Girl Undone (TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn Mysteries Book 3)

by Marla Madison

  JR, like a typical toddler, enjoyed the act of opening presents much more than the gifts themselves. The drone, however, was a hit with every male in the room, buzzing through the house like a lonely dragonfly.

  Everyone relaxed and enjoyed the Christmas dinner except for TJ, who couldn’t stop stewing about the fact that Lisa hadn’t told her Jamie Denison was alive. Once JR opened his presents, she brooded about it all morning, but finally had to admit that Lisa was right—she would have had a hard time keeping the Jamie news to herself. TJ would have to, though, since she didn’t know a damn thing that could prove Jeff’s wife was still alive and well. Finding out any more about her was going to have to wait. The important thing now, since Felhaber was in custody, was finding a killer. Patricia was the obvious suspect in her husband’s murder, but for the others she would have had no motive.

  The high point of the morning for TJ had come when the adults exchanged gifts. Richard had given her a lovely green scarf, and hidden in its folds were three tickets for Disneyworld in January. She couldn’t wait for the family outing with their son, even though Richard had embarrassed her by telling the room that part of the trip would be financed by TJ’s fines he recovered from the “swear jar” he kept in the kitchen.

  TJ’s day got even better when she called Rina to invite her and Kelsey to the New Year’s Eve party. Rina had lined up a body shop that specialized in cars made in the UK and they would be picking up the Mini next day. Grateful for TJ’s bravery in stopping Patricia from leaving the country, she promised she would have the car back to her in the same condition it left the factory.

  TJ didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  64

  Bart was having a hard time focusing on his writing. Two days had passed since Christmas day and Jen had yet to comment on the pearl necklace he’d given her, other than her immediate, “It’s beautiful!” after she opened the package. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he did know the gift had been too extravagant. The woman had made it very clear that she didn’t see him as a boyfriend and hadn’t mentioned New Year’s Eve or whether she’d invited the dream man to attend the party with her. Bart was hoping that Jen would be busy with all the wedding arrangements and wouldn’t invite the guy.

  Bart liked staying at Eric’s home, but he missed his house and his plants. Then he remembered his violets were gone; Headliner had taken them. They had all probably ended up in a dumpster somewhere.

  After what happened to Emma Le Gesse, Bart wanted to crawl in a hole until the guy was in jail. He was sick of it all, the threats, the bodies, and the hiding out as though he was the one who had done something wrong. And worst of all was the fact that he was helpless to fix it. He sat in front of TJ’s whiteboards, trying to make sense of everything. For lack of anything better to do, he read over Headliner’s latest taunt.

  Hey there, Blogger Boy,

  Did santa bring you everything you wanted? I should have gift wrapped my present, write?

  She would have been much mor attraktive with a red bow! You could have saved her you know. If you only hadn’t written all those lies about me. Naughty boy. Now I have to think of another way to punish you.

  Headliner

  The misspellings were, once more, erratic, telling Bart nothing other than that Headliner was messing with him.

  Richard, Lisa and TJ came into the room. Richard said, “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “We got some new stuff, though.” TJ pointed at the column under Whitney’s name. “Her parents identified her, so we know she was Lindsey Caruthers. And you said the ME thinks the blow from landing on the table didn’t kill her, which means Denise gets out of jail and we need to find out who did it.”

  Richard studied the boards for a minute. “There are more questions than ever. Did someone else come into the apartment, kill Lindsey, then move the body to Bart’s? Or did she regain consciousness and then go out and meet her killer somewhere?”

  Bart couldn’t keep quiet. “We have to think about the why. Why move the body to my place?” When no one answered, he walked over the boards, quickly reviewed the bullet points TJ had filled in, then said, “Whoa! I just thought of something. This guy here”—he pointed to what TJ had written about Caruthers—“he’s a firefighter, right?” When TJ nodded, he asked, “For how long?”

  “Dunno. He’s not a newbie, know that much.”

  “About a year and a half ago I did a piece about fire protection in America.” He turned to face them. “Did you know that in some countries, if you have a house fire, it’s your responsibility? You can be fined for it, big time. Here in America we have just the opposite. Every community, no matter how small, has its own fire department and the cost to the taxpayer for that protection is considerable. Countries that have laws in place requiring owners of either residential or commercial buildings to take at least some of the responsibility for their own fires, need a lot less government fire protection. If we enforced that here, those laws would lower property taxes considerably. I won’t bore you with the details, but I got a lot of negative feedback from firefighters, because, obviously, there wouldn’t have to be as many of them. People would be forced to be more careful because the majority of fire damage is caused by carelessness.”

  “You’re just telling me this now?” Richard said.

  “I didn’t think about it because I did that article for another blogger.”

  “Did you get any letters or emails that were threatening?”

  “None of them were that bad and they were posted on the other guy’s blog, that’s why I didn’t think about them. A lot of firefighter’s were pissed, but there weren’t any threats.” He paused a few seconds, then said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot. I got a phone call.”

  “What did he say?”

  Bart said quietly, “Told me to be sure all my ceiling alarms were working.”

  “And you didn’t take that as a threat?”

