Deadline (Sandra Brown)

guessing. I don’t know. In any case, he let go of me.
    “When Mr. Strong told him he ought to do something about me and my ‘smart mouth’—that’s a quote—Jeremy told him to shut up and to mind his own business. With an expletive. Then he opened the front door and shoved Mr. Strong out onto the porch. Mr. Strong cursed him, and I believe he would have retaliated if—”
    “Objection.”
    “Sustained.”
    Jackson asked quickly, “Did Mr. Strong retaliate to Mr. Wesson’s shove?”
    “No. He was too unsteady on his feet. He staggered off the steps and nearly fell down. Jeremy grabbed Mrs. Strong’s hand and pulled her behind him through the door. The two men were angrily pushing and shoving each other as they made their way to Jeremy’s car parked at the curb. I shut the door and didn’t see anything more. When the police arrived, they were gone.”
    Jackson returned to the table to once again consult his notes, probably unnecessarily. He was letting his witness take a breather and giving the jury time to imagine the scene and the antagonism that obviously had existed between the two so-called friends.
    Ms. Nolan took a sip from her glass of water. Even from the back of the room where Dawson sat, he could see that her hand was trembling.
    As Jackson walked toward her, he frowned and slid his hands into his pants pockets, looking rueful, as though regretting the direction his questioning was about to take. “Ms. Nolan, you had a second encounter with Willard Strong, is that correct?”
    “Yes.”
    “When was that?”
    “The third of May last year.”
    “Again, you remember the exact date.”
    “Yes.”
    She lowered her head, causing a loose strand of hair to fall against her cheek. Absently she reached up and tucked it behind her ear. Dawson wondered if that was a nervous gesture, specific to these circumstances, or if it was an unconscious habit with her. He would bet the latter.
    “Ms. Nolan, why do you remember that date with such clarity?”
    When she raised her head to answer Jackson’s question, Dawson realized that he, along with most everyone else in the courtroom, including the accused, was leaning forward in anticipation of her answer.
    She cleared her throat delicately. “That was the day Mrs. Strong and Jeremy went missing.”

Chapter 3
    J ackson asked her to describe that day.
    “It started out like any other weekday. I dropped the boys off at their preschool at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church and went to work.”
    “You work at the Collier War Museum?”
    “I’m a curator. I specialize in the Civil War.”
    “It’s a full-time job?”
    “Yes, but the museum allows me a lot of flexibility, which, as a single parent, I require.”
    “On that day of May third, did anything out of the ordinary happen to alert you to what was coming?”
    “Nothing. Not until I got a call from the school. It came shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon. The museum director, George Metcalf, and I were in his office.”
    *  *  *
     
    “Because, George, it’s crap.”
    “Humor him, Amelia. Humor me.”
    “It has no value. Either on the open market or to the museum.”
    “That may be.”
    “Not ‘may be.’ Is.”
    “Okay. It’s little more than a trinket. The Confederate Army handed out hundreds—”
    “Thousands.”
    “Thousands of them. But the medal is valuable to Patterson Knox. It came down through his family from his great-great-great-grand something or another, and he’s named after that particular ancestor. I don’t need to remind you—”
    “But you’re about to.”
    “—that Patterson Knox contributed over one hundred thousand dollars to us last year. Mrs. Knox is—”
    “On our board of directors. I’m not stupid, George. I get it. It’s just that you and I approach these issues from different directions. As a curator, it’s my job to protect the integrity of the museum.”
    “That’s my priority, too.”
    “Yes, but as director you must also pander to people who keep our doors open. It galls me to display junk in order to ensure that a large donor continues donating.”
    “I hear you. But—”
    “Never mind. I recognize a dead end when I run into one. I don’t concede defeat, but I acknowledge the futility of further argument, which I believe you had won even before it commenced. However, I had to give it my best shot.”
    “I would expect nothing less from you. Put Mr. Knox’s medal in a corner somewhere.”
    “With a spotlighted brass