“What don’t you want me to hear?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not that much of a choirboy. You couldn’t look innocent if you tried, especially when you’re lying. But”—she stood up and got her bag—“I’m desperate for coffee, too. Besides, I need to check in with Olivia.”
Dent stared at the door for several seconds after it closed behind her, then raised the phone to his ear again. “Gall?”
He snorted. “No more separate rooms?”
“Shut up and listen. I sent her on an errand, but she’ll be back soon. I didn’t want her to hear this. I won’t go into the details now, but Moody told us yesterday that it’s almost certain Bellamy witnessed her sister’s death.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It shook her up. I don’t know all the psychological whys and wherefores, but that would be traumatic enough to cause a memory shutdown, wouldn’t you say?”
“Damn straight.”
“This guy, Ray Strickland, has reason—and a solid one—to want vengeance for his brother. But I’m afraid he’s not the only one who’s stalking Bellamy.” He told Gall about her fan Jerry. “She dismissed him as a harmless, bookish type, an admirer who’s gone a little overboard.”
“She’s probably right.”
“Probably. Maybe. But in the park, he pretended not to notice us. At the Austin airport he was near enough to touch her. Close enough to address her, at least. If he’s gushy over his favorite writer, why didn’t he gush?”
“Maybe he was intimidated. She’s got big bad you at her side now.”
“Yeah, okay, maybe. But factor Jerry into everything else, and his unlikely presence in Texas doesn’t seem quite so innocent or coincidental.”
“But you said this Jerry is a fan.”
“Appears to be a fan. But say he’s only pretending to be and is actually someone with an axe to grind.”
“Say he is. He’s been close to her on several occasions, right? Even while she was still in New York. Why hasn’t he struck?”
Dent had no answer to that. And when Gall asked him what so-called Jerry’s connection to Susan’s death could be, Dent didn’t have an answer to that, either.
He threw a glance toward the door. “She’s back. I’m going to pretend that we’ve been talking about something else.” He grabbed the pen and s
mall tablet on the nightstand. “Give me that license plate number for the pickup.”
He was jotting it down when she came through the door carrying a cardboard tray with two tall paper cups of coffee. When he saw the doughnuts she had also brought, he blew her a kiss.
“Don’t go back to the hangar, Gall. Until you know we’re on our way back, stay in bed with your lady. You’ll be safer there.”
He laughed. “You don’t know my lady.”
“Soon as the weather clears and we can take off, I’ll call you with our ETA.”
“You’ll have to call this number.”
“Where’s your phone?”
The old man wheezed a sound of disgust aimed at himself. “In the pocket of my coveralls. The ones Strickland took with him when he hightailed it out of here.”
Chapter 21
Bellamy could tell that Dent was worried and preoccupied as he bit into the glazed doughnut and took a sip of coffee.
“I heard most of it,” she said. “He meant to kill him.”