Murder Among Friends (The Kate Austen Mystery Series)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “It’s Claire,” I sputtered, pointing to the limp figure lying by the side of the road. My voice shook as terribly and uncontrollably as my body. “She was . . . she was going to kill me. Just like she killed Mona and Brandon.”

  The jogger had run over to check on the injured woman. Two of the patrolmen joined him, while the third endeavored to talk to the young male driver who seemed unable to stand still or say anything beyond, “Shit, man. She came out of nowhere.”

  Michael touched my shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head, gasped for air, found that I’d forgotten how to breathe. “But she has Anna. Oh God, Michael, what if something’s happened to Anna?”

  The next few hours passed in a blur. The paramedics loaded Claire into the ambulance and took off amidst sirens and flashing red lights. The young man was escorted into a patrol car and driven away. A second uniformed officer talked to the jogger and the assemblage of neighbors which had materialized out of nowhere. There were tow trucks, fire trucks, television trucks, even one of those deli-on-wheels trucks. A regular beehive of activity, which was amazing considering that only a short time earlier, when I’d been desperately searching for some sign of life, the street had been utterly deserted.

  Michael immediately put out a bulletin on Anna and Jodi, then called in a forensic specialist to go over Claire’s car inch by inch. “See if we can pick up any clues as to where they might have gone,” he said.

  I nodded stiffly. I didn’t need him to tell me they were also looking for signs of torn flesh or blood.

  I’d given him the story in bits and pieces, but he had me go over it once more. This time he took notes, asked questions, nodded periodically, then looked at the other officer he’d introduced as Peter.

  “Everything matches,” Peter said. “Too bad we didn’t put it all together a couple of hours earlier.”

  When Peter left to make a call, I rested my head against Michael’s shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. I was too frightened to cry, but I couldn’t stop trembling.

  “It’s going to be okay, Kate. We’ll find the girls and we’ll find them unharmed. There would be no reason for Claire to hurt them.”

  But she’s crazy, I thought bleakly. There was no telling what she might do.

  Peter called Michael from the kitchen. “We’ve got the map laid out and the distances marked. You want to come take a look?”

  “Why don’t you go lie down,” Michael suggested, touching my cheek. “I’ll come check on you in a little bit.”

  There was no way I was going to sleep, or even rest. But sitting like a stone statue in my living room wasn’t doing anything for me either. I headed for the bathroom, peeled off my clothes, which were stiff with mud and sweat, and stepped into the shower. I was no less frantic when I got out, but at least I was clean.

  I was in the hallway headed for the kitchen when the phone rang. I stopped and held my breath.

  “Speaking,” I heard Michael say. There was a pause. “I see.”

  His tone was grave. My body turned to ice. The conversation played out in my imagination. They’d found two girls, strangled or stabbed or God knew what, but not alive. They’d want someone to make a positive identification.

  “Right. I’ll bring her over.”

  The silence that followed was deafening. I forced myself to the doorway. Michael turned, saw me, and gave me the thumbs up sign. His grin was as wide and bright as a summer’s day.

  “They picked up both girls about ten minutes ago,” he said. “They’re scared, but otherwise fine.”

  That’s when I started crying, and I cried all the way to the station. I was still mopping up tears when I pushed past the police sergeant to get to Anna. I hugged her tight and blubbered in her ear.

  “You shouldn’t have been worried,” she said airily. “I knew exactly where we were the whole time.”

  As it turned out, Anna had, in fact, handled herself admirably. Claire had left them at the movie theater in the mall, saying that she had shopping to do. She’d told them to wait for her on the bench outside the ice cream shop if she was late, then softened the deal with the promise of cones. Anna hadn’t enjoyed or understood the movie, which was some avant-garde Japanese film, and she’d grown tired after thirty minutes sitting on the appointed bench. Peeved though she was, she’d nonetheless tried to be a good sport. But finally, the injustice of the day had gotten to her and she’d done exactly what she’d been taught to do when she needed help—find a policeman or security guard. It was hardly her fault that she’d mistaken the telephone repairman for a cop; he was, after all, in uniform, and it had all worked out in the long run anyway.

  Or worked out for some of us.

  As Anna filled me in on what had happened, I watched a woman police officer talking to Jodi at the far side of the room. Anna’s adventure had a happy ending, but no matter how you sliced it, Jodi’s didn’t. It seemed terribly unfair that the big loser in all this was an innocent child. A child who would once again be forcibly snatched from a woman she knew as mother. My only consolation was the hope that with time, Jodi would blossom in the love of her real family. That she would learn to laugh and romp and revel in the joy of being a child. And that she would ultimately lead a much fuller, happier life with her parents than with Claire.

  Just then the side door opened and a man appeared. The blond, elflike man I’d seen with Brandon. I turned to Michael. “That’s him,” I whispered.

  Michael laughed. “I know.” The man approached. “Kate, I’d like you to meet Oscar Erikson, private investigator working for the McNevitts.”

  Chapter 33

  “Guess my instincts aren’t so good,” I told Michael the next morning. “I was ready to send Mr. Erikson away for life, yet I trusted a kidnapper and killer with my own child.”

