Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) by R.J. Jagger Page B

in.
    “Okay, to get me to participate in the charade, he told me that there was this client of the firm that wanted to help Alicia Elmblade, and that she wanted to fake her own death, because she was scared of something. But you told me she wasn’t scared of anything, she only did it for the money.”
    “A hundred grand.”
    “Precisely.”
    “Okay. I remember now.”
    “So he lied to me,” Kelly added. “That seems bad, but I don’t know for sure that it is. I’ve known him for a long time and have more respect for him than you can imagine. This is the first and only thing that’s been out of character for him, and there may well be a good explanation.”
    “So why don’t you just ask him straight-out what the hell’s going on? Just say, hey, mister big-shot, what the hell’s going on?”
    Kelly felt the bartender’s eyes on her. She looked in that direction but saw that he was pulling glasses out of a sink and drying them with a tattered towel, paying no attention to her and Jeannie whatsoever.
    She looked back at Dannenberg.
    “That’s not an option,” she said. “If he is somehow messed up in this, the last thing I need is for him to know that I know that he lied to me, that’ll just clam him up. The only thing that we have going for us right now is that he doesn’t know that we know that he lied to me. He doesn’t know that you and I are talking and we need to keep it that way.”
    Dannenberg smiled.
    “We could have Jack pay him a visit. He could get some answers. He hates lawyers anyway. Damn near killed his ex’s divorce lawyer, actually served a year in Canyon City . . .”
    Kelly shook her head.
    “No. What we need to do is find out if Alicia Elmblade is still alive, on our own, quietly. If it turns out that she is, we can talk to her, and maybe she’ll have an idea why someone might have killed D’endra or be after us.”
    “And if we can’t find her, then what?”
    Good question.
    “Then we need to regroup. Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. It’s just a theory, so don’t get too excited. But suppose someone actually wanted to kill Alicia Elmblade from the start. Somehow, someway, he gets Michael Northway to set up this charade. Alicia participates and disappears and three witnesses say they saw an Asian man take her. One of those witnesses is a lawyer in a prominent law firm, me.”
    Dannenberg nodded.
    “Later,” Kelly continued, “maybe even that very night, he really does kill her. And he has the perfect alibi, because he’s a white guy. Not only that, he was someplace public with plenty of witnesses at the time she was abducted at the gas station. Plus, he knows that I can’t change my story even if I wanted to, because I’d end up loosing my license and probably even land up in jail. What we did is a felony offense, in case you’re interested.”
    Dannenberg shrugged, like she didn’t particularly care, then noted, “He’d have to be awful smart. I mean, that’s a lot of planning. Why would anyone want to kill Alicia?”
    “You tell me.”
    Dannenberg drew a blank, drained her bottle, held it up and waved it at the bartender. “Hey, Raymond, if you’re not too busy playing with yourself.” She looked at Kelly’s bottle, saw that it was almost empty, and said, “Two.” Then to Kelly, ”Everyone liked her. And she wasn’t messed up in anything serious. I would have known.”
     
    KELLY REMEMBERED THE DARK FIGURE OUTSIDE, the man who hadn’t come in. She walked to the other end of the bar and looked out. There he was, walking out of the parking lot. He had massive shoulders and a strong physique, not the hunched over depressed look of someone who’d kill time in a dive like this. Now he was heading down the street. She watched him until he disappeared in the storm.
    Weird.
    What the hell was he doing back there in the parking lot?
    Screwing with her car so she couldn’t drive?
    “It’s called rain,” the bartender told her.
    She