Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  Kit’s answer was quick, and Jake had no time to answer for her. “Probably sleeping.”

  But St. John wasn’t the only one who’d lost patience. Jake spoke up, stating flatly, “The night Jessica Boyd died, Kit was with me.”

  “Ms. Griffin says she was sleeping. Now she was with you? Which is it?”

  Jake stared at St. John in disbelief. “If you think about it long enough, you’ll figure it out. We were together the entire night Jessica Boyd ended up dead. As you recall, we were together at the bookstore and from that time on into the next morning. Kit couldn’t have killed Jessica Boyd. I have a receipt from the restaurant here in San Madrid where we had dinner. You can talk to the waiters to verify how long we were there. The rest of the evening, you’ll just have to take my word for it, we were together all night.”

  But St. John wasn’t giving up. “It doesn’t take her off the hook for her mother’s murder, now does it? Unless, of course, you’re willing to provide her with a much-needed alibi for Saturday night or early Sunday morning, let’s say between the hours of seven o’clock Saturday night and noon Sunday.”

  But Jake was just as stubborn. “You just said you considered the two murders connected and that Kit was the link to both. Kit has an alibi for one. As I see it, you’ve just lost your link.”

  Holloway changed tactics, putting his hands up for peace. “Let’s back up for now. What about your mother’s ex-husbands? What do you remember about them?”

  “I don’t remember much about the men she married after my father. They weren’t around long enough. For all I know, husband number two might have been Smith or Jones. Look, I just don’t remember; I was three at the time. She married the other guy when I was five. As a child, I remember thinking his name sounded a lot like an Italian tuna. You’ll have to get the rest of the details about her marriages from public records.”

  Jake watched Holloway pull two plastic evidence bags from his jacket pocket. He held them up to Kit. “Have you ever seen these two items before?”

  Taking her hands for the first time out of Jake’s grasp, she took both bags from Holloway. It didn’t take long for her to recognize the contents. The bags held identical gold-minted cowboys, the same heavy feel and depiction of a cowboy sitting atop his horse in front of a rounded sunset in the background like the one she’d found at work by the cash register. A sick feeling came over her when she remembered that she’d thought it resembled her father.

  “They’re just like the one I found at the store.”

  St. John and Holloway exchanged looks. Holloway wanted to know, “You found one of these at the bookstore?”

  Kit got up, walked over to her desk under the stairwell and retrieved the gold cowboy from her purse. She held the bags up as well as the loose cowboy. “See, it matches the ones you have in the bags.”

  Holloway met Kit at the desk, examining them all. “We have cowboy number three. You say you found this in the store? When?”

  “Last Tuesday. It was sitting on the counter by the cash register. I thought maybe a child lost it and Baylee picked it up, put it there for safekeeping. But Baylee didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Could these cowboys have belonged to your mother?”

  She shook her head with certainty. “Oh no. They didn’t belong to Alana. Even if they are pure gold, Alana would not have owned anything so...so western, for lack of a better word. She would not have allowed these in her house. Where did you get them?”

  It was St. John who answered. “One came from the front seat of Jessica Boyd’s car. The other one—the coroner found stuffed down your mother’s throat.”

  Kit dropped all three cowboys to the floor with a thud. The loose one scattered under the desk. She glared at the detective. “That’s disgusting. You did that on purpose.”

  Up to this point Jake had been fairly patient, but eyeing how upset Kit was pushed him to tell both detectives, “That little stunt was uncalled for. You obviously have no leads. If you had leads, you wouldn’t have had to resort to something so base. It seems all you’ve got is a daughter who didn’t get along with her mother. Here’s a news flash, guys, lots of people didn’t get along with Alana. As I see it, the killer has just handed you a connection tying the two murders together, and you’re sitting here throwing accusations at Kit.”

