by C T Mitchell
Jack found it hard to believe that all these women were with the guy for who knows how long and only Cassandra got pregnant. They needed to go through the records again and double check they weren't missing a very important piece of evidence. Was Carl Jameson’s only child? Could there be a daughter out for revenge?
CHAPTER 6
“So what are we going to say to her to convince her we're not suspicious?” Jo asked as they stood outside Lydia Lindstrom's apartment. “If I did something to my ex-husband, I wouldn't want to talk to the police more than once.”
Jack attached his badge to the front of his coat pocket. Many people didn't like lying to police. He hoped Lydia was one of those people. “We'll stick with the cover story of tracing Jameson's actions back to the very beginning. She was his first wife, so we're starting with her.”
Jo knocked on the door. “Mrs. Lindstrom? It's Detective Constable Jo Boston-Wright and Detective Sergeant Jack Creed. We're here to ask you a few more questions. Do you mind opening the door?”
They heard some shuffling around as if someone was opening and closing drawers. Jo frowned at Jack and mouthed, “Hiding things? Should we get a search warrant?”
“Let's see how things go,” he mouthed back.
“I'll be right there!” Lydia's footsteps grew closer and closer to the door. She opened it and smiled, looking like a kindly grandma that just took a batch of cookies out of the oven instead of a vengeful ex-wife. “What can I do for you?”
“We need to ask you a few more follow-up questions,” Jo said, taking the lead. “Something came up while we were going over the reports, so we're following up with everybody. We thought you may have remembered some more details about the last time you saw James alive.”
Lydia motioned for them to follow her into the kitchen and sit down before she poured three glasses of lemonade and set out a platter of Tim Tam biscuits. Jo looked over at Jack and raised her eyebrows. Tim Tams? That was a little too convenient.
Lydia noticed the silent exchange. She laughed. “I know what you're thinking. Trust me, it's nothing like that. I would never hurt James. He was my first love. Sometimes I think he was my only love. I would never hurt him.”
“Do you have any idea who would?" Jack sipped the lemonade. It wasn't his usual style. He preferred a little bit of stiff whiskey to make it hard lemonade, but he'd take what the hostess gave him.
Lydia spread her hands out in front of her as if she was imagining a ring on each finger. They all knew how that ended. “If you want answers, I'd ask his secretary. Her name is Simone Lindstrom.”
Jo raised her eyebrow again. “Any relation?”
Lydia shook her head. “Just a coincidence, I guess.”
“What are the odds?” Jack didn't believe her for a second, but she didn't need to know that. “Why don't you tell us a little more about your history with James? Just go right back to the beginning. Don't leave out any details. Even the little details are important to us. It might be the key between solving this case and letting it go cold.”
Lydia looked down into a glass of lemonade. Jack counted the seconds go by with the ticking of the clock. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Just when it looked like she was going to declare temporary amnesia, Lydia started talking.
“James and I met in high school. I was new to the area. He lived here all his life. I don't mean to sound conceded when I say I was very beautiful back then. I was the sort of girl that turned heads when I entered a room. James was one of those heads. James understood me better than I understood myself. We were inseparable from that moment on. Anywhere he went, I was with him. We traveled all over the world and never saw the same place twice. Our life was full of adventure. He gave me a promise ring. You've seen it before. It's the gold ring with the Alexandrite stone. At first, I protested. I said it was too expensive, that I was afraid I was going to lose it, but he insisted that I keep it. He said it was one-of-a-kind, just like me. How can I say no to that?”
“When did things go south between you two?” Jack asked.
Lydia shrugged. She didn't take her eyes off of lemonade to make eye contact. “Everything goes south eventually. We grew apart. He got wrapped up in work and I had nothing better to do with my time than to sit around at home and wait for him. I got tired of waiting, so I gave his ring back and left.”
“For someone without any discernible income, this apartment is a little, shall we say, out of your price range.”
