Page 11 of Memory of Murder
He got it. Frankly, he would have been surprised if she’d agreed to ride with him, a total stranger. “No problem. We’ll drive to Crystal Lake. I’ve reserved two connecting rooms at the Water’s Edge Hotel. Once we’re settled in, we’ll begin by taking a tour of the area—where Mary Morton and Neil Reed lived. Where their friends lived then and now. Where they worked, past and present.”
“We’ll get the lay of the land, so to speak,” she suggested.
“Yes. After that we’ll go over what the agency has found related to the friends your mother—Mary mentioned in the journal.”
“We can’t do that part now?” Her expression had taken on a decidedly interested appearance. “I’d really like to know what you’ve found.”
He indicated the table and the chairs they had abandoned. “Why not? Since we’re driving separately, it’ll give you something to think about en route.”
The drive was just over an hour. If she had details to consider hopefully she wouldn’t have time to doubt her decision to dive in.
She eased into the chair she’d deserted, and he did the same.
“Coffee?” He’d had two cups already, so he was set.
Anne held up a hand. “I don’t think my nerves can handle more caffeine. I had two cups before driving over here.”
He smiled. “I’m regretting that second cup I downed as well.”
Her face told him she was ready to listen to something beyond small talk. She was even more attractive in person than in the photos he had seen. Her brown hair was long. It swept from a side part and hung around her shoulders. But her eyes werethe most flattering asset in his opinion. Deep chocolate brown. Wide and expressive.
“So…” She dragged out the one syllable.
Jack snapped to attention, kicking himself for getting caught up in analyzing her. “So, Mary Morton’s best friend, Eve Redford, married the year after the trial. She married Kevin Langston—her boyfriend at the time of Neil Reed’s murder. Kevin went on to do the bigger things he touted as his plan back in law school at the University of Chicago—according to interviews I watched from ten years ago. He worked as head legal counsel for one of the top research companies, BioTech, for the first nine years after law school, then he ran for the state senate. He served there for two terms and then ran for the US Senate, which is where he has served since. His wife, Eve, has made a career as a socialite, though she started out as a social worker.” He chuckled. “A bit of a turnaround for her. I would say by her many efforts to show up in the papers and on social media that she loves every minute of it.”
“What about Carin Carter?” Anne asked. “According to the journal, she parted ways with Mary and Eve before the murder. There was some sort of falling out, I presume.”
“She did. The reasons for the parting of ways remains unknown, but Carin left Crystal Lake and married an investor in Chicago. She worked as a secretary in various state government offices, eventually becoming a personal assistant to the Illinois governor at the time. By then her husband had passed away and she’d inherited a small fortune. This is where things start to twist backward a bit. When Kevin Langston got elected to the US Senate, Carin joined him there as a personal assistant. The two have worked together since. If you peruse photos of the Langstons online, you’ll find Carin somewhere in the background in most of them. Though none ever show Carin andEve looking all chummy the way they once did when they were younger.”
“I tried searching for Carin online.” Anne visibly relaxed as they talked. “I didn’t find much of anything.”
“That’s because she goes by her married name—Wallace. She never used her maiden name for anything relevant to her work in politics, so considering the timing, most everything about her that hit and stuck on the internet as it evolved has always been under the name Wallace. Her life as a Carter was during the internet’s infancy, so it’s not unusual that you didn’t find anything.”
“Then those three are back together.”
“For the past decade or so, yes.”
Anne took a minute to evaluate the information he’d passed along. “What are your thoughts about the three, based on what you know at this point?”
He smiled. “You know the old saying—you don’t get far in politics without a few skeletons in your closet. Does that mean that Kevin Langston or his personal assistant, Carin Carter Wallace, is guilty of murder or an accessory to murder? Who knows. It tells me that they’re fearless on some level. Not afraid to face negativity or tough battles. They’re determined and maybe a little on the ruthless side. As for the wife, Eve, I would say the same. None have had so much as a traffic ticket. Can we be sure they’ve never done anything illegal because of the lack of negative hits? Not at all. But as for what this indicates relative to our investigation, we’re looking at people who are high profile, have some level of loyalty in their community and who have everything to lose.”
“We’re facing an uphill battle,” Anne surmised.
“We are. But all any of this ultimately suggests is that we have no specific thing to look at. No particular time frame beyond that of the murder. Which dictates that we must go back to thebeginning and trace these people and what they did, who they did it with and what resulted from their actions until we find what we’re looking for. It takes a little longer, but the result is the same.”
Anne’s slim shoulders sagged. “This may take a while.”
He couldn’t pretend otherwise. “It’s possible that it will take some time, yes. But in my experience, whenever an investigation begins word gets around pretty quickly. Once that happens anyone who has something to hide will get nervous. When people get nervous they make mistakes.”
She nodded slowly as understanding sank in. “They do things they might not otherwise do in an effort to protect themselves.”
He grinned. “They do. The more nervous they get, the more risks they take, which allows for more noticeable mistakes. That’s when we’ll start to see whatever one or all are hiding. That,” he emphasized, “is when the real story will start to emerge.”
A blink, followed by another and then another warned that her emotions were getting the better of her. “I…” She took a moment, then pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I didn’t want to do this.” She met his gaze, her dark brown eyes liquid with the mounting emotion. “But after I read the journal, I felt like I had to know in order to get on with my life without this…this nightmarish history hanging around my neck.”
He wanted to reach out and squeeze her hand, give her a pat on the shoulder…something to comfort her, but that wouldn’t be a good move. He imagined that trust wasn’t easily gained with this woman. “I—all of us at the Colby Agency—recognize how difficult this must be for you. In truth, I wrestled with the idea of including you in the investigation. My boss, Victoria, insisted, but I wasn’t so sure it was the right thing to do.”
Anne searched his face, hers uncertain. “What changed your mind?”
