Free Three Strikes and You're Dead by Jessica Fletcher Page B

“I can’t believe this,” he said. “This is a nightmare.”
     
     
    Several television station vans were in front of the house, along with two police cars, their red lights flashing. An officer backed a patrol car away from the entrance to the driveway and waved us in.
     
     
    Pierce pulled up to the garage, and we hurried out of the car and into the house. I watched him back out of the driveway with almost reckless abandon and wondered whether he would have taken pleasure in running over the few reporters who jumped out of his way. He didn’t hit anyone, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
     
     
    Ty went straight upstairs. Meg, Jack, and I headed for the kitchen, which was flooded with sunshine, a welcoming contrast to the bleak emotional day it had turned out to be.
     
     
    Jack walked around closing the blinds to shield us from cameras with telephoto lenses. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they bribed my neighbors into letting them shoot pictures from their bedroom windows,” he said. He went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to Ty to close the drapes.
     
     
    “Here, Jess, have a seat on the window bench,” Meg said. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee. Or would you prefer tea?”
     
     
    “Whatever you’re having is fine with me.”
     
     
    Jack excused himself, saying, “I want to talk with Ty some more.”
     
     
    “Maybe it’s best to leave him alone,” Meg suggested.
     
     
    “No,” Jack said, “I think it’s a good time to follow up with him, while what happened is still fresh in his mind. I won’t be long.”
     
     
    “How are you holding up, Meg?” I asked when he was gone.
     
     
    “I’m worried sick, Jessica. I don’t know what to do. Jack has experience with the legal aspects of this. He knows what we’re up against. I believe Ty. I really do. But unless there are witnesses to come forward and back up his story, I don’t see how he stands much of a chance of being exonerated.”
     
     
    “Have you had any messages from Buddy Washington?” I asked. “Or from anyone else affiliated with the team?”
     
     
    “Not that I know of,” said Meg. She walked to a small table in the kitchen on which there was a telephone and an answering machine. “Full,” she said, shaking her head. “The answering machine is filled with messages. I’d better wait until Jack comes down to listen to them.”
     
     
    The phone rang. Meg looked at the caller ID. “It’s Sylvester Cole,” she said nervously. “I’m not up to speaking with anyone.”
     
     
    “Want me to talk to him?” I asked.
     
     
    She nodded and handed me the phone.
     
     
    Sylvester’s hello was friendly, almost too cheery considering the situation. Surely he knew what had happened. “I have to speak with Jack right away,” he said after acknowledging me. I told Meg, and she went upstairs to get him.
     
     
    “Sylvester, while you’re waiting, let me ask you. What have you heard? What has been reported?”
     
     
    He answered with confidence. “I just saw Karen Locke’s live report on WXYK. From the preliminary results of an autopsy, it appears now that Junior Bennett was bludgeoned to death and died from a brain hemorrhage.”
     
     
    “Anything else? We haven’t had time to watch the news, for obvious reasons.”
     
     
    “Ty’s arrest for Junior’s murder is all over the tube, but there’s also an unsubstantiated report that the police are now interested in speaking with someone else who was seen hanging around the hotel during the time the team dinner was taking place, and who evidently showed up later at the same bar where the murder occurred.”
     
     
    I immediately thought of the man I’d overheard speaking on his cell phone outside the hotel’s entrance, the one who said that Ramos would pay someone money. But there were so many people at the hotel, between its guests and those who attended the team dinner, that it was silly of me to speculate about one