Close Neighbors

Actually, he knew why there was no husband. She was divorced. Rachel had learned that from the real estate woman—via their ex-neighbor. As for lack of a boyfriend, he was only guessing at that.

If there was one, though, surely he’d be here helping her settle in. Or she’d have said she had someone coming later to help her arrange the furniture. When women were unavailable, or not interested, they always let men know.

But why on earth had he started contemplating the status of Anne Barrett’s love life? He certainly had no ideas about…

No, definitely no ideas along those lines. Not with her or any other woman. Julie, Rachel and he might not add up to a standard household, but their living arrangement worked for all three of them. And…

Rachel. Despite his best efforts, his thoughts returned to the problem at hand. The serious, ugly problem.

He looked across the patio table at Anne again, deciding he would have a shot at telling her what kind of person his sister was. But before he could begin, the gate between the yards creaked. When he glanced over, Rachel was standing in the opening.

“Mind if I join the party?” she asked tentatively. “Julie’s gone next door to play with Becky for a while. But before she left, she told me what you were talking about.”

“My sister,” he said to Anne, even though she’d already have figured that out.

She smiled across the yard at Rachel, which, for some reason, made him feel a touch better about this damn situation.

“I’m Anne Barrett,” she was saying. “And you’re exactly what the party needs.”

While Rachel Nicholson started around the end of the pool, Anne tried to size her up without being totally transparent about it.

Six or seven years younger than her brother, somewhere in her mid-twenties, she had deep brown eyes the same rich chocolate shade as Chase’s. At the moment, there were dark shadows beneath them. That, along with her bleak expression, gave her an utterly stressed-out appearance.

At about Anne’s height, five foot five or six, and as slightly built, she certainly didn’t look like a woman who could wrestle control of a gun from a police detective. Of course, Chase’s caller hadn’t said she’d gotten control of it—only that it had gone off while she’d been trying to.

As Rachel neared the patio, Anne said, “I hope you don’t think I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but—”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I think at all. Julie explained that she came over because she figured you might be able to help. And if Chase thinks so, too…”

After shooting her brother an anxious glance, Rachel looked at Anne again. “I’ll really appreciate any advice you can give us. Chase and I were even wondering whether we should talk to a lawyer, but I guess he’s mentioned that.”

“I hadn’t quite gotten to it,” he told her.

“We were still trying to decide what you should do about the extortion call,” Anne said.

Not that it was actually a matter of deciding. Rather, it was a matter of convincing them to report it. All taking time to think had done was reassure her that was the only thing to do.

Of course, those detectives would wonder why Chase hadn’t phoned them last night. He was right about that. Still, he had to call them.

“Didn’t Chase tell you we’d already decided?” Rachel was saying uneasily. “We’re going to keep quiet about it.”

“Well…I understand why that seems like a reasonable idea, but—”

“Anne, the guy said he’d know if Chase talked to the police and—”

“Yes, I realize that’s what he said, but it’s awfully unlikely. How would he find out?”

“I think he’s a cop.”

The way Rachel said that, with conviction and not a second’s hesitation, told Anne she hadn’t arrived at the conclusion on the spur of the moment.

“There are all kinds of dirty cops,” she continued. “I probably sound paranoid, but I went with Graham for almost six months and I learned an awful lot about them.”

“I don’t think you sound paranoid,” Anne said honestly. “I was a P.I. for long enough to learn a lot about them, too.”

Rachel nodded, looking relieved. “Then you know the kind of scams they’ve got going. Now and then, Graham would tell me about some of them. And about how, if a cop has the right connections, he can find out pretty much whatever he wants. So when this guy says he’ll learn if Chase tells those detectives about the call, then I have to think that maybe he will.”

“I guess it’s possible.”

Anne hesitated, but she didn’t want Rachel thinking that by “possible” she meant “likely,” so she added, “The thing is, I have a problem with the idea of this guy in the park being a cop. Mugging just isn’t the sort of thing dirty cops are normally into.”

