by Lisa Jackson
Settler said, “She’s . . . very decomposed.”
Martinez, standing near a window, added, “There’s nothing left but bones, really. A skeleton. Might be better to remember your mom the way she was.”
“I need to see,” Remmi insisted. “At least a photograph.”
“It’s not a good idea,” Settler said.
“I still want to see.”
Martinez was shaking his head, but Settler seemed to finally get it. “Okay.” She opened her phone, found the images, sat in the vacant seat next to Remmi on the couch, then said, “But I’m giving you fair warning. These aren’t going to be easy to see.”
And she was right. There were shots of the car and items that had been located inside, including Didi’s clutch purse, a once sparkly pink cigarette case, and the car seat, all of which brought back memories.
But the reddish-brown stains on the driver’s seat were horrifying.
Oh, Mom, what happened?
She must have blanched because Settler, who had been showing each of the pictures, stopped. “You want to go on?” she asked.
No. “Yes,” she heard herself say, and then recoiled at the first shot of the corpse, a grisly skeleton with an obscene grin and black holes for nose and eyes.
Her stomach clenched. Could this horrid, lifeless, desiccated body really be the once-vibrant woman who had been so full of life? The woman who had danced with her babies, laughing and throwing her head back in delight, only to plot and scheme and even sell those very infants? She forced herself to keep her eyes on the picture, taking in the macabre image. How could anyone know . . . and then she saw it, noticed the slight flair of one of the skeleton’s eye teeth. Remmi remembered Didi at her makeup mirror, tilting her head and studying that tooth.
“I’m gonna get that fixed one of these days,” she’d promised, catching a nine-year-old Remmi watching her in the mirror.
But, of course, Didi never had fixed the tooth.
Remmi swallowed. “It’s Didi,” she said, pulling herself together as she handed the phone back to Settler. Noah’s arm tightened around her. “She was murdered, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have to find out who did it. And you might want to start by talking to her sister.” She had to bite her tongue to keep from spilling the beans about what they’d seen and overheard on the tiny spy camera.
“Vera Gibbs. We were going to visit her next,” Settler said.
“Good,” Remmi said with feeling.
CHAPTER 31
As Settler drove away from the Emerson home, navigating the steep streets of the Mount Sutro neighborhood, she sensed they were closing in, the pieces of this fragmented puzzle starting to fit together. But she wasn’t quite there yet. It was almost as if she was trying to force a piece that was in the wrong spot, and she would have to shift around her thinking and figure it out.
Finding Didi Storm’s body had been a lucky coincidence. Who would have guessed that, at the very time the book about her was being published, twenty years after her disappearance, her body would be discovered?
Or had someone planned that, too? How?
“Ready for some overtime?” she asked Martinez, who was riding shotgun again. Once more, it was raining, pouring, and her wipers were having trouble keeping up with the onslaught, the city lights a blur.
“Sure. I’m already on the clock.”
“What about Maria and the kids?”
He shrugged. “They’re used to my hours.” He slid her a look, “And it’s getting near Christmas, so Maria will appreciate the overtime.”
“So let’s go have a visit with Gibbs.”
“In Walnut Creek? It’ll take a while to get there.” He checked his traffic app. “Well, about forty-five minutes, maybe less. Traffic’s not that bad on 80. But it’s pretty late.”
“All the better,” she said, her hands gripping the steering wheel as the Bay Bridge came into sight, its thousands of LED lights illuminating the spans and cables. “Maybe the whole family will be there, and we can have a chat with Milo, Billy, and Jensen. Four for the price of one.”
He grunted. “Fantastic.”
“You’re in?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Punch in the navigation to the Gibbses’ house on my GPS, then start digging into Morgan Investments and OH Industries.”
“Waaaay ahead of you, partner,” he said. “I’ve already got Camp working on it.”
Mina Camp, the tech wizard of the department.
