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“You’re right. She wouldn’t. She’s at least got a modicum of class.” To Kacey, Clarissa added, “Congratulations. It takes a lot to stir up this particular hornet’s nest, and it looks like you’ve done that and more.” She marched out of the room as fiercely as a mother bear whose cubs had just been threatened.

Gerald gave a last cursory glance at the photographs of the dead women. “Clarissa’s right, you know. I’m afraid you’ve started something you’re going to regret.”

Kacey wasn’t going to let anyone deter her, not when she’d come this far. “I’m not afraid at all.” But that was a lie, and they both knew it.

CHAPTER 29

Gerald Johnson and Clarissa seemed to half forget Kacey was there as they began planning the family meeting. “Excuse me,” Kacey said, sweeping up her coat.

“The boardroom is straight down the north hall. We’re convening now,” Clarissa warned her.

“I’m not leaving,” Kacey said. Yet. “I just need to make a phone call.”

They both gave her a hard look as she left the room. And she thought she was paranoid. Maybe she came by it naturally!

She walked in the direction of the boardroom, tried the doors, realized they were locked, so she punched in the number for the sheriff’s department, which she’d added onto her cell phone list.

“Detective Alvarez, please,” she said when the call was answered by the front desk. “I’m Dr. Lambert, returning an earlier call.”

She was put through immediately, and Detective Alvarez answered, “Alvarez.”

“This is Kacey Lambert. I know you’ve talked to Trace O’Halleran, who found the microphones.”

“Yes. We would like to come and see for ourselves. This afternoon?”

“Late afternoon?” Kacey asked. “I’m at an out-of-town appointment that may take a little more time. But I would really like to have those microphones out.”

“Call us when you’re on your way home.”

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

Next, she phoned Trace, who answered as if he’d had his ear to the phone.

“Kacey,” he said, and just the way he said her name flooded her with good feelings.

“Hey, there. I’m meeting the police at my house later today, and they’re going to take out the microphones, I guess. Look at them, anyway. I want them out.”

“Good. Are you at work?”

“I’m not at the clinic. I’m at an appointment,” she said, not wanting to go into the whole thing with him just yet. She didn’t know how she felt about anything to do with the Johnsons. “I told the police I’d call them when I was on my way home.”

“Call me, too.”

“You got it.”

“Kacey . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful,” he said, clearly reading more between the lines than she’d thought she’d revealed.

“I’ll see you this evening,” she said, then put back her phone in its slot inside her purse and watched with a certain amount of trepidation as Gerald and Clarissa came out of his office and strode down the hall toward her.

“Go check on your kids,” Alvarez told Pescoli. “There’s nothing happening here till we meet at Dr. Lambert’s.”

“I’m going home to shoo Chris out of the house, if he’s there, but I’ll be right back.”

Alvarez waved her off. They were in a waiting game. Waiting for the lab results. Waiting for someone to call back. Waiting, waiting, waiting.


Tags: Lisa Jackson Mystery