“But that doesn’t mean one of them can’t be. Or there could be more than one person involved. What if the mugger wasn’t a cop, but the guy who phoned Chase was? Maybe the mugger told him what had happened and the cop came up with the extortion plan.”

“No,” Anne said. “A mugging goes wrong and turns into a killing, then the killer admits this to a cop? That just doesn’t add up.”

“But…it might. If we’re talking about a crooked cop and a criminal who’ve worked together before. And maybe it was the mugger who came up with the extortion idea, but he realized he’d have a better chance of pulling it off if he had help. So he told the cop exactly what happened, then they came up with their plan to…” As her words trailed off, Rachel shook her head.

“Look,” she continued a moment later, “I know that doesn’t really add up, either. But when someone says that if Chase talks to the police about the phone call I’ll find myself framed for murder, it scares the hell out of me.”

“Well, that’s hardly surprising,” Anne told her. “And who knows? Maybe a cop is somehow involved.”

It must have been apparent that she was only trying to humor Rachel, because Chase said, “Rachel’s intuition is surprisingly good.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Then let’s assume there is a cop. Let’s even assume he could find out if Chase contacts those detectives.”

Rachel nodded for her to go on.

“After Chase has told them what the guy threatened to do, they’d hardly be surprised if the murder weapon turned up someplace that seemed to incriminate you. Or if it had been wiped clean. And they—”

“They might not be surprised,” Rachel interrupted, her voice quavering a little. “But it would give them one more piece of evidence against me. And even though everything they’ve got is circumstantial, if they end up with enough…”

“Everything?” Anne glanced at Chase, wondering what—and how much—he hadn’t told her.

“We didn’t really get beyond talking about the phone call,” he was saying to his sister. “That and what happened in the park. She doesn’t know about your clothes—yet.”

CHAPTER THREE

WHILE ANNE WAITED TO HEAR about Rachel’s “clothes,” Rachel sat looking as if that was the last topic in the world she wanted to discuss.

Finally, she said, “When Graham and I were arguing…Chase told you the details about that?”

“Everything you told me,” he said before Anne could reply.

“Well…my shorts got torn when I fell, and my top ended up with a grass stain on it. So I just pitched them in the garbage after I came home—didn’t even bother trying to get the stain out.

“Maybe that sounds like an overreaction,” she quickly added, “but I was really upset. And I knew that every time I looked at those clothes they’d remind me of how badly we’d ended things. Of course, I had no idea that Graham…So it just didn’t occur to me that anyone would care about what I’d had on. Not until those detectives asked.

“They said it was strictly routine, that they just wanted to have a look to verify my statement. But as soon as I started explaining that I’d thrown the things away, I knew they were thinking there’d been bloodstains on them. That…I killed Graham.”

“You mean your clothes weren’t still in the trash?” Anne said. “You couldn’t have dug them out and—”

“The garbage gets collected first thing Thursday mornings,” Chase told her. “It was picked up long before they arrived.”

“I see.” The more of this story she heard, the better she understood why the police would consider his sister a serious suspect.

“They wanted to look at the underwear I’d been wearing, too,” Rachel murmured. “They said that maybe there’d be a grass stain where my shorts tore or something.” She shook her head. “They might as well have just said that maybe some blood spatters had soaked through.”

“But at least you still had the underwear to show them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, only I’d washed it. I put a load in the machine before I went to bed on Wednesday. They were suspicious about that, too.”

Hardly surprising. Rachel seemed like an intelligent-enough woman that—if even a speck of Graham’s blood had gotten on her—she’d have disposed of every stitch she’d had on. And, for all the detectives knew, she could have shown them any underwear fresh from the wash.

But if she was guilty, if her clothes had actually been evidence that she’d killed Graham, why admit to throwing them out?

She’d have realized that would make the police suspicious. So why wouldn’t she have done the obvious? Produced clothes that looked similar to what she’d been wearing? Eyewitnesses were notoriously inaccurate, which meant that even if people had seen her in the park…

Chase had been home when she left, though. If she’d tried lying, he’d have known.

