Prime Suspect Read online

  Samuels’s eyes widened at the revelation. A short, uncomfortable silence followed, during which Darcie’s flush deepened, along with Caleb’s desire to defend her. So that was the source of Mrs. Fairmont’s dislike. It was nothing to do with Darcie, but with her uncle. Caleb was attuned to the small, still voice that he recognized as being the Lord’s. And right now that voice told him Darcie Wiley needed his help. If only he knew how.

  Mitchell broke the awkward silence. “Mr. Fairmont is out of town until Friday, but I can verify that he did hire Ms. Wiley last week. He asked me to handle the paperwork. Beyond that...” He shrugged.

  Darcie shot the man a quick, grateful smile that disappeared when Samuels addressed her again.

  “And how well did you know the victim, Ms. Wiley?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I don’t even know who he is. I’ve never seen him...before.” Her eyes squeezed shut, and Caleb knew she was once again seeing the gruesome sight of the man’s body.

  “His name is Jason Lewis,” Mrs. Fairmont said. “He’s my kennel manager.”

  “Kennel manager?”

  “He’s managed my breeding business for two years. I breed an exclusive bloodline of designer dogs. Maltipoms.”

  “I’m sorry.” The detective shook his head. “I don’t know much about dog breeds. What is a Maltipom?”

  “It’s not a breed.” One slender hand rose to gesture in the air as she spoke. The emerald ring winked in the sunlight. “It’s a hybrid of Maltese and Pomeranian.”

  The names meant nothing to Caleb, but then again, the stuff he knew about dogs could fit on a three-by-five card. The list would start with I prefer cats.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what business anyone would have in Jason’s office.” Mrs. Fairmont shot an accusing gaze toward Darcie.

  “Perhaps a tryst,” said Mrs. Byler, who hovered near her employer. She stared through narrowed eyes at Darcie, whose spine stiffened at her words.

  Her chin rose. “I only wanted to see the puppies.”

  “I can verify that,” Caleb said, glad to be able to offer a word in her defense. “I was with her. We found the body together.”

  “Ah.” Mrs. Fairmont turned a friendlier gaze toward him. “How upsetting for you. For all of us. Detective, do you have any idea what happened? Was it a break-in, a robbery?” A thought occurred to her, and she inhaled a quick breath. “Are we in danger?”

  The detective’s answer was not reassuring. “It’s too early to say. But I promise we’ll get some answers. In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea to take extra precautions. Don’t go wandering around the property alone, for instance. And if you notice anything or anyone suspicious, call me immediately.” His gaze swept the table and ended on Darcie. “Especially anyone you don’t know personally.”

  The girl kept her eyes averted and seemed to shrink into herself. Caleb fought the urge to put a protective arm around her and give her an encouraging hug. He had no more proof than Samuels, of course, but he knew with a certainty deeper than instinct that she wasn’t a killer.

  Is that how You want me to help her, Lord? Prove that she is innocent of murder?

  After all, that’s what he and his buddies on the Falsely Accused Support Team did. Maybe the Lord had just given them their next client.

  * * *

  The afternoon had faded into evening before Caleb and Darcie were finally able to leave Fairmont Estate. They’d repeated their “story,” as Samuels called it, over and over until Caleb’s patience with the detective was exhausted. Thoroughness was one thing, but the interview had become more like the interrogation of a suspect—namely, Darcie.

  When Caleb had gathered his painting tools and hurried toward the front of the house, Darcie was just getting in her car.

  “Darcie, hold up a second.” He tossed his tools into the bed of his pickup and hurried toward where she stood with her hand on the door handle.

  “That was pretty rough, huh?” He jerked his head toward the back lawn.

  “Yeah,” she agreed weakly. “It was rough.” She swallowed and attempted a smile. “Thank you for standing up for me back there.”

  “No problem. I was praying for the right words. For both of us.”

  A startled expression crossed her features. “You were?”

