AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Meatballs in each nostril and shoved into her mouth, caterer again. I’m thinking the caterer is looking better and better for this,” Peach said.
“How about a little bride and groom shoved—”
“Y’all stop it!” Jaclyn said, but she couldn’t help laughing. “That’s terrible. Carrie might have been—well, Carrie—but she’s dead.”
“I like her better that way, too,” said Diedra. “Just saying.”
“It’s not like there weren’t plenty of vendors who wanted her that way,” Peach said with a smile. “Maybe most of them just wished the deed done, but one of them might’ve actually done it.”
“Not with fondant or floral picks, thank goodness.” Jaclyn headed toward her mother’s office, trying to dismiss the idea that someone she knew well, someone she worked with, might’ve skewered a difficult bride. “Y’all do know there’s an old saying about not speaking ill of the dead,” she called back.
Diedra responded quickly. “There’s also an old saying that says honesty is the best policy. In this instance, the two old sayings don’t work well together.”
And wasn’t that the truth.
Taite Boyne was annoyed as hell that the Hopewell Police Department wanted to interview her, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been expecting the call. Doug had called her in a panic, but she’d calmed him down, told him she’d handle things. She had better things to do with her time, but for now, she’d play nice. After all, it was in her best interests not to piss off the investigators.
Detective Eric Wilder had called both her cell and her home phone the night before, but she hadn’t answered because she’d needed time to think things through, to get herself into the proper frame of mind. When he’d called early that morning, she had finally been ready to answer, and they’d arranged a time to meet. She’d suggested her home instead of work, because she didn’t want cops in and out of the boutique where she worked as a buyer. It was the perfect job, because she made her own hours and was often out of town. That left plenty of time for the senator, and he took a lot of time.
When the doorbell rang, she was ready. This was a bit like being in a play, she thought. Get into the role, practice your expressions and tone of voice, immerse yourself in the character. A lot was riding on how well she balanced several different things.
She answered the door of the twenty-eight-hundred-square-foot lake house Doug had bought for her. The lake was a private one, with only eight building sites around it, and three of the sites were still uns
old. The acreage was sufficient that her neighbors weren’t close enough to see who came and went, plus Doug always simply pulled into the three-car garage and got out of his car there. It wasn’t as if he was ever outside doing yard work. The house was in her name, the utility bills were in her name, and she paid for everything from her checking account. A nosy reporter would have to dig very deep, or get very lucky, to connect Doug to any of this.
All of this was in jeopardy now, because Carrie had been a greedy bitch.
Her expression was calm but sad as she led the two cops—Wilder and Garvey—into the den. From the den you could see the sparkling pool through the double French doors, and fifty yards beyond the pool, there was the lake, the blueness of the cloudless sky reflected on the surface. She saw them looking around, noting every detail—one of which was a photograph she’d dug out of the back of the closet, one of her and Carrie with their heads together, laughing. In any play, the props on the set mattered because they set the mood. The mood she was going for was bereaved but not hysterical.
“Would you like some coffee, or iced tea?” she asked as they sat.
“No, thank you,” said Wilder, answering for the both of them. Thank God they didn’t want anything; the sooner they got this over with, the sooner they’d be out of here. In the back of her mind she coolly noted that he looked like someone she wouldn’t mind getting to know better, back in the days before Doug. He would have been a fun time, but she wouldn’t risk what she had now just to have a hot roll in the hay.
She took the chair facing the sofa where they’d both sat down. She’d chosen her costume for effect: a snug, but not too snug, knee-length black skirt, and a crisply tailored white blouse. She’d also gone easy on the makeup; she didn’t exactly look wan, but neither did she look festive. She had even used just a touch of eyeshadow to put faint bruises under her eyes. Because she was a buyer she had to always look sharp, so she hadn’t gone for dowdy, just restrained. Her four-inch heels were sharp and stylish, the type a sophisticated buyer would wear for work, and she really was going to work as soon as they left. A little touch of reality was always handy.
“Thank you for speaking to us, Ms. Boyne,” Detective Wilder said. “We’re investigating Carrie Edwards’s murder. What can you tell us about her?”
Well, that was an open-ended question. Taite supposed it was designed to get her talking, maybe saying more than she intended.
“We were best friends,” she said simply, and let her voice wobble a little on the last word. It was a nice touch.
For a few minutes he asked her meaningless questions: How long had she known Carrie, where had they met, when was the last time she’d seen her, blah, blah blah. She answered with complete honesty, because she knew he’d check out every detail. Why lie about something when you didn’t need to? If you kept to the truth whenever possible, that made people more inclined to believe you when you had to lie.
“Where were you on Wednesday afternoon, between three and six?”
“Here.”
“Alone?”
She took a deep breath, let it out. “No.” She looked down at her hands, clasped her fingers together. “Doug—Senator Dennison—was here. I got back in town the day before from a two-week trip to London, and he left work early so we could have some time together.”
“He didn’t come over the day you got home?”
“No. I was too jet-lagged.”
That, too, was true, at least as far as the jet lag went. And she had been in London.
“What time did he get here?”
