Black Widow Page 3

  He might have been able to maintain the illusion a while longer if it hadn’t been for the tickle at the back of his neck, just beneath the hair he kept an inch or two longer than was approved by Elba’s city fathers. He tried to ignore that tickle, but it wouldn’t go away, and he was too good a cop to ignore it. It wasn’t just Kathryn McAllister’s protestations of innocence that had his wheels turning. In sixteen years, he’d met only a handful of criminals who’d admitted their guilt. It was always somebody else’s fault, somebody else who’d pulled that trigger or held up that liquor store. But logic said that the McAllister woman had been turned loose for some reason. And there was still the matter of the missing file.

  It probably didn’t mean a thing. Somebody had misfiled it when the dragon lady wasn’t on guard duty. When you added it all together, you came up with a big, fat zero. It was probably nothing more than his overactive imagination that had given birth to the gut feeling that something, somehow, wasn’t quite right here.

  He called Dora Hastings at the county clerk’s office and arranged to have a transcript of the McAllister trial sent over by courier. “While you’re at it,” he told Dora, “you might as well give me a copy of the judge’s ruling to overturn the conviction.”

  It took him another five minutes to get her off the phone. He still hadn’t adjusted to this Southern preoccupation with small talk. In New York, where people barely spoke to each other, it wasn’t uncommon to live next door to someone for twenty years and never have more than a nodding acquaintance. But here in Elba, five minutes after you met somebody, you knew their entire history, back at least four generations, whether you wanted to or not.

  Rowena was still knitting, and he could have sworn the blanket had grown by several inches in the last twenty minutes. “Anybody’s looking for me,” he told her, “I’ll be over at the Gazette.”

  The Dixie Gazette was located in a modern brick building a block south of downtown. He parked out front and went in search of Shanice Williams, the efficient young black woman who was in charge of the Gazette’s back files. Within minutes, Shanice had him settled at a microfiche viewer with several rolls of microfilm stacked beside him and a dire warning to treat them gently or else.

  He started at the beginning, on the morning of May seventeenth, when the Gazette’s front-page headline had screamed: PROMINENT LOCAL MAN BRUTALLY SLAIN; WIFE ARRESTED. He paged slowly through the newspaper accounts of the murder, the arrest, the subsequent trial. In sleepy little Elba, murder had been big news, and the Gazette’s coverage of it had bordered on obsession.

  There was a picture of Michael McAllister, most likely his high school portrait. He’d been a big bear of a man, a good-looking guy with a grin a mile wide. Another picture, this one an informal snapshot, showed Michael and Kathryn McAllister together at the seashore, arm in arm, looking young and tanned and preposterously happy.

  Numerous other photos followed. But the photos were only the tip of a very large iceberg. During the months preceding the trial, the city fathers had renamed a small park after Elba’s fallen son. Letters had poured in to the Gazette’s editor from citizens urging the State to seek the death penalty. Editorials had painted Kathryn McAllister as a gold-digger, a ruthless daughter of Polish immigrants who had latched onto Michael McAllister because his family had money. The Gazette interviewed neighbors, Kathryn’s coworkers, the parents of her students. Every one of them expressed shock at the savagery of the crime. As one neighbor put it, “Miz McAllister seemed to be such a caring lady.”

  Nobody argued for her innocence.

  Her attorney had been granted a change of venue, so the trial had taken place in neighboring Stetson County. The Gazette had published numerous photos of Kathryn entering and leaving the Stetson County Courthouse, her shoulders back and her chin raised, her face blank and expressionless. Because of the lack of emotion she displayed, the press had dubbed her the Black Widow, after the female spider that kills and devours its spouse after mating. NO REMORSE FOR BLACK WIDOW, one headline said, while another claimed, BLACK WIDOW BRAZEN AS EVIDENCE AGAINST HER PILES UP.

  The trial had taken eight days, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Guilty or innocent, Kathryn McAllister had been convicted by the media long before the jury of eight men and four women had reached a verdict.

  Nick removed the last microfilm and turned off the viewer. In the course of the past two hours, he’d learned a great deal about the McAllisters and about Elba, North Carolina. Like any small town, when something this gruesome happened, the citizens banded together to fight the evil in their midst. And that evil had been Kathryn McAllister.

  He felt a twinge of empathy, somewhere in his belly, mingled with a grudging respect. Right or wrong, it took guts to come back and face that kind of animosity. And unless he missed his bet, he was going to have his hands full with Kathryn McAllister.

  Chapter Two

  Dressed in sweat pants and a tank top, Kathryn sat cross-legged on the living room floor and dragged the first box over to the coffee table. Rising to her knees, she blew a layer of dust off the top and opened the flaps. This job would be a nightmare, but she had to start somewhere, and the household records that Raelynn had been storing for her seemed as logical a place as any to begin.

  She had no idea what she was looking for. Something unusual, something suspicious, something out of place or time. She could only hope that she would recognize it when she saw it. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out the first folder and opened it.

