Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (20 page)

The trees grew closer together and soon, a green, leafy archway obscured the sun. As I walked, I lost track of the real reason I was here. In my mind, I was following Noah as he walked ahead of me, his brown ponytail hanging down the back of his fishing vest and his fishing rod clutched in his hand, down a barely marked path. We were headed toward the Youghiogheny River from our campsite in Pennsylvania’s Ohiopyle State Park, toward a calm place on that rushing river where we’d fished since Noah was little.

It was a trek we made every summer until everything fell apart. I had a series of memories of Noah as we walked this way each year, from the little boy with chubby legs, tightly clutching a chunky-handled, plastic, fishing pole, to the surly teen who would rather have died than go camping with his parents, and finally to that last family outing as I watched the young man, just beginning his career, leading the way on this familiar path one final time.

Last night’s shame came back to me. Steve was right—I hadn’t fallen completely off the wagon. Maybe I’d been the one to pour the vodka into the bathroom sink—who knows? I didn’t remember. But I knew all I needed to do was to get back on, work the program again, and embrace the sobriety that came at such a cost.

Noah would want me to do that.

It looked like I’d lost Charisma before I’d even had the chance to connect with her. But if nothing else, I’d learned from the experience. She’d shown me that after four painful years, I was ready to step out again, maybe find someone who would be willing to take me into her life, somebody who just might be the reason to move out of Fitzgerald House.

You could even say, then, my trip to Jubilant Falls hadn’t been a complete loss. After all, I’d found the one war correspondent the world was searching for, the woman no one could find—even if my actions (and I knew I had to take the responsibility for them) would send her back into hiding.

After this was over, I’d drive my rental car back down to Cincinnati and catch the next plane back to Philadelphia. I’d write my story—as much as I had of it—and then settle back and wait for another fall quarter to begin.

And I would do it sober.

A bird called overhead and I stopped to listen, encircled in the dark green bower. I looked up in the trees, but couldn’t see it. I looked around for the other searchers. I had wandered farther than I should—the line of searchers was in the distance, out of voice range, but still visible. I’d have to work to catch up with them. The sound came again, this time clearer.

“Help me! Help me!”

It wasn’t a bird. It was Betty Dahlgren.

“Hang on! I’m coming!” I ran toward the feeble, female voice.

She had fallen, tripping over a fallen log and into the swale of a small creek. Her left leg hung at an odd angle in the cold water and mud streaked across her expensive pants and shirt.

“Betty? Betty Dahlgren?”

“Yes! Yes! Please help me!” Her claw-like hands reached out for me and her face was wild with fear. “Please, help me!”

Carefully, I hooked my arms beneath her shoulders and pulled her from the cold water. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Charisma’s number. “Come quick! Bring a stretcher! I’ve found her!”

In the distance, the woods exploded with voices and the sound of footsteps crashing through the underbrush. I rubbed her arms vigorously to keep her warm.

“It’s going to be OK, Betty, it’s going to be OK,” I said. “Help is coming.”

She looked up at me with her ice blue eyes. “I know who killed that man. I know who did it. I just had to get away before she could find me and do the same to me!”

I stopped rubbing her arms.
She doesn’t know Eve is dead
.

“What man? The state trooper?” I asked.

“Yes. That one.”

*****

Wrapped in a blanket, Betty’s damning story kept coming, even as the EMTs splinted her leg and lifted her onto a stretcher. Charisma and Sheriff Roarke were beside me, both frantically taking notes as we walked her back toward the road and a waiting ambulance.

“I told her she shouldn’t see him,” Betty said, her fingers picking at the blanket. “It was wrong, he had a family. She was so young and so pretty back then—she could have anybody she wanted and I don’t know why she insisted on seeing a man twenty years older that she was.”

“What kind of relationship was it?” Charisma’s questions came like rapid fire shots from a machine gun. “Did they see each other a lot? Were there any plans for the future? Did Eve have hopes of Bob Martz leaving his wife?”

“Yes. She was going to do anything she could to break up that man’s family and keep him for herself. She doesn’t care about anything else.” Betty shook her head as she lay on the stretcher. She reached a claw-like hand up to Charisma’s shoulder. “She has to have what she has to have... That’s because…”

Betty’s sentence drifted off and I wondered if she was sliding back into her dementia—or thinking about the baby her daughter had. Like a slingshot, the old woman’s acuity was back.

