He heard someone call out to him. Glancing around, he cursed under his breath. The last person he wanted to deal with today was Natalie. “Yes, Natalie?” he asked, when she came to stand in front of him with a huge smile on her face.
“I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I’ve been busy.”
He saw something flash in her eyes. “So I understand,” she said a little snidely. But the smile was back when she asked, “What can you tell me about that car accident yesterday? I heard it was somehow connected to the Maria Tindal homicide.”
Out of the corner of Andrew’s eye, he saw Toni. She had gotten out of her car and was about to walk past them. “Wait up, Toni. I need to talk to you about something.”
He turned back to Natalie. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more than you already know, Natalie.”
She frowned and then glanced over at Toni. “What about you, Detective Oliver? Do you have anything else to add?”
Toni smiled. “Drew’s my partner. I’ll backup whatever he says.”
“I understand the two of you are more than just partners these days.”
Before Andrew could tell Natalie that their relationship wasn’t any of her business, Toni surprised him by saying. “That’s right.”
He looked back at Natalie. “And just in case you need me to backup what my partner just said, the answer is she’s right, we are. Now you have it from both of us. See you around.”
Andrew and Toni walked toward the police building without saying anything. She glanced over at him. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”
He shook his head, deciding not to mention anything about Duan’s report until he’d had a chance to read it himself. “How did you sleep last night?”
She smiled at him. “Good. Thanks for giving me a chance to relax.”
“Don’t mention it, baby.”
An hour or so later, after meeting with the lieutenant and bringing him up to speed on their suspicions about both the Tindal and Nettles’ cases, Andrew and Toni went downstairs to the room where the cold cases were stored. They pulled out everything there was on the murder that had claimed the lives of Maria’s parents. Spreading the files out on the table, they reviewed them, made notes and discussed things of interest. The necklace had been listed as one of the items that had been stolen during the home invasion.
They had been reviewing the files for a couple of hours when the two detectives who’d worked the case six years ago joined them, giving Andrew and Toni the chance to ask questions.
Eric Flowers and Luther Rollins were seasoned detectives who had been in the criminal unit for more than twenty years. They verified that Constance Evans was not supposed to have been in town that night, but had returned home when the girls’ trip she had planned to the Bahamas with a friend named Myrtis Gunther had gotten canceled at the last minute. They had gotten word while in Miami to catch their connecting flight to the Bahamas that Myrtis Gunther’s husband had had a sudden heart attack. The man subsequently died a few days later.
“Unless Constance Evans could have somehow arranged the man’s heart attack, there was no way she would have planned to come back until she’d had her vacation,” Rollins said.
“Did you explain that to Jennifer Evans?” Toni asked the two detectives.
Rollins rubbed his hand down his face. “Yes, but she refused to believe her stepmother didn’t plan the entire thing. When she rushed home from college and discovered her father had been killed, she got hysterical. There was no reasoning with her. We decided to let her believe whatever she wanted, since there was no convincing her otherwise. It wasn’t as if it mattered, really. There wasn’t any kind of proof to support her allegations. We just figured she’d get tired eventually.”
“A couple of days later she had calmed down somewhat, but then she started throwing her weight around. She sure treated her stepsister, Maria Tindal, pretty awful. I understand Ms. Evans immediately cut off Ms. Tindal’s funds, and she had to borrow money just to get home,” Flowers tacked on.
“And then she demanded separate funerals. Jennifer Evans released Constance Evans’s body to Ms. Tindal and refused to let them be buried anywhere near each other. Her father was buried next to her mother, the man’s first wife.”
Toni nodded. “Since Myrtis Gunther was such a good friend of Constance Evans’s,