“Luke being your brother?”
“Yes.”
No happy endings for the Wainwrights. But then they were few and far between. “Lexis did a good deed for you. What were you two working on now?”
“That’s confidential.” She tugged at a loose thread at the corner of her pocket.
Rachel shook her head. “I left a note on my front door.” Lexis, I’m running. Back in a half-hour. If you’ve got the letters, I’d love to talk. “The note was gone when I got home.”
“I’m betting the someone who attacked you used it to find Lexis.”
A tear trickled down her cheek but he couldn’t summon pity. “Someone killed her. Brutally. And this nut also beat another woman to death. Tell me what the hell was going on between you two.” His voice rose to a shout that reverberated off the walls.
She twisted the thread around her finger until it cut into the skin. “After my media sensation the other night, someone must have been paying attention to what I was saying about Jeb Jones and the DNA.”
He folded arms over his chest, waiting to see how much of the truth she’d spit out this time.
“I also mentioned Annie Rivers Dawson, as you remember. It was the mention of her name that caught her sister’s attention.”
He wondered if the woman could answer a question outright without weighing each word. Natural suspicion combined with a law degree equaled passive sentences conveying little. He waited.
“I received a hand-delivered package the day after the vigil. Courier sent it. I later checked and found out the sender had paid in cash and the company had no record of who paid for the delivery.”
“What was in the package?”
“Letters.”
He leaned toward her a fraction, frustration reverberating from every muscle. “Jesus, would you stop being an attorney for a second and tell me. It’s like pulling teeth, Rachel.”
“I don’t trust cops.”
“Figured that much out. Talk.”
The words hitched in her throat. “The letters appeared to have been written by Annie Rivers Dawson.”
“What?”
“I know. It sounds crazy that thirty-year-old letters would be delivered to my doorstep. I read them and wasn’t sure what to make of them. They were compelling.”
“Why didn’t you bring them to me?”
A half smile tugged the edge of her mouth. “Right, give the potentially winning hand to you, the guy who stonewalls at every turn.”
“I don’t stonewall. I have no answers to give.”
“So you say.”
He held up his hand, annoyance shooting through his body. “You are the definition of trust issues.” When she arched an unapologetic brow, he asked, “What did you do with the letters?”
“I gave them to Lexis to authenticate. One of her talents is handwriting analysis. I hoped she could tell me if they were real or not.”
“When did you give her the letters?”
“Tuesday. She was supposed to call me last night. She sent me an email, which I didn’t see until today.” Before he could prompt her to finish she said, “It said she wanted to read and study the letters a little longer. Her first impression was that they were real but something bothered her. And before you ask, she did not say what that was. She said to stay tuned. I’d planned to call her today.”
This explained the visit to Margaret. “Did you have a sample of Annie’s handwriting?”
“She’d said she’d find one.” Suddenly, her shoulders slumped as the weight of Lexis’s death settled deeper. “I can’t believe she’s dead. She was the smartest woman I knew. No one fooled her.”
“She had her thirty-eight in her hand. But the killer knocked it out before she could fire.”
More tears streaked down her cheeks and she quickly swiped them away as if ashamed. He gave her a moment to collect herself.
“Did you keep copies of the letters?”
A conspirator’s look darkened her watery gaze. “What do you think?”
“I think you are a paranoid control freak who wouldn’t have let the letters out of your sight without keeping copies.”
“I not only kept copies but I didn’t give her all the originals. Didn’t want to toss all my apples into one basket.”
“Always thinking, aren’t you?”
“I try.” She moved toward her desk and opened the third drawer. She removed a file folder. “These are copies of the letters.”
“And the other originals?” He took the file, opened it and scanned the neatly written handwriting. The first line of the first letter caught his attention. “Sugar! . . .”
“Locked in my safe.”
He waited for her to retrieve the letters but when she didn’t move he scratched his head as if plagued by a puzzle. “Do I have to get a warrant? Do we have to make this ugly?”
She shook her head. “Normally, I’d say, hell yes. Take your best shot. But not this time. This time I want you to find the guy who killed Lexis.” She moved to a wall. She pressed several boards and a door popped open to a safe with a combination lock. Several turns of the dial and the lock opened. She removed a yellowed stack of letters.
Rachel held them close. “There were twenty letters in the original packet. I gave them to Lexis. You have ten originals here, plus copies of the missing ones. You now know all that I know.”
As he studied her pale, direct eyes, he sensed the truth.
She held out the letters.
He took them, watching as she shoved a shaking hand through her hair. “Thanks.”
“You said she was beaten.”
“It was rough, Rachel. No way to get around that. I don’t know what’s driving this nut but there’s a hell of a lot of pent-up rage.”
As she spoke her voice broke, forcing her to hesitate until she could speak without emotion. “You told me about the other woman last night. Dixie?”
“Dixie Simmons. A singer in a honky-tonk.”
“Could she have hired Lexis?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how the two women are connected. I’m hoping these letters will give me an idea.”
“The letters are Annie’s. I don’t understand.”
“I can’t explain it now. But Annie is in the mix.”
; Moistening her lips, she shifted her stance as if holding steady was more than she could handle. “Where are they taking Lexis? To the state medical examiner’s office?”
“Yes.”
Her lips flattened and fresh tears welled. “I hate the idea of them cutting into her. There’s no dignity in that.”
“No. But it’s necessary if we’re going to figure this out.”
She tipped her head back as if ordering her tears to stop. “Lexis better than anyone would want you to chase all the leads. She liked puzzles.” She shook her head. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“No, I don’t imagine she did.” He thought about the pain Lexis would have endured in her final minutes but couldn’t bring himself to share any of the details with Rachel. He’d been bluffing about showing the crime scene photos to her.
“When the medical examiner is finished with her body, then what?”
“We’ll contact next of kin. They’ll arrange for a funeral home to pick her up.”
“She didn’t have family. There was a sister but she died about fifteen years ago. It had been the two of them for most of their lives.” Her gaze sharpened. “I’ll take custody of the body and see that she’s buried properly.”
“That’s a legal question for the courts.”
Challenge sparked in her gaze. “I like legal questions. And I’m angling for a fight right now.”
Deke wondered what a full-on mad Rachel Wainwright looked like. That was a show he’d have paid to see. “I’ll smooth the waters on my end with the medical examiner’s office.”
A sigh shuddered through her. “And if you don’t, I’ll do what I do best.”
Deke didn’t crack a smile. “Bitch?”
She pointed her index finger at him as if he’d hit the nail on the head. “Exactly.”
December 29
Sugar,
Don’t you worry, now you hear me? No one saw us. We are safe. We weren’t spotted the other night. Close. But we are in the clear. Come on around this evening after work. The girls will be gone and we can snuggle in my bed without anyone watching us.
A.
Chapter Ten