“When she doesn’t get what she wants, look out. She will destroy anything in her path.”

Roarke stopped the EMTs and knelt beside the stretcher. “Tell me what happened that night,” he said.

Betty looked upward, tears beginning to crest in the crow’s feet around her eyes.

“It all started after her daddy killed himself. I told her she should haven’t gone to see Bob Martz, that I needed her at home that day, but she didn’t want...” Betty’s attention faded, whether from the pain in her leg or the pain in her heart, I couldn’t tell. “That was when he told her he was going to stay with his wife. She came home so angry—she said she was going to ruin him.”

“She wrote a letter saying Trooper Martz tried to attack her that night, didn’t she?” Charisma asked. “Did you know that?”

Betty nodded. “Yes, yes, I did. I told her not do to it, that it was a lie and it was wrong to send something like that. ‘There’s enough lies and secrets in this house, Mama,’ she said. ‘What do you care if we add one more?’ So she mailed the letter and went home to Texas.”

“When did she come back to Jubilant Falls?” I asked.

“It was a little while after her daddy died, maybe six months? I know when we talked long-distance, she told me she was still trying to call Mr. Martz and he kept refusing to see her again. She was very, very angry.”

Judson Roarke reached over and took her hand. “Tell me what happened next, Betty.”

“The night she came home, Eve told me she was going out with friends, but I didn’t believe her. People in this town don’t appreciate Eve—she’s too smart and too beautiful. Small towns are always like that—there isn’t anyone here who likes Eve. But I can tell when she’s up to something—she’s like her daddy that way.”

“What did you do?”

Pain from Betty’s broken leg made her face contort.

“We need to get you to the hospital, Mrs. Dahlgren,” one of the EMTs said.

“No, not yet. Let me finish,” she said. “I was waiting up for her when she came in—it was almost two-thirty in the morning. ‘You met Bob Martz again,’ I said. ‘Eve, that is wrong. It is so wrong.’ She just smiled and wouldn’t say a word. I saw the story in the paper the next morning, after she’d gotten on her plane back home.”

“Did you ever find a weapon?” Roarke asked.

“In her drawer, after she left.” Pain contorted Betty’s face again.

“Did you know she had a gun? What was it?” Roarke asked.

“No. I called her at home in Texas and asked her if she shot that man. She said if I ever told anybody, the same thing would happen to me. Eve still scares me.”

The sheriff looked at Charisma.

“She doesn’t realize that Eve is dead,” Charisma whispered. “The home healthcare worker told me that when Addison and I were out at her home.”

Roarke turned back to the old lady on the stretcher. “What did you do with the weapon?”

Betty finally lay back on the stretcher, covering her eyes with her arm. The group began moving again. The ambulance was in sight, its red lights flashing at the side of the road.

“It’s buried in the flower garden, out by the gazebo.”

Charisma leaned over the stretcher as our group came to the back of the ambulance. The driver was waiting at the open back door.

“You did the right thing, Betty. It’s OK now,” she said as the wounded woman was lifted into the back of the ambulance.

Betty groaned. “No, no it’s not. Eve is going to come get me now. I know she is.”

“Eve can’t come get you, Betty,” Charisma said. “You’re safe. Eve’s dead.”

“She’s dead?” Betty sat up on her elbows as the door of the ambulance slammed shut, her eyes wide.

Judson Roarke smacked the side of the ambulance with the flat of his hand. The sirens screamed in response as the medics pulled onto the pavement and the vehicle headed down the road.

He stepped back from the pavement to respond to a voice squawking from his shoulder microphone.

“Good job, Charisma,” I said, stepping closer to her. “You got her to talk.”

Her eyes followed the ambulance as it disappeared from view, but she didn’t answer, chewing her lip in consternation. Was she revisiting the day Jean Paul died? Was she planning where she’d run to next? Did she hate me as much as I hated myself? Or was she focused on Betty Dahlgren’s sad confession?

I started to reach for her shoulder, but Roarke jumped between us.

“We’ve got a suspect barricaded back in the Dahlgren’s house—and she’s got Addison with her.”

