“Don’t I have to be alive to testify?” she asked, and was proud her voice was so steady. She raked the fluffy scrambled eggs into a bowl, took the perfectly browned biscuits out of the oven and dumped them in a bread basket, then set everything on the table.
“You will be,” he said. “That’s a promise.”
TWENTY
Sykes did something he’d never done before: he called Temple Nolan at home, bright and early Tuesday morning. Wherever the blonde worked, he wanted to be there in plenty of time to intercept her if possible, or in place to follow her home when she left. It would make for a long day, but he was a patient man.
Temple answered on the third ring, his voice fogged with sleep. “Y’ello?”
“It’s me.”
“Sykes!” Instantly, Temple sounded more alert. “For God’s sake, what are you doing calling me here?”
“The Minor woman never showed up at the address you gave me. You sure she lives there?”
“I’m positive. She’s lived there her whole life.”
That answered one question, Sykes thought; the mayor definitely knew the woman personally.
“Then she stayed somewhere else last night. Maybe she has a boyfriend.”
“Daisy Minor? Not likely,” Temple scoffed.
“Hey, if she’s hanging out at the Buffalo Club, she isn’t Mother Teresa.”
“I guess so,” Temple said reluctantly. “And she’s bleached her hair. Damn!”
“The good news is, she seems to be clueless.”
“Then maybe we could forget about—”
“No.” Sykes was decisive. “She’s a loose end. The shipment of Russians will be here soon; do you want to take the chance this Minor woman doesn’t screw up things? I don’t think Phillips would take kindly to losing that much money. The Russians are worth three times any of our other shipments.”
“Shit.”
Hearing acceptance, Sykes said, “So where does she work? If I can, I’ll grab her this morning, maybe at lunch. If not, I’ll follow her this afternoon when she gets off and get her then.”
“She’s the damn librarian,” Temple said.
“Librarian?”
“Hillsboro Public Library. She works next door to city hall. She opens the library at nine and she’s the only one working until lunch, I think, but you can’t grab her there. There are too many people going and coming from city hall and the police department, and you can see the library parking lot from both places.”
“Then I’ll follow her at lunch, see if I get a chance. Don’t worry. One way or another, I’ll get her today.”
As the two men hung up, in her bedroom Jennifer Nolan quietly depressed the disconnect button and held it as she settled the receiver back into place. She had been listening in on Temple’s calls for years now, a sick compulsion she couldn’t resist. She had heard him make assignations with so many different women she had long since lost count, and yet every time he did, a little part of her still died. Over the years she had tried to muster enough self-respect to divorce him, but it was always easier to dull things with alcohol and other men. Sometimes she had even been able to drink enough that she could pretend the other men hurt him the way his women hurt her, but she had lost even that forlorn hope when he began asking her to sleep with men to whom he owed favors.
Elton Phillips was one of those men, and since then Jennifer had actively hated her husband, hated him with a fierceness that ate at her like acid. He knew, he had to have known, what Elton Phillips was like, and still Temple had sent her to him. In the privacy of Phillips’s bedroom she had screamed and cried and begged, and in the end merely endured, praying that she wouldn’t die—until she reached the point that she prayed she would die.
But he hadn’t intended to kill her; there was no need. He trusted Temple to keep her under control, not that she would have gone to the cops anyway. She never wanted her children to find out what had been done to her, or what part their father had played in it. Jason and Paige barely tolerated her anyway, because of the alcohol; they would turn their backs on her forever if they knew about all the other men, and Jennifer had no doubt Temple would make certain they knew.
Had Temple even noticed that she hadn’t willingly had sex since she’d recovered from Phillips’s assault? She could barely tolerate it now, and only if she’d had enough to drink beforehand. Temple had even stolen that pleasure, sordid as it had been, from her. She had nothing left now except her children.
And maybe Temple had just given her the means to get rid of him and keep Jason and Paige.
She struggled to remember all she’d heard. Temple had said the man’s name, something like Lykes. No—it was Sykes. And something about a shipment of Russians, which didn’t make sense. She couldn’t imagine Temple being involved in bringing in illegal aliens; he was vociferous in his opinion about what the country needed to do to beef up its borders to stop the flow of wetbacks. She knew one thing, though: if Elton Phillips was involved, then it was nasty.
But that about Daisy Minor—Jennifer was certain she hadn’t misunderstood that. Daisy was a “loose end,” and loose ends were tied up. Jennifer knew what that meant, though how Daisy could be involved with Temple was also something that didn’t make sense; Temple went for glossy women who knew the rules and never gave him any trouble. It sounded as if Daisy was causing a lot of trouble. That man, Sykes, was going to “get” her. He’d meant kill her.