  “Sure. Hey, listen. I don’t know where that detective’s investigation is going to take him, but I have a feeling you haven’t heard the last from him.”

  Fear flashed into her eyes, and she nodded.

  Caleb reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Take this. If you need help, give me a call.”

  Sudden tears glittered in her eyes. “I—” She swallowed and, face averted, opened the car door. “Thanks. Goodbye, Caleb.”

  Her farewell had the sound of finality. Confused, Caleb stepped back and watched as she started the engine, reversed to turn the car around and then sped down the long driveway without a backward glance. Discomfort stirred in the pit of his stomach as she disappeared from view.

  Lord, what was that about? All I did was offer to help.

  He started across the smooth blacktop toward his pickup. Apparently she’d rather run away than accept—

  His feet halted as though they’d encountered a patch of glue, memories hammering at his brain. There had been another girl he had tried to help who had run like that. Anita. Only when she left, Anita had stolen something he never managed to recover. Money, yes, to support a drug habit he thought she’d kicked. But, more importantly, she had stolen his heart and left a giant, empty crater in its place.

  Seeing Darcie flee down the driveway, away from him, sent all those emotions he’d thought he’d conquered washing over him like a tidal wave.

  I can’t do that again. I won’t. Don’t ask me to, Lord.

  The only answer to his prayer was a heavy silence as he got into his truck and left Fairmont Estate.

  TWO

  As Darcie sped down the winding driveway, she couldn’t help glancing in the rearview mirror. Caleb stood staring after her, arms hanging at his sides. A lump gathered in her throat. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she accept his offer of help without feeling like an ice age had overtaken her insides?

  The driveway curved around a stand of majestic trees that were probably as old as the estate grounds. She slowed the car to a stop before turning onto the main street, her hands gripping the steering wheel as if it were a lifesaver in a turbulent ocean. She realized she still clutched the business card and was wrinkling it against the wheel. He’d given her his phone number and told her to call if she needed help.

  The card read Falsely Accused Support Team. Help When You Need It—Fast. What was he, some sort of professional knight in shining armor? On the back he had scrawled a second phone number and labeled it, “My cell.”

  A bitter laugh escaped her lips. In her experience, men did not come to the rescue. The last man she’d turned to for help—the only man, in fact—was Mr. Fairmont, and look where that landed her. Whatever had possessed her to contact the wealthy man anyway?

  She took her foot off the brake and pulled onto the street. The answer to that question lay buried in a shoe box in the trunk of her car, the box she’d found tucked in the back of Mama’s closet. Judging by Mrs. Fairmont’s glares, Darcie was no longer welcome on Fairmont Estate. Now she would never have the opportunity to question Mr. Fairmont about the contents of that box.

  With a steely determination she’d perfected over the years since Mama’s cancer took control of her life, she pushed thoughts of the Fairmonts, the detective, the body and Caleb from her mind and focused on the road.

  By the time she reached her apartment complex, her heart had stopped pounding and her mind felt sufficiently numb to face an evening alone. There was always television to banish the silence. An
d Percy, Mama’s little dog, to bring a smile to her face with his antics.

  When she turned into the parking lot, she edged past a dark car waiting to exit. For the span of two seconds their windows were side by side, and then the sedan sped into the street. Tires squealed as it zoomed away.

  The roar of blood draining from her face left Darcie’s ears ringing, and she slammed her foot on the brake pedal. Her car skidded to a halt. In those brief moments, she had caught a glimpse of the driver.

  She’d seen him before.

  Several times when Mama was sick, she’d spied a car driving slowly in front of the house and felt the creepy regard of watchful eyes. And once she’d seen a man’s face through the windshield. Their eyes had connected in the seconds before he had sped away. At the time she’d chalked her irrational fear up to exhaustion from the relentless duties of caretaking.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. The man she’d seen then was the same man who just driven by. But that was back home, in Indiana. What was he doing at her apartment complex in Atlanta?

