Picture Me Dead (36 page)

She shrugged. “Could be. I don't know. I was never asked to help unload anything from a boat. How much could you actually bring in by boat? Only small vessels could get through. And airboats, of course. But they're so loud…. I heard one every now and then. But they never stopped. Not that I can remember.”

“How about canoes?”

She hesitated. “Maybe. Sometimes…late at night, when I was in the common room, I would hear noises. But we knew not to leave, you see. We all had a place, and we all kept to our place. That's the way it was.”

“Maybe everyone didn't keep to her place, Mary. And maybe that's why those girls died.”

A flicker of pain crossed her features. “Maybe,” she agreed.

“You had drugs available, right? Lots of drugs?”

“Lots of aphrodisiacs,” she murmured. Then she met his eyes. “Sure. Lots of drugs. We didn't shoot up or anything…. At least, I didn't. I'm clean as a whistle, Jake. So is everybody here.”

“I'm not attacking the Krishnas, Mary. I'm looking for a killer.”

She nodded. “Drugs were always available.”

“Thanks, Mary. And if you think of anything else—”

“I'll call you. Detective, I'd really like to help you. Honestly.”

“I believe you.”

He started to head out. She followed him. “Detective?”

“Yes?”

She hesitated. “I know how you've always felt…what you've always believed, that Peter might have been…somehow involved. But I don't believe he ever slit a woman's throat.”

“Thanks, Mary. Actually, I never believed he carried out the murders himself. But he knows who did. I'm sure of it. And one way or another, I'm going to find out.”

N
othing.

Karen's room was, like the rest of the house, as neat as a pin. Beneath the overhead lighting, the quilt was straight and even, the pillows leaned against the headboard, and everything appeared to be in perfect order.

The thunderous pounding on the door continued, then stopped abruptly. Ashley turned away from the bed and started back through the house. At the door, she peered through the peephole. There was no one there. She bit her lower lip. She heard a sound, someone coming around the side of the house. Then silence…followed by a noise at the living room window. She drew the gun from her bag and walked to the front door, opening it.

As she stepped out on the porch, someone came back around from the side of the house. “Stop right there!” she said.

“Ashley?”

She let out a rush of air and lowered the weapon. “Len? Len, what the hell are you doing, sneaking around the yard?”

“Me? What the hell are
you
doing? It's as if you're determined to get off a shot at me tonight.” He walked toward her, shaking his head. “I pounded at the door. You didn't answer. You got me worried about Karen, then you went to her house and didn't answer when my pounding should have wakened the dead.”

“I was in the other room, Len.”

“Is anything out of order?” he asked.

“No,” she said softly. “I don't think so. I'm going to check around one more time.” She frowned. “How did you get here?”

“Don't give me that frown. I wasn't drinking and driving. I made Sandy drop me off.”

“Great, you had Sandy drinking and driving.”

“No, he was drinking non-alcoholic beer tonight. Honest.”

“But why did you have him bring you out here?”

“I was worried about you coming out here alone.”

“Len, don't you get started. Are you going to worry about every female on the force?”

“You're not on the force. You're a civilian employee. And you're forgetting that officers are supposed to have backup when they might be facing a dangerous situation.”

She believed that, in his way, he really was trying to help. “All right, come in for a few minutes. I just want to take one more walk through the place.”

Len followed her back in. Ashley walked through the computer room and the bedroom one more time. She hesitated, realizing that she hadn't checked out the bathroom off the master bedroom. She did so, aware that Len was right behind her.

At first glance, the bathroom appeared to be as spotless as the rest of the house. As a last thought, she pulled back the shower curtain. The tile was as clean as everything else.

Then she saw the little specks on the bottom of the tub. She knelt down. There were just three. Three little specks of something that looked like rust.

Rust—or blood.

Ashley's heart careened into her throat. She told herself that they could be anything. They were tiny little specks. It wasn't as if the bathroom had been sprayed with blood. She didn't even know if it
was
blood. And if it was, the amount was minute. Karen might just have nicked herself while shaving.

