That possibility didn’t sit well with him. But he’d signed a contract, and he’d given her his promise. He was duty-bound to protect her until the contract expired this time next week, or until she released him from that promise.
“There’s another angle to consider,” Luke said. “The killer’s target may have been Mrs. Ashton. After all, it was her house. The killer could have been waiting there for her, but the husband showed up. The killer may have felt cornered, so he shot Mr. Ashton and ran off.”
The detective pursed his mouth. “I won’t dismiss that out of hand. But it’s not high on my list of probable scenarios.”
It wasn’t high on Luke’s, either, but he was trying to keep more of an open mind than the jaded policeman across from him.
“I’ve got to make a call.” Luke shoved out of the hard, narrow chair he’d stuffed his body into for over two hours while waiting for a doctor to see Caroline Ashton.
He hurried outside the waiting area and turned his cell phone on. When Mitch answered his call, Luke didn’t waste time on small talk. “Have you found out anything?”
“Sure did. I called a buddy of mine who works for Stellar Security. He said they keep a log of everyone going in and out of the Ashton mansion, right down to the minute. And Mr. Ashton keeps a GPS tracker on his wife’s car. Can you believe that? I have a printout of every place she went this morning, with the exact times.”
A GPS tracker sounded invasive, controlling, which made Luke’s suspicions about abuse even stronger. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Richard Ashton’s attempt to keep a tether on his wife ended up proving her innocence? “Go ahead. Tell me.”
“Mr. Ashton left the house at 7:55. His wife left fifteen minutes later. She drove directly to a dry-cleaning company and stayed there for ten minutes. After that, she drove across town to Wiley & Harrison, again without making any stops along the way, arriving at precisely 8:40.”
“Wiley & Harrison, the law firm?”
“One and the same. Her visit at the law office lasted twelve minutes. After that, she headed down Highway 80, pulled over and stopped for fourteen additional minutes.”
“Any clue why?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
“Okay, then what.”
“You know the rest. She drove straight to our office, arriving at 9:12, hired us, and you followed her to the cottage, arriving at 9:47. You placed the 911 call four minutes later.”
Luke considered what Mitch had said. “I haven’t been told an official time of death yet, but Richard Ashton’s body was still warm when I checked for a pulse. From what you just told me, there’s no way she had the opportunity to kill him.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Some of the tension went out of him. It was only then that he realized how much he’d hoped Caroline Ashton was innocent. He was normally an excellent judge of character, a skill that helped immensely in his line of work. From the beginning, Caroline had seemed kind and caring, as evidenced by her concern about whether he might get hurt protecting her. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who could murder someone, even if they deserved it.
“Thanks, Mitch.”
“You bet. You need me to follow up on anything else?”
“Not right now. Just keep the office going. I’ll call you later.”
He headed back into the waiting room. When he updated the detective about what he’d found out, disappointment flashed across the policeman’s face.
As if noticing Luke’s puzzlement, Cornell gave him a lopsided smile. “I’d hoped for a quick open-and-shut case. The coroner called while you were outside. He said the victim was killed within an hour of when the body was discovered. I already confirmed Mr. Ashton arrived at his office at 8:30 and left again at 8:45. His limo driver said he dropped Mr. Ashton off at the cottage, per his instructions, twenty minutes later. That would have been about the same time Mrs. Ashton arrived at your office. If everything you just told me checks out, she didn’t have the opportunity to shoot her husband.”
“His limo driver dropped him off? And left him there?”
“Apparently. I’ve got another detective interviewing the driver right now to find out more. I’m also sending someone over to your place of business to take a statement from this Mitch guy, the one you said can vouch that Mrs. Ashton was there this morning.”
“Mr. Dawson?” a voice called out. “Detective Cornell?” A doctor stood in the entrance to the waiting room, looking around at the various groups of people. Luke and Cornell both rose. The doctor hurried to them and introduced himself.
“Is Mrs. Ashton okay?” Luke asked.
“I’m hopeful for a good outcome. She’s in recovery now.”
“‘Hopeful’?” Luke said. “‘Recovery’? You had to operate?”
“She was bleeding internally, from a ruptured spleen. If she hadn’t gotten here when she did, she might not have made it.”
“Do you know how she was injured?” Cornell asked.
Luke shook his head. The answer was as obvious as the bruises on Caroline’s wrists.
The doctor’s jaw tightened. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. Follow me.”
He led them through the double doors and turned left down a brightly lit hall, stopping at a door marked Recovery. Inside, he brought them down a row of curtained-off enclosures to the last one at the end. He pulled the green curtain back to reveal Caroline Ashton, asleep, looking pale, vulnerable, her small body lost in the middle of the hospital bed. An IV tube ran from the back of her right hand to a bag suspended on a pole. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around her other arm. The monitor behind the bed beeped and displayed numbers and graphs as it tracked her vital signs.
The doctor waved to the bruises on her wrists.
For once, the detective wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t seen the bruises earlier, as Luke had. The sight of them now had his mouth pressing into a hard, thin line.
“I won’t disturb her to show you the other bruises,” the doctor said, keeping his voice low. “But I can tell you, there are plenty of them, across her abdomen, her back, her side, in places typically covered by clothing. Unless she was in several violent car wrecks recently, there’s only one obvious explanation. Someone beat her, viciously, repeatedly, over a period of several days, based on the coloration of the bruises. But that’s not half the story.”
He crossed the small space to a computer monitor on a rolling cart. After typing a few commands, he turned the screen around to reveal an X-ray.
“This,” he said, pointing to the screen, “is a healed hairline fracture on her right forearm. It was probably broken a few years ago.” He punched another button to reveal a new picture. “And this is another fracture, on her other forearm. Again, it’s healed, a relatively old injury, probably within the past eight or nine months.” He turned the monitor back around.
