by T. L. Haddix
The men walked up, and she showed them the paper. “Who is this guy, Dimitri? I know his face, but I can’t think of his name.”
Recognition dawned on Dimitri’s face. “He’s that new doctor over at the Primary Care Clinic.” He looked at Andre. “Remember? He stitched up Max when she cut her hand a couple of weeks ago, and he’s been in here a few times for meat. I forget his name.” He turned back to Stacy and Maria. “These your bad guys?”
“They’re persons of interest, but that’s all.” She moved her gaze to Andre, who had picked up the papers and was studying them closer. “Can you remember his name?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t, but I bet Max can. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him the whole time she was getting stitches. I do remember that he said he hasn’t been in town very long, only a couple of months. You want me to call my sister and ask her the guy’s name?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind. Just don’t mention why we need to know, if you can avoid it.”
He made the call. When his sister answered, he asked her if she remembered the name of the doctor who stitched her up. She responded, and he thanked her, and hung up without letting her ask any questions.
Carla raised her brows at her son. “You’ll pay for that later, you know.”
“She’ll get over it.” He laid the flier down on the table. “Your guy’s name is Chad Ormsby.”
Stacy pulled the flier to her and wrote the name across the bottom. “You said he’s an M.D. at the Primary Care Clinic?”
“That’s right,” said Dimitri. “For what it’s worth, he sewed Maxi up all nice and neat. She barely has a scar, and it was a bad cut.”
“Thanks, everyone. This really helps.”
“Have either of you seen the man on this second flier?” Maria asked, tapping the paper. They shook their heads.
“If he’s been in here, it’s not while I’ve been working. If you ladies don’t need anything else, I’d better get back to work.” Dimitri excused himself, and headed toward the kitchen. Carla followed him.
“I guess we’d better be going, too.” Gathering the papers, Stacy stood. When Andre stopped her, she frowned.
“Do you have a second?”
With a nod for Maria to go ahead, she cleared her throat. “Sure. What’s up?”
He hesitated. “Were you serious about Friday? Dinner, I mean?”
Stacy wet her lips and rocked back on her feet a little bit, cheeks turning pink. “I’m sorry if Maria embarrassed you. She means well, but she speaks sometimes before she thinks.”
Scowling, he asked, “So you don’t want to go out?”
Throwing caution to the wind, she gave in to the inevitable. “I wouldn’t mind going out Friday evening, if you don’t have other plans. I don’t want to interrupt your schedule or anything.”
His expression was still fierce but softened a little at her words. “Is six o’clock still good, then?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Six is fine.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. He took the pen she was holding clenched in her hand, and wrote a number on the back. “My cell number.” He handed her the card. “Call me if you need to. If your schedule changes or something. Or if you just want to talk.”
Stacy took the card, fingering its edges. “See you at six.”
Walking across the street to the courthouse, she cursed. She’d had the chance to turn down the date, but something inside her told her to keep it. Entering the courthouse, she pushed Andre to the back of her mind. She had a lot of prep work to do before the meeting that afternoon.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The afternoon briefing was a very tense affair. Once everyone was assembled, Ethan went over the pertinent points he and Jason had found in the journals and tapes from Charity’s apartment.
“We cataloged everything. We have one hundred ninety-six journals, and one hundred seven miniDV tapes. All the tapes are about sixty minutes long, and it looks like she had a motion sensor on the camera, so that it would only record when she hit the button or when there was movement in front of the sensor.”
“These tapes only record for sixty minutes, and she was pretty frugal with their use. She seemed to record enough of the encounters to identify her partners, but not the whole ‘date,’ if you will. Like Bert suspected, she had a button built into her phone system she would hit when she wanted to start or stop recording, and a similar button on the security keypad by the front door.”
Jason added, “When we watched the last tape again, we noticed the ‘jumps’ in the time stamp, and that’s when we figured out what was going on.”
“So if she hadn’t been meticulous about the way she recorded, we never would have gotten the shots of her killer, would we?” Wyatt asked.