Still…

She stood abruptly and walked into the kitchen. Rummaging in a cabinet, she found a box of plastic sandwich bags, then procured a white plastic knife from the drawer where Karen kept her picnic paraphernalia.

“What is it?” Len asked her.

“Probably nothing,” she said. But she walked past him and went back into the bathroom, then knelt down, scraped the speck from the tub and bagged it, along with the plastic knife. She slid the plastic bag into her purse and stood. Len was in the doorway, staring at her. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I'm probably just overreacting.”

“But what are you doing?”

“Just checking the tub.” He was so tall, she thought. His shoulders filled the doorway. Her imagination ran wild. What if Len were a killer? Cops did go bad.

She had a .38 Special in her bag, and they both knew she could use it. “Let's get out of here. Karen definitely isn't home.”

For a moment it seemed as if he would stay in the doorway. Stop her from exiting. Then he shook his head, moving aside. “I know you know your friend much better than I do, but I think you're right about overreacting. I'm sure she's all right. Even your best friend can have secrets.”

“That's possible, of course.”

“Ashley, all she did was call in sick and not answer her phone.”

“I'm sure you're right. And I'll try not to go off the deep end needlessly. I need some sleep,” she said. She waited for him to precede her out of the house. He hesitated, then did so.

“I'll take you home,” she told him.

“No need. Curtis is waiting at Nick's. He said he'd drop me off later.”

“All right.”

They drove in silence for a while. Then Len said, “Doesn't she have other friends, besides you and Jan?”

“Of course.”

“Well then?”

“You're absolutely right. She must be out with someone else.”

Ashley almost jumped when her phone rang. She dug into her purse and answered quickly. It was Jan.

“Well?”

“She wasn't home, her car is in the drive, and the house is as neat as a pin.”
And there were little specks of what might have been blood in her bathtub.
She didn't say that, though. There was no reason to alarm Jan further. Not until she actually knew what she had found.

And she
would
know. Tomorrow morning, she would pour her heart out to Mandy Nightingale, who would help her. She hadn't been under Mandy's wing that long, but she knew the woman would listen to her and help her, not mock her. And in a pinch, there was always Jake.

“Are you all right?” Jan asked anxiously. “I shouldn't have let you go there alone.”

“I wasn't alone. I'm not alone.”

“Oh?”

“Len Green is with me.”

“Oh, good. You're with a cop.”

A cop who might have turned bad.
What the hell was she thinking, and why on earth should she be thinking it?

“So what do we do now?” Jan asked.

“See if she comes home tonight. And if we don't hear from her tomorrow, we fill out a missing persons report. And get people who know what they're doing in on it.”

“She hasn't even been gone twenty-four hours,” Len reminded her gently, interrupting the conversation.

“We'll both keep trying her tonight,” Ashley said, ignoring him. Jan agreed, and they hung up.

A few minutes later, they reached Nick's. Before Ashley turned off the engine, she said, “You're certain you have a ride.”

“Yep. Curtis and Sandy both thought it was a good idea if I went to check on you. Sandy was going out, so he dropped me, and Curtis promised to wait until we were back.”

“Okay, I'm going to bed then.”

They both got out, and Len looked at her over the roof of the car. He saluted. “Good night, then. I'll just go find Curtis.”

She nodded, then felt ridiculous and guilty. “Len?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming after me.”

“Sure. Keep me posted. I—I do like her, too, you know.”

He walked around to the terrace entrance. Ashley let herself in by the side door. “Sharon?” she called, as she walked in. “Nick?”

No one replied, and she didn't want to go back through the bar to see if they were there. She went into her own room. This time, nothing had changed. She shook her head, still convinced that someone had been in there earlier. She flopped down on her bed, exhausted, though it wasn't even that late. She and Jan might have been ridiculous, checking up on Karen so quickly. Still…there were those spots in the bathtub.

 

Jake hadn't even reached his car before his cell phone rang. He was surprised to hear Carnegie on the other end. “Jake, I just wanted to let you know I'm real glad you arranged for those off-duty guys to stand guard at the hospital.”