  Michael McAllister had been meticulously organized. Each subcategory of recordkeeping had its own folder, and the folders were precisely organized in alphabetical order. It was amazing, the volume of paperwork two people could accumulate in four years of marriage. Insurance policies, canceled checks, income tax forms, old utility bills. She glanced at a bank statement, thumbed slowly through the canceled checks, but found nothing suspicious. Ditto for the income taxes. Until they’d bought the house, they hadn’t even filed a long form.

  After three hours of searching through a sea of paper, her vision was blurry and her head was pounding. And she still had two boxes left. Kathryn closed the box, changed into jogging shorts and headed out for a run.

  After four years of jogging around an enclosed track in full view of leering prison guards, being able to run free was exhilarating. She chose a route where she was unlikely to meet anybody, and settled into the simple pleasure of running, of pushing her muscles to perform, the way a virtuoso aims for perfection on his chosen instrument. She’d worked hard to keep herself in shape while in prison, running three times a week, hefting eighty-pound bags of linens in the prison laundry daily. She’d built up biceps that were as strong as any man’s. Her one failure, and the lone female vanity she’d tried unsuccessfully to overcome, was her hands.

  She’d always had lovely hands, slender and delicate, with soft, perfumed skin and gently rounded nails. Michael had been fond of holding those hands in his much larger ones and tracing the delicate lines with his fingertips, marveling at her daintiness next to his oversized masculinity. But after four years in the prison laundry, her hands were red and chapped and wrinkled, her nails blunt-tipped and ragged. They looked like the hands of an old woman, and although she’d told herself, time and again, that the condition of her hands was inconsequential compared to the bigger problems in her life, still she couldn’t help the petty vanity that made her furious because this had happened to her.

  She turned off the main highway onto the narrow, gravel-topped road that circled around Lake Alberta. Bathed in solitude and shaded by towering pines, it had always been one of her favorite places to run. The sun glinting off the surface of the lake was dazzling, and she was slowing to admire it when she heard the car.

  It approached her from behind at a moderate rate of speed, and she edged closer to the shoulder to give it room to pass. A dozen yards behind her, the car halted, its engine still idling, and uneasiness slithered up her spine. The first thing she’d lea
rned in prison had been how to scent danger. Kathryn quickened her pace in sync with her suddenly rapid heartbeat. Without warning, the driver punched the accelerator, and the car raced toward her.

  She had no more than a couple of seconds to react. Throwing her entire body into the motion, she twisted away, lost her footing in the loose gravel and fell hard on her hip on the grassy shoulder. The car roared past, so close she could feel the heat from its engine, and sped off in a cloud of dust.

  Kathryn lay there gasping, her heart racing as she tried to take in the stunning reality that somebody had just tried to kill her. Her arrival in Elba hadn’t exactly been celebrated with a parade and a brass band. But she hadn’t even started snooping around yet, and already somebody wanted her out of the way.

  The truth was, a lot of people wanted her out of the way. This might have been simply one more upright citizen who’d decided do the town a favor by ridding it of an unwanted pest. She should report the incident to the police, but she’d already found out just how helpful the police were going to be. She wanted to laugh at the irony of it. She’d been safer in prison, where she at least knew her enemy, than she was here, walking the streets of the town where she’d spent four years of her life, a town where everybody hated her, and at least one of those people was a killer.

  Kathryn picked herself up and brushed the gravel from her bare legs. Her hip was aching from the force of her landing, and she’d twisted her ankle somehow when she fell. It hurt like the blue blazes when she rested her weight on it. Tears blurred her eyes, but she furiously brushed them away. She’d survived four years of prison. She could survive this.

  By the time she reached her house, her ankle had started swelling. A strange vehicle was parked in the driveway, a black Chevy Blazer. And sitting casually on the front porch swing, looking for all the world as though he owned the place, was Police Chief Nick DiSalvo.

  Trying to hide the pain she felt with every step, Kathryn marched resolutely up to him. “It didn’t take you long to find out where I live, did it, Chief? I suppose you’re here to arrest me for violating some archaic law. Like the one that says women can only show their legs in Elba on alternate Tuesdays.”

  “You’re limping,” he said.

  “Congratulations,” she snapped. “You can go to the head of the class.”

  “What happened?”

  She used the key that hung around her neck to unlock the door. “Nothing much,” she said, and stepped inside. “Somebody tried to kill me, that’s all.”

  He grabbed her arm and yanked her around, causing her to wince at the sudden movement. “What?”

  “I was nearly run down by a car.” She looked down at the hand that gripped her arm. His skin was several shades darker than hers, the back of his wrist dusted with black hairs that disappeared into the cuff of his blue shirt. “Let go of me,” she said.

  Ignoring her, he said, “Sit down before you fall on your face.”

  In too much pain to argue, she sank gratefully onto the couch. DiSalvo knelt before her and carefully removed her sneaker. He wiggled her foot around to make sure there were no broken bones, and she flinched. “Sorry,” he said, and rocked back on his heels. “That’s some sprain you got there, kid. Want to tell me what happened?”

  “Some maniac tried to run me down. If my reflexes had been a little slower, I’d be dead right now.”