“Just because we split up didn't mean James stopped taking care of me,” Lydia said. “He bought me the apartment and sends me a monthly allowance.” She frowned. “I mean sent me a monthly allowance. I guess I'm still having trouble remembering that he's really gone.”
“Can you tell us where to find Simone? She's the only person we haven't talked to yet about the case.” Jack clicked the cap of his pen. It was as rhythmic as the ticking clock. Time was running out for Lydia. She just didn't know it yet. Jo and Jack were bored to death.
Lydia shrugged and looked everywhere around the unit except at Jack or Jo. “Check his office. James kept the names, phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses of everyone who ever worked for him. If you are looking for Simone, that should be the first place you go.”
*****
Jameson's office was as sparse as his second penthouse at the Beach Resort, except this time, instead of white leather, everything was brown leather. Usually when someone has a leather fetish it meant something. Jameson didn't seem the sort of guy to be into that particular brand of kink, but Jack had seen stranger things in his day. Maybe he had more than just leather furniture stashed somewhere in his apartment.
“Did you find anything?" Jo looked up from inspecting Jameson's desk. “All these drawers are locked and I can't find the key. If you were Jameson and had a possibly gold digging secretary, ex-wife, and a string of ex-girlfriends, where would you hide the key?”
“I wouldn't use a key.” Jack walked across the room to the desk and starting feeling underneath. “If I were Jameson, I’d build a false bottom or hidden drawer that only opens with a switch. Gotcha!” Jack grinned triumphantly as his fingers found the trigger switch. With a quiet click, the drawers sprung open.
Jack pulled out every file folder in the previously locked drawers and spread them out on top of the desk. He divided them into two sections. The left side of the desk was Jo's, the right side of the desk was his. “Check every file,” he instructed. “Looks like Jameson wasn't into labeling. Even if he was, I'd still tell you the same thing. No stone unturned, remember? That's a good police detective's motto.”
“I thought it was, 'Drink lots of coffee, but stay away from the donuts,'” Jo cracked.
“Very funny. There are other reasons to stay away from the donuts, and it's not just to avoid stereotypes.”
“Yeah?” She grinned. “Name one.”
“Just get to work, will ya? We can't take all day. We need to find Simone before she finds a way to disappear forever.”
Jack opened each of his folders and checked who the file was on before putting it on the bottom of the stack. Before long, he came to Simone Lindsrom's file. With her blonde hair and ice blue eyes, she looked a lot like another Lindstrom they knew – Lydia. Either Lydia and Simone were strange, distant Swedish cousins or they had been lied to repeatedly by the woman who claimed to still love Jameson no matter how many years passed.
“We found our girl. Let's bring in Simone. She has a lot of explaining to do."
*****
The girl sitting across from Jo didn't look like the blonde in the employee file. She had taken great pains to reinvent herself, which was a nice way to say she’d changed her identity. She dyed her hair black and cut it into a chin-length bob. When she removed her sunglasses, Jo noticed the blue eyes from the company ID badge were now brown. Contacts? Someone was serious about slipping by under the radar.
“Excuse my ignorance, Detective, but what is this about?” Simone folded her sunglasses and placed t
hem beside her on the table. “Is this going to take long? I've got places to go.”
“If you mean your flight to Japan, we took the liberty of cancelling that for you.” Jo slid a folder containing everything they had gathered on the Jameson case up until this point across the table toward Simone. Crime scene photos, autopsy photos, reports and pictures of the ten rings. It was all there. “Your schedule just became completely clear, Miss Lindstrom. Now it's time to answer some of our questions.”
“I—I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Sure you do.” Jo leaned over the table. “It's a little something we like to call 'your boss was murdered and you were the last person to see him alive.' Have you heard of it?”
All the colour drained from Simone's face. “I don't know what you're talking about. When I left James, he seemed fine. He was sleeping, but when is that something suspicious? He passed out, I left, end of story.”