Chapter 33 Addison

Julia Dahlgren held the gun against the side of my neck, just below my ear.

She’d grabbed me when I walked onto the porch. Pat Robinette waited in the yard to snap the deputy sheriff leaning on the fender of his cruiser, a photo for which I could have written the caption myself:
Deputy So-and-So, along with Julia Dahlgren, wait to learn the results of the search for Dahlgren’s elderly mother, Betty, a dementia patient who removed her GPS ankle monitor and left in the family Buick Friday morning.

Instead, it went bad—fast.

“Julia, I know Eve’s secret,” I said.

She reacted with the speed and strength of an animal, grabbing me around the throat and pushing the gun against my neck. Her other arm, surprisingly muscular despite her sloppy appearance, wrapped around my throat, nearly cutting off my oxygen.

“You move and I’ll kill you. You won’t be the first, either,” she hissed in my ear.

“Let her go! I’ll shoot!” the deputy called out.

“No! Don’t! Don’t!” I cried. The barrel pressed against my neck and I was pulled backward into the house.

Julia kicked the big white door closed and I fell against the mahogany staircase, her gun inches from my face.

Standing above me, she was the exact opposite of her late, poised and well-coiffed sister. Julia’s brown boots were crusty with dirt and the knees of her jeans were dusty. Her green John Deere tee shirt emphasized her fat, middle-aged frame and her sagging breasts. She wore a pink camouflage ball cap that covered her choppy hair.

When I saw Eve in Earlene’s office, her clothing was expensive, yet tasteful. Eve had been thin and trim—the day I saw her, I knew it took a village of beauticians, estheticians and personal trainers to preserve that high-maintenance blonde.

Why hadn’t Julia been afforded that same attention?

“You want to see what all the secrecy is about? I’ll show you. Move!”

I scrambled up the stairs; Julia’s steps close behind me. I missed a step, and stumbled, gasping as I felt the gun barrel against my back.

“Last door on the left,” she snapped.

I walked past three bedrooms, filled with oversize antique bedsteads and dark bureaus, their windows darkened with heavy Victorian-style curtains, all designed to put a glossy image over a tawdry truth. Double-globed antique oil lamps sat on small bedside tables; intricate carpets covered the floors. A claw-footed bathtub with copper fixtures caught my eye as we passed the bathroom, toward a closed door at the end of the hall.

As we approached, I could hear the sound of medical machinery, the rhythmic sound of an oxygen pump.

“I open this door and you don’t say a thing, you hear me?” She leveled the gun at my face.

I nodded. She lowered the gun and turned the doorknob.

Any other patient, like the man before me on the hospital bed, would have been pushed into a nursing home or a state facility years ago, except for the money Eve—or someone—spent to care for him at home.

He was severely brain-damaged; his eyes were wildly askew; his yellow teeth were ragged and crooked as his mouth hung open. A tube was attached at his throat to help him breathe and two others beneath the bed collected urine and feces. A monitor beside the bed kept track of his heartbeat and his oxygen levels.

“This is Andy,” Julia said, taking one of his thick hands. He turned his head slightly toward her and groaned in greeting.

I reached over and patted his leg. It felt misshapen and shrunken beneath the hospital blanket. I remembered Earlene’s comment about Eve having to spend much of her salary on healthcare for her mother and this house. A good chunk of it had to go to caring for this poor man.

Earlene’s words echoed in my head:
“You don’t know what’s behind those awful doors.”

Despite the warning, I had to speak.

“Why keep him such a secret?” I asked. “Your sister could have had help from the state. He could have been cared for someplace that wouldn’t have been so stressful on her or your family.”

She shoved me out the door into the hallway. I tumbled against the wall and sank onto the floor. My arm popped as I hit the hardwood floor, shooting pain up my arm. Julia slammed Andy’s door shut. I tried to sit up but her wide, thick hand pinned me by the neck against the flowered wallpaper.

“I told you not to say anything!” she screamed, waving the gun in my face.

“But what about Andy? What about him?”

“And let the world know the Dahlgren family weren’t the most perfect in Jubilant Falls?” Julia’s words were bitter and sarcastic. “No, we couldn’t let the truth about this family and its golden girl get out.”

