“So anybody could have killed that doctor,” said George, “including his old lady.”
Milo nodded again. “That’s right.”
But Vince kept feeling as if he was missing something. Something right under his nose.
Then he thought of something. “If she wasn’t on drugs or selling her body, why would she tell her sister that she was doing both things?”
George and Milo had to think about that. “Maybe she was afraid her sister would tell their parents,” said Milo.
But now Vince was shaking his head. “Her sister has no relationship with their parents. She left when she was eighteen and hardly ever looked back. That was ten years ago. If Erica was just a kid in love, she would have told Rasheda the truth.”
“So what are you saying? Are you saying this story about the doctor and Erica isn’t true?”
“I don’t know what’s true and what’s not true in this town,” said Vince. “But what about that pickup truck that ran us off the road? Were those Hartford guys able to find any video footage of the incident?”
“Only one business in that area had a camera working, but it was so grainy they couldn’t make out a thing on it.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t a drunk driver like Ricki thought?” asked George.
Vince shook his head. “Not the way that truck came at us. Whomever was driving it was targeting Ricki. As if somebody was trying to scare her into silence or to leave town, or both.”
“But the question remains,” said Milo as his phone began ringing, “is why? What does she have on anybody in this town?” He pulled it out, looked at the Caller ID, and then quickly answered. “What up?” he asked. And as soon as he asked that question, he looked over at Vince. And then, as if he had just gotten some shocking news, he jumped up on his feet. “What thefuck?!”
“What is it?” Vince asked anxiously.
“It’s the security detail. They said there’s been a massive explosion over at the Richardson house. The house just imploded,” Milo said.
But before he could say those last three words, Vince had already jumped up and was running out of that hotel to his car. His heart was hammering. All he could think about was Rasheda!
George and Milo, who’d never seen their boss so invested in a woman the way he seemed so invested in this woman, a woman he’d just met, jumped up and ran after him too.
They knew they could quarrel with who’s telling the truth about the nature of Erica and Dr. Proctor’s relationship, and whether or not she killed him and then killed herself, but they couldn’t quarrel with an explosion. Because not one of them would ever believe for a second that it was a mere coincidence that the childhood home of the woman who’d just hung herself in the county jail would have accidentally blown up too.
It took all they had to run up and hop into that Bentley before Vince sped away without them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It looked like a war zone to Vince when he first laid eyes on the Richardson home. Which didn’t help his already hammering heart. He thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw that house.
He was so anxious to get to Ricki that he opened his car door even as he was putting on brakes, hopped out, and left his car door wide open.
“Who is this girl?” Milo asked George, amazed by the boss’s display, but George was too busy jumping out too. They all ran toward the house, but the police, and the police tape, stopped them midway up the driveway.
“There were four people in that house!” Vince yelled out hysterically.
“We know who lives here,” the cop replied.
“Where are they?” Vince asked.
But when that cop replied with a snarky, “where do you think,” Vince had had it. He lifted that tape, pushed past that cop, and ran toward the house.
“Just a minute here!” the cop yelled, hurrying after Vince. George and Milo hurried after him too.
A group of police officers were able to grab Vince, George, and Milo and hurry them out of their cordoned off zone. But as Vince was insisting on answers and while they were being pushed out, Milo saw the security detail he had surveilling the house. “There’s our guys,” he said, and they all hurried over to them.
“Where’s the family?” Vince asked them anxiously, although he only cared about one member of that family.
“They’re all safe,” the detail chief said quickly, seeing the boss’s state. And as soon as he said it, Vince opened his suitcoat, leaned his head back, and took a long sigh of relief.
