Last Girl Standing

by Lisa Jackson

  Grimly, she drove toward the West Knoll police station. She’d hung up on McCrae but now realized she needed him. She was going to get this story whether she was employed or not.

  But . . . with Zora and Brian’s death, Tanner’s murder had slipped from the very top of the news rotation. Delta might not be under such a fine microscope, so it was a good time for her to pitch for an interview. She’d been harsh about Delta, true. Maybe Delta didn’t know it, though. Ellie could suck up a little, maybe get a personal one-on-one.

  And where are you going to air it?

  She would work that out later. The interview was the thing. That would be a coup, and if it played right, all the focus would shift back to Delta.

  She heard her own thoughts and grimaced. Zora was dead. Tanner was dead. And all she could think about was getting her job back.

  Her cell buzzed. She eyed it almost angrily, not trusting it wasn’t more bad news.

  It was her half brother, Joey.

  Ellie ignored him. Not today. Her brothers were endless problems. The cell stopped ringing, then started in again. She ignored the second call, too. They had no idea she had problems herself.

  The third time he called, she snatched up the phone and growled, “What?”

  “Nia and Michael are eloping,” he said through a clogged throat.

  She ground her teeth together, then almost laughed. It was so ludicrous. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So you and Michael are sharing . . . again?”

  “Nnnooo . . . ”

  “You’re not convincing me.” She sighed. “Do you know where they are now?”

  “At our apartment.”

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m outside. We had a fight.”

  “Hold on. I’m coming.” She clicked off and threw her phone into the passenger seat. It felt almost good to have a mission. She hoped to God she could stop Michael before he did something irrevocably stupid, and marrying a Crassley fell directly into that category.

  When she got to the apartment, a two-bedroom in a fifty-unit, gray complex in desperate need of paint, Joey was pacing outside. Ellie swept up the wooden stairs to the front door, but when he tried to follow, she ordered, “Stay here.” Both of her brothers had been involved with Nia Crassley, and it was bad news all around. Nia was the youngest Crassley and the only girl, with three elder brothers and a passel of half brothers, stepsiblings, and who knew what. Ellie knew, from the twins, that Nia was living with her three true brothers on the family property. She was a few years older than the twins, but looked twice their age. They were just her latest conquests. She, like her brothers, had been the bane of West Knoll for years. Her parents, both gone now, had started the dynasty of crime and bad behavior, and Nia, Gale, Booker, and Harry Crassley had gleefully continued in their wake.

  The door was locked. Ellie yelled, “Michael, let me in, or I will break this down, I swear. Bad things have happened to me, and I’m off leash. I will smash this lock. I will smash a window. I will—”

  The door flew inward, and Nia stood there with a look of disbelief on her elfin face. “What’s your problem?” she demanded. Michael hovered behind her, giving Ellie his somewhat belligerent “I know I’m in trouble” look.

  Ellie gave her attention to the girl in front of her. Nia was pretty enough, small and dark and sultry, but she’d had a hard life, and it showed in the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She regarded Ellie insolently through bangs that needed to be trimmed.

  “Let’s get you a pregnancy test before you guys make a run for the preacher,” Ellie said calmly.

  Michael said, “Butt out, Ellie.”

  Nia smirked.

  “I’m not going to bother being nice,” Ellie said. “Nia, if you are pregnant—and that’s a big if—well, we all know that if you are, it could be anybody’s.”

  “Ellie . . . ,” Michael murmured.

  “If Justin Penske were still alive, he’d be top of the list for baby-daddy, but he’s about the only man I would rule out at this point,” Ellie said. “I just don’t think it’s Michael.”

  An electric silence fell among them. Nia opened her eyes wide and glared at Ellie in a way that was meant to be intimidating. Ellie just waited.

  “Joey should’ve never called you,” Michael whined.

  “Shut up,” Nia told him.

  “You shut the fuck up,” Michael retorted, looking wounded.

  “You can’t elope!” Joey yelled from the porch.

