I followed her toward the kitchen. A heady blend of smoke and nicotine clung to her like cheap perfume. Pulling a couple of frosty bottles from the fridge, she handed me one. Since she didn’t offer a glass, I took my cue from her, twisted off the cap, and downed a swig. Icy cold and slightly bitter, it was a poor substitute for chamomile tea.

Nadine motioned to a chair. “Take a load off.”

I sat. I sipped. I waited.

Nadine pulled out the chair next to me and, stabbing out one cigarette, fired up another. “So,” she said, after inhaling a lungful of carcinogens, “what brings you here at this hour?”

“This.” Reaching into my sweater pocket, I produced the gold hoop earring and set it on the table between us.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sticking the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, she picked up the earring and studied it through a haze of smoke. “Never expected to set eyes on this again. Where’d you find it?”

“In the ladies’ room at the rec center.” I watched her reaction closely, my detection skills on red alert. “Actually, I found it the night Lance Ledeaux was killed.”

After taking another deep drag, she took the cigarette from her mouth and knocked ash into a dish on the table. Rosalie Brubaker would literally turn over in her grave at seeing her china so abused. “I thought I lost it then. Matter of fact, came back the next day. Asked at the front desk, but no one’d turned it in.”

I nearly choked on my beer at her easy admission. “S-so,” I sputtered, “you were there that night?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Did you kill Lance?” Sometimes I amaze myself. This was one of those times. Where was common sense? Had good judgment deserted me? I could very well be seated across a table from a cold-blooded killer-a killer who might have a chain saw in the cellar, a machete tucked under the table, a semiautomatic in a cereal box.

To my surprise-and relief-Nadine didn’t take offense. Instead, she tossed back her dyed-black hair and laughed. It was a phlegmy smoker’s laugh that ended in a paroxysm of coughing. “Believe me, hon, I’ve been tempted to kill the bastard a time or two. Always managed to restrain myself for the kid’s sake.”

At this revelation, I sat up straighter in my chair. “You two have a child together?”

“Yeah, Julie’s a single mom studying to be a nurse. She’s a good kid. Never gave me a minute’s worry.”

I was trying to process all this. “B-but,” I stammered, “I saw the two of you arguing behind the Piggly Wiggly. You’re getting mail from Down with Deadbeats. According to the Internet, one of their specialties is finding fathers who weasel out of child support.”

“Lance repented.” Nadine tipped back her beer, then swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “In fact, he insisted on giving me ten grand and ordered me to leave town. He was royally pissed when I told him I’d send it to our daughter instead. He was even more pissed when I told him I decided to stick around awhile.” A complacent smile played over her lips.

“Ten grand?”

Ten thousand for a Super Bowl bet, ten to bribe Nadine, another ten found on his person the night he was killed. There you have it, folks, Claudia’s thirty-thousand-dollar withdrawal. But still the question remained: What did Lance intend to do with all that pocket change? Trade in his Ralph Lauren for Armani? I took the only option open to me. I took another swig of beer.

“Didn’t need the bastard’s money. Not no more. Not after winning big in the Tennessee lottery. Besides, Lance didn’t owe it to me; he owed it to our daughter. I’m used to taking care of myself, but she’s struggling to raise a kid on her own and finish school. I feel sorry for the girl. When it comes to men, Julie doesn’t have any better sense picking men than her old lady.”

Since Nadine was in a chatty mood, I decided to milk it for all it was worth. I took another swallow of beer, which, by the way, tasted better as the night wore on, and asked, “Just how did you meet Lance?”

“Day after graduating high school, I left Chicago for good. Made it as far as Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the money I’d saved. Found a job waiting tables in a barbecue joint. That’s where I met Lance.” She absently flicked ash into Rosalie’s dish. “Gatlinburg is a big tourist trap. He had a song and dance act at Smokey the Bear Jamboree. We hit it off right from the get-go. We planned on heading for Hollywood, making a fresh start. Once he heard I was pregnant, though, the no-good bum cleaned out our savings and took off without me.”

“How awful,” I commiserated. Lance apparently was a scumbag long before Claudia met up with him.

“Don’t go feelin’ sorry for me, hon. I managed fine without him, and I’m still doing OK. Like I told you before, I hit it big in the lottery. Enough to find a shrink and hire Tennessee’s premier detective agency to track the bastard down.” She rose and went to the fridge. “Ready for another?”

I shook my head, wanting to save the second of my two annual brews for a steamy day in August. “What were you going to do to Lance once you found him?”

She returned, beer in hand, and shook another cigarette from the pack on the table. “If you think I planned to kill him, you’re dead wrong.” She let out a harsh bark of laughter at her own joke. “Dead wrong, get it?”

I polished off the last of my beer and got to my feet. “Better be going.”

“Sure you don’t want to stay, have another?”

“Thanks, Nadine, but it’s getting late, and I have a busy day tomorrow.”

Nadine walked me to the door. “You know what, Kate? Down with Deadbeats was worth every cent I paid ’em. Wish you could have seen the look on the bastard’s face first time he saw me. He was so afraid I’d screw things up with that new wife of his, he practically peed his pants. What he didn’t know is that I’ve probably got ten times her money. Isn’t that a kicker?”

And it was.

I replayed our conversation as I slowly walked home. Something about her story didn’t quite hold water. Why stick around after her confrontation with Lance? It just didn’t make sense. What was the old saying? Something like, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Had Nadine just pulled the wool over my eyes? Had she been out for revenge all along, but was now trying to cover it up?

And where did that leave Claudia?

Facing a minimum of thirty years to life, is where.

Chapter 32

As a soporific, beer won hands down over chamomile tea. I was sound asleep the second my head hit the pillow. Way off in the distance, I heard ringing. I turned onto my side, burrowed into the pillow, and tried to ignore the racket. Go away, urged my dead-to-the-world, sleep-numbed brain. Go away, leave me be.

The ringing persisted. I emerged from sleep as languidly as a scuba diver at the bottom of the ocean floating to the surface. Prying one eye open, I squinted at the glowing red numerals of the clock on the bedside stand.

Three a.m.?

Who could be calling at this hour? I willed my second eye open. The clock’s numerals hadn’t changed. And neither had the blasted ringing of the phone.

Phone…?

My body reacted to the three a.m. call with a blast of adrenaline. A phone call at this time of night is every mother’s worst nightmare. The question Do you know where your children are? immediately flashes through your mind. Had something happened to Jennifer? Or to one of my granddaughters? Then there was Steven. New York City is a dangerous place; one only has to watch Law & Order to know this.

I groped for the phone, fighting the panic that threatened to engulf me. “Hello…?”

“Don’t stick your nose where it don’t belong,” a deep voice rasped.

“Who is this?”

“Consider yourself warned.”

I was left clutching the phone while a dial tone buzzed in my ear. My hands shook as I replaced the handset. Wide-awake now, I pressed an imaginary REWIND button and mentally replayed the conversation. The voice had been obviously disguised to the point where I couldn’t be certain if it’d been male or female. At first I thought it belonged to a man, but now I wasn’t so sure. Nadine Peterson had a deep, husky voice such as the caller’s. Had I asked too many questions? Been too nosy?