  Kit swallowed hard and spoke up with a renewed interest. “Someone took great pains to have those cowboys custom minted, not to mention the intricate artwork that went into the detailed sunset in the background. That kind of detail had to cost a small fortune, considering that the pieces are made from pure gold. The fact that the pieces must be from a matching set only increases their value.”

  As Holloway bent down to pick up the three gold cowboys from the floor, he smiled. “Give the lady a prize, Max. That’s exactly what we think both pieces came from...a matched set. And now we have a third.”

  Jake pointed out, “And you don’t see that maybe Kit isn’t your suspect here but rather a potential target? Why leave one of those trinkets for her to find unless the killer wanted her to know he was out there?”

  Or, thought Holloway, it’s the killer’s way of telling us she’s not the killer.

  It was St. John who said, “But that’s just it, Mr. Boston. Ms. Griffin supposedly found this at her store and she’s alive, the only one that is. The other two are deader than dirt, now aren’t they? How come Ms. Griffin here is so special that he doesn’t kill her? How do I know for sure that she didn’t just hand us one of these toy trinkets to throw us off?”

  Jake was up off the couch like a shot. “So let me make sure I understand this. You’re saying that because she isn’t dead, because the killer hasn’t gotten around to killing her yet, you think this is some kind of ploy on her part. Maybe there’s some order to his killing. Did you ever think of that? Maybe he just hasn’t come around to Kit—yet.”

  Jake threw his hands in the air. “You guys never change. What exactly passes for an actual investigation where you come from? She has an alibi for the night Jessica died. She willingly offers you the gold cowboy she found at the store. As I see it, you should be protecting Kit from whoever’s out there killing women, not harassing her.”

  Kit was convinced that the only thing that kept the two men from going after each other right there in her living room was the ringing of St. John’s cell phone.

  She watched as St. John excused himself from the living room and headed off to the neutral corner of the entryway. The other three waited without talking as they caught only muffled parts of St. John’s conversation.

  When he hung up, he looked at Holloway and said, “There’s been a development. Jessica Boyd’s sister, Eva Geller Gatz, one of the partners at the law firm, is missing. Has been since around lunchtime. They found her car abandoned at some rundown strip shopping center in the Hollywood Hills. There was blood on the front seat.”

  “Missing since noon? If this one turns up dead too, that’s another murder you won’t be able to pin on Kit. She for goddamned sure wasn’t in Hollywood this afternoon. Sorry to disappoint you, but she’s been with me...all afternoon.”

  The two men glared at each other for several heated seconds before Holloway walked past Jake, grabbed his partner’s arm and moved him in the direction of the front door.

  Reluctantly, St. John went.

  When the two cops were finally gone, Jake turned to her with such intensity she thought he might hit something.

  “That man’s no different than when he investigated Claire’s murder. He’s looking in the wrong fucking direction, focused on the wrong person...again. The Gatz woman turns up missing; if you ask me, that’s another link to the law firm, and St. John is too goddamned stubborn to admit the connection. Did it ever occur to him that all three of these murders have been women, older women, somehow connected to BBG&G? Why is that?”

  Of course there was a connection, but with everything happening, she’d shut that part off. But when she saw the look on Jake’s
face, saw his jaw lock in place, something inside her melted.

  Knowing he needed to calm down, she softly said, “Jake, don’t think about it anymore. If they arrest me, if it happens, I’ll deal with it. I’ll call that lawyer, that friend of yours, and let him handle everything. We’re not going to worry about this anymore now.”

  “Like hell we won’t. That man is not going to do to you what he did to me. That SOB made my life a living hell for a year. Since St. John doesn’t seem to want to do any real police work, can’t seem to focus on any suspect other than you, we need to find him another suspect, someone that takes the heat off you. Knowing Alana, the suspect list should be longer than the Bible. So we start looking into Alana’s past, hand St. John some other possibilities.” He walked over to Kit’s desk, opened her laptop, and booted it up. “It’s time to do a little searching and investigating on our own.”