“But you love Andy, don’t you?” I gasped, despite the pressure on my throat. “You’re the one who protected him, aren’t you?”

She leveled the handgun at my nose. “What do you care?”

“This is Jimmy Lyle’s son, isn’t it?” I continued to rasp. “Jimmy didn’t die in the seventy-four tornado, did he?”

Outside, I could hear the deputy shouting, demanding we come to the door, but Julia didn’t react. In the distance, sirens blared.
I hope help gets here in time,
I thought. If I could keep her talking, it might buy me some time.

“Yes, he’s Jimmy’s son. My parents wanted to let him die in that Texas hospital. Eve said if we didn’t take him back to Jubilant Falls and care for him, she would tell the whole world how his father was murdered.”

She released her grip on my neck. Holding my broken arm close to my chest, I pushed myself into a sitting position with my feet and my one good arm.

“How did Jimmy die?” I winced in pain.

Julia sank against the wall next to me, the gun in her hand, hanging between her heavy legs. Fear kept me from running—fear of what her feral, quick reflexes would do to me and fear that, with my injury, I couldn’t react quick enough. But I also wanted to hear the story that kept me awake nights for the past forty years.

“When Eve came home and said she was pregnant, our father threw a fit. He’d worked his way up at Traeburn Tractor from the line, where Grandpa Dahlgren started, to vice president and he wasn’t going to have anything like a pregnancy, or some disgusting teen-age shotgun wedding, ruin how he thought he should be perceived. That night before the tornado, my father, Eve and Jimmy got into this horrible argument. Dad was convinced Jimmy had ruined Eve’s life and by extension, his. My parents pushed Eve into everything and when she didn’t succeed, Dad beat her. He was reaching up to hit Eve that night, but Jimmy grabbed his arm and told him to never to that again.”

So her dad hit her, just the way Eve would physically abuse the other cheerleaders, like Angela Perry
.
That also explains how and why she led Jimmy Lyle around by the nose. But it sounds like Jimmy stood up for his girlfriend that night and it cost him his life.

“Did he ever beat you?” I looked over at her.

She shrugged. “Why do you care? I got my share for being the stupid and ugly one—they sent me away to boarding school early, hoping to hide me. I flunked out before the tornado and never graduated from high school. It doesn’t matter anymore. The day of the tornado, Dad went looking for Jimmy. He wanted to settle it once and for all. Nobody was going to make him look bad, like Jimmy did the night before. Dad found him working in his grandfather’s pasture, just as the storm came up. Dad got into it with Jimmy again and he killed him, simple as that. Dad got home just before the tornado struck. He was covered in blood and soaking wet from the rain.”

“Jimmy was found with a posthole digger through his chest and a tree branch on his skull,” I said.

“I heard Dad tell Mom he knocked him out and shoved the posthole digger into his chest. The branch must have fallen on his head during the tornado. For the rest of his life, Dad was terrified he’d get caught. But Eve, little golden girl Eve—she turned the tables on the situation. She’d always been like that—if she could turn something to her advantage, she would. From that day forward, we all danced to Eve’s tune. Even though we both wanted to keep Andy, nobody ever paid two cents worth of attention to me because I wasn’t as pretty as Eve. And look at me today. I’m the only one left in this miserable place. I’m the one holding everything together.”

“Did Eve pay for everything?” I pressed my arm against my chest as more pain radiated to my elbow. If I could keep her talking, maybe I could get out of this, somehow.

“Oh, yes. After Traeburn Tractor closed and Dad couldn’t find a job to pay for Andy’s medical care, Eve threatened to expose him, even though she was already working and sending money home. So he took the coward’s way and blew his brains out. Unfortunately, that left Eve as the only income and god knows we couldn’t move from this house without exposing the biggest, nastiest secret of all. She declared that somebody in the family has got to stay here with Andy, so here’s Betty and me, stuck in this house once again. She paid me well to make sure I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“Does Karen know the truth about Andy?”

Julia smirked. “Of course not. She thinks he’s my poor retarded brother.”

“Who killed Eve?”

Before she could answer, Judson Roarke’s voice blared through a bullhorn: “Let your hostage go, Julia. Come out with your hands up and we can end this without anyone getting hurt.”

