Framed

by Karen Leabo

  The doorbell was insistent. Jess, not at her best from the hectic schedule she’d been keeping, was positive it was another reporter. She jerked open the door. “What do you people want from me?”

  “Police, ma’am,” a stone-faced young man on her front porch said. He wore the now-familiar black-and-white jacket of an evidence tech. “We have a warrant to search the exterior grounds of your home for evidence related to the disappearance—”

  “Yes, I know the routine by now. You already dug up my whole yard. What more could you want?” Then she noticed the crowbars. Another man and a woman carried crowbars and hammers. Behind them stood Detective Clewis, his self-satisfied smirk almost nauseating. Behind them stood the press—two minicams and a still photographer from the Star. And behind them...Kyle. His gaze was glued to her, his dark eyes almost apologetic.

  “The porch steps, ma’am,” the lead cop said.

  She wanted to run inside and slam the door against the inquisitive, accusing stares and the bright lights. But she and Marva had agreed that she would not shy away from the press as if she was guilty. All she could think of to do was shrug.

  “Do what you have to do,” she said.

  “Ms. Robinson, could you tell us—”

  “I’m sorry,” she interrupted, forcing a smile, “you guys know by now that I can’t make statements to the press.” She shrugged again. “Lawyer’s orders.” Her gaze slid toward Kyle.

  He looked away. Was this his doing? she wondered. Why was he here, if he really wasn’t a prominent member of the investigation team?

  By now the evidence techs had cleared the steps, and the cameras refocused their attention on the matter at hand. Should she go inside? she wondered. Or stand here and watch?

  She would watch, she decided, curious as hell to know why they’d suddenly zeroed in on her porch. It didn’t bode well.

  She saw movement behind the uniforms who were keeping the too-curious at bay. It was Kyle. He’d moved forward, and he was flashing his badge. The blue uniforms parted to let him through. Carefully skirting the activity on her steps, he vaulted up to the porch.

  She didn’t quite know how to greet him.

  “I wanted to warn you about this,” he said, his back to the cameras. “But to do so would have seriously violated ethics.”

  “What the hell are they—” she started to reply, but he hushed her with a furtive hand gesture.

  “Be careful what you say. Cameras are rolling. They can go over the tapes and read lips.”

  She felt suddenly paranoid. “Okay,” she mumbled. “Why are they doing this?”

  “Anonymous tip.” The shriek of splitting wood punctuated his sentence. “Man said he was intimate with you. You confessed to him and told him where you’d hidden the knife. I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”

  Jess’s insides were cold. She looked into Kyle’s eyes, saw the doubt written there and went even colder. He actually thought it could be true.

  “Do you have a lover?” he asked, almost defiantly, daring her to answer yes.

  If she hadn’t been concerned about a murder conviction, she might have answered yes just to needle him. But this wasn’t about mind games, she reminded herself. Not on her part. She had to be scrupulously honest...about this, anyway.

  “No lovers,” she said, staring down at her toes. “I don’t suppose this phone call was recorded?” She’d bet her bloomers it was Terry himself.

  “No.”

  “He’s playing hardball. I wonder when he intends to stop—when I’m on my way to the electric chair?” She turned her head to the side so the cameras couldn’t catch her words. “Kyle, you don’t take this seriously, do you? An anonymous tip? Conveniently timed to heat things up when the investigation was slowing down?”

  “I think it’s a crpck,” Kyle said. “I also think Clewis alerted the press so he could showboat when the murder weapon is found.”

  “They won’t find anything,” Jess said flatly. “He’ll look like a fool.”

  “Think about it, Jess. Would Terry have made this gesture without preparing for it?”

  Jess felt sick to her stomach. Of course. Terry had planted the knife there. And when the evidence techs had overlooked it, he’d been forced to draw their attention to it.

  “Looks like we found something,” the female tech said. A hush fell over the crowd. Cameras whirred and clicked. Reporters jockeyed for position. With a pair of forceps, she withdrew a knife. A large butcher knife, its blade rusted or dirtied or both.

