by Diane Capri
“You wanted to see me?” said a woman’s voice.
Jess turned. The woman could be no one other than Elisha’s sister. A little older perhaps, and a little heavier. “You’re Marion?”
“Yeah.” She sat in the booth, opposite Jess. “What do you need?”
“I was wondering, did you work at the Meisner estate when Crystal Mackie disappeared?”
“Didn’t see that question coming.” Marion pursed her lips and then nodded. “Yes.”
“You gave a statement to the police at the time?”
“We all did.”
“Did you know Crystal?”
“Everyone knew her. I mean, everyone at Meisner’s. It’s a big place, but the people who worked there, we kind of, like, bonded. We were a good team.”
Jess leaned forward, both hands around the warm coffee mug. “What comes to mind when you think about her?”
“She was…happy-go-lucky. I mean, we all knew she was living with Spud, so…” Marion sighed. “You’ve got to have a wild streak to live with a guy like that. So, we all gave her some latitude.”
“Latitude about what?”
Marion looked left and right, and back at Jess. “Like…her ups and downs, and if she was a little late or something. Life with Spud can do that to a girl.”
“Is that experience talking?”
Marion grunted and shook her head.
“Was she often late?”
“Occasionally.”
“I’ve read your police statement. You didn’t mention any tardiness.”
Marion shrugged. “I liked her. She’d gone missing. I wasn’t going to say anything bad about her.”
Jess shrugged. “I guess we’re all late sometimes.”
Marion shuffled to the open end of her bench seat and braced herself to stand.
“What other bad things were there that you didn’t mention at the time?” Jess asked.
Marion stopped moving. Her hands on the table, taking her weight, ready to stand. She looked at Jess and looked away.
“Please. It could be important.” Jess reached across and touched her hand.
Marion sank back into her seat. “I don’t know…it…” She shook her head. “Senator Meisner. He told us not to spread rumors. To stick to the facts.”
“Like what kind of rumors?”
“Well, you know, rumors… They’re not facts. And it was a long time ago.”
“It could still be important. Even now.”
She nodded. “Well, he used to look at the girls. Always. Like you could tell he was staring. Every time he walked past.” She shivered. “Most of us just thought he was a creep.”
Jess kept her face impassive.
Marion looked at her hands. “I didn’t want to mention it at the time. With him being recently married. You know?”
“It might still be important.” Jess smiled reassuringly.
Marion sighed. “We had different shifts, right? Earlys, lates, on some days, off others. It was hard to know. To be sure, I mean. But…I, I don’t think that was the first time Crystal had disappeared for a few days. And…”
Jess gazed steadily at Marion without flinching. “And, what?”
Marion shifted her weight. She looked up and down the length of the diner. She took a deep breath. “I didn’t realize till later, and I might be wrong, but when Crystal wasn’t around…Meisner wasn’t either.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Jess left the diner dialing Nelson. The moment the call connected, she said, “We need to talk to Yukon again.”
“This is Jess Kimball, I presume?”
“Marion Harvey just told me that Crystal Mackie had disappeared before. She thinks Crystal disappeared at the same time Meisner was traveling.” Jess paused, still standing in the parking lot. She glanced around to be sure no one was paying attention. “She didn’t say so, but I could tell she thinks they might have been together.”
Nelson sucked air in through his teeth. “There’s no statement to that effect. No one has ever mentioned that before.”
“Marion said she didn’t want to speak badly about Crystal because she’d gone missing. Meisner prompted them not to spread rumors.”
Nelson sighed. “She didn’t say that in any formal statement, and she hasn’t mentioned it in fourteen years.”
“She was trying to keep her job. Meisner was fighting a battle with the town over the right of way, Charlene’s disappearance was stirring things up.” Jess paused again. “Don’t you see? Raising a suspicion like that would have been like bringing a burning match to a gas station.”
“Is she willing to make a formal statement?”
Jess shook her head. “I didn’t ask. But let’s just talk to Yukon again. Maybe he’ll open up or just remember something.”
“Unfortunately he won’t. One of the neighbors found him on his living room floor. Paramedics were too late. Looks like he overdosed.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Blackstake watched Jess Kimball back her car out of the diner’s parking lot and head toward the police station. He raised his window. The air was chill. Crisp. Refreshing. The ideal conditions for voices to travel. Something to do with compression ratios, or density, or other scientific terms he had little time for. To him, it only meant one thing. Kimball’s phone call had been easy to overhear.
He dialed his phone and waited two rings. “She’s still digging.”
The boss swore.
“But they can’t talk to Yukon any more. Apparently, he’s OD’d.”
“Apparently?”
“Absolutely definite.”
“Now you just have to worry about Kimball and Nelson.”
“Trust me. I’m not worried about them at all.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Jess parked in the Randolph police station lot and called Mandy. By the fourth ring Jess expected voicemail, but Mandy’s voice came on the line.
“What’s up?”
