by Kathi Daley
I left Walt’s house and headed to the newspaper to visit with Jack and Kizmet. Jack had been taking the puppy to work with him every day and the cute little girl had quickly become the official Gull Island News mascot.
“Kizzy.” I bent down to greet the bundle of fur who’d run over to cover me with kisses the moment I walked through the door.
“Maybe I should have gotten my kiss first.” Jack laughed as he kissed me hard on the lips. “How did your interview go?”
“I think we might actually have something.” I explained what Walt had seen on the night she died. “Do you think you can find a photo of Tom Kettleman on the internet?”
Jack shrugged. “I can try. He was in the military, so I might be able to find one associated with his service to his country. Perhaps there was a mention in his hometown paper when he went off to Vietnam, or even an obituary. Not all small-town newspapers have digitized their back issues, but some have.”
“Great. If you can find a photo, I’ll show it to Walt. If she was with Tom that night, it’s likely he really did kill his wife.”
Jack sat down at the computer and started to work while I sat on the carpet and played with the puppy. I’d never had a dog and didn’t think I’d even wanted one, but this little girl certainly had captured my heart. She was sweet and playful but knew when to be quiet and still. I wasn’t sure how old she was, but one thing was true: she was a lot mellower than most puppies.
“I’ve got something,” Jack said after only a couple of minutes.
“That was fast.” I stood up, and Kizzy waddled over to her bed to watch from the sidelines.
“I found a wedding photo of Frannie and Tom. It looks like they married a week before he shipped out, although the article says they’d known each other for years.”
I looked at the photo. Neither of them were smiling, which I found odd. “Can you print it?”
Jack hit a button. “Done.”
“I’ll take it by to show to Walt after we speak to Savage.” I glanced at Kizzy. “What do we do with her while we’re out?”
“We’ll only be gone for an hour. She’ll be fine napping in her crate.”
Deputy Savage was waiting for us with the file we were interested in on his desk when we arrived. We took a few minutes to catch him up on what we’d learned to date before asking him what he made of the notes he’d managed to obtain.
“Based on what I’ve read,” Rick began, “it appears the officer who responded to the call realized immediately that Mrs. Kettleman was the fourth victim of the Strangler. He called the FBI, who sent an agent to check it out. The agent agreed. As far as I can tell, no other suspects were considered, and a local investigation was never initiated. It was only a week later that the Strangler’s fifth victim was discovered, and the entire focus of the FBI was to find the man responsible for so many deaths.”
Savage pushed the file across the desk.
I grabbed the file and opened it. I had a hunch Rick was correct about not getting much from it, but I wanted to look for myself. The entire file dealt with the identity of the Strangler and hunches the agents followed in their search for him, but there hadn’t been many interviews conducted on the island.
“It says here the special agent in charge on Gull Island was Brice Jeffries,” I said.
“Yes, that’s correct, but if you’re thinking it might be a good idea to track him down to interview him, I already did. He died four years ago.”
“That isn’t why I mentioned his name. It sounds familiar.”
“It’s doubtful anyone in town would know him. He didn’t live on the island and didn’t visit even at the time of Frannie’s death. He sent a man named Phillip Snyder to ask around a bit, but that was pretty much the extent of the local investigation.”
“That might be, but the name’s familiar. Maybe Ned mentioned him. He did say he’d spoken to the investigator, even though he wasn’t asked to help.”
Savage nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably it. I didn’t think about Ned.”
“I guess we’ll just keep following the leads we have. I have a feeling, though, that this is one mystery we may not solve.”
We left Savage’s office and Jack went back to the newspaper to check on Kizzy while I drove to Walt’s house for the second time that day. I brought him three photos to look at, of Tom Kettleman, Clint Brown, and Roland Carver. Clint had said he’d provided an alibi to the FBI, but the more I considered this case, the less confident I was that the FBI had checked it out.
“Nope,” Walt said when I showed him the photos. “I recognize this one as Clint Brown and this as Roland Carver. Both of them did tend to have wandering eyes, and I’d heard they might have had flings with Frannie, but neither are the man I saw her with.” Walt held one photo a bit closer to his face to get a better look. “The man I saw did have the same coloring and similar features to Roland, however. If you stumble across a man who looks a lot like Roland but isn’t him, you might just have your man.”
Chapter 13
I was pretty down by the time I headed back to the newspaper. I knew going in to this case that solving it was going to be a long shot, but I still felt somewhat deflated at hitting a total roadblock. The only person left on our list was the father of Frannie’s baby, assuming she’d really been pregnant. I realized all we had as proof for that was the word of Frannie’s friend Sherry, and the only proof she had was Frannie’s say-so. Surely they’d done an autopsy, and surely the autopsy would answer that question one way or another.
Deciding I needed that information sooner rather than later, I changed direction in midtrip and headed back to Savage’s office. Luckily, he was still at his desk. I asked about the autopsy and he handed me the file, saying he had work to do, but I was welcome to peruse the file to my heart’s content. It took a while, but I finally found what I was looking for. Frannie had been almost three months pregnant when she died. Could the man she’d been with outside the bar been the father of her child? Might she have made demands he wasn’t willing to meet? Could he have killed her?
