Prime Suspect Read online

  “Sorry,” Brent mumbled, coming toward her to retrieve the captive. “He got away from me.”

  When Brent reached for him, Percy yelped and dove beneath Darcie’s arm, hiding his face against her side. Darcie started to pick him up and hand him to Brent but then changed her mind. It was easy to muster the courage to answer the rest of the questions with Percy’s reassuring presence in her lap.

  “He’ll be all right,” she told Brent, who shrugged and retreated to stand along the wall behind the sofa.

  Detective Samuels stared at the dog. “That dog looks a lot like the ones at Mrs. Fairmont’s kennels.”

  “He’s the same breed.” Darcie buried her fingers in Percy’s soft fur. “He was a gift from Uncle Richard to my mother last year, when she got so sick.”

  The man’s gaze became speculative. “Does Mrs. Fairmont know you have one of her dogs?”

  Discomfort nibbled at her. “I don’t know.” If she did, would she demand Percy back? Darcie’s hand rested possessively on the dog’s back.

  Lauren returned with the shoe box. Darcie opened the lid and pulled the banded stack of notes out. Those she handed to Detective Samuels; then she replaced the lid and set the box on the floor beside the sofa.

  He flipped through them quickly. “These accompanied payments?”

  She nodded. “Before you ask, I don’t know how much or anything else about them. My mother didn’t have a lot of money. I’m sure she used them to pay the bills.” A thought dawned on her. Mama had paid her college tuition for the two years she attended without a second thought. When Darcie suggested getting a job to help with the bills, she had refused to consider it, insisting that Darcie needed to focus on her studies. When questioned, she said vaguely that Darcie’s father had made arrangements for her education. “I think she might have used some of the money to pay for my college.”

  He shuffled the notes into a neat stack and replaced the rubber band, then handed them to one of the officers standing behind him. “I’ll need to keep these.” It was not a question.

  Darcie bit back a protest. That stack of notes was one of the few things of her mother she had, and the only thing from Uncle Richard. Well, except...

  She buried her right hand in Percy’s fur to hide Mama’s ring. She wouldn’t give that up willingly.

  Standing beside the couch, Caleb folded his arms across his chest. “What happens now? Are you finally going to listen to us about Darcie’s apartment and car being searched and the kidnapping attempt?”

  The detective’s expression hardened. “What I do next is not your concern.” He glanced around the room, including Brent and Lauren in the statement. “I told you Monday night to stay out of this investigation, but did you listen? No. And now a second man is dead.” His glare settled on Caleb. “I ought to arrest you.”

  Caleb’s face did not change, but his fingers bit into the flesh of his arms. “I’m not going to stand around with my fingers in my ears while someone shouts false accusations at one of my friends.”

  Though soft, his tone bore a fierce determination that made Darcie want to weep with relief. Caleb wasn’t going to let her face this alone.

  Samuels’s face darkened and his lips pressed together. After a moment, he stood. “If you really want to help your friend, you might find her a good lawyer.” He looked at Darcie, any hint that he believed her protestations of innocence absent from his manner. “I told you this before, and I’m telling you again. Don’t leave town. I want to know where you are every minute.”

  Alarm nipped at her heels. “But I’ve told you, I didn’t kill Uncle Richard. You’ve got to keep looking for the real killer.”

  “Oh, I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. Have no fear about that. In the meantime, you’re still my number one suspect, Ms. Wiley.”

  She’d known that, of course, but to hear the words from the lips of a police detective hit her with the weight of a load of wet concrete. “But...but why?”

  At first she thought he wouldn’t answer. His lips clamped together beneath eyes hardened by suspicion. Then he seemed to change his mind.

  “Because I know the contents of Richard Fairmont’s will.” He leaned forward until his face was no more than a foot from hers and spoke in a low, calculated voice. “Your uncle left you half a million dollars, Ms. Wiley. Men have been killed for far less.”

