See No Evil (22 page)

“I take it you're still seeing what's-his-name? Edward Grayson?”

“You mean Gray Edwards, the man who got the contract for the huge downtown Amhearst job? Yes.” I grabbed my
purse and escaped before I got pneumonia from the arctic winds blowing in my direction. As I hurried to the lobby, eager for the warmth of Gray's company, I tried to feel bad about that last jab, but I couldn't.

Oh, Lord, I'm as petty as she is. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that I'd probably say it again in similar circumstances.

When I got to the lobby, I found Gray in conversation with Hal Reddick. The two men were doing much better at civility than we women had.

“You guys look like twins.” I pointed at their dark pinstriped suits.

“The successful man's uniform,” Hal said.

“Except for the ones where the stripe is too broad and the guy looks like a member of the Mob,” Gray said.

The three of us made pleasant small talk for a few minutes while Hal waited for his wife. “She must have gone out to the car when I wasn't looking,” he finally said. “Excuse me and good night.”

I watched him walk out the door. “I don't care if his name was one that Ken mentioned last night. He can't be the one who hired the man in black.”

Gray raised an eyebrow. “Why not? Because he has good taste in suits?”

“Works for me.”

Gray took my arm and escorted me outside. We halted in surprise under the front awning. It was raining quite heavily. Hal Reddick stood there, staring at the deluge.

“When did this begin?” I asked, as a bolt of lightning flashed and long rumble of thunder followed in about three seconds.

The slightly chill wind blew the rain just enough that it slipped under the awning about the legs. I could feel my ankles and feet getting more moist by the second. I looked at
the guys' trousers with longing. They probably weren't even aware that the rain was intruding.

A great bolt of lightning sizzled very close by, followed immediately by a crash of thunder. The restaurant lights went out. So did the lights in the parking lot, and the night suddenly became very dark.

I moved closer to Gray, and he slid an arm around my waist.

“It's okay, Anna. Don't be afraid.”

“I'm not, not really.” But I was, just a bit. Sort of my version of post traumatic stress syndrome.

We stood quietly for a few minutes, waiting to see if the lights would go back on or the rain would let up. When another bolt struck nearby and the thunder followed immediately, I knew the storm was going to be here for a while, and I doubted that the electric company had only the restaurant to worry about.

Gray must have reached the same decision because he said, “Let me go get the car. Otherwise we'll be here indefinitely.”

“I'll keep her company while you're gone,” Hal said. “Josie must still be in the ladies' room because she sure isn't running around in this weather.”

I thought of the immaculately coiffed Josie in her blue silk dress and just-so hair and had to agree.

Gray took off at a run, dodging puddles as he went.

“He's a fine young man,” Hal said, watching Gray's shadow disappear into the gloom and heavy rain.

“He is,” I agreed.

“I'm sure we'll bid against each other on other jobs.” He grinned at me. “Hopefully I'll win some of the competitions.”

Thunder cracked, and Hal's grin disappeared. Thunder cracked again, making me jump. Twice so close together!

Hal's back arched, and he began to topple toward me, his face twisted with shocked surprise.

A third crack sounded as I reached out to catch him. The corner of the brick beside me exploded, sending stinging bits of clay and mortar into my face.

“Hal!” I screamed. “Hal!”

A couple pushed the restaurant door open, bumping into Hal and me as he sagged in my arms. I struggled to hold his weight.

I turned a terrified face to the couple. “Call 911. A man's been shot!”

With horrified looks they disappeared back inside.

Hal and I collapsed in a heap on the small porch.

“Hal!” I screamed again. I could see blood forming a puddle on the concrete.

A car rounded the line of parked vehicles and screeched to a halt by the edge of the awning. Gray erupted from the driver's seat, leaving the engine running and the headlights shining.

“Anna!”

But I barely heard him. I was too busy staring at the bedraggled vision illuminated by Gray's headlights.

Josie Reddick stood in the rain, her little revolver dangling from her hand as she stared wild-eyed at what she had just done. “Hal?” She ran toward the little porch. “Hal!” She fell to her knees sobbing. “Hal!”

But he never heard her.

I
thought the second Saturday in June would never come, but finally, finally it did. My wedding day.

Again.

Stop that, I ordered my unruly self as I stood in the living room waiting for the limousine to take me, Dad, Lucy and Meg to the church. Do not think about before. This is now! This is Gray! This is not Glenn.

And while I agreed with myself mentally and knew the correct answer to the will-he-show-up question, I found myself feeling very nervous. My hands were clammy as I clutched a handkerchief Mom had carried when she married, and I couldn't stay still.

“Anna!” Lucy stood with her hands on her hips, scowling at me. “How are we supposed to arrange your veil if you keep stalking around like some caged animal in a zoo?”

I looked at my housemate, cute as could be in her bright navy bridesmaid's dress, her red curls a soft halo under the coronet of daisies and bachelor buttons with the navy streamers falling down her back. Meg stood behind her, staring in a mirror, trying to make her coronet of flowers stay on her glossy black hair.

“I'm going to need a dozen bobby pins, and it's still going to slide off,” she moaned.

“Just don't move your head all day,” Lucy advised.

I was going to miss these women who had become such wonderful friends. I didn't think Gray was going to want to sit up all night in his pj's and talk about the deep issues of life while munching on cold pizza or Rocky Road ice cream. I was fairly certain he wouldn't think giving me a manicure was a fun job or spending an hour in Bath and Body Works smelling everything was a good way to spend a rainy Saturday.

These women had been with me through the whole man-in-black situation, the unexpected finale, and all the legal aftermath. Of course, so had Gray. I guess it came down to the Lord giving me the best of both worlds, something for which I was deeply grateful.