  Jess recognized it instantly, even from a distance. It belonged to the cutlery set the police had confiscated earlier. It was her knife, probably loaded with her fingerprints.

  “Go inside—now!” Kyle hissed.

  That was exactly what she wanted to do. But her feet wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was spinning. A collective gasp issued from the onlookers as she went down. Kyle caught her before she hit the ground.

  What priceless footage this stunt would make for the evening news, she thought fuzzily. Marva would be furious!

  Her last thought, before everything went black, was how nice Kyle’s arms felt around her.

  Chapter 9

  She woke up inside her duplex, sprawled on her sofa, to find Kyle bathing her face with a wet towel.

  “There you are,” he said when she opened her eyes, his voice a caress. “You okay?”

  “That depends.” She cleared her throat so she wouldn’t sound like a sick sparrow. “Where’s everybody else?”

  “Stalled, for the time being. Clewis is out there smiling for the cameras. But he’ll be coming after you before long.”

  “I’m counting on it. Damn, I can’t believe I blacked out. I’ve never done that before.” Well, maybe once, after she’d stabbed Phil Cattrone. She’d awakened to find herself lying next to his inert body, his blood all over her. She shivered at the memory.

  “If you’re not up to questioning, I can call in the paramedics,” Kyle said, all full of concern as he stroked hair off her damp forehead. “A night in the hospital will buy you some time.”

  “I don’t need time,” she said indignantly, trying to sit up. But her woozy head forced her down again. “The questions shouldn’t last long. I don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah, well, it’ll take Clewis a couple of hours to convince himself he can’t worm any answers out of you. By now you know how that goes.”

  She nodded miserably. “I should call Marva. She’s going to hit the roof.”

  “This isn’t exactly your doing.”

  “True, I can’t do anything about planted evidence. But I should have at least stayed inside the house, away from the cameras.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. They say a picture paints a thousand words. And the look of shock on your face when they pulled that knife out from under your steps was as genuine as they come.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Every camera out there captured it. You could use it at the trial ”

  “Please, let’s not talk about trials. Surely Terry won’t put me through that.”

  “Whoever’s framing you might not stop at anything.” He paused to let that sink in. “I’ll call Marva for you.”

  “Her number’s by the phone in the kitchen.”

  While Kyle made the call, Jess tried to collect herself. God, this was insanity. She had to put a stop to it. She had to find Terry. As she lay there on the couch, her head spinning, her stomach churning, she thought of a plan.

  She couldn’t tell anyone about it, though, not even Lynn. Not Marva. Especially not Kyle, who would try to stop her. And if he couldn’t, he would follow her, and possibly end up in trouble himself. He could lose his job if he got caught breaking and entering.

  Detective Clewis made an appearance a few minutes later. He banged on the door. And when Kyle let him in, he swaggered and stared down his nose at Jess, still supine on the couch. He almost crowed.

  “Her attorney’s on the way,” Kyle said.

  Clew
is rolled his eyes, the wind momentarily out of his sails. “I’ll wait.”

  The female evidence tech, who’d followed Clewis inside, sat gingerly on the edge of a chair, looking nervous. She held a paper sack.

  Jess knew what was in the sack. They were going to make her look at it. As if she needed to see it.

  Marva showed up in record time. Her wig was on a little crooked, as was her lipstick. But her presence was commanding nonetheless. Even Clewis sat up a little straighter as she swept into the room, and Jess was once again pleased with Lynn’s choice of lawyer.

  “Are you up to this, honey?” she asked Jess first thing. “’Cause if you’re not—”

  “Yes. I want to get it over with.”

  “All right, then.” She pulled a chair over from the dining room and sat in it like a queen taking her throne. She nodded at Clewis. “Go ahead.”

  Things went predictably from there. Clewis asked Jess what she knew about the knife. She replied that she knew nothing more than anyone else. Yes, she recognized it as her knife. She didn’t know how it had gotten under the porch. Whenever she mentioned the possibility that someone had framed her, Clewis ignored her.