  FOURTEEN

  After delivering his verbal bomb, the detective swept out of the room. Caleb heard the front door close and tracked the man’s progress through the front window. He slid into the passenger seat of one of the two police cruisers. The vehicles backed out of the driveway and sped away.

  Darcie sat motionless on the sofa, staring at the floor in front of her feet. Jaw slack, lips parted, her eyes had the glaze of disbelief. He exchanged a glance with Brent, who lifted his shoulders in a shrug. The news had taken them all by surprise, though it made sense for Fairmont to provide for his niece in his will, since he had also provided for her during his life.

  “Half a million dollars,” Darcie repeated the figure in a distant voice. “Wow.”

  “It’s a lot of money.” Lauren dropped to the couch beside her. “He must have cared about you very much.”

  “I wish he’d told me years ago. I’d have liked to get to know him.” She splayed the fingers of her right hand in front of her, and Caleb realized she was staring at her ring. “But Mama wouldn’t let him. And now it’s too late.” Tears sparkled in her eyes.

  Caleb seated himself in the chair Samuels had occupied, the one facing her. “Let’s keep a cool head. We need to focus on getting you out of this.”

  “Do I need to hire a lawyer like he said?” She shook her head. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Brent took the armchair next to Caleb. “We know a couple of good ones. I’ll make some calls.”

  She turned a grateful look on him.

  “In the meantime,” Caleb said, “this cranks up the heat on our investigation.”

  Her head snapped toward him, disbelief clear on her features. “You mean you’re going to keep investigating even after Detective Samuels told you not to?”

  “Do you want us to stop?”

  Her eyes went round. Silently, she shook her head.

  Lauren relaxed, and Brent slapped his hands together, eagerness plain on his face. “Great. We move forward.”

  “Don’t worry,” Caleb told Darcie, “we’ll stay out of Samuels’s way. We don’t want to interfere with the police. And if we find something relevant—”

  “When we find something relevant,” Lauren corrected.

  Caleb acknowledged the comment with a nod. “We’ll turn it over to him. What we need to do is figure out what rocks they won’t look under. That’s where we’ll focus our efforts.”

  Tears once again glittered in Darcie’s eyes, and she turned a quivering smile on all of them. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  When she looked at him, Caleb held her gaze. “That’s what friends are for.”

  Lauren and Brent both nodded. Darcie’s smile softened, and Caleb’s pulse did a weird quickstep in response.

  Brent broke the moment. “All right then. What’s our next step?”

  “Let’s start by figuring out what questions we need to have answered.” Lauren held up a hand. “I mean besides the obvious, who killed Richard Fairmont?”

  Caleb threw out the first one. “Did the same person who killed Fairmont also kill Lewis?”

  Brent nodded. “Good one, but we can’t answer it yet. What about this one—was the attack on Darcie the other night really to kidnap her or to force her to turn over those letters?”

  “We can’t answer that unless we get our hands on the attackers.” Caleb flexed his fists. Those scumbags had better hope he didn’t find them before Samuels did. �
�And how do we know for sure that the letters are what they’re after?”

  “We don’t,” said Lauren. “It’s an assumption, but it’s the only one we have.”

  Darcie’s head turned toward each person as they spoke. “I have a question. How did Detective Samuels know the contents of Uncle Richard’s will? He only died last night.”

  “Hmm.” Caleb rubbed a finger across his lips, thinking. “His wife maybe?”

  “That’s possible,” said Brent. “If she knew about the money but didn’t know about Ryan, she might suspect the same thing we did, that her husband was Darcie’s father.”

  Lauren nodded slowly. “That would explain her dislike.”

  “And she would definitely have told the police of her suspicions when Uncle Richard was killed.” Crooked lines appeared on Darcie’s smooth brow. “Should I call her? Tell her what I’ve discovered about my real father?”

  Caleb weighed the question. “Normally I’d say yes, but I have a feeling Samuels would consider that a direct interference with his investigation.”