  Those mournful Italian eyes were sharp with interest, along with something else she couldn’t identify. “What kind of car?” he said. “Make, model, color?”

  “Some kind of dark-colored sedan. It all happened so quickly.”

  “I don’t suppose you got a look at the license plate?”

  Her head snapped up. “I was on my ass in the ditch,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a better description of my assailant.”

  “You’d better put some ice on that ankle. You stay put. I’ll get it.”

  She waited impatiently while he rattled around in her kitchen. He returned with a half-dozen ice cubes wrapped in a dish towel. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just have to improvise. Hold still now.”

  Kathryn winced when he applied the ice to her swollen ankle, but the cold immediately eased the red-hot pain. “I can do that,” she said, shoving his hand away. She moved the ice pack around a little, trying to cover all her bases. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  Instead of answering her, he walked around the room, pausing to study with great interest the boxes she’d left stacked beside the couch. “What’s this?” he said.

  She wondered just how far she could trust him. After all, he was a cop. And he still hadn’t told her why he was here. “Old household records,” she said, “that Raelynn was storing for me.”

  “Old household records,” he said.

  “I thought if I went through them, maybe I’d stumble across a clue that would lead me to Michael’s killer.”

  He lifted the flaps on one of the boxes and thumbed through the neatly labeled and color-coded tabs. “This your work, or your husband’s?”

  “Michael’s. He was very organized.”

  “You can say that again.” Absently, he added, “The file’s missing, by the way.”

  She wasn’t following him. “What file?” she said.

  “The departmental file on the McAllister homicide. It’s not in the drawer.”

  Her heart began to thud again, this time for a different reason. “Meaning?” she said.

  “Hell of a coincidence,” he said, still looking at the files. “First, you’re freed because a new witness appears out of the blue. And then—” He looked up, and those chocolate eyes bored directly into hers. “The department’s file disappears, too.”

  So he’d been checking up on her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Are you saying you think I had something to do with it?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. It could mean you have a friend with access to confidential materials who decided to help you out. Or—” He paused, closed the cover on the box of household records. “Or,” he said, “it could mean that somebody’s trying real hard to hide something. You want to file a complaint?”

  “What?”

  “The car,” he said. “You want to file an official complaint?”

  “What good will it do me?”

  “Most likely none. Without a description, without a license number, we’ve got squat to go on. It was probably nothing. Kids, trying to scare you.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  His level gaze studied her face. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

  Was he implying that she might have made up the whole incident? “You can leave now,” she said. “The door’s right over there.”

  She hadn’t thought he knew how to smile. It changed his entire face, brought light to the shadows that lurked there. “Make sure you keep putting ice to that ankle,” he said as he opened the door. “If the swelling doesn’t go down in a couple of days, you might want to consider seeing a doctor. Oh, and be sure to keep your doors and windows locked.”

  “Thank you, Chief DiSalvo, for that pithy advice.”

  “Watch yourself,” he said sternly, and closed the door behind him.

  Wanita Crumley lived in a little brick ranch house on the outskirts of town. The front lawn was sparse, most of the grass yellowed by the hot Carolina sun and the lack of a sprinkler. As Kathryn climbed out of the secondhand blue Toyota she’d bought the day before, she could hear the shrill laughter of small children coming from around the back. She smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, fortified herself with a deep breath, and strode toward the door.

  There was no bell, so she opened the screen and knocked on the inside door. When there was no answer, she stretched up on her toes and peered through the tiny oval window at the top. She knocked again, harder this time, and then she heard footsteps approaching. “Just a minute!” a peevish voice said. The door was flung open, and she was face to face with the woman whose testimony had helped put her behind bars.<
br />
  The years had not been kind to Wanita. She must have put on forty pounds since Kathryn had last seen her. Her blonde hair was teased and sprayed in a vain attempt to look fashionable. She must have been napping, because her mascara was smeared and a red ridge scarred one cheek.

  When she recognized Kathryn, her eyes went wide and her mouth formed a perfect o. “I’d like to talk to you,” Kathryn said.

  Wanita closed her gaping mouth. “Get out of here,” she said. “I got nothing to say to you.”

  She moved to close the door, but Kathryn was quicker. She crammed her foot between the door and the jamb and threw her entire weight into pushing it open. Wanita might outweigh her, but Wanita hadn’t spent the last four years toting eighty-pound bags of laundry. Kathryn shut the door behind her and leaned on it. “Now,” she said, “you and I are going to have a talk.”

  Wanita walked away from her, picked up a pack of cigarettes from an end table, and lit one. “You got no right to be coming here,” she said, “pushing your way into my house like this.” She sat on the couch and crossed her legs. “I ought to call the cops and have you removed from my property.”

  Kathryn smiled. “And perhaps while they’re here removing me, you’d like to tell them why you perjured yourself in court.”

  Beneath the heavy makeup, Wanita paled visibly. She sucked hard on the cigarette, brazenly met Kathryn’s gaze, and blew out the smoke. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You lied in court, Wanita. You testified that you believed I killed Michael after I found out the two of you were having an affair. I want to know why.”