Dolled Up for Murder (6 page)

Jamie stood to greet me. “Josie … you must be beside yourself. What a relief to know you weren't hurt. We came as soon as we heard the news. We're devastated … just shattered.”

“I didn't know you and Alice were close.”

“Oh, God, yes!” Jamie said. “She and our mom were best friends. We grew up thinking Randall was our brother.”

“Randall … that's Alice's son, right?”

“Yes.”

“Please accept my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said. She glanced at Lorna, sitting with her eyes on the floor, wiping her cheeks with the side of her hand. “It's such a shock … we just saw her the other day.”

“She was so decisive,” Lorna said. “I admired that.”

“Alice was decisive, all right. She stopped by while we were going through that box of Civil War memorabilia. You remember, Josie, we told you about it—how we're direct descendants of Salmon Chase, President Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, and couldn't decide whether to keep it all or sell it all or what. Anyway, when Alice saw what we were up to, well, she took over. She looked through the box, told us to pick a letter to keep for posterity and sell the rest.”

“It was good advice,” Lorna said.

Jamie shrugged. “It was advice. I don't know if it was good or not.” She met my eyes. “What do you think we should do?”

“Take your time and think it through.”

She looked at Lorna. “Now
that's
good advice.” She sent her eyes around the lobby and nearby corridors. “Have you seen Randall? Is he here?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “Actually, I wouldn't recognize him. We've never met.”

“Darleen is here,” Lorna said. “Randall's wife. She was walking into the station house as we drove into the lot, but by the time we got inside, she'd disappeared. Knowing Darleen, if she's here, Randall must be here, too.”

“Likely, but not necessarily,” Jamie said. “You know how much he travels on business.” To me, she added, “Between you and me and the gatepost, what Lorna means is that Darleen keeps Randall on a pretty short leash.” She shrugged. “To each his own, that's what I always say. Randall could be out of town, though—I know for sure he has clients throughout New England.” Reacting to my perplexed expression, she added, “Alice bought a marketing communications company about ten years ago, and Randall runs it. They do writing and design and printing and I don't know what else. Oh, my … I can't believe Alice's dead … it's horrible, just despicable.”

“Gruesome,” Lorna said.

“Did you leave Eric at your place?” I asked.

“Yes. Actually, he's the one who told us what happened. He said he'd lock up and set the alarm.”

“We didn't know what to do,” Lorna said, “but we thought we ought to come in and offer to help. Not that we know anything. Still, she was our mother's best friend.”

“I'm sure the police will be grateful for the cooperation,” I said, feeling trapped, wishing I could escape. I took a step sideways toward the door. “I have to go. I'll be in touch. I'm really very sorry for your loss.”

Outside, I crossed Ocean Avenue and clambered up a dune. The ocean was dead calm, the sun-specked water shimmering like sequins in the early evening sun. The tide was high, the water licking the ragged line of bottle green seaweed that stretched along the sand near the dunes, the high-water mark. Watching the water's rhythmic ebb and flow, I felt myself relax another notch. The sun was sinking into the horizon, and swirls of red stippled the solid blue sky. Tomorrow would be another warm and sunny day.

I didn't like that the Farmington sisters had asked Eric to close up their house. I was certain Eric would do fine, but I wasn't comfortable with it. Locking up other people's houses sounded simple, but it wasn't. From a liability point of view, you needed to confirm you'd completed all the steps of closing up. I knew him well enough to know that he would fret, worried that he would forget something or do something wrong.

I dug my cell phone out of my tote bag and called him. After six rings, voice mail picked up. I flipped the phone closed without leaving a message. It was six thirty-three. Probably, I thought, he was home and in the shower, washing away the workday's dust.

*   *   *

Wes called as I was pulling out of the parking lot. I slipped in my earpiece and punched the
ACCEPT CALL
button.

“I've got news,” Wes said, his voice nearly pulsating with excitement. “Big news. Bonzo-big news.”

Bonzo-big,
I repeated silently. “What?” I asked.

