Heart of Gold

by B. J Daniels

  “She changed her name. It’s now Ramsey. Kathryn Ramsey. She lives up Bridger Canyon.” Landusky rattled off the address and was gone.

  Shep looked at the time. As anxious as he was to talk to Kat, he didn’t have time. He had to meet with the retired cop.

  But he found it interesting that she hadn’t moved very far away. Also that she’d remarried. He wondered how soon that had happened after her daughter’s death.

  * * *

  CHARLIE WAS STILL thinking about what Amanda had told her at lunch as she headed back to the office. Why had Greg not wanted anyone to know that Amanda had come with him from another company he’d owned? Why did it matter?

  Unless he didn’t want anyone to know how short a time he’d had the other businesses before selling and moving on. But if that was the case, then he shouldn’t have brought Amanda with him. Surely he knew that she wasn’t good at keeping secrets—other than her own.

  Then again, he didn’t know a lot about her, including that she also had a lover on the side.

  If Amanda had been telling the truth, then Greg had hired a headhunter friend. Had he really wanted to recruit Charlie that badly? She felt honored. Why hadn’t Greg ever mentioned that he’d done that? Amanda had thought Greg was obsessed with his new creative artist, but other companies did the same thing to get the personnel they wanted.

  However, it did explain at least why Amanda had disliked her from the get-go.

  Charlie chuckled to herself. At lunch, Amanda had made it clear she didn’t think Charlie was that talented. Was she? She loved what she did, but it wasn’t like her last boss had praised her all that much. She was glad that Greg had seen something in her work that he liked enough to go to the trouble of getting her to come to work for him—and with a much better salary. The trouble was Amanda’s jealousy.

  She was stewing over all this as she came into the building and found Greg waiting for her. He looked concerned.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “I just didn’t want to miss you,” he said. “Why don’t you step into my office where we can talk?”

  Oh boy. She had absolutely no idea what to expect now—and went with her old standby, expect the worst.

  “I’m sorry, have I done something?” she asked as Greg offered her a chair.

  He took his behind his desk and waved the suggestion away. “Did I hear you went to lunch with Amanda?”

  She nodded, a little surprised he hadn’t known. Apparently his and Amanda’s pillow talk hadn’t included lunch today.

  “How was it?”

  “Lunch?” She swallowed down the lump that climbed up her throat. “We had lobster rolls.”

  He nodded. “Amanda’s favorite. I’ve never known if she loves lobster or if she just likes to order the most expensive item on the menu. So they were good?”

  “Delicious. I just ordered what she did.” Charlie wanted to call the words back the moment they were out of her mouth. She sounded like a kid making excuses for her behavior by blaming someone else.

  But Greg didn’t seem to hear her, which told her that this wasn’t about lunch or the bill. “I’m worried about you,” he said, leaning back in his chair to study her.

  That was the last thing Charlie wanted. “Because I’ve been showing up for work early rather than late?” she joked, hoping to lighten the tension she felt in the room.

  “I’m serious, Charlie. This old boyfriend who you think sent the dead mouse... He sounds dangerous.”

  You have no idea.

  “I think you should go to the police.”

  She was already shaking her head. “Really, that isn’t necessary. I’m sure he’ll never do anything like that again.”

  “You talked to him about it?” Before she could answer, he continued, “Is he the man I saw watching you come into the building this morning? I got the impression that he followed you.” Greg went on to describe Shep. “Could he be stalking you?”

  He thought Shep was her old boyfriend who she’d said had sent the dead mouse. She started to say no, but sensed he wasn’t going to let this go. “You have the wrong idea,” she said. “I can promise that Shep and I now have an understanding.”

  “Shep? That sounds like a dog’s name,” Greg said. “No offense.”

  She had to laugh. “I said the same thing to him when I first met him. His last name is Shepherd.” She shrugged, then she clamped her lips shut, realizing she was only getting in deeper.

  “He isn’t someone you dated since you went to work here?”

  “No, it was a long time ago.” A very long time ago. She frowned. “Why would you ask that?”

  Greg looked embarrassed. “Amanda was with me this morning. She said he wasn’t the one who’s picked you up from work in that muscle car of his.” Daniel. “She thought he might be someone new. She keeps track of these kinds of things. I have to admit, it isn’t something I ever notice.”

  Amanda, of course. Charlie wondered what other things the woman had told Greg about her. “Amanda definitely has a lot of interests.”

  “I wouldn’t ask about the man. It’s just that you seemed upset this morning.”

  It surprised her that he’d noticed. “You know how old relationships are. Often those feelings are still there.” She meant that as a throwaway, not realizing how close to home she’d hit until she saw his expression.

  “I guess the staff have been talking about my old girlfriend,” he said quietly. “I did make a fool of myself over her. And you’re right, it’s often hard to get over, especially your first real love.”

  She wanted to swallow her tongue. How had they gotten on this conversation? She didn’t want to share confidences with her boss anymore than she had wanted to with his fiancée.

  “Well, if you ever want to talk about it...” Greg rose, dismissing her just as a clearly drunk Amanda appeared in his doorway.

