Polished Off (31 page)

She ducked into the closet, rooted around on the floor, and dragged my purse out by the strap. I snatched it from her and looked inside. Everything seemed to be there, including my keys. It had never crossed my mind that she had my keys, along with my purse and wallet. Like the police, I figured she was long gone from St. Elizabeth, maybe long gone from Georgia.

“I’m really sorry,” she said again. She rubbed at her reddened eyes. “After . . . after everything yesterday, when the ambulance took you, I thought you’d be in the hospital for a couple of nights and I could hide out here and think what to do. I really screwed up, huh?”

I bit back the “You think?” that came to mind. “You have to go to the police, Daphne,” I said.

“They’ll put me in jail. My mom and dad will be so upset. I only wanted to stop the pageant. To stop girls from entering beauty contests and ruining their lives.” Water from her wet hair wicked down the cotton shirt, leaving trails like tear streams.

“Like Leda,” I said gently.

She sniffed. “She wasn’t just my sister—she was my best friend. I used to hear her throwing up in our bathroom, making herself throw up after every meal practically. It was awful. I thought she was getting better—we all did—but then she entered that stupid pageant.” Her hands balled into fists. “I didn’t set out to hurt anyone. No one was supposed to be at the theater. You weren’t supposed to be there.” She frowned at me.

Right. It was my fault I got hurt saving her life. And what about poisoning the judges, I wanted to ask. Daphne didn’t have the tightest grip on reality and I didn’t want to send her to whatever unhappy place she’d been in yesterday. “Why don’t we call your folks?” I said, moving toward the phone.

“Dr. Yarrow told us we have to act on our convictions,” she said. “He said it’s our responsibility as citizens to be bold and make changes. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ he says.”

“I think Gandhi said it first,” I said dryly, having seen an inspirational poster with that quotation on it somewhere. It seemed like Kwasi had brought his plagiarism habit to Georgia. I picked up the phone and dialed the GBI number by heart. “Mrs. Wissing?” I said when Dillon answered. “Daphne’s here with me at my apartment.”

“Are you okay?” Dillon asked, his voice tense.

“Yes, she’s fine, but I think she’d like to see you.”

“On my way.”

I hung up, my hand shaking slightly.

“The things I tried first didn’t work, so I knew I needed to be bolder.” She punctuated the last word by pounding her fist on her thigh.

“Why don’t we sit down,” I suggested, backing toward the living room. Daphne was working herself up again and I didn’t want to turn my back on her. “Would you like something to drink? Lemonade?”

“Audrey Faye’s death should have ended it,” she said, sending a chill up my spine. “Shouldn’t it?”

Her blue eyes studied my face, searching for an answer. She looked so young, her skin unwrinkled, a smattering of freckles saddling her nose. But the fixed intensity of her gaze was making me nervous. “Absolutely,” I said, backing away.

“And then that evil man with the camera. The gun was so loud! There was so much blood! I almost stepped in it.” She put her hands over her ears and scrunched her eyes closed as if to shut out the explosion.

I stared at her, horrified. She’d killed Audrey and Barnes. My pulse thrummed. “I’m going to wait for your parents outside,” I said.

A knock sounded on the door and I hurried toward it. A glance over my shoulder showed Daphne still standing in my bedroom, her hands clutching her ears like she would pull them off. Agent Dillon burst through the door, gun drawn, followed by two SEPD officers. Sizing up the situation, Dillon holstered his gun and drew me aside as the uniformed officers advanced into the bedroom. Daphne didn’t even look up until one of them put his hand on her shoulder. She docilely let them cuff her and lead her out, only asking as they reached the door, “Where’s my mom?”

I shivered and Dillon drew me close, hugging me against the solid warmth of his body. “She killed them,” I said into his shoulder. Despite my distress, a little tingle fluttered through me at the solid feel of his chest under my cheek. I arched back so I could see his face as I told him everything Daphne had said.

“Nice bra,” he said when I finished, stroking his hand down my bare back. His eyes glinted wickedly.

Zing! Electricity shot through me, warming my whole body. I jerked away. I’d completely forgotten I was shirtless. “You stay here,” I said, marching into the bedroom and closing the door. I leaned against it for a moment, breathing deeply. At least it was my nicest bra, pearly pink lace that wasn’t all stretched out and dingy like some of my others.

“Are you sure?” he called.

No. “Yes.” I fumbled in a drawer for a tee shirt and pulled it on, catching my breath when one of my stitches snagged on the fabric. I returned to the living room, hair disheveled, my eyes daring him to comment.

“They’ll have processed Daphne by the time I get back,” he said, all business now, although I caught the hint of a smile. “I’ll see what she has to say about what she told you. Her parents will be there, and I’m sure they’ll have a lawyer; it’ll be a mess.”

“This will get Darryl off the hook, right? Her confession?”

“
If
she confesses and
if
she has the details to back it up,” he cautioned. “Keep all this”—he gestured around my apartment, taking in everything that had happened—“under your hat. I’ll get back to you when I can, okay?”

Nodding, I walked him to the door. “Thanks for coming so quickly,” I said.

“Always.” He surprised me with a light kiss on top of my head and strode toward his car, parked askew with the front wheels on the sidewalk.

The sight of his car reminded me that my Fiesta was in Atlanta and I was late for my appointment with Kevin Faye.

