Murder Déjà Vu
Polly Iyer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to actual events or locales is coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
Cover design by Polly Iyer
Murder Déjà Vu
Copyright © 2012 by Polly Iyer
ASIN: B006UYD0NY
Table of Contents
Chapter One
A Meeting of the Minds
Chapter Two
Out in the Open
Chapter Three
Ignoring the Facts
Chapter Four
From Lunch to More
Chapter Five
Life’s Outline
Chapter Six
Uninvited Guests
Chapter Seven
A Day’s Lifetime Change
Chapter Eight
Locked Up
Chapter Nine
Jeraldine
Chapter Ten
The Sleuth Sleuths
Chapter Eleven
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Chapter Twelve
A Little History
Chapter Thirteen
The Bombshell
Chapter Fourteen
Calling Bluffs
Chapter Fifteen
Dana Exposed
Chapter Sixteen
The Noose Tightens
Chapter Seventeen
The Last Nail in the Coffin
Chapter Eighteen
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Chapter Nineteen
Part Two
Chapter Twenty
Collusion
Chapter Twenty-One
Clarence Comes Clean
Chapter Twenty-Two
Something to Go On
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Reece’s Protector
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Sleeping Giant
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Little Feather Ruffling
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brotherly Love
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Closet
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Reality Bites
Chapter Thirty
Russian Roulette
Chapter Thirty-One
What Could Have Been
Chapter Thirty-Two
Uninvited Guests
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tomorrow
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Dark Side
Chapter Thirty-Five
Another One Down
Chapter Thirty-Six
Going Back in Time
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dana’s Fifteen Minutes
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Revelation
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A Little Undercover Work
Chapter Forty
Let’s Make a Deal
Chapter Forty-One
Misplaced trust
Chapter Forty-Two
Old Angers
Chapter Forty-Three
Sweet Thang
Chapter Forty-Four
And Then There Were None
Chapter Forty-Five
A Hopeless Choice
Chapter Forty-Six
Too Late
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sprung from the Hoosegow
Chapter Forty-Eight
Good News and Bad
Chapter Forty-Nine
One Word Against the Other
Chapter Fifty
Hidden Meaning
Chapter Fifty-One
A Double Life
Chapter Fifty-Two
Drifting Off to a Better Place
Chapter Fifty-Three
What’s Going On?
Chapter Fifty-Four
One-sided Deal
Chapter Fifty-Five
More Than Murder
Chapter Fifty-Six
A Bittersweet Time
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Bitter Truth
Epilogue
Chapter One
Gotcha
Chapter One
A Meeting of the Minds
What did a man born rich and privileged look like after spending fifteen years in prison and another six hiding in these mountains? Dana pondered her question as she parked her Jeep in the gravel driveway next to a rough-looking pickup and skirted around the house to the back.
Reece Daughtry sat in an Adirondack chair on the dock, reading. A johnboat bobbed in the lake, complete with fishing rod and tackle box. After swiveling around to see his intruder, he turned back to his book.
She had her answer. Unshaven, leather-tanned, and lean, with dark blond hair heavily threaded with gray brushing his shoulders. Reading glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose. He struck Dana as more interesting looking than handsome, but he could be called that too.
A booming voice echoed over the water. “What do you want?”
“A fireplace.”
“I’m not working now.”
Undeterred, she kept going, waiting for him to tell her she was trespassing. He didn’t.
A few well-fed cats poked their heads out of the greenery lining the rock stairs down to the lake. Another snuggled under his chair, and a three-legged mutt hobbled to greet her.
“Hey, pooch, how’ya doing?” She bent down to rub him, and the dog wiggled his excitement. “Nice dog.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m not building fireplaces right now.”
“I heard you. Doesn’t make me want one less.”
“Come back in a year. Better yet, don’t.” He kept his nose in the book.
She couldn’t help noticing his long, knotty fingers. Laborer’s hands, with rough skin and short clipped nails. Sinewy forearms like twisted rope. “What are you reading?”
He glanced up. “You still here?”
“Yup.”
“Only a few people know where I live. Know why? So trespassers can’t come here and bother me. Let me guess who snitched. Old Harris big mouth.”
“Don’t blame Harris. I saw the article he wrote on the house that featured your fireplaces. He warned me not to come, but I blackmailed him into telling me where you lived.”
“You should’ve listened.”
She moved closer and offered her hand. “Dana Minette.”
He nailed her with a squinty glare. “Any relation to the prosecutor Minette?”
She pulled back. “Not anymore.”
“We had an ugly run-in years ago. He tried to stop the sale of this property to keep a convicted murderer out of his county. My attorney humiliated him; the judge ruled in my favor.”
“Yes, I know. Robert is always looking for ways to get his name in the papers. He picked on the wrong person that time.”
