Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The service was in a small Methodist church in Tonasket, an apple-growing town not far from the Tri-Cities. Since Addie Lane was young and single, most of the mourners were high school friends and a few older couples who’d known her family when she was growing up. Pictures of the dead girl hung on the memory board posted by the door showed her as a darling little blonde with big blue eyes and pink cheeks.

  “A cherub without wings,” said one elderly woman standing by the photos.

  “She has those wings now,” said a man with a sad smile.

  Brenda introduced herself and Chelsea, telling the family friends that they were close friends from work.

  “She was only a temp,” Brenda said, “but we’ll never forget her.”

  Chelsea didn’t like the sound of that. Brenda had put emphasis on “temp,” like it was some kind of twisted in-joke between the two of them.

  After the minister gave a brief eulogy, family members and friends were invited to the front of the church by the altar to share a memory of the young woman gone too soon.

  Though Addie’s brother, Devon, could barely speak through his grief, his effort was valiant. He talked about his sister and how proud they’d been of her when she was the runner-up for Miss Apple Valley as a senior in high school. He talked about how they used to sneak away from their house to swim in the creek that ran through their family’s property. Addie had a pet raccoon named Bandit that she’d raised with a doll’s bottle when its mother got hit by a car.

  “My sister was the nicest person you ever met. It was a real tragedy what happened to her. A real sad shame,” he said.

  Brenda got up and made her way to the front of the church. Her eyes were puffy from tears.

  “I just want you all to know that we thought of Addie like a sister. She was our kid sister. We all loved her at the company. She was part of our family. She looked like a cherub without wings in those baby pictures by the door. Now she has wings. She has the most beautiful wings ever.”

  * * *

  Chelsea lit another cigarette. The light had started to fade, and the river was turning to gunmetal gray. The man with the dog and the Frisbee packed up his SUV and drove away. It was just the two of them along the river then. Not even a gull or crow hovered by the trashcan to disturb them.

  “What happened to Addie? How did she die?” Kendall asked.

  Chelsea exhaled, and the breeze caught her smoke, pushing it at Kendall.

  “Sorry,” she said, fanning it away.

  “How?” Kendall repeated.

  “Car accident. Her brakes failed and she went through the guardrail.”

  “What makes you think Brenda had anything to do with that? Did she tell you? Did she confess?”

  Chelsea leaned back and shook her head. “Brenda was never going to confess. She led me to believe that she cut the brake lines or something like that, but she never directly said so.”

  “How did she lead you to believe that? That’s a pretty big thing for someone to hint at, right?”

  “Yes, Detective, it is. She didn’t say so. She left a book on automotive repair on her desk the week before Addie’s accident. It might even have been the day before. I asked her about it. She said she was having brake problems, and she was going to try to fix her car on her own—to save money. There were a couple things wrong with that.”

  “Such as?” Kendall asked.

  Chelsea shrugged her dream-catcher shoulder. “Well, for one, she was hooking up with a mechanic behind her husband’s back, and she was all about trading sex for favors. One time I admired a handbag she had and she told me that some old guy gave it to her because she let him feel her up in the parking lot at the mall.”

  “Sounds like she was a prostitute,” Kendall said.

  “Something along those lines. I doubt she took money for what she did. She more or less bartered for things. I really think that if she was having brake problems she’d have given that mechanic of hers a hand job and called it even.”

  “You don’t like her much, do you?” Kendall asked, giving Chelsea a little break from the story she was unwinding.

  “I used to,” Chelsea said. “I mean, I adored her. I thought she was the most amazing person that I’d ever met in my entire life. Sometimes I still think that. She was unencumbered by conscience, and that made it easy for her to really cut loose and live.”

  Hearing someone admiring another person for not having a conscience was a first for Kendall. She couldn’t help but wonder if Chelsea thought Ted Bundy was the epitome of self-direction and self-centered prowess.

  Except for the killing part, maybe.

  “You said a couple of things tipped you off that she might have been behind Addie’s death.”

  “Right. Later, after Addie died, and the police ruled it was an accident caused by a mechanical failure on her car, I mentioned to Brenda that I thought it was ironic that she’d been researching how to repair faulty brakes just before the crash.”

  “So you were suspicious, Chelsea? That’s why you asked her?”

  Chelsea didn’t agree with that at all.

  “No,” she said. “Not at all. I mean, it was possible that I was a little suspicious, you know, subconsciously, I guess. It was her response that made me wonder. She told me she thought it was ironic that she was researching brake-line repairs the day after Addie died—a week before the ruling came down from the police.”

  “But it wasn’t after the accident, was it?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “No. I know it was before. I know she was trying to get me to believe it was after, but I remembered that it was Thai food day in the office. A Thursday. I remember the pad thai container on her desk right next to the book. Addie’s crash was on a Friday. We were all off on Monday for the holiday. We found out on the Tuesday when we came back. By the following Monday, we’d learned the cause.”

  Chelsea hesitated over her cigarette pack, but thought better of lighting up another.

  “There’s something that’s really been bothering me,” she said.