MY FOREHEAD DRIPPED SWEAT AND MY CRISP SHIRT was as soggy as the Cap’n Crunch in the bottom of my cereal bowl by the time I biked the two miles to Faye’s office. He took one look at me and offered me a bottle of water. “Thanks,” I said, gulping thirstily, my hands cupped awkwardly around the bottle since the bike ride had inflamed my stitches. I sat in the same chair as before while he seated himself behind the desk.

He looked past me to the bike I had parked on the sidewalk. “What happened to your car?” he asked. “Or are you on some kind of exercise kick?”

I told him about the fire and about Daphne stealing my car. Mindful of Dillon’s warning, I left it at that.

He sat back in his chair when I finished, looking astonished. “Good heavens! I had no idea. I heard about the Oglethorpe burning, of course, but I didn’t know it was arson or that you were involved.”

“Please don’t say I was involved with arson.” I laughed. “I just happened to be there when the fire broke out.”

“That’s a little strange, isn’t it? That you just happened to be there?”

He gave me a funny look and I wondered if he thought I was behind the sabotage meant to derail his wife’s pageant. It didn’t matter; soon, everyone would know about Daphne.

I held up my hands in a surrender gesture. “Hey, I’m just trying to prove that—” I broke off, realizing that mentioning Darryl Michaelson, his wife’s lover, would not win me any sensitivity prizes. So instead of saying I was trying to prove Darryl innocent by finding the real killer—and had succeeded—I asked, “How many houses are we going to look at?”

“Four.” He passed a slim stack of printouts across the desk to me.

I scanned them eagerly, drawn in by the photos on each one. Three were ranch style while one looked like a small, two-story Victorian with carnation gingerbread along the eaves and gabled windows.

“I’ll tell you about them while we’re driving,” he said. “Ready?” He stood and jangled keys in his pocket.

We went around to the back of the strip mall where his black Mercedes was parked. A spatter of bird poop decorated the windshield. “Damn pigeons.” Faye stomped to the rear of the car. He got paper towels and a spray bottle of window cleaner from the trunk and scrubbed off the poop. I watched in silence, trying to remember the last time I’d even run my Fiesta through the car wash. March, maybe?

The interior of the car was equally pristine. I buckled my seat belt gingerly, afraid of leaving finger smudges on the metal tab. Keeping up a steady flow of conversation about current mortgage rates, the different kinds of loans, short sales, and foreclosures, Kevin Faye put the car in gear and drove to the first house, located on the south side of town, just a couple of blocks from the beach. The location sounded great and I wondered why the house would be in my price range. One sniff answered the question. The house reeked of cats and never-emptied litter boxes. I was sure the smell had soaked into the walls and flooring. We didn’t make it past the front hall.

The second house was more promising. Painted white, it had flower beds full of zinnias, sunflowers, and petunias fronting the house. “The owners are U.S. Navy—they got short-notice orders to Japan,” Kevin said, unlocking the front door, “and I think they’d take an offer ten thou under the asking price.”

I took notes as we walked through the small rooms, liking the light that flooded through windows on all sides of the house, but wary of what looked like an old water stain on the kitchen ceiling. When we left, Kevin had trouble with the lockbox and I wandered back to the Mercedes while he fought with it. The car was unlocked and I sat in the passenger seat with the door open, studying the printouts. Raucous
caw-caw
s and the beating of wings signaled the arrival of a flock of crows. Soaring low over the car, they settled by the sunflowers. I noticed that one of them had deposited a great white splat on the hood of the car. Since Kevin was still wrestling with the lockbox, I leaned over and punched the trunk button, thinking I’d clean it up before he saw it. I wasn’t sure the man’s blood pressure could withstand two such besmirchings in one day.

I had just reached the trunk when Kevin trotted down the porch steps. “Got it,” he said, then stopped dead. “What are you doing in my trunk?”

The cold snap of his voice startled me. “Nothing. I was going to get the Windex. A bird—”

“I knew you knew.” His voice was flat and his eyes glittered.

“Knew what?” I backed up a step as he marched toward me, his steps crisping in the sun-parched yard.

“You saw me in the theater that night. I knew it when I talked to you about Audrey’s death and you were so evasive. She was alive when you found her, wasn’t she? She told you.”

“She was dead. She didn’t say anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I did. He’d killed Audrey. I’d felt all along that Daphne wasn’t a murderer, but her jumbled words had sounded like a confession. The lethality radiating off Kevin Faye convinced me he’d done it.

He went on like I hadn’t said a word. “And then you tracked me down with this story about wanting to buy a house. Why me out of all the Realtors in town? Huh? I don’t know what your game is, why you haven’t told the police, but if you think you can blackmail me, you’re sadly mistaken. Like that Barnes character with his veiled threats on TV. I knew it was just a matter of time before he approached me, tried to bleed me.”

He slammed the trunk shut with an emphatic clang. “You didn’t find anything in there, did you? Did you think I’d be so stupid I wouldn’t clean it? I even replaced the carpet in case there might be some trace of blood from the clothes I wore that night. Get in.” A gun had appeared in his hand. I’d bet my down payment it was the gun that killed Sam Barnes. Kevin Faye kept it pulled in close to his body, hidden from any neighbors who might glance out their windows.

I evaluated my options. I could run—but not faster than a bullet. I could scream and hope someone called 911. I could comply and let him drive me to some out-of-the-way scrap of woods and put a bullet in me. I opened my mouth to scream and he said, “Don’t even think about it. If you make a scene, I’ll drive straight from here to your mother’s place and put a bullet through her while she’s blow-drying someone’s hair. I’ve got nothing to lose, so don’t try me. Get. In. The car.”

I believed him. I got in.