  Ellie turned to frown hard at him, and he backed down the stairs again. “Nobody’s eloping,” she told them.

  “You think your shit don’t stink,” Nia snarled. “But I know something you don’t . . .”

  “You’ve never shown that you know anything.”

  “Oh, burn!” Michael choked out, half-inclined to laugh.

  Nia turned on him, and Ellie thought she was going to rake his face with her nails.

  “Stop,” she ordered, her voice cold and hard. Nia froze, possibly hearing something in Ellie’s tone. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she was off leash. Right now, at this moment, she felt capable of anything. To Michael, Ellie said, “Am I going to have to follow you around? I could call your father. Let Oliver deal with you.”

  “You don’t want that!” Joey called from outside.

  “Joey, if you say one more word, I’m heading straight to your father,” Ellie shouted at him.

  Both Michael and Joey stayed silent.

  Nia, having recovered a bit, defiantly lifted her chin. “You wanna know what I know? Too bad.”

  “I want you out of my brothers’ lives. That’s all I want from you.”

  “I know that Penske didn’t kill that cop, Bailey Quintar,” Nia said quickly.

  Ellie could feel her anger harden. She wanted to grab Nia Crassley by her hair and drag her outside. She knew she was close to losing it completely. And if she wasn’t careful, this adrenaline-pumping anger could change to grief, and she would collapse and sob her heart out.

  “She deserved to die. Bitch killed my brother. I was glad when she died! We all were. I—” She gasped in shock when Ellie suddenly did grab a fistful of her hair. “Ow! You fucking bitch! . . . Whore! . . . cu–”

  “Shut up!” Ellie screamed in her face, shocking her silent. “Bailey didn’t kill your brother. That was road rage. Get it straight. I’m taking you back to your house. On the way, we’re going to stop for a pregnancy test, and you’re gonna pee on that stick in front of me!”

  “I’ll sue you. I’ll say you attacked me!” Nia shrieked.

  “Hey,” Michael said.

  Ellie rounded on him. “Pay attention to what you and your brother have been fighting over. This girl? Really?”

  Nia twisted around to try to slap Ellie, and she would’ve gotten in a pretty good hit if Ellie hadn’t held her back with a hard yank.

  “Owwww!” Nia howled. “I’m gonna sue! Tell everybody about you! You’ll lose your job!”

  Ellie laughed without humor. Too late. “And I will write a story about you and your miserable family that’ll put half of them in jail, where they oughtta be.”

  “Nia, stop it. You don’t want more trouble. A couple of ’em landed there already,” Michael admitted.

  That caught Ellie up. “A couple Crassleys in jail? Well, that’s a good start. Which ones?”

  “Booker and Harry. They were in a bar fight last night,” Michael said glumly.

  Nia wriggled, trying to loosen Ellie’s grip. “Like the kind that bitch cop always broke up!”

  “Watch yourself when you say anything more about Bailey,” Ellie warned.

  “I’ll say what I want. He never wanted to be with her. It was just a job,” Nia spat.

  “Penske? He’d be lucky to have her,” Ellie responded, but her antennae shot up nonetheless.

  Nia spat like a wildcat. “He never wanted her! She was just in the way and had to be removed. We all hated he
r! She just wouldn’t leave us alone!”

  Ellie snarled sarcastically, “Oh, sure, so he killed himself too.”

  “He didn’t kill himself! That wasn’t supposed to happen! He was mmmiiiiinnnee!”

  The last word came out on a long moan. The fight went out of her, and Ellie slowly released her grip on Nia’s hair.

  Michael from behind her, and Joey, outside, were both utterly silent.

  Ellie processed what Nia had revealed. She asked, jaw set, “Which one of your brothers killed him?”

  Nia’s mouth quivered. For a moment, Ellie thought she was actually going to give them up, but instead she cried, “You’re trying to make me say things, you bitch! I’m not talking to you.” She whirled around. “Goddamnit, Michael. I’m sick of this!”

