“Do you know why we’re here, Luisa?” Whitney asked. They had decided Luisa might be more responsive to one of her own, another moneyed blueblood.
She hesitated. Tess knew she would lie to them if she thought she could get away with it. At last she wrote, I have my suppositions.
“You forwarded a list, through your foundation’s attorney, to a consortium of nonprofits interested in the issue of domestic violence.”
Luisa nodded.
“You decided which other nonprofits should be invited—and you made sure I was included. Your idea, your list, your project. My family’s board doesn’t have much experience with social issues. But you knew I’d jump at it, didn’t you? And you knew that Tess and I were old friends and I’d put her forward as the private investigator.”
Luisa had no response to any of this, no denial and no affirmation.
“In fact, it was your lawyer who suggested we hire a private detective. And it was your lawyer who said, ”Don’t you know someone like that, Whitney?“ ”
She wrote slowly, with more care than she needed. I cannot speak to things that happened when I was not there.
“Where did you get the list, Luisa?”
Research, she wrote. We have an excellent library here.
“Research?” Whitney had reached the limits of her patience— which, admittedly, was never a distant boundary. “With your palsied hands? If there’s a computer on the premises, it’s a cinch you don’t know how to use it.”
It was a great advantage, refusing to speak. Luisa simply stared at Whitney. The partial paralysis of her face made it particularly difficult to read. The stroke had left her with an Elvis-like sneer.
Tess turned to Whitney and mouthed, Leave. Whitney shook her head at first, but something in Tess’s face convinced her to go. She, too, stomped out to the hallway, shutting the door behind her.
Tess crouched by the bed, so she could speak as quietly as possible and still be heard. “Luisa. I kept your secret. It’s been over two years, and I’ve never told anyone how Seamon O’Neal arranged for Jonathan Ross to be killed.”
Her letters were not as careful now. I was never sure, she wrote, that he intended for him to die. The revisionism stunned Tess. Here was Luisa O’Neal on what appeared to be her deathbed, and she could not quite admit that anyone in her family was capable of wrongdoing.
“Why resist the truth, Luisa? Your husband is dead, beyond justice for the things he did, even if those things could be proven. Your son remains in the institution where you had him committed. The man who took credit for your son’s crimes has been executed for his own. No one mourns him, no one feels sorry for him. All your scores are settled, everyone you love is safe. Why can’t you afford me the same privilege?”
Luisa began to turn another page in her sketchbook but wrote instead at the bottom of the sullied page, I never wanted anything to do with you. I had hoped never to see you again. I am only a go-between.
“Whose?”
Still on the same page. I must not say.
“Why? What are you scared of?”
Quickly, fiercely, as if she were carving the words into Tess’s flesh:
Not death. I want to die.
“Great, good for you. You’re much braver than the rest of us. So what does this person have on you?”
Luisa placed her shaking hand on a silver frame at her bedside. A young woman, a woman who resembled the Luisa that Tess had once known, with luminous eyes and soft dark hair. She was with a handsome if beefy man and a chubby baby boy. The daughter, Tess recalled. Luisa had a daughter in Chicago.
Luisa wrote, He will kill her. I am sure of that.
Her own eyes were still beautiful, once you got past their withered casings, the faded brows and lashes. Deep in the damaged face, the eyes were as blue as ever, almost robin’s-egg blue. Tess remembered that Luisa Julia O’Neal had been known as Ellie Jay. She had been one of the city’s best female tennis players, strong and vigorous, albeit in a ladylike way. Now she was dying by inches. What disease had not taken from her, fear would. Fear was exacting a greater toll on her body now than all her medical problems.
“Luisa, I’ll do my best to protect you and your daughter. But I have to know something. If you won’t tell me who this man is, you must at least tell me what he wants.”
Luisa turned a page and wrote in large block letters that took the entire sheet:
You.
She should have been more shocked. But the moment the answer came, she realized she had known it all along. It was the gnat in the ear, the buzzing that had bothered her so many times. What did all these people have in common? Tess Monaghan.
I am the link. Not geography or cause of death. The five were not connected to one another until I came along.
The list had been the lure, leading her toward something, to someone. She needed to know who, she needed to know why. But Luisa O’Neal had already refused to tell her either, and who could blame her? Killing her daughter would be nothing to this man. He had killed Julie Carter just to remind Tess that he was not done.
She unfolded from her crouch, listening to her knees crack. She was happy to have her legs at all, instead of the atrophied appendages beneath the blanket in Luisa’s bed. She was happy to be alive and wondered how much longer she would be. She heard a furious scratching sound and looked up to see Luisa writing hurriedly. Her handwriting was almost indecipherable now.
You must not tell anyone. No one. No police.
“But—”
My daughter, Luisa wrote. MY DAUGHTER. He will kill my daughter if you go to the police. And if you send the police here, I will deny everything.
With that, she ripped the pages from the tablet and shredded them as best she could. Her hands may have been shaky, but they still had some strength.
“But he wants to kill me, Luisa. Right? So are you saying your daughter’s life is more important than mine?”
Not necessarily, she wrote—and promptly tore it up.
“Are you disputing my first premise or the second?”
