LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded, wiping at her eyes one last time with the increasingly large wad of crumpled tissues she held in one hand. “Teddy’s birthday. One—two—four—three. I’m sorry I’m bailing on you guys…”

      “You’re not bailing,” Jade assured her. “We know where to find you when we need you. Besides, you and Sam are going to work the bride case together, right? We’ll meet here every night to talk over what we’ve done each day—eight o’clock good for everyone? Good,” she said, not waiting for anyone to answer. “So just go now and get your clothes. I’ll wait until five and then call for a pizza delivery at six, so be back by then. Sam? Does the guy at the gate like pizza?”

      “Probably. With or without the box,” Sam said, visions of Jade running his life poking at his brain and making him spare a moment’s pity for his cousin Court. Then again, Courtland Becket always liked to be in charge, the go-to man. It might be considered a success that his and Jade’s marriage had lasted a full six months. “Do either of you want anything else from the house while we’re there?”

      “See if Teggy as marcus.” Jessica removed the pencil from her teeth. “Sorry. Could you check in Teddy’s office, see if he’s got markers? You know, highlighter pens? Stupid, but I have a system when I work, and that includes highlighters. Pink would be nice, but I’ll use yellow in a pinch.”

      “Pink highlighters,” Sam repeated. “Got it.” He put his hand on Jolie’s waist. “Ready to go?”

      But Jolie just stood there, staring into the middle distance, every muscle in her body taut. “Jade?” she asked quietly. “When you got home the night you found—when you got home? Was the alarm engaged?”

      Jade shook her head. “Sorry, honey, I see where you’re going, but that won’t work. We need the code to shut off the alarm after we enter the house, but anyone can just push the set button on the way out and arm the alarm again. The cops say suicide in a locked house. We can say Teddy let his murderer in and the killer just set the alarm again before he left. We can say Teddy turned off the alarm, which he’s been known to do, so that the killer entered the house without Teddy knowing it. Face it—a man who insists on using his birth date for a code isn’t really taking the alarm system seriously in the first place, as I always told him. Any scenario works, but the cops bought the suicide version.”

      “You should change the code in any case,” Sam pointed out, feeling himself being drawn into this whole murder/suicide conspiracy thing. Much against his will, not to mention his better judgment. “If you’re right, that is, and Teddy let his murderer into the house that night. Even if you still need a key for the front door, the guy could—”

      “The perp,” Jessica interrupted brightly. “If we’re going to play private dicks, let’s use the snappy lingo, okay? You’re a guy, Sam. The killer is a perp.” Her smile faded slightly. “Besides, I’m having trouble thinking Teddy and killer in the same thought. Somehow perp is easier.”

      “All right, the perp,” Sam conceded. “If there was a perp, and Teddy admitted said perp to the premises, said perp may have seen Teddy punch in the code. In other words, ladies, change the damn code, all right?” He looked to Jade because he wasn’t stupid, he recognized the pecking order in their little group: Jade, Jessica, Jolie and, fourth, finishing out of the money, himself. “Jade? We agree on this?”

      “Hmm?” she said, blinking as she looked at him. “Sorry. I was trying again to remember if the alarm was on or not that night or even if the door was locked. Teddy was so lax about setting the alarm. In fact, to get real about the thing, if it was on, that alone would be unusual. I just can’t remember if it was engaged or not. As for the front door lock? I always use my key, but that doesn’t mean the door was locked when I put the key in, you know? I think I’ll take Rockne for a walk in the garden, if nobody minds. I have to go think about this, mentally retrace my steps. If it was on, that might tell us for certain that Teddy was killed—not that I’m questioning that…”

      Sam looked at Jessica, who was making notes on a scrap of paper and totally ignoring everyone, and then glared at Jolie. “Humor me. Change…the damn…code.”

      “We will,” Jolie promised as she headed for the front door. “You want to explain to me why you’d think the murderer would come back?”

      “If I had all the answers, sweetheart,” he told her as he opened the car door for her, “I’d be king of the world. I’m basing my concern solely on books and TV shows wherein the murderer—excuse me, the perp—always returns to the scene of the crime. Like it’s part of their job description.”

      Jolie buckled herself in as he started the car. “So you’re going along with us? You’re willing to believe Teddy was murdered?”

      Sam put the transmission into gear and the car pretty much on autopilot as he headed toward the Sunshine family home in nearby Ardmore. “I just walked in on this earlier today, Jolie, and haven’t had much time to think about anything but the moment following the one that just preceded it.”

      “Our fault, I know. The Sunshine girls invaded, and you haven’t had much chance to do anything but listen to us rant and rave. So think about it now, Sam. Do you think Teddy was capable of suicide—for any reason? I really do want your opinion.”

      “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

      A minute later Jolie gave him a soft punch in the arm. “Out loud, Sam. Think about it out loud.”

      “All I seem to be doing today is taking orders.All right. Teddy was one of the most alive people I ever met. That’s one. He loved you three girls more than anything else in the world, and I can’t see him taking the coward’s way out of trouble, leaving you three behind to clean up his mess—and I mean that in any way imaginable. Whatever trouble he might have been in couldn’t have been more important to him than…well, he had to have known Jade would be the one to find him. So, no, Jolie. I can’t see Teddy doing something like that to Jade, no matter how much distress he might have been under at the time.”

      Jolie nodded, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “That’s what Jade kept telling the police. Teddy wouldn’t have done that to her. He would have gone somewhere private, away from the house. Somewhere someone else would find the…find the body. And he would have left a note, too. Explaining what he did, why he did it. He would have apologized, told us that…told us that he loved us.”

      This was something new to Sam. He looked across the car at Jolie. “He didn’t leave a note?”

      “No. Nothing. Jade said there was an almost empty bottle of Irish whiskey on the desk. An overturned glass on the floor across the room, as if he’d flung it away from him. That’s how Jade described it, anyway. The case Teddy kept his old service revolver in was on the desk, too, open, the key beside it. The gun was on the floor next to him, two shots fired.”

      Sam nearly ran off the road as he looked over at Jolie. “Two? Two shots?”

      Jolie sighed, nodded. “According to the police, the first was a test shot to see if he really had the nerve to pull the trigger. A lot of people do that, supposedly. They dug that shot—slug?—out of the floor. But there was no note. Not in his handwriting, not on his computer.”

      Sam turned onto the street where the Sunshine family lived ina small Georgian-style brick two-story house and slowed the car to a crawl when he saw a nondescript blue van parked at the curb.

      “Only one still sticking around, Jolie,” he said, looking at the blond man sitting on the second of two steps that led up to a long cement walkway and another half flight of steps that ended on the front porch of the house. He had one shoe off and was rubbing at his foot. “Looks like my new friend from the cemetery. And he’s trespassing. What do you want to do?”

      Jolie leaned forward in her seat, lowering her sunglasses and squinting into the sun. “Oh, God. It’s Gary Tuttle.”

      “I should recognize the name? I mean, I did run over his foot.”

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