  “Whad I do?” he asked.

  “Nothing!” With that, Nia ran out the door.

  Joey looked like he was going to try to stop her, but she kicked at him as she pounded down the wooden porch steps and beat feet to an ages-old green Chevy parked on the street outside.

  “Fuck, Ellie, what have you done?” Michael demanded, joining her on the porch, where they watched Nia fire up her car and burn around the corner.

  “Saved your ass, like always.”

  “Damn you, Michael.” Joey suddenly leapt up the steps toward his brother.

  “Stop it. Both of you. You need to both get over her.”

  “But she’s—” Michael began.

  Ellie glared at him, and he cut himself off. After a beat of silence, she said, “She’s a Crassley, and they’re grifters, con artists, and all-around miserable human beings. You know it as well as I do.”

  “That’s really harsh,” Joey said.

  “You heard what she said about Bailey.”

  “But Bailey harassed her,” Michael said.

  “Be careful,” she warned. “Gale Crassley attacked her in an alley.”

  They both clammed up. Joey shuffled after Michael back inside and asked him, “You going to work today?”

  “Nah, I quit.”

  They both worked at fast-food restaurants.

  “Wanna play video games?” Joey asked him.

  “Mother of God,” Ellie muttered, leaving them and heading back to her car. Crisis averted for the moment, unless the girl was really pregnant. Maybe she was. If so, they would all end up back in another scene.

  But it had made her forget her own problems for a moment.

  Now Nia’s words circled her brain as she drove back toward town: He didn’t want to be with her. It was a job.

  And: He didn’t kill himself. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He was mine.

  Had one of her brothers killed Penske? Maybe Bailey, too, although the current theory was that he’d shot her and then shot himself. Same gun, but maybe . . .

  She thought furiously for several moments. She could call Delta, ask for an interview, maybe then push that interview with Channel Four. Or . . .

  Two Crassleys were in jail, leaving only one—Gale, maybe the worst one, but only one. Well, and Nia. But if she were ever going to interview, face off, with the Crassleys, this was the time.

  But was that safe? What if . . . what if they had killed Penske? And Bailey?

  Bailey for being a cop who’d constantly thwarted them, and Penske . . . because he was with Nia, before she was old enough for legal consent?

  “You’re asking for trouble,” she murmured aloud. But hell . . . what a story, if it were true. And maybe even some closure for Bailey’s family.

  She knew where the Crassley compound was, a ramshackle, sprawling single-story house in dire need of repairs, with a weedy drive and a barbed-wire fence that corralled a car graveyard. She was driving in the opposite direction, so she turned around and drove past the western boundaries of West Knoll and onto the county roads.

  She bumped up a long, pothole-riddled drive and parked on a grassy mound to one side, aiming her Escort for a straight shot out, if she needed it, which she might. Six or seven large dogs barked madly at her behind the barbed-wire fence in a pen of sorts as she got out of her car and stepped into a pile of dog shit. Fuming, she tried to scrape the smelly stuff onto the clots of gravel that showed through the weeds as she walk-hopped toward the sagging front porch.

  Loud voices sounded from within. Angry voices. A man and a woman. Gale, most likely, and Nia. When Nia came flying out of the house, that answered that. She acted like she didn’t see Ellie as she stomped down the porch steps and over to the area where about twenty vehicles in various states of disrepair were parked. Ellie realized Nia’s car had been one of the paint-faded hoods—rusted cars, trucks, and what have you; there was even a tractor out there—as the girl jumped inside her green Chevy and burned away from the others. Smoke flew out of her tailpipe as she took off again.

  She’d better not be going back to Michael and/or Joey.

  She almost turned around, but now there was only one Crassley at home. She moved forward and rapped her knuckles against the side of the tattered screen door. She put on an expression of friendly interest, though suddenly she didn’t know exactly what she planned on saying to him. She didn’t really want to complain about Nia; she thought she’d heard “Penske” in the argument she’d overheard between them, and that didn’t bode well.

