Secret Agent Santa. Carol Ericson
“Of course.”
They sat down and ordered their coffees, which their waitress delivered in record time.
Mike dumped a packet of sugar into the steaming liquid and stirred. Then he braced his forearms on the table, cupping his hands around the mug of coffee. “Start from the beginning.”
“The beginning.” Claire swirled a ribbon of cream in her coffee and placed the spoon on the saucer with a click. “It all started when Spencer Correll came out of nowhere, married my mother and then killed her.”
“Your mother fell down the stairs.”
She took a sip of her coffee and stared at Mike over the rim of her cup. “He murdered her.”
“You think he pushed her down the stairs? That’s hardly a surefire method for murder. People can and do survive falls like that.”
“He pushed her and then finished the job by smothering her with a pillow.” Her eyes watered, and she dabbed the corners with her napkin.
“And you know this how?”
“I saw the pillow.” She dashed a tear from her cheek.
“Lying next to your mother’s body? What did the police think about it?”
“No, no.” She took a deep breath. “That’s just it. There was no pillow there. I noticed my mother’s pillow on her bed later—with her lipstick on it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Mike cocked his head, his nostrils flaring.
“My mother was meticulous about her beauty regimen.” As Mike shifted in his seat, she held up her index finger. “Just wait. She never, and I mean never, went to bed with makeup on. She’d remove it, cleanse, moisturize. I mean, this routine took her about thirty minutes every night. There is no way there would be lipstick on her pillow, no reason for it.”
“Let me get this straight.” Sitting back in his chair, Mike folded his arms over his chest. “Your mother loses her life falling down some stairs, you see lipstick on her pillow and immediately believe your stepfather murdered her?”
“It wasn’t just the pillow.” She glanced both ways and the cupped her mouth with her hand. “It was the phone call.”
“You just lost me.” He drew his brows over his nose. “What phone call?”
“A few years before Mom’s so-called accident, a woman called me with a warning about Spencer Correll. She said he was dangerous and that he’d killed before and would do so again to get what he wanted.”
“Who was the woman?”
“She wouldn’t give me her name.”
“Did you inform the police?”
“At the time of the call?” She widened her eyes. “I thought it was a prank, but I told them about it when Mom died.”
“They dismissed it.”
“Yes, even after I showed them the pillow.”
He rubbed his knuckles across the black stubble on his chin. “Did the cops tell Correll about your suspicions?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear from this woman again? After your mother’s death?”
“No.”
He dropped his spikey, dark lashes over his eyes, but not before she saw a glimpse of pity gleaming from their depths.
She clenched her jaw. She didn’t expect him to believe her, but she didn’t want to be pitied. People generally reserved their pity for the crazy or delusional. Neither applied to her—anymore.
He huffed out a breath and took a sip of coffee. “So, you believe your stepfather killed your mother, but how in the world does that link him to terrorists?”
Pursing her lips, she studied his lean face, his dark eyes bright with interest. At least he hadn’t called for the little men in the white coats yet. “I didn’t say the murder had anything to do with terrorism, but it prompted me to start nosing around his personal effects.”
“What did you discover?” He gripped the edge of the table as if bracing for the next onslaught of crazy.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the envelope containing the picture, the picture she’d taken from the video she rescued from the trash can on Spencer’s computer. She pinched it between two fingers and removed it from the envelope. Then she dropped it on the table and positioned it toward Mike with her fingertip.
Picking it up, he squinted at the photo. “It’s your stepfather talking to another man. Who is he?”
“He’s the terrorist who killed my husband.”
Mike’s gaze jumped to Claire’s flushed face, her violet eyes glittering with a challenge, her lips parted.
She’d really gone off the deep end. Nothing she had to say about Correll could be of any importance now. A hollowness formed in the pit of his stomach, threatening to engulf him.
How could he possibly save this bright, beautiful, damaged woman?
He toyed with the corner of the picture, a piece of paper really, with the image printed on it. “How do you know this man is the one who killed your husband? On the video, your husband’s executioner was masked.”
“Do you know how many times I watched that video? It’s seared into my brain.”
Swallowing, he grabbed her hand. “Why? Why torture yourself?”
“My torture paled in comparison to the torture Shane endured.” She blinked her eyes, but no tears formed or spilled onto her flawless skin. “I watched that video frame by frame. I memorized every detail about that man, mask or no mask.”
“You really believe this man—” he flicked the edge of the paper “—is the same man in the video with your husband.”
“I’m sure of it.”
Her voice never wavered, her eyes never lost their clarity.
“Why?” He loosened his grip on her hand and smoothed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. “Explain it to me.”
“This—” she tapped her finger on the picture “—is a still from a video I found on Spencer’s laptop. It’s the video I was telling you about before. I have the entire thing. I can see the way the man moves, the tilt of his head...his eye.”
“His eye, singular?”
She drew a circle in the air over her own eye. “He has a misshapen iris. I researched it, and the defect is called a coloboma. I had blowups made of my husband’s execution video and I had this picture blown up. The man’s eye is the same in both. This is the guy.”
Mike buried his fingers into his hair, digging them into his scalp. What had this woman put herself through for the past five years? What was she willing to put herself through now?
“I can prove it to you. Let me prove it to you. I have the videos and the stills in a safe deposit box.”
He owed her that much, didn’t he? He owed Lola Coburn’s friend an audience for her manic obsession.
“What is the video you retrieved from Correll’s laptop? Who took it? Where was he meeting this man?”
Claire’s shoulders dropped as she licked her lips. “It’s not DC. Florida, maybe—warm weather, palm trees. I don’t know who took the video or why. I don’t know why Spencer had it, but I can guess why he trashed it.”
“Because it’s evidence