As he and Joe left and headed for Joe’s car, Joe was scowling.
“The man is innocent,” Jeremy said quietly. “They’ll have to let him go in the end.”
“Yeah, I know,” Joe said. “That poor sucker is too damn dumb to have done it,” he added in disgust. “Wasted time.”
“No,” Jeremy disagreed. “He said that she stayed in the bar after he had left because she wanted to talk to someone she’d met that day.”
“So? That may not even be true.”
“I think it is.”
“We’re still looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“I think the haystack just got smaller. I asked Hugh to pull his receipts for the day, and I’ll pick them up later. We can start looking at every local who was in that bar that night.”
Joe eyed him dolefully. “We can start looking, and we may still be wrong.”
“And we may be right,” Jeremy said. “Richardson said she told him she was parked by the cemetery.”
“I told you—there are no tunnels in that cemetery. No tombs doubling as a secret hideaway.”
“That’s not the point,” Jeremy said. “The cemetery figures into this somehow. This guy has decided that he likes the whole Harvest Man idea. Being worshipped. He’s taking these women and entertaining himself with them. Making them adore him, beg for their lives, maybe. And then, when he tires of them, or they try to escape, or maybe because it’s Wednesday or it rains, he decides it’s time to kill them and find another. And I’m telling you, Joe, whoever he is, he was at that bar that night.”
“Maybe,” Joe said.
“We narrow it down. We find someone who was there, and who has land, so no one will hear what goes on. Or a soundproof room. Somewhere where he kept Dinah Green before he killed her. Somewhere where he’s got Mary Johnstone right now.”
“Let’s just hope he paid with a credit card,” Joe muttered.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t get tired of Mary,” Jeremy replied.
“Amen,” Joe said solemnly.
16
Rowenna had no idea what to say to Eve.
She couldn’t believe her friend was accusing her own husband of being a murderous monster.
And looking into Eve’s tormented eyes, she knew that Eve didn’t want to believe it, either, but things had built up inside her until she was ready to self-combust, and she’d desperately needed to speak with someone. Someone she trusted.
“Well?” Eve whispered.
“Well, the fact that he wasn’t in the store doesn’t make him a murderer. And even if he flirted with her…well, we all flirt sometimes. It’s a way of feeling…appreciated, I guess,” Rowenna said.
“What should I do?” Eve asked quietly.
“Have you confronted him with any of this?” Rowenna asked.
“I’ve argued with him about the books. And we had a big fight after he followed Dinah Green out of the store…. It didn’t help when we saw her again later. At the bar,” Eve said.
Rowenna sucked in a breath, watching her friend closely as she asked, “Did he leave you at all that night?”
Eve frowned. “Yes. He got up from the table and went to the bar to get our drinks. Then, when he didn’t come back, I went to ask Hugh what the hell was going on that it took so long to get a drink, but I couldn’t find him, either. I was angry, so I said screw the check and left.”
“And then—did Adam come home?”
“Of course he came home. Do you think he’d leave a house he feels he paid for?” Eve asked bitterly.
“Eve, I meant when did he come home?”
“I don’t know!” Eve exclaimed miserably. “I’d had a few drinks, and I was so angry—I shouldn’t have, but I took a sleeping pill. And I was out like a light.”
“What happened in the morning? Was he there when you woke up?”
“Yes. He was there. I got up, ignored him and went into the store without him.”
“Did he come into the store later?”
“Yes. He got there a few minutes after me.”
Rowenna studied Eve, at a loss for reassuring words.
Adam?
Could her friend be right? Was her husband a killer?
“What should I do?” Eve begged. “What should I do?”
If Adam was the killer, Rowenna thought, was Eve safe with him? No, what was she thinking? It couldn’t be Adam. It couldn’t.
Why not?
Because it just had to be someone else.
But should Eve be staying with him if there was any possibility, any possibility at all?
“Oh, Eve…”
“I know. If I’m wrong, I’ve destroyed my marriage. But if I’m right, I might wind up dead in a cornfield,” Eve said miserably.
“I have to tell Jeremy,” Rowenna said.