“Detective Soto. He called earlier this afternoon. Said he needed to come by.” Sheri turned to Misty. “Misty, think you could let him in?”
From the kitchen, I could hear the sound of male voices.
Before I knew who it was, Cate jumped up and went running down the hall. “Pete! It’s Pete. He’s here.”
I followed Cate down the hall and watched as Detective Soto stepped out of the way and Cate, like a cannonball, threw her arms and legs around Pete and buried her head in his chest.
Soto looked at me. “I thought since I wanted to stop by here first and check on Sheri, the least I could do was drive Pete home.”
“No. No way.” Cate hung on to Pete’s arm and shook her head. “I’ll take him home.”
“You sure you don’t want to ask him to stay for dinner, Cate?” Misty asked.
Cate shook her head. “Thanks, but if it’s alright with Mom, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
I crossed my arms and took a step back. Cate had made up her mind about Pete. I needed to let whatever was going to happen between the two of them happen. Pete was a good kid, and Cate’s future was hers, not mine to dictate. The sooner I accepted that, the sooner our relationship would get back to normal.
“It’s fine,” I said.
Misty put her arm around me as we watched the two of them walk hand-in-hand down the drive to Cate’s car. “She’s going to be alright, Carol.”
“That a prediction, Misty, or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be,” Misty said.
I shut the door and thanked Soto for bringing Pete by.
“About Pete,” Soto said. “You were right, Carol. Pete was innocent. It’s not easy for me to admit, but sometimes cops get tunnel vision. I’m afraid that’s what happened here. Pete was an obvious suspect. A photographer. He knew the victims and fit the profile of a serial killer. Young. White. Male. And a bit of a drifter.”
“If we’re confessing things, Detective, I have to admit, when you showed me all the evidence this morning, I was worried. Particularly when you showed me that photo with Pete and Ely together. If I hadn’t recognized Max, I might have had a reason to doubt myself.”
Soto cleared his throat. “About that photo. After the accident this morning, I went back to the jail to talk to Pete again. I showed him the picture and asked him about it. He said he’d only met Ely Wade once. The day that photo was taken. He remembered he picked up a gig on Craig’s List for a lighting tech for a photo shoot at one of the big studios. That’s where he met Lenny Marx. Lenny hired him after that, and according to Pete, he worked for him for a short while, but didn’t care for the way he treated the girls.”
“Who took the photo?” I asked.
“Marx liked to document all his shoots. Including those of the models he murdered. Detectives found more Polaroids like the ones we found at Ely’s place hidden inside a safe at his studio. As for who took that particular photo of the three of them, I don’t know. Only that we found that it inside Marx’s safe as well.”
“And you never suspected Marx?” I asked. “Even after you first talked to him about Pete?”
“Marx was Teflon. Big name. Successful. Didn’t fit the profile. Which may have been why our detectives didn’t spend a lot of time trying to match up his travel schedule with the murders.”
“And what about Brian Evans? I thought for sure you’d think he was involved or at least responsible for Marilynn’s murder.”
“We did. At first anyway. Or until you identified Xstacy’s van. That’s when the whole case opened up for us, and quite frankly that’s when we lost interest in Brian.”
“I saw him at the Sky High Club one night, and I thought for sure he might be connected.”
“Brian was doing his own little detective work. Too bad he didn’t take more interest in what Marilynn was up to before she died. If he had, she might never have run into Ely Wade. As it was, once we started looking into Xstacy’s background and realized that both Xstacy and Marilynn had connections to the Sky High Club, we got curious and started poking around. But then you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“Misty knew,” I said. “She suspected early on Xstacy and Marilynn were friends.”
Soto raised a brow and smiled at Misty. “Psychic to the Stars, huh? I’ve heard a lot about you over the years. Could have used you on a couple of cases.”
I nudged Misty and whispered in her ear. “You still got it, Misty.”
“As it was,” Soto said, “we ended up talking to a barmaid who told us the last time she saw Marilynn was the night she performed at the club.”
I paused and waited to see if Soto was going to say if the barmaid had also told him about Xstacy’s friend Sam. When he didn’t, I asked what he had learned.
“Barmaid said Marilynn left the club with two men. One of the men appeared to have been upset with her act. We think Marilynn was Ely and Lenny’s last victim, at least that they did together. They kidnapped her from the club, drove her out to the Santa Clarita metro stop where they left her car, then took her out to Vasquez Canyon and killed her. But they botched the job. Probably because they didn’t have time to plan for it, like they did the models. Ended up they had to hit her over the head and used her ex-boyfriend’s dog collar to tie her to the tree. Totally different MO, which was why initially we thought Brian might have killed her and tried to make it look like a copycat murder.”
“What about Xstacy? Marx had to have killed her alone. Ely was dead by then. How did he find her?”
“That same barmaid who remembered Marilynn performing at the club also remembers Xstacy coming in to pick up a check one night after she’d stopped working there. We think Marx was there, spotted her, followed her back to her van and killed her. Set it up to look like she had gone to meet Pete. By then everyone in town knew the police had arrested Pete and released him. The public was nervous, and all Marx had to do was add a little fuel to the fire.”
