Dylan said nothing. Didn’t so much as falter in his grin, or blink. But I could tell by the glint in his eyes that he’d caught my slip of the tongue.
And I wanted to slip my tongue….
Whoa, Dix.
I busied myself re-belting the old brown housecoat Mrs. Presley had provided, cinching it even tighter, telling myself I needed the extra bit of warmth after the long, increasingly cool shower. It had taken so many shampoos to get the temporary dye out of my hair that I’d used up all Mrs. P’s hot water. But at last, I was blond again. And though I was fully clad in underwear (no, not the be-tasseled stuff that Dylan had brought over), jeans and t-shirt, the housecoat felt good around my shoulders. Protective. Defensive.
Butt-ugly.
“Had to make sure you got safely out of there, Dix.” His voice dropped a notch. Though his eyes still showed a bit of teasing, he’d stopped laughing altogether. “I’d crawl through worse than a few bushes to do that.”
“Well, thanks. If you hadn’t been watching my ass—” Oh, just shut up, Dix! “—I’d still be stuck under that desk.”
“Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat, then said, “If you need a hand checking up on the man, I’m the one to call.”
“Let me guess — another business card?”
He pulled himself up on the bed so both of us were leaning against the headboard. “It’s a good one, don’t you think? Straight-shooting from the hip. Gets right to the point. Clever and witty.”
“Ummm, that would be a no.”
“Geez, you’re hard to please, woman. We gotta come up with something.”
“I know, I know. But it has to be the right thing. The exact thing.”
And it felt kind of good just then, when I realized what I’d said. Dylan felt it too, I could tell by the impish grin on his face. We were talking positively about the business cards again. Talking about the future. Hope.
Things were beginning to look up. Jennifer’s journal had been an amazing find. And though I was far from out of the fire, I had maybe moved a little to the periphery of it. Maybe.
I heard a siren in the distance growing closer. Dylan’s eyes widened along with mine. Only when the siren sound began to fade again did I realize I’d been holding my breath. I let it out again. Just a little reminder that I was far from burn-free yet. This was no time to get lazy. No time to let my guard down.
It was time to get to work.
I told Dylan about the second intruder to the Weatherby home — Luanne Laney. Turns out it wasn’t news, of course. He’d seen Ned’s psycho-secretary walk up to the front door and let herself into the Weatherby house with a key.
That was why he’d called frantically on Ned and Jennifer’s home phone line after I failed to answer my cell. He’d ID’d her from all the surveillance pictures I’d taken over the course of the week I’d trailed Ned, even though she’d drawn her hat down over her eyes and pulled her coat collar up around her ears.
“I’m telling you, she might have had a key, but she wasn’t supposed to be there,” Dylan said. “Even without the turned-up-collar routine, her posture would have said it all. Self-conscious and guilty.”
“Odd for a woman known to scare the bejeezus out of just about everyone who knew her.”
Luanne’s presence there put a new spin on things. Why had she been sneaking around? Why had she wanted Jennifer’s journal? And, perhaps most importantly, how the hell had she even known about it?
“Do you think it was Luanne who came to the office dressed as Jennifer that day?”
“No,” I answered, without having to put too much effort into the thought. “For one thing, even in heels Luanne isn’t tall enough. And yes, I realize the impostor was putting on a fake voice, but I think it was too throaty for Luanne Laney under the best of circumstances.”
“Luanne could have hired someone. There’s a very good chance that whoever killed Jennifer and set us up did just that — hired an actress for that stint. And I’m betting that if that’s the case, that’s one scared actress right about now.”
I nodded in agreement. “Scared and close-mouthed, no doubt.”
Dylan scratched a hand along his unshaven jaw as he thought. “You said Jennifer hid the journal somewhere other than in the desk?”
“Right, the bookshelf.”
“So who was she hiding it from? Ned or Luanne?”
“And what the hell is so very important in this journal that Luanne Laney would risk breaking in to retrieve it?”
Dylan and I barely breathed into the silence now, as I opened Jennifer’s journal. The bed dipped between us as we leaned in closer together to look through the pages. Dylan was seeing this for the first time, of course, and studying it with all the intensity that I’d come to admire about him. I was giving the journal a second but substantially more thorough look — a more purposeful one now that I had the time to do so, and now that I’d had the chance to think things over.
I looked at the time correlation of the journal entries again:
J - return six dresses to Ryder’s.
N - meeting with PR.
J - buy three watches, choose one (return others within the week)
N - church meeting after supper
J - cancel first-class tickets to New York.
“She didn’t go to New York?” Dylan asked.
“She did.” I flipped forward a few pages, and pointed to an entry.
J - see Mrs. E at Tiffany’s on Fifth re: refund policy
“That’s Tiffany’s in New York,” I pointed out helpfully. “She went. She just didn’t go first class.”
Dylan huffed a laugh. “So she downgraded her ticket, and flew economy to New York? Why?”
I smiled. “Think about it. What’s the only logical reason someone would chose economy.”
Dylan was still for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Money. Jennifer downgraded the ticket and pocketed the difference.”
“That’s my guess.” I leaned closer to Dylan and started flipping through the pages — back and forth as I compared. “And look at the way purchases and refunds are aligned here. Every time Jennifer contemplates she should ‘return’ something, it corresponds with the times her husband is in church, at first.”
“Feeling guilty for excesses?”
“Orrrrrr,” I said. “Every time he goes to church, she got concerned. So she’d write a note to return a costly item. That’s the way Jennifer kept her entries — always what she ‘planned to do’. This wasn’t so much of a diary as an events calendar. And the more her husband went to church, the more Jennifer bought and returned.”
“I don’t know….”
“Think about it, Dylan. She puts items on her virtually limitless credit card. Returns them for cash. Husband, pays the credit card bills every month and is none the wiser as Jennifer tucks the money away. What would an outfit from Ryder’s run? At least fifteen hundred or two thousand, I’m thinking. That would certainly add up after awhile — build a little nest egg. Little backup cash just in case.”
Just in case of what? That was the question pounding through my mind.
“Nice theory,” Dylan offered. “Except stores would simply credit the amount of the refund back to the credit card, wouldn’t they? I’ve never known a retailer to do otherwise. I don’t think they can do anything else.”
“Sure, to you and me and the rest of us plebs. But this is Jennifer Weatherby we’re talking about here. You gotta figure the proprietors of those shops would bend over backwards to keep her business, especially in this fairly small backwater. Hell, they’d probably turn a blind eye while she stole the stuff, then send the bill to Ned.”