“Two things. First, Brooke Michaels, Alice's granddaughter, inherits everything. Poor little rich girl, huh?”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because when I called the mother, Alice's daughter-in-law, Darleen, and asked for a comment, she was shocked. The bequest was news to her, and I can tell you she was none too happy. As far as I was concerned, I was the bearer of good news, but she sure acted like I was an ambulance chaser, if you know what I mean—ready to pounce on an innocent victim. Why, do you think?”

I paused, considering the options. “Maybe she expected that her husband would inherit everything.”

“That's what I figure, too. Not that it matters given the legal snarl everything is in. Little eight-year-old Brooke will be lucky to get her inheritance in time to pay for college.”

“That's true, isn't it? I mean, every investor will probably sue the estate to try to get their money back. God, Wes, what a nightmare.” I thought for a moment. “Just because Alice's will was news to Darleen doesn't mean it was news to Randall. Maybe he learned of his mother's intentions and snapped. Or maybe Darleen was lying about being surprised. Do they have alibis?”

“I'll check.” Faint scratching sounds alerted me that he was writing himself a note. “What about Alice's investors? Could one of them have killed her? Or maybe Lenny, her former employee?”

“For revenge?” I asked. “I mean, killing Alice won't help them get their money or job back.”

“Revenge is a biggie, though,” Wes said. “What other reasons can you think of?”

“Lots,” I replied, thinking that sometimes, maybe often, things are less complicated than we expect them to be. “I mean, don't investigators look for people who hated the victim? Like a love relationship gone bad?”

“Good point,” Wes said, “but she was long divorced. I mean, like twenty years, plus.”

“Was she dating anyone?”

“At her age?”

I shook my head at Wes's myopic view of love. “You're never too old to love, Wes. If you don't know that now, you will.”

“I guess. I'll ask around about who she might have been seeing. So how was it being interrogated?”

“I wasn't interrogated,” I protested, irritated at Wes's incendiary language. “I was interviewed. There's a difference.”

“How did it go?” he asked, unabashed.

“Fine. I couldn't tell them anything new.”

“Who else was there?”

I told him, thinking it was happening again. Wes had a gift for getting me to confide in him, to trust him as if we were close allies. Which, as I thought of it, we were.

“Where's Randall?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“Yup,” Wes said, chuckling again. “At his lawyer's, looking for ways to break the trust. My contact says his wife called for an emergency appointment and made him keep it.”

“On the day his mother is murdered. That's unbelievable, Wes.”

He chuckled. “I know. From what I hear their relationship is all about his doing as he's told.”

“Ick. So what's your second piece of news?”

“The weapon used to kill Alice was probably a target pistol, like a Ruger. They found shell casings near the path that leads from your place to the church parking lot.”

I gasped, shocked and horrified at the thought that a sniper had used my woods as a hiding place. A shiver ran up my back. I'd strolled along that path a hundred times. Two hundred.

“If it is a Ruger,” Wes continued, “that's like the most common target pistol in the world, or at least one of them, which means it's unlikely to help them find the killer.”

It will help them convict him once they know who he is,
I thought.

“They're checking prints on the shell casings,” he added.

“It's completely creepy, Wes.” A click sounded, indicating a text message had just arrived. Ty, probably, I thought, wanting to know how I was doing. “I've got to go, Wes. I'm driving.”

“Give me something, Josie,” he whined. “About the interrogation or something.”

“I wasn't interrogated,” I repeated. Wes was hopeless. “I'm hanging up now.”

“Josie!”

I hung up.

The text message wasn't from Ty. I didn't recognize the number and didn't want to try reading the message while I was driving. I pulled onto the sandy shoulder and set my blinkers. The text was from Cathy, the Rocky Point police civilian admin.
CALL ME. URGENT.

I dialed her number, and she answered on the first ring.

“Thanks for calling so quickly, Josie,” she said. “Chief Hunter asked me to call on his behalf. He's hoping you'll join him at a location on Garry Road. Do you know it?”

