Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [102]
“I’d like copies of your cell-block records. Who is housed next to who. More specifically, I want to know who has lived, slept, eaten, showered, exercised, or watched TV with Archer Lowell since the day he was incarcerated.”
The secretary stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Have a seat.” She pointed to a love seat and chair in one corner. “This is going to take a while.”
Back in his cell, Archer Lowell marveled at the changes in his onetime victim. She was a different woman than the one he’d known. He’d liked the old Amanda far better. This one—this new one—just left him cold.
But hey now, how about that Vince! I hardly even recognized him. Dark hair, glasses, muzzie. And he has a lady friend. Way to go, Vince, you dog, you.
But as the implications of Mercer’s visit slowly began to come together in Archer’s mind, he began to pace back and forth in his cell on increasingly worried feet, and his fears began to gather and take shape, looming before him like a still shot on a big-screen TV.
Somehow, someone had figured out there was some connection between him and Vince Giordano.
There were dead people, people who were part of his past—except for the hairdresser—who were now being connected to Vince, and the dots were leading right back to Archer.
But unless those dots could be connected, there was no way they could bring any of it back on him. Unless Giordano named him, there was no way they could prove anything.
Would Giordano name him?
Jeez, he’d seemed like such a stand-up kind of guy. . . .
Denial took over and those feet began to pace a lot faster.
I don’t really know what Vince has done. I ain’t had no contact with him. It could be a coincidence, right? Sure, that’s it. It’s all a coincidence. And I ain’t about to admit to knowing him. Six weeks left on my sentence. Uh-uh. I ain’t done a damned thing to get into trouble since the day I was brought in here, and I ain’t about to blow it now. I just want out. Besides, I didn’t do nothin’. Whatever Vince has done, well, that’s on Vince, isn’t it? I don’t know nothin’ about it and I don’t know him. I been in here and I ain’t seen no one and I don’t know why he did what he did.
Yeah, that’s it. I don’t even know him. No one can prove that I do. . . .
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Dolores lolled beneath the sheets for a moment or two before she realized that the bed was empty. Vinnie must have left for work hours ago.
She stretched and rolled over to look at the clock. It was almost three-thirty in the afternoon. She’d spent most of the day in bed, alternating between sleeping and weeping. She knew she had to get herself together, but it was so damned hard. Besides, it hadn’t even been a full week since the murder. She missed Connie terribly. Every time she thought about never seeing her friend again, Dolores burst into tears.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed as soon as she felt her eyes begin to well up again. She knew Vinnie was getting tired of her weeping and moping, but jeez, she and Connie went way back. Back to the days when they were both newly divorced and working for that scumbag Richard who owned that shop down on Adams. Man, he had been one mean son of a bitch.
She shook her head, remembering. She and Connie had bonded over their bad hours and bad pay, and had become real close. Together they’d left Richard and gone with another shop, where they both did better, but still not well enough.
“Dee, we need our own place,” Connie would say. “If you save, and I save, and we get enough socked away, we can get a loan to cover the rest of what we’ll need to start our own business. All we need is the right place to come along at the right time. We gotta start now to save for it, so we’ll be ready.”
And eventually the right place did come along, and thanks to Connie’s goading, they were ready. The Cut N Curl had been well established before either of the two women had moved to Carleton. While its clientele was aging, the facilities were still solid and the location was good. The fact that zoning had just given