does that mean you haven’t reported it to the police?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Then I guess my first question is, why not?”
Silence stretched between them until he said, “You know, all of a sudden I’m feeling like an idiot—and wondering what the devil possessed me to come over here. I mean, we’ve barely met, so…”
She simply waited, watching him. On the surface, he appeared relaxed, his hands resting lightly on his thighs, but no one looking closely would mistake him for a man at ease. His dark eyes were clouded with worry, and there was a tightness around his mouth.
“When Julie said you’d been a detective…” he finally continued. “But, no. I should have realized that imposing on you was totally inappropriate.” He began to rise. “This doesn’t concern you, and—”
“Wait, it’s all right,” she said, aware as the words came out that she might regret them.
Giving advice to a virtual stranger could be risky business, so she’d probably be wiser to just let him leave. But something about him made her want to help.
Before she could decide exactly what it was, he said, “You’re sure it’s okay?”
“Yes.”
He lowered himself into the chair again, slowly saying, “I would have called the police, but the situation’s a lot more complicated than Julie made it sound.”
“In that case, you’d better start at the beginning. Tell me the whole story. I’ve got time,” she added when he glanced at her laptop. “I was just playing with the opening of a new book. And that was mostly because my house is such a disaster area that I don’t know where to start attacking it.”
“Well…then how about this? After we’re finished discussing my problem, I’ll give you a hand inside. Help you arrange your furniture, or cart boxes to the basement or whatever.”
Her gaze slipped downward from his face. His shoulders were broad, and the way his T-shirt was pulling tautly across his chest emphasized its muscles, leaving little doubt that he’d be a big help.
“All right.” She shot him a smile. “Deal.”
“Great. Then…the beginning would have been Wednesday evening. Graham phoned Rachel after dinner and…I mentioned that she’d recently broken up with him, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Well, on Wednesday he phoned after dinner and told her they had to talk—suggested they meet in High Park. She said she’d be there, then had second thoughts and called him back. She couldn’t reach him, though, so she asked me to go with her.
“It wouldn’t have been any problem. Julie was spending the night next door, at her friend’s. But Rachel has a habit of avoiding difficult situations, of always trying to get someone else to take care of them for her. So I said no, and she went alone.”
When Chase paused and caught Anne’s gaze, she felt a flicker of affinity. How often had she made a spur-of-the-moment decision, only to end up wishing she’d decided differently? Far more often than she liked to recall.
“I imagine I’d have told her no, too,” she said—and was glad she had when Chase looked grateful.
“Yeah, well, I figured that was the right way to play it,” he continued. “Until about three minutes after she left, that is. Then I started worrying that I’d made a mistake. See, Graham had a quick temper, and the more I thought about that the more I wished I’d gone.
“Finally, I got in my Jeep and headed to the park. I drove around, checking the lots for their cars, but couldn’t find them. Later, Rachel explained that they met at the entrance to a walking trail, and had both parked in a pull-off near it.”
“So when you couldn’t find them you came home?” Anne prompted after he paused a second time.
“Right. And, eventually, Rachel arrived back, so upset that I knew something was wrong the instant she walked in.
“It turned out Graham had started talking about their getting together again and she’d told him it wouldn’t work. Said they simply weren’t right for each other. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, though, and one thing led to another until, at some point, he shoved her.
“She said he didn’t push her very hard. But they were in a wooded area and she must have slipped on some leaves or something, because she ended up on the ground. And that totally infuriated her, so she didn’t say another word—just picked herself up, marched back to her car and drove home. End of story. Until yesterday morning, when we turned on the news and heard he’d been killed.”
“How did she react?”
“She practically disintegrated. She’d been seeing him for months, and even though she’d decided he wasn’t the love of her life, she still had feelings for him. In any event, the police were issuing their standard request for people who knew anything to contact them.”
“And she did.”
“Of course.”
“Despite her habit of avoiding difficult situations.”
“She realized there was no avoiding this one.”
That, Anne thought, was only too true. Likely, people in the park had seen Rachel and Graham together. Or, at the very least, had seen their cars parked in the same place. Which meant it would only have been a matter of time until the police learned her identity.
“So Rachel called the police,” she said. “And the next thing you knew those detectives were at your house.”
Chase nodded.
“And when Julie told me the ‘TV people’ are implying Rachel did it? Are they really?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s just hype, or did the detectives actually seem to suspect her?”
“Well…I’d better fill you in on some of the other details. Graham was killed with a .40-caliber Glock, which, apparently, is standard Toronto police issue. So they assume someone turned his own gun on him and—”
“He had it with him, then?”
“It seems that way. Rachel didn’t see it. But he was wearing a jacket, so it could have been underneath that or in a pocket. At any rate, it wasn’t found at the scene. And since it wasn’t in his car or apartment, the detectives figure he was carrying it. And that the killer took it with him.”
“But if ballistics hasn’t got it, there’s no way of telling whether it’s actually the murder weapon or not.”
“No, and…you know a lot about police procedures?”
“A fair bit.”
“Well, then, if they’d really thought it was Rachel who killed him, wouldn’t they have checked her for gunpowder? Don’t traces of it show up even if somebody’s spent