Of course, if the man who killed Frannie was the father of her baby that didn’t explain how he knew about the pentagram. Unless…
I looked once more at the name of the FBI agent. Brice Jeffries. Hadn’t Roland Carver said one of the men in the photo in his home was named Brice? I remembered he was tall and thin and had light hair much like Roland’s. Playing a hunch, I left the sheriff’s office and set out for Roland’s house again.
“You’re back,” Roland said when he opened the door.
“I wanted to ask if I could take another look at the photo in your den. In fact, I’d like to take a photo of it with my phone, if you don’t mind.”
Roland stepped aside and I entered. I followed him down the hall to the room where we’d spoken the last time.
“Do you want to tell me why you want to take a picture of the photo?”
“I found someone who saw a man with Frannie on the night she died. He didn’t know him, but he feels he’d be able to recognize him if he saw a photo of him.” I paused to look at the photo and frowned.
“So, you think either Kurt, Brice, Clint, or I killed Frannie? I already told you neither Brice nor Kurt lived on the island, and I had no reason to kill her.”
I continued to study the photo. “I don’t think it was you who killed Frannie. I thought it might be Brice.” I looked at the photo more closely. “It seems someone named Brice Jeffries was the FBI agent working on the Strangler case. It occurred to me that if Brice was the killer, it would explain how the killer knew about the pentagram on the victim’s shoulder. But now that I’ve taken a second look, I don’t think so. My witness said the man wasn’t you but looked a lot like you. Brice has similar coloring but a very different overall look.”
I glanced at the man between Roland and Brice. Roland had said he was his brother, Kurt. He’d invited Brice, who had never sailed, to the event because they needed a fourth, and they knew each other from work. I
f they knew each other from work, and Brice worked for the FBI, that meant …
“It was Kurt,” I blurted out. “He looks just like you and he also worked for the FBI.” I turned and looked at Roland. “Did you know?”
I could tell by the expression on his face that he had. Suddenly, I realized confronting Roland alone in his home hadn’t been the smartest thing to do, even though he was a lot older than me and seemed harmless enough.
“Why didn’t you tell someone what you knew?” I demanded.
A look of remorse crossed Roland’s face. “I thought about telling Ned what had happened, but that wouldn’t bring Frannie back, and Kurt was my brother. I loved him. And I knew Frannie was a flirt who would sleep with any man. Once she was done with them, she’d toss them aside, though not before demanding money for her services. I knew the score and paid her willingly, but Kurt fell in love with her. I mean really, deeply in love. I tried to warn him that she didn’t return his affection, but he wouldn’t listen. When she came to him for money to pay for an abortion, he begged her to marry him. When she reminded him that she was already married, he begged her to run away with him. When she laughed in his face and told him that she’d had her fun with him and never wanted to see him again, he went a little crazy.”
“I guess I could see how your brother could have acted in rage.”
“He was a good man who let that witch send him over the edge. They struggled and he hit her over the head. When he realized what he’d done, he panicked and called me. By the time I arrived, Frannie was already dead. I was scared for him, so I came up with the idea to make it look like the Strangler had killed Frannie. Kurt had been working the case, so he knew all the specifics. As it turned out, we got a few things wrong, but as the special agent working the case, Kurt swept them under the rug, and in the end, everyone thought the Strangler really had killed her. I hoped that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. At least not for Kurt. He couldn’t deal with the fact that he’d killed not only the woman he loved, but his own child. He fell into a deep depression, started drinking, and, eventually, lost his job. He would have ended up on the street if I hadn’t helped him out. There was a part of me that felt burdened by what I’d done, and there were times I considered going to Ned, but Kurt was suffering enough. I didn’t see the point of punishing him further.”
“But…” I stopped myself. Now wasn’t the time to argue with Roland. I’d walk away and let Savage handle it. “You know what? You’re right. I didn’t grow up with a sibling, but if I had, I’d probably do whatever it took to protect them. I wanted to solve this mystery, but now I realize there isn’t any point. Everyone involved is dead.”
I’d just begun to turn to the door when I saw Roland had a small gun in his hand. I froze.
“I can’t let you go. You know too much. If you tell the authorities I knew Kurt was the killer and chose to cover it up, it will be me in prison. I’m an old man and that’s not how I want to spend the rest of my time on earth.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to panic. “I won’t tell. I promise.”
Roland actually paused. I could see he wanted to believe me but couldn’t. “I’m sorry. I can’t take that chance.”
“So you’re going to shoot me?”
“No, I’m not going to do that either. For now, I’m going to lock you up until I can decide what to do with you. Put your bag and your cell phone on the table.”
I did as I was told.
“Now continue down the hall.”
Roland led me to a basement room. It was dreary, built from cylinder blocks, without windows. There were a stack of blankets in a corner.
“Light on or off?’
“On, please.”
He turned on the light, then closed the door, locking it from the outside. I took another deep breath and once again tried not to panic. I wasn’t sure what Roland was going to do with me, but I was in no immediate danger. I looked around the room, but it was obvious there was no way out. I suspected it was soundproof, so screaming wasn’t going to do me any good. All I could do was wait for Roland to return or hope someone would rescue me though no one other than he knew I was here.
