Chapter 19 #2
Annabelle noticed it, too. As the car’s engine was cut, she cried, “He’s back!
” She jumped up and down a little in the tub.
Like the kid she was. “Oooh, I’d better not let him catch me like this.
” She pulled a worried face, then grinned a little wickedly.
“Archie doesn’t like it when I’m naked around other people. Especially other men. He gets jealous.”
“Okay.” Sometimes the best plan was to just let the person talk.
She started to step out of the hot tub, when a male voice cut through the night. “Annie?”
“Oops, busted!” Annabelle said under her breath the second Archer Greenlee rounded the corner of the house. He was carrying a white sack in one hand and pocketing his keys with the other. He stopped dead in his tracks at the edge of the deck when his gaze landed on Nikki. “What the hell?”
Annabelle scrambled for her cover-up.
Nikki was already walking up the path and stretched out her hand as she introduced herself. “I’m Nikki Gillette. With the Sentinel.”
Archer took one look at her, then swept his gaze to the hot tub, where Annabelle was cinching up her short robe.
“Oh God,” he whispered and, ignoring her, zeroed in on the girl.
“You’ve been talking to her?” he accused.
“Didn’t I tell you not to … oh, dear Jesus.
” His gaze had landed on the table to take in the pistol, wineglasses, and empty bottle.
“She writes those crime books I like!” Annabelle explained. “And she’s one of my student’s aunt.”
“She’s a reporter!” he strangled out, dropping the white bag onto the ground. “I told you not to talk to anyone.”
“You said the police,” Annabelle argued, a bit petulantly.
“She’s married to the detective in charge of …”
Nikki waited as his voice faded.
Archer cleared his throat. “Ms. Gillette’s husband is a homicide detective, and she,” he went on, pointing a condemning finger at Nikki, “is here to try to create some kind of story where there is none.”
“But we’ve got nothing to hide,” Annabelle said, walking up and snaking her still-wet arms around his waist.
As if she’d burned him, he pushed away from her embrace, taking a step backward. “Don’t,” he warned. “And you,” he added, squaring off with Nikki. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“You left the card game early,” she pushed, sensing this might be her only chance to interview him. “I checked with the bartender at the Stag and Boar.”
“Wait a minute.” Annabelle appeared bewildered as she bent down to pick up the sack that Archer had dropped. “What’s she saying?”
“I’m talking about the night Mavis was killed,” Nikki explained and positioned herself between the man and the table where the gun lay. Just in case anyone got trigger-happy with her line of questioning. “Archer wasn’t where he said he was.”
Annabelle’s pretty face clouded. “You lied, Archie?”
“I didn’t lie,” he snapped. “I was trying to protect you.” Sighing, he raised his eyes to the cloudy heavens, as if for searching for divine intervention.
“I don’t need protection.” Her fingers curled over the edge of the sack, which was now turning brown, something inside leaking.
“Yes, yes, you do. We do. Or we did. Dear God. Don’t you get it?” he snapped, dropping onto a chaise near the bubbling tub. Distraught, he held his head in both hands. “I just wanted to keep Annabelle out of this,” he explained.
Nikki said carefully, “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Then, as if silently conceding defeat, he sighed and glanced up at her. “Look. Annabelle and I are involved. We have been for a little while.”
“She told me.”
“Not involved,” Annabelle corrected, slamming the sack down again. “In love.”
“And I was trying to be discreet, to save Mavis some embarrassment.”
And save your own ass, Nikki thought, but held her tongue.
He went on, “As you’ve probably figured out, I was with Annabelle that night, before I went back to the house to pick up a few things and attend that stupid thing Mavis wanted to go to, a barbecue or some kind of party at the Honeywells.
I’d gone to my usual card game, swung by here, and then, went home and found …
” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
“I found Mavis.” His voice had lowered to a whisper, and even in the dark night, it was obvious that he paled at the memory.
“I panicked for a second or two before I made the call to 911 and … and waited for the cops to arrive. I was hoping that this”—he motioned to the space between himself and Annabelle—“wouldn’t be found out. ”
“Is that why you tried to get me to move back home?” Annabelle demanded, as if she suddenly understood the implications of their affair and Mavis’s homicide.
“Temporarily,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously for the first time. “Are you ashamed of me? Or, or, of us?”
“Of course not!” He jumped to his feet, hands outstretched. “Annie, honey, you know how I feel.”
“Do I?” Crossing her arms under her breasts, pushing them upward so that her cleavage with the little cross was in full display, she pouted at him.
In frustration, Archer plowed the fingers of both hands through his hair.
“I’m done talking,” he said to Nikki. “I didn’t kill my wife.
I … I was hoping to divorce her, yes, but I never …
I never would have done anything to hurt her.
” He sighed into the night. “I didn’t want Annie to be dragged into this mess. I was just protecting her.”
Beside him, Annie seemed to thaw a little, her smile faltering as she stared up at him adoringly.
Her hero.
Tarnished and rusty as he was.
“Did Mavis know?”
“Yes. Yes, she knew.”
Nikki couldn’t discern if he was telling the truth about that or not.
“That is all you need to know,” Archer said with finality as he looped an arm around Annie’s shoulders and she nestled closer to him.
“I didn’t kill Mavis. I know it looks bad, but that’s the truth.
” His arm tightened around Annie, and his backbone stiffened.
“Why don’t you do us all a favor, Ms. Gillette, and find Mavis’s real killer instead of bothering us? ”
“I have a few more questions,” Nikki said.
“And I’ve got no more answers. Nor does Annabelle, so please leave, right now. Otherwise, I’m going to call the cops.”
She thought about calling his bluff, but couldn’t really, as he’d already called hers.
Neither one of them wanted the police to show up.
Also, she knew, Archer Greenlee had told her all he was going to.
And she thought he was mostly telling the truth.
No matter how in love he was with Annabelle, whether it was the real thing or just a post-midlife fantasy, he hadn’t pushed his wife down the stairs, cut her throat, and placed a stone on her body. She couldn’t see Archer Greenlee filled with the anger and fury the killer had exuded.
She was mentally scratching Archer Greenlee from her list.
But if he wasn’t the killer, who was?