  They went round and round. The nausea worked in Jess’s favor. Her stomach hurt so badly that she couldn’t spare any energy to fuel emotions. Her answers to Clewis’s questions were sedate, calm, matter-of-fact.

  He gave up more quickly than she would have guessed possible.

  The moment Clewis was gone, Marva turned a jaundiced eye toward Kyle. “You can go, too, you know.”

  Jess longed to defend Kyle. He’d been kind to her this afternoon—warning her about the TV cameras, catching her when she fell, protecting her from the press vultures. But Marva would be horrified if she knew exactly how close she’d gotten to Kyle Branson. The best she could do for Kyle was to give him an apologetic shrug.

  “I’m gone,” Kyle said, putting on his jacket. “Call if you need anything.”

  When he’d left, Marva stared suspiciously at the closed door for several seconds. Finally she asked, “What’s going on with him?”

  “He’s been nice to me, some of the time, anyway,” Jess answered, finding it impossible to fib to Marva. “He’s the only one who even halfway believes my theory that Terry framed me.”

  Marva clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Girl, you ever heard of good cop, bad cop? Your fine-looking detective there is playing good cop. And don’t you fall for it. He’s after something, and it’s not your sweet behind, although he’d probably take that with a smile.”

  Jess shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Marva was only voicing the same doubts Jess had experienced about Kyle from time to time. She said cautiously, “I think he’s on the level.”

  Marva used the scowl she reserved for when she really wanted to make an impression. “You get this through your head. With the police, nothing is on the level. You don’t tell that man a thing, you got me?”

  Jess nodded numbly. Marva didn’t understand. Just the same, she was obliged to follow her attorney’s advice. Marva knew what was best for Jess’s case. But did anyone know what was best for Jess’s soul? For reasons that were beyond her understanding, she was beginning to need Kyle.

  Kyle tried to watch TV, but on every channel they kept showing news updates. Short film clips of the knife and Jess’s pale face dominated the screen, along with some not-so-clever sound bites from Clewis. Kyle couldn’t get away from them. So he turned off the box. It was after midnight, anyway.

  He needed sleep, but he knew it would elude him. His right leg ached, the vestiges of an old injury he’d incurred when he was a street cop. Some doped-up drug dealer had run Kyle down with his car. When the pain kicked in, the only way he could sleep was to achieve total exhaustion.

  He was close to that now. He thought longingly of the prescription pain reliever tucked away in his medicine chest, then shook his head. His old man had long been addicted to prescription narcotics. The drugs ruled his life. Kyle had vowed not to make that mistake. The bottle of pills remained untouched.

  He lay down on his butt-sprung couch, his leg propped up by a couple of cushions, and listened to the traffic outside. Someone down the street was having a party. The cars came and went. He’d almost drifted off when the phone rang.

  He pounced on it, hoping it might be good news for Jess. Or Jess herself. “Branson.”

  “Kyle?”

  At first he thought it was Jess, then realized the voice wasn’t quite right. “Lynn?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you, but something’s wrong and I don’t know who else to call. Jess is missing.”

  “What?” Alarming pictures flashed through Kyle’s mind.

  “She wasn’t kidnapped or anything,” Lynn said hastily. “She went off someplace. She said she was going to bed a couple of hours ago, but just now I got a funny feeling and I went to check on her. She’s gone, her car’s gone, her bed’s made. She sneaked out.”

  That news was only slightly more welcome than a kidnapping would have been. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Any idea where she went?”

  Lynn hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I think I know. Earlier, she kept talking about how finding Terry was the only way she could get out of this mess. She’s convinced Kevin is hiding Terry. Ergo...”

  “I get it.” Oh, Jess, how could you do something this dumb? “We have to stop her.”

  “What if we’re too late?” Lynn wailed.

