EYEWITNESS

by Marc Timms

  Lilly shook her head. “It wasn’t that bad. I got all of Penny’s things from Jessica’s house, including her bed and the dog food. So it was all provided, but it was a lot of work.” She looked from one to the other. “Would you girls mind helping me carry over some more dog food from Jessica’s house?”

  Johanna couldn’t believe the luck. Not only was she learning the background of the dead woman, but now they would go into Jessica’s house. Perhaps even discuss the key.

  Marnie winked at her friend. “Of course, we’d be happy to help.” She stood up and said, “No time like the present.”

  They walked back to the home next door, and Lilly opened the door with a key.

  “Did they drop off a key for you? That was pretty nice,” Marnie said.

  “I’ve had this for a while. Jessica rarely left town, but she had gone somewhere a couple of months ago. She gave me a key then to keep an eye on the place. I just watered the plants and brought in the mail.”

  “And she had you keep it afterward?” Marnie asked.

  “Yes, she said it was the only spare she had. Apparently, it was the key that had belonged to her husband before he passed. Jessica said I could keep it in case anything came up—and then it did.”

  They went in the front door and stopped abruptly at the other end of the entryway. Another door stood there. Penny barked at the door, and Lilly used the key again to let them in.

  Johanna turned and looked at the door as they went into the main hallway. Sure enough, the door had a deadbolt lock on the interior side of the door and only a flat plate on the outside. There was no way to turn the lock from outside the door, only the inside, which would mean that an occupant would be required to be inside the house to lock the door. She scrutinized the door as Lilly talked about the locks and why Jessica had felt a need for them, even though the area was not crime ridden.

  “She just wanted to be safe when she was here alone after her husband died,” Lilly said, as Johanna began to pay attention again. “So she had these special locks put in. She could be secure, and she never had to worry about putting all those extra keys on her chain.”

  “But what about the windows? Wouldn’t thieves get in that way?” Marnie was looking at the glass window that showed the backyard where they’d stood earlier.

  Lilly shook her head again. “She had some sort of security glass put into the windows, so people couldn’t break in. I mean, it’s strong stuff. She hit a chair against it one night by accident, and nothing happened to it. At my house, all the glass in the window would have shattered.”

  Johanna looked directly at the window but couldn’t see any difference. “Why this need for security? I thought Covedale was a safe neighborhood. Instead, it feels like a panic room, except it’s the whole house.”

  Lilly drew a deep sigh. “You’d have to ask her. I have no idea. I guess we’ll never know now.”

  Johanna doubted that. She was sure that the first step in understanding how she’d been killed in this fortress was to know why she’d felt a need for such security. Was there something precious here—papers, diamonds, jewels, that required such protection? Or was there another reason?

  Marnie looked around the kitchen, but it was evident from her expression that she had no idea what required such caution.

  Lilly pointed to a cabinet. “If you could get those two bags, I would appreciate it.”

  Johanna opened the cabinet and saw about ten bags of dog food, all the same. Each of the two younger women grabbed a bag and hefted it over their shoulders. Penny should have been able to last for weeks on the amount of food they were carrying, but it had only been a few days that she’d been with Lilly. Had the older woman not been able to carry something that heavy?

  She doubted that the older woman would have been able to reach the taller deadbolts on the doors. Like many her age, she had started to shrink with age. If Johanna measured her height correctly, Lilly would not be able to reach the lock.

  Maybe if she couldn’t determine how to escape this safe room, she could decide which suspects were physically able to manipulate the locks. She also needed to look into why Jessica had felt a need for such locks. Those two questions might keep her busy for some time, Johanna admitted to herself.

  Lilly locked the doors again as they left and carried the dog food back to her house. Penny danced around them as she saw bags of food heading her way.

  After they’d put the food away for Lilly, they made their way to the car and home.

  Chapter 6

  The following day, Johanna decided to look at Jessica’s car again. One of the things that had bothered her from the start was the fact that the woman she’d seen strangled had been killed in Jessica’s car. Jessica was seemingly obsessed with security and safety. Yet she’d left her car in a parking lot unattended, and then went home in some curious way that hadn’t yet been identified.

  Presumably, Jessica had locked the car before she’d left the forest. A set of keys seemed to be floating around. Perhaps Jessica had loaned the keys to another person—like she’d loaned the house keys to Lilly.

  Yet Lilly seemed like an unlikely murderer, who had no reason to kill the victim and no means by which to do it.

  If nothing else, Johanna thought that the forest would provide a background to reach nature and offer her relaxation and peace. She could perhaps think about the murders and develop a theory there.

  So Johanna pulled into the parking lot. The first thing that she noticed was that the car was still there. She was surprised, but after giving it some thought, she could understand the reasons why it had not been moved. The police had never really believed that she had witnessed this. If Johanna had to guess, she thought the police believed she had pulled an all-night bender in the woods and had come back the next day to hallucinate a murder. By that logic, she continued: the parked car was a fluke, and the woman’s death had to be unrelated.

