She snickered.
He laughed too.
And then they stared at each other for a few seconds, just smiling at each other.
“Oh, Classic Rock,” she said softly. “Did I ever say I was sorry for that night at the dance?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think you did.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
First off, they were hitting pay dirt. They searched for a guy, searched for a group of unsolved murders that had stopped, and jackpot, a match. That happened at least five times.
And then they started hitting people who didn’t work at all.
It was worth noting that almost all of the men on the list had drowned—some in pools, like Nathan Parker, some in lakes or oceans like Bart Miller, others in the bathtub, like Vernon Rogers. He was one of the guys in which there were no unsolved murders. Not a single one. The place where he lived wasn’t exactly the murder capital of the world, and it was too remote to think that he’d be going to some city to find victims.
Vernon didn’t make sense.
So, they called his sister Tess, his only living relative.
Nash explained that he did a podcast about unsolved crimes, and he wanted to know if Tess would be willing to talk to him about her brother.
“Oh, but Vernon’s death was an accident,” said Tess. “I don’t think you should include it.”
Nash explained about Siobhan, how she’d married lots of different men under assumed names and how they all kept turning up drowned to death. “Can we come see you?” he said. “It won’t take too long, I promise. Just an afternoon of your time. We’ll bring food.”
Tess wasn’t into it. She told them in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t interested in talking to them.
Nash knew they were going to have to convince her, so he told Zoe to saddle up, they were going on a road trip. They drove all the way out to the town where Tess lived, which was pretty remote. The stopped and picked up some pizza, and then they knocked on her door.
Tess lived in an old house with gray siding. It was surrounded by straggly pine trees.
She opened the door.
“Hi, Tess,” said Nash. “I’m Nash Steven Wilt. We spoke on the phone?”
Tess matched the house—a skinny woman with thin, mousy hair. She was startled to see them. She sputtered. “I told you I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“This is just a friendly visit,” said Nash. “We brought pizza.” He grinned widely.
Zoe shot him a wary look.
“Can we come in?”
Tess’s jaw worked.
“You like pizza, don’t you?” said Nash.
“I suppose,” said Tess.
“Well, we’ll just come in for a minute, and then we’ll leave this pizza with you,” said Nash.
“Just for a minute?” said Tess.
“Just for a minute,” said Nash reassuringly.
She let them inside her house, which smelled strongly of cats. She led them through the house into the kitchen. She pointed at the table.
Zoe, who was carrying the pizza boxes, set them down there.
“All right, then,” said Tess. “Thank you for the pizza. I think you should go.”
“One more minute,” said Nash. “I’m wondering if I could just get a little more information from you on why you don’t want to be on the podcast.”
“I…” Tess twisted her hands together. “I don’t want Sloane to get in trouble, I guess. I don’t see why she should.”
Sloane was the name that Siobhan had used when she married Vernon.
“So, you admit that maybe there was more to Vernon’s death than an accident?”
“No, I didn’t say that.” Tess stuck out her chin defiantly.
“Hey, look, Tess, we’re not the police. We’re not doing this to get Sloane in trouble,” he said. He looked at Zoe to back him up.
Zoe just let out an uncomfortable chuckle.
“Well, what are you trying to do?” said Tess.
Nash decided to take a leap. Thus far, he’d been operating under the impression that Tess was grieving her brother, but maybe she wasn’t. If Vernon was as much of a creep as Siobhan’s other victims, maybe Tess was glad to see him go. “Sloane seems to have had a penchant for men who, um, well, weren’t very nice. Maybe you think Vernon got what he deserved.”
Tess wrung her hands. “I never said that either.”
“Okay,” said Nash. “Okay. Sorry.” He waited. Sometimes silence worked. People didn’t like it when it was quiet, and they tried to fill the silence with something.
“The thing you have to understand about Vernon was that he wasn’t right in the head,” said Tess.
“I see,” said Nash.
“He was mean. Just deep down mean,” said Tess.
“That’s about what we expected, actually,” said Nash. “Most of the people that Siobhan—Sloane—has been married to, were deep down mean.”
“Well,” said Tess, “then why are you after her?”
“We’re just trying to get the whole story,” he said. “We want to figure out who she is and what she does.”
“You said you investigated unsolved crimes.”
“That’s true.”
“There isn’t any crime here. He drowned in the bathtub accidentally. He must have fallen asleep in there or something. I don’t know.”
“Did Vernon ever… hurt you?”
She snorted. “Sure. Not physically or anything, but he was always awful to me.”
“Awful how?”
Tess looked at the pizza boxes. “It’d be a shame for that to get cold.”
“It sure would,” said Nash.
Tess went to her cabinet and got out some paper plates. She gave Nash one, Zoe one, and herself one. Then she opened up the box of pizza and got herself a slice.
Zoe got one too.
Nash didn’t. “How was he awful, Tess?”
“He and I lived together in this house, you know. I tried to move out a couple of times when I was younger, but he wouldn’t ever let me. Once I even got as far as to sign the lease and pay up front. I was moving all my stuff into the place and Vernon showed up and he took all my things—my clothes and my dishes—and he just started destroying them, all the while telling me that I was worthless and stupid and I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own, and that he wouldn’t allow me to be off by myself.” Tess took a bite of pizza.
