Witness to Murder

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  Hallie waved. “I’ll communicate through Ms. Monique.” She walked away briskly.

  Stan tagged behind her into the lobby then scooted ahead and poked a finger at her as he walked backward. “Now there’s a murder suspect that I like—er, don’t like.” He turned around and fell into step.

  Hallie buzzed him like a game show loser. “Sorry to bust your bubble, but if Alicia died in a fatal catfight, both parties would be covered in scratches, not to mention bald spots.”

  Stan shot her a fake pout.

  She laughed. “I’ll give you this, though. The deceased was no fairy tale princess loved by all. She had enemies.”

  On the ride back to the station, Hallie closed her eyes and leaned her head back. They were building a treasure-trove of film about the modeling industry in Minnesota. More work lay ahead, interviewing fashion designers, event planners, photographers, hair dressers, makeup artists and the list went on.

  She wasn’t getting quite the picture of Alicia she had expected—not the needy, insecure type who clung to any affection she found, no matter how dysfunctional. Still, the woman had possessed an unnatural fixation on Damon that would have made it easy for her to stay with him despite abuse. Maybe in her case the abuse wasn’t entirely unprovoked, but nothing justified what she’d seen in the living room of that coed house.

  What had Alicia’s housemates seen in her relationship with Damon? She needed to put them on her list to interview.

  And the part about Daddy paying the college tuition meant that Alicia worked for spending money, not to put herself through college. No wonder part-time was plenty.

  What would Alicia’s parents say about the daughter who’d been wrenched from them so horribly? If nothing else, they’d be Hallie’s best bet to find out about the bracelet. Surely, they knew where it came from. She’d found out a whole lot of nothing today.

  She had to track down Alicia’s parents.

  But first, corner Brody. What was on that guy’s agenda? She’d go back to the station to watch the evening news broadcast for the outcome of Damon’s arraignment, and then maybe she’d hang around and see Brody afterward. Or maybe she wouldn’t.

  “We’re off the air.”

  The director’s voice through the intercom of the control room released Brody from his chair behind the long desk on the news set. His stride ate up the distance to the door and up the hallway. Would she be there? He reached his office, and his stomach clenched. The door was slightly ajar, just like he’d left it, and no Hallie loitered in the hallway. It had probably been expecting too much for her to be interested in anything he had going, but he thought he’d baited the hook fairly well.

  He opened the door, stepped inside and halted. “Well, ah…hello.” Did that inane greeting escape his mouth? He cleared his throat. There she sat, dressed in a navy blue jacket and skirt, long legs crossed at the knee. She turned her head, and a pair of ear bangles swayed against her elegant neck.

  She frowned at him from his guest chair. “You sound surprised to see me. Should I have waited outside the door?”

  “No, of course not.” Brody hustled past her and plopped his news script from the evening broadcast onto his desktop. “I’m glad you decided to hang around.” He settled a hip on the edge of his desk.

  She shrugged. “I’m surprised you’ve got something scheduled tonight that involves me. I thought you’d be off celebrating Damon’s release on bail. Dramatic footage there on the courthouse steps when Damon walked out with his lawyer on one side of him and you on the other. You whisked him away pretty quickly. Where have you stashed him?”

  “Far away. You don’t need to worry about him.”

  She snorted. “Says the man who saw what the guy sent me yesterday.”

  “Let’s not go there. Okay?” He raised his hands, palms out. “We’ve got better things to think about. I’ve offered to treat Alicia’s roommates to ice cream in about an hour, downtown Minneapolis. Can I buy you a treat, too?”

  Her full mouth widened into a smile that lit her deep brown gaze. If Brody didn’t know better, from the fizz going off on the inside, he’d think he just gulped a swig of seltzer water.

  “For once you’re ahead of me, Jordan.” She rose. “The roommates were on my must-see list. I suppose if I have to eat ice cream to make it happen, I could force a little down.”

  A few minutes later they settled into Brody’s Impala, and he headed the vehicle toward I-94. “We’ve got a little drive time. Ask what you want to know about me and Damon.”

