Ready, Aim, Under Fire (Lexi Graves Mysteries, 10)

by Camilla Chafer

  The doorbell rang and Jerry looked up. “Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

  “There’s been a long line of people dropping by with casseroles,” he said. “My freezer is full of them and so is the one here. You can take one home with you if you like. There’s enough to feed me, my friends and their families for at least two weeks.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but no thank you, I couldn’t,” I told him, waiting while he got up to answer the door.

  When he came back, Mrs. Patterson and Debby were with him. Mrs. Patterson held a large casserole dish. “Look what Debby made for you,” she said, blinking in obvious surprise when she saw me. “Detective?”

  “I’m not a detective, I’m a consultant for MPD,” I corrected her.

  “Ms. Graves was asking a few questions about Fiona,” Jerry told them.

  “Of course, she’s been working for you,” said Debby. She reached over to squeeze Jerry’s hand briefly. It seemed friendly but not overtly affectionate and she moved to lean against the arm of his chair. “We’ve all tried to help as much as we can,” Debby told me.

  “She doesn’t work for me. You consult for the police department,” said Jerry, looking right at me. “That’s what you said.”

  “Thank you so much for your time,” I said, rising to leave. I know when my time is up. I didn’t want to identify whom I was working for, or have to come up with any explanation as to precisely what I was investigating. Debby thought I was looking into Fiona’s murder; Jerry knew I wanted to confirm Debby’s true identity and was searching for any connection between his wife and her. If he blew my story, Debby would be on high alert. Trying to get any further information out of her, or anyone close to her, would be almost impossible after that. Even if I deflected Debby now, there was no way I could stop her and Jerry from talking after I left. I had a dilemma: either I overstay my welcome and distract them both; or leave and hope they chose to discuss other things.

  Before I could reach a decision, Debby curved her arm around my shoulder and was gently guiding me towards the door. “Thanks so much for coming by,” she said, a false smile etched on her face. “I’m sure Mr. Queller has had about all he can handle today.”

  I glanced back as she propelled me forwards but Jerry’s head was bent down, forgetting all about me. Mrs. Patterson placed the casserole on a side table and knelt down next to him, talking softly.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” said Debby as she steered me outside. With the door closed behind us, she hissed, “What are you really doing here?”

  “Just asking a few questions to complete my investigation.”

  “I don’t buy it! You’ve been sniffing around for days. At my parents’ house, the market, my hotel. Are you following me?”

  “If I were, wouldn’t you have gotten here first?” I asked, redirecting the conversation. That stumped Debby and her eyes narrowed but she regained her composure quickly.

  “Are you even working for him?” she inquired. “Did he hire you to follow me?”

  “Absolutely not,” I told her, letting her pick whichever question she chose for my answer.

  “You listen here…” Debby began.

  “Why would he hire…” I started to ask at the same time.

  “Marley! Marley, is that you?” A woman across the road began to wave frantically. She hopped up and down, trying to catch our attention. Debby glanced at her, then looked away, her face full of annoyance. “It is you!” The woman hurried across the road, looking absolutely delighted as she reached us. She hugged Debby and pulled back. “It’s been so long. How have you been?”

  “I think you have the wrong person,” Debby spluttered. “I don’t think I know you.”

  “Of course you do! We took a cooking class together. Wednesday nights. Remember? Oh, I know, it was years ago but I will never forget you. You made an amazing soufflé while the rest of the class flopped. I’m Amber Yuen. Our stations were right next to each other.”

  “I never took a cooking class,” said Debby.

  “Yes, you did… On Wednesday nights. It was designed for beginners.”

  “No, that was not me.”

  “You are Marley?”

  “No, I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else. Excuse me.” Debby stepped backwards and turned around before walking away. At the house, she shut the door behind her without looking back.

  “I am so embarrassed,” said Amber, staring after her. “Obviously, I made a mistake. Sorry to disturb you.”

  “No trouble at all,” I said, grateful for the timely interruption. Scaring Debby off was better than I could have hoped for! Now all I needed was for my good luck to continue inside the house, keeping the topic of conversation on anything but me. If Debby had been a little more insistent, I might have been the one running for my car, scrambling for an explanation to give Garrett the moment someone complained about me to the police.

  With my access to Jerry Queller now blocked, I headed for the next name on my interview list. I was determined to find something else to support Garrett’s beliefs. I’d exhausted all the other avenues of interviews, except for one: Debby’s old friend in Frederickstown. As that lead entered my head, I groaned. Why didn’t I pay a little more attention to what the woman outside the house called Debby? Marley. Marley McFadden. Marley was the other friend we failed to locate.

  I frowned when I thought about Debby’s reaction to her intrusion. She pretended like she didn’t know that name at all, insisting that the woman was confused, and practically running away when Amber challenged her. Yet Mrs. Patterson said she and Marley were close friends. Why didn’t Debby tell Amber that she knew Marley?

  I puzzled over that for a few minutes and my thoughts began moving in circles until a new thought appeared in the mix: Maddox. Thinking about him was something I tried very hard to avoid. Every time his name popped into my head, I carefully stuffed it away, refusing to ponder on anything about him. But now, in my empty car with nothing else to distract me, he had my full attention.

