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“And you think he’s capable of murder?”
“Now, don’t you go twisting my words. I don’t know what he’s capable of, I just said he’s a bad seed. That’s all.” She was getting angry now, as if feeling Nikki was reading more into what she was saying than she meant.
“What was Holly Duval doing at the Marianne Inn?”
“Beats me.” She shrugged as she untied the bay. “That, I can’t tell you.” She waved to the man in the orchard, making a swirling motion over her head, and he got the message. The chain saw screamed, biting into wood again.
Nikki watched Chandra lead the horse to the trough and as he dipped his head and drank, she wondered about Chandra’s claim. If the woman fancied herself some kind of prognosticator or seer, she was a damned poor one. And there was something more to the woman, Nikki thought. Beneath the civil, rancher-like exterior was something darker, something Chandra worked to keep hidden. As Nikki drove away, checking her rearview and spying Chandra Johnson staring at her through a cloud of dust, Nikki couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that she’d just been speaking with a charlatan rather than a psychic.
* * *
Reed slid a pair of sunglasses over the bridge of his nose while Delacroix sat in the passenger seat of his Jeep, riding shotgun, her eyes focused, as usual, on the screen of her cell phone as they drove along the river.
“We’re about to Wells’s place.”
“Mmm.” She nodded, looking up, her own pair of Ray-Bans hanging from the neckline of her shirt. “I don’t think his story is going to change. He was interviewed three times and I watched them all twice.”
“Me too.”
“Nervous, wasn’t he?”
“Very.” In the interviews, each a little more intense than the one before, Owen Duval, only sixteen, had come in voluntarily. But he’d stared at the interviewing officer belligerently, his arms crossed over his chest, his right leg visibly jumping beneath the table in the interview room. Each time, he’d held fast to his story, barely changing the wording, and each time he was backed up by an airtight alibi from his girlfriend, Ashley McDonnell, at the time.
As if she’d read Reed’s mind, Delacroix said, “Ashley McDonnell, who is now Ashley Jefferson, still lives in the area. Married, a couple of kids, rocking the island lifestyle out on Tybee.”
“You get hold of her?”
“Yeah, but she tried to brush me off. Too ‘busy’ with the kids, hubby and some sort of mommy blog, you know, but I used my considerable powers of persuasion to convince her otherwise. She agreed to meet me, albeit reluctantly, later, probably today or tomorrow. Worked for me. I wanted to see what Owen has to say first.”
“What ‘powers of persuasion’ are those?” he asked, spying the turnoff and driving down a smooth lane.
“The power behind the badge,” she said, staring through the windshield as they drove through a grove of pecan trees and up a small rise to a large, plantation-style home of two stories. With gleaming white siding, a wide front porch, huge pillars and tall windows that winked in the dying afternoon sun, the house was surrounded by a trimmed lawn and the front doors flanked by huge ceramic pots overflowing with trailing flowers.
“Man, oh, man,” Delacroix said, clucking her tongue while Reed parked behind a triple garage and next to a dusty, ten-year-old Chevrolet Silverado, the windows tinted, and from the plates, Reed knew the vehicle belonged to Duval. “Wells isn’t exactly a public defender, now, is he? How in the world does a guy like Owen Duval afford this kind of lawyer?”
“Pro bono, I’d guess. Wells is probably doing it for the publicity. So people get to know his name. He’s got ambitions.”
&nbs
p; “Such as?”
“Governor.” Reed shrugged. “Or senator, maybe.”
“You know this how?” she asked dubiously, as he pocketed his keys and they both climbed out of his Jeep.
“Common knowledge. And who knows? Maybe he’s looking to get a book deal out of it.”
“Like your wife?” she said, shooting him a knowing look.
“Maybe.”
“Pretty hard with attorney-client privilege.”
“Been known to happen.”
“Hmm.” As they reached the edge of the lawn, she said, “I’m going to push Duval a little.”
“Okay.”