  “I can tell,” Kendall said, reaching over to press on Chelsea’s hand. “You’re shaking.”

  Chelsea braced herself a little. She pulled back and wrapped her arms around her torso to stem the shudders that undulated through her body. One wave. Another. All the memories that she’d never given voice to had stirred something physical inside.

  “I feel sick,” she said. “Really, I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Get up. Let’s walk a little. You’ll feel better,” Kendall said, standing first and holding out her hand.

  Chelsea stood and they walked toward the river’s edge.

  “I think I gave her the idea to kill Addie and to kill her husband and daughter. I think I did.” She bent over and coughed, but didn’t vomit. It was as though she wanted to purge her body of all that she’d been talking about, all that she’d held inside for so long.

  “You didn’t,” Kendall said.

  Chelsea held her ground. “I did,” she said, looking up at Kendall. “I told her about how insurance companies don’t really investigate accidents. It didn’t matter how much money was on the line. If the cops say it was an accident—and murder and arson are considered accidents—then they’ll just pay up. It costs too much money to do a full-on investigation if the cops don’t call it a homicide.”

  “But she didn’t collect on Addie’s death.”

  Chelsea looked Kendall in the eye. “She did,” she said. “At least I think she did. She drove up in a new Miata three weeks later. She didn’t have that kind of money. None of us did. She told me that an aunt had left her some cash, but she’d never mentioned any rich aunt before.”

  “You would have known if she’d collected. You worked for the insurance company and you processed claims, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” Chelsea said. “But that’s just the thing. Maybe it’s different now, but back then there was no cross-referencing between insurance
companies. No automatic reporting to the authorities.”

  This was a lot to take in. The idea that Brenda was a serial killer was nothing new, yet it had long been believed by the authorities that her first kills had been her husband and daughter.

  “You’re suspicious,” Kendall said, “but you don’t know, and you shouldn’t put it on yourself, Chelsea.”

  “One time when Brenda was routing the mail in the office I saw a letter from one of our company’s competitors addressed to Addie. Brenda picked it out of the stack and said something about how Addie was trying to get a job there and she’d take care of it. She said it was Addie’s dream job. That’s so wrong. Insurance is no one’s dream job.”

  “Did you see what was in the letter?” Kendall asked.

  Chelsea gulped. “Yeah, I did. It was an application form.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Elan sat on the nearly deserted bleachers overlooking South Kitsap High School’s athletic field. He’d just completed four miles on the South Kitsap track, trying to keep his head on the run, instead of on Amber Turner. It was no easy task.

  There was something very special about her. She was a little beyond his reach. Maybe a lot.

  He didn’t have the kind of confidence that some of the guys had. He’d never really had a serious girlfriend. Never really had a girlfriend at all. The last time he took a girl anywhere was on the reservation, when he squired his dumpy cousin, Millie-Ann, to a school dance. It was a mercy date for Millie-Ann, but it felt a little that way for him too. Maybe a practice run for when he had the nerve to ask out a girl.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to get a girlfriend; he just hadn’t been able to summon up the nerve. He’d been unsure about how his Native American heritage would play in a small, almost completely white, town like Port Orchard. He wondered if the fact that he’d been living with his Aunt Birdy would keep him out of the hunt for a girl—who wants to hang out with some guy whose aunt cuts up dead people all day?

  Amber Turner didn’t seem to mind any of that in the least. She’d gone through all her school years in South Kitsap. She seemed bored with the same old, same old. She wanted to know what it was like living on the reservation (not great, but not terrible either), how it was living with a forensic pathologist (she’s nice, but a little bit of a control freak) and if he’d been to any of his aunt’s autopsies (God, no).

  It was as though he’d been plucked from obscurity; from the anonymity of no longer being the new kid at a very big high school, to a guy with a girlfriend.

  “Want to hang out at my place?” he asked when Amber found him on the bleachers. “My aunt’s out running errands or something.”

  She smiled. “Sure. I’ll drive.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t have a car.”

  “How’d you get here?” she asked.

  “I ran,” he said.

  * * *

  When he saw his aunt pull up in her familiar Prius, Elan jumped up and went outside to help her unload groceries.

  “Amber’s here,” he said.

  Birdy stooped to pick up one of her reusable shopping bags from the backseat. She shifted it into Elan’s outstretched arms.

  “Really?” she said, with mock seriousness. “Should I leave?”

  Elan scooped up a second bag of groceries. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

  She shut the car door with her hip. “Yes. Kidding, Elan. And really, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to be alone with a girl.”

  “Nothing’s happening.”

  “Well if it does . . .”

  “We’re not having this conversation,” he said. “You know I’m not a virgin, Aunt Birdy.”

  Birdy looked right at him. “I didn’t need to know that, Elan.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to think I was some loser and that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Like you said,” Birdy sighed. “We’re not having this conversation.”

  Once they got inside, Amber got up from the camelback sofa where she and Elan had been watching TV. A white-on-white pillow with a starfish applique fell to the floor and the teen scooped it up.

  “Hi again, Dr. Waterman,” she said.

  “Feel free to call me Birdy,” she said. “Join us for dinner? I’m making chicken tacos.”