  She approached the car but didn’t touch it. If Johanna could connect the dots between all the events, they might come back and want to check for prints. She used the bottom of her blouse over her hand to try to open the car doors. The passenger side was open, and the door moved towards her.

  How could this be? The car was locked, according to the police. Now the car was unlocked but unmoved. She stuck her head in on the passenger side and looked around. The backseats had been folded down, as she remembered it. The man and woman had been in the back, making her first think that they were intimately involved. It wasn’t until she saw the man’s hands around the woman’s neck that she’d realized that she’d been mistaken. The man was trying to kill her.

  The police had suggested that this was a sexual maneuver, but she knew better. The woman’s face had a blue hue, and her mouth made an odd motion as if she was trying to bring in air. Honestly, men sometimes thought women couldn’t distinguish one from the other.

  She looked deeper into the car, wondering if she would find anything. However, she knew in all likelihood that nothing would be found. The vehicle had been scoured thoroughly by the police technicians when she had called in the murder. Nothing of any interest or value would have been left in the car.

  Nothing explained why the car was still here or why it had been here in the first place. Johanna wondered if Lilly would know anything about the car and why it was there. Someone should be picking up the car to include as part of the estate, and now that it was open, the chances were that not much would be left for the estate.

  The most likely way for anyone to get home after leaving a car stranded would be a car service. Even though Jessica was an older woman, perhaps she had a smartphone, and Johanna could find a way to look at the recently used apps. If she’d taken another car from the park home, then she might have talked to the driver, which could lead her in some exciting ways to find the truth.

  The other thing, which she’d forgotten about until now, was the discovery of the key Marnie had found. At the time, she’d put it into her pocket, but Marnie had a
pparently not brought it with her today. Johanna couldn’t remember if the key looked like it fit a car or a house —or something else entirely. She would definitely have to look into that further.

  Johanna was still disappointed, though. She had hoped for more than just these two small clues. She had wanted a sign that would blow up the case and make the police see that they were wrong.

  Nothing like that had happened.

  She walked around the parking lot several times, looking for anything that resembled a clue. Still, unless the killer had eaten several peanut butter cups, there was nothing to be found.

  When she arrived home, a man was standing at her door. He had glanced around several times, but his gaze had only momentarily fallen on her before he looked elsewhere. Johanna had never seen this man before. Given that he had not greeted her, she was reasonably sure that he didn’t know her as well.

  He had dark hair that fell down into deep brown eyes. He had the stubble of a few days on his cheeks, and his mouth was turned down. Johanna couldn’t read the emotion there—it was so hard to do with a stranger. He had a lean, muscled body from what she could discern; he didn’t wear clothing that highlighted it, which was a point in his favor.

  She stood there a second to reassure herself that he was not the man who had killed the woman in the car. The fact that she still didn’t have names for either one frustrated her. If she knew their names and relationship, she was sure that she would solve the case.

  Johanna approached the door with her phone in her hand in case of an emergency. He turned again and looked at her. “Are you Johanna Cole?” he said politely and calmly. Johanna felt confident that he wasn’t a reporter or a crackpot wanting to meet someone involved in a murder case.

  Johanna nodded and stood there. She had no desire to go into her own home until she’d ascertained who he was. She thought of Jessica and how she’d been killed behind closed doors. When he didn’t offer his own name, she continued, “And you are?”

  He put out a hand that she didn’t take. “I’m Thomas. I’m Jessica’s nephew, and I understand you were at the crime scene. I just wanted to talk to you and hear your story. The police have been very reserved about saying anything about her death, and it’s getting frustrating.”

  Johanna smiled, but she felt puzzled. Lilly had distinctly mentioned a niece as the nearest relative and the likely heir to the estate. Yet, here was a young man who was claiming to be Jessica’s nephew.

  Since she was in a public place, Johanna decided to be straightforward in her response. “I thought that the estate was going to a niece? I don’t recall the police mentioning anything about a nephew. Are you two married or brother and sister?”

  His eyes widened for a second, and then he smiled. “Sorry, it’s always been easier to call Jessica my aunt. She was much older than me, but technically, I think we’re third cousins, so many times removed.”

  Johanna nodded again. “Oh, so how did you know each other? I don’t think I could pick out a second cousin or beyond out of a crowd.” Johanna thought about her own family and how her parents had passed away when she was young. She’d gone to live with an aunt, but the woman had been unmarried and without children. Cousins were a rarity in her family.

  “Oh, my mom was big into family genealogy.” He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “We were always meeting some relative or another. Jessica had a big house and lots of room to play outside, so I remember going there often.”

  Johanna recalled the discussions with Lilly. “So you knew their daughter too? Jessica’s daughter, that is?”

  Another unreadable emotion crossed his face. “Yeah, definitely. Uh, could we go into your place and talk? If I’m going to be sharing this family stuff, I feel a little exposed in the hallway.”

  Before she made a move, Johanna pressed a button on her phone. She was going to verify the identity of this man before she let him into the house. Lilly answered the phone.

  Johanna introduced herself. “I just had a quick question. Did Jessica have a relative named Thomas?” She waited while the woman went through a rather lengthy discussion of Thomas and his relationship with Jessica.

