Conklin asked again in his kind, steady voice, “What’s his name, Donnie?”

“One. That’s what he said. That’s what I call him. Mr. One.”

CHAPTER 67

I’D JUST GOTTEN home when I got a call from Cindy. She was at the airport, just back from her book tour, so I invited her and Richie to come on over to our house for Joe’s sausage lasagna.

A half hour later, Julie was in bed and two of my very favorite people were standing around the kitchen with me and Joe, all of us sampling the fine wine Cindy had picked up at our neighborhood liquor store.

Cindy was wearing a butter-yellow pullover and jeans and had glittery clips in her curly blond hair. She stood hip-to-hip against Richie, and he had his arm around her. They both looked radiant. I loved to see this. Loved it.

While I tossed the salad, Cindy told a story about her last stop, at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. A woman had hung back until every one of the thirty people who’d wanted Cindy to sign their books had moved on. Then, said Cindy, “This woman whispered, ‘I have a story I think you’ll want to write.’”

“Really,” Joe said. “A true story?”

“That’s what she said.”

Cindy relayed the woman’s fairly intense tale of a serial polygamist with five wives, each unknown to the other four. The guy posed as a traveling salesman, but in fact was a con man.

Cindy said, “This woman, Nikki, told me, ‘Benny was the sweetest man you’d ever want to meet. Super-kind. Always attentive. He always made me feel like I was the most important person in the world—Oh. I forgot to say Benny was my fath

er.’” Cindy laughed at the shocked expressions all around her. Then she said, “Nikki said her father disappeared ten years ago and is presumed dead, but his body has never been found. She wants me to write an exposé of her own father and his mysterious disappearance. She wants me to find him, dead or alive, and if he was killed, to find the killer. She’s not asking much, right? But I am thinking about it.”

Dinner was hot, tasty, and served with plenty of laughs, which I needed. But I was still feeling crappy about my set-to with Wayne L. Broward and couldn’t wait to tell Joe about it.

I found everything that had happened from the moment I knocked on Broward’s door so embarrassing, I hadn’t even told Conklin. Luckily, Cindy and Rich were eager to take their party home right after dinner. As soon as we’d all hugged and kissed good-bye and I’d checked on Julie, I said to Joe, “I did a tremendously stupid thing today.”

I told him about my lunchtime visit to Wayne Broward and how I’d let the guy get his gun on me. Joe scowled, and I could feel him winding up to remind me that I had a child now.

I said, “Please don’t scold me, Joe. I’ve already had some strong words with myself.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“I know. But you’d be within your rights. The guy is wacko. And by that I mean, his mind hardly tracks at all. He could be demented. I can’t see him making a note to kill a woman every year on May twelfth and then doing it and after that, getting away with it.”

I shook my head, thinking about the house piled high with junk, the way Broward’s mind veered from past to present, and why I was pretty sure he’d never even focused on my badge.

I said, “I turned my back on him. He had a gun.”

“Come here,” said Joe.

I went into my husband’s arms, took a few deep breaths, then pulled him to the sofa and leaned against his shoulder.

“I’m gonna have to tell Brady and Richie about this guy, and after the arraignment the story is gonna get out. And I’m gonna take some crap for going into the guy’s house on a hunch.”

“It was a dead end. The wrong tree,” Joe said. “But Tina Strichler’s killer is still out there.”

“True,” I said. “But I wonder if there really is a pattern to these killings, Joe. Or if linking five separate stabbings to one killer with a mind like a clock is all in our minds. It could just as easily be that there are five different killers with minds of their own.”

CHAPTER 68

IT WAS DAY two of the trial.

Yuki had had a rough night. She and Brady were at opposite sides of the justice system, and the so-called Chinese Wall was in play. She couldn’t talk to him about her case, he couldn’t talk to her about his, and that made conversation forced and sleep barely possible.

She was at her desk at quarter to eight, and Natalie arrived a few minutes later with coffee. They picked apart Parisi’s opening statement, guessed about what he might be planning to do with their witnesses. Natalie told Yuki not to worry.

Zac arrived and stopped in the doorway.

Tags: James Patterson Women's Murder Club Mystery
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