  A relieved sigh escaped from Darcie. No doubt that was an encounter she was happy to avoid as long as possible.

  “That brings up another question.” Brent heaved himself out of the chair and began to pace. “Who else knew about Darcie’s relationship to Fairmont?”

  Caleb saw where he was going. “Her other uncle, Kenneth.”

  “But he can’t be involved,” Darcie argued. “He’s been in prison for almost five years. Now, if this had happened a few months from now—” A hand rose to cover her mouth, eyes wide.

  “What?” Caleb leaned toward her and rested his elbows on his knees. “What have you remembered?”

  “Something Uncle Richard said.” Her eyes squinted, as though trying to focus on something not in the room. “He said Uncle Kenneth was scheduled to be released in a few months, and if he makes any attempt to contact me I should tell him.” Her gaze focused on his face. “He asked me if Mama or I’ve had any contact with him while he was in prison. I told him no, but he seemed really tense when he brought up Uncle Kenneth.”

  “That’s to be expected, don’t you think?” Lauren asked. “I mean, the man stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from him.”

  Darcie shook her head. “There was more to it than that. He wanted to know if Mama had kept any letters from her brother, and there was this...” She grasped for a word and then shrugged. “I don’t know, this kind of intense feeling about him for a few minutes. It wasn’t there the rest of the time.”

  “Sounds to me like we just identified our next step. We need to talk to Pryor.” Brent ceased his pacing. “Caleb, did you apply for that special visitor pass to Hancock State Prison yet?”

  “I put in a call to a friend down there, but he hasn’t called me back yet.”

  “Maybe you should call him again.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Caleb said. “I’ve got some bigger strings to pull. Let me make another call.”

  * * *

  Darcie handed her driver’s license to Caleb, who passed it through the pickup’s window. The prison guard studied it closely, then bent to look into the truck at her. Darcie forced herself to return his gaze calmly, though the pounding of her heart was so loud surely he could hear it and know how nervous she was. With another glance at the licenses, he handed them back through the window and waved them forward. The metal gate swung open, and Caleb pulled slowly through the tall fence that stretched around the desolate prison compound. As she passed, Darcie inspected the huge roll of barbed wire that topped the fence. Correction. That was not normal barbed wire. The barbs were longer, sharper and far more menacing. Razor wire. The term stepped forward from memory. Yes, that’s what it looked like. A tangled mass of razors. She shuddered as they left the fence behind.

  “How did you manage to get us in so quickly?” She glanced at Caleb’s profile. “Didn’t Mason say it might take weeks to get approved for a visit?”

  “Normally it does.” He flashed an appealing grin her way. “But I’m not normal.”

  She chuckled with him, and then he continued, “I met the warden a year or so ago, when his son got involved with the wrong crowd. He ended up in juvvie, where I hang out sometimes.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “You hang out at the Juvenile Detention Center?”

  “Sometimes.” The shoulder closest to her lifted in a shrug. “I go there and talk to the kids. Tell them what it’s like to get crossways of the law and where they could end up if they don’t get their acts together. Some of them listen to me when they won’t listen to their parents or a judge or a cop.”

  That was understandable. She eyed the tattoos on his arms. She’d gotten so accustomed to them that she didn’t even notice them anymore, but when she had first spied him kneeling by the water spigot on Fairmont Estate, they might as well have been flashing in neon. Between those tattoos and his massive size, she’d been a little frightened of him. That was before she’d come to know what a caring man he was, a gentle giant.

  “I’ll bet,” was all she said.

  “The warden’s son’s a good kid. He was just going through some stuff. You know, rebelling like all kids do. He took a liking to me, and I helped him get straightened out. He’ll graduate from high school in a couple of weeks, and then he’s going to Emory in the fall.”

  “Wow.” Emory was one of the top-ranked schools in the state of Georgia. “No wonder the warden let us in on short notice. He owes you.”

