Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 49

I’d been beaten twice in the past twenty-four hours and both times by people who had loved Colleen. First Donahue had clocked me. He’d also apparently told Siobhan where to find me. And now I’d been clobbered by Siobhan.

The couch was a beauty, eight feet of down-filled cushions. I took a seat and put my feet up on the coffee table next to the sap Siobhan had used to knock me down.

Siobhan was tough, but she brought me a pillow, then took a bottle of water out of the bar fridge and gave it to me. She sat in the chair across from me and stared at me.

“Start talkin’,” she said.

I did. I told her repeatedly that I hadn’t killed Colleen. I explained where I’d been when Colleen had been shot, and I told her how much I cared about her sister.

“You made love to her,” Siobhan said accusingly. “Colleen called to say you took her to bed before you left Los Angeles. Do you deny it?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You were fooling with her.”

“I loved her. Just not enough to give her what she wanted,” I said.

I thought about Colleen’s last birthday. We’d gone to dinner at Donahue’s, sat at the same table where I’d sat with him last night. Donahue and a gang of waiters had brought out the birthday cake and sung to Colleen.

She had started out very happy that night.

I had known that, after a year of going out, what Colleen wanted for her birthday was a ring.

I had let her down. The best I could do had hurt her, terribly.

“You loved her? Then I don’t understand ‘not enough,’ ” Siobhan said. Her lips trembled. Tears slid down her cheeks. “Why would you have taken her to bed if you meant nothing by it?”

“Why did you sap me?”

“I had to do it.”

I paused to let her words stand alone.

“I missed her, Siobhan.”

I wanted to say more, but nothing I said would make sense, even to me. It had been a mistake to sleep with Colleen. If I hadn’t gone back to her hotel with her, maybe she’d still be alive.

Siobhan struggled to interrogate me through her grief.

“And so, if you didn’t kill Colleen, who did? Aren’t you supposed to be good at this sort of thing-investigating murders?”

Siobhan was sobbing now.

I stood up, reached out my arms to her.

She shook her head no.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”

She came to me and I held her as she cried.

“Find the bastard. You owe that to Colleen.”

“If it can be done, I’ll do it.”

“I miss her,” Siobhan choked out. “I loved her so much. She and I were best friends. Never a cross word. No secrets. I don’t know how I’m going to go on without her.”

“I’m so sorry, Siobhan. Losing Colleen-it’s a terrible thing.”

My voice cracked and then both of us were crying. It had been years since I had let myself cry. Sadness for Colleen swept through me. Holding her sister felt to me like saying good-bye to Colleen again.

Maybe Siobhan felt as if Colleen were saying a last good-bye to me.

Siobhan pulled away from me but gripped my arms tightly as she looked up at my face.

“You really did love her, didn’t you, Jack? So why didn’t you do the right thing by her?”

“I thought I did. I set her free.”