  For the next hour, Jake put his hacker skills to work. He started his search with a public records database, specifically marriages. Something Kit had said to the detectives about Alana’s marriages had him curious. Had Alana actually been married only three times? It was common knowledge she went through men like water through a sieve. He’d seen it for himself. And besides, he had a hunch. He’d learned a long time ago that when you have a hunch you simply run with it until you hit a brick wall.

  Searching public records, he got five hits. Like every other aspect of her life, Alana Stevens had not been entirely truthful about her marriages. No surprise there. But the additional divorce information he wanted took less time to find than her marriages. And it was as he’d feared. The divorce information had been there all along for anyone to find if they had bothered looking. And in the end, the information was one more revelation that Kit would have to deal with. After hitting the print button, he looked up from the laptop only to realize she’d left the room.

  He found her in the kitchen clearing away the dishes. And her face told him she suspected something was up.

  “What did you find?”

  “Listen to me, Kit. What I found is all about Alana. It has nothing to do with what kind of a person you are. I mean, it was Alana’s life, her mess, her lies.”

  He handed her the computer printouts, one listing Alana’s five marriages, the other listing her five divorces. He watched her study the names, the dates, look from one printout to the other, until finally she said, “This can’t be right, Jake.”

  “The information came directly from public records, Kit. You yourself said that Holloway should get the info from public records. That’s what made me think to do just that.” He tugged on the piece of paper she held in her hands. “This is it.”

  “But this doesn’t list a marriage to John Griffin or a divorce from him, either. That can’t be right. There’s no mention of my father here. And none of these dates fit the right timeframe for when I was born. According to these records, Alana wasn’t married to anyone when I was born.”

  Jake nodded. “And if there was never a marriage, there was no contentious divorce.”

  “How can that be? They both told me time and time again they’d been married and divorced. Why lie about that?”

  “They obviously wanted you to believe it.”

  “Because they weren’t married when I was born, is that it? Keep the information from the child for the benefit of the child. Does that sound like Alana to you? I’m not surprised she didn’t tell me the truth, but what about him? He lied to me. The father I trusted never told me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry, Kit.”

  “Okay, they kept that from me. My parents weren’t married, big deal. But it does explain a lot about their private war. Maybe I was the result of a one-night stand or maybe a rape, something that happened at one of their decadent Hollywood parties and that’s why Alana never liked him or me. Every time she looked at me I was a reminder of that night or that party or something horrible.” When she saw the skeptical look on his face, she added, “Well, think about it. She certainly didn’t like him, and I know she didn’t like me. That much was genuine. Something bad had to have happened between the two of them.”

  Jake didn’t want to speculate, so he switched to the computer printout, to the facts. “This says she was married three times before you were ever born, the first time in 1967 to a William Forrester, an environmental engineer, of all things. Can you see Alana married to any kind of an engineer? He listed his place of employment as McKetrick Construction. Talk about opposites, and they divorce after only a few months of marriage.”

  Reading from the list, Kit added, “Her second marriage to Robert Carlton, a real estate developer, lasts a little longer. Now that’s more her style: a developer, a rich guy with money. They were divorced two years later.”

  “And look at lucky number three. Frank Geller. Jessica’s brother. There’s a surprise.”

  “Oh. I was almost related to the Boyds by association or something. It’s a good thing that marriage took place before I came along. Again though, it didn’t last long. Years go by before she marries again. I was five years old when she marries number four, Anthony Tunicelli, from Las Vegas.”

  “And then, there’s husband number five. Four years ago, she marries one of her real estate agents, Scott Barlow, fifteen years her junior. Maybe he’s our suspect. The other day when I went through some of the paperwork you dropped off, it was apparent Alana was taking an extra cut from her agents on top of her regular commission. That might not sound like much, but when you consider all the commercial real estate she handled, she took in a lot of money under the table from her agents. Maybe this guy this, Scott Barlow, got tired of paying an extra cut and killed her.”