  “Mmm.” Michael nibbled a piece of croissant. He’d brought over a whole bag of them, still warm from the bakery, plus several baskets of fresh, ripe strawberries. Libby and Anna had devoured their share quickly and were now in the front room engrossed in a game of checkers, leaving the two of us to a leisurely and unexpectedly civilized Sunday brunch.

  I rested my chin on my hands. “I still don’t understand why Brandon and Mr. Erikson were together the other day.”

  “As far as I can make out, Brandon’s sole interest in this matter was what was in it for him. He had his eye on the big bucks, and he was willing to play both sides to see which was most lucrative. He was hoping he could convince the McNevitts, through Erikson, to up the reward.”

  The Missouri lottery. And Jodi was his winning ticket. That the McNevitts actually lived on the Illinois side of St. Louis seemed to have escaped him. “That’s pretty disgusting,” I said, “using a child’s misfortune for your own gain.”

  “We both know Brandon wasn’t any boy scout. It might have worked, too. You can imagine how desperate the McNevitts were, especially after Mona’s phone call raised their hopes.”

  “She actually talked to them?”

  Michael shook his head. “She contacted the police there, wanting information about the case. She didn’t let on that she knew anything, but word got back to McNevitts. They hired Erikson and asked him to follow up on it.”

  “Why not the FBI?”

  He broke off an end of a croissant and tossed it to Max. “Well, for one thing, what they had wasn’t exactly a solid lead. Besides, they blamed the feds for botching the case in the beginning and they weren’t willing to take a chance on having it blown again. By the time Erikson arrived though, Mona was already dead, supposedly a suicide.”

  “And the poor McNevitts were back to square one.” Worse, really, because they’d thought they might be getting somewhere.

  “Erikson thought it was strange, that’s why he called our office and asked if we’d found anything suspicious about the death. He nosed around for a couple of days, tried to talk to Libby, at school of all places—”

  “He tried to talk
to me, too,” I added, remembering the phone call he’d placed from the Pelican Lodge.

  “He didn’t handle any of it very well, in my opinion, but he was concerned about keeping a low profile. He was afraid if word got out, whoever had the child would simply move on.”

  Michael reached for a second croissant. “When the family got a call from Brandon asking about the reward, they told Erikson to get in touch with the guy. But Brandon wouldn’t tell him a thing, except that the price wasn’t right.”

  “But you knew it was Claire. Somehow you figured it out before I told you.”

  He nodded. “I’d only just put it together late yesterday. Brandon’s father was going through his belongings and came up with a death certificate for a month-old baby named Jodi Jorgensen. He thought it was odd and figured it might shed some light on his son’s death. I think he was worried that Brandon might have been the baby’s father.”

  I did a quick calculation. “He’d have been only fourteen at the time.”

  Michael shrugged. “The father must have had some reason for thinking the way he did. The name didn’t mean anything to him, but it went off like a neon light for me.

  “You actually remembered Claire’s last name?” I thought I’d only mentioned her once or twice in passing, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever mentioned Jodi.

  “Not from anything you’d said. If you recall, I told you that we had a break in the arson case. What we had was a partial plate which led us to Claire Jorgensen. We questioned her Friday and got nowhere. It seemed pretty farfetched anyway. What motive could a suburban housewife possibly have for setting a school fire? But when Erikson came forward with this stuff about the kidnapping, it made more sense.”

  Not to me, it didn’t. I shook my head in confusion. “The school had a copy of Jodi’s birth certificate,” Michael explained. “Claire wanted it destroyed.”

  The light bulb went off. She’d taken the birth certificate from Sharon’s soccer files as well. Poor George, Sharon had blamed him unfairly.

  “I went back to see Claire again yesterday afternoon,” Michael continued. “She wasn’t there, but I got to talking to a neighbor who told me you’d been there, too. That you’d been half hysterical, in fact.”

  I felt a chill just remembering it. The terror, the anxiety, the panic. I didn’t want to think about what I’d be feeling today if Anna hadn’t been found. What Laurie McNevitt must have felt everyday for the past five years. “You’ve no idea how terrible it was.”

  His eyes were soft, as was his voice. “I can only begin to imagine, and even that’s pretty awful.”

  I felt tears prick at my eyes, as they had periodically since yesterday afternoon. I couldn’t help thinking about what might have happened, what in fact had happened to one little girl five years ago. I got up to reheat the coffee and wipe my eyes on the sly. Michael pulled a section of newspaper from the heap at the far end of the table.

  “If Eve Fisher hadn’t been in Mona’s class,” I said, after a bit, “if she hadn’t been visiting her daughter the week the assignment was given ...”

  “If Jennifer McNevitt hadn’t taken sick one night five years ago. That’s the way life works, Kate. You think about it too much, you go crazy.”

  I poured us both a second cup of coffee, then stared off into the drippy, gray morning while Michael read the paper.

  Suddenly he rocked forward in his chair with a wild, loopy laugh. “Hey, they found your slasher.”

  “My slasher?”

  “Your tires, remember? The guy was caught red-handed by two little old ladies out walking their poodles. Seems he has a thing against you ‘knee-jerk liberals.’”

