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Isn’t everything? He handed her his key ring and noted that Kimberly Mason was still watching intently.
“Reed. You coming or what?” Delacroix shouted.
“It’ll have to wait,” he said into Nikki’s ear. He again held up a finger to Delacroix, silently asking her to wait. “When we’re alone.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t try to tell you.”
That gave him pause, but he didn’t have time to deal with it now. He handed her his keys. “I’ll be home as soon as I can and we’ll talk then.”
“Remember, we have a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Exclusive?”
“Right.” He gave a quick nod. “Exclusive,” though his stomach tightened when he said it.
CHAPTER 28
Owen Duval?
Dead?
By suicide?
Before she even got to interview him?
Nikki tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror. What the hell had just happened? In the few minutes since the funeral service, Morrisette’s ex-husband had insisted that she’d left this world naming Reed as the guardian for her children, despite the fact that they had a father. And then Reed had gotten a phone call about another potential homicide that had caused him to leave her with his car and a promise that he’d be home soon.
She knew better than that.
Especially since she thought she’d heard the name Owen Duval from whomever he’d been talking to.
And what was with his keys? He got a new ring with a star on it? Why? Not that it was a big deal, but it was odd.
What isn’t?
She put his Jeep into gear and drove home, but in her mind’s eye she was at Owen Duval’s home, at the crime scene watching the police investigate the suicide. Had the pressure gotten to Owen after all these years? Had the spotlight burned a hole into his soul and he couldn’t go on? Had guilt eaten him alive?
With thoughts rattling through her mind, she parked the Jeep in Reed’s space in the garage and sat for a second.
Aside from the death of Owen Duval there was the news that Sylvie Morrisette had named Reed as guardian for her kids should she die.
Of course that was only if their father, Bart Yelkis, was dead or incapacitated. Or unfit. That last thought bothered her. Was he able to care for a couple of teenagers? Oh, God, was she?
She went into the house and went through the motions of her life. Greeting Mikado and Jennings, letting the dog out, even throwing a frisbee in the backyard while the cat stalked through the wet foliage, hoping to catch an unsuspecting bird, but her thoughts were miles away, to the idea that she could, under the righ
t circumstances, become the instant mother of grieving teenagers, to Owen Duval and his sudden death. She thought about the apartment that Owen Duval had rented. She knew where it was. Had planned on going there and interviewing him.
So why didn’t you? When you had the chance, why didn’t you? Was it because you were healing from the accident in the river, or was it because you were being a good girl and doing exactly what your husband and the cops wanted?
She flung the frisbee past the fountain, skimming the air near a row of azaleas, and Mikado bounded after it, snagging it airborne before it hit the ground. “Good boy,” she said, patting him on the head when he retrieved the plastic disk and brought it back. “We’ll go out to Mom’s place in a few days and you can stretch your legs there.” The backyard here was a little cramped, but Mikado didn’t seem to mind.
At the mention of her mother, she felt a little guilty. She’d avoided Charlene and told herself she’d visit. Maybe tomorrow. And wasn’t there something she wanted to talk to her mother about? Oh, right—the Savannah gossip about the Beaumont family. “Come on,” she said to the dog, and spying the tabby in a crouch, tail twitching as Jennings eyed a squirrel running along the top of the fence, she scooped him up and was rewarded with a growl. “You’ll live,” she told her cat, and carried him inside.
She checked her phone.
No text from Reed.