Ethan shook his head. “Nope, not a chance. As it was, we only have a couple minutes of him on tape, and most of that is sound and flashes of movement.”
The sheriff perched on the edge of the table, studying the board depicting the crime’s probable timeline. With arms crossed and a pen dangling from his fingertips like a cigarette, his tension was palpable. Standing, he turned and looked down the table at the boxes and stacks of evidence. “How far have we gotten in reviewing all this?”
“We got everything organized by date, and we split into teams. We weren’t actually able to start reviewing until about ten last night, and Jason and I were here until early this morning,” Ethan said. “I’ve been reading journals, and Jason’s been doing tapes. I’ve finished six journals, and I’m starting on the seventh.”
“Jason?”
“I’m starting on the ninth video now. I’m able to get through them pretty quickly because I can fast forward through most of the actual sex once I’ve gotten a good shot of her partners.”
“That’s not been pleasant, I’d imagine,” Wyatt remarked.
Jason made a face. “So far, she’s had five different male partners, and the tapes are dated from March fourteenth through April fifteenth, three years ago.”
“Who were the men?” Stacy asked. “Were you able to recognize them?”
“Some.” He was grim as he reached for a bottle of water. “I know two of them well, and one by sight. Not sure who the other two are, but I logged the time stamp on the tapes so that Maria can pull their pictures off. So far, I’ve been treated to seeing my own uncle and cousin getting naked with Charity, as well as Reese Bolen.”
Stacy snorted. “That’s no surprise. Reese Bolen tries to nail everything in town that wears a skirt and some things that don’t.”
Maria agreed. “I can’t tell you how many times he’s hit on me. Turning him down has almost become a ritual.”
Wyatt frowned, then turned to Jason. “John and Barney? Not together, I hope?”
“No! Please, God, don’t put that image in my mind. It’s bad enough, as is.” Shuddering, he rubbed his eyes. “So far she’s just had one partner at a time, and I hope it stays that way. And it’s only been men so far.”
“Do I need to make up fliers for each of the unidentified men?” Maria asked.
“No. I think as long as we don’t see them again in the more recent tapes, and if they’re not mentioned in the journals from the past few months, it’s probably safe to assume none of these men are the killer.” Wyatt sat down in one of the chairs. “That’s not to say we won’t keep our eyes open. If we see a man in the videos who matches the description of our guy, by all means, see what you can do. Ethan, what have you found out from the journals so far?”
Ethan sat back in his chair and rubbed his jaw. “The first journals start about fourteen years ago. She talks about boys she had crushes on, her parents, that sort of thing. She would have been about sixteen or so, and it’s just typical teenage angst and dreams. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, no red flags.”
“Does she mention names?” Stacy asked.
“Some, but mostly she uses initials. However, her tone changes toward the end of the second
journal, becomes more… brittle, I guess. She uses some veiled references that lead me to think there must have been some kind of abuse going on. Did you learn anything about her past from her attorney today, Stacy?”
“Oh, yes. Your suspicions are dead on. Apparently, her father was raping her. Oh, and Charity Vaughn? Not the name she was born with.”
Wyatt scowled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Charity Vaughn was born Margaret Kelly Vernon, Margie for short, and she grew up just thirty miles from here, in Clayhole, Indiana.”
Ethan sat straight up in his chair and looked at her without blinking. “Son of a bitch.”
“I thought that might get your attention.” To everyone else, she explained, “Charity was Lauren Grant’s cousin.”
“That changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it?” Maria asked.
Ethan and Stacy both nodded. “Yes, and it gets better,” Stacy said. “Or worse, depending on your point of view.” She told them about Charity’s large estate.
“Where’d she get that kind of money?”
“After she left here, she managed to get to Georgia, and hooked up with a couple who ran an escort service. They took her to the Miami area and pimped her out at parties. She met someone there who got her out of that life. Ever hear of Mason Smythe?”
Wyatt just groaned and covered his face with his hands. Stacy knew he was probably ready to hand over his badge and run for the hills right about now.