  It’s my imagination. That couldn’t be the same man. I’m spooked, that’s all. And who wouldn’t be, after the day I’ve had?

  Ignoring the chills that raised the hair along her arms, Darcie drove through the lot to the parking space in front of her door. She turned the key and sat in the silent car, scanning her surroundings. Was anything out of place? Everything looked normal.

  She exited the car and headed for her apartment. The eleven-year-old girl next door slumped across the four-foot square block of concrete that served as the front porch. When she caught sight of Darcie, she jumped to her feet and raced down the sidewalk.

  “Hi, Miss Wiley.”

  “Hello, Sloane. How are you?”

  The girl shrugged a slender shoulder. “Okay.”

  “Everything, uh, normal around here today?”

  Sloane tilted her head, blond locks waving in the slight breeze. “What do you mean?”

  If she asked a specific question, it might influence the child’s answer. Surely if Sloane saw strangers lurking about it would strike her as “not normal.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anything unusual happen?”

  Blue eyes rolled skyward. “I wish. It’s been boring, as usual.” Then she bounced up on her toes. “Do you want me to take Percy for a walk?”

  As though in response to his name, a dog’s high-pitched bark sounded from behind Darcie’s front door.

  The insistent sound dismissed much of Darcie’s discomfort. The memory of a dozen puppies tumbling joyfully in the grass brought a smile to her face. “Sounds to me like he’d enjoy that a lot.”

  She unlocked the door and, with Sloane on her heels, entered the apartment. From the dog kennel just inside the small living room, an ecstasy of yapping erupted. While Darcie tossed her purse on the square, bland sofa, Sloane unlatched the kennel and snatched up the ball of white fur inside.

  “He sure is glad to see us,” the child said, giggling when the dog bathed her face with an enthusiastic tongue.

  Darcie ran her fingers through fluffy white fur and was rewarded with doggie kisses. Oh, how Mama used to love for her to lift Percy up to her bed so he could snuggle at her side.

  Percy had been Mama’s dog, a gift from Mr. Fairmont last year when the news of her cancer reached him. Some of those puppies she’d seen today were probably Percy’s brothers and sisters. Darcie had remarked at the time that it was kind of the man who, after all, could have held a grudge against them for Uncle Kenneth’s betrayal. Mama had agreed and then changed the subject. Percy’s limitless energy and constant antics had brought joy to Mama in the last months of her life, and now they did the same for Darcie.

  She picked up the retractable leash from the otherwise empty coffee table and handed it to the girl. “Take him out quickly. Poor little guy has been cooped up all day. This is the longest he’s ever had to go without a walk.”

  Sloane clasped the hook onto Percy’s collar and headed toward the open door. In the doorway she turned.

  “You know, you ought to unpack sometime. It looks pretty awful in here.”

  The door slammed shut behind her, leaving Darcie alone in the empty apartment. She glanced around the room. A sofa of nondescript color rested against one wall, a matching chair opposite. In between there was a cheap coffee table with nothing on its surface. A television set, one of the old, heavy ones, rested on an inexpensive stand. All standard-issue for an apartment that had been advertised as furnished. Besides that, she only had her DVD player—sitting atop the TV set but not yet hooked up—and a couple of cardboard boxes that she hadn’t unpacked stacked in the corner. Mingled with her things inside were Mama’s, and she hadn’t been able to make herself unwrap them, to set them in their new home in an alien landscape.

  The child was right. It looked awful in here. Awfully sad. Awfully lonely. What she needed was a friend, someone to help her ease into this new life without Mama. Unbidden, Caleb’s image rose in her mind, but she pushed it away. No, not a man. Definitely not.

  She sank onto a couch cushion, and her head dropped into her hands. The events of the day had stirred up all the emotions she thought she’d conquered in the past few weeks.