Nash got out his field recorder and set it on the table. “Maybe I’ll just turn this on?”
“Why?” said Tess.
“Just to have something to keep my memory fresh,” said Nash.
She considered. “Oh, all right. I guess so.”
“Great,” said Nash, flipping it on. Later on, he’d convince Tess to let him use the audio. The important thing now was to get it. “So, you moved back in with him?”
“Well, he said he would come by my new place every day until I moved back in with him. So, eventually, I did.”
“You didn’t like it here, though?” said Nash.
“Vernon made it hell,” she said. “He hated me. He hated everything I did. I cooked all our meals, and he was never satisfied with anything I made. I did the cleaning and the laundry…” She laughed a little. “This place used to be spotless, but after he died…”
“After he died, there was no more pressure?”
“No,” said Tess, “there wasn’t.”
“You were a little relieved when he died?” said Nash.
Tess shoved more pizza in her mouth.
Nash made his voice gentle. “Did Vernon ever do worse things than insult you or harass you? Did he do things to other people?”
Tess chewed. She swallowed. “Maybe.”
Zoe spoke up. “Did he, um…? Do you think maybe he killed someone?”
“No,” said Tess, looking at Zoe with a shocked expression on her face. “He was bad, but not that bad.”
Nash shot Zoe an annoyed look.
“Sorry,” said Zoe. �
�It’s just that some of the people that Sloane has been involved with—”
“I caught him once when we were teenagers,” Tess blurted. “I had a friend over for a sleepover, and I was disappointed, because she was real tired and fell right asleep. So, I went to sleep too. But then I woke up in the middle of the night, and she wasn’t in the sleeping bag next to me. I went looking for her. I found her with Vernon. She was still asleep, and he was…”
Nash waited.
Tess got another piece of pizza.
“What was he doing?” Nash said.
Tess set down the pizza. “He was… he was raping her. I yelled at him, and he came after me, and he said that if I told anyone what I saw, he would come into my room while I was sleeping and strangle me to death. And I was young, and I was scared. He said it wasn’t hurting anyone, because no one knew what happened. He drugged her, you know. That’s why she was so tired.”
“That’s horrible,” said Nash. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“And that wasn’t the only time he did it,” said Tess. “I don’t know how many times, but I know he did it more. He would sneak into women’s houses, women who lived alone, or women whose husbands were away on a trip or something and he’d drug them and rape them.”
Nash was quiet.
“He was a horrible man,” said Tess. “You know, maybe he did deserve to die.”
“Was it really an accident, Tess?” said Nash.
Tess picked up her slice of pizza again. “When I found out he was marrying Sloane, I was glad, because I thought that it meant that he would stop doing it. I thought maybe he only did it because women never paid him any attention. He was not exactly an attractive man. And I also thought it meant he would let me move out of the house. But he wouldn’t. He made me stay, and he called me all those awful names in front of Sloane, and I was so embarrassed, because she was so nice.”
“Do you think he did stop when he was married to her?” said Zoe.
“Maybe,” said Tess. “Only because she kept her eye on him and wouldn’t let him go anywhere. And he got mad, tried to insist. One night, he started calling Sloane names too, because she was saying she’d go with him if he tried to leave the house. The next night, she ran a bath for him, and she said he should get in and she’d give him a massage and that would relax him.”
“Is that when he drowned?”
“They were in there for a while. And then Sloane came out, and she was all wet, just sopping wet, like she’d been splashed with water. She smiled at me, and she walked out the front door, and I never saw her again.”
It was quiet. Nash waited. He saw Zoe start to speak and he shook his head at her.
Tess continued. “After a while, I went upstairs, and I knocked on the bathroom door. No answer. I said, ‘Vernon?’ No answer. I turned the knob and I looked inside the room, and he was lying in the tub, and he was dead. There was water splashed everywhere, but I cleaned that up before the police got there.”
“You cleaned up a crime scene?” said Zoe.
Nash glared at her.
“It was an accident,” said Tess. “I mean, it could have been. Whatever the case, my brother’s death was only a good thing. That man wasn’t doing anything on this earth except causing people pain and anguish.”
* * *
“So,” said Zoe, “they don’t have to be killers.” She was in the passenger seat of the car. They were driving away from Tess’s house.
“Guess not,” said Nash.
“They can be rapists,” said Zoe.
“Which,” said Nash, “I mean, if you think about it, is just as horrible. I mean, maybe not. Or maybe it’s worse. I don’t know. Definitely, he’s a jerk. It’s like she said, he deserves to die.”
“No,” said Zoe, “you can’t let yourself think like that. Vigilantism is bad. It’s not our place to decide whether or not someone deserves to die. That’s something better left to courts and juries.”
“Yeah, but in this case, how would he have even been arrested?”
“What if she got it wrong sometime? What if she thought a guy was a murderer, but he was actually innocent?”
