“No. Leave it alone. I want this under lock and key. Nobody is to know about it.”
“Are you sure?”
Ethan nodded. “Until all this mess with Sills’s death is over—absolutely. Personally, I’d rather not have this information released—ever. But even thinking as a detective investigating a high-profile murder, I know that this piece of paper will only muddy the waters and cause a flurry of gossip and renewed interest in Con Delancey. We can’t afford all that distraction if we’re going to find Sills’s murderer.”
“I agree. The question is, do we give it to the commander or do we keep it secret?”
“My vote? Keep it secret. I’ll put it in my safe-deposit box.”
Dixon looked at him questioningly. “You don’t think that’s withholding evidence?”
“Evidence of what?” Ethan said on a laugh. “Con Delancey’s wandering...eye?”
Dixon stood. “Okay. It’s your family. It’s your call. Do you want the rest of the folder?”
“Yeah. I’ll stick it all in the box. What’s in the rest of it?”
Dixon held up his thumb and forefinger, about an inch apart. “Documentation of meetings Sills had with your grandfather. Later on, cassette tapes. Looks to me like he was hoping to be able to blackmail Con. I haven’t listened to the tapes, but as far as written records, that birth certificate was the only thing in the whole file that he could have used. I wonder why he never did.”
Ethan stood, too, and held up his hands as if framing a screenshot. “I can see it now. Sills tells Granddad what he’s got and Granddad just shrugs and says, ‘Slap it on the front page for all I care.’ I’ll bet that’s exactly why it’s buried in a dusty file. I’ll bet Con Delancey told him where he could put it.”
“Well, I’d better get home. I just wanted to tell you about Sills’s information on your granddad.”
Ethan followed Dixon out onto the porch. “Yeah. I appreciate it. Let me know as soon as you get the safe-deposit box. I’m betting that if there’s any information anywhere about the people Sills was blackmailing, it’ll be in that box. Once we’ve got those names, then we’ll have a real suspect list.”
Chapter Six
It was after four by the time Laney finally got on the road back to New Orleans from Baton Rouge. The meetings had gone longer than she’d anticipated. The first one, to discuss who would be appointed to finish out Senator Sills’s term, had deteriorated into a three-hour debate between the governor’s executive assistant and the president of the senate. The only thing they agreed on was that Laney should work with the new appointee’s staff to ease the transition. They couldn’t even agree on who would pay her.
That information, she thought bitterly as she exited off I-10 onto Veterans Memorial Boulevard, could have been passed on to her in a phone call.
The second meeting, to discuss the funeral arrangements, was delayed because the senator’s older daughter’s baby had an earache. By the time it was over, Laney had been excused from any part in the planning or execution of the funeral by both daughters, who also spent quite a bit of time debating. When four o’clock rolled around and nobody seemed inclined to wrap up the
discussion,
Laney excused herself, saying that she had to get back to New Orleans before dark.
Now she drove to the storage building she’d rented when her dad had gone into an assisted-living facility. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to rent storage space near his home in Kenner so she could move furniture, boxes and books as she had time. Now she wished she’d gotten one nearer her rented house in the lower Garden District.
She keyed in the password at the gate to the storage facility and drove to her building. By the time she unlocked the padlock on the garage door it was five o’clock, and she needed a flashlight to find the two boxes labeled Dad’s Papers and wrestled them into the backseat of her car, probably ruining her dark blue slacks and gray blouse.
As she headed back through the gate and onto the access road for Veterans Memorial Highway, a car appeared out of nowhere and sped straight toward her. She tried to gun the engine to get out of the way, but the other car veered at the last second and sideswiped her on the driver’s side.
The screech of metal on metal hurt her ears as the impact sent her car spinning into the other lane, where a panel truck barely missed her. Her car slid sideways off the shoulder of the road and finally came to a stop.
Laney sat unmoving, stunned. From the first instant when she’d seen the small car barreling toward her, everything had moved in slow motion. She’d experienced every second as if she were watching one of those super-slow vignettes in a movie. The kind of split-screen action where the driver relived years of memories in the few seconds it took to crash a car or down a plane.
Vaguely, she became aware of a rapping noise. She opened her eyes and saw a man looking at her through the windshield. He was saying something she couldn’t understand. After watching him blankly for a moment, she realized he was motioning for her to roll down her window. She pressed the button on the console, but although she could hear an electrical whirr, nothing happened. Once the man saw that the window wasn’t working, he gestured toward the passenger side. With a passing thought that this wasn’t the man who had sideswiped her, because he had on a white cap and that man had worn a black hat, she lowered the window on the passenger side.
