“I’m working close to the investigation,” she hedged. “I was here the night Miss Whitt’s body was removed.” The woman seemed satisfied with the vague identification. “May I ask your name, ma’am?”
“Audrey Cole.”
“Ms. Cole, please try to remember. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary that day?”
“Like what?”
“People in the neighborhood who didn’t belong? Strange vehicles?”
“No.”
Carlotta pressed her lips together, her mind racing for another approach. “What about the day before?”
“Now that’s another matter entirely,” the woman declared with a smile. “I noticed a van cruising through the neighborhood. I figured it was the phone company, or Ms. Rosen three doors down getting new carpet. That woman buys new carpet every eighteen months.”
Carlotta swallowed. “What color?”
“Same color every time—Sante Fe beige.”
“No, I meant what color was the van?”
“Oh. It was white.”
Her stomach rolled. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. A long, white van.”
“Did the van stop at Shawna’s house?”
“No, but it did slow down—once when it went up the street, and again when it came back down. Like the driver was checking for an address.”
“Did you happen to see the driver?”
“No. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”
That made Carlotta smile. “Just one more thing, Ms. Cole. Did you tell the police about the white van?”
“I talked to a big, nice-looking man in a suit, but I didn’t tell him about the van.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t ask.”
Carlotta pursed her mouth. So unless another neighbor had been as attentive as Ms. Cole, neither the APD nor the GBI had this bit of information.
And now that Carlotta had it, what was she going to do with it?
She thanked the woman and made her way back to her car, her mind racing. She needed more info on the case, and no way was she going to get it from Jack or Maria.
On impulse, she opened her phone, pulled up a number on her contacts list, and connected the call. The phone was answered on the first ring, as Carlotta would’ve expected from any self-respecting newspaper reporter who was afraid to miss a scoop.
“Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rainie Stephens speaking.”
“Rainie, it’s Carlotta Wren.”
“Hi, Carlotta. What can I do for you?” The woman’s tone was equal parts curiosity and suspicion. Since Rainie and Coop had shared some kind of relationship before Carlotta had met either one of them, the reporter had to know why Carlotta was calling.
Carlotta smiled into the phone. “Let me buy you lunch, Rainie.”
10
“Salad and water,” Rainie Stephens said, handing her menu to the waiter.
Carlotta smiled at the server. “Scratch that. Bring us an appetizer platter and two martinis with lots of olives.”
After the man left, the curvy redhead angled her head toward Carlotta. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Are you trying to stop me?”
“Are you kidding? So far, this is the best date I’ve had all year.”
Carlotta laughed, then clasped her hands on the table in front of her. “You and I made a pretty good team recovering Eva McCoy’s stolen charm bracelet.”
“Glad to help. Although I’ve spoken to Eva and she’s worried sick that all the media she got over her Olympic Lucky Charm Bracelet might have set off this killing spree.”
“I can see why she’d be upset, but who knows how or why the charms figure into the murders.”
“That’s what I told her.”
“So…you don’t know?” Carlotta probed carefully.
Rainie shook her head. “No.”
Carlotta didn’t know whether to believe her, but she backed off a notch. “The Charmed Killer case has been good for the newspaper business.”
Rainie nodded. “It’s the kind of story that reporters dream of…and it’s the most horrendous thing I’ve ever experienced. I’d give anything if it had never happened. I can’t believe that Cooper—” Her voice broke and she fought for composure. “The past couple of days have been a nightmare.”
“I know. I went to see Coop in jail.”
Rainie leaned forward. “How is he?”
“Not good. But I don’t believe he did this, Rainie.”
“I don’t want to believe it, either.”
“Your articles about the The Charmed Killer murders—was Coop your source in the morgue?”
“You know I can’t reveal my sources, Carlotta.”
“But I need your help, and so does Coop.”
Rainie squinted. “Is there…something going on between you and Coop?”