“She’ll be able to access more information, more quickly,” he added as he put the address into Dani’s GPS. “By the time we’re finished with Gibbs, she’ll have everything there is to know about OH Industries and Morgan Investments uncovered, organized, tied with a red bow, and attached to an e-mail. You watch.”
“I believe you.” She passed a large truck piled high with baled Christmas trees. When she reached the exit for Walnut Creek, she peeled off the freeway. Fifteen minutes later, they were on the street where the cottage belonging to Milo and Vera Gibbs stood, and as she pulled into an empty space, Martinez’s iPad dinged.
He looked at the screen. “What did I tell you? Preliminary information from Mina the Marvelous.” He opened the attachment and scanned it as Settler cut the engine. “Holy shit,” he said under his breath.
“What?”
“OH Industries?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s owned by Oliver Hedges, which we knew. But the man has an interesting history.”
“Tell me.”
“He has—no, wait—had two sons. Oliver Hedges Jr., or the second, called himself OH2, and a younger son, Brett, who is fifty-five now. But the second Oliver Hedges, the son who called himself OH2? He took over as head of the company when the old man had some kind of accident, doesn’t say what. The old man survived, but that son, OH2, died at age thirty-seven.”
“From what?”
“Let’s see.” He was scanning the information. “Doesn’t say. But the upshot is that the old man, Hedges Senior, improved somehow and took back the reins of the company. And here’s the kicker. Both father and son were married to the same woman.”
“What? Not at the same time?”
“Nope. OH2 married his much-younger-than-daddy stepmother, Marilee McIver, not too long after the older Hedges was placed in a care facility and—” He paused, then gave a low whistle. “I was wrong. Here’s the real kicker. The date that the younger Hedges died?” He was scratching his goatee and studying the screen. “Less than a week after Didi Storm was reported missing.”
“Coincidence?”
He barked out a laugh. “Seems unlikely.”
“We need to know what the younger Oliver Hedges died from. Natural causes or not so natural.”
“Mina is doing more digging.” He tapped the screen. “This report is just the beginning. She says she’ll have more later.”
“Good.” Settler reached for the door handle. “Let’s see what the Gibbs family knows about Karen Upgarde, Ned and Trudie Crenshaw, Didi Storm, and Oliver Hedges Senior and Junior.”
* * *
Greta wasn’t going to be satisfied until she knew everything. And she wanted details.
Remmi brought her up to speed as best she could, but the truth was that, other than believing Vera was somehow involved and accepting the finality that her mother was dead, she didn’t have a lot more information. She had no idea who had murdered Didi or Ned and Trudie. The same person, or another player? She believed that, somehow, Aunt Vera was involved at some level but didn’t know how. She suspected that one of her uncles, or maybe both, were involved, though were they really cold-blooded killers? Could either of them have been involved in Didi’s death and, now, the recent homicides?
And what about Karen Upgarde? What had driven her to take the final step that precipitated a nineteen-story fall?
Remmi was too exhausted tonight to rehash theories and speculation with Greta. The older lady would just have to
wait, though she’d cornered Remmi while Noah was on the phone, motioning her into the kitchen. The minute they were through the doorway, Greta had killed the motor on her chair so that she could whisper, “I assume he’s still here.”
“It’s been a whirlwind. He showed up last night. I thought he was an intruder and . . . he convinced me he wasn’t.”
Greta’s eyebrows arched speculatively, but Remmi didn’t elaborate or try to explain that Noah had camped out, that they hadn’t slept together, and that it wasn’t any of the older woman’s business anyway. “He’s very handsome,” Greta pointed out.
“Yep.”
“If I were twenty years younger . . .”
Remmi shot her a look but held her tongue.
“Well, thirty . . . or . . . forty . . . or . . . ,” she conceded. She caught Remmi smothering a smile. “For the love of Mike, Remmi, I’m not going to say fifty! That’s half a century.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“All I’m saying is you’re young and single, and presumably he is, too, so . . .”