“I need you to dig up anything you can on Senator Meisner from fourteen years ago. I’m interested in hotels he stayed in, flights he took, cars he hired or rented. We need the same information on Crystal Mackie as well. I’m looking for commonality. Anything that overlapped.”
“I’ve got the afternoon off.” The pitch of Mandy’s voice rose an octave.
Jess stifled a sigh. “Okay. Then tomorrow will be fine. But it’s important, so first thing, okay?”
“First thing. No problem. I’m mostly done with Meisner anyway.”
Jess frowned. “Mostly done?”
“Carter had me dig out his background. He put me in touch with the Berenstains. And not the bears. They’re a political investigator unit in DC.”
Jess pressed the phone closer to her ear. “And?”
“Well, I’ve got a ton of stuff on everything he voted for and against. Where his contributions come from. Ethics committee. All that sort of stuff.”
“Any scandals? Staffers, males, females, constituents, donors, anything like that? Legal problems?”
“No sex scandals that we can find. He’s married to big money. His wife keeps him on a short leash. He’s had some long-running legal problem with the boundary of his estate, but the big thing is that he nearly went bankrupt.”
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago, shortly after his first election. The Berenstains say his father died, left him the family fortune, and he spent it getting elected.”
Jess checked her watch. “I don’t suppose you…”
“I have a date.”
Jess sagged back.
There was a long silence.
Mandy sighed. “All right. I’ll find a way to remote-in to my secure email and send you what I can.”
Jess smiled. “I owe you.”
“Yes, you do.” Mandy took a deep breath. “I haven’t written it all up, so it’ll just be a bunch of files. You’ll have to figure it out.”
“No problem.”
The strains of an orchestra tuning up rever
berated through the phone line. “This a good date?”
“A visiting conductor from Vienna.”
“Interesting.”
“He specializes in opera.”
“Nice.”
“I like opera.”
“Since when?”
Mandy laughed. “Very recently. And he’s starting, so I have to go.”
The line went dead. Jess grinned as she tucked the phone in her pocket.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Jess walked into the police station. Gardner was the only person visible. He stood up and met her at the counter.
“I need to talk to Nelson,” Jess said.
Gardner stepped toward Jess, his arms outstretched, herding her back to the door. “We’re flat out busy. I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to a reporter. Come back tomorrow.”
“That’s okay, Gardner,” Nelson said.
Gardner turned. “Oh, I thought you were leaving.”
“I wish.”
“Where’s Charlene?” Jess said.
Nelson checked his watch. “Shifts over. She’s gone.”
“What happened to Yukon?”
“The pathologist report will tell us, but I think it’s safe to assume he OD’d on something. The paramedics noticed several syringes scattered around the living room.”
“Good riddance,” Gardner said.
Jess shook her head. “I can’t say I’d ever have liked him, but it’s a shame to see a life wasted.”
Nelson nodded. “It’s strange, though. He’s been an addict for the best part of twenty years. He’s been in and out of rehab and in and out of jail. Then right after we visit, he overdoses.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say at this point. I mean we took Laurie away, but I doubt that pushed him over the edge.”
“Think he knew something?”
“Probably guilty as hell,” Gardner said. “Finally got too much for him.”
Jess frowned. “He didn’t seem in the slightest concerned when we were there earlier.”
Gardner laughed. “He was good at playing people. I mean, no offense, but look at him, he’d being doing it for years. He was an expert.”
“Do you think Yukon was capable of killing someone?”
“You mean Crystal?” Gardner said. “Who knows? But he could have put the fear of God in her, and frightened her off. Either way, he’s gone now, and that should put a lid on the Crystal Mackie case.”
“We’ll see,” Nelson said. He beckoned Jess as he led the way back to his office, and closed the door.
“Gardner’s not a fan of Yukon or Charlene. So, Crystal Mackie has always been a sore point with him. Far as he’s concerned, they’re trash and not worth the time of day.”
“Do you think Yukon could be involved in her disappearance?”
He gestured to the boxes of evidence. “I’ve read everything that’s been collected on the case, and I still have no strong feelings about what happened.”
He leaned back in his chair. “So, Marion told you that Crystal and Meisner seemed to travel at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“But she never thought to mention it in all this time?”
“She’s not one to start rumors.”
“In other words, she doesn’t have proof.”
Jess sighed. “Charlene showed me a picture of Crystal. Had it in her purse. She was wearing a black T-shirt with writing on it that I can’t quite remember.”
Nelson thumbed through the files in the box marked “C. Mackie #4.” He found a faded green envelope and pulled out a photograph.
Jess took the picture. “This is the same one Charlene showed me.”
Crystal’s bright eyes stared back at her. Blond hair and high cheekbones. The tree she’d leaned against. Blue jeans and the black T-shirt with the heart-shaped American flag and “I love DC” stamped on it.
She turned the photo over. There was a date on the back. “This was taken the week before she disappeared.”
“Apparently.”