“No.” Carlotta shifted on the chair. “I mean, there was a time…a brief window when we might have…” She arched an eyebrow. “Did you and Coop have a thing?”
Rainie’s smile was coy. “We had our window. I was willing, but Coop was going through a rough time. It was after he’d gotten out of jail, out of rehab—do you know about that?”
Carlotta nodded. “The woman he wrongly pronounced dead on the accident scene?”
“Right. Everything had worked itself out by the time I met him, but he was still…searching. But the Cooper Craft I know couldn’t have killed those women.”
“So help me.”
The waiter brought their drinks and set the platter of food between them. Carlotta took a healthy swallow from her glass and Rainie followed, then cradled the stem.
“What can I do?”
“Are there any details you can give me, any leads to follow?”
“Why don’t you ask Detective Terry? I thought you two were…friends.”
“The GBI booted him off the case. You probably know more than he does.”
“Such as?”
Carlotta leaned forward. “Dr. Abrams told me the state crime lab was supposed to return DNA from one of the crime scenes. What was it?”
Rainie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Can you find out? And if it matched Coop?”
“I can’t make any promises.”
“And there’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Last week my brother saw Coop at Piedmont Hospital, and followed him to the office of a neurologist. When I asked Coop about it, he went off and basically told me to mind my own business. Can you look into it?”
“Sure. I’ll poke around.”
“And one more thing…”
The redhead scoffed. “Just one?”
“Can you help me flush out Michael Lane?”
Rainie blinked. “How?”
“I don’t know. It would have to be something he’d find irresistible.” Carlotta laughed. “Like a sale on Gucci.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea. Let me give it some thought.”
“Oh, and all this needs to be on the Q.T.”
“Will I get an exclusive if Lane shows?”
Carlotta lifted her glass. “Absolutely.”
Rainie clinked her glass to Carlotta’s. “Deal. You have a lot riding on Michael Lane being The Charmed Killer, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
The reporter gave her a pointed smile. “Because if Coop didn’t kill those women, and if Michael Lane didn’t do it, either, then that leaves your father as next best suspect, right?”
Instead of answering, Carlotta picked up a loaded potato skin and took a bite.
Rainie reached for a stuffed mushroom. “Girl, I thought I had man problems. What’s up with you and that Ashford guy I saw you with at the country club auction?”
“Peter and I go way back. I’m staying at his place until this all blows over.”
“Didn’t he win one of the romantic getaway vacations?”
Carlotta nodded.
�
�I assume for the two of you?”
She nodded again. “He thinks it would be safer if I were out of town.”
“Can’t say I blame him,” Rainie said. “Which means he’s not hip to this little fact-finding mission of yours?”
“Right.”
“Carlotta, you’re a dog with three bones.”
She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Remember Aesop’s fable? A dog with a nice meaty bone is crossing a bridge and looks down to see another dog holding a bone that’s even bigger. The dog drops his bone to go after the bigger one and guess what?”
“The dog winds up losing the bone,” Carlotta finished.
“Righto.”
Carlotta bit her lip. “So who’s the nice meaty bone in my mouth?”
Rainie laughed. “You’re going to have to figure that one out for yourself.”
They finished lunch and Carlotta picked up the tab, then they made their way back to the parking lot to Carlotta’s car. She snagged Rainie’s arm to hold her back while she unlocked the Civic with the keyless remote. When nothing detonated, Carlotta exhaled and walked forward.
“Do the police think Michael Lane planted the explosive device under your car?” Rainie asked.
“For lack of a better suspect. Detective Marquez said that Michael wants to get rid of me because in his mind, he’ll be locked away if I testify against him for the identity-theft murders.” Then she shook her head. “Although I can’t imagine why Michael would’ve gone to the trouble of planting a bomb when he could’ve easily killed me in my bed when he was hiding in our house.”
“Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to do it up close.” Rainie made a face. “But that doesn’t mesh with someone who then goes on a killing spree.”