Both. This note, too, was torn up. Then: Go.
Tess did, feeling as she always had when she faced someone from the O’Neal family—defeated, crushed, decreased. But when she reached the door, a voice called after her. It was a sad voice, slurry and soft, unable to make consonants, but a voice all the same.
“Nushingish ran’um.”
“What?”
“Nushing… nushing.” Tess could hear the fury in Luisa’s voice, could see how she loathed her imperfections. Her face was flushed from emotion and effort as she held up a hand, spreading her fingers the best she could. Her fingers curved, slicing the words into the air.
“Fi—” she said. “Fi—”
“Five? Five what?”
But she gave up, returning to her pad.
Tiffani Gunts
Lucy Fancher
Julie Carter
Hazel Ligetti
Michael Shaw
Five names. Five homicides. And nothing was random. Absolutely nothing.
CHAPTER 28
As soon as they signed out of the Keswick Home for Incurables, Tess called Crow on her cell phone and told him to bring her case files to their local coffee shop, the Daily Grind.
She also asked for her Smith & Wesson.
“You’re going to strap your gun on here in the Grind?” Whitney asked, sliding into the back booth with a large coffee and a pumpkin muffin. Tess had no appetite.
“Luisa O’Neal just told me that a serial killer—a man who has killed three, maybe five, people—wants me. I’d call having my gun nothing more than prudent.”
Whitney fussed with her coffee, adding three packets of sugar and half-and-half until was more lait au café than café au lait. “What is it between you and Luisa? Why did you ask me to leave the room?”
Tess hesitated. Part of her mind told her all bets were off. Luisa had helped this man lay a trap. The fact that she had done it out of fear for hersel
f and her daughter was not a wholly satisfying excuse, although it was an understandable one. She had set this plan in motion, indifferent to the fact that Tess was a killer’s quarry.
But seeing her old nemesis so reduced had changed the nature of their relationship. Where once Luisa had made Tess feel inconsequential and helpless, Luisa was now the helpless one. Tess, who once kept Luisa’s secrets out of fear, continued to keep them out of habit.
Besides, she had never wanted to test Whitney’s loyalties. Whitney loved Tess, but she also had a fierce loyalty to what Mrs. Talbot would call, without irony, “our kind of people.”
Whitney, mistaking her silence for out-and-out refusal, said, “I bet you told Crow.”
Tess nodded. He was the one person she had told.
“I can keep a secret too, Tesser.”
Her use of the old nickname was strategic, a reminder of how long they had known each other.
“It wasn’t just about keeping secrets,” Tess replied. “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you the O’Neal family was capable of murder. But yes, after Crow and I began dating, I told him. I needed to tell someone.”
“The first time or the second time?”
“Huh?”
“Did you tell Crow the first time you hooked up—the time you fucked it up and he left you—or when he took you back?”
Whitney must be hurt if she was going out of her way to remind Tess of past mistakes.
“The first time. In fact, I told him before we slept together.”
“You are easy. I mean, I always knew you were a first-date kind of girl, but I didn’t know you gave everything up so readily.”
“Look, I’ll tell you the whole story right now if you like. But don’t argue with me, say it couldn’t have been that way, or tell me I must be mistaken.”
“I don’t argue—”
Tess held up her palm. “You’re arguing now.”
Whitney settled back, as close to contrite as she could ever be.
“Remember Jonathan Ross?”
“Speaking of being promiscuous—you slept with him even after you stopped dating.”
“Thanks for reminding me. Remember how he died?”
“He was hit by a car.”
“Luisa’s husband, Seamon, arranged that. Jonathan was getting too close to uncovering a true scandal. The O’Neals had paid a man already on Death Row to confess to a murder their son had committed. A go-between was used, a lawyer, so the killer never knew which prominent family he was helping. But there was money in it, which went to his mother. He also assumed his ”sponsors’ would keep him from being executed.“
“Did they?”
“He got two extensions before he was put to death last fall. Tucker Fauquier.”
“The psychopath who wanted to kill a boy in every county, but only made it as far as the Bay Bridge?”
“The very same.”
“And he never knew about the O’Neals’ involvement?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Whitney was thinking, chin cupped in her hand. “Could anyone else know about all this?”
“Possibly. But I don’t see how. Seamon O’Neal, Tucker Fauquier, his mom, the lawyer who made the deal—they’re all dead. As far as I know, Luisa and I were the only two people left on earth who knew this story.”
“And Crow,” Whitney reminded Tess.
“And Crow.”
“I always hoped you talked about me when I wasn’t around.” Crow slid into the booth alongside Tess and, with one easy gesture, dropped her gun into her lap as he squeezed her left thigh. She looked down and almost laughed out loud when she realized he had wrapped the gun in a dish towel.
“That’s why it took me so long to get over here. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to transport it. You may have a license to carry, but I don’t, and I had these visions of me being jacked up on Cold Spring Lane. But I loaded it, per your instructions So.” He surveyed the bustling coffee shop. “A little heist? You picked a good day to knock over the Grind. They do a lot of cash business on a Saturday.”
His light mood disappeared when Tess told him everything that had happened that morning.