  The other day I’d been called a snooty society woman and today I was a knee-jerk liberal. At least I wasn’t in a rut. But I wasn’t exactly following Michael’s point either.

  “It’s that bumper-sticker,” he said, caught up in the humor of it all. “It will be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. This guy’s on a campaign to teach ‘your type’ a lesson.”

  A man with a cause. However misguided, it was a step above being stalked by a killer. I gave an inward sigh of relief. The irony was that the bumper-sticker wasn’t even mine; it had come with the car we bought used.

  “See what I mean,” Michael said, “about not knowing what’s germane to a case until it’s over?”

  I nodded.

  But Michael didn’t want an answer. He leaned across the table, suddenly serious. “I’ve been so worried that someone was out to get you. Even after we knew about Claire, I wasn’t sure it was over. You managed to stir up a lot of people over Mona’s death, you know. Any one of them could have had a reason for wanting you silenced.” He reached for my hand and began tracing a pattern on my palm. “If something were to happen to you—”

  I recognized the tone—we were approaching heavy discussion time. I removed my hand from his and tried steering the conversation back to the simpler subject of murder. “There were a lot of things that seemed germane and weren’t,” I observed. “Things that made me think it was Gary who’d killed Mona. Or maybe Bambi. He had such an obvious motive and she’s, well, she’s just weird.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow. “You going to change the subject every time we get personal?”

  “I believe it was you who changed the subject first.” He pursed his lips, then started to say something, but I cut him off.

  “Not only did Gary have the financial motive, I’m sure Mona had something on him, too. Why else would he have agreed to a settlement he was so clearly unhappy with?”

  “Gary may well be guilty of some offense, but chances are we’ll never know what it is. Not unless the IRS gets interested anyway. Bambi, now that’s a different story.” Michael leaned back in his chair and popped a strawberry into his mouth. “Seems manicurist wasn’t Miss Bambi’s first chosen career. Until last year she worked as a dancer, so to speak, at a back-alley strip joint.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  He shook his head. “Apparently this was a part of her past Bambi wasn’t eager to share with her future husband. During the divorce, Mona hired someone to dig into Bambi’s background, hen used the information as leverage. Mona would keep her lips sealed if Bambi could persuade Gary to accept the settlement offer.”

  “My, my.” I don’t know why exactly, but I found myself more favorably disposed towards Bambi the ex-stripper than Bambi the fluffy-headed fiancée. Maybe the woman had some character after all. “Life sure is full of surprises,” I mused. “You think you know a person, but you never do, really.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” Michael reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope and slid it across the table to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “Tickets.”

  “To what?”

  “Not what, where.” He had an odd look on his face, solemn and unsure, yet tinged with boyish impatience. “They’re tickets to Maui,” he said softly. “For spring break.”

  I’m sure my own face, in response, looked every bit as odd.

  “You’ve been complaining of the cold and all, and I thought . . .” He paused for a breath. “And I thought that if we went away together, spent an entire week with each other, it might convince you ...” Here he stopped altogether and looked at me. The silence rang in my ears. “... Well, it would be a chance to see if you could stand having me around, you know, on a regular basis.”

  I felt a ping in my chest, a kind of breathlessness deep inside me. “It’s a ... a nice idea,” I stammered, “but I can’t leave Anna for that long.”

  Michael nodded, then gave me a slow, impish smile. “There’s a ticket there for her, too.”

  “Oh.” I brushed the crumbs from my plate into a little pile and worked at getting air into my lungs. “Well, there’s Libby to consider as well. I mean, she’s been through a lot and I’d hate to just shuttle her off somewhere.”

  Michael pulled out
another envelope. The smile grew to a grin. “I figured you’d say that so I got an extra ticket”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?” His eyes were a soft, liquid gray. As warm and inviting as his smile. All at once the breathlessness in my chest gave way to a tidal wave of feelings. Most of them, I have to admit, were pretty nice. I opened my mouth to speak.

  Michael shook his head. “Sorry, they don’t allow dogs without a six-month quarantine.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “No?”

  “What I was going to say was, it sounds lovely. The very best idea I could imagine.”

  I returned Michael’s grin with one of my own.

  About the Author

  Jonnie Jacobs is the bestselling author of thirteen mystery and suspense novels, including the most recently released Paradise Falls. A former practicing attorney and the mother of two grown sons, she lives in northern California with her husband. Email her at jonnie@jonniejacobs.com or visit her on the web at http://www.jonniejacobs.com.

  Books by Jonnie Jacobs

  Kali O'Brien Novels of Legal Suspense (in order)

  SHADOW OF DOUBT

  EVIDENCE OF GUILT

  MOTION TO DISMISS

  WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE

  COLD JUSTICE

  INTENT TO HARM

  THE NEXT VICTIM

  The Kate Austen Mysteries (in order)

  MURDER AMONG NEIGHBORS

  MURDER AMONG FRIENDS

  MURDER AMONG US

  MURDER AMONG STRANGERS

  Non-series books

  THE ONLY SUSPECT

  PARADISE FALLS