Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 15

"Good evening, Sergeant."

He noticed she didn't immediately approach, but kept her distance. She and Thomas exchanged a glance, and Wyatt began to wonder if they were interrupting more than dinner. Interesting.

"Do you mind if we look at your coats?" Wyatt asked. He and Kevin had rehea.r.s.ed this on the way over. Rather than go straight after the husband, which might raise his defenses, they would ease their way into it.

"My coats?" Nicky asked in surprise.

"Coat, rain jacket, an article of outerwear you would normally wear to head out at night."

She gazed at them curiously, then looked at her husband again. When Thomas remained silent, she finally approached, opening the entryway closet. "My coats are in here."

"You remember that?" Kevin asked.

"In a manner of speaking. I don't understand. Why do you want to see my coats?"

"We checked with the hospital," Wyatt said. "Morning you were brought in, you weren't wearing a jacket."

"Maybe I left it in the car."

Wyatt thought back to the mint-clean interior of the vehicle, as pointed out by the dog handler. "No," he said.

Nicole appeared confused, but she stepped back, let them do their thing.

He and Kevin took their time. Kevin pulled out each jacket that appeared to possibly belong to a female, while Wyatt made note of all the others. None of the coats were wet or particularly filthy; then again, it had now been nearly thirty-six hours since the rainstorm had ended Thursday morning.

"These all of your jackets?" Kevin asked.

Nicky tilted her head to the side, obviously having to think about it. "I think so."

Kevin looked at Thomas. "This all of your wife's coats?"

"Yes."

"So . . . you weren't wearing a coat when you got into your car Wednesday night."

Even Nicky seemed to understand that was strange. "But it was pouring out. Had been for days."

"Cold, too."

She hesitated, looking troubled. Then, because who else could she turn to, Wyatt thought, she glanced once more at her husband.

"Last I saw you," he said quietly, "you were on the couch, wearing jeans, a black turtleneck and a gray fleece pullover."

Which was consistent with what the ER nurse had remembered. She'd also offered the tidbit that Thomas had been very insistent on getting his wife's b.l.o.o.d.y clothes back, regardless of the fact they were considered biohazardous waste.

"Shoes?" Wyatt asked.

Thomas shook his head. "When I saw her, she was wearing her slippers. Like now."

Kevin and Wyatt glanced at Nicky's shoes. Sure enough, she was wearing a st.u.r.dy pair of fleece-lined slippers with black rubber soles. Most likely L.L. Bean, and owned by most households in the North Country.

Now Kevin and Wyatt turned their attention to the line of shoes in the closet. Once again, Kevin drew out the smaller, female models, while Wyatt noted the male equivalents.

"Sneakers are missing," Thomas said at last. "Your running shoes."

Beside him, Nicky nodded. "My old pair. New Balance, silver with blue markings."

"You wore your sneakers out into the rain?" Wyatt asked. He hadn't thought to ask the ER nurse about Nicky's shoes. Now he wished he had.

Nicky frowned, shook her head slightly. "I wouldn't . . . My first instinct is that I'd grab my Danskos. The black clogs, right there. Sneakers soak through, and I wouldn't want to get them muddy. Whereas the Danskos . . ."

One of the most popular clogs in the wintry North, Wyatt thought. And yeah, that's what he'd figure someone would grab on a mucky night as well.

"Picture your sneakers," Kevin spoke up. "Silvery, old, maybe well-worn . . ."

Nicky closed her eyes; she seemed to understand what he wanted from her. "I should throw them away. They're old, starting to smell. But for gardening, household ch.o.r.es, they still come in handy."

"It's Wednesday night," Kevin intoned. "It's dark, raining. Can you hear it?"

"The wind against the windows," she whispers.

Wyatt kept his attention on Thomas, who he noticed made no move to interrupt the trip down memory lane. Because he honestly had nothing to fear from his wife's memories? Or because he was curious for the answers himself?

"I'm tired. My head hurts."

"You're resting."

"On the sofa. Thomas has gone back to work. I think I should just go upstairs, go to bed. But I don't feel like moving."

"What do you hear? The wind, the rain?"

"The phone," Nicky murmured. "It's ringing."

Kevin and Wyatt exchanged a glance. This was new information. Apparently Thomas hadn't known either, as he straightened slightly, muscles tensing.

"Did you pick up the phone? How does the receiver feel in your hand?"

"I have to go," Nicky whispered.

"You answer the phone, pick it up," Kevin tried again. "And you hear . . ."

But Nicky won't go there. "I have to leave," she said again. "Quick. Before Thomas returns. My tennis shoes. I spot them still out in the hall from earlier in the day. I grab them. They'll have to do."

"You put on your shoes, find a coat-"

"No. No time. I have to go. Now. I need a drink."

Standing beside Wyatt, Thomas flinched but still said nothing.

"You take your car keys," Kevin intoned. "You reach into the basket, feel them with your fingers . . ."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Nicky said abruptly. Her eyes opened. She stared at all three men. "I didn't have to go out into a storm to find scotch. All I had to do was head upstairs."

THOMAS WAS CLEARLY not a happy man. About his wife's confession that she had a secret stash of alcohol elsewhere in the house. That she'd received some mysterious phone call she'd never told him about. But he gamely led Wyatt and Kevin to the handheld receiver in the family room, to check caller history. The phone, however, didn't have any record of a call on Wednesday night.