Jason was the first to recover. “Holy mother of—the Mason Smythe? Reclusive billionaire? One of the nation’s most famous gallery owners? That Mason Smythe?”
Stacy nodded. “One and the same. Charity swore to her attorney that he was never a client, but instead had taken her in and, for all intents and purposes, adopted her. He helped her change her name, and paid for all kinds of plastic surgery. That’s why no one here recognized her.”
“And that’s where her money came from.” Maria’s face reflected her surprise. “Speaking of that, how much are we talking about?”
“At the time of her death, she was worth about twelve million dollars, if you factor in the value of the gallery.” She was grim as she finished. “That’s an awful lot of motive, if you ask me.”
“Twelve million—I need a drink,” Wyatt said. Standing, he stalked to the room’s only window. “So, Charity Vaughn, aka Margie Vernon, is Lauren Grant’s cousin. Does Lauren know that, I wonder?”
“Not from what Davis told me,” Stacy said. “Charity went to great lengths to make sure no one here recognized her, especially Lauren. But this does lend a lot of weight to the theory that the vandalism at the Brown Bag and her murder are related. Ethan?”
“No, I’d say she doesn’t know. She told me about her cousin during our interview, and I’ve talked to her about it since then. If she knows about the dual identity, I’ll eat my badge. I was supposed to have gone up to Jefferson County today to talk to Troy Vernon about the vandalism. He’s the guy Lauren thinks might be responsible. I don’t believe in coincidences. If she’s right, he’s very likely involved in the murder.”
Stacy shuffled through the folder containing the will. “Troy Vernon is Charity—Margie—whatever the heck you want to call her, he’s her brother.” She looked at Ethan, her heart starting to pound. “I think we have a solid suspect.”
“Thank God,” Wyatt said. “I’ll call Sheriff Wallace up in Madison, have him send a unit to pick Troy up for questioning. If we’re lucky, the sheriff will be in the mood to play ball and let us bring him over here for a talk.”
Ethan stood, agreeing. “Good. While you do that, though? We need to go talk to Lauren.”
Chapter Thirty
The doorbell rang a few minutes after five o’clock. Lauren had just gotten out of the shower and was trying to decide what to wear for the night out with Annie and Beth. “Good. They can help me decide.” Grabbing her robe, she hurried downstairs. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, the bell rang again. “I’m coming already,” she hollered.
She threw open the door. “You’re early! Oh, crap.”
Instead of her friends, Ethan and Stacy stood on the porch, looking slightly surprised by her greeting.
Stacy smiled. “We obviously aren’t who you were expecting. Sorry about that.”
Lauren knew her face was fiery red, and she clutched the robe tighter around her neck. “Is everything okay? My parents, Ava?”
“Fine, as far as we know,” said Ethan. “That’s not why we’re here. Mind if we come in for a few minutes?”
She invited them in, leading them to the living room. “Do you mind if I run upstairs and put on some clothes?”
“That’s fine,” Stacy told her.
She dashed upstairs. Grabbing the clothes she’d taken off earlier, she pulled them on and went back down to the living room. They both turned as she came in, and their somber expressions warned her that whatever the reason for their visit, it wasn’t good news.
“What’s going on?”
“You’ve heard about Charity Vaughn?” Ethan asked, watching her closely.
“That she was found dead? Yes, I heard. It’s horrible. Have you found the person who did it?”
“We have a suspect, yes,” said Stacy. “How well did you know Charity?”
“Not very well. We were both in the Ladies’ Business League, and we saw each other at the stores, a few social functions, but that’s all. We didn’t run in the same circles,” she told them. “While we were friendly, we weren’t friends.”
Ethan and Stacy exchanged a look, and Stacy pulled out a sheet of paper, handing it to Lauren. “Do you recognize this man?”
With a startled gasp, she looked up at Stacy, her eyebrows raised. “That’s Troy. Troy Vernon.”
“Are you certain?” Stacy asked.
