The Deepest Water Read Free

Brice said briskly, “Well, come on in. Do you want to take off your jacket and coat?”
    Caldwell was wearing a windbreaker, Detective Varney had a long dark green raincoat. She pulled it off, then held it, but he shook his head. “It’s okay. Beautiful day out there, just right, not too hot, not too cool. And not raining,” he added, making a leisurely examination of the foyer, of Brice and Abby, everything. He was a stocky man, in his forties, heavy through the shoulders and chest, with dark hair turning grey at the temples, and dark eyes. Everything about him seemed too deliberate, too slow, as if he never had rushed in his life and would not be rushed now.
    “This way,” Brice said, steering them toward the living room, where he and Abby sat on the sofa, and the lieutenant and detective sat in identical tapestry-covered chairs across a coffee table from them. The detective did not relax, but Caldwell settled back, crossed his legs, and examined the living room with the same methodical scrutiny he had given the foyer.
    “Nice house,” Caldwell said finally.
    Abby could feel her stomach muscles tightening harder and harder. The house was nice, with good, maybe-Danish furniture, good original art on the walls even if not very much of it. There was a grouping of netsukes on the mantel; the lieutenant’s gaze lingered on it as if in appraisal.
    Expensive, she wanted to say. Too expensive. Brice had brought home two of them from a trip to Los Angeles, her first anniversary gift, startling her. Take them back, she should have said; we can’t afford them. But they were so beautiful—
    “Well, we’re not selling and you’re not buying, so let’s get on with it,” Brice said, glancing at his watch. “I already told you we’ve given statements to the local police. What more do you need?”
    Lieutenant Caldwell faced Abby and Brice then. “You see, Mr. Connors, that place where the crime happened is sort of in a no-man’s-land, the lake and all. Part in one county, part in another, it makes for confusion. In cases like this they often call in the state investigators, and that’s what happened this time. And just to keep things straight in my own head, I’d like to go over your statements again, get it first hand, so to speak.” He shrugged, almost apologetically, it seemed. “And, of course, you might have remembered something during the past few days that you didn’t think of when the sheriff talked to you.”
    “I can only repeat what I said before,” Brice said wearily. “On Friday I drove to Portland for a business meeting with associates from my company. We had dinner together and talked until about ten-thirty. I went to bed around twelve. I had to make notes about the meeting; it took awhile. On Saturday morning I checked out, drove down to Salem and had breakfast there, and then I drove home. I gave the sheriff copies of the log of my trip and my receipts. And they already took our fingerprints, they said for elimination purposes. That’s all I can tell you.”
    Caldwell had been listening intently, consulting a notebook from time to time. He nodded. “Your firm is Hartmann and Fine Financial Services?”
    “Yes. The head office is in Bellingham; there’s an office in Spokane, one in Olympia, in Portland, Salem, and here in Eugene. A representative from each office attended the meeting.”
    “Your company in trouble?”
    “No. It’s not like that! If you read the newspapers, you know how the market’s been for over a year, crazy swings up and down. We have clients who get antsy when it gyrates like that. We’ve been having these meetings once a month over the past year. Purely routine.”
    “You always go?”
    “No. There are three of us here in the Eugene office: we take turns. They aren’t exactly pleasure jaunts, Lieutenant. It happened to be my turn.”
    Caldwell nodded, as if everything Brice said checked out with the notes he had. Then he said, “I understand that some of the