The Only Suspect

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “What a shock to discover at the age of eighteen that you have a twin.”

  “The bottom line is that my wife was Andrea, not Eva. Andrea wasn’t involved with organized crime. She didn’t even know Eric, much less go to see him right before she disappeared.”

  Hannah hadn’t forgotten Phipps’s warning that Sam and his wife might be part of a crime ring. “The man who broke into your house said something about Eric though.”

  “He must have made the same mistake as Phipps,” Sam told her.

  “Mistaking your wife for her twin sister.”

  He nodded. “That could be the reason she was killed too. The real target may have been Eva.”

  Hannah frowned.

  “There would have to be some reason the killer even knew to look for my wife in the first place, but I’m thinking maybe Eva pointed him our way to get herself off the hook.”

  “Set up her own sister, you mean?” Hannah shouldn’t be shocked, she supposed. She and Claire had been on good terms, and look what Claire had done to her. Eva and Andrea hadn’t even known about each other until late into their teens. If there’d been bad feelings between them, and there might well have been ...

  “What about Ben Albright’s wine cellar?” Hannah asked. “How would the killer, a mobster from Las Vegas in your scenario, know about the wine cellar?”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. But a person interested in pinning this on me could probably have found out.”

  “And why would a person from organized crime be interested in setting you up to take the fall for your wife’s murder?” Hannah tried not to sound overly cynical, but she was sure her skepticism showed.

  Sam’s shoulders dropped. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  Part of her wanted to put a hand on his and offer comfort, but that side of her didn’t belong here. Still, Hannah wasn’t ready to buy Phipps’s conspiracy theory. It would take an amazing actor to fake the anguish she saw in Sam’s eyes. And by telling her about Andrea, Sam had actually made his own case worse, assuming the whole preposterous story was true.

  “When we were operating under the theory that your wife was Eva,” Hannah said, “it seemed logical to think her murder might be tied with the crime ring. Now, despite your mistaken-identity hypothesis, it’s more of a stretch.”

  “I’m aware of that. And I know Dallas is convinced I killed her. Maybe you are too. But stretch or not, I have a feeling Eva and Eric are implicated in my wife’s death.”

  This time Hannah did reach out, tentatively and very lightly, to brush Sam’s hand with her own. “I want to believe you, Sam. But parts of your story just don’t add up.”

  She waited a moment for him to respond. When he didn’t, she continued. “No one at the hospital remembers seeing you the Sunday morning your wife disappeared. And the flower stand where you bought her flowers—it’s on the other side of town from the hospital.”

  She expected a rebuttal, a defense of some sort that explained away the discrepancies. Instead, he looked at her then away. His expression was drawn. “The truth is, I woke up Sunday morning out in the country with my car in a ditch and no memory of what had happened.”

  “No memory? You mean now you’re claiming amnesia?” The breeze fluttered the leaves in the trees above them. Their shadows flickered across Sam’s face, making his expression difficult to read.

  “Not just claiming; it’s the truth. At first, when I got home and Maureen wasn’t there, I figured she was just angry at me. I didn’t even think of calling the cops. It wasn’t until later that I got worried, but by then I’d already told Sherri Moore I’d gone to the hospital that morning.” He smoothed his hands along his pant legs. “Past experience taught me that telling the truth is no guarantee people will believe you, so it wasn’t such a big deal at first. Then one thing led to another, and pretty soon I was tangled in a lie.”

  Hannah was still reeling with Sam’s revelations. “What do you remember?” she asked.

  “Not much between Saturday and Sunday mornings, but I was apparently at work Saturday.”

  “So the last time you saw your wife was Saturday morning rather than Sunday morning?” Hannah wasn’t sure what difference it made, but she was trying to get a clear picture in her head.

  “Right. Though Sherri saw her Saturday afternoon when she dropped Molly off for Heather’s slumber party. When Sherri called me Sunday morning, it was because she’d been unable to reach Maureen.”

