and ask her. Let them check our alibi all they want to. They'll find out that we're telling the truth. They said Dr. Baxter had been dead for nearly an hour when I found her, and I was nowhere near the place then!”

The determined defiance that Phyllis heard in the young woman's voice was a little troubling. Would Raylene be this adamant about the situation if she was bluffing? Phyllis didn't really think so, but it was impossible to say for sure.

“Wait just a minute,” Carlyle said. “Raylene's right. If the cops check all this out, they'll see that neither of us could have killed Susan. But if we're brought into the investigation, my wife is bound to find out about . . . well, about what we've been doing.”

“The affair, you mean.”

Carlyle shrugged and said, “Yeah. I don't want Meredith to find out. She'd just be hurt. Isn't there any way we can convince the two of you to leave us out of this?”

“Hank Baxter didn't kill his wife,” Sam said. “But the only way to prove that may be to find out who really did.”

“I understand, but it wasn't us. Ruining our lives isn't going to get Hank off the hook for the murder, because our alibis will hold up, I tell you. It won't do you a bit of good to blow my marriage to hell.”

Raylene frowned as she looked at Carlyle and said, “But you were going to divorce Meredith and marry me anyway, Jack. I guess when you get right down to it, this just speeds things up a little.”

“Yeah, but . . . I'm not really ready . . .”

And Jack Carlyle never would be ready to divorce his wife and marry this young woman, Phyllis thought. He had just been stringing Raylene along, enjoying their affair, but sooner or later he would have broken it off with her. Phyllis thought that what they'd been doing was shameful, but she blamed Carlyle for it more than she did Raylene. She was just another woman who had been taken in by a man's lies.

Evidently Raylene was starting to realize that, too, because she stared at Carlyle with growing anger.

“Jack, did you ever intend to marry me?” she demanded.

“Of course I did. The timing's just . . . just not right yet.”

“Would it have ever been right?”

Phyllis caught Sam's eye and inclined her head toward the door. When he asked quietly, “Are you sure?” she nodded.

As they eased out of the room, Carlyle and Raylene were still talking, their voices slowly rising in anger. When Sam and Phyllis reached the waiting room, Sam said, “I've got a hunch those two are about to break up.”

“If the circumstances were different, I'd say that's a good thing because they'd be more likely to testify against each other, but I think they're telling the truth.”

Sam opened the office's front door and held it for Phyllis. As they started toward the pickup, he said, “They didn't really sound like they were bluffin'. But if neither of them killed Susan, where does that leave us?”

“Back where we started,” Phyllis said. “Why don't we go over the whole thing? Start at the beginning and go over everything we know about the case, everything we heard anyone say or saw them do.”

“You think there's something we've missed?”

“There has to be . . . unless Hank really killed his wife.”

Sam shook his head as he opened the pickup's passenger door for Phyllis.

“I'm not gonna believe that until there's just no other choice. We'll sit right here and hash the whole thing out again.”

They sat in the pickup and cast their memories all the way back to the beginning of the case: their visit to the animal shelter and their “adoption” of Buck. Phyllis went over everything she remembered about that day, and Sam filled in any gaps with the things he recalled. They proceeded through Phyllis and Carolyn's visit to the clinic to ask about bringing doggie treats for the Halloween party, then the party itself, where the police had shown up with the tragic news of Susan's death and arrested Hank Baxter for her murder.

“We didn't even know Jack Carlyle then,” Phyllis said. “We'd only seen Susan a couple of times and never really talked to her.”

“And yet we've spent all this time tryin' to find out who killed her,” Sam said.

“Only because we want to help Hank. Although the idea of anyone getting away with murder doesn't sit well with me, no matter who the victim was.”

Sam chuckled and said, “We've seen plenty of proof of that the past few years, I reckon.”

“This was a brutal crime, and whoever committed it
deserves to be brought to justice. I thought for sure it would turn out to be Kyle Woods or Jack Carlyle.” Phyllis sighed. “But I've been wrong before. Let's get back to the case. What happened next?”

“I went out to the vet clinic the next day. That was when Meredith and Jack were there givin' Holly and Tommy a hard time, the first time I met those two. Meredith was all worked up about her sister bein' dead, of course, but those two kids didn't have anything to do with it and she didn't have to light into 'em the way she did, threatenin' to take over the clinic and sell it. Tommy tried to tell her she couldn't do that, but she just bulldozed over him and said that Hank tryin' to frame some junkie for the murder wasn't gonna work and he was gonna be found guilty. And sure enough, that's what happened, the part about the cops not buyin' the frame, anyway. The bein' found guilty part is still up in the air, I guess.”

“I suppose so.” Phyllis frowned for a moment, then said, “Wait a minute. When did you go see Mr. D'Angelo?”

“The first time, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Sam scratched his jaw, thought for a few seconds, and said, “It was later that same day. That was when he told me about the cops' case against Hank.”

“Including the broken drug cabinet with Hank's fingerprints on it.”

“Yeah.” Sam's hands had been gripping the steering wheel loosely. Now they tightened on it as he turned his head to stare at Phyllis.

In unison, they said, “I know who killed Susan Baxter.”

At that moment, the squeal of tires on pavement made
both of them look around sharply. Jack Carlyle had emerged from the building and was stalking angrily across the parking lot toward his car. One of the other cars in the lot had roared out of its space, and now it shot straight toward Carlyle.

For a second he didn't seem to notice the vehicle barreling toward him. Sam threw the pickup door open and lunged out as he yelled, “Look out!”

Carlyle realized his danger at the last moment and tried to throw himself out of the way. He was a little too late. The car's fender clipped him and sent him spinning through the air. He crashed to the pavement and rolled over in a limp heap, stunned or worse.

The car's driver slammed on the brakes. Phyllis saw the backup lights flare as Sam ran toward Carlyle. She leaped out of the pickup as well.

“Sam, look out!” she cried.

The driver gunned the gas and sent the car squealing in reverse toward Sam and Carlyle. Sam got his hands under the injured man's arms and heaved him up. He fell backward, taking Carlyle with him, and the car barely missed them.

Phyllis had her phone out and called 911. They were less than half a mile from the police station, so she hoped help would arrive in moments.

They might not have moments, though. Meredith Carlyle had already brought her car to a stop and slid out from behind the wheel. She stalked toward her husband and Sam with a gun held out in front of her in both hands.

“Get away from him!” she yelled at Sam. “He's the only one who deserves to die!”

“Mrs. Carlyle,” Phyllis said as she approached carefully
from the side. “Meredith. Please. You don't want to do this. There's already been enough tragedy.” With an effort, she kept her voice pitched in a steady, calming tone.