The Littlest Witness. Amanda Stevens
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Little girls, to be exact.”
“But why?” For the first time, Thea noticed the brown paper bag he carried in one hand. Fear crept up her backbone. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Detective Gallagher, what’s this about?”
In answer, he turned toward the television. “I see you’ve been watching the news this morning. You probably already know that the woman who died here last night was Gail Waters. She was a reporter for a small newspaper called the Press.”
“A reporter?” What had a reporter been doing in this building? Who had she come to see? Had she somehow found out about her and Nikki?
“The paper is local, but some of her investigative pieces also ran on a cable news channel.”
Gail Waters had been on television? Was that why she’d looked familiar? Thea desperately wanted to believe that was the case. There was no reason to assume a reporter’s presence in this building had anything to do with her and Nikki. And yet…
Detective Gallagher was here in her apartment, asking questions about her daughter. Obviously he thought there was a connection.
Thea lifted her chin. “As I told you last night, I don’t recall having seen her before. I don’t understand why you’re here, Detective Gallagher.”
His gaze, intent and probing, fell on her once more. “As you can imagine, there’re still a lot of unanswered questions concerning her death.”
“But I thought her death was a suicide. The officer I spoke with last night said a note had been found on the body.”
“And as I said last night, suicide’s a possibility, but we’re not ruling out homicide. Not yet, at least.”
“Homicide? You think someone murdered her?” Thea felt momentarily faint. “Who would want to kill her?” she asked weakly.
He gave her a curious look. “Reporters are a lot like cops. People sometimes don’t like the questions we ask.”
Thea didn’t say anything to that, but she remembered the list of people Rick had claimed wanted him dead. And yet the last person he’d suspected was the one who finally did him in. Thea’s stomach churned in warning. “Whether it was suicide or murder, I don’t see what her death has to do with my daughter or me.”
“I’m coming to that.” He took something from the bag and held it up for her inspection. “Do you recognize this?”
Thea’s knees almost buckled when she saw the doll. The black curls, the brown eyes, the dimpled cheeks were very much like her daughter’s, which was exactly why she’d bought the doll for Nikki. It had been an extravagance they could ill afford these days, but her daughter had been so enchanted with the resemblance when they’d seen her in a shop window. Thea hadn’t been able to resist. Until then, Nikki had been largely unresponsive to just about everything. The doll, named Piper after a character in Nikki’s favorite book, had struck a chord deep inside the child that no one, including Thea, had been able to touch since that terrible night four months ago.
Nikki loved that doll. She would never have willingly parted with it. So how had Detective Gallagher come to be in possession of it? And what did the doll have to do with Gail Waters’s death?
Chilled, Thea stared at the doll in Gallagher’s hand, forcing her expression to remain placid. It was imperative that he not connect the doll to Nikki. It was crucial that the two of them remain untouched by his investigation. “You came here at this hour of the morning to ask me about a doll?” She let a trace of irritation creep into her voice.
“Do you recognize it?”
Almost absently Thea rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Detective Gallagher watched her intently, studying her as if she were a bug under his microscope. But Thea had learned a lot about bluffing from her father and from the other investigators who had worked for him. “That doll could belong to any little girl in this building. I can’t imagine why you think it’s my daughter’s.”
His eyes narrowed on her. He didn’t appear fooled by her evasions. “I found this doll on the roof last night after a woman had fallen to her death. Does it, or does it not, belong to your daughter?”
On the roof! My God…
A fresh wave of fear washed over Thea, but she shook her head, denying her thoughts. This was crazy. Nikki would never have gone up to the roof. She wasn’t even allowed out of the apartment without Thea’s permission, and besides that, her daughter was terrified of the dark. There was no way on earth she would have gone up to that roof alone last night, and Thea couldn’t imagine that Mrs. Lewellyn would have taken her.
So how had the doll gotten up there?
“You look surprised, Mrs. Lockhart. Why is that, if the doll doesn’t belong to your daughter?”
Cornered, Thea chewed her lip. “The doll is a common one. I’ve seen it in several stores. Nikki does have one similar to it, but that doesn’t mean this one is hers. It couldn’t be, because there is no way she would have been on that roof. She’s only four years old.”
“The stairs go all the way to the roof,” Detective Gallagher pointed out. “Even a four-year-old can climb stairs, and you said yourself, you were out all evening. How can you be sure your daughter wasn’t on that roof?”
“Because her baby-sitter would never have allowed it.” But a vision of Mrs. Lewellyn snoring peacefully on the sofa flashed through Thea’s mind. Was it possible Nikki had left the apartment while the elderly woman slept? But why would Nikki do something like that? It was totally out of character for her. There was no good reason Thea could think of that would have compelled her daughter out of the apartment and up to the roof.
Either the doll wasn’t hers or she’d lost it somewhere, in the hallway perhaps between here and Mrs. Lewellyn’s apartment, and someone had picked it up. Someone else had taken it to the roof. That was the only possible explanation.
If only she hadn’t had to work late last night. Then she would have been home with Nikki herself, and Detective Gallagher wouldn’t be here asking all these questions, and she wouldn’t be assailed by all these doubts. This awful premonition that somehow she and Nikki both were tied to the dead woman.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she insisted.
Detective Gallagher stared at her for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Sorry I wasted your time.” He started for the door, but before Thea could breathe a sigh of relief, he turned back to face her. “Maybe we should ask your daughter about last night. Just to be on the safe side.”
“She’s sleeping, and I really don’t want to wake her. She…hasn’t been feeling well lately.”
“I see.” His eyes were dark and fathomless as his gaze rested on Thea. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but a sound from behind her drew his attention, and Thea knew without turning that her daughter was standing in the doorway. She also knew that once Nikki saw the doll in Detective Gallagher’s hand the pretense would be over.
But Piper had disappeared behind the detective’s back, out of Nikki’s sight. Thea thought for a moment he was actually going to leave without questioning her daughter, but then in the next instant, she told herself she should have known better. He was a cop, wasn’t he? No one was sacred. Not even a wounded four-year-old girl.
“You must be Nikki.” His tone lowered, became almost gentle. He walked past Thea before she could protest and knelt in front of her daughter. “Your mother and I were just talking about you. I’m Detective Gallagher.”
Nikki was still dressed in her pajamas, looking soft and sweetly rumpled, her cloud of dark hair hanging in tangles down her back. She stared at Detective Gallagher, her brown eyes wide with fright.
Thea moved quickly to Nikki’s side and knelt beside her, smoothing back her hair. “It’s okay, sweetie. He’s not going to hurt you.”
She