  He didn’t even want to consider the possibilities. “I’ll do what I can.” He was already shoving his arms into the sleeves of his leather jacket. “Thanks for calling, Lynn. You did the right thing.” Although Jess wouldn’t think so, not after he got done with her. If he caught her before Kevin did.

  Jess was freezing. This stakeout was by far more uncomfortable than her last one. At least last time she’d had a car to block the wind. Now, all that protected her were the scraggly bushes Kevin had planted around his garbagecan rack in the alley.

  After observing the house from all angles, Jess had decided the view from the back was best. She’d removed one of the garbage cans from the rack, replacing it with herself. The position afforded her a nice knothole in the stockade fence to peer through, and although she was scrunched up and the place smelled of bad meat, it wasn’t terribly uncomfortable.

  Just cold.

  She consulted her watch. It was after midnight. The lights had been off for more than an hour and all was quiet. Time to move in.

  She’d thought out her plan and it was a good one, though not without its risks. The worst-case scenario was that Kevin would catch her and call the cops. She would be arrested and charged with breaking and entering. Next to a murder charge, big deal.

  Best-case scenario, she would get into the house and find evidence that Terry had been living there. His razor, for one thing. When Jess had packed up the stuff from his bathroom, his gold designer razor was the one personal item that had been missing. Jess figured he just couldn’t stand the thought of using a disposable. When she’d found what she wanted, she would get out. And tomorrow, she would be the one to make an anonymous call. She would pose as Kevin’s girlfriend and describe the evidence she’d seen in Kevin’s house. The police would have to check out her story.

  She quietly opened the zippered case she’d brought with her and extracted her burglar’s tools—a crowbar and a towel. She had a tiny penlight in one jacket pocket, and an old Kodak disk camera in the other. She was able to slip the tools through a loose board. She herself, however, would have to go over the top of the six-foot wooden fence. With one final look around to be sure no one was watching, she climbed up on top of the garbage can, grasped two of the pointed slats of the fence and heaved herself over.

  She landed in a great heap on the other side, jarred but unhurt. She grabbed up her tools and sprinted for the first window well she saw, which would lead into the basement.

  So far so good. All was quiet. No lights came on.


  She would have to break the glass. She wrapped her towel around the crowbar and, lying on her stomach to reach the low window, gave it an experimental tap, then a harder one. With her third attempt, the glass cracked with very little sound.

  Piece of cake. She pushed and tapped a little more until she’d punched out a piece large enough for her arm. She reached inside, unlocked the window and opened it. It was a tight fit, but she managed to wiggle through feetfirst. Her sneakers hit the concrete floor with a thud.

  A momentary panic seized her. She’d crossed the line. She was committing a crime. But she swallowed back the fear. There was no turning back now. She switched on the miniature flashlight and had a look around.

  Typical basement. Dusty boxes, old exercise equipment, rakes and garden hoses, paint cans, lumber. A pile of carpet remnants caught her eye. Moving closer, she noticed a larger than average “remnant” tightly rolled and wrapped in plastic. She couldn’t easily unwrap it, either—the thing was sealed with duct tape. But she noted with a surge of satisfaction that the rug had fringe. It was an Oriental, about the right size to be hers.

  Elation emboldened her. She snapped a quick picture of it, put the camera away, then made her way up the stairs, cringing with every creak. She hoped Kevin was a sound sleeper.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened onto a kitchen. A filthy kitchen. Two dirty plates sat on the table. Two. Good sign. But it wasn’t conclusive enough evidence for her to risk the camera flash.

  She moved on to the dining room. The table was piled so high with junk that she guessed no one had actually eaten off it in months. In the living room, she found clothing scattered about, including a UMKC sweatshirt. Now that looked familiar. Still, she was afraid to use the camera. If she was discovered, she planned to simply bolt out the front door. She was a pretty fast runner.

  A hallway led to the bedrooms. Did she dare? Why not? she thought brazenly. She’d come this far. Might as well get what she came for. She tiptoed down the hallway.