Pass.
It wasn’t as if she had any other leads to follow. She’d give the cat an hour to satisfy his curiosity, and then she’d do what she should have done in the first place—turn the note over to the authorities.
Chapter Two
The only good thing about being back in his cell was that they removed the handcuffs. Thomas sat on the thin bunk mattress and tried not to hear the sounds of the other incarcerated men or to think about the future. For just one second, he’d thought he might have connected with Molly Harper. That had given him hope—and hope was the only thing he couldn’t afford.
Someone had framed him, and done a professional job of it. Someone who knew of his friendship with Anna Goodman. Someone who knew she had a key to his home and access to his gun.
Since the terrible morning when the deputies had come to the park and arrested him, Thomas’s life had become a nightmare. He’d gleaned enough details about Anna’s murder to be able to imagine what had occurred. He could only hope that his imagination was worse than the reality.
In his mind he saw Anna running across his lawn, using her key to unlock his door. She had Kate in her arms, and they were both crying. Anna kept looking back over her shoulder, terrified that someone had followed her. Her fingers fumbled the key as she tried to open the door.
Thomas stopped his thoughts. He couldn’t bear to see Anna so afraid, and the one person she was most afraid of was her husband, Darwin. He paced the small cell. The worst curse in the world would be to love the person you feared the most. Anna’s relationship with Darwin had been pure hell. Yet she had acted as if she were powerless to change it.
Unless on the night of her murder, she’d intended to take the baby and leave.
He saw her again, putting Kate on his bed as she got the gun from the drawer. She turned and faced the doorway, determined to defend herself against whoever was after her. The bedroom door flew open and—
Thomas grasped the bars and bit back the curse that wanted to escape. Someone had hurt Anna while he was sitting around a campfire drinking coffee and playing cards. And then that someone had framed him.
Now he was helpless to hunt for Kate or even try to clear his own name. He’d been jailed with bail set so high he could never make it—not even if every friend he had chipped in. The only way he was going to get out of the cell he was in would be a transfer to the state prison in Huntsville. He flopped back on his bed in defeat.
In a moment he sat up. Instead of moping around, he needed to call his lawyer and arrange for the sale of his home—that was the only way he’d generate enough funds to make bail. Thank goodness Bradley Alain, the topmost criminal lawyer in east Texas, had volunteered to defend him. Otherwise he’d have to sell his house for legal fees alone.
If Molly Harper had done nothing else, she’d inspired him to quit wallowing around and imagining the awfulness of Anna’s last moments and do something to help himself. She’d walked into the jail and brought his hopes back to life. “Damn,” he muttered.
The man in the cell next to him spoke. “Hey, Lakeman, I hear you’re going to get the chair.”
“Shut up,” Thomas said.
“My lawyer tells me that Texas executes more people than any other state.”
“Shut up!” Thomas grasped the bars as if he intended to pull them apart. “Just shut up!” But now he was speaking to himself, to the part of him that, once again, had begun to imagine Anna’s last moments.
IT WAS MIDDAY, the February sun warm as Molly stepped out of the Jeep in the midst of huge trees and the chirping of birds. Spring was still several weeks away, but the forest was waking up from the sleep of winter.
Familiar hopped out of the vehicle and started immediately to the abandoned tent that remained at the campsite where Thomas had spent Saturday night. Molly approached slowly, taking in the evidence that told of a hurried departure.
There were the cold embers of a fire and a camp coffeepot sitting beside it. She touched the pot with her toe. Coffee sloshed in it. About ten yards away, Familiar was entering the tent.
Beside the fire she found a Coleman lantern and a tin cup. Closer to the tent was a flashlight lying on a bed of pine needles and beside that a battered ice chest. The police hadn’t bothered to pick up any of Thomas’s gear. She lifted the lid of the chest and found three unopened beers, water, coffee, some apples and bologna. It certainly looked as if Thomas had been camping in earnest.
So far, everything he’d said had checked out, but if he’d set up the campsite as an alibi, of course it would. She was reluctant to enter the tent, and that emotion surprised her. For some reason she felt as if she were invading Thomas’s privacy. Even though he’d requested as much.
“Familiar!” She went to the tent flap. The cat had found plenty to explore. He’d been inside the tent for more than fifteen minutes. “Kitty, kitty.”
The cat sauntered outside with what looked to be part of a newspaper. She knelt to take it and the cat used his paw to point out the date. February 17. It was the Saturday evening that Anna had been killed.
“This doesn’t prove anything.” She folded the paper and put it in her pocket. “Thomas Lakeman could have planted that newspaper. He could have bought it and left it just to attempt to show he was here.” The newspaper didn’t prove a thing, but it was good to have.
The cat gave one cry and began to walk the area. Molly watched him in awe as he created a spiral and worked his way from the inside out, examining the ground, sniffing the grass. She’d never seen a detective, much less a cat, conduct such an intense investigation.
When he paused about twenty yards away, she went to see what he’d found. “A clue?”
Familiar pointed to a hole in the ground. “Snake?” she asked, remembering that her father had always told her that snakes lived in holes. Though she enjoyed the woods, she was wary of the wild creatures, particularly snakes. The motto in Texas was that everything was bigger, and that certainly applied to the rattlers. A timber rattler could grow up to six feet long and as big around as a man’s muscular arm.
The cat left his find and walked to another place. He stared at her until she followed him. Another hole. She frowned, realizing the cat was showing her a pattern.
There were four holes on each side of the square and two larger ones in between. She understood. “A tent. So Thomas wasn’t lying about that. Someone else was camping here.” Why was the cat trying so hard to convince her of Thomas’s innocence? The answer was obvious—because he believed Thomas wasn’t guilty.
“Why would someone kill my sister, steal her baby and set Thomas Lakeman up to take the fall? Why him? If he’s telling the truth, he was just my sister’s friend.”
The cat didn’t have an answer, or if he did he wasn’t saying. But the question throbbed in Molly’s brain. Ever since she’d heard the awful news, she’d asked herself who would hurt her sweet sister. The name that always came up was Darwin Goodman. She didn’t say it, but in her opinion he was awful enough to sell his own child. And if a lot of money were involved, he’d even kill.
“We have to get back to the jail,” she said. “I have another question for Thomas.”
