AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But you didn’t?”
“No, Jaclyn pointed out that Premier had the legal high ground, and best of all, Carrie had fired us. We were free of her.”
“What about the fee she’d paid?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. The trick was to keep asking the same questions over and over, to see if you got the same answers. If you didn’t, that was a clue to where to look, where to keep picking.
“She wouldn’t have gotten much money back. Our contracts state that, in case of termination, our fees are prorated according to the amount of work the agency has done. With Carrie’s wedding, the vast majority of planning and arrangements had already been made.”
That jibed exactly with what Jaclyn had told him, but she and her mother had obviously talked, so it was possible they’d gone
over that detail and rehearsed what to say. “May I see a copy of the contract?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
Madelyn opened a drawer, flicked through the files, and withdrew a moss green folder. “Here it is.” She placed the file on the desk and slid it across to him. Eric leaned forward and took the file, opened it. He leafed through the thick stack of paperwork until he found the contract. Finding the pertinent clause took only a few seconds, and it was exactly as they’d said. Carrie Edwards had signed it, and it was dated more than a year before.
“Damn,” he said without thinking. “It takes that long to plan a wedding?” Then he caught himself and looked up. “Sorry.”
She waved away the apology. “Do you want a copy of the contract?”
“If you don’t mind.” He didn’t know that he’d need it, but having a copy was one more i dotted.
She took the contract, opened a closet door to reveal a small printer, and copied every page. He waited in silence. When she was finished she neatly stacked the pages, stapled them together in one corner, and handed them to him before repeating the sequence with the original contract and returning it to its file folder, which she then replaced in the file drawer.
He’d bet his badge that if any of these four women ever killed anyone, the murder would be carefully researched, planned, and meticulously orchestrated. There wouldn’t be any detail left to chance, nothing done in the heat of the moment, no messy clues left behind. They’d probably get away with the crime, too, he thought, torn between amusement and irritation, because the cop in him didn’t like the idea of anyone getting away with anything on his watch.
“What time did you leave Claire’s?”
“Five-fifteen.”
“Exactly?” he asked, less than pleased that she’d come back with such a specific answer. In his experience, people might know about when they did something, but not down to the minute.
“Exactly,” Madelyn said firmly. “I’m a clock-watcher. We all are. I told you, I had a wedding to oversee last night. I had to be there well in advance.”
“Where was the wedding?”
She told him, and he knew from experience the drive would have taken her at least forty-five minutes. Not only that, it was in the opposite direction from Hopewell. “What time did you arrive?”
“Six oh two. And, yes, there were a number of vendors already at the church, as well as most of the wedding party, so there are people who can verify the time. Would you like a list of their names?”
“Please,” he said politely, and took notes as she consulted her own notes and rattled off names, as well as phone numbers. God, these women were so organized it was scary. Madelyn hadn’t been on his short list of suspects but she’d definitely been a possibility, but this pretty much ruled her out. If she’d arrived at the church when she said she had, there was no way she could have driven to Hopewell, killed Carrie, then made the drive to the church, not to mention she’d have had to go home and change clothes, too.
She’d given Jaclyn a pretty good alibi, too. The t.o.d. time frame the medical examiner had given them put Carrie’s death pretty close to the time Jaclyn had left her—but if Jaclyn had killed her and then calmly went to have a muffin with her mother at a public restaurant, she’d have been covered with blood.
Carrie’s murder had been messy. Whoever had killed her had walked—or run—away from the scene bloody and enraged, likely in a panic. He’d play this by the book and wait for word that no blood had been found on Jaclyn’s clothes, but he was pretty sure none of these women ever panicked. No matter how he played the scene in his mind, he just couldn’t see Jaclyn Wilde losing her cool and killing Carrie Edwards in a rage. He could see her a lot of ways, not least of which was beneath him, naked and flushed, but not as a killer—and he shouldn’t be thinking about her naked, either, not until she was officially off the suspect list.
The problem was, though he could make his actions objective, his mind kept going back to the night they’d spent together, and he didn’t feel objective about that at all.
On the good side, he was one step closer to clearing Jaclyn. On the bad side, he was back to square one in finding Carrie’s killer, with a victim almost no one liked, and ass-deep in potential suspects.
There wasn’t anything more he could find out from Madelyn. She was clear, and she’d provided a damn good alibi for Jaclyn, though until he got the report back on Jaclyn’s clothes he couldn’t say anything. He’d be better off spending his time chasing down the other possibilities. He studied his notes for a moment, trying to think of any angle he might have missed, but everything was pretty straightforward. Finally he flipped his notebook shut and rose to his feet. “Thank you for answering my questions, Mrs. Wilde. I’ll be in touch.”
Again, she made that disgusted little snorting sound. It was almost like a feminine grunt.
The two other women were still in the outer office, their expressions closed and hostile. Jaclyn’s door was firmly closed again. Eric said good-bye to the two women, smiling warmly at them just to tweak them; the older redhead narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together.
Soon enough he’d have Jaclyn cleared, but by then it might well be too late, might have been too late since last night when he’d questioned her. As he got into his car he remembered the skunk comment, and inwardly winced. Like the two women who had just glared at his back as he went out the door, he figured Jaclyn was going to carry this grudge for a long time.
A thought occurred to him: Had Jaclyn told her mother that they’d spent the night together?
