“Tree comes with lots of history that dates back to the Civil War. To lose it would be losing history.” He cocked his head. “Why’re you asking so many questions about Diane. She in some kind of trouble?”
“She’s dead,” Bishop said. “Murdered.”
Stewart’s mouth dropped open and he shook his head as if his brain wrestled with the words. “How? When?”
“Found her charred remains in a house in Nashville yesterday.”
“What?” The thin face paled, whitening to ashen.
Delivering news of death was always a wild card. He’d witnessed the full range. Tears, screams, laughter, stunned stupors, shock, outrage. He wasn’t interested in the reaction as the intent humming beneath the surface. He studied Stewart, paying close attention to the twitch tweaking the fingers of his right hand, the bead of sweat on his brow, and the flare of his nostrils as he breathed.
“Burned beyond recognition. Had to ID her with a hip implant.”
Stewart dragged a trembling hand through his hair. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” He left out the detail of the gunshot wound to Diane’s head. That tidbit he’d share only with a few cops and the killer. “Flesh and blood melted.”
“God.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?” Bishop’s even tone disarmed the repeated question designed to test Stewart. Whereas the truth came naturally, lying took work. Easier to trip up on stories hastily made up in panic. Can you keep your stories straight?
“Three days ago.”
“You argued at dinner last week?” Rick countered.
He shook his head slowly. “Over the trees. She cut them down.”
“Pissed you off.” An edge sharpened Rick’s words.
His gaze grew vacant as if he’d gotten lost for a moment and then he shook his head. “Yeah. But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t. Couldn’t.”
He could. Anyone could. Rick believed everyone had a magic combination that when dialed drove them to do just about anything, including tying a neighbor to a bed, shooting her in the head, and setting the house on fire. Stewart wasn’t the kind of guy who had it in him to destroy a tree or an old house, but Rick suspected a difficult neighbor or a one-story house in the West End was fair game. “Where were you two nights ago, Mr. Stewart?”
“Two nights ago?” he echoed. “Sunday night. I was at the gym until seven and then went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I had a taste for pasta.”
“Where’d you sleep?” Rick asked.
“In my own bed.”
“Got a name of the restaurant?” Bishop pressed the tip of his pen to his notebook. Diane had been killed in the middle of the night so where Stewart ate didn’t really matter. But the more details they gathered the more lies Stewart would have to remember.
Outrage flashed in Stewart’s gaze. “Why do I have to give you a name? I told you I didn’t do it.”
A smile tugged the edges of Rick’s lips. “Believe it or not, I’ve heard that line before.”
“But I’m innocent!”
“Names,” Bishop said.
Stewart huffed out a ragged sigh and then rattled off the name of his gym and the restaurant, even giving them the name of the waitress who’d served him. Bishop wrote it all down.
Rick shifted his stance and cursed the uneven ground bearing on his left leg. “Anyone else you think might have wanted to hurt Diane?”
“She wasn’t a nice woman,” he rushed to say. “She did what she wanted, when she wanted and she irritated a lot of people.”
“No one specific?”
He seemed to think as if he groped and scraped for another name to feed the cops so they would leave with a fresh suspect. “None that come to mind.”
“None?” Rick taunted.
“No, but there’re others.” The sentence crested in a high tone.
“You’ll call when you’ve a list.”
“Yeah.”
Rick nodded, not willing to let him off the hook. “We’ll keep in touch, Mr. Stewart.”
Stewart shook his head like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “It was just a few trees.”
Rick’s thoughts strayed to the aspirin in his glove box. He could use a few now. “I know. Just a few trees.” He turned to Bishop. “Let’s see if Boone or Carter had bigger issues with Diane Smith.”
Susan Martinez sat at her computer screen typing out the story she’d read on the six o’clock news. She’d spent a frustrating day calling her contacts in the Nashville Police Department, trying to find out if the cops had identified the body pulled from the house fire. She’d covered her share of fires and murders in the last thirty years and she’d developed a sixth sense that alerted her to a high-profile murder. Right now, her senses buzzed.
At the fire, when she’d seen homicide detectives Morgan and Bishop inspect the carnage, she’d known by their grim expression the victim had not died by accident.
She’d put in a few calls to Morgan but he’d ignored her, as had Bishop. Eventually, Morgan would include her but he’d stretch it out as long as he could. She’d questioned his judgment on air. When she’d cornered Rick after his release from the hospital and asked him about the shooting, she’d seen the muscle in his jaw tighten and the fingers on his left hand curl into a fist. He’d not spoken to her but she’d known that day she’d burned a bridge.
If she had a nickel for all the people she’d upset over the years, she’d be worth millions. She wasn’t paid to play nice. People liked to turn their televisions on in the evening and get the scoop. They didn’t care how she got the details, only that she did.
“Susan, how’s the copy coming?”