The Whispering Room

“But why now? Johnny’s been dead almost a year. Why did you wait so long to get in touch with Nathan?”

“I didn’t. I’ve been trying to talk to him since Johnny’s funeral. He would never return any of my phone calls. And I had a lot on mind. Like you said, there was a lot to take care of. The baby came and I went on maternity leave. Time passed in a daze for me. When I came back to work, it hit me again that something wasn’t right about that shooting. So I started asking questions.”

Kathy still clutched Evangeline’s hand, and now she squeezed her fingers reflexively. “Don’t you find it strange that right after you started asking those questions, someone killed Nathan?”

Evangeline stared at her for a moment. “Are you saying you think my asking questions is what got Nathan killed?”

“It seems too much of a coincidence to believe anything else. I’m not blaming you,” she said quickly. “Please don’t think that. I’d want answers, too. I do want answers. That’s why I wanted to see you today. We’re in the same boat now. I think our husbands were killed because of something they knew.”

“What?”

Kathy bit her lip. “I don’t know. But I want to help you find out if I can.”

Evangeline hesitated. What if her questions about Johnny’s shooting really had gotten Nathan killed? The last thing she wanted was to drag his widow into danger.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “I saw Nathan last night at the cemetery.”

Kathy’s head snapped up. “Last night? When?”

“It was early evening. Around seven-thirty or eight. I went out there to see him.”

“How did you know he’d be there?”

Too late, Evangeline remembered the reason Nathan had gone to Mount Olive—to visit his first wife’s tomb.

“I know why he was there,” Kathy said softly. “I know all about his visits to Teri’s grave. I’m just surprised…” She broke off, her gaze dropping to her hands. “I’m a little surprised that he went out there before coming here.”

Evangeline didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m sorry. We only spoke briefly.”

“Was he able to tell you anything about Johnny?”

“Yes.” Evangeline’s gaze fell away. “He told me Johnny had gone to that parking garage to see a woman.”

“Do you believe that?”

Evangeline shrugged. “I don’t want to believe. But I just don’t know anymore.”

Kathy got up and walked back over to the window. “Since we talked last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened. Things went south in my marriage right after Johnny’s shooting. Nathan started acting really strange. I thought at first he was just upset about Johnny’s death. But after a while, I realized it was more than that. He was scared of something.”

“Do you have any idea what it was?”

“No, but I overheard something one night that scared me, too. Nathan was on the phone in the living room. He thought I was taking a bath, but I picked up the extension in here not realizing he’d already answered. I heard a man tell him that he needed to keep his head and not do anything stupid. As long as they stayed cool, they were home free.”

“Do you know who this man was?”

“I couldn’t place the voice. It sounded like he was on a cell phone, and wherever he was, the signal was really weak. The call kept breaking up. But right after that phone call is when Nathan decided to go stay with his uncle in New Iberia.”

“What reason did he give you?”

“He didn’t. He just walked out. Which wasn’t like Nathan. He had problems and plenty of them. But he wasn’t a cruel man.”

“Do you think he may have come back last night to see the person who called him that night?”

“Maybe.” Kathy turned from the window, her face pale and drawn. “But there may have been another reason he came back.” She went over to the closet, slid back the door and rummaged through the boxes stacked on the floor. Pulling out a large manila envelope, she came back to the bed. “I found this one day when I was cleaning out the attic. I’m sure Nathan never expected that I would come across it.”

“What is it?”

She undid the fastener, then upended the contents on the bed. Several wads of hundred-dollar bills tumbled out, along with a passport and a snapshot of someplace tropical.

“There’s twenty-five thousand dollars here,” she said. “We’ve never even had that much in our savings account at any given time. Where did he get so much cash? And take a look at this.”

She handed Evangeline the passport. The booklet contained Nathan’s photograph, but it had been issued to someone named Todd Jamison.

“It looks like Nathan was preparing for a time when he might have to leave the country quickly,” Evangeline said.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Kathy said. “But I can’t figure out why he didn’t take it with him when he moved to New Iberia.”

“Maybe he thought it would be safer here.”

Evangeline picked up the photograph. “What’s this?”

“It was in the envelope with the money and the passport.”