“It would be the end of the story if he was still alive.” Jo leaned further over the table. “But he's not and you know what happened.”
Simone shook her head. “I don't. I went to his place, that's true, but I always went to his place. He invited me over after work all the time. We weren't seeing each other if that's what you think. It was purely business. Sometimes James drank a little too much wine and passed out. That's what happened the last time I saw him.”
“How do you explain the fact that the coroner said he had sex the day he died?” Jo liked playing bad cop. Usually it was a role reserved for Jack, but when it came to interrogating females, they needed a female cop to do it. It was good practice. Jo liked the change of pace.
“How should I know anything about that?” Simone waved her hand so as to gesture her innocence. Someone else had that nervous habit too — Lydia. “I already told you I wasn’t seeing James in that way. We had a business relationship. He trusted me. He told me things he didn't tell anyone else. He knew I would be discreet. He had secrets, but doesn't everyone?”
“Were his kind of secrets enough for someone to kill him?” Jo slammed her hands on the table and leaned as far over as she could in order to get right up in Simone's face to go for full-on intimidation mode. “Did you kill him, Simone?”
Simone shook her head violently. “No. No, of course not. How can you even ask me that? Why would I kill James? He said he loved me. Even if I didn't feel the same way, that's not an excuse or motive to kill him.”
“Don't lie! You wanted his money. You made him think he could have the ultimate prize — you. You dangled yourself in front of him like some trussed up carrot, only to pull back when he thought he finally caught you. That's true, isn't it? You led him on and then you killed him.” Simone tried to get up out of her seat, but Jo slammed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. “You're not going anywhere, Miss Lindstrom. You're staying right here. In fact, get used to these grey walls. You'll be seeing a lot of those from inside your jail cell.”
“You can't accuse me of things without having any evidence!” Simone clutched her purse against her chest. Usually people were smart enough not to take anything with them into the interrogation room, but Simone had refused to let anyone have her purse. Now she clutched it against her like it was a life preserver and she was slowly sinking into the ocean. “You can't just go popping off with all this crazy talk and expect me to just confess to something I didn't do! You don't have anything on me because there is nothing incriminating about my relationship with James. You're spinning your wheels. You have nothing on me, Detective. Can I go now?”
Jo grabbed Simone’s shoulders and slammed her back in the chair. “You're not going anywhere.” She looked over her shoulder to where she knew the two-way mirror was and nodded her head toward Simone. That was their signal for Jack to come in. Jo turned around and faced Simone. “If you're not going to talk to me, perhaps you'll feel differently about my partner, Detective Creed. Just wait. If you think I'm bad, I have nothing on him.”
Simone clutched her purse even tighter as Jo marched out of the room. She joined Jack on the other side of the door. “She's all yours.”
A lot of people called Jack a shark because he could smell blood in the water. He smelled blood when he walked into the interrogation room and saw Simone sitting huddled in the chair. She wasn't trying to be big or brave – she was just trying to keep it all together. That meant they had her right where they wanted her. Before he was through, she would be singing like a canary.
“Miss Lindstrom, I’m Detective Sgt. Jack Creed. How are you?”
Simone looked up as if expecting the male version of Jo, someone who was going to get right up in her face and scream at her until she broke down in tears and admitted to anything just to get it all to stop. “I understand why you brought me in, Detective Sgt., but I don't understand why I'm still here.” She batted her eyelashes. Now she was playing the innocent victim or the damsel in distress. Little did she know he'd never fall for her game. He didn't even play that game. If Simone thought her feminine powers of persuasion would get her out of this interrogation room and back onto the streets, she had another thing coming. Jack wasn't called the shark for nothing. He smelled blood and was going in for the kill. But first he'd play with his food for a bit.
“We've been looking for you for quite a while, Miss Lindstrom.” Jack sat down in the chair across from her, folded his hands on top of the table, and just waited. There's an old saying, 'You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.' That's what he intended to do. He wasn't usually so mild and polite during interrogations, but he supposed he could let Jo have the title of bad cop for once in her life.
