by Beverly Long
“Yes.” She did not correct his use of her married name. But they’d get to that.
He paused a beat to see if she’d made the connection between him and Traci. McKittridge wasn’t that common of a name. But if she had, she didn’t seem inclined to mention it. “We wanted to ask you a few questions,” he said.
“I’m very busy,” she said, looking at Rena.
“It’ll just take a few minutes,” A.L. insisted.
“All right. But really, I’m very busy.” Again, she made eye contact only with Rena.
The office was small and windowless. Maybe that’s why she was so pale. She didn’t get enough sun. Her vitamin D levels were probably in the toilet.
She took the chair behind the desk, and they sat in the two armchairs in front of it.
“We installed the bolt lock about a month ago,” she said. “It was Pastor’s idea.”
He didn’t need to ask why. “I understand that you were good friends with Jane Picus.”
Now the woman was looking down, but he could still see her eyes fill with tears. “Yes, I was.”
“When’s the last time you saw Jane?”
She raised her head, blinked her eyes fast. “About a week ago. We went out to dinner.”
Even though A.L. was asking the questions, she didn’t look at him. It didn’t piss him off, but it was pretty goddamn weird. “Was there anything that Jane mentioned that you found interesting or odd or concerning?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t remember much of the conversation, really. We just talked about things. The things women talk about.”
He hoped Rena had some idea of what that was. “Do you have any knowledge of why somebody would want to hurt Jane?”
“No.” Her voice was sure, but she had her index finger bent double and was pressing it so hard into the desk that it was turning white.
“Nothing?” he pushed.
She shook her head.
He was pretty sure she was lying. But could not fathom a reason why. “I spoke with Terry Picus this morning. He is very grateful for your friendship and help with the services.”
“That’s what I do,” she said. “I help people.” She spread her fingers flat onto the desk. “Over the years, I’ve helped a lot of people.”
She sounded defensive, as if she thought that he doubted her. “Of course,” he said. “Where were you when you heard the news about Jane?” he asked.
“At home.”
“You worked that day?”
“Yes. I work Monday through Friday, nine to five.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wallace,” A.L. said.
“Ms. Wallace. I’m divorced,” she said.
“But your last name is still Wallace?” he clarified.
“Yes.”
So Jacqui’s information had been wrong. “You grew up in Baywood, correct?”
“Yes?”
“What was your maiden name?”
She finally looked at him. “I don’t see why that’s important.”
He said nothing.
“Fine. It’s Devine.”
A.L. pulled a card from his pocket. She did not glance at it, just kept her eyes on Rena. He slid it onto her desk. “We would certainly appreciate any help that you can give us. We want to find the person who did this to Jane.”
She stood up. “I better get back to work,” she said.
“Is Pastor Rife in?” Rena asked.
He hadn’t anticipated talking to the pastor again, but if Rena wanted to, that was fine. But evidently Marie didn’t see it the same way. Her eyes flared in response to Rena’s question. “No,” she said. “He’s golfing at the club.”
“The club” was the Baywood Country Club. It was a decent eighteen-hole course, and they’d started offering tee times to nonmembers about a year ago because the dues weren’t keeping the doors open.
“We’ll catch him later, then,” Rena said. She stood up and A.L. followed suit.
Marie didn’t answer. When the door closed behind them, A.L. heard the click of a bolt lock being thrown. They were halfway back to their car before Rena spoke again. “Very odd,” she said.
“I thought so, too,” A.L. said. “I wish I’d actually met her before so I’d have some basis of comparison.”
“She would hardly look at you. And she got really touchy over her maiden name.”
“Yeah. We weren’t in school together—I think she’s quite a bit older. I remember Jacqui saying something once that Marie had had her daughter late.”
“You don’t really think she had anything to do with Jane’s murder, do you? I mean, you asked where she was on Tuesday when Jane was killed.”
“No. I was just getting an overall bad vibe. I’m not doubting that she and Jane were friends. Terry Picus said it. She said it. And I don’t think she killed Jane or those other women. But I guess I needed her to say that she’d been at work all day.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like men,” Rena said.
“Pastor Rife is a man,” A.L. said. “Must make for a strained working relationship. I really am not sure how that would have gone if you hadn’t been there.”
“I think we should take a drive out to the golf course. Try to find Pastor Rife.”
He stopped walking. “You think there’s something here.”
“I don’t know. But for God’s sake, her good friend was murdered. She should have been pushing us for answers, not the other way around.”
Six
“I’ll drive,” A.L. said. It took them ten minutes. The clubhouse sat high on a hill, overlooking the river. He’d been here for a couple wedding receptions over the years. Always very nice.
He’d hoped they might get lucky and find Pastor Rife in the clubhouse. But it was empty, save for a table of four women enjoying glasses of wine. A.L. approached the young man behind the counter. His dark hair was short in the back but long in the front, hanging over one eye. He wore a T-shirt that made it clear he wasn’t fond of Republicans.