She jumped to her feet and yanked me up by my shirt, pushing me toward the window. I screamed in pain. Her arm hooked around my neck again and she shoved the gun perilously close to my face.

Down in the manicured circular driveway, there was a line of sheriff’s cruisers, a township fire department ladder truck, and an ambulance. The county’s SWAT team, with weapons drawn, had assembled in front of those vehicles. At the back of the cruisers, Charisma stood next to Dr. Huffinger and Gary McGinnis, who wore a Kevlar vest.

“Do as they say, Julia, let me go,” I said. “Please. Let me go.”

“Shut up!” She pressed the barrel against my cheek. She turned to the window and kicked it out, the glass tinkling on the concrete below. Weapons—service revolvers, automatic rifles—pointed toward the window in one synchronized movement. Judson Roarke waved them down.

“I’m not coming out!” Julia screamed. “If you come in, I’ll kill her. You hear me?”

She pulled me away from the window and pushed me back down the hall, toward another narrow door.

“Who killed Eve, Julia? Did you do it?” I demanded as I stumbled against the wall.

“Don’t feel too sorry for my darling sister. She got to go out on Saturday night with that idiot Earlene and I’d just about had it.
Eve
got to go out,
Eve
got to do what
she
wanted, live where
she
wanted and I’m stuck here with
her
child and
our
mother.”

“So what did you do?” I leaned against the wall long enough to catch my breath and hold my broken arm close again. Intent on telling her story, Julia kept talking as she held the gun close to my face.
“I told her I’d made an appointment on Monday to get the oil changed in my truck and we needed to drop it off at the mechanic’s Sunday night. She followed me in that Lincoln. She gets a fancy car that sits here when she’s back home in Texas and what do I drive? A piece of shit Franken-Ford I got to baby every step of the way. After I dropped my truck off, she decides she doesn’t feel like driving and hands me the keys, like I’m some peasant here to serve the queen. We were sitting behind the mechanic’s shop and she started bitching about how much sacrifice she makes and how hard her life is and I’d had it. I’d just had it.”

“You stabbed her, didn’t you?”

“Not before I choked the shit out of that bitch. She fought me though—kicked through the damned windshield.”

“Did you drive her car to the park then?” It was Monday afternoon before Eve’s body was found. The murder occurred Sunday night. A dead woman wouldn’t have lain unnoticed in a public park on a hot June day until after three. She would have been seen sooner.

“No, I drove home and parked the car in the air conditioned garage. On Monday, I left it in the park and walked over to the mechanic to pick up my truck.”

“Why didn’t they find your fingerprints in that car? My boss did a night in jail because police found her prints.”

Julia grinned at me. “Of course, my fingerprints were there—and they should be! I’m Eve Dahlgren’s ever-supportive sister, like I told the cops. I’m staying home with my poor mother and retarded brother to care for the family farm. And they bought it. Just because my sister let that gullible Earlene Whitelaw drive her car isn’t my problem. They won’t find any prints on the knife, though. I wiped it before I threw it in the sewer.”

So Gary McGinnis knew Eve had a sister? How did I not know that? Why didn’t he tell me?

“You were going to let Earlene Whitelaw take the fall for killing your sister, weren’t you?”

Julia smirked. “If you and your reporter hadn’t gone digging, my family would have continued doing what we do best: getting away with murder.”

Still pointing the gun at my face, Julia turned the knob and pulled open the narrow door. Curving stairs led up to a dark attic.

“Get up there.” She pushed me from behind and I fell across the wooden stairs, screaming with pain. The door slammed behind me. I gasped as I heard the old skeleton key turn in the lock.

“Let me out! Let me out!” I pounded on the door with my good arm.

There was the sound of sloshing outside the door. I stopped pounding as a familiar odor filled the air.

Gasoline.

“Julia! Don’t do this! Please! Let me out! Let me out!”

My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I found the light switch near the stairs. A single yellowed bulb glowed at the top of the stairs and I quickly made my way up into the attic. The attic was filled with old furniture and holiday decorations. I ran to the narrow triangular window at the front of the house and began pounding on the glass with my good arm, hoping the folks in the yard could see me.

Did they? I couldn’t tell—all I could see was Roarke speaking on the bullhorn, trying to connect with Julia.