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CHAPTER 29
The crowd had grown in the two hours since Reed and Delacroix had arrived at Owen Duval’s place. Reporters and neighbors clogged the street, making it nearly impossible for the crime scene unit and the ambulance to lumber through. Night was less than an hour away, dusk threatening, the sky showing a few stars as the rain clouds earlier had disappeared. Already the strobing of red and blue emergency lights reflected on the windows of the neighboring houses and pulsed on the boles of the trees lining the street. Reed, standing on the lawn and surveying the front yard where the hastily constructed barricade and several uniformed officers kept the crowd at bay, checked his phone. Three voice mails from Margaret Duval.
“Great.” He slid the phone into his pocket. From the tone of her messages, she was nearly hysterical.
“My son?” she’d screamed. “My son is dead? You didn’t protect him? I thought you were investigating the case and now he’s dead?” She’d begun sobbing and Reed had heard the soft, placating voice of her husband asking her to hang up and go to bed.
Reed raked his hand through his hair. He needed to see Margaret face-to-face to ask her about a possible affair and Nikki’s wild assumption that Rose, who was still missing and most likely already deceased, was Baxter Beaumont’s child. He agreed the timeline worked, he’d double-checked Margaret’s work records against Rose’s birth date, but still, it was quite a leap. The thought of accusing her of having a child from an affair, then passing that kid off as her husband’s, then losing all of her daughters, the child in question still missing while her son just appeared to have taken his own life seemed like it would be awkward and tasteless and extremely painful.
Then again, this was his job: finding out the truth and serving justice, no matter what.
But right now, he was stuck at the crime scene as Nikki had driven his Jeep home. Delacroix wasn’t an option. She was already on her way to interview Duval’s attorney, Austin Wells. Not only could Wells speak to Owen Duval’s mental state but also to who would benefit financially, if anyone, so they agreed to meet at the station later tonight or early in the morning.
He bummed a ride with Tina Rounds, the deputy who’d been first on the scene, and she drove him to the station, where he’d either grab a department vehicle or have Nikki swing by the station and pick him up. That was definitely option number two as his wife would like nothing more than to show up at the department and nose around.
Nikki and he definitely needed to sit down and talk. Not only about the case and the fact that he had to remind her that he could not be her source, but also that the exclusivity of her story was only good once the case was wrapped up. That could be months and if a trial was involved, possibly years.
What a headache.
And then there was the added pressure of Bart Yelkis and his ludicrous claims that Reed wanted to take his kids away from him. “What the hell did you do?” he whispered, as if Morrisette could hear him.
“Pardon me? You say somethin’?” Rounds asked as they drove into the heart of the city, streetlamps already glowing, traffic moving easily.
“Just to myself.”
“Out loud? You know what they say about that?”
“That I’m speaking with an intellectually acute audience?”
She actually smiled. “I was gonna say, the first sign of dementia.” But she was kidding, her dark eyes glinting.
“Actually, I think the first sign is giving your wife the car keys and leaving yourself stranded,” he said, and Tina Rounds, a tough, by-the-book, always-serious cop, actually cracked a smile and let out a little laugh. “That might be,” she said as she wheeled into the station’s lot.
Once in the office, he checked a few e-mails, signed out for a vehicle and hit the road. His stomach rumbled as it had been hours since his takeout pimento cheese sandwich that he’d eaten at his desk before the funeral, but he ignored the feeling and told himself to just get through the interview with Margaret Duval Le Roy. It would be tough, but he might just learn something.
Owen Duval’s death was a tragedy and, he felt, had struck a blow to the case, but he couldn’t help that it also tied it together. As he drove the department-issued, stripped-down SUV to the Le Roys’ home, he thought about the violent deaths related to the investigation: Holly and Poppy Duval, Bronco Cravens, and now Owen Duval. Coincidence? He didn’t think so.
“Help me out here,” he said, and glanced at the empty passenger seat, imagining Morrisette slumped in it, fiddling with the windows, her eyes narrowed as she stared out the windshield to the coming night.
“You’re on your own here, pardner,” she said with that cocky smile that was so Morrisette. “You’re a smart boy. You figure it out.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He parked in front of the Le Roy bungalow, lamps lighting the windows of the little white house surrounded by live oaks. He cut the engine and looked past the home to the church, where, again, lamps were burning in the lancet windows, the steeple, up lit, a white sword slicing into the dark heavens. He strode up the walk and pounded a fist on the screen.
The door behind was opened in a second and Margaret Duval Le Roy stood behind the mesh, her chin trembling, her eyes puffy and red. “Another one, Detective. Another one of my babies is dead, and . . . and . . .” She didn’t say it, but he read the unspoken accusation in her eyes.
. . . and I blame you.
* * *
Ashley McDonnell Jefferson was a hot mess.
Nikki found her sitting on her front porch, her makeup smeared, her face puffy, a barely smoked cigarette dangling between her fingers. When she spied Nikki driving through the still-open front gates she quickly dropped her cigarette into the pot of a hibiscus, burying it quickly, then waving away any lingering smoke as she stood and glared at Nikki as she climbed out of her car.
“What’re you doing here?” she demanded, arms crossed over her chest.
“I came to talk about Owen.”
