Colleen shook her head. “I don’t have a great feeling about this.”
“I don’t either but better to open it and find out.”
Colleen fished out her cell. “Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Disaster.” Colleen had grown up in a well-to-do family who’d been more amused than encouraging of her decision to attend law school. Her mother expected her to abandon the law and marry well. Colleen, with no eye toward a society life, had agreed to cast her lot with Rachel after a chance meeting in law school. Though Rachel admired her friend’s drive, she still laughed at the sheltered upbringing.
“I think we’ll be fine.” Rachel sliced into the top layer of tape until the top flaps separated and opened. Despite brave words, Rachel held her breath as she peeled back the flaps. Both women studied the popcorn-filled box. Rachel flexed her fingers and then dug them into the popcorn. Colleen tensed.
“Snake!” Rachel screamed and jerked out her hand.
Colleen screamed and backed up a step. She had trembling fingers as she dialed. “I’m calling the cops! Are you bleeding?”
Rachel laughed and waggled all her fingers. “Sorry. Bad joke. Couldn’t resist.”
Colleen hugged out a breath. “Bitch.”
“Guilty.” She pulled out a stack of letters, bound by a faded red ribbon. The letters were in creamy envelopes yellowed and curled with age.
“Letters,” Colleen said as she put her phone away. “At least it wasn’t a snake or a bomb.”
Rachel laughed. “You didn’t really think it was a snake, did you?”
“Maybe not a snake but definitely a bomb.”
Rachel undid the ribbon and carefully set it aside. She lifted the first letter and unfolded it. “It begins with, Sugar, you make my heart sing.”
“A love letter? Why would someone send you old love letters?”
Rachel studied the soft fluid handwriting, so precise and lovely. “I’ve no idea.”
“Looks old.”
“The paper feels brittle.”
“Who wrote the letter?”
Rachel flipped over the first page. Her heart lurched. “It’s from A.”
“A. As in Annie? As in Annie Rivers Dawson?”
A chill oozed over Rachel’s spine. “I don’t know.” She started reading the letter out loud.
October 13
Sugar!
You made me laugh today. Not a snigger or a giggle but a belly-clutching laugh! And that was a complete shock. I’d expected you to be stuffy and humorless but you had me giggling all the way home.
“Damn,” Colleen said. “If A. is the Annie in question who is Sugar?”
“I don’t know.”
“Annie was married at the time of her death.”
“I’ve not dug deeply into her past. I’ve read police reports but I couldn’t tell you much about her as a person.”
Colleen held the yellowed envelopes to her nose. “Lavender.” She scanned the text. “The gal who wrote this sounds pretty fun-loving.”
“Makes sense from what I did read about Annie. She was a singer who left her small Tennessee town to hit it big.”
Colleen held up the envelope, letting the light shine through the thin paper. “Who gave up that career and settled into a routine life.”
“She got pregnant. That changed a lot, I suppose.”
“What happened to Annie’s baby after she died?”
“Again, I need to find out. I’ve been focused on Jeb and getting the DNA and I’ve not had time to dig.”
Carefully, Colleen refolded the letter. “There’s no sense until you get the DNA back. Not like you’ve lots of Nancy Drew time in your docket.”
“Right.” Rachel dropped her gaze to the letter and reread it. “There’s a month and day but no year. And A. doesn’t necessarily stand for Annie.”
“Yeah, but why send you old letters from another woman?”
“To throw me off. To mess with me. You’d be surprised what people do.”
A frown wrinkled Colleen’s forehead briefly. “But if your Annie wrote these letters, we know it’s at least thirty years old. And I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know Sugar’s identity.”
Rachel held the sheet of paper up and studied the faded pigment and the slightly yellowed edges. “That would be huge if the letters were written by Annie. A voice from the past.”
“A peek into her private life.”
Rachel wanted the letters to be real but feared to hope. “Why send them to me?”
“Why not you? You landed right in the center of the case last night on the news.” Colleen cocked a brow. “Let’s face it, no one stayed up all night, forging letters on thirty-year-old paper. Even for you, that’s a bit of a conspiracy theory.”
Rachel pulled her finger over the neat stack but didn’t read another.
“Aren’t you going to read them?”
“I need to put on rubber gloves before I photograph these. If these letters are real then I don’t want my fingerprints smeared over them. How do you think it will look if I turn these in to the police? They’ll be dismissed by virtue of the messenger.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Cops distrust by nature. I’ve irritated more than a few with this case. These letters delivered by my hand would raise questions.” Had she touched a nerve with someone yesterday? She feared to hope. “And these letters could be fake. Old doesn’t mean Annie wrote them.”
Colleen rolled her eyes and raised her hand. “Let’s suppose they are real, for argument’s sake.”
“Fine.”
“We’ve established you are the center of this brewing storm.”
“Yeah.”
“Whoever sent them to you must believe in what you are doing,” Colleen said. “Maybe they have information you don’t and want to help.”
“Or they sent fake letters to me hoping I’d take them to the cops and then be discredited.”
Colleen winced. “Cynical.”
“To the bone.” Rachel rubbed her sore jaw knowing she’d be reaching for aspirin soon. “The question is why send the letters to me? And who sent them?”
“I don’t see Margaret Miller sending the letters to you. She’s not on your side.”
“No.”
“The letters are addressed to Sugar. Maybe someone out there knows Sugar’s real name. Maybe Sugar killed Annie.”
The idea had merit, but her mind jumped to the worst-case scenario. “Jeb could have been Sugar.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Annie was beautiful and her eyes were set on the big-time. What good would it do her to love a handyman with an eighth-grade education?”
Rachel laughed. “That’s kind of a cold way of looking at love. What happened to the heart wants what it wants?”
“That’s for saps,” Colleen said. “What little I do know about Annie is that she was a woman with ambition. She wouldn’t saddle herself with a man who barely had a hundred dollars to his name.”
“So cold.”
“Practical.”
Rachel reached for her cell. “I need to photograph them and then I’ll send them off to be authenticated. If Annie didn’t write them, then Sugar doesn’t matter. And if they are real I need to be able to prove it to the cops.”
“Whom are you sending them to?”
“There’s a private detective I know.” She turned to her desk and flipped through the large Rolodex until she reached the name Lexis Hanover. “She helped me with my brother’s case and I helped her with a legal case last summer. She’s good at what she does and I trust her.” She plucked the card free and reached for the phone. “She did all the work for Luke pro bono.”
“Why?”
“Mumbling about paying it forward, but I sensed there was more. I never pressed.” The ink of Rachel’s law degree had barely been dry. She’d been trying to look and sound like a seasoned lawyer when she’d petitioned the court for her brother’s retrial. Four years’ di
stance from that day and she cringed at her naive bravado in the face of the judge’s dismissive attitude and denial.
Lexis had been in the courtroom and approached her later. “I can help.”
“Why?”
“I like your spirit and despite a sloppy presentation you made good points. Let me ask around.”
“I don’t have money.”
“Not asking for any. Someone did me a favor once and now I’ll do one for you. Like paying it forward.”
Rachel had been suspicious, but also desperate and so she’d taken Lexis’s card and soon sent her Luke’s files. To her astonishment Lexis had helped, found key leads that had given Rachel the ammo she needed for a retrial. And then Luke had been murdered in prison. Now Rachel had a chance to pay Lexis back again. She dialed. “Lexis knows handwriting and if these are fake she’ll tell me.”
“You’re going to need a baseline, won’t you?”
“Lexis figures all that out.”
Rachel neared the Vanderbilt University arches in her car when her cell rang. Distracted by her mission she picked up the phone without glancing at the number.
“Rachel Wainwright?”