Jennifer tiredly let her head fall back against the headrest. “Are you working with him?” she asked, all nasally. What did it matter? There was nothing she could do even if he said yes.
“No, ma’am, I’m not,” he replied. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but Daisy Minor is a special friend of mine. I take threats against her very seriously.”
He could be lying. She knew that, but she didn’t think so. She’d suffered too much pain at a man’s hands not to notice the complete absence of threat from Chief Russo. Her purse had spilled all its contents on the floorboard when she hit the ditch; she unfastened her seat belt and slowly leaned forward, scrabbling through the mess until she found the tiny cassette tape. “I didn’t just hear it,” she said. “I taped it.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Mrs. Nolan was very shaky, but she was coherent. To cover all bases, Jack insisted she take a Breathalyzer test; nothing registered. She not only wasn’t drunk, she hadn’t had any alcohol that day. One of his investigators took her statement; then several of them listened to the answering machine tape. The mayor’s voice sounded a little tinny, but recognizable.
“—-grab her when she leaves the library for lunch, or when she goes home this afternoon. She’ll just disappear. When Sykes handles something personally, there aren’t any problems.”
“Realty?” That was the second man, the one Mrs. Nolan identified as Elton Phillips, a wealthy businessman in Scottsboro. “Then why was Mitchell’s body found so fast?”
“Sykes didn’t handle it. He stayed behind at the club to find out who had seen them in the parking lot. The other two were the ones who handled the body.”
“A mistake on Mr. Sykes’s part.”
“Yes.”
“Then this is his last chance. And yours.”
Daisy hadn’t been mentioned specifically, but with the mention of the library and Mrs. Nolan’s testimony about the part of the conversation she hadn’t taped, it wasn’t necessary. Mitchell had been mentioned, and someone’s seeing them in the parking lot of the club. With Daisy’s testimony and identification of two of the men who had killed Mitchell and Temple’s own voice on this tape, the mayor was firmly implicated in a murder. Mrs. Nolan didn’t understand the reference she’d over-heard about a shipment of Russians, but Jack was beginning to have nasty suspicions.
Regardless, the mayor and his friend were nailed.
Eva Fay was one of the people gathered around listening to the tape. She put her hands on her hips. “Why, that snake.”
His people were angry, Jack saw. Investigators, patrol officers, and office personnel alike were incensed. He was no longer the outsider, but one of them, and his woman had been threatened. Not just any woman, but Daisy Minor, whom most of them had known for years. The bad thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. The good thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. During times of trouble, the support system was massive.
“Let’s bring the mayor in for questioning,” he said quietly, keeping a firm lid on his own anger. Daisy was safe; that was the important thing. “Contact the Scottsboro P.D. and have Mr. Phillips picked up, too.”
He would have liked to have thrown up a net to catch this Mr. Sykes, but he didn’t have the manpower to block every street in town to check licenses. Sykes worried him, but as long as Daisy stayed put, Sykes couldn’t find her.
“I’ve kept everything off radio,” said Tony Marvin. “He won’t have a clue we’re on to him.”
“Sure he will. Remember Kendra Owens? Do you think she’s gone all day without mentioning Mrs. Nolan’s call to anyone else?”
“Not Kendra,” said Eva Fay. “She’s sweet, but she loves to talk.”
“Then we have to assume the mayor knows Mrs. Nolan called us. He’ll be on guard, but he doesn’t know about the tape, so he may not have bolted. C’mon, let’s get this ball rolling.”
The damn Minor woman wasn’t anywhere in town, which made Sykes very nervous. She hadn’t shown up at work; she hadn’t been at home. She simply wasn’t there. When people veered so far out of their normal routine, something was up.
He even called the library, taking care to use a pay phone in case they had Caller ID—not likely in a municipal building, but possible, and that damn call-return service meant he had to be cautious all the time anyway—and asked for Miss Minor. The woman who answered gave him no information other than that Miss Minor wasn’t in that day, but there was an underlying tension, a stiffness, in her voice that worried him even more.
Okay, he wasn’t going to get the Minor woman today. That was a setback, not a catastrophe.
But what had the woman at the library so on edge?
It was a small detail, the nervousness in a woman’s voice, but it was the little details that would jump up and bite you on the ass when you least expected it, if you didn’t pay attention and take care of them. His instinct told him it was time to pay attention.
He called the mayor on his private line, but there was no answer. That was another worrisome detail. If he knew the mayor, he’d planned to stay in his office all day long, providing himself with an airtight alibi in regard to Miss Minor’s disappearance, just in case.
His next call was to the mayor’s cell phone. No answer. Really uneasy now, Sykes called the mayor’s house. Nolan himself picked up on the second ring.
“The Minor woman isn’t working today,” Sykes said. “I’m calling it a day.”