The night Hal Reddick was murdered revealed much about what was going on below the surface, much that even Sergeant Poole and the Amhearst police didn't know.

When Bob Boyes, the accountant from Windle, Boyes, Kepiro, and Ryder, became ill and Dorothy Ryder filled in for him on the Reddick account, Dorothy became suspicious. Like me, she had always admired the beautiful Reddick house and understood its value. She also lived in Amhearst and noted in the paper the amounts of money that Reddick Construction gave to civic and social service organizations and agencies. She knew about the house the Reddicks had at Nag's Head, North Caroline, a very plush resort. When she saw the figures Hal Reddick was reporting for tax purposes, she became very suspicious.

Added to these more or less public observations was the fact that Dorothy and Ken Ryder had mutual friends with the Reddicks. Through the unintentionally damning gossip of these friends, Dorothy knew of Josie's visits to extremely expensive health spas for a month at a time, of her trips to New
York for all the spring and fall fashion shows and her costly purchases of designer clothes.

All it took was her whisper in the ear of the IRS, and Hal and Josie Reddick became subjects of great interest to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. As one of the WBK and R accountants told the paper, “Cash-based payment and income flourishes in this country, and there's no way accountants can trace it. We can deal only with the figures we are given.”

But the IRS can trace such non-compliance, and their agents began a detailed investigation of the Reddicks for tax evasion and tax fraud. Bank records were subpoenaed and assets evaluated. The possibility of offshore accounts and hidden monies was probed.

Not that Hal and Josie were aware at this point. Neither were the Amhearst police. However it is assumed that Dorothy asked enough questions to somehow reveal that she was suspicious, and her sudden overt interest got back to Josie. Bob Boyes, the Reddick accountant of years' standing, didn't live in Amhearst, he had no interest in local goings-on, and he never asked about or suspected assets other than those reported to him. Dorothy was not so obliging.

Josie became very nervous.

The
News
quoted her as saying, “I loved my husband and I
loved
our lifestyle. I was willing to do most anything to preserve it.”

On one of the frequent gambling trips she and Hal took to Atlantic City where they were treated like royalty by the casinos, she made contact with the man in black who called himself Dar Jones at the time.

“I hired him to kill Dorothy Ryder before she learned too much,” Josie freely admitted. “Then
that girl
got involved and messed everything up!”

When the reporter from the
News
called me for a reaction to that quote, I told her, “All I did was look out a window.”

When Dar Jones couldn't manage to kill me, Josie decided he had become a liability. The police were chasing him, and what if they caught him? He could implicate her. So she met him at Freedom's Chase and killed him with her trusty little revolver.

Sergeant Poole, Natalie and the Amhearst police investigated the murders completely unaware that the IRS was conducting the investigation that provided the motive for the killings. Had Amhearst law enforcement known, perhaps Hal wouldn't have been shot. Who knows? Certainly if he hadn't been killed, he would be spending a considerable amount of time in jail, as Josie was doing.

The night Gray and I bumped into the Reddicks having dinner at the same restaurant we were, Josie was reveling in how easy it had been to take care of the Dar Jones and Dorothy Ryder problems. Maybe she should also take care of the Gray Edwards problem so he could no longer provide the most serious and potentially financially devastating competition Reddick Construction had ever had. The fact that she mistook her husband in his navy pinstriped suit as he stood with his back to her while talking to me on the restaurant porch for Gray in his pinstriped suit is one of life's ironies. Whenever I try to feel sorry for Josie for killing the man she loved, I remember that if she had hit her intended target, I wouldn't be getting married today.

I heard the limousine pull up in front of our little brick house. The next time I entered here, I'd be Anna Edwards. I'd have two first names, but no one would mix mine up as they did Gray's. I grinned to myself.

The doorbell rang, and my father hurried to answer. The limo driver slouched there, wearing a tux and a cap pulled low, sunglasses swathing his face. He handed my father a note.

I thought I might be sick.

Dad handed me the note. With a trembling hand, I opened it.

I looked up, and there stood the limo driver, cap and glasses gone as he smiled at me.

“Gray!” I ran to him and threw myself into his arms.

“Anna!” Lucy called. “Your veil!”

“Gray!” Meg sounded appalled. “You can't see her before the wedding!”

Like I cared.

Gray held me close, and I could feel his heart beating against mine. Over his shoulder I could see his silver pickup behind the limo.

“I'm so glad he never showed,” he whispered in my ear. “But I'll be here for you always. I promise, Anna.” And he kissed me.

 

Society page of the
Amhearst News:

Dear Reader,

You're holding in your hands my first book for the Love Inspired Suspense line, though this isn't my first book. It is my sincere wish that with my titles coming from Steeple Hill Books, I will get to meet many new readers like you.

Since one of my great loves is reading a good romantic suspense, that's the pleasure I want to give you. I want you to fall in love with Anna and her friends, drool just a little bit over Gray and root for the dastardly Dar to be caught. Most of all I want you to be aware that though
See No Evil
is fiction, the characters model for us just how God interacts with us in the crunches of daily living.

It's this showing us patterns of living that makes fiction so exciting to me. Sure, nonfiction is good as it tells us how we should live, but stories show us how. We see characters choose certain actions and reactions, and consequences follow.

“Whoops,” we say. “If I make that bad choice, what happened to that character might happen to me, but if I choose well and follow the Lord, good stuff will happen.” I'm not saying that hard times never come when we make wise choices, but the chances are that life will be less complex and more pleasant. Certainly the presence of the Lord makes all our experiences richer.

Drop me a line at [email protected] I'd love to hear from you.

Warmly,