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“You don’t recall who that is, Mr. Simpson? I can give him a call and let him refresh your memory. I’ll ask again, where were you on the night that Melissa Sherry was killed?” Celia hammered him with questions one after the other about his affair with Melissa and what he knew about that night.
“I…I…” Don started to hyperventilate at the rapid-fire quickness of her questions and the sudden change in her demeanor. How had things escalated so fast? He’d gone from thinking he may be skating on thin ice to drowning in an iced-over lake.
He didn’t dare look at Stella, as he was sure there’d be a look of disappointment on her face, something he’d never really learned to deal with. When the detective mentioned the similarities between the last murder and this one, he almost fell off his chair. What’s happening? How had things come to this so soon and seemingly out of nowhere?
This is exactly what he’d been trying to avoid, the reason he’d moved here, so far away from his past. His heart felt like it was about to explode in his chest, and he just wanted to get out of there. He knew that the guilt was not his, that he had no part in hurting those women, but would the law see it that way?
As a lawyer, he knew better. Was there any way he could convince the world that he didn’t know what Stella had been up to? The questions circled his mind like a rat in a maze, but he couldn’t hold onto his thoughts, which seemed to be going every which way under the unmerciful onslaught of the young woman he’d obviously taken too lightly the day before. His pleading look when he finally lifted his head didn’t move Celia one bit.
Sensing that she was on to something and not wanting to lose momentum, Detective Sparks kept pushing the issue, backing them both into a corner as she threw question after question at them relentlessly. “Did you or your stepmother have anything to do with her death? Did either of you leave the house that night?”
“What about Sara Blue? Who killer her, Don? Who snuffed out the life of that beautiful young woman? Were there others? When I go looking, will I find others that you’ve done this to?”
“Go fuck yourself, you annoying bitch.” Stella’s outburst brought a hush over the room for a second, but Celia kept pushing even more now that she’d seen how flustered she had the other woman.
That was the crack she’d been hoping for, now all she had to do was widen it so that all the dirty little secrets would come pouring out. It was only as she was here now, facing the two of them that she realized what she might be looking at. She’d thought that the similarities between her case and the other had been too perfect not to matter. But the fact that both had been so meticulously carried out told a story in itself.
It told her that whoever had done them was no amateur. The person had done it before and more than once too. It takes a lot of practice to be that good at taking a life and setting a scene like the one they’d found where Melissa had been killed. Especially out in the open like that where there was a chance of someone coming upon the scene. The fact that there had been nothing left behind of the killer was very telling. It spoke of a level of know-how that would take at least four or five killings to perfect. Now Celia was in no doubt as to who of the two people in the room with her, and officer Bailey was the real killer.
“You can answer these questions here, or we can go down to the station. “Pete…” She started to indicate to Pete that they were going to cuff them and take them down for questioning when all hell broke loose.
Riley found Constance and Lenore just where they told him they would be after they’d called to tattle on his woman. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen these two this hopped up about something the way they were as they sat at the diner’s window peering across the street.
There were heaping plates of burgers and fries in front of them with what looked like strawberry shakes in the old fashioned milkshake glasses. “I’m pretty sure you two shouldn’t be eating that.” That was his greeting as he took a seat in the booth beside Lenore, who almost jumped out of her skin since she and Constance had been looking the other way and hadn’t sensed his approach.
“Boy, what the hell?” Riley just raised a brow at her and stole a fry off her plate. “If you don’t want to lose one of them fingers, you’d better get your own. It’s not every day we get to eat like this, but since your woman asked us to come here, we thought what the heck. Ain’t that right, Constance?”
