by LENA DIAZ,
“Then . . . maybe Damon . . . is the killer. Maybe he stabbed that boy, and zipped up his jacket to cover the blood.”
“I already mentioned that possibility to Hamilton. He thinks it’s highly unlikely. The killer wouldn’t have stuck around in the crowd and risk being discovered.”
She rested her face in her hands, looking worried, defeated.
Pierce wished he could make her feel better, but short of catching her stalker and proving he wasn’t Damon, he didn’t know what else he could do to give her peace of mind again.
“We’re through here,” he said. “The police are looking for the man you described. If he’s still in the area, they’ll find him. We might as well go.”
She looked relieved to be leaving. “Do you want to go see Mrs. Whitmire now?”
He opened the door for her, and they headed outside. “I didn’t think you’d be up to talking to her today, after . . .” He nodded toward the yellow tape down the street.
Madison followed his gaze, then quickly looked away. “I want to talk to Mrs. Whitmire now. No sense in wasting time.”
Keeping a close watch on the people around them, Pierce walked her toward his car. The killer who was stalking Savannah had just struck within a few hundred yards of where Madison had been. Could it really be a coincidence that she was being stalked, and the “Simon says” killer murdered someone a few hundred yards from her?
If the killer was the same person stalking her, that blew a big hole in Madison’s belief that her dead husband was her stalker. Pierce couldn’t imagine that a killer narcissistic enough to leave those notes would use a fake name.
So what did that mean? Were two people after her now? How the hell was he supposed to protect her from a stalker and a sadistic killer?
Chapter Nine
“YOU’RE CERTAIN THIS is not the man who dropped the note off, Mrs. Whitmire?” Pierce asked.
Madison sat impatiently while Pierce continued to question her former property manager. So far, he wasn’t doing any better than she had when she’d questioned the woman.
Mrs. Whitmire squinted down at the black-and-white printout of Damon’s driver’s license that Tessa had faxed over.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was sure, but I guess it could be him.”
“What about his eyes?” Madison asked. “Did he have pale blue eyes?”
“He caught me outside, and he was wearing sunglasses, dear. I didn’t see his eyes.” She shoved the paper back across her desk. “Perhaps if you had a better quality photograph?”
Pierce glanced at Madison sitting beside him. “I assumed Mrs. McKinley had a picture of her beloved husband in her purse.”
Madison smirked at him, but smoothed her face into a smile when Mrs. Whitemire turned to her. She twisted her hands in her lap, trying to portray the grieving widow. “I’m so sorry. With Damon gone, I just couldn’t bear to keep his pictures with me. It’s only been eighteen months. The memories are still so fresh.”
The manager’s eyes moistened with sympathy. “Understandable, dear. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Madison wiped a fake tear from under her eye. “Thank you.”
Pierce rolled his eyes.
Madison kicked him.
He coughed to cover his reaction. The property manager looked at him, her eyes wide.
“I wasn’t involved in the original investigation,” Pierce continued. “Bear with me if I ask some questions you’ve already answered. But can you tell me whether the housekeeping service you hired to clean the house ever reported anything odd at Mrs. McKinley’s house?”
She shook her head. “They cleaned once a week. Never mentioned anything.”
“What about the yard service? Did they ever see anyone hanging around?”
Mrs. Whitmire huffed. “I have to assume not. The man I hired never bothered to call me each week like the cleaning service did. All he did was cash my checks. I didn’t even have to fire him. He just stopped showing up on his own. I didn’t even know he wasn’t taking care of the yard until the cleaning service told me the weeds were getting overgrown. He’d better not ask for a recommendation. He certainly won’t like what I tell anyone about his lack of professionalism.”
Pierce exchanged a glance with Madison. “He just stopped showing up? When was that?”
She tapped her fingernails on the desk. “Hmm. Probably around the same time Mrs. McKinley fired our service.” She looked down her nose at Madison as if she’d committed some kind of unforgiveable faux pas.
“I didn’t fire your service,” Madison insisted. “Someone else created that note.”
“If you say so.” Mrs. Whitmire looked across her desk at Pierce. “Was there anything else you needed?”
Madison crossed her arms and sat back, tapping her foot.
“Actually,” Pierce said, “if you could give me the contact information for the yard service, I’d like to ask them a few questions.”
She turned around in her chair and opened a filing cabinet. A moment later she handed Pierce a business card. “It’s just one man, Kevin Newsome. He was starting up his own service, and I thought I was being nice by helping him out. I’ll never do that again.”
It sounded like Mrs. Whitmire had done her one good deed and intended to never help anyone else again. Madison eyed her with distaste.
“Thank you,” Pierce said, taking her hand. “You’ve been very helpful.”
The older woman blushed, actually blushed.
Madison thought she just might be sick.
Pierce ushered Madison out of the office to his car.
“Where are we going now?” she asked, as she buckled her seat belt.