  “What do you think caused your lack of memory?”

  “At first, I thought maybe I’d blacked out from drinking or hit my head in an accident.”

  Hannah remembered what Dallas had said about Sam’s drinking. “You’re an alcoholic, aren’t you?”

  He nodded then looked her in the eye. “But I’ve been sober for five years. Besides, I don’t think it was drink, and I don’t think the amnesia was trauma induced. I think I was drugged.”

  “So that the killer, who is a member of organized crime and has mistaken your wife for her twin sister, could pin the murder on you?” Hannah’s voice was veined with sarcasm. She hadn’t intended that, but the story was so far-fetched she couldn’t help it. She wanted to believe Sam, did believe him on many levels, but this hypothesis strained her credulity.

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  “Drugged you how?” Hannah asked.

  Sam lifted his hands helplessly and again said nothing.

  “If you don’t remember what happened,” Hannah pointed out, “you could have killed her.”

  “I loved her. Why would I hurt her?”

  Would Sam have told Hannah about blacking out if he thought there was a chance he’d killed his wife? Probably not. But his thinking he had nothing to do with the murder didn’t make it so.

  “Remember the flyer in your wife’s pocket?” she asked. “You told us it was her handwriting on the back. Is that true?”

  “It looked like hers.” He paused, thinking. “That was before I knew she had a twin, but I doubt their handwriting would be that similar. Especially since Eva was left-handed and Andrea right. Why?”

  She hesitated. “The flyer was one those monthly recipes handed out at the hospital. It didn’t officially come out until Monday. The day after you reported her missing.”

  Sam’s face drained of color. “You mean she was alive on Monday?” Sam looked like a man reeling from confusion.

  “That’s one explanation. It’s also conceivable that someone in the medical profession could get his hands on the flyers before Monday.”

  “Me, in other words.”

  Hannah got to her feet. “I want you to come down to the station so we can write up exactly what did happen. The truth this time.”

  She had the feeling it wasn’t going to make things any clearer, but at least they’d have the right pieces of the puzzle to work with.

  CHAPTER 53

  Dallas looked bored. It was clear he wasn’t buying my explanation.

  We were back in the interview room where I’d been questioned earlier. Only this time, I felt the walls closing in on me. My palms were sweating and my throat was dry.

  Hannah had given him a brief rundown of our conversation in the park, and then I’d told it again in my own words. As far as I could tell, Dallas hadn’t listened with anything approaching an open mind.

  “Bull,” he said now, stabbing the table with his index finger.

  “My wife had a twin,” I told him. “You can check it out for yourself.” Of course the attorney, Dunbar, might not speak as freely to a cop as he had to me. But there’d have to be a birth certificate, wouldn’t there?

  Dallas wasn’t impressed. “So what if she was a twin? I’m willing to accept that it was Eva and not Andrea who was in Las Vegas, but none of that has any bearing on who murdered your wife. The evidence is there, Sam. It all points to you.”

  “It can’t. I didn’t kill her.”

  “You don’t know what you did, Sam. You just admitted you don’t re
member a thing between Saturday and Sunday mornings.”

  Anxiety squeezed my gut. Why hadn’t I listened to Jesse and kept my mouth shut? “I know I didn’t kill her,” I said with newfound conviction.

  “The evidence,” Dallas asked, waving his hand in the air like a butterfly, “it was arranged just to frame you?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to rise to the bait.

  “And the guy who killed your wife and tried to frame you is a member of organized crime? Someone who came all the way to Monte Vista and happened to stumble upon a woman who was the spitting image of Eva Flynn, a woman he was looking to murder?” Dallas turned away from the table with an incredulous shake of his head.

  “The man who broke into Sam’s house did mention Eric’s name,” Hannah pointed out.

  Dallas looked at her. “I can’t believe you buy this.”

  “I’m not buying anything, Dallas. But Sam has brought us new information we need to follow up on.”