“Positive.” She looked back at the flier and frowned. “You don’t think Troy had something to do with Charity’s death?”
“Would it surprise you if we said yes?” Ethan asked her.
Lauren was quiet for a moment, and then shook her head. “No, I don’t suppose it would. Remember what I told you?” She looked at Stacy. “You know the creepy feeling that some men give you? Guys who set off a light bulb inside you that says, ‘something’s not right with him’?”
“Oh, yes,” Stacy replied. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s a kind of radar women have, an instinct.”
They both looked at Ethan, who nodded. “Obviously, being male, I’ve never experienced the phenomenon, but I’ve heard my mom and sisters mention it.”
“Well, Troy sets that off in me,” Lauren said. “That day in the shop, when I had the blowup with Mary Margaret, he gave me a look that set me on edge. Maybe I’m overreacting, and it was just that I was upset about seeing them, but I don’t think I’d want to be alone with Troy anywhere.” She shook her head. “But why would he kill Charity? There’s no reason for it…” Her voice trailed off when she read their looks. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”
Ethan’s voice was quiet. “Lauren, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just put it out there. Charity Vaughn was living under an assumed name. Apparently, she changed it years ago, when she moved from Indiana to Florida.” He looked at her and saw that she was connecting the dots. She started shaking her head as he continued. “Charity was your cousin, Margie Vernon.”
She stared at him, horrified. “No. No, you’re wrong.” Standing, she backed away from them. “You’re wrong, damn it. I would have known. I would have known.” She clapped a hand over her mouth to hold a scream of protest inside, and it was only then that she realized she was crying.
Stacy spoke up. “I’m sorry, Lauren, but it is true.”
The front door opened and Beth and Annie came in, just in time to hear Lauren’s denial and Stacy’s response.
“What the hell is going on?” Beth asked, glaring at Ethan as she rushed up to comfort her friend. “What did you do to her?”
His scowl was f
ierce and he opened his mouth to fire back, but stopped and lowered his voice. “Not a damned thing.”
Lauren, who let Annie guide her to a chair, agreed. “Beth, don’t yell at him. He just told me something very upsetting, but it’s not Ethan’s fault.”
“The family’s okay, aren’t they?” Annie asked.
“They’re fine,” Stacy answered when Lauren couldn’t. “Lauren, is there anything we can do for you?”
She started to say no, but realized there was something. “How did I not know it was her?”
“From what her attorney told me earlier, she had undergone extensive plastic surgery—nose, breasts, possibly more. She dyed her hair, and wore colored contact lenses. I’m sorry.”
Lauren’s arms were tightly crossed. A tear spilled over and she angrily wiped it away. “Why would she lie?” she asked them, voice shaking. “If she was here, all this time, why would she lie about who she was? Why wouldn’t she come to me, tell me she was Margie?”
Her voice broke over Margie’s name, and she stood. “I have to go. Excuse me.” Without waiting, she ran down the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
~ * * * ~
Back in the living room, Annie and Beth were trying to figure out the situation. Annie spoke before Beth could. “Would one of you please tell us what’s going on?”
“How much do you know about Lauren’s cousin Margie?” Ethan asked.
Beth shrugged. “We’ve all talked about it. We’re aware of the situation. Why?”
“Because Charity Vaughn was her cousin.” He saw the moment when the words made sense to her.
“Oh, my God.” Beth looked at Annie. “Oh, no.”
“Are you sure?” Annie asked. “Surely it’s a mistake.”
Stacy told her it wasn’t. She and Ethan stood. “Are the two of you able to stay with Lauren?”
“Of course,” Beth assured her. “We’ll call her parents, let them know what’s happening if that’s okay. Do you have any idea who the killer is?” Ethan’s eyes narrowed, but before he could speak, she continued. “I’m not asking because I’m going to run put it in the paper. Her parents are going to ask, and they have the right to know. Use your brain, Ethan, just this once—I know it’s hard, but I have every confidence you can pull it off.”