“—the door.” The man was talking to her.
She frowned. Had he said unlock the door? “I don’t—” she said in a barely audible croak.
He peered at her searchingly. “Are you injured? Bleeding? I need to see if you’re all right. I’ve called the police.”
Call Ethan,
she wanted to say, but she couldn’t make a sound. There was a lump in her throat that felt as big and hard as a stone. She shook her head no, because she didn’t think she was injured. Then she swallowed hard and tried to talk past the stone. “Who―who are you?” she croaked, peering at him sideways. For some reason she thought it might be better if she didn’t move too much. She felt slightly nauseated and every time she turned or nodded her head, it seemed as though something hurt somewhere.
“I was in the truck. That car pushed you right into my lane. I barely missed you. Was he chasing you?”
“No,” she whispered raggedly. “I’d just come—” at that second, for the life of her she couldn’t remember where she’d been. All she remembered was the crash. “Where’s my purse?” she asked.
“It’s right here.” The man pointed at the floor of the passenger seat.
“My phone. Call Ethan. Delancey.” She tried to shift in her seat and found out, first, that she couldn’t move, and second, that the vague pain she’d noticed had suddenly become very specific and very sharp. “My shoulder hurts,” she said.
The man grabbed her purse, then glanced up. “Okay,” he said. “Just stay right there. The EMTs are on their way.”
It took over twenty minutes for the EMTs to get her out of the car. The damage to the frame wasn’t that bad, but the door was bent in enough that it kept the lock on the seat belt from releasing. The EMTs had to pry off the driver’s-side door, then cut the seat belt.
They checked her vital signs and carefully examined her for broken bones or internal injuries. Once they were satisfied that her only injury seemed to be a bruised left shoulder from the impact, they got her to her feet and helped her walk to the back of the ambulance and sit.
“Okay,” the male EMT said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m feeling kind of sick,” she whispered. “Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize to me,” the young EMT said with a little chuckle. He pointed to his female partner. “Just turn your head toward her if you think you’re going to throw up, okay?”
* * *
W
HEN
E
THAN
GOT
to the scene of the accident, he noticed that Detective Stephen Benoit of the Kenner Police Department, whom he’d met a couple of times before, seemed to be in charge. He quickly introduced himself, in case the other man didn’t remember him, and explained that the accident could be connected with a case of his and that Laney Montgomery was his witness and a victim in the crime. Benoit gave him a quick rundown of what had happened and told him to stick with him. A crime scene tech came up to the detective, so Ethan took a few steps closer to the back of the ambulance, so that he could see where Laney was sitting.
She seemed unhurt, he saw with relief, except for her left shoulder, which one of the EMTs was carefully manipulating.
From what he could hear of their conversation, the EMT was explaining about the bruised biceps and triceps and what she could expect. Each time he appeared to be finished, Laney would ask another question. Once the EMT tried to brush off her questions, saying the answer was just a bunch of technical stuff that she didn’t need to know.
“I do,” she said earnestly. “Please. I need to understand.”
The EMT patiently explained about bruises and how ice was the best thing for a fresh bruise. As he talked to her, the other EMT taped a reusable ice pack to her shoulder on top of her blouse.
Ethan knew that a couple of hours spent with her did not make him an expert on Laney Montgomery, but right now, watching her as she concentrated on what the EMT was telling her, he was certainly getting a more complete picture of her. She’d been precise and careful in her answers to his questions about the shooting, but now it occurred to him that she was just as precise and step-by-step about everything.
He allowed himself a small smile. He understood, maybe better than a lot of people ever could, where all that need for precision came from. It was her effort to hold on to as much control as she could, even in situations where no control was possible, like right now. He could identify with that. Living in the same house as his father and his oldest brother Lucas, who were always at loggerheads, he’d learned before age ten that logic and careful attention to facts got him a lot further than an explosive temper and a short fuse. He wondered what in her life had taught Laney that lesson. He could see that she was more of a control freak than he was.
It didn’t take much imagination to see that she would be hell to live with. But the question was, would she be worth it?
Oh, yeah.
Detective Benoit stepped up beside Ethan. “How is she?” he asked.
“Looks like just a bruised arm,” Ethan said. “Mostly she’s just shaken up. You talked with the guy driving the truck?”
Benoit nodded. “He saw the vehicle speed toward Ms. Montgomery’s car. Said he heard the engine rev. The car was definitely gaining speed. It was no accident.”
“Did he see anything?”
Benoit nodded. “Definitely. The vehicle was a sports car. Red, naturally. He didn’t know the make. Said it was one of those low, fast things. Maybe Italian. He caught a glimpse of the license plate.”