“He came here about a year ago. Said he had no hard feelings, and would I build him a fireplace. Can you beat that?”
“I take it you jumped at the chance.”
Daughtry pushed his reading glasses onto his forehead and focused on her for more than a split second. “You’re a smart-ass, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.” Was that the beginning of a smile on his face?
“If he’s your ex-husband, you’re well rid of him. He’s an asshole.”
“He’s my ex, and you’re not the first person to describe Robert in those exact words.” She plunked down on the dock, crossed her legs, Indian style. “You’re all excellent judges of character.”
“He didn’t have nice things to say about you, whi
ch I thought rather ungentlemanly, since I didn’t ask. Said he was redoing his house after he dumped his ungrateful wife.”
“He said that? Ha!”
“Yup. His county, his house. Probably pissed you weren’t his wife anymore, even though it was his idea. Or so he said.”
“It’s a long story. Twenty years long.”
“Not interested.”
“Me either. Will you build me the goddamn fireplace? The two pictures I saw in the Regal Falls magazine were the most unique works of art I’ve ever seen.”
Daughtry stared at her a long time with the clearest, most intense blue eyes. “Your ex wanted a fireplace in the worst way. Said he’d double whatever I charged.”
“I bet when you held out, he doubled the amount again.”
His smile was unmistakable now. “How would your ex feel if I built one for you?”
“Talk about being pissed off.”
* * * * *
Reece went into the house as soon as Dana Minette left. She was a piece of work. A very nice-looking piece of work. He could go for a woman like her, but a woman’s what got him twenty to life, and he sure as hell didn’t need any more trouble. Whenever he felt the urge, he drove to one of the larger cities within a hundred-mile radius—Asheville or Charlotte—put up in a motel, and found someone to satisfy his sexual needs. No entanglements. No emotional attachments. He could do it by himself—he had years of practice—but he never found that a satisfying substitute for the warmth of a woman’s body or the touch of soft skin. That was the way it had been for the six years since he got out of prison and how it would be from now on. He’d even adapted to the loneliness. Had plenty of practice with that too.
The three-legged dog nuzzled his leg. Reece never named any of the dogs or cats roaming his property. They were there, and he fed them. “Hey, Pooch. She gave you a good name, didn’t she?” He leaned down and rubbed the dog’s neck. He’d found the beagle cross lying on the side of the road, near death, taken it to his vet, and had it treated and fixed. He did that with every abused or emaciated animal he came across. Electronic fencing and collars kept them inside his property so they couldn’t wander off and wind up like Pooch, or worse. Reece debated whether he was imprisoning them, but dead was more of a prison than contained, though he disliked the thought of either.
The phone rang. He let it go to the answering machine. When he heard the voice, he picked up. “Hey, Carl.”
“Deciding whether you feel like answering your phone, big brother?”
“I couldn’t check the number in time.” Sometimes Reece answered, sometimes he didn’t, depending on his mood. Carl knew that.
His brother laughed.
“What’s up?” Reece noted the hesitation. “Carl?”
“Dad’s in the hospital. He had another heart attack.”
Reece stiffened at the mention of his father, a reaction over which he had no control. “What do the doctors say?”
“It doesn’t look good. He’s conscious but weak. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Well, keep me informed.”
“Jesus, Reece. That’s cold. Your father is dying and all you can say is ‘keep me informed’?”
“We’ve gone over this a hundred times. Sorry, but I can’t fake that I care. Wish I could, but that’s not my style.” He pulled a beer from the fridge.
“You’re still his son.”
Reece wanted to laugh, but the humor eluded him. “He should have thought about that twenty-one years ago.” He took a long draft from the bottle. It did nothing to cool his heat.
“He could have handled it differently, I agree, but―”
“Look, I’ve gotta go. Let me know when it’s over.”
Reece clicked the off button before Carl could argue. He finished the beer, then took another. He’d worked hard over the years to control his anger and sense of betrayal, but times like these brought them back like a knife twisting in his belly. How could he forget? One day he and Carl were drawing up plans to expand the family’s home-building business—Reece, the architect, designing a new type of energy-efficient structure; Carl the business head, making them affordable. The next day he was locked in a cement cell with the echoing sound of steel doors clanging shut to keep him rotting inside. One day he had dozens of friends; the next only Carl and his mother stood in his corner. When he saw the toll it took on his mother to sneak away and visit, he asked her not to come any more. That, more than anything, had torn him up.
Now she was gone, and he hoped the old bastard would soon follow, freeing him of at least part of the rage that consumed him and, yes, the hatred for the old man he carried in his chest like one of his stones. How could he feel anything for a man who believed his son capable of slicing a woman’s throat, almost severing her head from her body? Who probably still believed it with his dying breath?