Carlotta swung her head to look at the reporter. “It’s been suggested that Michael is doing this to avoid killing me.”
“You mean, an extreme form of projection?”
“Maybe.”
“If that’s the case, Carlotta, this isn’t your fault. Michael Lane is sick and needs to be stopped.”
“I know.”
“We’ll think of a way to draw him out,” Rainie promised. “It’s Michael Lane who belongs behind bars, not Coop.”
Carlotta dropped off Rainie at the AJC office and waved goodbye with a heaviness in her stomach that went beyond a self-indulgent lunch. While she felt better knowing that Rainie also believed in Coop’s innocence, she wondered if the reporter would change her mind if Carlotta told her about Coop’s bookstore connection with the first victim and the sighting of the white van in Shawna Whitt’s neighborhood.
Puzzled and apprehensive, Carlotta drove to the Perimeter Mall and spent most of the afternoon flashing Michael Lane’s photo to people who worked in shops selling charms, but again with no results. She cruised by the Betsey Johnson and Stuart Weitzman stores for a quick looky-loo at the newest arrivals, and was able to get a walk-in appointment at DASS salon to have her split ends trimmed.
While she was sitting in a chair covered with a poncho and reading People magazine, Carlotta felt a prickle of awareness, as if she was being watched. With her senses on alert, she slowly pivoted her head…and found herself in the crosshairs of one Tracey Tully Lowenstein.
Carlotta swallowed a groan. Tracey was the daughter of Walt Tully, her father’s former partner at the investment firm. Walt was her and Wesley’s godfather, although the man hadn’t checked on them a single time after Randolph and Valerie had disappeared. And Tracey, who had gone to the same private girls’ school as Carlotta, had done everything in her power to ostracize Carlotta from their social circle. Meanwhile, Tracey had snagged herself a doctor—a creepy OB/GYN—and loved parading him around while sabotaging Carlotta’s struggling relationship with Peter because Tracey didn’t cotton to hobnobbing with a lowly retail clerk.
Carlotta gave Tracey a tight little smile, then looked back to her magazine and willed the hairdresser to hurry. But as luck would have it, she and Tracey wound up at the checkout counter together.
“Carlotta, I’ve never seen you in here before.”
“First time,” Carlotta offered cheerfully.
Tracey surveyed Carlotta’s hair. “Next time you should ask for the deep-conditioning treatment. It would help with the frizz.”
Carlotta stuck her tongue into her cheek. “Thanks.”
“Goodness, you must be so relieved that the police arrested The Charmed Killer.”
“I…yes.”
“It lets your dad off the hook, doesn’t it? Well, at least for this crime.”
“Yes,” Carlotta murmured, seething.
“I understand the psycho they arrested worked for the morgue. Since you’ve been moonlighting as a body mover—” she paused to shudder “—you must know him.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Carlotta said evenly.
Tracey tsk, tsked. “Honestly, Carlotta, the company you keep. From that Goth-girl to serial killers. Peter must be positively mortified.”
Carlotta gritted her teeth. “Peter lets me be my own person.”
Tracey leaned in. “But doesn’t Peter deserve better? You’ve really gone to the dogs, Carlotta. Even that red dress you wore to the club auction the other night looked off-the-rack.”
“Gee, your husband didn’t seem to mind. He practically gave me a pelvic exam with his eyes.”
Tracey gasped and recoiled.
Carlotta took advantage of the pause to escape the vile woman’s presence. True, Tracey had been friends with Peter’s former wife, Angela, so maybe some of Tracey’s reaction to Carlotta was out of loyalty to her dead friend. But she didn’t have to go out of her way to be so nasty. At the club auction, Tracey had made a big deal out of the fact that her important husband, Dr. Frederick Lowenstein, had to leave the event to deliver a baby. The woman used her husband’s position as a social lever, and she wielded her power maliciously. Carlotta wondered if Tracey overcompensated because deep down, she knew her husband was a lecherous cad. Or maybe she was just in complete denial.