“Has something else happened?” He felt more than a twinge of guilt. He had told Ashley that he would look into the case, but his own affairs had taken such precedence that he hadn't even thought about the Stuart Fresia investigation since he'd handed the matter over to Marty.

“Not really, but I decided to talk to that guy again, the one who was writing for the same paper Fresia was. Guess what I found out? He doesn't exist.”

“What do you mean, he doesn't exist? I thought he was screaming louder than anyone that people needed to look into the accident, that Stuart Fresia had been on to something.”

“Yes, that's true. But when I went to call him today, the number he gave me was a pizza parlor. So I went to the paper, talked to personnel and got his social security number. Checked up on that, and it belonged to a guy killed in World War Two. I went back to the hospital, where he'd been hanging around like a leech. All of a sudden, he's nowhere to be seen. What it means exactly, I don't know. But I've got the department picking up the bill for round-the-clock protection. I just wanted to let you know.”

“Thanks, Carnegie. Thanks a lot. I'm going to be out of town the first half of tomorrow, at least, but I'll have my cell phone. If you get anything else, let me know. And if you don't mind, I'll do some prying myself when I get back. And if you think of anything specific I can do, just yell.”

“All right. I'll keep you posted.”

“You're working late,” Jake said, glancing at his watch.

“Not that late. And hey, I'm willing to bet you didn't knock off according to the clock.”

“Think we'll die young?”

A chuckle came over the wire. “Too late for me,” Carnegie said wryly. “But you—you watch your back.”

“Will do.”

They rang off. Jake thought about calling Marty to let him know he would be out in the morning, then decided against it. Marty probably had gone home or gone out. After all, he had a life.

A life…

Suddenly he was anxious to get home. He had a reason to see Ashley.

As he drove, he called Blake, letting the captain know his intentions and receiving a reminder that he wasn't working the case alone, and that Blake wanted every step of his investigation duly noted on his report. He admitted to Blake that the call might have been a hoax, but if so, it had been a hoax perpetrated at the prison. And if it was real, it seemed that Bordon was afraid of everyone except for his confidant. Either way, Blake agreed that he had to go.

As soon as he finished his conversation with Blake, who had been in the middle of algebra homework with his daughter, Jake called the prison and made arrangements to see Bordon privately first thing in the morning.

Bordon held the key. He knew it.

Hours of interrogation had never made the man give up his secrets. Threats of the death penalty, of years of incarceration, had never made him break his silence. Oddly, now, the prospect of being free had made him willing to talk.

Jake felt his palms grow damp as he drove. He wondered if he would be able to keep his hands off the man if Bordon admitted his complicity in the murders of the young women.

And Nancy.

 

Ashley had thought she was so tired that she could go to sleep without even getting ready for bed. But instead, her mind was racing. Restless, she rose. Tonight, of all nights, when she was anxious to question Sharon, she and Nick were out doing the town. She couldn't get hold of David Wharton, and Karen still wasn't home or returning any calls.

She called the hospital and asked about Stuart's condition, which was unchanged. She tried calling David Wharton again but got no answer. As she hung up, it occurred to her that Jake might have learned something.

And even if he hadn't, the night would still be better if she could see him.

She let herself out by the door that led to the docks, looking down the line of boats to Jake's
Gwendolyn.
She hesitated, then crossed the little patch of sand and grass to the docks, scissored over the ropes and headed down the dock. She hesitated when she saw that Jake's cabin door was ajar.

“Jake?”

The door opened fully. She recognized the man coming out. The case he was carrying was familiar, as well. She had met him during her whirlwind tour of forensics the other day. His name was Skip Conrad, and he was a fingerprint expert.

He saw her as she walked over to the boat. “Hey, Ashley,” he said a little awkwardly. “You live here, too, huh?”

“Nick is my uncle.”

“Nick is your uncle?” He was a slim man, with thinning brown hair, dimples and a boyish look, despite the shiny circle on his pate. “Go figure. I didn't know Nick's last name was Montague.”