MURDER on the ROCKS (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

              Allie Griffin waited nervously in the audience for the ceremony to begin. Three months had passed since she left Bennett Reilly in the hands of the police, allies of Beauchenne's who'd responded to her call. She felt a little sorry for Bennett. The press had had a field day with him, painting him as a cuckold. The story hit the wires and even made national news. It was the slow season, after all. Commenters on the online sites running the story were divided: some vilifying Reilly, some, mostly men, voicing support of him for standing up to a shrewish wife.

              Allie could do nothing but sit back and watch it unfold this way. Perhaps Honey Reilly was a shrewish wife, but money had made her that way, and although we all have a path in life to choose of our own volition, some of us get stuck in that rut and can’t get out, even though memories of dangling off floats in Church Street parades still retain their sweet scent after years buried in boxes, tucked away behind bags of money and material things.

              She couldn’t help but think of these things now. Just as she couldn’t help but think of poor Art Chapman and
his
memories. How he must have loathed reading those stories!

              All these things swam through her head as she watched Chief Roy Dupond take to the dais amid a fanfare and thunderous applause. Thirty years of faithful service, and now a ceremony in his honor, a decoration by the mayor of Verdenier, and local TV station coverage.

              She shifted anxiously in her place. This was the first time she'd ever seen the chief in person. Up there on the Verdenier Opera House stage, he cut an imposing figure, larger than life. In pictures he was a sturdy fellow with a benevolent smile, a man you could trust with your life and your children's lives. Here, even at this distance, he was intimidating. Broad-shouldered, a shock of silver hair that was full-bodied and combed neatly over the bull head. His mouth was tight, and he smiled crookedly, and here the benevolence was transmuted into smug magnanimity. He accepted the mayor's award graciously, and he made a speech that was pandering and full of fluff. And the emcee made an announcement that the chief would now take questions from the press.

              Allie couldn’t bear to watch anymore. She turned and left the Verdenier Opera House. But not before she heard the first question:

              "
Sir, are the allegations that you falsified fingerprints true...
"

              It was sure to come as a shock. The wire had broken the story just that morning. Old Chief Dupond was probably having breakfast, shaving, doing what crooked cops do when it's time to accept an award for doing it.

              Allie had felt like a snitch when she actually made the call and gave the reporter his leads. She'd printed photos of Bennett Reilly and Honey Reilly and she printed out Robert Jessup's high school picture. And she wrote the name "Art Chapman" on an index card and had drawn a heart around it. And she'd taken all these things and laid them out on the oak table in her dining room, with its knot shaped like an eye watching all, and all she had to do, if she felt the slightest tinge of guilt or unease or even shame, was to look down.

              As she walked to her car, Allie Griffin smiled to herself. She'd watch it on the news later. What's more, she'd called Walter Matson and invited him over to watch it with her. That's where her smile had come from. That, and the fact that Sgt. Frank Beauchenne was back at his post, doing the work he loved to do.

              The Reilly case, and now this, had put a kink in Detective Tomlin's plans to investigate her husband, Tom's, death. When he found out how Allie Griffin had a hand in this one, he was sure to up his game once the dust settled.

              In her car, she muttered to herself, just as she had said the last time, "Bring it on."

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