“He did?” Ethan was excited. Maybe he could get a lead on Sills’s murderer from this.
“Only got two letters and he’s not sure of the position of the letters or color or state. But he swears the two letters are correct. He also saw the driver. Said the man had on a black cowboy hat with some kind of shiny decoration on it.”
Black cowboy hat with shiny things.
Ethan grabbed his pad and made a note. “What were the two letters the driver saw?”
Benoit consulted his own notes. “C and F.”
Ethan wrote that down as his brain fed him the obvious interpretation of that partial plate—something to do with Circle of Faith. “I need to run Buddy Davis’s plates. I know he drives a sports car.”
“Why Davis?” Benoit asked.
“Something the witness told us about the man who shot the senator and her. The C and the F on the license could be ‘Circle of Faith.’”
Benoit gave him a skeptical look.
“Look, man,” Ethan said. “I hate that I can’t be more specific, but my commander wants us to keep certain things under wraps.”
“No problem,” Benoit said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ethan saw the EMT hand Laney a little plastic bag with two tablets in it.
She nodded. “Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking.
He glanced at Benoit, who nodded. So he stepped closer to her. “Hey,” he said with a smile as the EMT closed his emergency box and moved out of the way. “It’s all over now. You’re fine.”
“You came,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.
“Of course I did,” he responded. Obviously she was a lot more shaken than she appeared to be. Although she’d been at the point of tears several times, she hadn’t actually cried during the entire ordeal the other night. That probably explained her tears now. She’d been through a lot and now she’d reached her breaking point.
He didn’t want to take a chance on making it worse, so he took a deep breath and put on his “just the facts ma’am” demeanor, figuring that would be better than being too nice or too solicitous. As much as she valued her control, she might not be able to keep from crying. “You’re my witness. That means you’re my responsibility.”
She sniffed, bit her lip, then nodded.
Benoit stepped up and began questioning her, writing down everything she told him. Once he was done, he said, “We’ll need to get you back over here to read and sign your statement, Ms. Montgomery.”
Ethan spoke up. “If you’ll send it over to the Eighth, I’ll make sure it’s signed and sent back.”
Benoit agreed. He thanked Laney and him and told her that one of his officers could take her home.
“That’s okay. I’ll take her,” Ethan said. “Let me ask you a favor. She told you she’d stopped at the mini-storage to pick up some boxes. They’re right there in the backseat of her car. She picked them up because they’re part of my investigation into the murder of Senator Darby Sills.”
He heard a murmur of protest from Laney, but ignored it as he saw the detective’s eyes widen. “That’s the case you’re working on? I thought I recognized the name Montgomery.”
Ethan nodded. “I need to take them with me.”
“Technically, those boxes are part of this incident.”
Ethan grimaced internally. “Technically,” he said with a nod, “you’re right. I’d owe you one.”
The detective regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Send me an official request first thing tomorrow,” he said.
Ethan nodded. “First thing.” He held his breath. He wanted the boxes tonight. If he was right, they were Elliott Montgomery’s personal financial records. They might include proof that Darby Sills was blackmailing him.
“Okay,” the detective said, nodding. “Go ahead and take them. Need any help?”
Ethan shook his head. “Thanks.” He shook the detective’s hand again, then got the keys to the car from the tow truck driver and quickly transferred two medium-size boxes from Laney’s backseat to his trunk.
While he was doing that, Laney stood and waved off a police officer’s help. She walked over to his car. Her eyes still sparkled with unshed tears as she faced him, her back straight, her face flushed with anger. The effect was diminished by the pale blue sling the EMTs had given her for her arm. “You can’t possibly believe that my father was being blackmailed.”
“So you eavesdropped on my conversation with the detective.”
“Of course I did. It concerned me. How could you possibly think Senator Sills was blackmailing
my
father. Go after the dozens and dozens of people Sills
could
have something on.”
“Seems to me that Elliott Montgomery could be one of them. And you know I’m checking out everybody who had a relationship with Sills. Tell me something, Laney. Why did you want those boxes, anyhow, if it wasn’t to see if his bank statements showed excessive withdrawals?”
Laney stared at him, fury blazing in her blue eyes. “I don’t have to answer that,” she said. “They are my property, and I don’t think you can just
confiscate
them.”
“On the side of the boxes it says ‘Dad’s Papers.’ I was going to ask you for them anyway,” he said, opening the passenger door for her.
“That does not answer my question,” she said icily.
He looked at her. “Let me refer again to the discussion I just had with the other detective.”
She scowled. “What about it?”
“There’s the answer to your question. I can take those boxes, and I did.”