Crystal was carefree, smiling. She looked like a girl who thought she had a future. Confident. At peace in her world. “She knew she was leaving Yukon.”
Nelson frowned. “You’re a mind reader now?”
“She was pregnant, and Yukon wasn’t the baby’s father. Obviously, she had a plan. Her glowing face tells you that.” Jess held up the picture for Nelson to see. “She thinks she’s on the way to a better life.”
Nelson frowned.
“This isn’t the smile of a girl who’s living in squalor with that scum. This is a girl who knows her life is getting better.” Jess shook the picture. “Look at her eyes. She’s absolutely one-hundred percent sure of it.”
“If you say so.”
“Exactly.” Jess lowered the photograph. “Do you have a list of the things Crystal left behind?”
Nelson rummaged in the same box and found a twenty-three-page list and an envelope of photographs. He laid out the pictures on the desk and handed the list to Jess.
Jess skimmed the list. Most of it was unremarkable. Clothes, shoes, toiletries and the like. A shoe box containing old bank statements and other papers, and a smooth pink rock that must have held some sentimental value.
Everything on the list had been photographed and cross-referenced. She pored over the pictures.
Nelson shook his head. “I’ve looked at them for hours. Things a young woman would own. Nothing special about any of it.”
Jess moved from picture to picture, resisting the temptation to skim to the end. Worn shoes. A broken watch. Sunglasses. The contents of the shoebox photographed on both sides of every page. Bills and receipts. Mundane. Tedious in life, irrelevant after.
Jess reached the end of the photographs. The last picture showed a dresser drawer. A comb, toiletries, and a few scraps of paper. One was a small square with a hole punched in it.
She handed the picture to Nelson. “She kept mementos. Things that meant something to her.”
She pointed to the square. Printed on it was an American flag in the shape of a heart. The letter D was visible.
Nelson frowned. “She was so happy in the T-shirt, she kept the tag?”
“I love DC. Except it wasn’t the T-shirt. She was really saying she loved what it represented.”
Nelson shook his head. “You think she was planning to move to DC with Yukon?”
Jess shook her head. “She knew she was leaving Yukon. She was heading toward a better life. What do you need if you’re going to start over?”
He frowned. “A dream? Hope? A lover?”
“Money. She’d already made plans to sell her baby. And maybe she planned to get more money from someone else, and,” Jess pointed to Crystal’s T-shirt.
“And what? Millions of people live in DC.”
“But who did she know?”
Nelson shook his head. “You can’t accuse a public figure with nothing to back up the charges but guesses.”
“True.” Jess nodded.
“Rumor has it he’s starting a run for the presidency. That brings a whole machine down on you, me, and anyone else who dares say anything bad about him.”
“I’m not writing fiction. I’ll get confirmation.”
“Confirmation? Confirmation isn’t going to do squat. He’ll chew you up and spit you out if you find anything less than Crystal Mackie’s body.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Jess sat in the police station parking lot and checked her phone. Another missed call from Agent Henry Morris, but he’d left no message, so whatever he wanted couldn’t be all that urgent. The message from Mandy was better. She had found somewhere to connect to her email and forward the information she had collected on Meisner.
She flipped through the first few files. Lists of his voting records stacked against his declared investments. No obvious conflicts of interest, but if he was smart enough to manipulate legislation to his advantage, he was smart enough to co
ver up his activities.
One file was devoted to Meisner’s legal battle over the right of way across his land. There were hundreds of pages of legal discussion. She skipped through, stopping at a series of diagrams of his estate.
Before the big fence was installed, the public pathway had curved much further into his estate than it did now. The diagrams included crosses, circles, and random capital letters. She searched the surrounding pages but found no explanations for them.
The file ended with the order establishing the new path. A compromise established by a judge after fourteen years of the trivial dispute. About the length of time Meisner had been a senator.
The final file covered Meisner’s financial affairs. The Berenstains had acquired confidential information. Some of it must have been illegally obtained.
Politicians are not required to disclose tax returns, but Meisner’s were included. His estate and holdings were sizeable, but his income wasn’t. Around the time he was first elected to the senate, his tax bill approached the value of his entire holdings. Creditors threatened him with involuntary bankruptcy. Shortly afterward, somehow he’d paid all of his debts. Jess shook her head. How had he managed to employ such a big staff to maintain his house and grounds?
She found the answer in the next file. Fourteen years ago, Meisner had married Margot Palmer-Breton, daughter of one of America’s few double-digit billionaires. George Palmer-Breton had started from nothing and in forty years built up a financial empire that was a watchword for integrity and independence.
Wedding pictures included a shot of Margot’s father with his arm around Meisner. Both men smiling.
Two years later, Margot’s father purchased Meisner’s estate. Only Meisner still lived there. So it wasn’t so much a purchase, as a way to transfer a large sum of money while avoiding any troublesome tax issues.
Jess whistled. Not only did Meisner no longer own his mansion or his estate, but he’d sold to his father-in-law three days after Crystal Mackie was reported missing.