  “I intended to.” She darted him a shuttered look. “And I suppose you’d like a little quid pro quo on what my modeling interviews yielded so far.”

  “The thought crossed my mind.” Brody held his gaze on the road. They’d missed rush hour, so traffic wasn’t too heavy, but he couldn’t let her see how eager he was to trade information. “I’ve been thinking deeper than that.”

  “Should I be afraid?” A grin sneaked onto her face.

  Brody chuckled. “Very afraid.”

  She laughed.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “We both want the same thing, so why shouldn’t we work together?”

  “The same thing? That’s a pretty big stretch.”

  “Not really. Maybe we have opposing opinions on Damon’s role in Alicia’s death, but we both want to see that the guilty party pays for her murder.”

  She turned away and looked out the passenger side window. Finally, she angled her head toward him. “I think you’re reaching with that assessment of the situation. Your primary concern is getting Damon off, and the best way to do that is to prove someone else did it, or at least provide enough evidence that someone else could have done it in order to remove him as the main suspect. I don’t know if I want to be a party to that effort.”

  Brody resisted the urge to take the next exit, head back for St. Paul, and dump her cute highness off at the station. Why had he wanted to bring her along in the first place? And why was he so irritated with her? Maybe because there was a nugget of truth mixed in with her contrariness. But truth could work both ways. “You could be right…to a degree. But are you sure your insistence that Damon is a murderer isn’t a little bit influenced by your prejudice against athletes? My guess is you got burned by some fool who thought being good at a ball game gave him free license with women.”

  Red crept up her neck. “You’re surmising and missing the mark. Yes, I think professional athletes are mostly an arrogant lot. But if I’m prejudiced, it’s against abusers of any stripe.”

  “There, again, we agree. About the abusive people, I mean. Controllers, manipulators, batterers. I’d like to bundle them all off to Antarctica where they can enjoy each other’s company, and the rest of us can live in peace.”

  “Poor penguins.” Hallie clucked her tongue. “But I like your style.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “Jocks aren’t such a bad lot, you know,” Brody said. “Many of them are Christians.”

  Hallie lost her grin. “So was Teresa’s boyfriend, Mason…or so he claimed. Didn’t stop him from inflicting diabolical torment on her heart, mind and body.”

  “Sounds heavy. Who are Teresa and Mason?”

  His passenger stared straight ahead toward the freeway, but the distant look in her gaze said she probably wasn’t seeing much of the road. “You’ve met my BFFs Jenna and Sam. I had to leave them behind when I graduated first and went to college. I thought I’d be miserable without them, but wonderful Teresa turned out to be my roommate. Funny. Kind. Smart. We hit it off straight away…and then Mason happened.” Breath hissed between her teeth with a sound like a punctured tire.

  “Touchy subject?” Something bad enough to leach the color from her face.

  “Let’s get back to business.” She smacked her palms against the seat. “Cough up what’s so special about your relationship to Damon that you’d risk your life for him in that neighborhood…and that he’d let you bring him in.”

  “Fair que
stion. I’m his Big Brother.”

  Her jaw went slack. “His b-brother? That woman you said was his mother, she—”

  “Nope, she’s not my mommy-dearest. For that, I genuinely thank the Lord. My parents are happily retired in a senior village in Florida. Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear about relationships. Damon grew up in Elk River, a town a little north and west of the Twin Cities. That’s where I graduated from, so I took on a kid from there in the Big Brother mentorship program.”

  Her brow smoothed. “Not like George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother, then.”

  He laughed. “Well, we do keep a close eye on our protégés. In this program a guy volunteers to provide a male role model for a less fortunate kid. He was a handful. Still is, obviously. I’ve been on his case—literally—since he was in fifth grade. We’ve been through a pile of trouble together—near-brushes with the law from foolish decisions, his mom in and out of treatment, the constant mental and emotional affects of being born a crack baby. After he graduated high school and headed for college, his mom moved to the Cities right behind him. Not sure that was a good thing for Damon, but I’m proud of the young man he’s become and his prospects for a great future.”

