Close Neighbors

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.