Anne glanced at him, remembering he’d also been there waiting when Rachel returned. If she’d arrived back with blood on her clothes, he could hardly have helped noticing. Which meant her story had to be true—unless there’d been only a few, inconspicuous, traces of blood. Or unless Chase was trying to help her cover up what she’d done.

That thought had barely formed before it was joined by another, even more disquieting, one. What if Chase had played a role in Graham’s death?

She licked her suddenly dry lips and surreptitiously looked at him again. She could almost feel his distress, but was he just worried about Rachel? Or was he afraid those detectives figured he might have been involved in the shooting?

He’d admitted going to the park. And she only had his say-so that he hadn’t found Rachel and Graham there. What if he actually had? While they’d been in the midst of their argument? Or maybe after Graham had pushed her down?

Of course, every one of those questions, and then some, would have occurred to the cops. They’d have suspected that Chase might have done a lot more than simply drive around—which was undoubtedly the real reason they’d questioned him at length.

Lord, for all she knew, she was sitting here with not one but two people who were at risk of being charged with murder.

Despite the warmth of the sun, she suddenly felt chilled. She’d barely met Chase and Rachel, knew virtually nothing about either of them. What if they were both lying to her?

She had to figure out whether they were, and to do that she needed more information, so she said to Rachel, “Why don’t you go over what else the detectives asked about. Aside from your clothes. Start at the beginning and try to remember everything.”

“Well…they wanted to know about my relationship with Graham. How long we’d been seeing each other and why we broke up. Then they had me go over what happened on Wednesday. Minute by minute, from the time I met him until I got back to my car.”

“All right, let’s hear what you told them.”

Rachel leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and began.

Her account proved to be a fill-in-the-blanks elaboration of Chase’s. Graham had wanted them to get back together. She’d said it wouldn’t work. That led to their argument, his shoving her and her leaving.

“The detectives already knew I’d fallen,” she continued. “At least they knew someone had. The crime-scene team established that the leaves had been disturbed not far from his body.”

She took a deep breath, then added, “That means he was killed right in the clearing where I left him. And every time I think about that I wonder whether he’d still be alive if I hadn’t just walked away.”

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Chase said quietly. “You had no way of knowing anything would happen.”

When Anne glanced at him, his dark eyes were filled with concern. It seemed genuine enough to make her almost certain that he knew nothing about what had happened in the park except what his sister had told him.

But her father’s voice was whispering in her ear, saying, Never trust a brown-eyed man, darling.

It was one of the bits of advice he’d been giving her since he’d first realized she was noticing boys—always delivering the line straight-faced, waiting a beat, then adding, And never trust a blue-eyed one, either.

Turning her mind back to the moment, she focused on Rachel again. “If Graham was killed right in that clearing,” she said, mentally sorting through her thoughts as she spoke, “it couldn’t have happened long after you left. He wouldn’t have just stayed standing where he was indefinitely.”

“It was after I got back to my car and drove off, though. Because I didn’t hear the shot.”

“A few people in the park did,” Chase interjected.

“And none of them investigated?”

“No. According to the news, they all assumed it was a car backfiring. Maybe, if there’d been more than one…”

“Maybe,” she agreed, still wondering exactly what the truth was. “How long did it take to walk back to your car?” she asked Rachel.

“Only three or four minutes.”

That added up. Someone lurking in the trees wouldn’t have stepped out the moment she left the clearing. He’d have held off for a bit, in case she decided to come back, before confronting Graham.

Then the encounter between the two men would have taken a little time. So Rachel could easily have been gone before…The question was, had she been?

“After you finished telling the detectives what happened in the park,” she said, “where did the interview go from there?”

Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “They touched on a couple of other things, then they came right out and asked if I’d killed Graham.”

The air turned deathly still. Even the aspens ceased their rustling, as if breathlessly waiting for the tale to continue.

Anne waited, as well. Then, when the silence grew uncomfortable, she said, “You know, asking if you killed him and actually believing you did are two different things. People almost never answer yes to a question like that, even if they’re guilty. But the police always ask. To see what reaction they get. Sometimes, it tells them a lot.”