  But Caleb shook his head. “He doesn’t owe me a thing. But that business with his son introduced us, and now I count him among my friends. I’m not cashing in on a debt. I’m just asking a friend to help me out.”

  The matter-of-fact manner in which he spoke impressed Darcie more than the words. “You must have a lot of friends.”

  His grin returned. “You can never have too many.”

  They parked the pickup and walked through a series of gates. Darcie hung close to Caleb, whose confidence told her he was on familiar territory here. Did he visit other prisoners, young men in trouble who had not listened to his cautions, perhaps? She wouldn’t be at all surprised.

  Inside the building they stepped into a large waiting room, with chairs lining the walls. In the center a trio of guards sat behind a rounded desk. Caleb approached and gave his name to the one in the middle.

  The man studied him with interest. “The warden told us you were coming. You’re here to see Kenneth Pryor?”

  “That’s right. And this is Darcie Wiley, Pryor’s niece.”

  The ease in Caleb’s voice did nothing to settle Darcie’s taut nerves as the guard inspected their driver’s licenses. She dreaded talking to her uncle more than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Detective Samuels.

  He set their ID cards on the desk in front of him and pulled a computer keyboard toward him. “Have a seat.”

  Darcie perched on the edge of a hard plastic chair and watched the man peck on the keyboard. It seemed an eternity later when he finally said, “You can go on back. Number three.”

  She’d left her purse in the car at Caleb’s suggestion, so she passed through the metal detector with no delays. Caleb led her a short distance down a hallway, to an interior room with large windows, the glass reinforced with steel mesh. A row of booths lined the inside wall, each with a built-in computer monitor mounted above a narrow shelf that served as a miniature desk. A telephone sat on each shelf. Caleb led her to the booth that bore a large number three above the only monitor that was not black. She sat in the chair he held out for her. He grabbed a second chair and scooted it beside her. In the monitor she saw an empty chair, exactly like the ones in which they sat. Relief poured through her as she realized the manner of this visit.

  “We’re not going to be in the same room with him?”

&nb
sp; Caleb shook his head. “We’re not even in the same building. He’s somewhere on the other side of the prison.”

  Why that should be such a relief, Darcie didn’t know, but some of the tension that tied her stomach into knots relaxed.

  A man slid into the chair in the monitor. Uncle Kenneth. She studied his face. The five years since she’d last seen him had not been kind. Heavy creases lined his skin, and the fuzz covering his nearly shaved head bore witness that the dark hair she remembered had faded to dull gray. His cheeks were hollow, giving him a haggard appearance. But the eyes were the same. They stared at some point below the monitor and narrowed slightly, as though studying something. Glancing upward, Darcie saw the circle of a lens mounted at the top of the screen and realized he was looking at her face in the monitor on his side.

  His eyes slid sideways toward Caleb, and a question appeared on his brow. She saw his arm reach forward and then a telephone receiver appeared in his hand, which he held up to his ear. With a glance at Caleb, she picked up the phone on the shelf in front of her.

  “Who’s that?”

  No greeting. No “It’s good to see you,” or “How have you been,” just the same demanding tone from her memories.

  Darcie glanced at Caleb. “A friend.”

  “What’s he doing here?” He must have glanced upward at the camera, because for a moment it looked like his eyes met hers. “In fact, what are you doing here?”

  “I need some help.”

  His lip curled. “Figured. You sure didn’t decide to visit your only living relative out of the goodness of your heart.”

  Darcie tried to ignore the thinly veiled barb but couldn’t. “Turns out you’re not my only living relative after all. That’s what I came to talk about.”

  A smile twisted the corners of his lips as he sat back in his chair. “So you finally found out, did you? What was it, your mother’s deathbed confession?”

  The reference to Mama’s death, so casually mentioned, prodded at a tender place that she refused to let this man see. She didn’t bother to answer the question. “I need to know about your relationship with my uncle Richard.”