  Hallie huffed. “Prospects that would be seriously dimmed by a murder conviction.” She pursed her lips. “I can see why you’d be willing to fight for his innocence.” Her gaze zeroed in on him. “But what if he’s guilty?”

  A slow smile spread across Brody’s face. “He can’t be. I may know him better than his own mother. He’s not physically capable of committing what was done to Alicia.”

  “Now that’s a problematic statement to make about an acclaimed athlete.”

  “Damon becomes ill in the presence of violence toward women. He developed that phobia from exposure to all the abuse he witnessed from his mom’s poor choices in—er, companions. If he’d even thought about hitting Alicia, he would have been hugging a toilet.”

  “And this is provable how? Any prosecutor would claim he’s putting on an act.”

  Brody frowned. “That’s what Damon’s defense attorney said, too. I just happen to know it’s the truth.”

  “If Damon doesn’t hurt women, then how come he chased me at the coed house?”

  “There’s where you’re again misinterpreting what you experienced. He wasn’t chasing you. He was trying to escape the house and had to get past you to do it.”

  “I suppose he told you that.”

  “He did, and you have to admit it’s a reasonable explanation.” He tucked the Impala into a parking spot outside the ice cream parlor.

  “Hmm. I don’t know about that, but we’re here now, so we can tackle the issue again later. I hope Alicia’s roommates show up.” Hallie turned her head this way and that, eyeing pedestrians on the sidewalks.

  Brody checked his watch. She was right about interview subjects sometimes chickening out. “We’re a little early. Let’s go inside and wait for them.”

  She gathered her purse, and they entered the cool interior of the shop. From behind the serving counter, several youthful faces of wait staff focused on them. Most of the small, round tables were occupied by customers, but Brody snagged a pair in the corner and pulled them together, along with five chairs.

  “Nice and cozy.” Hallie nodded. “Uh-oh!” She pointed out the window that took up most of the front facade of the building. “Somebody’s leaving a flyer on your windshield.”

  “I hate that.” Brody scowled and hustled out the door. Didn’t people have anything better to do than annoy their fellow man and waste good paper?

  The broad-shouldered guy by the car must have heard him coming, because he took off at a lope and disappeared into the evening masses, baseball cap bobbing. Brody didn’t even get a glimpse of his face. He snatched a folded white sheet from beneath his wiper blade, balled it in his fist, and went back inside. Hallie was standing where he’d left her, mouth agape.

  “What’s the big deal? It’s probably just some advertisement.” He headed for the waste can against the wall, but Hallie caught up to him and grabbed his arm.

  “If I were you, I’d read that.” Her grip tightened. “His cap resembles one on a guy I saw last night after a dog stole my birthday present.”

  “A dog stole your birthday present!” Was this woman losing it from all the stress lately?

  “Later. Just find out what the note says.”

  Slowly, Brody unfolded the paper. Words stared back at him in bold, block letters.

  ALICIA HAD MORE THAN ONE VISITOR THE DAY SHE DIED

  NINE

  Hallie shivered, though she hadn’t so much as ordered her ice cream yet. If the guy who left this note on Brody’s car had been lurking around in the store parking lot last night, then the scarf-snatching wasn’t necessarily a fluke incident topping off a very bad day. Her breath snagged in her throat. Someone must be following her wherever she went. She opened her mouth to blurt out her alarms when three college-age women in shorts outfits and sandals entered the store.

  Brody gave her a stare that promised further discussion, tucked the paper in the back pocket of his khaki slacks and waved at the newcomers. They smiled back. He shepherded them all into line for treats. While they waited, they exchanged introductions. Erin Weeding was from Spicer, Cassidy Beyer hailed from Duluth, and Jackie Kim came from Rochester. She was premed and swamped in summer school, while the other two were working and saving for the fall semester. Every one of them was a cheerleader for some type of college sport. They all vied with wisecracks, hair flips and long-lashed glances to tempt the famous Brody Jordan dimple out of hiding. None of them mentioned Alicia.