“My reaction was that I started to cry,” Rachel murmured. “I knew there was no way Graham and I should get back together, but I was still a little in love with him. And even though I was awfully angry the other night…” She paused to wipe away a few tears that were making good their escape, then shook her head as more began to flow.

Her distress reminded Anne what she’d liked least about being a private investigator—having to press people who were so emotionally fragile they shouldn’t be forced to answer questions.

And when it came to Rachel, not only was she upset about Graham’s murder, she knew she was a suspect. That would be more than enough to induce emotional fragility. Regardless of whether she was innocent or guilty.

PEERING THROUGH A CRACK in the gate, Julie watched Rachel cry and tried to keep from crying herself. It was hard to do, now that she knew things were even worse than she’d realized.

When she’d asked Daddy if the police thought Rachel had killed Graham, he’d tried to make it sound as if they didn’t. Not really, at least. But they must. ’Cuz a minute ago, just as she was reaching for the latch, she’d heard Rachel say the detectives came right out and asked her if she’d done it.

After hearing that, Julie just hadn’t been able to open the gate until she’d heard a little more. Then Anne had started saying that maybe the police asking wasn’t as bad as it seemed. And that hadn’t been a good time to interrupt, ’cuz she’d wanted to hear why Anne thought it wasn’t so bad.

But after Anne was finished, Rachel had started crying, and she never liked anyone to see her cry, ‘specially Julie, so—

Her thoughts stopped dead as a wasp zoomed past her nose and began to hover midair, directly above the plate she was carrying. Rats! She should have put plastic wrap on it.

Slowly, she took a step backward. The wasp stayed right with her, only an inch above the sandwiches.

Okay, what should she do? If she stepped forward again and reached for the latch, she might get stung. But if she didn’t, the wasp was going to land. And she could never, ever, not in a zillion years, eat food a wasp had walked on.

Deciding, she called, “Dad? Dad, come open the gate. Fast! But be careful ’cuz there’s a wasp.”

A chair scraped across Anne’s patio; a second later she could see her father heading for the fence.

“Careful,” she said again, as he neared it.

He cautiously opened the gate, then slowly brushed at the air in front of the wasp. It was a trick she’d never dare try, but it sometimes made them back off. When it did this time, she stopped holding her breath.

“I came home from Becky’s ’cuz it was getting near lunchtime,” she explained as he took the plate from her. “But when I looked out from the kitchen you were all sitting there talking. So I made sandwiches and was gonna call you. Then I thought that maybe Anne didn’t have any food in her house, so I made an extra one. That was okay, huh?”

“Of course,” he said as they started toward the patio. “It was very thoughtful. Hope you like peanut butter and jelly,” he added to Anne.

“One of my favorites.”

“It’s grape jelly,” Julie told her, pretending not to notice the way Rachel was wiping her eyes. “And crunchy peanut butter.”

“Mmm. That’s the best combination going.” Anne gave her a friendly smile, then pushed back her chair and said, “I’ll go get us something to drink.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure. You’ll know what everyone would like. Not that I have much to choose from yet, but…” She shrugged and smiled again, then turned toward the house.

Julie followed along inside, not letting herself look back at Rachel.

“A mess, isn’t it.” Anne gestured toward a stack of cartons.

“Kind of. But that’s okay when you just moved in.”

“I guess. Orange juice, iced tea or water,” she added, checking the fridge.

“Ah…juice for me. And iced tea for Dad and Rachel. Please,” she added, remembering her manners.

“Coming right up.” Anne took the two pitchers from the fridge and set them on the counter. “Now, if I can just find some glasses…”

“Anne?”

“Yes?” She looked up from the carton she’d stooped to open.

“You’re gonna be able to help Rachel, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Promise?”

Anne sat back on her haunches and met Julie’s gaze. “Didn’t I promise earlier?”

“I thought you might have forgotten.”

“No, I take promises very seriously. Rachel hasn’t finished telling me the whole story, though, so I’m still not sure she really needs my help. But whether she does or not, I’ll bet everything’s going to be just fine.”