Carlotta pursed her mouth. Not that she herself was such a great judge of character—hadn’t Michael’s gruesome betrayal taught her that? Jack had once told her that everyone was capable of murder, given the right circumstances. Which meant that anyone walking around this mall, the people she came into casual contact with every day, could be harboring horrible, secret compulsions.
She slowed and hugged herself as people passed by her on all sides. Irrational fear seized her. She glanced at their faces, wondering which ones contemplated horrible acts at this very moment, and which ones harbored dark fantasies that might erupt as a result of some random emotional trigger.
And conceding that, according to Jack, there was the tiniest possibility that after years of working with the dead and avoiding the living, Coop’s random emotional trigger had somehow been tripped.
11
Wesley parked his bike next to Liz Fischer’s garage and slowly walked toward her guest house, where they always met to screw. His balls had their own memory because they tingled with anticipation, but his stomach was tied in knots.
Sure, having sex with Liz guaranteed fifteen minutes of pure physical pleasure. But he kept thinking about Meg and the way she’d fussed over the raggedy flowers he’d bought her and the daisy she’d put in her hair, and it left him feeling…torn. Like he shouldn’t sleep with Liz, that he should—he grimaced—save himself or something.
Christ, he was turning into a wuss over a girl who probably just felt sorry for him after he’d unloaded his whole sad family saga on her.
It was still early, around seven, but the low-hanging clouds made it seem later. Shadows encroached as he walked up to the French doors of the guest house and knocked. When Liz didn’t answer, he peered through the door, but it was dark inside. Then he noticed a note taped to the glass.
Come to the back door of the house.
He frowned, then peeled off the note and headed across the man
icured grass in the direction of the main house. He’d never been inside Liz’s home, and he wondered why tonight was any different.
Liz’s brown brick house was tucked into an older, expensive community. The dwellings weren’t huge, but they were all well-appointed with guest houses and pools, and situated for maximum privacy. Thick trees shielded him—and Liz’s other lovers, he presumed—from prying eyes. A curving concrete walk led up to the back door, flanked by tiered planting beds and pots of geraniums. He had trouble picturing Liz getting her hands dirty, but he supposed the woman had a life outside of her job, and gardening was tres chic these days.
He stopped at the back door and pressed a button that sent a little buzzing sensation through his finger. The half caplet of Oxy he’d just chewed made everything vivid and experiential—the weight of humid night air on his neck, the shriek of horny crickets in his ears, the sharp scent of evergreen bushes in his nostrils.
The door swung open and Liz stood in the threshold wearing chinos and an untucked button-up white blouse, holding a drink. A pang of disappointment stabbed him that she was dressed at all, but compared to what she typically wore, her outfit was a little dowdy. Her blond hair, commonly coiffed into a French twist, was loose around her shoulders. Her face was free of makeup, making her look softer…and a little old.
Suddenly he relaxed—it was a ploy. Underneath the floppy white shirt, she was probably wearing a latex corset. Or an edible bra.
“Hi, Wes. Come on in.”
Her smile was friendly instead of flirtatious, throwing him off a little. Stepping inside, he scanned the room while he closed the door. The kitchen was straight out of Southern Living, with white painted cabinetry, black granite countertops, and wood floors. Two lidded pans emitting nice smells sat on top of the commercial-grade stainless steel stove. Through a doorway leading deeper into the house, he saw pale, overstuffed furniture and thick rugs. Elvis Costello’s “Allison” sounded from the next room.
Wesley frowned. The setting seemed…cozy.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked.
Conscious of Chance’s stern warning not to drink alcohol with the Oxy, he swallowed past a dry throat. “Water would be great.”
“Pellegrino okay?” she asked, withdrawing a green bottle from the refrigerator. She topped off her own glass, then looked up.
6 Killer Bodies Page 8