“May I help you?” he asked, his tone polite.
“I’m looking for Pastor Rife,” A.L. said. “It’s important.”
“I don’t know him,” the young man said. “But if he’s here, he should have signed in.” He ran a finger down the sheet that was next to the cash register. “There he is. I’m guessing he’s probably on the seventh or eighth hole. It’ll be a while before he’s back in the clubhouse.”
Now A.L. pulled his badge. The guy looked at it fast. Then turned and pulled a key off a pegboard behind him and tossed it toward him. “Take a cart. No charge.”
A.L. caught the key midair. “Thanks.” He’d taken a step before the guy spoke again.
“Are you Traci’s dad?” he asked.
It hadn’t been the question that A.L. had been expecting. He stopped walking. Turned. “I am.”
“I’m John,” the guy said. He came out from behind the counter and extended his hand for a shake.
A.L. could tell he was nervous. Which spooked him. “John, tell me how you know my daughter.”
John swallowed hard. “We’re...we’re dating.”
Traci was going to prom next week with a kid who was a junior in high school. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rena moving. Probably trying to get in position to stop him from pulling his gun. “That can’t be true.”
John just looked at him.
“How old are you?” A.L. asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“My daughter is sixteen,” A.L. said. He could feel a sudden burn in his chest.
“I didn’t know that until our third date.”
None of this made sense. “But now that you do know it, there’s not going to be any more dating.”
John’s ears turned red. “I think that’s Traci’s decision.”
“I don’t
think so,” A.L. said. “Again, she’s sixteen.”
Now Rena was yanking on his arm. “Let’s go,” she said.
He tried to shake her off. But she was tenacious.
“Now, A.L.,” she said. She leaned in close to his ear. “Talk to Traci before you do anything stupid,” she hissed. She turned her head to look at John. “We’ll be back in a little while with the cart.” Then she shoved A.L. toward the door. Once they were outside, she pointed at the cart. “Get in. I’ll drive.”
A.L. sat down. “What the fuck was that? She can’t date somebody who is twenty-two.”
“It’s only six years,” Rena said. “Gabe is four years older than me.”
“And when you’re in your thirties, that’s fine. But not when you’re sixteen. Do you think he realizes that she’s jailbait?”
“Maybe they’re not having sex,” Rena said.
He’d been a twenty-two-year-old guy once. “I’m going to have to kill him.”
“Don’t say things like that. He seemed very polite, even before he realized the connection.”
“I don’t care.”
“And it took some balls to shake your hand. You don’t exactly radiate warmth.”
“I’m pretty hot right now.” And scared. But he wasn’t going to admit that. Her grades were slipping, she’d skipped school to have a morning cocktail and now she was secretly dating somebody.
He was going to have to tell Jacqui. He had been willing to give Traci a pass on the skipping school and drinking, but this was a whole other thing. What else could she be hiding?
“Are you going to be okay?” Rena asked.
Yeah. He didn’t need to be reminded that he was investigating a fucking serial killer. He needed his A game. All the way. He’d have to deal with the Traci thing later. “Don’t worry about me,” he said.
The course wasn’t busy, probably because the kids were still in school and it was too early for working stiffs to be on the course. They found Pastor Rife on the seventh hole. He was with three men whom A.L. did not know. They stayed back until all four of them had teed off. Then Rena pulled the cart closer.
“Pastor Rife,” she said, her voice carrying. “May we have a quick word?”
A.L. figured the minister remembered them from their earlier conversation when he waved his friends on and approached. “Yes,” he said.
They both showed badges.
“Of course,” Pastor Rife said. “What can I do for you?”
“We understand that you’re handling the funeral services for Jane Picus,” Rena said.
“Yes. Terrible thing. She was a lovely person,” he said. “When is this craziness going to stop?”
“I don’t know,” A.L. said honestly. “But given that two of our victims were members of your church, we wanted to have another conversation with you. Can you recall any circumstances that would have involved both Jane Picus and LeAnn Jacobs?”
Pastor Rife shook his head. “I just had this conversation with my secretary.”
“Would that be Marie Wallace?” Rena asked.
“Yes?”
“We had a conversation with her as well today. That’s how we knew that you were here.” A.L. paused. “To be honest, Marie seemed a little off.”
“Her friend is dead,” Pastor Rife said, his tone gentle.
“It seemed as if something else might be bothering her,” Rena said.
“Marie Wallace is an amazing asset to the church,” Pastor Rife said. “And she’s done an admirable job raising her daughter in less than ideal circumstances.”
“What’s that?” A.L. asked.
“Her husband had an affair, and the marriage couldn’t be saved. The divorce was financially devastating for Marie. They had to sell the house, and she and her daughter are living in a two-bedroom apartment.”
That all matched what Terry Picus had told them. “Does her husband still live in town?” A.L. asked.
