“I overheard talk from two of the forensics guys about a note.”
“What?” She frowned. “A suicide note? With all those stab wounds. That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. That’s why I want to see if the media was able to get a statement from the police about the note.”
“Don’t stay up all night waiting for the media to catch up. It’s almost four, and you didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He nodded. “I’ll only check one time before I turn in. You go on.”
She hesitated, her gaze on his face. His tea-colored eyes were glittering, and there was the tension she knew well. He was wired. Even if he came to bed right now, he’d lie there, his brain moving at hyperspeed, going over possibilities. “Okay.” She slid the glass doors open. “Let me know if you hear anything interesting.”
“I will.” He dropped down in the chair Eve had just vacated. “There should be news on the hour, and that’s in twenty minutes.”
“And five minutes later, I expect to see you,” Eve said sternly. “Or I’ll come down and get you.”
He laughed but didn’t answer her.
Eve stopped by Beth’s room, knocked, and carefully opened the door. Beth was in bed but the light was still on. “Are you okay?”
Beth nodded, then smiled shakily. “You don’t have to be so protective. I told you I was working my way through this.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk it out. I’m here if you need me.”
“I don’t need you.” Then, as Eve started to close the door, “Thank you. I’m … grateful.”
“No gratitude necessary.” She smiled. “After all, we’re family.”
Beth’s smile became steadier. “That’s right, I keep forgetting. That means you’re stuck with me.” She reached over and turned out the light on the nightstand. “Now get out of here and let me see if I can get to sleep in this bed. If I can’t, you may find me downstairs sleeping on that couch in the living room.”
“It looked pretty comfortable.” She paused. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about Gelber’s disc Billy is trying to make sense of?”
“Yes.” Eve couldn’t see her expression in the darkness, but her voice was only a wisp of sound. “But I’m more scared than curious. If what you say is true about Gelber’s manipulating my memories and giving me posthypnotic suggestions, maybe that’s natural. Perhaps I was supposed to be too afraid to delve into what Gelber did. Do you suppose that’s possible?”
Eve felt a surge of anger. “Yes, that’s entirely possible.” She turned. “So we’ll just break through that wall he built around you, ignore what he did, and get what we need. There’s nothing to be scared about.”
“What if I did something … bad.”
“Bullshit. You were a kid. What could you have done?” She started to pull the door shut. “Try to sleep.” She paused a moment outside the door before she moved next door to her room. She had thought that Pierce was the principal villain of the piece, but the more she thought about Gelber, the more she was beginning to give him equal billing. Pierce had been her jailer, but Gelber had robbed her in a hideous way.
Murder was a terrible crime, but so was the crime that Gelber had committed against Beth. There was no way on earth Eve could regret Gelber’s death.
* * *
EVE WAS STILL AWAKE when Joe came to bed over an hour later. “So much for catching one newscast.” She yawned and cuddled closer to him. “Well? Anything about Drogan?”
“No.” His hand absently stroked her hair. “Nothing about Drogan. He’s not a suspect.”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“You heard me. A note was found on the coffee table in the living room written by a Paul Helmer, a director. He confessed to killing Gelber because he allegedly ruined his life by hypnotizing him, then threatening to tell his wife of his infidelities, which he’d confessed while under hypnosis. He stated Gelber was blackmailing him.”
“It wasn’t Drogan?”
“I didn’t say that. I just told you about the note. The police think that since Paul Helmer was a patient, Gelber could have let him into the house. It’s a pat explanation since the house was not broken into, and the alarm was so difficult to disarm. They checked out Helmer with Gelber’s secretary and he’d definitely been undergoing therapy for the past two years.”
“Have they picked up Helmer and gotten a statement yet?”
“Not yet. He wasn’t at his apartment.” He paused. “And they may not get a statement … in time. The note he left was a suicide note as well as a confession.”
Eve was silent, trying to take it in. “All the ends neatly tied up. I suppose it could have been Helmer.”
“If they find Helmer’s body, then the police will close the case without any further investigation.”
“Was the note handwritten?”
“No, computer, but it was signed by hand.” He added dryly, “Much simpler to forge … or easier to persuade someone to scrawl.”
“You’re not buying it.”
“I’m still betting on Drogan. Pierce knew we were getting too close to finding out what happened to Beth. It would be smart to get rid of one of the prime witnesses.”
“You think he planned all this with Helmer?”
“It was clever, and I don’t believe Drogan is that clever. According to his dossier, he’s principally an assassin and good at what he does. But this is an elaborate cover-up, and he’d need someone to do that for him.”
“But is Pierce that clever?”
“He’s capable … and desperate. By using Helmer, no one would be looking at any connection to him. The killing is all spelled out for anyone to see. All he had to do was wait a few days until the police finished getting the info on Helmer out of his files, then send someone to get Beth’s records.” He shook his head. “I don’t know … it’s complicated.”
“So what next?”
“We go through the disc we pulled tonight and see if we find evidence that will skewer that son of a bitch, Pierce.”
“Can’t we go to the police now?”
“We could, but not if you want to protect Beth. You prove that Helmer didn’t kill Gelber and Beth was thirty minutes away, and you set her up. She’s a mental patient who has a grudge against Gelber and wants revenge for an imagined crime against her.”
“Dammit.”
“Exactly. That mental-patient stigma is going to haunt her for the foreseeable future.”
“I hate it.”
“So do I,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t deserve it. But we have to accept the facts and deal with them.”
“The fact is that Pierce put a major stumbling block in our way when he got rid of Gelber.”
“He got rid of Gelber, but we still have the disc. That could clear the path.”
“Then what are we doing lying here when we could be working on that disc?” She sat up in bed and said fiercely, “Beth may be frightened of knowing what’s in it, but I can’t wait.”
Joe chuckled and pulled her back down. “You’ll have to wait. Newell has the disc, and you need to sleep.” He kissed her. “Give it a few hours, Eve.”
He was right. But she was still feeling a sense of sudden urgency. She put her cheek on his shoulder. “I just have a feeling that everything is moving too fast, and we need to keep up. We needed Gelber as a witness against Pierce, but now he’s dead. Pierce is scared, and he’s started eliminating everyone who knew what he did to Beth.”
“If we can catch Drogan, he won’t have a weapon to use,” Joe said. “All we need to do is keep an eye out for him and pounce. There’s no doubt that he’ll stay close to us as he can get. Beth is the target, and I’m the lagniappe.”
“‘Lagniappe,’” she repeated. “That’s the French word for a little something extra.”
“And Drogan was born and raised in Cajun country, so he knows Cajun French. He’s into voodoo. I’ve been thinking of that and wondering how we can use it…”
Eve shook her head and settled closer to him. Joe was thinking, planning, reaching out. She brushed her lips against the warm flesh of his shoulder. “You’d better not be the lagniappe. I won’t have it.”