“Did you see that? There was a news van here a while ago! I called the sheriff on them.” She smoothed her hands up and down her upper arms.
“Are you still not feeling well?” Perry asked. Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure Jane hadn’t left the estate in over a week.
She snapped, “This goddamned place is freezing. I think the old bat turned off the furnace.”
“Which old bat?” Perry asked.
Jane gave a harsh laugh.
Perry’s eyes met Nick’s, and he read the message there. “Janie…” he began awkwardly.
As Perry told Jane about the man who was going around town showing her photo, Jane turned paler and paler until she was so white he feared she was going to faint. Nick must have thought so too, because he took her by the arm and guided her to one of the overstuffed chairs by the unlit fireplace.
Jane put her face in her hands. “What did you tell him?” she asked, muffled.
Perry said, “I told him I didn’t recognize you.”
She looked up, fastening her green gaze on him. “Did he believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
Nick said, “Even if he did, sooner or later he’s going to stumble on someone who knows you from that picture. This is a small town.”
Jane nodded. She seemed to be listening to an inner voice. An inner voice delivering some very bad news.
“Who is he?” Perry asked, and Jane’s eyes jerked his way.
“I have no idea.”
“But…”
She said carefully, “I don’t know who he is, but I know who sent him.”
“Who?”
Her face worked. At last she said huskily, “Have you ever heard of Michael Cimbelli?”
“No,” Perry and Nick said at the same time. Their eyes met.
“Michael is -- was -- the head of the Martinelli crime family.”
Nick said nothing. Perry said, “This is going to be really bad, isn’t it?”
Jane said, “I’m not a former hit woman, if that’s what you’re thinking. I didn’t have anything to do with that P.I. getting murdered -- or Tiny. This is nothing to do with any of that.” She licked colorless lips. “I was Michael’s mistress for four years. Then I…left him.”
“And he doesn’t take rejection well?” Perry asked.
“He doesn’t, no. But that wasn’t the main problem. I” -- she swallowed -- “I agreed to testify against Michael in exchange for protection. I went into the Witness Protection Program, but Michael’s lawyers were able to delay a trial by claiming that Michael was mentally unfit. They’ve successfully stalled for three years. Now Michael has been declared competent to stand trial.”
“And his goons are looking for you?” Nick finished.
Jane nodded.
“Won’t the Witness Protection people move you again?” Perry asked.
“They would,” Jane said. “But they don’t know where I am, and I don’t want them to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I left the program. I didn’t want to live my life like an animal in a cage,” she said passionately. “And because of David.”
“David?”
“Center,” Nick supplied.
“I know who she means,” Perry said. “I just can’t…David?”
“Hey,” Jane said with a flare of spirit. “You’re in no position to talk. You were on the verge of falling in love with a guy on the Internet named Marcel. At least I actually know David.”
Before Perry could respond, Nick said, “Don’t they move spouses and lovers into the program?”
Because, Jane’s poor choice of men aside, this was the crux of the problem. If Jane went back into the program, she would never see David Center again -- which instead of being the relief you’d expect, was apparently tragic enough that she was considering risking her life.
Jane bit her lip and nodded. “They do, but David and I aren’t at that point in our relationship. We need more time.”
“You don’t have more time,” Nick said flatly.
Perry and Jane both stared at him.
Nick said, “You can’t stay inside this house indefinitely, and even if you could, sooner or later someone in town is going to recognize you from that photo.”
“Or,” Perry said suddenly, “Your picture is going to turn up on the newswire.”
“I have to think,” Jane said, rising.
“There’s nothing to think about,” Nick said. “This is survival time.”
Jane did not answer. She went into her apartment and closed the door quietly after her.
“What do we do?” Perry asked Nick.
“Nothing,” Nick said. “This is her choice.”
“But…”
Nick was already on his way upstairs.
“There’s got to be some way we can help her,” Perry was saying as they reached Nick’s tower room. They could hear the phone ringing from inside.
Nick unlocked the door. “She’s a grown-up. She can make her own choices. Stay out of it.”
He opened the door and got the phone, and Perry listened to the one-sided conversation while he stared out the window at the bare trees and clouds moving in from the north.
“Just winding things up here,” Nick said after the initial greetings were out of the way. That would be Roscoe calling -- the former SEAL buddy with the private investigation firm in California.
Perry listened to Nick’s silence, and then Nick said slowly, “Another week, but I can probably move it up if I have to.”
Perry closed his eyes. When he opened them, he could see the little circle of his breath on the windowpane.
* * * * *
It was a strange day.
Mr. Teagle came home and went straight to his rooms, locking himself in. The sheriff’s deputies returned and questioned everyone again, and Perry went over each and every step of coming home from San Francisco and finding the dead man in his bathtub.
“They’re trying to work out a timetable,” Nick told him. “They’ve narrowed Swiss’s death to Friday afternoon -- which lets you and Teagle out, but leaves everyone else here a suspect.”
“If Swiss was a private investigator, what was he investigating?”
Nick said, “Apparently, even his secretary didn’t know. She’d been on vacation when he took whatever job it was he took on. But here’s the thing…” Nick’s expression was guarded, as though he knew Perry would not like what he was about to tell him.
“What?”
“Swiss apparently had mob ties.”
Perry stared, trying to make sense of this. Then he said indignantly, “No way did Janie kill that guy. And then what? She killed Tiny to keep her secret? No fucking way, Nick!”
“I’m just telling you --”
“Who said he had mob ties?”
“Roscoe.” And at Perry’s look, Nick explained, “I asked him if he could do a little checking for us.”
Us? There was no us. Nick wanted this thing wrapped up as fast as possible so he could split for California and not have to give Perry or this place a second thought.
“I don’t care what that asshole Roscoe thinks, Jane didn’t kill anyone!”
Nick’s dark brows rose. “Where the hell is this coming from? Roscoe doesn’t think one thing or the other about this. He just ran a name at my request.”
“Did you share that information with the sheriff?”
Nick met Perry’s glare, unmoved. “No, I didn’t. But if you think they won’t put this together pretty damn quick, your head is buried as deep in the sand as Bridger’s.” More patiently, he said, “Come on, Perry. You saw how frightened she was today. If someone came after her, it’s possible she might have struck out in a panic. You heard the stuff she said about accidentally killing someone and not being able to come forward.”
“She wasn’t talking about herself.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What about the Alston sapphires? What happened to that theory? We haven’t talked to Mr. Stein.”