Sting

Both he and Hickam were still looking at her expectantly. She raised her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “He must’ve changed his mind about San Jose. He went someplace else.”

“And left this money there? Does that sound like him to you? Doesn’t sound like him to me. To us. To Josh, who told us while sitting in that chair you’re sitting in now that, although Panella made a show of spending to enhance his reputation as a brilliant moneyman, he kept track of every single cent. Squeezed the copper off every penny. He’d made a science of having his money multiply while he slept. Why would he leave five hundred thou in an account that earns less than one percent interest?”

They waited. She felt the walls closing in and was powerless to stop them. “I have no idea.”

Wiley said, “Only thing we can guess? He plans on keeping it there till he can retrieve it or move it, and the timing just hasn’t been right.”

“I don’t know what he plans,” she said. “I never did.”

“Who called you to that honky tonk last Friday night?”

Again, the switch in tone and subjects momentarily threw her. “I’ve told you repeatedly that I didn’t recognize the voice.”

Wiley leaned toward her. “And all he said was—”

“I quoted it to you exactly. You wrote it down.” She gestured to the iPad now lying on the table.

Hickam picked up. “You’re an intelligent woman, Ms. Bennett. You’ve got common sense. You’re rational. A savvy businesswoman. Yet you expect us to believe that when a man you can’t identify called and told you to rush to a seedy bar out in the sticks, you dropped everything and went tearing out there?”

Adrian Dover intervened. “This is becoming harassment, gentlemen. My client has affirmed several times that she doesn’t know who that caller was.”

“Was it Panella?” Wiley asked.

“No.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?” That from Hickam. “You said you didn’t recognize his voice.”

“I didn’t! He only said a few words and then he was gone.”

“Has Panella been cooling his heels somewhere until you and he could sneak off to—”

“Oh, good God, no!”

Adrian was urging her not to say another word.

Unmindful of her lawyer’s advice she said, “I wouldn’t go anywhere with him.”

“You went to Costa Rica.”

“If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t.”

“Why? What happened down there?”

“Don’t answer,” Adrian said.

“I hated Billy Panella then, and I utterly loathe him now. And the feeling is mutual,” she said, stressing it. “He sent two men to kill me. Have you forgotten that?”

Hickam patted the air between them. “Okay. Right. He had Bolden and Kinnard waiting there for you. He laid a trap.”

She negated that with a shake of her head. “Shaw Kinnard told me that it came as a shock to them when I walked in.”

Hickam scoffed at that. “You believe Kinnard?”

She thought back to all the times he had tricked her with a lie or semitruth, and she’d been gullible enough to believe him. Maybe plan A had been to kill her at that bar.

Hickam didn’t let up. “Panella called you—”

Shaw had said otherwise.