You Don't Want To Know - By Lisa Jackson Page 0,141

boat’s seats and it slid to the deck, its contents spilling onto the oiled teak. She jumped, ready to hide everything quickly, to force the contents into the sack, but he saw his mistake and reached forward.

“What’s this?” he asked, and her heart froze. She was certain he’d found the spy equipment and now had more evidence of her paranoia. “A new purse?”

She tried not to sound nervous. “I told you.” Play nice, play nice! Don’t let him get more suspicious than he already is.

“It’s big.”

“Thought it might hold my laptop.” She held her breath as he looked it over, studying the bag.

Don’t peek inside. For God’s sake, Wyatt, don’t peer into the zippered area and find the camera and recorder.

“It might,” he said, dropping the purse into its shopping bag and looking up at her. “So . . . we’re good now?”

Not even close. But she had to play this right. “No,” she said cautiously, “we’re not good, but maybe better.” She cast him a glance and feigned worry. “Maybe getting everything out, is . . . a step in the right direction.”

“So you’re not throwing me out?”

She forced a smile that felt like a grimace. “Undecided.”

“At least not tonight?” He gave her a long look.

She nodded jerkily and tried not to feel sick inside. She was a hypocrite, pure and simple. But you have to pretend, to play the part of the wife wanting to repair this broken marriage so that you can find the truth, prove that you’re not insane. . . .

“Fair enough. Oh, and, Ava?” he asked, his voice a little sharper.

Here it comes! He did see the spy equipment! Oh, sweet Jesus, you’re doomed! “Yes?”

“Put this on.” He grabbed a life vest from under one of the seats and handed the flotation device to her. “You know what they say: You can never be too careful.”

“So we’ve got ourselves a witness who’s seen Lester Reece,” Lyons said as she and Snyder walked toward the station house. They’d had a quick dinner and were on their way back to the office.

“I don’t call Wolfgang Brandt a credible witness.”

“If you ask me, Brandt’s just one rung lower on the whopper-teller ladder than some of the others who have ‘seen’—and I use the term loosely—Reece over the years.” Wolfgang Brandt was around thirty-five and had been in and out of trouble with the police for years. “Deputies talked to Brandt, then went out to the old hunting lodge where he’d claimed he’d seen Reece. No one was there. No evidence of anyone but hunters and maybe some teenagers who’d broken in and had a few beers a while back. Big surprise. You’re new here. You’ll get used to the Reece sightings soon enough. Besides, what does Lester Reece have to do with our case?”

“Why do you have to be so damned negative?”

She was unwrapping a scarf before going to work on the buttons of her jacket as they walked through the reception area. It took a code to get through these days, and a camera was filming their every move. He wondered about that. With all the phone cams and computer cameras and all, why hadn’t anyone seen or photographed anything unusual at Cheryl Reynolds’s home? The trouble was, her place of business was in a part of Anchorville that was zoned residential; the store cams and traffic cams were located a few blocks closer to the waterfront and the heart of town.

“Brandt’s not the only one who saw him. I heard a couple of the deputies talking. One of them—Gorski, I think—plays poker with a group of guys, one of them being Butch Johansen, who claimed, after a few beers, that he ferried a guy who looked a helluva lot like Reece out to Church Island recently.”

“Lots of stories about guys who look like Reece, but they never pan out. Case in point the hunting lodge. Besides, Reece is ancient history.”

“Is he? Doesn’t seem like the sheriff thinks so.”

Inside his cubicle, Snyder removed his jacket and sidearm while Lyons motioned toward the restrooms in the back of the building; then, boots clicking, she headed off.

The Reynolds case was getting to him. The only homicide in years and just not enough evidence to put it together. Taking a seat at his desk, he checked his e-mail and found a note with an attachment from the lab. A couple of clicks of his mouse and he was looking at an analysis report of the hair discovered in Cheryl