  “Okay, that might explain Alana’s murder. But Jake, what possible connection would her real estate agents, including this Scott Barlow, have with Jessica or Eva Gatz? And then there are those three gold cowboys, two of which were with Alana and Jessica. Why would Scott Barlow kill Jessica?”

  “I wished you’d told me that you found that gold cowboy at the store. I’d say the killer’s been to the Book & Bean.”

  That was creepy. She thought of that strange man who’d been in the store the other day, but then remembered she’d found the cowboy earlier before he’d even showed up that afternoon.

  Jake looked at Kit. “There’s no suspect here, is there?”

  Kit shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it. But I still haven’t recovered from knowing they lied to me, Jake, about their marriage. Do you think Gloria knew? We need to ask Gloria about all of this.” She immediately got up from the table and walked to the phone but then remembered it didn’t work. She reached for her cell. Jake put his hand on hers before she could dial.

  “Baby, it’s late.” He pushed her hair off her shoulders to give him better access and nibbled her neck while his hands encircled her breasts, his fingers found their points until she moaned.

  “We’ll ask Gloria whatever you want to ask, just tomorrow; let’s ask tomorrow.” He knew if she found out something bad from Gloria, she wouldn’t sleep a wink. So he tried to distract her.

  She let him graze on her neck, let his fingers work the magic before melding her body to his. She gave in with a sigh. “You’re right. It’s late; let’s go to bed.”

  With L.A. traffic in typical gridlock, it took St. John and Holloway two hours to make the drive from San Madrid to the Hollywood Hills. The Gatz car had been found parked near an abandoned strip shopping center.

  By the time they arrived, a patrolman had discovered the body of Eva Geller Gatz some two hundred yards from her Jaguar. She’d been shot in the left temple, just like Jessica, this time with a .38.

  Sometime later, it was another detective who pointed out a shiny gold trinket left on the passenger seat of her car. The trinket depicted a cowboy riding off into the sunset.

  The questions came like the opening of a floodgate. Why had the killer brought Eva Gatz to a rundown storefront in the Hollywood Hills? And once here, how had he left the are
a?

  It was St John who had trouble defending his position. “Okay, the Boyd woman was shot, just like this one. I know what you’re thinking. Kit Griffin has an alibi for Jessica Boyd and the Gatz woman. She still could have filleted her own mother. The two didn’t get along and she inherits everything. Despite the gold cowboys he’s left behind, tell me, if it’s the same killer, why shoot the Boyd woman and now Gatz but stab Alana Stevens twenty-one times with a knife? We have different murder weapons. It’s just too early for me to merge the three together. I’m still convinced Kit Griffin killed her mother. I agree that the same killer killed the Boyd woman and now Gatz. But we don’t try to link these two with the Stevens murder.”

  But Holloway was unconvinced. “I might buy that if I could discount the three gold cowboys. And the gold thing was stuffed down Alana’s throat. Maybe the killer had cause to hate her a little more than he did Jessica and Eva. And come on, Max, you can’t tell me you don’t see the look in Kit Griffin’s eyes every time we talk to her about her mother. That distant, unemotional tone isn’t an act. It’s like she goes someplace else so she can deal with anything that has to do with her mother.”

  When St. John made no comment he went on, “The gold trinkets show up with each murder victim. And now we find out that maybe the killer left one of these gold things at her store. Why would he do that unless he put it there specifically so we’d know she didn’t do it? Did you consider that? Sounds crazy, I know, but maybe we’re dealing with a psycho. What’s the significance of these cowboys? The killer’s leaving something of himself with each victim. You know Kit Griffin’s father was a cowboy actor. I checked. Maybe he isn’t dead at all. My vote is we start from scratch and find out what happened to John Griffin, the cowboy star.”

  Reluctantly, St. John agreed, but added, “I’m not ready to discount the fact that Kit Griffin had motive in her mother’s murder. The inheritance is motive. And she’s hanging out with Jake Boston. We just may have to dig a little deeper to find what we need.”