  He was the reason I poked into Solomon’s past the night before. Despite the innocuous questions, Solomon couldn’t provide any answers. Was it because of the wedding talk, or just because Solomon wanted to distract me?

  Maddox’s warning about Solomon’s past really got to me. Much more than I ever thought possible and that made me angry. He made me angry. I didn’t want to question Solomon, much less myself for not knowing more about him; but now, those little questions began to grow bigger in my mind, and the answers grew smaller.

  Instead of happily browsing through my mother’s wedding binders — which were still on the floorboard of the passenger side — and buying up all the stocks of bridal magazines, I kept wondering what Solomon did and how he lived before we met. What did he do during the time when we did know each other before he set up the agency? Why did he make it clear that he intended to make my town his home?

  The uncomfortable truth was that I knew very little about the man I was engaged to. Sure, I knew what he liked to eat — everything — and what made him laugh and how deeply he slept. I also knew he worked hard, was an excellent marksman, very athletic, and a superb lover. I knew he ran a successful business, and given the beautiful house we shared, had plenty of money to invest. However, I never saw his yearbook photo, or had any idea about his career trajectory. I didn’t even know if he led a wild life in his youth, or a quiet one. Did he go to space camp or basketball camp in the summertime? What was his major at college? Did he even go to a university?

  Up until now, what little I knew about him was enough for me.

  “Damn you, Maddox,” I yelled.

  “Dialing Maddox,” replied my cell phone. I screamed in fright, jabbing at the screen to make it stop before the call connected. The screen went blank, and I dropped the offending item into my purse, hoping it remained quiet.

  Forcing my brain to return to the task at hand, I searched for the address of Anna Colby. She might not have lived in t
he nicest part of Frederickstown, but it wasn’t the worst either. Someone was obviously making an effort to improve the curb appeal of the small house and I took a moment to appreciate the neat fence and pretty, but inexpensive, pots on the porch as I parked outside. I locked the car doors and discreetly surveyed a loitering group of teenage boys, their hoodies up and cigarettes in hand before I opened the chain-link gate and walked up to the door. I knocked and waited, checking to see that the boys hadn’t moved any closer to my car.

  The woman who answered the door looked tired. The long, black braids were gone, replaced by a chic bob, but her face was still the same, albeit a little older. “I don’t buy anything at the door,” she told me, preparing to close it.

  “I’m not selling anything and I’m not asking for anything but your help,” I said. “I’m looking for Anna Colby.”

  She blinked suspiciously. “Here I am.”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I told her, displaying my license. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

  “Is this about my ex-husband?” she asked, heaving out a long sigh. “I already told the last one. I don’t know where that no good POS is but if you manage to find him, I want my car back along with seven years of unpaid child support that he owes me so I can move out of this crappy house.”

  “It’s not about your ex. It’s about an old friend of yours. Debby Patterson.”

  “Debby? Oh, wow! I haven’t heard her name in a while.”

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “Since you’re not trying to repossess anything thanks to my ex, please,” she said as she stepped back. I entered a neat but almost bare living room. An old but cared-for couch, covered in a blanket, was adorned with pretty pillows. Books filled the shelves of a half-sized bookcase and a basket of children’s toys was on the floor. There was a small TV and some children’s DVDs but no child.

  “He’s at school,” Anna explained. “Debby Patterson, huh? What did she do?”

  “I was hired to look into Debby Patterson’s disappearance,” I told her.

  “I heard she left town ten years ago and never returned. Isn’t it a little late to go looking for her now?”

  “We’re working on some new leads. Has she contacted you at all in that time?”

  “No, I tried to get in touch with her but she never called me back. Then I got caught up in my own life and married a man I now know was a huge jerk who left me with a baby and a stack of debts. I lost my apartment and my job because I couldn’t afford childcare, and had to move us here until I get back on my feet.”

  “That is a lot to deal with.”

  “Yeah, it is. Every so often, I used to think about Debby, and wonder whatever happened to her, but truthfully, as bad as it sounds, I have so much to deal with in my own life…”

  “My sister was a single mom. It’s pretty tough work,” I told her.

  “Yeah? It’s funny in a strange way. It’s actually easier to be a single mom than to be a married mom with a husband who’s hell-bent on screwing up your life.”

  “I think I know him,” I said. “I almost married him!”

  “Tell me his name is Olivier Simmons and I will believe you.”

  “Actually no, but it sounds like he used the same playbook as a man I almost married.” We smiled at each other, embarrassed and friendly at the same time. I liked her, I realized. She had a lot of admirable qualities and was rather warm. I hoped she had compassionate people around her who cared about her child and her.

  “Almost? Lucky escape for you.”

  “Yes, it was,” I agreed, smiling now that we shared a connection and something to bond over. “So, Debby hasn’t contacted you at all in ten years?”

  “No.”

  “Were you close before she disappeared?”

  “I thought so. We met at summer camp one year and kept in touch. Neither of us had a great time in high school so we hung out together and later, went to the same college.”