“No. He’s living with his new wife in Minneapolis. Listen, I’m sorry if it didn’t go well with Marie. But she’s a good person. It hasn’t been easy, but she doesn’t complain. The church, of course, pays her for her work, and we help her in other ways when it’s appropriate.”
A.L. wasn’t sure what that meant but didn’t think it probably mattered. What was important was whether there was a link between LeAnn Jacobs and Jane Picus. “Can you contact us if you think of anything important about either one or both of these women?”
“Of course.”
A.L. ran a hand through his short hair. “Can you confirm that Marie was at work on Tuesday? All day?”
Pastor Rife frowned at them. “She was.”
“Thank you.” A.L. handed over his business card. The pastor put it in his shirt pocket.
When they were back in the cart, Rena looked at him. “So there’s a side of Marie that we didn’t see.”
“Maybe. At least he verified that she was at work on Tuesday.”
“Right. So now do you want to go back to the clubhouse and beat up a twenty-two-year-old?”
“Don’t tempt me,” he said. “I just don’t know what Traci is thinking.”
“She’s thinking that her parents don’t know everything and that she’s old enough to make her own decisions. Same as we did at sixteen. You’re never really smarter than you are at that age.”
“True. I imagine the first thing Golf Course John did after we left with the cart is text her. She knows that I know.”
“Takes away the element of surprise,” Rena said.
“I’m not looking to ambush her,” A.L. said. “She’ll probably be pissed at him that he didn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“I got the feeling that he was surprised that you didn’t know about him. Which makes me think that she was lying to John, too.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll break up with her,” A.L. said. “Problem solved.”
“Until the next one comes along.”
“The bigger the kid, the bigger the problem,” A.L. said. “I remember the days when I could fix everything.”
“Trust me on this. She needs you as much as she ever did. But not to fix stuff. Just to be there. To support. I didn’t have that. And I could have definitely benefited from it.”
Rena’s parents had divorced when she was eight and she’d been raised by her mother and grandparents. He studied her. “You should go home and have dinner with Gabe tonight.”
“I went home for dinner last night.”
“Which you didn’t eat. You worked instead.”
“So did you. And I’m fairly confident that you won’t go home for dinner tonight.”
“Take a couple hours,” he said. “The world isn’t going to end, and it’ll probably do your mental health some good.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you worried about my mental health?”
“Hell, yes. I’ve invested a lot of time breaking you in as my partner. I don’t want to start over. It’s bad enough that we’ve got a new boss. A partner is something else.”
She patted her chest. “My heart is aflutter.”
Her voice was light, teasing, but her eyes were serious. And her nose was getting pink.
“Don’t fucking cry,” he said.
“I fucking won’t.”
* * *
Rena stopped at the grocery store on her way home. It was usually Gabe’s domain, and she had to backtrack twice before she got a package of chicken breasts, fresh pineapple, a box of rice and a jar of orange marmalade. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could manage a decent grilled chicken and pineapple kabob smothered in the sweet marmalade, a little olive oil and a strong pour of tequila.
Unfortunately, most of the alcohol would burn off. She felt as if a nice drink to calm her nerves might be just the thing. She needed to talk with Gabe about what Dr. Mobriani had told her.
Even with the stop, she still managed to get home earlier than Gabe. She made the sauce for the chicken, tossed a salad, wrapped some garlic bread in foil and sat down hard on the kitchen chair.
Now what?
She looked at the clock on the wall. Stared at the word that ran across the clock face. Paris. Not purchased there. Not anything authentic other than a forty-seven-dollar clock. But she and Gabe had honeymooned in Paris, and when they’d seen the clock at Target six months later, they’d both had to have it.
If she mentioned Paris tonight, would he remember that feeling—the one where they were breathless for each other, could barely make it back to the room before tearing off each other’s clothes—or would he simply think of time, that it was time to screw, time to get some sperm to try to swim and find a reluctant egg.
Time to fuck her, whether he wanted to or not.
She drummed her fingers on the old wood table that had belonged to her grandmother. The chairs were wood, too, but they didn’t match, either the table or each other. But once her mother had inherited the table from Gram more than twenty years ago, she’d added the chairs one by one.
Three years ago, when her mother had died¸ way too damn early from ovarian cancer, the set had come to Rena.
Gabe would have preferred something more contemporary. Had said on more than one occasion that the kitchen didn’t match the rest of the house.
Maybe the little blonde, with her smooth hair and even smoother skin and her stupid linen dress, matched Gabe’s life better than she did.
It was an ugly thought and a pretty goddamn big leap in logic. After all, they’d been having coffee, not sex. But she was a good observer. And the body language had been clear.
That’s what had sent her to the grocery store to buy chicken. Chicken. Like that could solve everything.
She picked up her phone, just to make sure she hadn’t missed a message. Nothing there. Set it down. Picked it up again. Opened the browser. Typed in “Richard Jones, Baywood, Wisconsin.”
No matches. She took out “Baywood” and left the rest. Now there were forty-seven possibilities. It was evidently a pretty common name.