  “What do you have here?” Amanda said, slurring her words as she took in the two of them.

  “Running a business,” Greg said stiffly. “Nice of you to join us.”

  Charlie made the fastest exit of her life, fearing another dead mouse. Or worse.

  * * *

  RETIRED HOMICIDE DETECTIVE Danny Mulvane offered Shep a cold can of beer and a chair at the kitchen table. He took both. Mulvane was a big man, broad-shouldered with thick legs and a belly that preceded him wherever he went. The man seemed comfortable with himself and his retirement.

  “Lindy Parker,” Mulvane said with a sigh and shook his mop of graying dark hair. “Have you seen a photo of her? Beautiful girl. Had her whole life ahead of her. What a waste.”

  “You talked to the neighbors at the time?”

  He nodded.

  “What about boyfriends?”

  “She was seventeen,” Mulvane said.

  “Exactly.”

  “The neighbors said they’d never seen her with a boy. The mother was in a coma in the hospital, the stepfather was dead and the sister said no boyfriend, but she wasn’t the most reliable witness, even if she hadn’t been in some kind of state of shock.”

  Shep was surprised by his take on Charlie but asked, “Were you the one who found her?”

  Mulvane nodded. “I was in the office when the call came in. I offered to go with the new patrolman to deliver the bad news about the parents to the family. The father was dead. The mother was missing somewhere in the river. It was the last thing I wanted to tell the family. The moment the one daughter opened the door, I felt like something was wrong. You know when you just have a feeling you can’t shake. The girl... What was her name?”

  “Charlie Farmington.”

  “Right, the stepsister. She said Lindy was in the house, but when we called for her, she didn’t answer. I insisted we find her. Turns out she wasn’t in the house and hadn’t been for some time. When we found the ba
ck door standing open, I told her to stay and I stepped out back. Found Lindy Parker only yards from the house. She’d been brutalized. Definitely a crime of passion. I figured, like you, a boyfriend. At first.”

  “At first?”

  “Turned out that according to the sister—Charlie? Odd name for a girl, don’t you think?”

  Not if you knew the girl, Shep thought.

  “Anyway, it seemed that Lindy didn’t have a boyfriend. A little hard to believe that she wasn’t involved with anyone, as pretty as she was in her picture. So that left the sister. The neighbor said the two fought like cats and dogs. Then the sister answers the door acting completely out of it, you know?”

  Shep felt a start. Charlie was “out of it” before she opened the door and found out about her father’s death? “How so?”

  “Ditzy, like she was confused and didn’t know what was going on. And she lies about her sister being somewhere in the house.”

  “Wait a minute.” Shep remembered what Charlie had told him. “Are you telling me you actually suspected Charlie of killing her stepsister?”

  “I sure as hell did. If you had seen how strange she was acting... Then I find the sister’s body. By then the kid was catatonic.”

  “Shock does that to some people.” Shep was still trying to digest this. “Was Charlie questioned as a suspect?”

  Mulvane shook his head. “The forensics guys found footprints out by the creek where someone had hidden like they were watching the house. Once they found blood in the same shoe track near the body and disappearing into the woods behind the house, they figured they had their killer. So it’s always been believed that some vagrant hanging out in those buildings killed her.” He shrugged. “We found a bloody baseball bat back in the woods but couldn’t get any DNA off it other than the young woman’s.”

  “You must have tried to find the man who’d made those tracks,” Shep said.

  “There was the neighbor kind of kitty-corner from the Farmingtons’ place, an old farmhouse way back off the road. Paul Wagner. I think he still lives there. He said he hadn’t heard anything. Had his television turned up because he was half deaf. I asked if he lived alone. I already knew he had three older stepsons. But he said his stepsons hadn’t been around all night. Turned out that they didn’t know the girls at all. The media was quick to blame some homeless psycho traveling the rails near the old house and my boss was happy to go with that. No one wanted to believe there was a killer in town that might come after his or her daughter next.”

  The former cop sighed and finished his beer. “Social services took the sister. The mother was found in the river a day or two later, barely alive. Once she got out of the hospital, she buried her daughter and that was that. The killer escaped justice.”

  Shep left with a large manila envelope with copies of the file on the murder. He felt shaken that Mulvane had ever believed that Charlie was that killer. What struck him was the question of who else might blame her and be looking for justice?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN CHARLIE RETURNED to her apartment, she found Shep poring over stacks of papers strewn across her kitchen table.

  “What’s all this?” she asked as she shrugged out of her coat and boots. She padded in her socks into the kitchen.

  “You may not want to look at these,” he said, trying to shield her from what she realized were copies of the murder investigation and what might have also been copies of autopsy photos. There were also copies of what appeared to be newspaper articles on the case.

  “All this is about Lindy’s murder?” She couldn’t help her surprise. The table was covered several inches thick.

  She felt a stab of guilt. Her foster care mother wouldn’t let her follow the news about the murder. But in truth, she hadn’t wanted to know. She knew what had happened. Lindy had been killed behind the house. It didn’t matter who’d done it or how. Charlie knew who the real guilty person was.