  “Did you think it was strange that she disappeared so suddenly?”

  “Not at first. We were both working, trying to make it as new graduates, until I met jerk-face, and then, we weren’t hanging out as much. I didn’t realize how long it had been until the police came to see me and told me she was missing.”

  “Were you worried?”

  “Yes and no. Debby sometimes disappeared for a couple of weeks at a time; and she wasn’t the best at time-keeping, or even showing up occasionally. She always appeared eventually with some new half-assed apology. I figured this was just like all those other times and, to be honest, I was getting sick and tired of it.”

  “Did she ever say where she was going, or where she went?”

  “No, she was always private like that.”

  “When did you start to get worried?”

  “When the police contacted me, I think. They said she was reported missing and hadn’t been seen in weeks, but there wasn’t anything I could tell them. I tried calling her but she never called back, and you know, life happened. I used to think about her occasionally but… a little part of me thought that maybe she ‘ghosted’ me. Maybe she didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

  “Was that the way she treated people?”

  “She didn’t have many friends so I can’t be sure, but occasionally she did. She was kind of dismissive, like I would call her three times in a row to hang out but she never initiated things or reciprocated. By the time we graduated, I decided I preferred two-way friendships, where both parties make an effort. Debby wasn’t like that. That was partly why I didn’t see her much in the months before she disappeared. When they told me she was officially missing, I got worried.”

  “Did she contact you recently?”

  “No.” Anna paused. “You never said why you are asking me now. It’s been so long.”

  “The case was closed recently.”

  “You wouldn’t be asking me if a body was found,” Anna mused. “She’s alive?”

  “We believe so.”

  “I doubt I would be at the top of her list of people to contact. Plus, I moved and changed my surname when I got married. I wouldn’t have been too easy to find. I only just changed my name back.”

  “No, but not impossible either. Do you think you would recognize her if you saw her again?”

  “Maybe. People can change a lot.”

  “If I came back with a photo, would you try?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “One last thing, do you know where I can find Marley McFadden?”

  “Marley? She was another friend of Debby’s, right?”

  I confirmed she was and Anna continued, “I only met Marley a few times. A couple of times socially and when Debby invited me to her new apartment once to hang out. I thought we were getting take-out since Debby can’t even make toast, but Marley cooked us a huge meal. I remember her cooking was really good although I wouldn’t call us friends. I think she followed Debby around and Debby liked that. I believe they knew each other from high school but she didn’t live in Montgomery anymore. I’m not sure where she lived.”

  I thanked Anna for her time and told her I’d come back soon with a photo. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I did, only that she was my best hope for an identification. If she agreed that the Debby I photographed was the Debby she once knew, then I could tell Garrett and call off the investigation before any more time was invested in it. If Anna couldn’t identify her, then Garrett would need to know that too. For now though, I planned to keep Anna’s name and location exclusively to myself. The last person who questioned Debby’s identity wound up dead.

  My phone rang as I got into my car and I checked the screen. There was a missed call from Maddox. He was probably wondering why I called him and hung up. Fortunately, it was Garrett calling now. “Hey,” I said, “I just visited Anna Colby.”

  “Anything of interest?”

  “Not much. She might be able to identify Debby if I can get her a photo. I think we should keep her name and locati
on secret for now, just in case Fiona’s murder is related to Debby.”

  “I agree to be cautious,” Garrett said. “I’m actually calling about Fiona. I rushed the DNA results on the grip from the gun that was used to kill her and we’ve got a problem. It’s male DNA. Our killer could be almost anyone.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I perched on the chair opposite Garrett’s desk, where Debby’s case file lay open between us. The room that housed the homicide division was quiet, something that didn’t bode well for the residents of Montgomery. Someone had to have been murdered to keep the squad this busy.

  “Don’t worry about Jerry Queller,” said Garrett after I finished telling him about Debby, along with Margaret Patterson’s interruption and the ensuing question about who I was working for. “I’ll go talk to him and smooth things over.”

  “It’s probably too late,” I pointed out. “Debby has probably already asked Jerry and he’ll confirm that I don’t work for him. As soon as they start talking about it, Margaret Patterson will remember I said I worked for you.”

  “You think Debby smells a rat?”

  I pulled a face. “She said as much.”

  “I wish I could tell you to leave her alone but you’re all I’ve got. Stick with her, just be careful.”

  “No problem.” We both paused and took a moment to breathe. Garrett’s DNA news wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It would have been so much easier if he’d called and told me they managed to link the blood on the gun’s grip to someone, even if they couldn’t match the historical DNA evidence on file from Debby’s disappearance. If the Debby we knew was the impostor, then naturally, her DNA wouldn’t be on file. When I turned over the stolen toothbrush I had high hopes that it could provide a match. Learning that the DNA belonged to a male and they hadn’t turned up even a familial match in AFIS was disappointing. It would have been nice to wrap things up in a neat, little package: Debby wasn’t Debby and had to kill Fiona to protect her secret. Of course, that didn’t explain why her parents welcomed a stranger into their home although it would have been a pretty good conclusion to the case. It was rare I saw my brother appear so wholly confused and this was definitely one of those times.