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Julia gasped.
Her mother’s eyes shut.
Reed asked, “Mrs. Adams?”
Nothing.
“Mom?” Julia, obviously distressed, glanced at Reed but touched her mother’s shoulder again. “The detective has more questions.” She waited and then raised her hands, palms up. “This is how it happens. A few quick words as if she’s been a part of the conversation all along or at least listening in, and then she blurts something out and it’s as if it takes everything out of her. She probably won’t speak again for a couple of days.” Then leaning down to her mother’s ear, she said, “Can you hear me? Detective Reed is trying to find out what happened to the Duval girls. Margaret and Harvey’s kids, you know.”
There was a movement behind the older woman’s eyes again and her face twisted into an expression of disgust, but she remained silent.
After ten minutes, Reed handed Julia his card. “If she wakes up or you can think of anything else, please give me a call.”
“I will,” Julia promised. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
No, he thought now. He’d left after waiting for Ona to wake up and say anything clear or helpful. As he drove through the city, his thoughts turned over in his mind. How much of what the old woman remembered was true? How much of it was just gossip? How much of it had no basis in fact at all?
He was almost to the station when his cell phone buzzed and the call was connected to his Bluetooth, his display showing Delacroix’s name and number.
“You’re not going to believe this,” his new partner said when he answered. “Guess who just walked into the police station?”
“I couldn’t.” Squinting, he flipped down his visor as he passed into the heart of the city.
“Rose Duval,” she said, her voice heavy with skepticism.
“What?”
“I’m telling you, a woman saying she’s Rose Duval. We’ve got her in an interview room. Thought you’d want to know.”
“On my way,” he said. “I’ll be there in five.”
CHAPTER 22
“If Muhammad won’t come to the mountain,” Nikki told Jennings as she grabbed her keys, “then the mountain is just going to have to go to the Red Knuckle.” She patted the cat on his striped head, then drove into town. She intended to visit Bronco at his home, but she’d remembered what Morrisette had said on that final phone call Nikki had overheard:
“. . . the Red Knuckle. He’s a regular there. Hangs out there every damned evening, the way I hear it. They probably have a stool with his name on it . . .”
Nikki’s heart clenched as that joke was the last Reed’s partner had ever uttered. And it was her fault the woman was dead. Guilt, forever nearby, caught up with her and settled firmly on her shoulder. Close enough to keep whispering in her ear: It’s your fault, Nikki. Your fault that Morrisette jumped into the river to try to save you.
Setting her jaw, she pushed that horrid voice away and concentrated on the here and now. Why the hell had Bronco Cravens been at the Beaumont estate that day? How had he discovered the bodies in the basement? What had he been doing? It was time to find out. If Bronco wasn’t at the bar, then she’d go to his house and after that, she hoped to find a way to avoid Tyson Beaumont’s cameras and visit the Beaumont mansion, the scene of the crime.
First things first: talking to Bronco, finding out what he knew, why he was at the house in the basement that day.
Nikki had learned that until recently, Bronco had worked at Lamont Construction, but she’d checked with the company and found he’d been let go; though, of course, she didn’t know why. Not that it mattered, probably. Since she had to drive through town anyway, she headed toward campus, parked a block away from the Red Knuckle and made her way inside the crowded bar.
The darkened interior was noisy, a din of conversation, clinking glasses, rattling ice cubes and click of billiard balls over the throb of some crossover country and pop song she couldn’t identify. Most of the crowd was on the younger side, college students who were just starting a new semester.
All of the stools at the bar were filled, people laughing and talking, drinking and flirting, some watching the televisions mounted on the wall, all tuned to various sporting events. Currently, the Braves were down two runs to the Red Sox on one screen, a golf match on another and three husky suited men at a desk discussing college football on a third.
Bronco wasn’t seated at the bar.
Nikki scanned the tables scattered over the darkened floorboards in the center of the room, then skirting two pool tables, slowly checked out the occupied booths. No Bronco. She nearly ran into a waitress balancing a tray of drinks as she headed to a screen door that opened to a back patio, where some of the patrons nursed drinks and smoked at umbrella tables.
But Bronco hadn’t landed outside, either.
Maybe it was too early for him to show up. Or too late.
Back inside, she made her way to the bar. “Hey,” she said to the bartender, and offered a smile.
