Deadline (Sandra Brown)

smile. “Be nice, Willard. I’m the guy who’s here to save your sorry self.”
    *  *  *
     
    Amelia and Headly were headed back toward the jail. She was driving. Headly was in the passenger seat, talking on his cell phone to Knutz. A minor collision on the expressway had slowed traffic to a crawl. The sheriff’s unmarked cars were having as much difficulty switching lanes as she.
    Headly ended his conversation. “Knutz is trying to buy us more time, using that phone call to Dawson’s boss as leverage. Why would little ol’ Bernie phone her in the first place? Why would he lie?”
    “Unless he was Carl.”
    “Knutz is acting on that. Meanwhile the boat hasn’t given up any clues.”
    Nor had the strongbox. Nothing useful was discovered: no map, property deed, lease, or paperwork of any kind.
    That having proved fruitless, they’d divided the list of Jeremy’s former friends that she’d compiled, and working on their separate cell phones, the two of them had placed dozens of calls. In preparation for the inevitable question Why are you asking me about Jeremy now? Headly had made up an explanation involving a fictitious tax return with a questionable deduction that was affecting the trust funds set up for Hunter and Grant. He’d advised Amelia on the buzzwords to use.
    “Do you think they’ll understand that gibberish?” she asked.
    “No. And to avoid any further involvement, no one will ask for clarity. That’s the point.”
    Many of the numbers they called were no longer in service. Some had been answered by voice mail, on which they’d left messages asking the individual to call them back on a matter of grave importance.
    Of the few people with whom they’d spoken, all were reluctant to talk about Jeremy and were actually ill at ease for having been singled out as a former acquaintance. Most reactions were wary, some downright hostile.
    Repeatedly both Headly and Amelia were told that the questions they were putting to them now had already been asked by police more than a year earlier, when Jeremy went missing and was presumed dead. They’d told everything they knew then.
    She braked for a pickup truck trying to wedge its way in and looked over at Headly. “Where do we go from here?”
    “Maybe Dawson got something out of Willard.” He shifted in his seat and turned slightly toward her. “What do you think of him?”
    “He gives me the creeps.”
    He laughed. “I meant Dawson. Or does he give you the creeps?”
    “Oh. Dawson.”
    Headly waited her out, and she was the first to look away. Taking her foot off the brake pedal, she rolled forward only a few yards before having to stop again. “Dawson and I didn’t get off to a great start. Did he tell you about our initial meeting?”
    “He began playing with the boys on the beach. Things went from there.”
    “More or less,” she murmured.
    “Huh. More, I think.”
    When she said nothing, he chuckled. “Okay. Keep that story to yourselves. Back to my original question.”
    “What do I think of him? In what way?”
    “In any way.”
    “He’s good with the boys.”
    “Surprisingly.”
    “Why?”
    “He has no former experience with kids. He was raised an only child. He was around our daughter, Sarah, a lot, but she’s a few years older, so they squabbled as much as they played.” He told her that Sarah was married and living in London.
    “Children?”
    “Not yet. My wife drops hints about as subtle as crashing meteorites.”
    Amelia laughed. “In the meantime Dawson receives parental doting from you and Mrs. Headly.”
    “Which he resists, of course.”
    Temporarily stopped in the logjam, she looked at him. “Why ‘of course’?”
    “The detachment that makes him a good journalist carries over into his personal life. He sets himself apart, sees himself only as an observer, a loner. That’s why he’s never married. Why he hasn’t even come close.”
    She gave him an arch look. “Mind you, I didn’t ask.”
    “No, but I figured you wanted to know.” He grinned at her and winked. “Oh, there have been a few women who stayed on longer than others. A couple of them were lovely ladies, who met Eva’s rigid standards. But even with them, once things got too warm and fuzzy, he called it quits.”
    “Commitment issues are common. Especially for a man who’s a loner.”
    “I didn’t say he was a loner.”
    She looked at him with puzzlement. “You just did.”
    “I said he sees himself as a