  “The original stories were pretty sensational so it’s no surprise that they went national,” Shep was saying. “Since then, your stepsister’s story keeps coming up whenever the area papers do stories on unsolved murders.”

  She stepped past him to pick up a page-one newspaper article and recognized Lindy’s high school photo. She’d forgotten how beautiful her stepsister had been and said as much.

  Shep made a not-that-beautiful sound.

  “Seriously?” she demanded. “Look at this girl.”

  “You’re more beautiful than she ever was,” he said without looking at her.

  She eyed him suspiciously. “If you think flattery will get you—”

  “It’s the truth,” he said, looking up at her in a way that sent fissures of pleasure through her. “Your face is more interesting.”

  Charlie laughed nervously. “Okay, I’m going to take that as a compliment.” She put down the newspaper article without reading it. She knew what had happened. Well, enough of what had happened. She’d lived with it every day for fifteen years. “I’m sorry, but how is this going to help?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have to start somewhere and I need to know all the facts.”

  “I already told you what happened.”

  “You didn’t mention that you told the police she didn’t have a boyfriend. Did she?”

  “What? You think I lied to the police? She didn’t have a boyfriend. Did she have a crush on someone?” She shrugged. “But there wasn’t any boy who took her out on dates, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Was there anyone at school who was interested in her?” Shep asked.

  “Other than Andy, the boy I liked?” Charlie thought for a moment. “There was this one boy she argued with a lot at school. This can’t have anything to do with her death though.”

  “Tell me about this boy.”

  “Fletcher. I’ve forgotten his first name. Everyone just called him Fletch. I saw Lindy with him a few times, always arguing. Lindy said all the boys at school were too immature. She couldn’t wait to graduate and find a real man. Fletch,” she repeated as he came into view in her memory. “I remember this one time, he grabbed her arm roughly. She fought back and got him in trouble. He was kind of a bully. I thought they were perfect for each other.”

  “I’ll check him out. What about boys in the neighborhood?”

  She shook her head. “There weren’t any. Not boys anyway. There were some guys in their twenties around that older man’s house down the road. I did see Lindy wave to them once, just fooling around. She liked to think that any man alive would want her. It was probably true.”

  “Did you ever meet the twentysomethings?”

  “I know it seems strange, but Lindy didn’t have time for boys—or men. Her full-time job was making my life miserable.”

  “It certainly sounds that way. I’m sorry.” He surreptitiously shoved some copies of photos under a pile of newspaper articles.

  “Are those the autopsy photos? Let me see them.”

  He shook his head. “You will never unsee them, trust me.”

  “They’re that bad?” She shuddered. “I heard my foster mother talking about the murder. I knew it must have been awful.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “You and I will always disagree about that. If I had just opened the door—”

  The buzzer sounded. “Another date with what’s-his-name?” Shep asked.

  “His name is Daniel and no, not until later.” She frowned as she moved to the intercom. “Yes?”

  “Hey, I’m starved. I thought you might have finally gotten to the store?”

  “I’ll be right down.” She turned to look at Shep. “He’s going to get suspicious if I keep sending him away.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone in this apartment. I promised the judge I would find out what was going on and make sure that nothing happened to you. Why
don’t you just tell your boyfriend about Lindy and that I’ve been hired to investigate?” He grinned. “You don’t have to tell him that—”

  “Tell him that you’re a middle school math teacher?”

  “True, but I’m good at it and I have other talents.” He sounded defensive enough that it made her smile.

  She remembered some of his other talents. He’d probably picked up a few more in the past fifteen years too.

  “I think we’d better keep your...talents a secret for now.” With that she was gone, slamming the door after her.

  * * *

  SHEP SWORE TO himself as she left. But she did have a point. Did he really have any idea what he was doing? He’d gone into this as if it was a math problem. So far, he hadn’t figured out anything. At least by staying in her apartment and dogging her every step, he could make sure she was safe. If there was another Lindy sighting, he would be there.

  He wondered what was happening downstairs. He moved to the window and peeked out—first across the street. No Lindy. Below the window he could make out Charlie and Daniel talking.

  She was right. Her boyfriend was suspicious. He could tell they were arguing. Daniel was all wrong for her anyway. But Shep didn’t want to see her hurt. If she had real feelings for this guy...

  He stepped away from the window and picked up the newspaper article with Lindy’s high school photo. He thought of the stories Charlie had told him. There’d definitely been something dark inside Lindy. Too bad the judge didn’t get hold of her. But then again, not everyone came out of the judge’s boot camp changed.

  Staring at her stepsister, he wished the photo could talk. What had happened that night outside the house? It seemed too coincidental that the one time Charlie locked Lindy out, a killer came along. He supposed it could have been random. They were close to the tracks and a lot of empty warehouses. A derelict could have heard Lindy yelling and come out to see what was going on.

  Still...if that wasn’t what had happened, then what were the other options? Someone who’d been stalking the girl without her knowing it? The shoe tracks the police had found at the edge of the creek... Someone from school? Or someone from the neighborhood? He thought about the boy named Fletch. He also thought about the twentysomethings from down the street who Lindy had waved at.