Assault and Batter(52)

“Are you sure?”

“I am,” I said as I started the Jeep and pulled out. The man was a brute, there was no doubt about that, but that didn’t necessarily make him a murderer.

It didn’t make him innocent, either. I was going to have to keep my eye on Frank Grambling in the future, and that meant not being alone with him if I could help it. He made me nervous. I couldn’t imagine how Lisa felt around him.

“Where are you going now?” Grace asked me as I sped off.

“I thought we might go look for Lisa,” I said.

“After what just happened with her husband? Have you lost your mind?”

“I’m not letting someone scare me away from our investigation,” I said. “But if you want out, say the word and I won’t hold it against you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything in my life,” she replied, and there was no doubting the truth of what she was saying.

“Good. Then let’s see if we can track Lisa down.”

“Where should we look?” she asked.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Frank said that she was at the grocery store.”

“Then let’s head over there,” Grace said.

As it turned out, we got there just in time. Lisa had already finished her shopping, and she was loading her bags into the car.

I pulled up across from her and got out of the Jeep with Grace close on my heels.

“Need a hand with those?” I asked as we walked up to her.

“No, I’m fine,” she said absently, and then she realized that it was us. “What are you two doing here? Are you stalking me?”

“We were just doing a bit of shopping ourselves,” Grace said before I could answer. It was the right thing to say for two reasons. It might just let us catch her off guard, and it would be hard for Frank to know exactly when we spoke with his wife.

“Then go shop,” she said as she threw the last few bags in haphazardly. “I don’t have time to talk.”

I wouldn’t let it go at that, though. “Lisa, did someone get to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said defiantly.

“The first time we spoke to you, you couldn’t tell us fast enough about the people who might want to hurt Jude. The second time we chatted, you practically ran away from us. Something happened between the two times we chatted. You claim that you have a happy life with your husband, so if he didn’t threaten you, then who did?”

She looked as though she wanted to tell us; I could see it in her eyes. “I don’t know if I can trust you,” she finally said.

“We won’t tell a soul what you share with us,” Grace said in a reassuring voice. “You can bank on it.”

“I wish I could,” she said. After a long moment, Lisa stared straight into my eyes. “Suzanne, if you or Grace say a word about what I’m about to tell you, I’m a dead woman.”

Finally we were breaking through. “You have our words,” I said.

Lisa looked up and down the parking lot to see if anyone was near, and then she said, “This could be the end of me, but I can’t keep living like this.” As she finished, her cellphone rang.

“Let it go to voicemail,” Grace said.

“I can’t.” She answered the call, and her face went pale. “I understand,” she said at last then hung up.

“Go on, you were saying?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said. Short of blocking her car with our bodies, we couldn’t stop her. Lisa raced out of the parking lot, her tires screaming on the pavement.

“Who just called her, Grace?” I asked.

“It had to be her husband,” she said.

“Not necessarily. If whoever is threatening her saw her chatting with us just now, it could have been a reminder about what might happen to her.” As I said it, I looked wildly around the parking lot for some sign that someone was watching us. There were a few people loading groceries and a few others heading inside, but I didn’t see a soul who was directly involved in our investigation. “It’s no use. I’m afraid that we might never know.”

“Is Lisa in danger?” Grace asked. “Maybe we should follow her.”

“We could, but what’s the killer going to think if they see us tailing her home? We could put her in more jeopardy than she’s already in.”

“We need to find out who she’s so afraid of,” Grace said.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do that. We can’t exactly get her phone records, and we don’t have any proof that we can take to Chief Martin to get him to do it, either.”