"Could it have been on your cell phone?" Wyatt asked after a moment.

Nicky hesitated, reflexively patted her pockets. Since her scotch confession, she was studiously avoiding her husband's eyes.

"We recovered your cell phone in your vehicle," Kevin spoke up. "It's currently at the state police lab for processing."

"Oh. I guess so, that the call could've been on my cell phone."

Wyatt made a note. Cell phone records were easy to retrieve, a simple matter of a phone call to the service provider. Which beat trying to trace down the mangled phone from the state police.

"You shouldn't be drinking," Thomas spoke up abruptly.

Nicky didn't reply. She stood with her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"You said you wouldn't," Thomas persisted. "Dammit! I've been bending over backward, trying to take care of you, ridding the house of any trace of temptation. Where the h.e.l.l did you even hide it-"

"I don't know. Maybe not far from where you hide your little secrets." Nicky's voice was cool. Thomas shut up, glared at her instead.

Interesting and more interesting, Wyatt thought. Now, as long as both members of the Frank family were fighting among themselves . . .

"Mr. Frank," he said, "mind if we take a look at your shoes and coat?"

"What?"

"Your shoes and coat. You know, whatever you were wearing on Wednesday."

"I already told you, I was here-"

"Which will make our inspection very quick. But we gotta verify your story, you know. It's part of our job. As long as you're telling the truth, I'm sure you won't mind."

Thomas, no dummy, thinned his lips. But with his wife standing there, still regarding him stonily . . . He stalked back to the foyer, yanked open the closet door. "By all means. Have at it."

Kevin and Wyatt helped themselves. They identified a light Windbreaker, a heavy wool jacket, a well-used ski coat, plus a designer leather jacket, the usual suspects for a middle-aged man. Shoes lined up the same. Tennis shoes, old and new, hiking boots, well-worn. Then: a brown pair of slip-on Merrells with their thick soles heavily encrusted with sand.

Kevin pulled them out with a pencil. He gave Wyatt a serious look. "We should have these tested."

Thomas immediately held up a hand. "Wait. Tested? What do you mean?"

"This sand. Of course, I'm just a detective, not one of the lab geeks, but looks to me to be the same color, consistency, of the roadside sand near your wife's crash."

"What? It's just sand. Traditional New England sand, dumped everywhere this time of year to help manage patches of ice. Of course I have it on my shoes. After all those days of rain, d.a.m.n stuff is washed up into piles everywhere. h.e.l.l, step out on my driveway."

Wyatt stared at him. "Sure? We test these shoes, the sand won't come back as matching that stretch of road?"

"Oh, give me a break."

Kevin gave Wyatt a slight shrug. They were selling their story; Thomas just wasn't buying it.

"These all your husband's shoes?" Wyatt asked Nicole, who'd followed them back to the entryway.

"I think so."

"And the jackets?"

She hesitated. "Raincoat," she murmured. "A black-and-silver raincoat. I don't see it."

Was it Wyatt's imagination, or did Thomas flinch again?

"Mr. Frank?"

"It was wet. I wore it back and forth to the work shed during the storm on Wednesday. Of course it became soaked."

"Where is it now?"

No doubt about it, the man's voice was sullen. "I hung it up in the bas.e.m.e.nt. In the laundry room, for it to dry."

Wyatt glanced at Nicole. "Mind showing us to the laundry room? Then we could be all done here."

Nicole paled. For a moment, Wyatt thought she might refuse. But then she squared her shoulders, shot her husband a look that was hard to interpret and headed once more down the hall.

Turned out, door to the bas.e.m.e.nt was behind the entryway staircase, off the family room. Nicole yanked open the door with more force than was strictly necessary, snapping on a light. Wyatt made out a downward flight of rough wooden stairs, leading to a bare cement floor below.

In front of him, Nicky took a deep breath in, blew it out, then grabbed the railing and began her descent.

The stairs scared her. Wyatt noted her white-knuckle grip on the railing, the way she took each step one by one. Post-traumatic stress? he wondered. An instinctive response to the site of her first accident? He didn't ask. Just watched her slow but determined progress.

The risers felt st.u.r.dy enough, he thought, making his own descent behind her. A little narrow and steep. Coming down them with a laundry basket wouldn't be the easiest task. Day after day . . . Perhaps some kind of fall had been inevitable.

"These days, I slide the basket down," Nicky murmured, as if reading his mind. "It's probably what I should've done from the beginning. Just toss the clothes down, then make my way after them."

"What about coming back up when the clothes are clean and neatly folded?"

"That's Thomas's job now. I wash the clothes; he moves them."

"Why not have him just take over the laundry duty?"

"He ruins my delicates," she said, and it took Wyatt a second to realize she wasn't joking.

Arriving in the middle of the bas.e.m.e.nt, Wyatt discovered a surprisingly large and open s.p.a.ce. Probably meant to be turned into a rec room, man cave, in-law suite, whatever might suit a couple best. One corner had been framed off and finished into a combination laundry room, lower-level bath.

"You guys do this?" he asked Nicky. Kevin and Thomas were still descending behind them.