Despite the lack of windows, the room seemed to have fresh air. It was a bit on the chilly side, but I could curl up with the blankets, and I found a few cans of food on a shelf. All in all, it wasn’t a horrible place to be trapped for a few hours. If Roland decided just to leave me here, however, would anyone ever find me?
No, I decided, just waiting wasn’t an option. The problem was, I didn’t have a better plan. I wished Roland hadn’t thought to take my phone. I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to find a means of communication among the supplies stacked on the shelves, but looking gave me something to do.
The longer I searched with zero results, the angrier I got. Just when things were coming together, it would be so unfair if I wasn’t alive to enjoy it. Jack and I were in such a good place, and I was excited about working with him at the newspaper. Kizzy was adorable and I was starting to love her already. It was almost like having a child with Jack. Garrett was doing better and would be coming home, and I had a feeling he and Clara might be destined for each other. Vikki and Rick seemed to have found a common ground and George was happy with Meg. It was almost Christmas and love was in the air. I wanted to be there to enjoy it.
“Damn,” I said aloud as I hit the wall with my hand. When I saw blood on my knuckles, I realized how stupid that had been. I grabbed a blanket, walked across the room, and sat on the floor near the door. Waiting appeared to be all I could do after all.
To occupy my mind with something other than my dire predicament, I turned my mind to Secret Santa. I’d decided not to try to publish an article outing the guy, but I was still curious. Evan Paddington was still my number-one suspect, but I’d learned over the past week that he was in Europe, which was why he hadn’t returned my call, and it seemed to me Secret Santa would stay closer to home with the big day just around the corner. I supposed Evan could have someone helping him. Being out of town when the annual Christmas miracle occurred would take the focus off him if he didn’t want to be found out and worried there were people like me who suspected him. Still, the gifts were always well thought out and personal. You’d think he’d want to be here to see the expression on the face of the recipient.
And then there was the sheer amount of money spent. I did a quick tally, and over the past twelve years, Secret Santa must have spent close to a half million dollars. Some years the gift would have required a lesser amount—maybe ten or twenty thousand dollars—but others were much more significant, with Secret Santa paying off debts or donating real estate. Evan had inherited money, but I had no idea how much.
“There has to be a way out of here,” I mumbled to myself as I gave up thinking about Evan and began to pace again. Maybe I could work the lock on the door loose if I pounded on it, or if I screamed loud enough, someone would hear me.
The longer I paced, the more panicked I began to feel. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but I figured Jack would be looking for me by now. He would most likely have alerted Savage, and at some point, the deputy would think to look at the report I’d been studying. If I could link the name of the FBI agent in charge of the Strangler investigation to the man in Roland’s photo, with enough time, Jack would as well.
I wondered if Roland had left the house or he was still upstairs. Had he thought to move my car or turn off my cell? If he hadn’t turned off the phone, Savage could ping it. Both Jack and Rick Savage were intelligent men. They’d figure it out eventually.
It wasn’t a lot later before I heard movement upstairs. I hesitated for a moment, not knowing who was responsible for the sounds, but I decided I’d waited long enough and began to scream. Several seconds later, Rick and Jack crashed through the door.
Jack wrapped me in his arms and I fought off tears of relief. “Roland’s brother killed Frannie,” I blurted out.
“He isn’t here,” Rick
informed me.
“The marina. Try the marina. There’s no way he’d leave the island for good without his boat.”
Chapter 14
Friday, December 22
Brit’s A Christmas Carol was better than anything I could have imagined. It was sweet and funny and really brought home the feeling of Christmas. Brit played Mrs. Cratchit, and she only had a few lines, but her facial expressions as she stood in the background while her husband, Bob, was speaking to Mr. Scrooge, were priceless.
It had been a crazy couple of days, but things were settling down at last, and I was ready to get on with the festivities. The main house was decorated, gifts had been purchased and wrapped, the baking complete, and food for the weekend bought and stored.
Rick had caught up with Roland at the marina, as I suggested. He’d confessed to his part in the cover-up of Frannie’s murder and was spending the holiday in jail. I wasn’t sure how things would work out, but I hoped he’d be able to cut a deal with the district attorney to avoid time in prison, as he’d feared. He was an old man and all he’d done was to protect his brother. He may not have made the right choice, but a lot of people would have done the same thing in his place.
Garrett was home and settled in his room, and he and Blackbeard seemed over-the-top happy to be together again. Garrett was able to get around fine on his own between his walker and his wheelchair. I wanted this visit to go well so Garrett would be confident enough make arrangements to move back to the resort for good.
Clara was delighted to have Garrett in the house. They’d spent a lot of time playing cards and watching old Christmas movies. When she wasn’t with Garrett, Clara spent most of her time baking, which was working out fine because Garrett loved sweets.
Brit and George were packed and ready to fly out to spend the weekend with their family. They hadn’t visited in quite some time, so I was glad they’d planned this trip for the long holiday. Rick had come to the house for the dinner we were preparing and Vikki still intended to go home with him for the weekend, and Alex was packed for his trip to the Bahamas.
