“I forgot to mention that fact to Agent Duncan this morning. Maybe,” Rebecca Lynn said slowly, her words slurring, “I’ll give him a call later and tell him that Harold requested you to go all out to seduce him for information on The Tears of the Quetzal.”
Anger began to mushroom inside Jenna. “Do what the hell you like, Rebecca! You’re drunk, and I’m going to change. I’m soaked.” She turned to leave.
“I also know that you went to visit Candace on the night she was killed,” she called out.
Jenna froze.
“Maybe, Jenna Jayne, if I was truly malicious, I might suggest the FBI try and match your DNA to the scene. Who knows what the feds could come up with.”
Her heart jackhammering, Jenna turned slowly to face her wicked little stepmother. “You don’t know what you’re saying—”
“Jenna, I know you were there.”
Jenna stared at Rebecca Lynn for several beats, feeling increasingly ill. Slowly, she sunk down into a chair, Napoleon at her feet. “How?” she whispered, scared now, wondering what Lex really knew about the night of the murder, wondering if this reviled stepmother of hers had already told Lex that she’d been at Candace’s apartment mere hours before her sister was killed.
“How do you know?”
Rebecca Lynn started sashaying theatrically out of the room.
“Rebecca Lynn!”
She stopped in the doorway, smiling crookedly.
“Did you have me followed that night?”
“No, I went to visit Candace myself that night, Jenna. When I got there, I saw your car was already parked outside. So I just sat in my vehicle for a while, waiting for you to come out. Watching.”
“What on earth were you doing there?”
“I needed to talk to Candace, alone. About…an issue between us. But then I saw you two up in front of the big lighted window, arguing. I saw Candace throw the vase at you, and you ducked. You began to pick up the broken pieces. It looked, Jenna, like you might have cut your finger, because you sucked it quickly. Do you think you might have left blood on one of those vase pieces? Your DNA, perhaps?”
Jenna swallowed against the thickness ballooning in her throat. She should have told the cops right away that she’d gone to try and talk Candace into a rehab program. But there was such a media circus around the murder she didn’t want to smear her dead sister’s name further into the mire. As much as she and Candace had squabbled, Candace was still her blood. Her sister. And there were her boys to think about. Jenna had been raised to close ranks at times of family trouble.
Besides, she knew she hadn’t killed her sister, so what difference did it make, truly, that she’d been there a few hours earlier? Except now Lex would see it as a lie by omission. Another reason not to trust her.
God, he might even think she’d done it.
“Are you going to tell Agent Duncan?” she whispered.
“Don’t think I need to. Your sexy bachelor agent probably already knows that you’re a lying little bitch. It’s probably why he’s escorting you around town, plying you for information so he can nail you.” She snorted derisively at Jenna’s expression. “What? You thought he actually fancied you?”
Nausea slicked through Jenna’s stomach.
If what Rebecca Lynn said was true—and Lex had been playing her—it meant the fragile bond she’d felt dawning between her and Lex today had been a complete farce. And that hurt more than anything.
Rebecca Lynn had just stomped her stiletto into Jenna’s fragile burgeoning emotions, grinding them right into the dirt. And Jenna hated her more than ever. “You know I didn’t hurt Candace,” she said quietly. “If you were watching, you’d have seen me leave, while she was still alive. You’re a witness to my innocence.”
“Hmm,” Rebecca Lynn said, putting the glass to her mouth, wetting her lips with gin. “Not sure I can recall those little details.”
Jenna launched to her feet. “For all I know you did it! You’ve just told me you were there. After I was.”
“I never went into her apartment. It would’ve been pointless to try and talk to Candace when she was in a drunken rage, so I drove home.”
Jenna glowered at Rebecca Lynn, all sorts of dark suspicions suddenly growing in her mind.
Rebecca Lynn sighed theatrically, as if suddenly bored out of her skull. “I didn’t hurt Candace, my dear, as much as I would’ve liked to,” she said. “And I certainly didn’t send all those threatening notes.”
“There was only one note. A typed one, left in Dad’s mailbox.”
“Oh, really?” Rebecca Lynn glanced pointedly at Harold’s study door. Jenna followed her gaze and noticed that the door was ajar. It was never open. Harold always kept that door shut. And through the open door Jenna could see the top drawer of his desk was partially open. Harold was meticulous about such things. He’d never have left it like that.