  Before Bart could answer, Lisa said, “Let’s think about what this means, how it ties in with Caruthers.”

  TJ stood and added the information to the board. “Told you we gotta look at this guy again.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Richard said. “I talked to the fire chief at his station yesterday. Sorry, I forgot to tell you, TJ. The night that Lindsey was murdered, Caruthers was on shift. He couldn’t have killed her.”

  The room went still. Then Bart exclaimed, “I’ve got it! There has to be more than one of them. Those fire guys have a lot of down time; they get to know each other better than husbands and wives. Whoever killed Lindsey and moved her body had to be pretty damn strong, right? Firefighters not only have to be fit to get their jobs, they have to stay that way or they face serious penalties. It’s possible that one of Caruthers’ buddies did the deed for him.”

  TJ said, “Shit! I think he’s right. When I was there, Caruthers’ pals talked like they thought Lindsey was a real bitch for leavin’ the guy. There was a whole line of pickups parked at that station; Caruthers doesn’t own one and somebody in a pickup followed me outa town when I left Cedar Rapids.”

  “Every red-blooded male in Iowa drives a pickup,” Richard argued.

  Lisa said, “Caruthers had two grudges, don’t forget, one with his wife for leaving him, and another with Bart for his rant against the fire protection in this country. I think his hatred of Bart got mixed up in his mind with that for his wife. He, or I should say they, his buddies, decided to help him out by killing her. Then they covered up Whitney’s death by making it look like there was another serial killer out there murdering abused women, hence the second death. And they all hate Bart, so persecuting him was a big plus for them. It might have ended there if no one discovered whom the first body belonged to. If we hadn’t been investigating Whitney because of Kelsey’s abduction, we may never have found out that the body was Whitney.”

  Richard frowned. “That sounds good in theory, but right now it’s all conjecture and based on facts that are circumstantial. If you�
�re right about their being a pack of them, they know that, and that’s why they’re on a mission to remove the threat against them.”

  “So none of us are safe,” Lisa said. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to have to force their hand.”

  65

  After two hours of discussion, the group decided that if they were going to set up a sting to catch the firefighters in action, it had to happen soon, before they retaliated against any of them. Unfortunately, the most obvious setup would be the New Year’s Eve party, which was set to be combined with a wedding.

  Richard left with serious reservations about putting so many other people at risk, but the next day he got a commitment from his boss to give him two more detectives for the night and Waukesha’s PD had agreed to give them two uniforms. Richard figured all their bases should be covered with that help and with himself and Justin, TJ and RayAnn, and Rina’s guys.

  Richard and Bart worked on a response to Headliner’s last email, one that would entice him and his friends to the party. The plan had required talking to the wedding couple, who, once they heard the details, were eager to take part—so eager, that Richard had to warn them of the seriousness of what they would be involved in. He added that they wouldn’t be able to tell their guests what might be going down, for fear that people wouldn’t act natural, which could tip off the suspects if one of them actually gained entry. The favored outcome was catching them on the way in.

  Eric added three more security guards who would be disguised as guests to man the parking lot when people arrived. The agenda was simple. The wedding party, the bride and groom and four attendants, would arrive at five for pictures. The wedding itself would follow at five thirty, with fifty guests expected. A catered dinner would be served to the wedding guests at six, and at seven, the deejay would start playing tunes and the wedding traditions would be observed—the wedding dance, the bride-and-father dance, the tossing of the garter and the bouquet, even the chicken dance. The only holdover would be the wedding cake, served at midnight with the traditional champagne toast. The wedding guests were invited to stay for the New Year’s Eve party, which would commence at nine thirty, when about sixty more guests were expected. The motif would be the forties, the dress code formal styles of that era, and the music would be mostly big-band and romantic tunes of the time.

  On New Year’s Eve afternoon, Lisa had two appointments. The holidays were always hard on her patients, so she tried to be available for their needs. When she went to lock up after the second one left her office, she found a woman in the waiting area. Lisa recognized her immediately even with a dark tan and longer hair—Jamie Denison. Lisa and TJ had just had a discussion about her the day before, one in which TJ aired all of her issues with the fact that Lisa hadn’t shared with her that Jamie was alive.

  Jamie jumped up when she saw Lisa. “I’m sorry to bother you on a holiday like this. It seems like I keep apologizing to you, doesn’t it?”

  “No need. Come into my office.” Lisa opted to keep things formal and sat at her desk while Jamie, Jeff Denison’s wife, believed dead by most of the world, took the visitor’s chair across from her. Lisa all but bit her tongue in order to resist the many questions that cried out to be asked. “What can I do for you, Jamie?”

  “I guess I should start seeing you again now that I’m back to stay—as a patient, of course.”

  “You could have called for that.” Not only was Lisa less than thrilled to see Jamie, her timing couldn’t have been worse. Lisa had to get home to prepare for the party.