  “This is Monte Vista, for Chrissakes. We don’t have mob murders here, but we damn sure have husbands who kill their wives.”

  “Even if my wife’s murder had nothing to do with Eva,” I said, “you need to keep looking. Because it wasn’t me.”

  Dallas narrowed his eyes at me. “We’re going to let you go today, Sam. But I promise you, it’s only a matter of time before we arrest you. You’re not going to get away with murder a second time.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Annalise Rose watched the collage of brightly colored sails dancing along the Charles River outside her dormitory window. A lot of the MIT dorms were located on Memorial Drive paralleling the river, but only the south-facing rooms had a view. She counted herself lucky to have ended up with such a choice location, but there were times, like today, when it made studying difficult. With a final on Monday, no matter how inviting the afternoon, she was stuck inside.

  And she’d be stuck inside all summer too. Not even doing something challenging like research for a professor or interning with a company she might be interested in working for after graduation. Instead, she’d be holed up in the back room of a bank, pushing paper for Uncle Hal. At least the job paid well, which was the only reason she’d taken it.

  Her cousin Lisa had worked at the bank too. Three summers in a row when she was in college. Annalise had been too young at the time to pay any attention, but Lisa had told her about it later, when Annalise was twelve.

  It was summer, and she was being shipped off to camp, when what she really wanted was to stay home with her friends. Lisa told her summer camp was a whole lot better than working, so she should count herself lucky. Coming from anyone else, the advice would have sounded preachy. But Lisa wasn’t like that. She didn’t lecture the way Annalise’s parents did when they gave their you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are speeches. And she didn’t consider herself superior because she was older. Lisa had been like an older sister, a wonderful sister, wise and generous. She gave Annalise advice about makeup and clothes and even boys. They laughed that their parents had given them similar names. Lisa. Annalise. It was like they really were sisters.

  And little Molly was so cute. Annalise had helped Lisa out after school, and she babysat if Lisa and Sam weren’t going to be out too late. Annalise smiled at the memory. She’d had such a crush on Sam. An innocent crush, but she’d dreamed of growing up to be just like Lisa, with a husband like Sam and a darling baby girl. When Lisa was murdered, Annalise felt like her whole world had been torn apart.

  After Sam was arrested, Lisa’s entire family, her parents included, wanted nothing to do with him. Annalise had been too young to attend the trial, and she hadn’t seen Sam since the funeral. But she’d seen the grief in his eyes that day, and she’d never been able to reconcile that anguish, and the memory of the gentle man she’d known, with the image of a husband who’d murder his wife.

  It all seemed like such a long time ago. She hadn’t thought much about it until the other day, when she’d overheard her mom and Aunt Sylvia talking. It brought Annalise up short to realize Molly would be only a year younger now than Annalise had been then. Uncle Hal was talking about bringing Molly home to stay with them for good. Annalise supposed it might be fun to be a big sister, the way Lisa had been to her, but the circumstances were kind of strange. Besides, she didn’t see how Uncle Hal could just take the kid away from her father.

  Annalise didn’t know whether it was good or not that the cops were still looking into Lisa’s murder. What would happen if Sam was arrested a second time?

  She was glad she’d told the detective about “the monster” who’d been bothering Lisa. It was probably nothing, but it had weighed on her mind ever since she’d heard Aunt Sylvia tell her mother that Sam’s second wife had also been murdered. In a tone that implied, Sam’s done it again.

  Annalise’s roommate, Becky, picked up her Rollerblades and backpack. “Catch you later,” she said.

  “You off to the library?”

  “I should be, but Aaron and I are going to the afternoon concert in the park instead.”

  “Have fun.” With a pang of envy, Annalise turned back to her problem sets. Boring.

