“I know they fought earlier today. On the phone. I was with Lloyd and I heard the terrible things she said to him. She called him a two-faced liar and a cheat and said as how she wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.”
“How did you hear her side of the conversation?” the officer asked. “Was she on speaker phone?”
Crystal gaped at him. “Um, maybe. I don’t remember. Or maybe she was just talking real loud.”
Or maybe the conversation never took place, Julie thought. She didn’t know what to believe—but she did know she shouldn’t be hearing any of this. Any affair between Lloyd Fredericks and Crystal Rivers was not something she wanted to know any more about.
She stepped away to leave the police officer to the interview. Still, Crystal wasn’t exactly being unobtrusive. Her words carried to Julie as she walked through the crowd.
“I just know Frannie made my poor Lloyd’s life a living hell. And now her brother’s going to cover it up. Watch and see if the Fortunes don’t all circle the wagons around her. You just watch and see.”
The Fortunes were a powerful family in Red Rock. But most of the ones she had met through the Foundation were also decent, compassionate people who cared about the community and making it a better place.
The family also had its enemies, though—people who resented their wealth and power—and Julie had a feeling Crystal wouldn’t be the only one who would whisper similar accusations about the Fortunes.
What a terrible way for the Spring Fling to end, she thought as she made her way through the crowd. The event should be a celebration, a chance for everyone in town to gather and help raise money for a worthy cause. Instead, one life had been snuffed out and several others would be changed forever, especially those in Lloyd’s family.
Julie knew the Frederickses had a teenage son. Josh, she thought was his name. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was friendly with Ricky Farraday Jamison, her boss Linda’s son, even though Ricky was a few years younger than Josh.
Had anyone told him yet? she wondered. How terrible for him if he were somehow drawn to the scene by the commotion and the crowd and happened to see his father’s body lying there. It was a definite possibility, even though the police were widening the perimeter of the scene, pushing the crowd still farther back.
Perhaps proactive measures were called for. Someone should find the boy first before he could witness such a terrible sight.
Ross Fortune seemed the logical person to find his nephew. She sighed. She really didn’t want to talk to him. Their altercation seemed a lifetime ago, but she would still prefer not to have anything more to do with the man.
If she had her preference, she would escape this situation completely and go as far away as possible. It reminded her far too much of another tragic scene, of police lights flashing and yellow crime tape flipping in the wind and the hard, invasive stares of the rapacious crowd.
She had a sudden memory of that terrible day seven years earlier, driving home from work, completely oblivious to the scene she would find at her tidy little house, and the subsequent crime tape and the solemn-eyed police officers and the sudden terrible knowledge that her world had just changed forever.
She didn’t think about that day often anymore, but this situation was entirely too familiar. Then again it would have been unusual if the similarities didn’t shake loose those memories she tried to keep so carefully contained.
She didn’t want Frannie’s son to go through the same thing. He needed to be warned, whether she wanted to talk to his uncle again or not. She started through the crowd, keeping an eye out for the tall, gorgeous private investigator.
In the end, he found her.
“Julie! Ms. Osterman!”
She followed the sound of her name and discovered Ross in a nearby vendor booth with his sister and the Red Rock chief of police, Jimmy Caldwell.
Frannie Fortune was slumped in a chair while her brother hovered protectively over her. She looked exactly as Julie imagined she had looked that day seven years ago. Frannie’s lovely, delicate features were stark and pale and her eyes looked dazed. Numb.
She wanted to hug her, to promise her that sometime in the future this terrible day would be just an awful memory.
“I told you, Jim,” Ross said. “I was talking to Ms. Osterman just a row over when we heard a scream. We were the first ones on the scene, weren’t we? Besides the other woman.”
Julie nodded.
“You’re the one who called 911, right?” the police chief asked her.
“Yes. But your officers were on the scene before I could even give the dispatcher any information. Probably only a moment or two after we arrived,” she said.
The police chief wrote something in a notebook. “Can you confirm the scene as you saw it? Lloyd was on the ground and Frannie was standing over him.”
“Yes.” She pointed. “And the other woman—Crystal—was standing over there screaming.”
“You didn’t see anyone else? Just Frannie and Crystal?”
Julie nodded. “That’s right. Just them.”
“Frannie? You want to tell me what happened before Ross and Ms. Osterman showed up?”
She lifted her shell-shocked gaze from her blood-stained pants to the police chief. “I don’t know. I was looking for…I just…I found him that way. He was just lying there.”
“Tell him, Frannie,” Ross insisted. “Go ahead and tell Jim you had nothing to do with Lloyd’s death.”
“I…I didn’t.”
Jimmy scratched the nape of his neck. “That’s not a very convincing claim of innocence, Frannie. Especially when you’re the one standing here over your dead husband’s body with blood on your hands.”
Ross glared at him. “Frannie is not capable of murder. You have to know that. You’re crazy if you think she could have done this.”
The police chief raised a dark eyebrow that contrasted with his salt-and-pepper hair. “This might not be the best time for you to be calling names, Fortune.”
“What else would you call it? My sister did not kill her husband, though she should have done it years ago.”
“Appears to be no love lost between the two of you, was there?”
“I hated his miserable, two-timing guts.”
“Maybe you need to be the one coming down to the station for questions instead of Frannie here.”
“I’ll go any place you want me to. But I didn’t kill him any more than my sister did. I’ve got an alibi, remember? Ms. Osterman here.”
“He’s right. He was with me,” she said.
“Lucky for you. Unfortunately, by the sound of it, Frannie doesn’t have that kind of alibi. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the station to answer some questions, Frannie.”
“Come on, Jimmy. You know she couldn’t have done this.”
“You want to know what I know? The evidence in front of me. That’s it. That’s what I have to go by, no matter what. You were a cop. You know that. And I’m also quite sure this is going to be a powder keg of a case. I can’t afford to let people say I allowed the Fortunes to push me around. I have to follow every procedure to the letter, which means I’m going to have to take her in for questioning. I have no choice here.”
Ross glowered at the man but before he could say anything, another officer approached them. He was vibrating with energy. Julie imagined in a quiet town like Red Rock, this sort of situation was the most excitement the small police force ever saw.
“We