  When she hung up, she smiled at the man. “You’ve been vouched for.” She pulled her key out of her purse, and they entered the apartment.

  Johanna offered him a drink, which he declined. That was probably a good thing since she thought she only had beer and water available.

  They sat down in the living room, facing each other. Johanna was drawn to those eyes as she looked at him. She forced herself to focus by reminding herself that he was probably married, engaged, or seriously involved with someone. There was no way to bring that up in a discussion of the murder of his aunt.

  “So you had questions?” she asked finally, when he hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t sure if he was shy or merely rude.

  He seemed to snap out of his thoughts. “Yeah, the police haven’t shared much with the family. We know that she was found dead in her home, and some man killed himself after confessing, but that’s it. No motive, nothing more.”

  Johanna took a deep breath. This would not be an easy conversation. She started by explaining what had happened at the park, how she’d seen a couple in what turned out to be Jessica’s car, and then witnessed a murder. She talked about hiding in the woods, calling the police, and tracking down the vehicle to his aunt’s house.

  “By the time that I got to your aunt’s house, they’d found her body and had declared her dead.” Johanna felt as though she’d just finished a marathon. She was tired and emotionally beat from sharing the events of the last few days.

  “So what about this guy? The one who supposedly killed her?” he asked.

  “I don’t really know. I never met him. He was dead before I could speak to him. I know that his confession doesn’t match what I know of the killings, and it leaves several large things unexplained: the car, the locked doors, and all of that. Why did your aunt make her doors that way?”

  Thomas smiled. “She was scared to death to live alone after her husband died. She wanted to make sure that she was safe, locked in as it were, but some people in the family made fun of her for it—suggested that she could go to an assisted living place. So she made the locks as unobtrusive as she could. Nothing on the outside, and locks up near the top of the doors on the inside.”

  The idea made sense to Johanna. She lived in a secure building with multiple locks on her door. She could understand the need for a feeling of security, even if it hadn’t saved her from murder.

  “So why are the police so certain that it was murder? I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier to call her death a suicide?” Thomas asked.

  She felt awkward talking about his family member in this way. It felt as though she was involved, and yet, she had never met the woman while she was alive.

  “My understanding is that she was shot. I’m not certain of where because the police asked me to identify her, only to determine if it was the same woman I’d seen in the car. I saw her face, but there were no visible signs that was what led to her demise.”

  “So below the neck?” Thomas said. He asked it as a question, but Johanna felt that he didn’t expect an answer from her.

  “They couldn’t find the gun in the house. So a gunshot with no gun has to be murder. You’d expect the gun to be right by her side if it was suicide or an accident.” Johanna thought back to the house and its design. How could someone have escaped from that locked space? She still didn’t understand how the police could close the case without an explanation.

  “And you said her car was still at the park?” he asked. “I don’t understand that.”

  Johanna explained how she’d found the car the last time she was there, unlocked but cleaned out of any forensic evidence. The police had been thorough, even if they hadn’t strongly believed her story.

  “So that’s it?” he asked. Johanna wasn’t sure what he’d expected from her. If the police had believed this story and closed the case, t
hen a member of the public was unlikely to overturn that decision.

  “In a nutshell,” Johanna replied.

  “How can I help? I need to know more,” he said, looking sad and a bit lost.

  Johanna thought about the questions she still had about the murder and the circumstances. She didn’t know how he could help until she thought about the car. “Do you think you could get her phone? I would love to know if Jessica had called a ride service to get home from the park. If she did, maybe we could talk to the driver and learn if she said anything about how she was feeling, or why she had taken a service home from the park, rather than driving. If she didn’t take a ride service home, then we’ll know we still need to find out how she got home. It’s a fairly long drive, and she couldn’t have walked or ridden a bike.”

  Thomas seemed to smirk for a moment. “I don’t think she ever rode a bicycle. You’re right. Somebody drove her home, and we could find out who that is and why she left the car there.”

  Johanna puzzled over this for a moment. “The police said that the car was operational. Unless it was one of those things where time makes the car start again, like flooding the engine or something, then she had no reason to get a ride home. She should have driven there.”

  Thomas stuck his hand out again as he stood up. “Thank you for sharing all this with me. I’ll try to track down the phone. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  This time, Johanna took his hand and smiled. “I hope to hear something from you soon.”

  Chapter 7

  Marnie came over in the afternoon to see what the latest was on the locked house and the murder. She was wearing a dress and large hoop earrings that made Johanna wonder where her friend had been. This did not look like her standard leggings and oversized blouse.

  “What’s up with you?” Johanna asked, as she let her friend inside.

  “I wanted to report back that I looked into the matter of the key. I took it to three different locksmiths, and none of them could tell me much. It’s not a car key, at least not a recent model, but it could belong to an older car. But all three of them felt it was more likely that it belonged to a lock on a house. Not a fancy lock, but just a plain old house key. So from that, I’m assuming that the key doesn’t answer any questions about the locked home. I was hoping for an easy answer there.”