  She got up and closed the blinds. Maybe studying would be easier if she wasn’t looking out at the beautiful day she was missing. Halfway through a long calculation, her computer beeped, announcing an instant message from a friend. Glad for the reprieve, Annalise responded. They commiserated at being stuck with finals. When the friend signed off, Annalise went to Google and typed in Sam Russell’s name.

  Until Aunt Sylvia mentioned him the other day, Annalise hadn’t thought of him for years, but now she was curious. She was hoping she’d find a newspaper story. She wanted to see what he looked like now. And to know what had happened to his second wife.

  There were quite a few hits. Some were medical associations and such, but there was a lot of news coverage too. She read through several articles. Sam had reported his wife missing and then she’d turned up dead.

  Strangled and stabbed, just like Lisa.

  Annalise felt a shiver work its way down her spine.

  She clicked on a related link and jumped to another screen revealing a photo of Sam. She enlarged the picture. He looked just like she remembered. Those soft crinkly eyes that seemed to laugh even when he didn’t. He’d been so kind to her, hadn’t treated her like a kid at all.

  Another link. Another photo of Sam. And next to it, a photo of his missing wife.

  Annalise drew in her breath sharply and again enlarged the image.

  Could it be?

  But it made no sense.

  Studying forgotten, she fumbled through her backpack for the card Detective Donahue had given her.

  CHAPTER 55

  I called my dad from the police station so he wouldn’t worry that I was stuck in Atlanta. Instead, he worried that I was with the cops. He and Chase and Molly were waiting the minute I walked into the house.

  “What happened?” Dad asked. “Why did they need to talk to you again?”

  “I’m the one who called them,” I explained. Well, I’d called Hannah anyway, which somehow made it more palatable. But it hadn’t stayed that way for long. Now I regretted the whole thing.

  “Why’d you call them?” Chase asked.

  “There’s a new twist I thought they should know about.”

  “About the adoption? Were you able to talk to the attorney who handled it?”

  I nodded. We sat around the kitchen table, where the others had just finished a breakfast of waffles and bacon, and I told them what I’d learned about Eva and her twin, Andrea Wycoff.

  Dad scratched his head. “Maureen was Andrea?”

  “Right.”

  “Why was she so secretive about her family?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably because she didn’t have any real family left, aside from Eva. And telling me about Eva would mean talking about the adoption.”

  Molly touched the locket Maureen had give her. “You mean this isn�
�t even Maureen’s? It’s her sister’s?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Why did she give it to me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she thought you’d like it.” But Molly was a sentimentalist. I knew the locket had lost much of its meaning for her.

  “None of this gets the cops any closer to finding her killer,” Chase pointed out.

  “I know.”

  We tossed around theories and possible explanations for a bit, then Chase headed home. Suddenly I hit the wall of exhaustion.

  “I need to take a short nap. Are you okay with that, Molly?”

  She nodded unconvincingly.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I’m just beat.”

  “I’ll stay a bit,” Dad said.

  “You’re not going to leave again, are you?” Molly asked me.

  “No. I’m home to stay. We’ll rent a movie tonight and have takeout Chinese food for dinner.” Usually, a winning combination as far as Molly was concerned.

  She wasn’t so easily placated today. But after a moment, she gave me a hug. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “I’ll try.”

  My sleep wasn’t tight or restful. I tossed and thrashed, jolted awake what seemed like every few minutes by nonsensical and exhausting dreams. Lisa and Maureen, Eva and Andrea, Hannah and Phipps, and even Eric Vance—they all made repeated appearances as I climbed endless stairs and raced to find the right room for a big test.

  I didn’t sleep soundly, but I did sleep much longer than I’d intended. When I got up, it was three o’clock and the house was quiet. I found a note on the kitchen counter from Dad.

  Molly and I have gone to play miniature golf. Back by four.

  I showered, which cleared a few of the cobwebs from my head, and then tackled the job of cleaning up the kitchen. Dad and Chase were great with Molly, but neither of them paid much attention to things like bread crumbs and bacon grease.