Reece looked around the house he built with his own two hands. Stone and wood and glass. It fit the new life he’d made for himself. A life he liked. He wasn’t designing the buildings he’d envisioned all those years ago, except for his own, but he was creating something he considered beautiful. Others thought so too, which gave him pleasure. He worked when the spirit moved him, nourished his passion for reading, fished, and ran the mountain roads—all the things he couldn’t do inside, except for the reading, which had saved his sanity.
His thoughts roamed back to Dana Minette without conscious effort. He couldn’t decide whether she was cute, pretty, or beautiful, though his skill judging women was twenty-one-years rusty. He didn’t score the trifecta in honky-tonk bars, but he wasn’t after looks in those places.
Dana Minette possessed something quite different. Determination, humor, and warmth, all wrapped up in an attractive package about sixty-three inches in height. Better still, she didn’t appear the type to genuflect for money or position. So how did a creep like Robert Minette get a woman like her to stay with him for twenty years?
He remembered the first time he saw Minette, with his white-collared, pin-striped shirt, suspenders, and shiny suit. The man had done everything to rally the townspeople against the murderer who wanted to live among them. Reece had run too far and too long to run again. He fought Minette and won. So where did the lawyer find the nerve to drive into his yard, say he had no hard feelings, and act like Reece should fall at his feet and say Yassuh, Masser.
“No one refuses Robert Minette,” he’d said, slicked-back hair glistening in the morning sun. “Robert Minette gets what he wants.”
Reece laughed and ordered him off his property. The attorney stormed away in his Escalade, a spray of gravel spitting from its tires.
Not this time, bub, and good riddance to you.
Chapter Two
Out in the Open
Dana drove home with Daughtry’s promise to meet at eight the next morning to draw up plans for her fireplace. Harris told her Daughtry was a strange man, and he was right. But after he’d spent fifteen years caged like an animal, rarely seeing the light of day or a kind face, she couldn’t blame him for being antisocial. Especially after being wrongly convicted. If he was. But she didn’t believe a man who fitted a menagerie of animals with electronic collars could ever kill. She saw three more dogs roaming the property before she left. How many more were in the house?
There were many types of prisons. Dana could have walked away from hers sooner, but the penalty would have been unbearable. After her younger son left for college and a TV movie deal for one of her books gave her financial independence, she thrust her middle finger at Robert and left his house with nothing but the clothes on her back. She would have left those too, but walking naked into the cold mountain air didn’t seem like an option. She filed for divorce shortly after. Robert dumped her? What a joke. Yes, Dana knew the freedom Daughtry must feel.
Robert would blow a gasket when he found out Daughtry was building her a fireplace. A smile curled her lips. No one rejected Robert Minette, and no one called him Bob or Bobby or Rob or any of the pa
t-on-the-back nicknames most Roberts answered to. It was Robert Minette, and don’t you forget it. She hated him with a passion she never thought herself capable of.
She sat with a glass of wine in her unfinished great room and stared at the fireplace wall. What magnificence would Daughtry construct? The magazine pictures and the breathtaking beauty of his house sparked her imagination. She drank another glass of wine and sat there until dark, then went to bed to wait for morning.
* * * * *
Dana usually rose at six, but the wine had put her into a deep sleep, and she woke a few minutes after seven. She hopped out of bed, padded into the kitchen, and ground coffee for a full pot rather than her usual two cups. Maybe Daughtry didn’t drink coffee, but if he did…
After a quick shower, she fluffed her short wet hair to dry naturally and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She rarely wore more than a dab of lipstick and didn’t put on any more than that this morning.
With a mug of coffee in hand, she slid open the glass door and went outside to enjoy the morning sun, scaring off a cardinal perched on her bird feeder. Dew covered the blanket of winter turf, interrupted by a few sprouts of green struggling to make an appearance. May mornings in the North Carolina mountains still held the nip of late winter instead of late spring. A brisk gust of wind sent her back inside for a sweater.
Her house overlooked the picture-postcard view of the valley. Houses and farms peppering the countryside, church steeples, pastures, and barns. No lake like Daughtry’s, but that was okay. She preferred this.
A truck groaned up the steep drive. A door opened and closed. She waited until he saw her on the patio and joined her, the little three-legged mutt trailing behind. Daughtry wore jeans, a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt, and work boots.
The dog hobbled straight to her and put his two front paws in her lap while he balanced on his one hind leg. “Hey, Pooch.” She glanced at Daughtry. “He’s a cute little fellow.”
“Got hit by a car near my house. He didn’t have any tags or collar, so he’s mine. Vet fixed him up, but he can’t run after cars anymore.”
“Because he can’t get off your property without being shocked.”
“Better than dead,” he said with a penetrating stare.
She couldn’t argue that. “Coffee?”