“You mean like the Post-it note left in her van?”
“This afternoon, forensics checked the note against handwriting samples we have for Marx. It looks like a match.”
“So that’s it then? Brian never had anything to do with Marilynn’s death or her disappearance, and it was Ely Wade and Lenny Marx all along.”
“It’s why I came by tonight. I wanted to check on Sheri, and when she told me you’d be here, I thought I should tell you myself, in person.”
I put my hands behind me and leaned back against the door. “But why? Why does anyone do something like this?”
“I’m not a psychologist, Ms. Childs. I leave that to the shrinks and FBI profilers who would probably tell you both men had some type of childhood trauma growing up. Ely’s sister said their mother walked out on them when they were kids. Cases like this the perps are usually loners and socially inept.”
“I don’t know about Ely Wade, but Lenny Marx was a nationally recognized portrait photographer. He was at the top of his game. He wasn’t exactly socially inept.”
“There’s no class exclusivity on psychopaths. In fact, if Marx were alive, he’d probably even say the murders were some type of erotic performance art. It might explain the blood smiles and the mixing of their blood with their victims. But don’t ask me to explain it. All I know is people are seldom what you think. A CEO is as likely to be a psychopath as a down-and-out homeless person. But that’s not the reason I stopped by and wanted to talk with you.”
“No?” I squeezed the door handle in my hand behind me and hoped the next words out of Soto’s mouth weren’t that the DA had changed his mind, and Soto was here to take me to jail.
“Don’t look so worried, Carol. Much as I might have enjoyed locking you up earlier today, I’m here to tell you the DA officially dropped the case against you. You’ve nothing to worry about. Whoever or whatever you knew and did
n’t want to share with us is no longer of concern.”
I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“However, there is one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
Soto reached into his pocket and took out Sheri’s cell phone. “I need to give this to Sheri.”
I led Soto back to the kitchen where Sheri was doing her last minute prep for dinner. The boys were out of earshot in the den, playing video games.
Soto handed Sheri the phone. “I thought you might like this back.”
Without bothering to look at it, Sheri thanked him and slipped the phone into her apron. “You want to stay for dinner? I can set an extra seat if you like. I’m making London Broil, and if you’ll excuse the expression, it’s a killer, Detective.”
Soto scoffed. “Thank you, but not tonight. However, there is one more thing. Carol, I thought you might like to know Marx was scrolling through Sheri’s contacts on her phone when he was hit. It looks like he had pulled up your number. If you hadn’t found him, he was coming to find you.”
I swallowed hard and thanked Soto for coming by, then showed him to the door.
When I got back to the kitchen, I checked my cell phone to see if Chase had called. After my invite, I had expected him to show up for dinner, but there was no message. I excused myself and told Sheri I needed to go outside and make a quick call.
I stood on the deck and rang Chase’s number. The sun had set, and the lights of the city below and the stars twinkled back at me. I listened as my call went to voicemail. I wasn’t about to leave another message. I already bared my soul to Chase or as much as I felt comfortable sharing. An invite to dinner, with no case looming before us, was a clear intent on my part to lower my resistance and invite him into my life. Surely he knew that.
I ended the call and slipped my phone back into my pocket. Dammit. I didn’t need him anyway.
“You coming in for dinner?” My heart quickened as I recognized the voice behind me.
“You’re here.” I turned to see Chase standing in the doorway to the patio.
“You know me, always up for a home cooked meal.”
“Me too,” I said.
“However, I was hoping for something more than that.” Chase took a step closer to me and put his arms around my waist.
“Like what?” I looked up into his face and put my hands on his shoulders.
“Like that last kiss we had.” Chase pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“You mean...at the bar? When I was trying to avoid being seen by Brian?”
“Seemed to me there was more to it than that.” Chase pulled me closer to him.
“You’re flattering yourself,” I said.
“Am I?” Chase tucked his finger under my chin and pulled my face close to his. “Or are you just unsure about letting a man into your life and losing your independence? Because, lady, that’s not going to happen. I like you just the way you are. Determined and stubborn as hell. My kind of woman.”
My eyes met Chase’s. I could feel the heat of his body next to mine. “So, are you going to kiss me or are we just going to stand here and stare into each other eyes like a couple of teenagers?”
“I’ve been waiting all night for you to ask,” he said.
About the Author
Nancy Cole Silverman credits her twenty-five years in news and talk radio for helping her to develop an ear for storytelling. But it wasn’t until after she retired that she was able to write fiction full-time. Much of what Silverman writes about is pulled from events that were reported on from inside some of Los Angeles’ busiest newsrooms where she spent the bulk of her career. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Bruce, and two standard poodles.
The Carol Childs Mystery Series
by Nancy Cole Silverman
SHADOW OF DOUBT (#1)
BEYOND A DOUBT (#2)
WITHOUT A DOUBT (#3)
ROOM FOR DOUBT (#4)
REASON TO DOUBT (#5)
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REASON TO DOUBT Page 24
