I braked the car to a halt and jumped out. I ran back the few yards to where the figure had disappeared. There was no trace of anyone. The only sound to break the silence of the night was the soft mutter of my engine. I might have been dreaming, but I didn’t think so. I had only seen Moira’s lover once, but I’d have recognized Maggie Rossiter anywhere.

Chapter   15

When people find out what I do for a living, they always ask if it’s dangerous. They usually seem disappointed when I confess that the hardest thing to deal with is lack of sleep. I get very ratty if I’m kept away from my bed. I’d been asleep for a mere four hours after my run-in with Jackson when the phone rang insistently.

I picked up the phone. “Who is it?” I growled.

“Good morning to you, too,” Shelley replied. “Bill wants to talk to you. Are you coming in or do you want to speak to him now?”

“Both,” I replied. Bill’s no stickler for regular office hours, and he knows me well enough to know that if I’m not in the office at nine there’s a good reason. So for him to get Shelley to roust me out of bed, it had to be important.

“Kate,” his voice boomed in my ear as Shelley connected us. “What’s this you’ve been up to now?”

“How did you get to hear about it?” I asked wearily, climbing out of bed and heading for the kitchen.

“The news about Moira was on the radio this morning, and I got into the office to find a string of increasingly hysterical messages from Jett and a demand for a meeting from a pompous asshole called Inspector Cliff Jackson. It didn’t take a lot of working out,” he reported.

“What did Jett want?”

“You, basically. A lot of moaning about why did you run out on him when he needed you and instructions to get yourself back over there asap. I think you’d better come in and brief me on what’s been going on before we decide whether we want to have any further involvement. OK?” It was the nearest Bill was ever going to get to a direct order.

Twenty minutes later, I was filling him in. When I got to the bit about the story I’d concocted for the police about the body’s discovery, he shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don’t think that was one of your brightest moves, Kate,” he complained.

“I know. But anything else made Jett look like the killer.”

“And how do you know he wasn’t?” Bill challenged me.