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"You don't have to do that," Nadia said. "He did kidnap you."
"The murder charges are more important. Of course, he's convinced he can duck those, which is why he's agreeing. He won't get out of this. I'll make sure of it." She glanced back at the cabin. "I'll admit, I was almost glad when he brought you through that door, Nancy. At least then I knew it was a straight-up kidnapping and not anything . . . else. He came by my office when I was getting ready to meet you. I really didn't want to be alone with him, so I said you were expecting me. That's when he knocked me out."
"He must have thought you knew something and were about to tell me. Then he pretended he'd been knocked out--by you--to get me here."
"I didn't know a damned thing, except that Victor didn't kill Mindy and Albert. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Just discuss my doubts. When I woke up in that cabin, I was worried it wasn't about the case at all."
"You never had an affair with Howard, did you?"
She sighed. "Did you hear that old rumor? I thought--hoped--it died long ago. There was no affair, but not for lack of trying on his part. Howard fooled around, and Mindy ignored it . . . until she realized it wasn't the women doing the pursuing. Hard pursuing. In my case, I was about to file a stalking complaint when Mindy found out. We talked. That's why she left him. Because when a woman said no, Howard heard maybe."
Nadia made a face. "Ugh."
"That was Mindy's breaking point, but they stayed friends. I think she ho
ped their divorce would teach him the error of his ways. I thought it had. He certainly backed off me after that. I'll admit that after we found out Mindy had been murdered, I immediately thought of Howard. I couldn't see any reason why he'd kill Albert, though, so I told myself I was being silly. Obviously, I should have trusted my instincts."
Jack waited in the woods with Nadia until the police arrived. Then they slipped off and began the long walk back to the city.
"You didn't track me on GPS, did you?" she said when they were far enough away to talk. "I noticed that flash of confusion when I mentioned it. I just wasn't going to call you on it back there."
He told her everything, starting with watching her at the bar and ending with following her to the cabin.
"You thought Angela was the killer?" she said when he finished.
"I know you like her."
"Sure, but I liked Howard, too, and I still suspected him. But you thought Angela killed her own dog?" Nadia shook her head. "I can't imagine anyone doing that."
To which Jack, who had seen people do much worse, wisely decided not to respond.
"The upshot, though," she continued, "is that we both knew Victor didn't fit for all the murders, and we both had other suspects in mind. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if we'd just, you know, talked." She looked at him. "We need to work on that."
"Yeah, we do."
She slipped her hand into his, squeezed it, and they continued walking.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Nadia
Imet with Angela for an update the next day.
The police already had a theory connecting Howard to Albert Kim's death. It seemed that e-mail correspondence between Kim and Howard suggested the judge had reason to believe Mindy Lang didn't kill herself.
"So first Howard killed Mindy," Angela said as we had our belated drink on the beachfront. "I'm going to guess that he borrowed the truth for his accusation against me. He got into a fight with Mindy, accidentally killed her, and staged it as suicide. Then something led Albert to think it was murder. He contacted Howard to raise the possibility. To say, 'Hey, I think someone killed your wife.' Howard shoots him to shut him up and stages it as a suicide because that worked the first time. Only this time, it doesn't, which leads to reopening Mindy's case."
"He would have been better to just talk Albert Kim out of it," I said. "Convince him he was mistaken."
"Which would have worked, I bet. I'm sorry Albert died, but he was a corrupt bastard. I wouldn't be surprised if Albert did suspect Howard and was just hoping for a cash payment to make it all go away. Instead, Howard shoots him. And then Victor, who has accidentally killed Cherise, sees an opportunity to frame Sheila for the deaths and ends up killing poor Sara Atom."
"In the lamest frame-up job ever. Which wouldn't have gone anywhere, except, by that point, Howard was on the case, working hard to solidify the link between all the murders, because that was in his best interests. Prove Sheila killed Sara Atom and Cherise Hale, and pin the others on her, too."
"Men," she said. "They can be such bastards."
I laughed. "Which is not really the moral of this story, but in this case, yes, the boys were to blame."
"Speaking of men . . ." She twirled her umbrella. "He's not going to come, is he? My anonymous benefactor."