Julie nodded, thinking “everything’s going to be just fine” were the exact same words her father had used this morning. But what if both he and Anne were wrong?

That possibility made her eyes sting and her throat hurt. She didn’t know what she’d do if the police put Rachel in jail.

Looking at Anne again, she reminded herself that Penelope Snow didn’t really solve all the mysteries in her books. Anne did. So maybe everything would be fine.

“You know what?” she said.

“No, what?”

“Rachel always says that if something’s scary to think about, you should just not let yourself think about it.”

“You mean like noises in the night?”

Even though it wasn’t exactly what she meant, she nodded.

Anne smiled. “Well, that sounds like pretty good advice to me. But here, I haven’t got a clue where to find a tray, so you take a couple of these glasses, okay?”

“Sure.”

She followed Anne back outside, feeling way better. For the whole rest of the day, if even one single thought about anything awful happening to Rachel snuck into her head, she was just going to chase it straight back out.

CHASE DRAINED THE LAST of his iced tea and glanced at his daughter. The sooner Rachel told Anne the rest of the details, the sooner they’d find out just how bad she thought things were. But they certainly couldn’t pick up where they’d left off in front of Julie.

She popped the final bite of sandwich into her mouth, gazed longingly at the pool for a moment, then focused on Anne. “Are we still going swimming?”

“Sure. But we have to wait for a while, don’t we?” she added, glancing at Chase.

He nodded. “For an hour.”

“D-a-a-d, that’s only when it’s a big lake.”

“Really? You mean they changed the rules without telling me?”

Julie grinned. “I guess.”

“I don’t think so,” Rachel told her. “But by the time you go home and change…”

“I hear you’ve got a friend who lives right next door,” Anne said.

“Uh-huh. My best friend. Her name’s Becky.”

“Well, why don’t you see if she’d like a swim, too.”

Way to go, Anne, Chase thought. Every minute longer that Julie was gone gave them another minute to finish talking.

“Take the plate home, hon,” Rachel said as Julie pushed back her chair.

“Aren’t you and Dad coming, too? Aren’t you going to change?”

“Later,” Chase told her.

He waited until she’d disappeared behind the gate, then looked at his sister. “Let’s see how fast we can finish filling Anne in.”

“You’re feeling up to talking again?” she asked Rachel.

“Uh-huh, the sugar hit from that jelly helped a lot. So what else should I tell you?”

“Well…let’s hear exactly what the detectives asked you about Graham’s gun. Chase said they wanted to know whether he had it with him.”

“Yes, and I told them I didn’t think so. That if he did, I wasn’t aware of it. But I’m not sure they believed me.”

“Why not?”

“Because the next thing they asked was if I knew how to use it. That was just before they asked me if I’d killed him,” she added, staring at a patio stone.

Anne glanced at Chase.

He nodded that she should continue. He doubted Rachel was as up to talking as she wanted them to think, but Anne couldn’t help unless she had the rest of the facts.

“And do you know how to use a gun?” she asked quietly.

“Uh-huh. Graham taught me to shoot. He used to take me to the police target range with him.”

Chase couldn’t stop himself from checking Anne’s reaction to that.

He’d already realized she wasn’t very good at concealing her thoughts—especially considering she’d been a P.I.—and at the moment he could tell precisely what she was thinking. Learning that Rachel knew how to handle a gun would only have made those detectives more convinced she was their killer.

After a few seconds of silence, she said, “Rachel, let’s talk about the would-be extortionist for a minute. You didn’t even think Graham was carrying his gun, yet this guy claimed Graham drew it while you were still there, and—”

“I explained what we figure about that,” Chase reminded her. “He needed a story he could threaten to tell the police, and that’s what he decided on.”

“There’s no truth to the gun part at all,” Rachel said, her voice catching a little. “Graham didn’t draw his gun while I was with him, I didn’t wrestle him for it and I didn’t, didn’t kill him. Anne, everything happened exactly the way I told you.”

When she murmured “I know it did,” Chase wondered if she was actually convinced. No matter how many times he assured himself that the “evidence” against his sister was entirely circumstantial, he knew how things must look to an outsider.