  She heard him trudge her way, and then he pushed through the screen, causing her to back up. Standing in front of her on the porch, the man had a rifle tucked under his arm.

  “You’re that reporter,” he said.

  She stopped short. Oh, holy God, she thought, and only after a long moment did she nod her head.

  “Well, come on in,” he said, opening the screen to have her walk through ahead of him.

  Gale Crassley . . . possibly Penske’s killer . . . possibly Bailey’s . . . a man who knew the inside of a jail cell better than the walls of his own home.

  With the greatest reluctance, she ordered her legs to walk inside.

  * * *

  McCrae knocked his knee as he was swinging away from his desk, and he bit off a string of invectives. He was mad at himself. For his feelings for Delta.

  Just because she lied doesn’t mean she’s a killer.

  Quin came looking for him. “We got a lot to discuss.”

  McCrae nodded. He’d avoided him on purpose. A lot had happened in the last few days that they hadn’t gone over.

  “Come outside.”

  They walked out the back door together and stood on the edge of the field. A hawk slowly cruised overhead, looking for small prey, while the sun reached out warming fingers of light through the cloud bank.

  “Tech came back. They found a block of concrete in Timmons’s car. Markings and dust on the accelerator.”

  McCrae frowned. “Someone lodged it in place on the accelerator and turned them loose?”

  “Looks that way. They were likely unconscious as they went over.”

  “What the hell for?” McCrae exploded.

  “They’re looking for prints, fibers, whatever, to see if someone drove the car to Grimm’s Pond. So far nothing.”

  “In that case, Brian and Zora likely drove themselves. Why?”

  “There’s a house about half a mile back on the road on that side of the cliff. Number of houses on five-acre lots, far enough apart for privacy, close enough to run into your neighbors now and again. One of ’em’s just closed up and empty. Got dusty tire tracks on the tarmac that match Brian Timmons’s.”

  “So he went there? Or someone drove him there?”

  “It’s Anne Reade’s family’s old house.”

  McCrae regarded him incredulously. “Anne Reade.”

  “She’s out of town and hasn’t lived there for years. She was taking care of her father, but he moved to a nursing home earlier this year. It’s been uninhabited since February. I talked to her on the phone. She’s in South Carolina. She’s got a boyfriend there and is moving at the end of the summer to join him and start teaching there. She said Brian knew the h
ouse was empty.”

  “So he was meeting someone else there? Who else knew?”

  “She says nobody, although it wasn’t a big secret. Crime techs are going over it now, but I understand it’s dusty and undisturbed like no one’s actually entered in a while.”

  “So they met outside? I’d say maybe Brian was living a secret life, but he had Zora with him last night.”

  “We checked out their house this morning. Everything looks in place, except Zora’s car isn’t there.”

  McCrae frowned. “Maybe with a friend? Or in the shop or getting detailed?”

  They discussed it further but came up with no new conclusions.

  They headed back inside as they were wrapping up. Quin switched subjects and asked him about his interviews with Tracy Gillup and Dean Sutton. McCrae told him about Tracy seeing someone she thought was watching Bailey and Penske, but he added that Carville had warned about Tracy not always being truthful. He then said he hadn’t learned anything more than what they’d already known from Sutton, purposely leaving out what the coach had said about Quin’s ex-wife. Until he interviewed Bailey’s mother himself, he wasn’t going to stir that pot.

  Which was what he thought he might do right then, along with checking in with Delta and getting some in-depth information about Zora and Brian from their friends and family. He went to his office and took his gun out of the drawer, then headed out.

  “Mr. McCrae!” he heard as he was opening the back door again.

  He turned slowly around and saw Tim Hurston coming his way from reception. Thinning gray hair, neatly trimmed, suit pressed to a knife’s edge, pugnacious chin: the man had his hand out and a smile that looked predatory.

  What was this?

  McCrae shook his hand reluctantly. “Something you need?”

  “I wanted to talk about the widow Stahd. Delta, her name is.”