“Sure, it runs from Tripper to Oakmont,” I replied, thinking that Garry wasn't far from the Farmington house.

“Chief Ellis asks that you go there now.”

“Why?”

“He'll explain when you get there.”

“All right,” I said, feeling my heart begin to beat harder and faster. “What address?”

“You'll see his vehicle. It's a short street.”

I wanted to ask more questions, to keep her talking, to get some answers, but I couldn't think of anything to say.

“Josie?” she asked.

“You can tell him I'll be there in about ten minutes.”

Something was very, very wrong.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ellis's SUV sat on the packed dirt shoulder ten feet behind my company's van. Three police vehicles, their overhead red lights pulsing and spinning, were lined up in front of it. As soon as I rolled to a stop behind his SUV, the two lead vehicles pulled out. One drove a hundred yards forward toward Tripper, pulled a hard left, and blocked the road. The other backed up a hundred yards toward Oakmont, the way I'd driven in, turned a hard right, and blocked access from that end. Ellis stood next to my van, waiting for me to approach. I stepped out and walked slowly toward him.

“Is this your van?” Ellis called.

“Yes,” I said. I recognized that he was asking for some official record. There was no mystery that the van was mine.
PRESCOTT'S ANTIQUES & AUCTIONS
was printed in white and gold on a maroon background.

“Do you know why it's here?”

I glanced around. Garry Road was narrow, flanked on both sides by ancient hardwood forests. The sun was still bright, yet under the thick canopy it could have been twilight.

“No,” I said. “Where's Eric?”

“Was he driving?”

“Where is he? Was there an accident?”

“When did you last hear from him?”

“Stop fencing with me, Ellis,” I said. “Where is he?”

“I don't know. When did you last speak to him?”

“About four thirty. A little after. I called to tell him about Alice.”

“He didn't call in after that?”

“Not that I know of. Maybe he called the office.”

“Is anyone still at work? Can you check?”

I jogged back to my car and dug through my tote bag, finally finding my BlackBerry at the bottom, where it had somehow worked itself after I'd tossed it in. There were two missed calls. I held my breath, hoping they were from Eric. They weren't. Both were from Wes, no surprise. He would have heard about the van on his police scanner. I called the office, and Fred answered.

“Has Eric called in?” I asked without preamble.

“I don't think so … Let me check Cara's message book.”

I heard rustling and footsteps, and then Fred said, “No. Is everything okay?”

“I'll fill you in later,” I said and hung up. My throat closed, momentarily choking me. “He didn't call in. I tried calling him about half an hour ago on his cell. It rang, then went to voice mail.” I took a breath, then turned to meet Ellis's eyes. “What's going on, Ellis?”

“One of our officers on routine patrol spotted the van off to the side of the road. The officer, assuming the van had broken down, stopped to see if he could help. No one was on scene, and the van was unlocked. He noted significant destruction, so he called it in.”

“What do you mean, ‘significant destruction'?” I asked, shivering as if I'd stepped into an unexpected blast of icy wind.

Ellis swung open the back doors, and before I looked inside, I met his eyes, trying to intuit what he wasn't revealing, but got no hint. I turned my gaze to take in the inside of the van. Destruction was right—the van floor was a jumble of splintered wood; shattered porcelain, bisque, and colored glass; shredded leather and papier-mâché; torn fabric; flattened doll torsos; and hanks of hair, presumably from the dolls' wigs. A blue sugar bowl was intact, lying in the gully between the two front seats. The lid, also unbroken, sat nearby. A wooden level was perched against the bowl. The crates were more or less intact, with several side panels ripped off but not smashed. Most of the glassware and tools appeared to be undamaged. It was the dolls that had taken the brunt of the attack. I reached for the door frame so I could hoist myself up, but Ellis stopped me.

“The crime scene team isn't here yet,” he said.

“Where's Eric?”

“There's no sign of him. There's a cell phone on the center console. Would you know by sight if it's his?”