  Hallie folded her arms and hung back. If these ladies were bent on falling all over a television personality, how were they going to get the conversation around to something serious? Didn’t they give a flying pom-pom that their roommate was dead?

  Soon they settled at the tables with various frozen concoctions. Hallie glanced at Brody, surrounded by coed attention. He spooned a bite into his mouth and gave her the barest nod. She wrinkled her nose at him. Fat chance she’d be able to arrest the women’s attention long enough to get a question answered, but she might as well try.

  “So where are you all staying now that your house is—um, off-limits?” She strained a smile from one to the next.

  Jackie’s face hardened. The others looked away. Erin’s lower lip quivered.

  “We’re still processing. Y’know?” The premed student shrugged an eloquent shoulder. “This whole thing has shaken us up. It’d be worse if one of us had found her.”

  Three pairs of wide eyes focused on Hallie, while Brody kept his gaze on his ice cream. Heat rippled through her, leaving a damp chill on her skin. “It was…pretty bad.”

  Cassidy showed her palm. “Spare us the details.”

  “Gladly.”

  Jackie nodded. “So we figure you’re not just some disinterested reporter nosing around, and we should be candid with you. We discussed it on the way over here.”

  Sure, when you weren’t giggling about the hot WDJN sportscaster. Hallie stuck her spoon into her strawberry cheesecake ice cream. “We’d like to understand more about Damon and Alicia.”

  Jackie tilted her head, straight black hair falling over one eye. “So ask what you really want to know. Where we’re living now isn’t important, and griping about temporary accommodations sure isn’t why we’re here practicing our flirting skills on a TV mug old enough to be a lead professor.”

  Brody went bug-eyed with a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough in his mouth.

  Hallie choked back a laugh then gave up the fight and hooted, while the others laughed too, including Brody. She had to admit the man was a good sport. “My humble apologies, ladies. I had about written you off as puff-cakes. My mistake. Now suppose you fill us in on how Alicia was as a roommate and what you observed about Alicia and Damon’s relationship.” She tucked a bite of ice cream into her mouth. The rich flavor flowed over her tongue, almost a
s delicious as the conversation that suddenly sounded promising.

  “She was mean.” Erin twirled a honey-brown strand of hair around her pointer finger.

  “As a roommate or with Damon?” Brody inserted the question.

  “Both. Wouldn’t you think that was rude when you talk to a person, and they just brush right past you? And the things she said to Damon. I don’t see why he put up with it for so long.”

  Cassidy waved her spoon. “Oh, Erin, you took her too personally. She said what was on her mind, and didn’t care who heard it. And at times, well, she was like in her own little world. I don’t think she ignored you on purpose. Too much going on inside to pay attention to small talk…and you do tend to jabber on quite a bit. But that’s just your way, and we love you whatever.”

  Erin’s cheeks bloomed a becoming pink. “Thanks…I think.”

  “You’re both missing the subtleties of Alicia,” Jackie said. “She played head games. A pro at it. Because Damon was whipped in love with her, he got the full load. Her favorite one with him was ‘come hither, the better to mark you with my claws.’”

  “Explain.” Brody set his spoon down on his napkin. “I’ve seen glimpses of this behavior myself, but I’d like to get a clearer picture.”

  “Well, like it was pretty common for her to be all warm and excited on the phone about some dating plans, then when he shows up she turns all diva on him, and nothing’s good enough. When they’d get home from an evening out, either they were going at it hammer and nails or hanging all over each other. Never any middle ground.”

  “She’d stir the pot with us quite a bit, too.” Cassidy nodded.

  Erin leaned forward. “You mean the way she had of turning the corners of her lips down and twitching an eyebrow, while she comes with ‘you’re wearing that today?’ Like you were about to step out the door in your pajamas or something.”

  Jackie chuckled. “Trademark Alicia. I finally figured out she was just messing with my head and paid no attention. She wasn’t all that bad when you got used to her ways.”