To Die For Read online

  I washed off in the ladies’ restroom, using paper towels to scrub the dried blood off my face and out of my hair as best I could. I have no idea how blood from a nosebleed got in my hair, but it was there. I had blood in my ears, behind my ears, on my neck, my arms—and another bra was ruined, damn it! I even had blood on my feet.

  There was a small cut across the bridge of my nose, and both cheekbones were red and swollen. I suspected I would have two black eyes in the morning. I also suspected I would have so many other aches and pains that I wouldn’t care about a black eye, or eyes.

  Wyatt hadn’t found my bag, so I didn’t have my cell phone. The bag had to be in the car . . . somewhere . . . and the car was in the police lot, secured behind a locked fence. The forensics team had gone over the car there at the scene, at least the exterior, so the wrecker could haul it in without destroying any evidence. They would do their best to check out the interior, too, and Wyatt said they’d find my bag then. I could do without everything that was in it, except my wallet and checkbook. Having to replace all my credit cards, my driver’s license, insurance cards and all the others, would be a pain, so I hoped they found it.

  I hadn’t called Mom yet, because telling her someone had tried to kill me—again—was infinitely worse than telling her I’d been in an accident.

  The cops kept bringing me stuff to drink and eat. I guess, having heard tales of the cookie situation on Sunday, they thought I needed sustenance. One woman, who looked stern and businesslike in her blue uniform and with her hair tightly braided, brought me a bag of microwave popcorn and apologized because she didn’t have anything sweet to offer. I drank coffee. I drank Diet Coke. I was offered chewing gum, and cheese crackers. Potato chips. Peanuts. I ate the peanuts and the popcorn, and refused everything else or I’d have been bloated. They did not, however, offer me the one thing I was waiting for. Excuse me, but just where were the doughnuts??? This was a cop station, for crying out loud. Everyone knows cops eat doughnuts. Of course, considering it was now lunchtime, probably the doughnuts were long gone.

  The officer, Adams, who had been the primary accident-scene investigator, went over the sequence of events at length with me. He had me draw diagrams. He drew diagrams. I got bored and drew smiley faces, too.

  They were keeping me occupied, of course. I knew that. It was probably on Wyatt’s orders, so I wouldn’t be tempted to interfere in Dwayne Bailey’s interrogation, as if I would. Hard as it may be to believe, I know when to butt out. Wyatt, however, evidently had doubts.

  Around two, Wyatt came to collect me. “I’m taking you to your place to get cleaned up and your clothes changed; then I’m taking you to your mom’s for right now. It’s a good thing your bags are still packed, because you’re going back to my house with me.”

  “Why?” I asked as I got to my feet. I’d been sitting in his chair, at his desk, making a list of everything I needed to do. Wyatt frowned a little when he saw the list and turned it around so he could read it. His brow cleared when he realized the list wasn’t about him.

  “Bailey swears he didn’t touch your car,” he said. “He says he doesn’t even know where you live, and that he has an alibi for his time from Thursday night on. MacInnes and Forester are checking things out, but just to be on the safe side, we’re going back to Plan A, which is keep you hidden.”

  “Bailey is here, right? Is he under arrest?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “He’s in custody, but he isn’t under arrest. We can hold him for a little while without officially filing charges against him.”

  “Well, if he’s here, then who am I hiding from?”

  He regarded me soberly. “Bailey’s the most obvious person—if the sabotage was done before yesterday and he didn’t tell us about the car because then we’d figure he was the shooter on Sunday and the car was just another attempt to kill you. On the other hand, if his alibi checks out, then we have to consider that someone else is trying to kill you and used this opportunity while someone else had the motive for doing it. We had this conversation the night Ms. Goodwin was murdered, but we need to have it again—have you been in an argument with anyone?”

  “You,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Other than me.”

  “No. Believe it or not, I don’t get in many arguments. You’re the exception.”

  “Lucky me,” he muttered.

  “Hey. How many people have you had arguments with in the past month, other than me?” I asked indignantly.

  He rubbed his face. “Good point. All right, let’s get moving. I’m having your ex-husband interviewed, too, by the way.”

  “Jason? Why?”

  “It struck me as a little odd that he’d call you like that, after five years of no contact at all. I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “But why would Jason try to kill me? It isn’t as if he’s the beneficiary of any insurance policy I have, or that I know anything he wouldn’t want—” I stopped, because I did know something about Jason that would hurt his political career—and I had the picture to prove it. He didn’t know I had the picture, though, and I wasn’t the only one who knew he was a cheating scumbag.

  Wyatt’s eyes had that hard, piercing cop look. “What?” he said. “What do you know?”

  “It can’t be that I know about him cheating on me,” I said. “That doesn’t make sense. For one thing, I haven’t said anything for five years, so why would he all of a sudden get worried about it? And I’m not the only person who knows, so bumping me off wouldn’t accomplish anything.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Mom. Siana and Jenni. Dad knows Jason cheated; Mom eventually told him that much, but he doesn’t know any specifics. The women he cheated with certainly know. Probably his family. And it isn’t as if knowledge that he cheated on his first wife, over five years ago and with someone who isn’t his current wife, would wreck his political career. Dent it, maybe, but not wreck it.” Now, if it were generally known that he’d been caught coming on to my seventeen-year-old sister, that would wreck his career, because that put him in the category of pervert.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. Anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.” Like I said, Jason didn’t know I had copies of those pictures, so I was safe on that count. “Anyway, Jason isn’t violent.”

  “I thought you said he threatened to trash your car. To me, this is definitely in the same ballpark.”

  “But that was five years ago. And he threatened to trash my car if I went public about him cheating on me. He was running for the state legislature at the time, so that would definitely have hurt him. And to be fair, he only did that when I threatened to go public on him if he didn’t give me everything I wanted in the divorce settlement.”

  Wyatt tilted his head back and surveyed the ceiling. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because you’re a smart man,” I said, and patted his butt.

  “Okay, if you don’t think it’s your ex-husband—I’m going to check him out anyway—do you have any other ideas?”

  I shook my head. “Dwayne Bailey has the only reason I can think of.”

  “C’mon, Blair. Think.”

  “I am thinking!” I said in exasperation.

  He was getting exasperated, too. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. “Then think harder. You’re a cheerleader; there must be hundreds of people who’d like to kill you.”

  Chapter

  Twenty

  My resultant shriek stopped the hum of voices that came from outside his closed office door. “You take that back!”

  “All right, all right. Pipe down,” he muttered. “Shit. I take it back.”

  “No you don’t. You meant it.” As a rule of thumb, you never let a man take something back on the first attempt. Section three, paragraph ten, of the Southern Women’s Code states that if one (meaning a man) is going to be a shithead, one must pay for it.

  “I didn’t mean it. I’m just frustrated.” He rea