“I'm sure you know by now that Mr. Jameson is deceased. Everyone we interviewed said the same thing: 'Ask the secretary. She'll know.' So we found you and now we're asking what you know about Mr. Jameson's activities outside of work.”
Simone frowned. “I don't know what you mean. If you have something to say, just come right out and say it.”
“Fair enough.” Jack leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the table. He counted to five to let the silence drag on. The longer he waited to talk, the more nervous she would get. He had done this enough times to know this was the way to finally find some answers. “Everyone says Mr. Jameson had secrets. Everyone also says you knew the secrets. We want to know them, too. Either you tell us or we'll find a way to get them out of you."
“Torture?" Simone's mouth quirked into a wry smile. “I thought they outlawed that ages ago, Detective.”
“We do what we have to do to crack cases. Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Not,” she decided. “I don't know anything. I'm probably the worst person to help you. James didn't tell me all his secrets. I just told people that to make Carl and Cassandra jealous. He hoped Carl would take some interest in the family practice if he thought I would somehow jump over him in the line of succession. James hoped that maybe he would take more interest in counting and less interest in that girlfriend of his.”
“Jump the line of succession?" Jack sat up straight and leaned forward. There was definitely blood in the water. He was close to the truth. “How can you jump the line of succession? Jameson only had one child and that's Carl."
Simone grew silent. She examined her bright red fingernails, picked at a split end in her bobbed hair, bit her bottom lip; she did just about everything anyone guilty could do. She was guilty of something all right, but it wasn't guilty of murdering Jameson. Jack sensed this wasn't a murder. It was an accident.
“The reason James and I only had a business relationship is because we couldn't have a personal relationship. It just wasn't possible. Carl may be his only son, but I'm his only daughter."
CHAPTER 7
“Just start at the beginning,” Jack prompted. “You don't have to carry around his or your secrets any longer.”
Simone took a deep breath before she began her story:
“I believe you've met my mother, Lydia? She and James were high
school sweethearts. They married when they were still in college. Mum dropped out, but he finished his degree. It was all pretty standard for the time, but what wasn't standard was some things he enjoyed, so to speak. He gave my mother a beautiful alexandrite ring. It was a promise. As long as she wore it, she was committed to being submissive to him. I don't just mean like a housewife, to cook and clean and always having dinner on the table when he got home from work. I mean submissive in a darker way."
Simone waved her hand to try to collect her thoughts. “It's weird thinking about my parents being into that kind of stuff, you know? As long as she wore the ring, she was safe. It was a way to prove to him that she would submit to anything inside and outside the bedroom. When she took off the ring and gave it back, all bets were off. When she found out she was pregnant with me, she knew it was time to leave. She didn't even tell him that I existed. She just handed back the ring and left. He kept it just like he kept every ring from every other girl. He never knew about me, but I knew all about him. Mum told me all sorts of stories. It was probably more graphic than a kid like me needed, but she wanted to let me know he wasn't a good guy. He wasn't nice. He was a monster. He had a dark side. She knew the last thing she wanted to do was raise a child in that atmosphere, so she kept me hidden. She kept me safe. She clipped newspaper articles about him and made a scrapbook. She never once lied to me about my real father, so I grew up knowing that this man, this great man from the newspapers, wasn't so great. He was evil and he deserved every evil thing that happened to him."
“Whose idea was it for you to work for him?”
“Mum's.” Simone wiped at her bright eyes. “He could be so arrogant, you know? He didn't even put two and two together with the last names. He just saw a pretty face and hired me on the spot. Maybe it was because I reminded him of Mum. I don't know. He didn't hit on me, no matter what that snot of a half-brother or step-monster says. He was a gentleman for the most part. He just wanted to unload all his secrets. That secret keeper became me. I found his trophy photo album the first day he invited me to his Cabarita apartment. He kept it right next to all the plaques and cups he won for sports.”
