to go, Anne, Chase thought. Every minute longer that Julie was gone gave them another minute to finish talking.
“Take the plate home, hon,” Rachel said as Julie pushed back her chair.
“Aren’t you and Dad coming, too? Aren’t you going to change?”
“Later,” Chase told her.
He waited until she’d disappeared behind the gate, then looked at his sister. “Let’s see how fast we can finish filling Anne in.”
“You’re feeling up to talking again?” she asked Rachel.
“Uh-huh, the sugar hit from that jelly helped a lot. So what else should I tell you?”
“Well…let’s hear exactly what the detectives asked you about Graham’s gun. Chase said they wanted to know whether he had it with him.”
“Yes, and I told them I didn’t think so. That if he did, I wasn’t aware of it. But I’m not sure they believed me.”
“Why not?”
“Because the next thing they asked was if I knew how to use it. That was just before they asked me if I’d killed him,” she added, staring at a patio stone.
Anne glanced at Chase.
He nodded that she should continue. He doubted Rachel was as up to talking as she wanted them to think, but Anne couldn’t help unless she had the rest of the facts.
“And do you know how to use a gun?” she asked quietly.
“Uh-huh. Graham taught me to shoot. He used to take me to the police target range with him.”
Chase couldn’t stop himself from checking Anne’s reaction to that.
He’d already realized she wasn’t very good at concealing her thoughts—especially considering she’d been a P.I.—and at the moment he could tell precisely what she was thinking. Learning that Rachel knew how to handle a gun would only have made those detectives more convinced she was their killer.
After a few seconds of silence, she said, “Rachel, let’s talk about the would-be extortionist for a minute. You didn’t even think Graham was carrying his gun, yet this guy claimed Graham drew it while you were still there, and—”
“I explained what we figure about that,” Chase reminded her. “He needed a story he could threaten to tell the police, and that’s what he decided on.”
“There’s no truth to the gun part at all,” Rachel said, her voice catching a little. “Graham didn’t draw his gun while I was with him, I didn’t wrestle him for it and I didn’t, didn’t kill him. Anne, everything happened exactly the way I told you.”
When she murmured “I know it did,” Chase wondered if she was actually convinced. No matter how many times he assured himself that the “evidence” against his sister was entirely circumstantial, he knew how things must look to an outsider.
“Okay, then let’s get back to the detectives,” Anne suggested. “You told them that you simply got up and left after Graham pushed you, and what did they say?”
“Nothing.”
“They just let it pass?”
Rachel nodded.
“You figure that’s significant,” Chase said.
“Well…yes. I’ve been assuming they found evidence of a struggle, been assuming that’s why they figure the killer might have turned Graham’s own gun on him. But if there was evidence, why wouldn’t they have pressed Rachel about saying she just got up and walked off?”
Chase considered the question, but couldn’t come up with any logical answer. “They noticed the leaves were disturbed where she fell,” he finally said. “So they’d hardly have missed something more obvious.”
He hesitated then, afraid of jumping to a conclusion just because he wanted it to be true. But since it struck him as the only possible one, he added, “Which means there can’t have been any struggle. And that means,” he continued, looking at Rachel with a sudden sense of euphoria, “we don’t have to worry about our extortionist. Because if he tells the cops you wrestled with Graham for his gun, they’ll know he’s lying.”
“Chase?” Anne said.
When he glanced at her, she said, “Maybe there was no evidence of a struggle. But maybe there was, and the detectives just had some reason for not asking Rachel about it.”
A reason like wanting to give her enough rope to hang herself? he thought, the euphoria gone as quickly as it had come.
“What sort of reason?” Rachel asked.
“Nothing really comes to mind,” Anne told her. “So Chase was probably right—there likely wasn’t any sign of a struggle. But if there wasn’t, why would the cops think Graham might have been shot with his own gun?”
“Because he was killed with a Glock?” Chase said.
“Well…I guess that could be it, although the police are hardly the only people who have Glocks. But let’s get back to why they didn’t ask about a struggle.
“If we assume it was because there wasn’t one, we get an entirely different scenario of what happened in the clearing. In it, the killer would have stepped out of the woods with a gun aimed at Graham, and—”
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said. “Because Graham wasn’t stupid. If someone was pointing a gun at him, he’d have simply handed over his wallet. And if he had, why would the guy have killed him?”
When Anne was silent again, Chase’s throat went dry. They were close to something important. He felt certain they were. So why didn’t she know what it was?
As the seconds slowly passed, he told himself she was merely taking time to think. Finally, he couldn’t stop himself from asking what she was thinking about.
“Just something my father used to tell me,” she said. “Do you know he’s a private investigator?”
“Yes, Julie mentioned it. She said you used to work for him. But what did he tell you?”
“That I should always guard against tunnel vision, never lock into only one explanation when there might be others. So I was remembering that—and trying to figure out what others there could be when it comes to Graham’s murder.”
Chase retreated into wait mode once more, simply watching Anne until the silence grew too much for him again.
“And?” he said when it did. “What other explanations are coming to mind?”
“Well, only one, really. That the guy in the park wasn’t a mugger at all. That he followed Graham there with the specific intention of killing him.”
ANNE, RACHEL AND CHASE were still talking when Julie arrived back with Becky in tow.
The
