Rick frowned. “Two hours? That’s awfully fast. Why not wait until morning? Get a chance to put together her story. Prep her client.”
“Because she bargained with us. We’ve agreed to not obtain warrants for her home and her husband’s business, or a subpoena for her client,” Margot said. She looked at FireWind and her full lips widened. She looked a little wicked. “She suggested that she wanted only you at the interview. Not me, because I must be some kind of paranormal, and not Nell because she is, and I quote, ‘an obnoxious child.’”
FireWind laughed softly. “Let’s get back to HQ and prep. Ihate to throw you two directly from an out-of-town case and into a new one, but I need you.”
“You couldn’t care less about throwing us into another case,” Margot said. She tapped her nose. “Truth-senser, here.”
“True. I was trying for polite,” FireWind said, his tone droll. “We’ll meet you at HQ.”
SIXTEEN
I didn’t much like being called an obnoxious child by a powerful woman. My method had worked, but I needed to alter the way I approached females like the lawyer Goode. That would take some cogitating that I didn’t have time for just now.
FireWind and Margot sat across the table from Goode and her client. Racine/Cadence had changed clothes and was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt, with sneakers. Her dress and her body language were very different from the cowed woman we had met at the Merriweather home. Either that woman had been a fake or she had metamorphosed like a phoenix from the ashes in just a couple of hours.
Rick, Occam, Tandy, and I were crowded into the small cubicle behind the new observation mirror. I glanced side-eyed at Rick and Occam and they seemed fine together, no cat disharmonies, which I figured was a good thing. Unit Eighteen hadn’t had a standard interview room until recently. Previously we had just used the cameras in the null room, but that room was being saved for UTMC patients and to decontaminate evidence from death energies, so the new interrogation room was getting its first workout.
“I specified only Special Agent FireWind for this interview,” Goode said, in an opening salvo.
“If Special Agent Racer leaves, this interview is ended. We then proceed with a warrant for Mrs. Merriweather’s home, and this becomes much more invasive,” FireWind said, his voice without inflection. “Luther Merriweather would likely discover just how close to separation and divorce he is. And why.” It was a baiting technique. None of us knew for certain Racine/Cadence was looking to leave her husband, but hiring a PI and a divorce lawyer was a good indicator.
Goode narrowed her eyes at him.
Margot said, “This interview is being video recorded.” She gave everyone’s name and the date and time. “Now. Mrs. Merriweather. When did you resume the affair with Stella Mae Ragel?” She pushed the small card from Stella’s bedside across the table to the suspect.
Racine/Cadence stared at the card, emotions rushing across her face too quickly to read. She looked at her lawyer and Goode nodded permission.
“I ran into Stella Mae in an antiques shop in Nashville, in December,” Cadence said. She leaned in and put her folded hands on the tabletop. She was no longer wearing the glittering diamond rings. There was an indention and a white line where they had rested for so long. “My marriage was disintegrating. My life was falling apart. Seeing Stella was like a lifeline.” She smiled sadly. “Things went fast after that.”
“True,” Tandy murmured.
Racine/Cadence admitted that she and Stella Mae had been involved. Meaning they had been having an affair when Stella was not on the road. Things had been getting serious. Racine/Cadence had decided to leave her big-money, deep-pockets CEO husband and had begun divorce arrangements. She had him followed by a private detective for the weeks when the tour took place. There was significant photographic evidence that the CEO was cheating on his not-so-devoted but much-more-discreet wife with three mistresses in three cities. There was an evidence trail for dinners, hotels, gifts, and flowers, none of which had been given to his wife.
Ms. Goode said, “Let me make it clear to you all. Mrs. Merriweather stood to make millions off a very nasty divorce and had no reason to kill Stella Mae Ragel. My client is not a witch or a magic user, or a paranormal of any kind. Her intent was to divorce, take her share of the proceeds, and move in with Stella Mae. They were in love and planning a future together.”
“True, not true,” Tandy said. “Things hidden and things not said.”
I remembered four pages of Stella’s lovers, given to Occam and me at Stella’s kitchen bar, and figured Racine/Cadence had no idea that Stella had been seeing other people. And Cadence’sname hadn’t been on the cat-paper lists. Secrets all around. I watched as FireWind tilted his head, his long braid sliding across his back, letting the silence build in the room. His tone ever so slightly disbelieving, he said, “Mrs. Merriweather. Considering your shared history, I find it highly unlikely that you were unaware Stella Mae Ragel was sharing her bed and body with others in her band, including Catriona Doyle and members of the original poly marriage, Thomas Langer and Cale Nowell specifically. Possibly even Erica Lynn Quinton and Connelly Darrow, among others.”
“No,” she whispered. “No. Stella said...” Cadence fell silent and her face paled. She blinked several times and looked down, staring at her naked finger, her breath shallow and too fast. Tears gathered in her eyes. Her lawyer glared at FireWind, who stared back at her unperturbed.
“She didn’t know,” Tandy said. “She is... pained.”
I crossed my arms over my middle, trying to put it all together and also grieving with Cadence. She had been through so much in her life, had lost so much. Since Stella Mae died, she had been grieving the loss of her lover, added to the loss of her current life and husband, and now she was grieving the betrayal of Stella sleeping with others. Again.
But life had given Cadence Merriweather a backbone of steel and her tears dried quickly. She said, “Stella sleeping with other people was what drove the wedge between us back in the commune. Even then, I wanted a monogamous relationship. I wanted Stella all to myself and Stella...” She took a steadying breath. “Stella wasn’t interested in monogamy. I guess she wasn’t interested now either.”
Tandy murmured, “Truth.”
Something about the sequence of events and the intertwined relationships seemed... incomplete. My thoughts wandering, I watched the woman in the interview room. While she was holding herself together, Racine/Cadence was also floundering. It made me want to offer the peace of Soulwood to her, but I was afraid the vampire tree might take her instead.
“My client also has been blackmailed by a former commune member,” Goode said, “threatening to go to her husband with details about Cadence’s previous life unless payments continuedunder the table. His name is Hugo Ames.” She slid a folded piece of paper across the table to FireWind. “His contact information.”
FireWind opened the paper and nodded, passing it to Margot. “Will your client be bringing charges against Ames?”
“Yes, as soon as the separation from her husband is legally formalized. My only purpose in giving you the information is candor and transparency. And the slight possibility that if he was blackmailing Cadence, he was also involved with the murders.” Her tone was hopeful and the glint in her eyes suggested she wanted to see him stretched on the rack for punishment if possible.
Cadence told her interviewers everything, monitored by Margot in the interrogation room and by Tandy, Rick, and Occam in the equipment room with me, watching. As part of not pursuing an investigation into Cadence Merriweather (though the bargain hadn’t been stated so bluntly) PsyLED was provided full financial records, including a list of businesses owned all or in part by the CEO husband, who was now a person of interest, if not an outright suspect, because he had stood to lose millions if his wife had divorced him for the murder victim. If he knew about Cadence’s affair or thought that she knew about his, that would give him more motives to commit crimes. FireWind was also informed that any further harassment of Goode’s client would result in legal consequences.