He pulled out his cell phone and punched a button. “I want to talk to your yardman. I’ll see if we can make an appointment.” A minute later he shook his head and ended the call. “No answer. I’ll call Hamilton, see if he can send an officer over to do a wellness check.”
“A wellness check?”
“Go by his place of business, or his home if he’s not there, make sure he’s okay.” He made the call to Hamilton, nodding his head to let Madison know Hamilton had agreed to his request, then he pocketed his phone. “I assume you have some photographs of your husband back at your house.”
“I’m sure he’s in some of the pictures of my family, and my wedding album of course.”
“Let’s get a better picture than that driver’s license photo. If Hamilton locates Mr. Newsome, we can take the picture by and ask him why he stopped taking care of the yard.”
She put her hand on his forearm. “If he locates Newsome? You think something happened to him don’t you?”
His jaw tightened. “From what Mrs. Whitmire said, Newsome was just starting out and couldn’t even afford to hire helpers. A man in that position isn’t going to just not show up at work one day, unless something is wrong.”
MADISON AND PIERCE headed through the family room into the front room of Madison’s house. It was originally supposed to be a dining room. It connected through an archway to both the kitchen and the family room. But Madison had set it up as her home office. She paused in front of one of the bookshelves, frowning when she didn’t see the picture she’d wanted to give to him.
After her husband died, knowing what he’d done, she certainly hadn’t kept pictures of him sitting around. But this particular picture had been one of her favorites of Logan, so she’d kept it, even though her husband could clearly be seen in the background.
“Something wrong?” Pierce asked, studying the collection of picture frames on the shelves of the other bookcase.
Madison edged a picture of her and Pierce behind a picture of her mom so that he wouldn’t see it and ask her why she still had it.
She moved another picture of Logan and her mother to the side to more clearly see the frames sitting behind it. “I could have sworn there was a picture here that had Damon in it.”
“Are you saying some pictures are missing?”
“I don’t see how they could be.” She glanced around uneasily. Her security alarm hadn’t been tripped, and Damon certainly didn’t have any keys to her house. “I’m probably wrong about what I unpacked. I still have tons of boxes in the attic. I must not have brought down all the photos I thought I’d brought down.” Or at least, she hoped that was what had happened. It made sense. And it was preferable to the alternative—that someone had been in her house and taken the picture. She didn’t have to think very long about who that someone would be.
She led the way up the stairs and down the long hallway. Stopping outside her bedroom door, she pressed one of the boards in the wall and it slid back to reveal the hidden staircase.
Pierce’s face lit with interest as he stepped inside the little alcove. “Do these stairs lead anywhere besides the attic?” He ran his hands along the pocket in the wall where the door had slid.
“Just the attic. You can only get to the basement from the stairs in the back hallway on the first floor. She led the way up the stairs with Pierce following behind. He kept running his hands along the wall.
“Are there any other hidden passageways in this house?”
“Nope, sorry. Just the one.” She paused at the top to open the door. “No one could sneak in here without setting off the security alarm, if that’s your worry.”
He stilled. “Did you change the alarm code after you moved in?”
“Of course.” The way his brow tightened with concern had her feeling uneasy again.
She slid the pocket door into the wall and flipped on the overhead lights. The two small dormers let in almost no natural light because of the centuries old oak trees that hung over this side of the house.
He gently moved her to the side and made a circuit of the room, looking behind each stack of boxes, in every possible hiding place. “All right, come on in.”
For once, she didn’t feel aggravated at his over-protectiveness. After everything that had happened today, his vigilance was reassuring.
While she read the labels on the boxes stacked against one wall, he felt along the far wall—the only wall not blocked by boxes.
“What are you doing?” She opened the box in front of her.
“Looking for a hidden door.”
“There aren’t any others. And all the exterior doors, and the windows, are wired into the security system.”
“What about the dormers?” He finished his examination of the wall and crossed to the small windows.
“It’s a three-story drop from the attic to the yard below.” She pulled an album out of the box and sat on the floor. “There aren’t any balconies, no access from the outside.”
“What about gutters, downspouts? If they’re solidly attached to the house, someone could climb up those. Or they could climb the oak trees.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted, as she flipped the pages. “I suppose if someone was really, really determined . . .” She rubbed her arms and glanced around the room. The stacks of boxes suddenly took on more sinister shapes. She vowed to get better lighting up here once this was all over.
Pierce crossed the room and sat on the floor beside her. “Did you find any pictures of Damon?” He peered over her shoulder at the album she was holding.
She looked back down and turned another page. “Maybe I have the wrong album.” She quickly flipped through the rest of the pages, then set it aside and pulled another one out of the box in front of her.
“What about framed pictures?”
“I haven’t come across any yet.” She flipped through the album and sat back. “I must have mislabeled one of the boxes.”
They searched together, opening up box after box.
“Here,” she said, relieved to find another album in a box filled with winter clothes. “I don’t know how this ended up over here, but there should be plenty of pictures of Damon in this one. This is the album I made the first month after we got married.”