  Jamie sighed. “I should have called, but I was afraid you would turn me away after what I’ve done.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Jamie. But I need to remind you that you put me in an impossible situation when you called me from Dubai. Because I couldn’t tell anyone that you called, Jeff’s death remained a mystery, with everyone believing he had committed suicide because he killed you. That was very hard on my friend TJ. And just so you know, on Christmas Eve I finally told her you were alive, but I warned her that she couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “All I can do now is apologize for what I did; I shouldn’t have run off. I know that now. I just got in yesterday and I’m staying with my parents. I plan on going to the police tomorrow and telling them everything. I realize that I might face criminal charges for letting everyone think I’d been abducted, so I plan on explaining everything to my folks before I go.” She paused and pulled a tissue from the box on Lisa’s desk. You must think I’m a terrible person.”

  “No Jamie, I know you were a very confused woman when you left Jeff.”

  “I was. And I’ve had all this time to come to my senses.”

  “Do you plan on staying here?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve thought about getting my old job back, but I did enjoy the casino life. I might try to get into the one here.”

  Lisa collected her thoughts as her surprise faded. She had to ask, “Jamie, why are you here?”

  Jamie took a deep breath. “I want to meet Jeff’s son. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

  That wasn’t what Lisa wanted to hear although the request didn’t really surprise her. “I can tell TJ that you want to meet him, but I can’t promise anything. She’s angry with you, of course, with good reason.”

  “I understand that. I’ve let everyone down—my parents, Jeff’s parents, you. All I can do now is try to make amends for what I’ve done.”

  Lisa was finding it impossible to be a therapist and not an accuser. “Unfortunately, the person who needed those amends the most is dead.”

  “I know. I’ve had to live with the knowledge that his death is my fault.”

  As expected, TJ’s reaction to the news was volatile. “That bitch wants to meet JR? Who the crap does she think she is?

  “I certainly understand if you don’t want to allow it,” Lisa said. “I didn’t promise her anything. In fact, I told her you would turn her down.”

  “Fuckin’ blond bimbo,” TJ muttered. “She didn’t deserve Jeff.”

  “TJ, I’ll support you no matter what you decide.”

  “Does Donna know about this?”

  “Not that I know. But it’s possible Jamie has talked to her. Why, do you want me to tell Donna?”

  “Don’t want to, but I gotta tell Donna before she can go sneakin’ around with JR, lettin’ the bitch see him.”

  “TJ, you know Donna wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t risk your friendship by letting Jamie see JR without your approval. And don’t forget, she has as much reason to be angry with Jamie as you do.”

  66

  Eric and Bart left for the dealership at five. When they arrived the wedding ceremony had just started. The inflammatory blog they’d designed was posted the day before, nearly daring Headliner to come after Bart at the New Year’s Eve party without saying anything direct. They were counting on Headliner being able to decipher where Bart would be on the big night. Just that morning they had found a miniature-tracking device on the bottom of Lisa’s car, identical to the one they had found on Jen’s.

  Security had already been sprinkled in with the wedding guests and stationed outside. The woman checking invitations at the door was a Waukesha policewoman. If the guests were wondering why they needed to produce an invitation and a picture ID, they were being good sports about it and not asking questions. Eric and Bart remained behind the scenes, helping to keep the bar stocked and readying the break room for Donna and JR.

  After a lot of discussion of the best way to keep JR and Donna safe, Richard, TJ, and Donna decided to keep them at the dealership during the party. The place would be secure and his mother and father would both be nearby. Having Donna and JR there also freed up one of the security guards from the estate. “Place is gonna be a frickin’ Fort Knox,” TJ had said. “We might as well take advantage of it.”

  The tables in the break room were moved around, and a twin-size, elevated inflatable bed was readied for JR and placed next to t
he sofa, where Donna could sleep if she needed to while the party was in progress.

  By nine o’clock, the party guests were arriving and JR and Donna were situated for the night. The child was excited to be able to attend the party, but sleep won out on the drive over.

  TJ, in a bright-red vintage cocktail dress with a flouncy skirt that reached the tops of her knees, found Richard and surveyed the room. At least half of Eric’s guests had arrived early and were mingling with the wedding guests. The classic cars had been moved aside to make room for the dance floor, and a few choice models were on display: a Cadillac limo from the fifties, a Bentley coupe from the forties, and a white Excalibur. The deejay, wearing a light blue tux with a ruffled shirt, was keeping the music going.

  Jamie Denison sat in her car, waiting. She needed an unattached male to walk into the party with to avoid attracting attention as a lone female. In her bag, she had the invitation she’d lifted from Lisa’s office, certain it would get her admission to the party where she could talk to TJ at a time everyone would be drinking and in a good spirits. She had her fake ID with her, anticipating that they would check the guests before allowing them admission. When she spotted a man getting out of his car not too far from her, she quickly stepped out and caught up with him.

  She pulled her wrap tighter around her bare shoulders. In her mother’s attic, she’d found a strapless prom dress that would work for the occasion and a shoulder-length, red wig from a Halloween party of the past. When she was abreast of the man, she said, “Nice night for this, isn’t it? It’s usually so cold on New Year’s Eve.”

  He slowed his pace and looked her over. “That it is.”

  He grinned, his features hidden under an exaggerated Elvis Presley-style pompadour. Jamie could feel him evaluating her, his eyes unreadable behind tinted blue lenses. “Do you mind if I walk in with you?” She asked.