  Elan looked over at Amber. “They’re actually pretty good.”

  Amber pushed her long red hair back over her shoulders. “Can’t,” she said. “I’m having dinner with my dad.”

  “I didn’t know your dad was around,” Elan said, surprised. “You mean your dad-dad?”

  Amber continued to fuss with her hair. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s here for a few days. Selling some property or something.”

  “Cool,” Elan said.

  “Yeah,” Amber went on. “I’m lucky. He’s the parent that I wish got custody when I was up for grabs. When my parents split, the judge insisted that as a girl I’d be better off with my mom. I guess that would have been true if she hadn’t married Karl.”

  Birdy, who had disappeared into the kitchen, thought about Elan and how he was processing what Amber was saying.

  He’d never been up for grabs. But he’d always been loved.

  After Amber and Elan had their long good-bye out by her car, Elan appeared in the kitchen and picked up the cutting board and a knife. Without saying anything, he started chopping a yellow onion.

  “You okay?” Birdy asked.

  He kept chopping. “Fine, I guess.”

  Something is wrong.

  “What is it, Elan?” she said, trying not to be too pushy.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking up. “I just like her. A lot. I feel like she kind of needs me, and I’m not sure I can help her.”

  “Help her with what?” Birdy asked.

  “Typical stuff, I guess. She hates her stepdad and she feels like her new sister gets all the attention.”

  Birdy placed the chicken in a shallow pan ready for roasting in the almost-dead oven, then pulled a bunch of cilantro from a plastic bag in the refrigerator.

  “That’s a hard one,” she said, handing the cilantro to Elan. “Parents sometimes favor one child over another and, yes, it does complicate things and cause a world of hurt feelings.”

  Elan knew that Aunt Birdy was talking about herself as much as Amber. Her own history with her mother had been the subject of tribal and family gossip for years.

  “I know you get it, Aunt Birdy. It just sucks, that’s all.”

  She couldn’t disagree.

  It really does suck.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kendall Stark looked at the time. She knew she would not be able to make the drive over the mountains and arrive home until very late. She texted Steven that she’d be staying overnight and would call him from her motel. Next, she dialed Birdy’s number to let her know what Chelsea had told her.

  “In her mind she’s an accomplice to Addie’s murder,” Kendall said.

  “The specter of guilt sometimes makes even the most innocent feel responsible for things they didn’t do,” Birdy said.

  “Right,” Kendall said. “I doubt that Chelsea even planted the seed of the idea. And if she did, it was completely inadvertent.”

  “Do you feel like you’re getting a better handle on who Brenda is?”

  Kendall knew what Birdy was after. The way to find Brenda and capture her was to dig in deep. Turn every furrow of her psyche. Understand how it was that a perfect baby had transformed into something so undeniably evil. So much had been written about Brenda. So many TV producers and talking heads had weighed in on the woman who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.

  Stop at nothing to get what she wanted. The phrase rolled around in Kendall’s mind. It was hackneyed. It was corny.

  It was Brenda.

  “Not sure,” Kendall said. “It’s hard to grasp where this need for the spotlight and the need to kill merged. Some killers like atte
ntion, don’t get me wrong. But Brenda is more than that.”

  “She craves it, Kendall,” Birdy said.

  “Yes,” Kendall said. “She sees herself as worthy of the spotlight without seeing that she’s in its glow for all the wrong reasons.”

  “Small-town girl,” Birdy said. “Pretty. Maybe abused. Sees her way out in living inside the TV or on the movie screen.”

  “Some people are famous simply for being famous,” Kendall said.

  Kendall parked her SUV in front of the Mountain View Motel.

  “I’m going to check in. I will call you tomorrow before I head home.”

  “Look for bedbugs,” Birdy said.

  Kendall smiled. “That’s a creepy good-bye.”

  “Just saying.”

  * * *

  The Mountain View Motel was a relic that boasted a “major remodel.” It looked as though most of the money had been spent on the front desk, where granite tiles fronted the counter and a new coffee bar area had been installed for “courtesy” coffee, 5 to 9 A.M. Kendall checked in and reparked her car in front of her room on the first floor. Her feet were killing her. Never, she thought, wear new shoes on a day with back-to-back interviews. She looked over the menu card for local restaurants that delivered and was about to turn on a bath to soak her feet, when someone knocked on the door.

  It was Chelsea. She appeared slightly drunk. Her hair was halfway tucked into her jacket and halfway out.

  “I was driving by, and I saw your car,” she said.

  “Should you be driving?” Kendall asked her.

  “Look, don’t judge me,” Chelsea said. “I’ve had a couple, yes. But I’m not drunk.”

  “You need coffee,” Kendall said.

  “No, I don’t,” Chelsea said. “I need to get out of this town. But I can’t, can I? I never can. I’m stuck here. Brenda got out.”

  “She’s not exactly a role model, Chelsea. Nor should she be.”

  Chelsea stood in the doorway, bracing herself against the jamb. “The murders,” she said, “I know.”

  “You aren’t here just because you were driving by?” Kendall asked.