Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [39]
“Chief Mercer, Broeder police.”
“Yeah, I heard they fired Anderson’s ass.” Lowell nodded. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk about the crime that got you in here.”
“Wasn’t no crime,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t?”
“No, man. Me and Amanda . . . she and I were . . . well, you know.”
“Lovers?”
“We would have been,” Lowell said sullenly.
“What happened?”
“You’re the chief of police, you got the file, you can read. Figure it out.”
“I read about how you were obsessed with Amanda.”
“Hey, man, she loved me. Maybe she still does, all I know.”
“Do you still love her?”
“No, man, I got no use for her now. It’s all confusing, you know?” He scratched his elbow. “I mean, we were going to be together. Should have been together, but it all got mixed up. First that old biddy next door got involved. . . .”
“You mean her next-door neighbor?”
“Nah, I mean the old lady with the shop across from hers. Bigmouthed bitch.”
“Marian O’Connor?”
“Yeah, somethin’ like that. Anyway, she told the cops I was bothering Amanda, told them she’d seen me around the shop at night. And then that guy got involved. He was hanging around her all the time. Every day, man, he was right there, in her face.”
“You’re referring to her business partner?”
“Huh?”
“Derek England was her business partner.”
“Whatever.” Lowell shrugged.
“He was murdered a week ago.” Sean leaned forward to watch Lowell’s face.
“What?” His brows drew together slowly. “The dude is dead?”
Sean nodded.
“Ha. What do you know about that?” Lowell sat back in his chair. “Someone took the dude out.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know who, would you?”
“Me? You crazy?” Lowell scoffed. “I didn’t even know about it till just now. Why would you even think that?”
“Because right before England was killed, someone started sending Ms. Crosby the same kind of messages that you had.”
“Someone’s sending . . .” He looked puzzled. “I don’t know nothing about that, man. How could I? I been in here all this time. The judge, he told me not to have any contact with her, not ever. I can’t talk to her, call her. . . . Shit, when I get out, I won’t even be able to drive down her street without getting arrested.”
Sean continued to watch the young man’s face. “Maybe you have a friend—”
“I got no friends, man.”
“Who comes to see you?”
“My mother, once in a while. My sister, she came a time or two back in the beginning, but she hasn’t been around in a long time. You can check that out easy enough with the warden, though. I ain’t telling you anything you can’t find out on your own.”
“It’s odd, don’t you think, that whoever is doing this is following exactly the pattern you set?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I mean the person who is calling her and hanging up the phone is also leaving red roses on her front doorstep.”
“Huh. Really?”
“Really. And since the police never released the information about the roses to the public, I got to thinking that maybe you told someone about it.”
Sean’s eyes never left Lowell’s face.
“No, I never told . . .”
A faint light began to dawn ever so slowly in Lowell’s pale blue eyes. Sean could see it.
“I never told no one.” Lowell shook his head vehemently, his gaze suddenly fixated on a spot on the wall somewhere behind Sean’s head.
“Then I guess that means that someone else is in love with Amanda Crosby and bringing her roses.”
“I . . . I don’t know. I mean, I guess maybe. Yeah. Her luck, huh?” Lowell stood up and nodded to the guard. “I want to go back now.”
“So you have no thoughts at all about who could be copying you?”
“I told you, man.” His parting smile was faintly smug. “No. I don’t know nothing about it.”
The guard unlocked the door, and Archer Lowell disappeared through it.
Sean remained in the chair, rubbing his chin. He’d bet everything he had that when Archer Lowell first entered the room, he’d had no idea that someone had been mimicking his actions. Yet when he walked out, there’d been the briefest hint of . . . something. As if Sean had tipped him off to something so secret even Sean wasn’t aware of it.
What, Sean wondered, had he said that