  It was the body. Again, the sight of the dead man loomed in her mind, and she gave in to an uncontrollable shudder. She’d seen dead people before. Hadn’t Mama died in her arms? But today was different. This man had died as a result of violence, and that violence was apparent on his purpled face, in his bulging eyes. Accusing eyes, as though in their dying moment they had fixed on the one who had forever robbed their owner of life and happiness. Not dissimilar, in fact, to the eyes Mrs. Fairmont had turned on her.

  And then there were Caleb’s eyes.

  Darcie shook her head. Why, among all the eyes she’d seen today, were Caleb’s eyes the hardest to ignore?

  Oh, Lord, I—

  The half-formed prayer halted. She’d given up praying months ago. What good did it do to pray to someone who didn’t hear and didn’t answer?

  Something caught her attention. Moving slowly, she rose and skirted the coffee table toward the stack of boxes in the corner. Was she imagining things? Her memory had played tricks on her lately, victim to the numbness that she gathered around her emotions like a shield. But how could she imagine the telltale sign of a piece of fabric hanging loose from one of the boxes that was supposed to still be sealed? The familiar pattern taunted her from across the room. A brightly colored quilt, the same one that had covered Mama’s bed last winter as she lay dying. It had been on the bottom of the box, a cushion for the framed pictures and glass bric-a-brac that Mama had kept close in her last days. How, then, could it hang loose from the folds at the top of the box?

  A horrible suspicion stole over her. Had that man in the car been inside her apartment? Gone through her things? Or was it, perhaps, someone else? Someone still here?

  Heart pounding, she tiptoed forward and, with a quick movement, threw open the closet door. Empty. She looked into the kitchen and then crept down the short hallway. Glanced into the empty bathroom. Inspected the bedroom closet, also empty. Carefully stooped down to look beneath the bed. The linen closet was small enough that no one could hide there, but she checked it anyway.

  Only when she had examined every window and ensured that all the locks were engaged and every pane of glass was unbroken did she finally allow herself to draw in an easy breath. Everything was secure. She was safe.

  But one thing was sure. That quilt in the box had not moved of its own accord.

  * * *

  Caleb’s phone rang as he pulled his burger and fries from the take-out bag. He dove for the kitchen counter and managed to snatch the phone just before voice mail took over.

  “Hello?”

  At first he thought the caller had hung up. After a pause, an unsteady fema
le voice said, “Caleb, is that you?”

  He placed the voice immediately and straightened, the phone to his ear. Darcie. And she sounded upset. Surely the detective hadn’t filed charges against her already. “What can I do for you, Darcie?”

  “I—you said to call if I needed help. I think I do.”

  A million thoughts battered Caleb’s mind. Why had he given her his phone number? If she wanted to hire the Falsely Accused Support Team he should have let her follow normal channels. The contact information printed on the card would have put her in touch with Mason, who screened all prospective clients. The task had fallen on him because, of the three members of F.A.S.T., he was the most intuitive. Mason could spot a fake within minutes, whereas Caleb’s heart was the consistency of warm Play-Doh, soft and pliant and completely moldable. Especially when it came to women who needed help.

  I should tell her to call Mason. He knows all the right questions to ask.

  He found himself saying, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s probably nothing. I’m probably overreacting.” But her voice wavered on the last word.

  Something inside Caleb twisted. “What is it?”

  “I—I think someone’s been in my apartment. And on the way home tonight, I saw someone. A man. He—he looked familiar. I think he followed me here from Indiana.”

  He lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table, letting her words sink in. “Did you call the police?”

  Her laugh held a note of hysteria. “And say what? That my door and windows were locked, but I’m sure someone moved my quilt? They’ll say I’m paranoid after finding...after today.”

  True. And they may be right. Completely understandable, of course.

  He softened his voice. “Are you sure about the quilt, Darcie?”

  “I’m sure! Someone was here, in this apartment. I don’t know why, but they were. Maybe it has something to do with that man’s death.” He heard a quiet sob, and then she asked meekly, “Could you come over? Just for a little while. I need some help reasoning a couple of things out.”