She knelt on the floor with the album sitting on a box in front of her. Pierce knelt down beside her.
She flipped a page and pointed to a photo. “This is Damon, but it’s not a very good picture. He’s looking away. You can’t see his face very well.”
She frowned. “Here’s another one, but it’s not very good either, blurry. There have to be some better pictures in here.”
“Don’t you have some professional pictures from your wedding? Maybe one of those is a close-up.”
“We eloped to Vegas. The only picture I got there was fuzzy and out of focus.”
“Vegas? You?” His voice was laced with surprise.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
He stared at her intently, as if he could divine her thoughts if he stared hard enough. “I can’t see you wanting a Vegas wedding.”
“Exactly what kind of wedding do you think I’d want?”
“Nothing flashy, like Vegas. Nothing traditional either. Something flirty, fun. Outdoors—a beach or a garden, maybe under an oak tree. You wouldn’t want a lot of guests, mainly family, a few friends. The dress would be easy to move in. You’d want to be comfortable and free, not restricted by a long, tight gown.”
She stared at him, too surprised to say anything. She’d hated her Vegas wedding. She’d only agreed to it because Damon had been so excited about the idea of going to the casinos. Going to Vegas was his dream, not hers. If she could have gotten married the way she wanted, she’d have had an outdoor wedding, much like what he’d just described.
How could he know her so well when they’d known each other for such a short amount of time? She frowned and dropped her gaze. She flipped a few more pages in the album, then froze.
“What’s the matter?” He looked over her shoulder, instantly in tune with her and realizing something was wrong.
“They’re gone. They should have been right here.” She pointed at a blank page. “There were four pictures on this page that my daddy took when we got back from Vegas. I remember, because my mom insisted I put on my wedding dress and let them take some pictures, even though Damon was fussing the entire time.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re sure they were in this album?”
She pointed to the rectangular outlines on the page where the pictures used to be. “I’m positive.”
“You wouldn’t have taken them out? Maybe destroyed them after he died?”
“No.”
“Do you have any good pictures of your husband?”
“I already looked through the other albums. This is the last one.” She quickly flipped through the rest of it. “Every picture of Damon is either blurry or . . . missing.”
“When was the last time you looked at the albums?”
“When I packed up my Manhattan apartment and moved here.”
He gently but firmly pulled her hands back from the cover and set the album onto a box.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her up, then tugged her behind him as he headed toward the door. “I’m getting you out of this house. Now.”
Chapter Ten
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Pierce stood behind a patrol car next to a policeman. Madison was sitting inside the back of the car, glaring at both of them through the rear window. She wasn’t happy one bit about being locked up in the car. And Pierce didn’t have to hear her to know what she was saying.
Her hand gestures were perfectly clear.
Hiding his grin behind a fake cough, he turned his back on her and leaned against the rear bumper. “Thanks, Officer Crowley. I appreciate you keeping Mrs. McKinley safe while Hamilton oversees the investigation inside the house.”
“No problem.” The officer cast a wary look toward Madison. “I don’t think I’ve seen a woman that angry in a long time. You’re going to have your hands full later.”
“I don’t mind,” Pierce said, and he meant it. He’d take whatever abuse she wanted to dish out if it meant keeping her safe. “I’ll check on the techs and see ho
w it’s going. I’ll let you know when Hamilton gives the all-clear to let Mrs. McKinley back in the house.”
“Yes, sir. I think I’ll just wait outside the car. Feels pretty good today. The weather’s been fairly mild for January so far.”
Pierce laughed and the young officer smiled in return. They both knew why he wasn’t getting into his car.
Pierce headed up the front walk and went inside the house. Another uniformed officer was standing in the family room with Lieutenant Hamilton. They both turned around when Pierce approached. The uniformed policeman nodded in response to something the lieutenant said and hurried out the front door.
“Agent Buchanan.” Hamilton held out his hand. “No offense, but I’d hoped it would be a bit longer before we saw each other again.”
Pierce shook Hamilton’s hand. “Got any leads on that murder off East River Street this morning?”
“No, but it’s early yet. We’re still looking for witnesses and canvassing the area. We did talk to a few people who saw someone in the crowd that matched the description Mrs. McKinley gave, but no luck getting a lead on where that guy went, or even if he’s the shooter in the park.”
“What about Mr. Newsome, the yardman? Did your men conduct that wellness check?”
“Not yet, but we will. It might be a day or two. We’ve had a few other higher priorities, as you know.” He cocked his head. “I don’t recall inviting the FBI to help me with any of my current investigations, but you sure are popping up a lot. Are you sure your involvement isn’t official?”
“I’m on my own time, a friend of the family.”
“I see.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Have your techs found anything upstairs?” Pierce asked, not wanting him to pursue that line of questions. Casey and Tessa were both looking into the case now after Pierce had called them this morning to tell them his worries about the murdered bicyclist. But without an official invitation to join the investigation, they could both get in trouble if Hamilton found out.