“Thus far, she hasn’t gotten it wrong.”
“Even if she never does, it’s not right,” said Zoe. “Either killing is wrong or it’s not. If you kill someone because they killed other people, you’re just as bad as they are. It just furthers the cycle.”
Nash gripped the steering wheel, peering out in the late afternoon light. It had turned gray outside. A storm was rolling in.
“And I don’t know how I feel about the way you tricked that poor woman into recording her,” Zoe continued.
“Oh, come on, Zoe. I had to get her voice on tape.”
“You’re going to call her up and try to convince her to let you use the audio, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to work up the segment and send it to her, and when she gets annoyed, I’m going to ask her what I could cut to make her okay with it, and then do what she asks. I might not get to air it all, but I guarantee I’ll get some of it.”
“But why is it so important?”
“It’s my job.”
“Is it your job to bully people into airing their secrets to a national audience?”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s not what it is. You’re making it sound worse than it is.”
She sighed.
“Look, this story is a big deal, the biggest deal of my career, okay?” He leaned back in his seat, gazing out at the road ahead of him. “We need to find her.”
“Who? Siobhan?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We need to figure out where she is and find her and talk to her. That’s the only way this podcast can end. By the way, I’m thinking this could be its own podcast. Not just an episode of Cold Case Files. There’s enough material here for ten episodes, especially if we can find Siobhan.”
“You think she’ll talk to us?”
“She has to,” said Nash. “I’ll find a way to convince her.”
“I don’t know, Nash,” said Zoe. “She’s a murderer. Going to find her? It doesn’t sound safe.”
“We’ll both be perfectly safe,” he said. “We don’t fit her profile.”
“Maybe she’ll decide to kill us to keep herself safe,” said Zoe. “Someone whose already good at killing might find it easier to convince herself to kill out of self-interest.”
“No way,” said Nash. “How should we go about finding her?”
Zoe inspected her fingernails. “You’re not letting this go, are you?”
“Nope.” Nash smiled at her. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was also anxious to see Siobhan. The prospect of getting to talk to her was something to look forward to.
“Well, I guess we should go to the last place that anyone saw her,” said Zoe.
“That was Charity, though, right?”
“Okay, before Charity,” said Zoe. “The most recent wedding invitation in the box.”
* * *
“I thought it was so funny that Sienna even wanted to print those up,” said Celia Bell. She was a plump woman with rosy cheeks, and she was standing at the counter in her kitchen. “We did it, though, on our little printer, remember, Unity?”
Unity Bell, who was thinner and taller than Celia, was sitting at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee to her lips. “Oh, yes, I remember. But I thought it was darling. The children loved getting the invitations.”
“But no one was coming to the wedding besides us,” said Deanna Bell, who was younger than the other women. She was picking at a spot on the kitchen stove.
The three women lived together in house that sat majestically on a hill near the woods. The house had two stories, a finished basement, and a finished apartment over the garage. It had to be big, because it housed not only the women, but their children, and they each had three or more. Nash and Zoe had been introduced to them when they arrived, but Nash couldn’t remember any of their names.
They all knew Siobhan as
Sienna. She had been part of their lives for some time under that name.
“That’s how Arnold wanted it,” said Deanna to Nash and Zoe. “He wouldn’t ever let us invite anyone outside the family to the ceremonies. No family, no friends. He was…” She sighed. “Well, he was a character, that’s for sure.”
“He was an abusive asshole,” said Unity dryly. She raised her hand and waved it. “I was the one married to him the longest, you know.”
“Oh, Unity,” said Celia, “it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead. Besides, what does it matter now?”
Nash looked back and forth between the three women. The situation was very unique. They’d explained it to him over the phone, but it had been just sketchy details. He wasn’t sure he understood it all. “Maybe the three of you could help me understand this better? You were all married to Arnold Bell?”
“That’s right,” said Unity. She got up from the stool at the breakfast bar. “Why don’t we go to the living room so that we can sit down and talk about this?”
Everyone agreed, so they went to the other room and settled down on couches in there. The room was neat and tidy, but the couches and chairs were threadbare. Nash noticed, however, that there was a huge, glossy TV on one wall. He must have reacted to it in some way, because Celia let out a nervous laugh.
“It’s big, huh?” Celia laughed again. “That was a gift from Sienna. We never had TV before. Arnold wouldn’t let us. Said it was bad for the mind, you know?”
“So,” said Nash, settling into his chair, “this was a religious thing? All of you marrying him?”
“Oh, no,” said Unity.
The other women shook their heads.
“Arnold was very much an atheist, and he said we had to be too,” said Deanna, “but I always would say prayers with my little ones anyway. What he didn’t know didn’t hurt him.”
Zoe furrowed her brow. “Well, then I guess… I don’t understand.”
“Why’d we marry him?” said Unity, her voice ironic. She arched an eyebrow. “He could be persuasive.”
“Oh, he most definitely could,” said Celia. “He could talk you into anything.”
“And if he couldn’t talk you into it, he’d bully you into it,” said Deanna.
The Feminine Touch Page 13