“You’ve got to go to the police, Tess. I don’t care what she said. You can at least call someone you trust, Detective Tull in homicide. This guy wants to kill you.”
“Not necessarily,” she said, echoing the words on Luisa’s pad. “Besides, how’s he going to get to me? His pattern is to insert himself into women’s lives, establish himself as the perfect boyfriend, the one who picks up the pieces left behind by some asshole. I already have the perfect boyfriend.”
The compliment did not soothe Crow. “You’ve got to call the state police.”
“And tell them—”
“Everything.”
Tess knew the advice was right and prudent. Truly, Crow cared only about her and her safety. That was the problem. She wasn’t the only person in the world. She had to protect herself, but there were others who had to be protected as well. Whitney, Crow, her parents. Luisa’s daughter. A man who would kill a woman just to make a point would kill anyone. She wouldn’t be safe from him until she knew who he was and why he did what he did.
“Luisa believes that if this man knows she spoke to me, he’ll kill her daughter.”
“You can’t think about that.”
“I have to think about that.” The gun was still in her lap, hidden in the folds of the dish towel, a black-and-white gingham print. Seeing that dish towel from her own kitchen made Tess long for everything ordinary in her life, everything she had taken for granted when she awoke this morning: her dogs, her bed, the view from her deck, her toothbrush. The happy sensation of coming home at the end of the day and pouring a glass of wine. A life without fear.
Where was he? Who was he? Had they met? Exchanged a few words?
“He’ll kill anyone, for any reason. He killed Julie for me.”
Whitney nodded, but Crow was confused.
“You didn’t want Julie dead,” he said. “She was just a pathetic junkie who tried to shake you down for a few bucks. Why would you care what happened to her?”
“No. He killed Julie because he knew the investigation had stalled, that I was no longer a part of it. He killed a woman to get my attention.”
“She was on his list,” Whitney pointed out. “Perhaps he always intended to kill her. As Luisa said, ”Nothing is random.“ ”
“Point taken. But if I go to the state police and Luisa’s daughter out in Chicago ends up dead, how do I justify that? She’s a mother. Whatever her parents have done—whatever her brother did—she’s innocent.”
“How will he know if you talk to the police?” Crow asked.
“I don’t know. He seems to know everything else about me. He knew how to get to me—how to use Luisa to set up a project that would be irresistible to me. How to get me to put the pieces together.”
“But he’s dead,” Whitney said. “The wreckage of the boat was found. They’re looking at bodies, trying to make a match.”
“Sometimes,” Tess said, “a John Doe is simply a John Doe. People drown, they don’t get identified. Who’s to say our guy didn’t catch a break?”
“Yes, but you’re assuming the only person who could know these five names is the killer himself. What if there are two killers, the man who killed Tiffani and Lucy and a second man, who had entirely different reasons for killing Julie Carter, Hazel Ligetti, and Michael Shaw. Those murders all happened after the apparent suicide, right? And they’re nothing like the first two.”
Tess rubbed her forehead. “My brain hurts.”
“My soul hurts,” Crow said. “I think I’m going to be sick. I’ve never felt so helpless.”
They sat in glum silence, coffee growing cold, muffin untouched. Together, the three could usually figure anything out. Like Dorothy’s companions through Oz, they were three incompletes who made a whole. Crow was all heart, like the Tin Man. Whitney was their Scare
crow, but more like the version in the book, the one whose head was filled with needles and pins so he might be sharp.
This left Tess, by default, to be the Cowardly Lion, the one who marched forward into battle, bitching and moaning from fear all the while. She was afraid. She had no illusions about herself. If she had a choice, she wouldn’t fight this fight.
It would have been nice, having a choice.
CHAPTER 29
Even junkies have to be buried.
Tess scanned the Sunday edition of the Beacon-Light, looking for the classified obituary notice that would tell her if there was a funeral service for Julie Carter. She knew Julie would not qualify for what the paper’s writers privately called the mort du jour, one of the lengthier obituaries, reported and written by a staff writer.
You didn’t have to be rich or socially prominent to warrant a fullblown mort, although it didn’t hurt. Getting shot and killed in an apparent drug deal was pretty much guaranteed to keep you off the obituary page, with its soft-focus photography and distilled hagiography.
She found, at last, the tiny paid death notice. For a Catholic, Julie was going in the ground fast. The Rosary was scheduled for that very evening, with the funeral mass and burial set for tomorrow. Tess tore out the information and tried to remember if she had a dark dress that was lightweight enough for warm weather.
She also wondered if she was the only nonrelative who was searching the paper this morning for Julie’s obituary, if she would be the only stranger who showed up at the service and the graveside. It was 5 A.M., and she was reading the paper after a sleepless night, her gun lying next to her on the dining room table. Her doors and windows were double-bolted, shutting out the balmy spring air that she so loved. The only sound in the house was the trio of slumbering breaths coming from the bedroom—Esskay, Miata, and Crow, who had finally fallen asleep about 3 A.M.
She had a black linen suit, she remembered, something she hadn’t worn for years. Could you wear linen before Memorial Day, or did that rule apply only to white linen?
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