He said, “Good work, Ingram. Is that why you took lead?”
“No. Ms. Goode had her walls up against professional questions, and especially against good-looking men, but she didn’t have them up against a little country hick chick like me.” I grinned.
“Country hick chick?”
“That’s what JoJo calls me sometimes. I kinda like it. And just so you know, Mrs. Merriweather wears the exact same shade of pink of all the clothes I saw on the floor of Stella Mae’s bedroom before someone cleaned it up.”
Only minutes later Rick returned and said, “No indication of death magics, but I could hear Margot talking to Goode. By her tone of voice, that woman is not happy with her client or with us.”
Margot, who walked up on his heels, said, “You got that right. But we have an appointment in two hours with Goode and Merriweather at HQ.”
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. I hate 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