“So . . . ?” Remmi said dryly.
Greta let out a huff. “You’re being purposely obtuse.”
“And you’re being purposely nosy.”
“He’s pretty handsome, and he looks like he’s . . . in love with you.”
“That’s a leap, Greta. We reconnected twenty-four hours ago.”
“Well, it sure didn’t take me twenty-four hours to fall for Duncan, I can tell you that. One look at him, and I thought, ‘He’s the one. He’s the one I want to wake up next to every morning,’ and I never looked back. He felt the same way, and we were engaged in three months and married in six.” She hoisted up her chin. “So don’t you lecture me about love.”
“Was I lecturing?” Remmi said but laughed, her first of the day, she thought.
“Sounded like it to me,” Greta said with a smile, then grabbed Remmi’s hand. “I’m sorry about your mom, Remmi, I really am. I know that you hoped she was still alive. I saw that, and I don’t blame you, so this is a hard day for you.”
Remmi nodded, not trusting herself to respond.
“But I just want to remind you that you’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you, and that man in there”—she jabbed her finger toward the doorway to the dining room and beyond—“he’s into you. So give him a fair chance. That’s all.” She squeezed Remmi’s hand, then spun her chair back toward the dining room and rolled past the table, her wheelchair humming.
Though Greta’s story was sweet, Remmi wasn’t going to fall in love in one damned day, not even if it was with the boy she’d been pining about for twenty years. She was a child back then, but she was a grown woman now, and she hoped she’d gained some sense along the way. Besides, her life was chaos now, upside down. She’d just found out Didi was dead, and other people she knew were dying . . . no, this was not the time to fall in love. She’d been a rebellious teenager when she’d imagined herself falling for Noah Scott, the bad boy, but now, she was a grown woman.
And he’s a man . . . who straightened out . . . who seems to care for you.
“Forget it,” she told herself. She had to keep a clear head. Yes, it was a stone-cold fact that Didi was dead, but her sister and brother, now nearly adults themselves, could still be out there. Somewhere. She had to find them if it was at all possible.
She’d been on her way toward the stairs when she heard Noah end his call. Greta had buzzed his way, so Remmi changed her mind and headed into the parlor. Greta was near the bookcase, just bending down to pet Ghost, who’d been hiding on the lower shelves. That didn’t work, of course, and Ghost, true to his nature, gave a quiet hiss, then slunk out of the room and disappeared into the shadows.
“You’re such a naughty boy,” Greta said and looked up to find Noah staring at her as she rolled back across the room. “What?”
“The chair,” he said, then met Remmi’s gaze as she approached. “The woman who was in the picture we looked at earlier? Seneca Williams?” His eyes narrowed, and he stared into a space in the hallway, but Remmi guessed he was somewhere else, lost for a moment in a distant memory.
“What about her?” she demanded.
He snapped his fingers. “That’s why she was talking to Ike!”
“Who’s Ike?” Greta asked.
“My stepfather.” He turned to Remmi. “I couldn’t remember why Seneca stopped by my uncle’s shop.”
“You said they were talking about his moped.”
“But that wasn’t it. He was a mechanic and fixed small engines and motorcycles, messed around repairing lots of different things. But she came in and asked him to fix a wheelchair, like that one.” He pointed at Greta’s chair. “She said she worked in some kind of care facility, and she needed an electric chair or scooter, or whatever she called it, fixed. Ike sent her on her way, said he didn’t work on those things, but it was Seneca, I’m sure of it. Only she said her name was . . . Shelly . . . no, Shawna.” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “Shawna . . . Whitman! That’s what it was, because I remember thinking about the Whitman Massacre and the fact that, to me as a kid, her name sounded exotic, kind of Native American, like a shaman.”
Remmi’s pulse quickened. “You remembered.”
“Yeah. Shawna Whitman is Seneca Williams.” He got to his feet. “Now, all we have to do is find her.”
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine . . .
The familiar tune whispered through his brain as the Marksman yanked hard on the thin wire of Christmas lights that he’d wrapped around the handyman’s neck. The guy was struggling and fighting like a wildcat, but he was smaller and older than the Marksman, and his fight was futile. He flung one hand back, trying to claw at the Marksman’s already mutilated face, but he failed and soon was trying to force his fat little fingers between the wire and his windpipe.
It was no use.
The wire was digging into the guy’s skin, deeper and deeper, cutting off his air. Still he wrestled around, gasping until he couldn’t. The Marksman could visualize the man’s eyes already starting to bulge from their sockets.
He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip even further, pulling the man from his feet. His victim—an unlucky handyman for Kris Kringle’s Christmas Lights who had been hired to decorate Greta Emerson’s house—was losing the battle, his frantic attempts at freeing himself beginning to slow.
Hide it under a bushel? No!
Another twist of the wire, flesh splitting. His dangling victim went limp. Just in time. The Marksman’s leg was pounding in pain from the strain on his thighs as he’d hoisted the man from his feet.
Dead, probably. No reason to take a chance, though. He held the wire taut, despite the fact that the man wasn’t moving.
Hide it under a bushel?
No!
I’m gonna let it shine . . .
A last twist of the wire.
No fight. Zero response. Dead weight.
Still the Marksman waited. If he’d learned anything from the killing of Ned Crenshaw, it was to not take a death for granted. He had to remember he was not invincible and that a victim could sometimes respond with almost superhuman strength.
So he held the man off his feet as his own thigh pulsed in angry pain. Rain poured from the dark skies, and the wind blew harshly, rattling the branches of the shrubbery around the Emerson mansion. The Christmas lights winked brightly from the eaves and peak of the roof, but still the Marksman held fast until at last he was certain that the man, whose clothes and keys he was going to use, was surely, without a doubt, dead as the proverbial doornail.
Satisfied, he let his victim sink down to the soggy ground. His plan was to change into the handyman’s Kris Kringle jumpsuit, grab a string of lights, and use the man’s access to the basement garage and electrical panel. Then he would sneak into the house and up the interior, back staircase to the third-floor apartment.
First, though, he planned to st
uff the body into the back of the Kris Kringle Christmas Lights van and then, using the handyman’s ladders, peer into the windows of the house to orient himself with the layout. He should be able to pull it off. Even if he was seen, it was dark and gloomy. No one would suspect he wasn’t the regular guy.
Carefully, he rolled his dead victim onto a tarp he kept in his SUV.
He didn’t really have anything against Remmi other than that she was nosy and poking around where she didn’t belong, but she had to go. There was a chance she could challenge the authenticity of the book or start making noise about wanting to get paid for any royalties or movie deals or whatever.
So, good-bye, Remmi Storm.
He lifted the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and then cautiously, quietly, sneaked within the curtain of rain to the empty street and stuffed the man into the back of his Kris Kringle van. There was enough room to climb inside. Just enough. So he followed after the body and around the spools of lights, small ladders, staple guns, and the like, stripped the worker of his jumpsuit, ripped off his own clothes, and in the cramped space, his leg screaming in pain, he zipped up the ill-fitting suit. It didn’t exactly fit like a glove, but it would have to do. Once outside, he quietly closed the back doors and locked the van, then returned to the house, where he repositioned the ladder and climbed up it, still checking every window as he passed, keeping himself oriented with the inside of Greta Emerson’s huge home.
He hadn’t counted on his leg aching so badly—pain was radiating from the wound in his thigh—but he’d deal with it.
Once he’d scoped out the place, he would leave in the guy’s van for a few hours, then return later. If anyone looked out, they’d see the same handyman’s vehicle that had been parked on the street, off and on, for several days. Once he was certain the neighborhood was asleep, he’d sneak inside and finish this job.
The plan wasn’t foolproof, but it should work.
It was long past time for Remmi Storm to join her mother in eternity.
