The Perfect Facade (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Twelve)

by Blake Pierce

  “How can you be sure?” Karen asked. “Did Claudia tell you that?”

  Kimberly looked like she’d prefer to do anything other than answer the question but ultimately she did.

  “No. She was completely closed-mouthed, which is typical for her. But the next morning, after Veronica found her and we called the police, I felt ill and went into the master bathroom to throw up. I managed to stop myself, but in the trash basket, I saw a used condom.”

  She lowered her head, apparently preparing for what she knew was coming next.

  “We didn’t find that when we arrived,” Karen said.

  “I know,” Kimberly said, her head still down, “After I saw it and told Lauren and Veronica, we calmed down enough to process that everything about that night would come out, including the stripper stuff. We couldn’t bear the thought of the world knowing what Claudia had done the night she died. We didn’t want that to be the final image people had of her. We didn’t want her husband, or especially her kids, to have to deal with it. So we agreed to throw it out.”

  “Who did?” Karen asked.

  “Me. I tied the bag up and ran it down the hallway to the trash chute next to the housekeeping closet.”

  “You realize you committed a crime,” Karen said.

  Kimberly was shivering. Apparently now that the tension of holding in her secret was gone, her body had become aware of the elements.

  “I do now. In the moment, it made sense. Claudia was alive when the guy left. We were even teasing her about not being the goody-goody she portrayed herself as. She was fine. I mean, she was conscious. So there didn’t seem to be any reason to let the encounter come out if it didn’t have anything to do with her death.”

  “But you don’t know that,” Jessie told her. “Maybe he got aggressive with her. Maybe he forced her. If so, he might have snuck back in later when you were all asleep to make sure she didn’t accuse him of something the next day.”

  “But we would have heard him,” Kimberly protested. “How would he even have gotten in?”

  “You said you were all toasted,” Jessie reminded her. “Apparently Lauren couldn’t even stay conscious until the guy left. Would any of you really have noticed if he snagged one of your keycards? If he came back in when you were all passed out?”

  “You think that’s what happened?” Kimberly asked, aghast.

  “I have no idea. We have experts reviewing surveillance footage as we speak. The point is, the investigators are supposed to determine what evidence is relevant, not the victim’s hungover friends.”

  Kimberly was now shaking violently. She wrapped her arms around herself in a vain attempt to stay warm but made no request to go back inside. It was like she viewed her discomfort as some sort of atonement for her deception.

  “Are you going to arrest me?” she asked meekly.

  Jessie looked over at Karen to make sure she was on the same page before replying. The detective said nothing but rolled her eyes slightly, which Jessie interpreted as a sign she wouldn’t go to the mat over this. She turned back to Kimberly.

  “Your bigger concern is that we arrest you for Claudia’s murder,” she said sharply. “We haven’t ruled you out on that front yet. Getting charged with destroying evidence will seem like a walk in the park compared to that.”

  The shaking continued but it wasn’t clear whether it was the result of cold or fear.

  “You know me, Jessie,” Kimberly pleaded. “You know I would never do something like that. Claudia was my friend. Our daughters played together. It’s just not…it’s not possible.”

  Jessie was inclined to believe her, but not for the reasons she suggested.

  “Go back inside, Kimberly,” she told her. “Don’t talk to Lauren or Victoria about this. You’ve done enough conspiring with them for one weekend. If we find that you’re communicating with them, it won’t look great.”

  “What should I do then?”

  “Hang out with your family. Play with your kids. Avoid committing additional crimes. We’ll be in touch.”

  Kimberly nodded and hurriedly returned inside without another word. Jessie and Karen moved just as quickly to get back to Karen’s car and out of the whipping wind.

  “To Veronica Rhett’s next, I assume?” Karen said.

  “I think so, “Jessie agreed. “Let’s see what crime she confesses to.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They knocked and rang the bell multiple times without an answer. There were no cars in the driveway and Karen even used a small mirror with a long extension handle to see if any vehicles were in the garage. She saw one but the other space was empty. They returned to her car, unsure how to proceed.

  “What do you want to do?” Karen asked. “I hate to head back without talking to her.”

  “Me too,” Jessie said. “At some point today we should pay Rock Harder a visit so he can explain himself. But I think we should hold out here a little longer. It’s late morning on a Sunday. Maybe they’re at church or breakfast.”

  “Or maybe she’s trying to leave the country,” Karen half-joked. “I knew we shouldn’t have let those surveillance cars go.”

  “Let’s give it a few minutes before we put out an APB,” Jessie replied with a wry smile.

  “I guess I’ll trust your judgment on this one,” Karen said. “You called it right on Kimberly Miner.”

  Jessie shrugged modestly.

  “I guess I knew her better than I thought. It was clear she was hiding something. Maybe Captain Decker was right to put me on this, even if he was sneaky about it. Don’t tell him I said that though.”

  “Never,” Karen replied.

  “Anyway, I’ve learned not to make too many assumptions, but I’m skeptical that she’s our killer.”

  “Because of the hand?” Karen said, smiling deviously.

  “You noticed that too?”

  “Not at first, I’ll admit,” Karen conceded. “But after you pulled that pen toss trick, I caught on. I realized what I guess you already had—that she’s a lefty.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said. “She poured the hot water with her left hand. She drank from the mug with it. Catching the pen with her left hand just sealed it. And the medical examiner’s report I was looking at on the way down here indicates that because of the angle of the blow to the head, Claudia was likely attacked by a right-handed person. I wouldn’t definitively exclude Kimberly based on that alone. But she definitely drops lower on my list.”

  Before Karen could reply, an SUV pulled into the driveway. The garage door opened and four people got out: Veronica, her husband, and two children. Jessie observed that they were all dressed in matching outfits. The boy wore a miniature version of his dad’s suit and the girl had the same dress as Veronica. She flashed back to Lauren Kiplinger’s “goody-goody church mouse” jibe, and wondered just how much of a facade that was.

  “Looks like you were right about church,” Karen noted.

  “I guess we should see if Veronica’s in a confessional kind of mood,” Jessie said as they got out of the car.

  Veronica saw them coming and stopped in her tracks.

  “Take the children in, honey,” she told her husband. “I need to have a chat with our guests.”

  He husband glanced over and quickly ascertained the situation.

  “Come on, kids, let’s get in where it’s warm,” he said enthusiastically to the kids before turning to his wife. “Let me know if you need me.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, blowing him a kiss.

  Jessie and Karen stopped at the garage entrance, waiting for everyone to go in the house before speaking.

  “So where do you want to do this?” Veronica asked, beating them to the punch. Jessie was surprised by how controlled she seemed.

  “Probably somewhere with privacy,” Karen said. “You don’t want your kids listening in.”

  Veronica thought for a second.

  “We’re building an additional wing to the house. The kids know it’s off l
imits because of all the dangerous equipment. It’s not the most comfortable place but it’s secluded.”

  “Lead the way,” Karen said.

  They followed her as she passed through the dining room and foyer, carefully avoiding a route where her kids might see them. They continued over to the other side of the house, through a small sitting room to a clear, plastic tarp that served as a door to the area under construction. She unzipped it and led them into a large, enclosed open space with exposed wood beams, partially dry-walled sections, and lumber everywhere. Veronica Rhett looked mildly ridiculous standing amid it all in her elegant, navy Sunday dress.

  “What is this?” Karen asked.

  “It’s going to be a visitors’ wing,” Veronica said. “Like a guest house but connected to the main house. It affords privacy but accessibility.”

  “Must be nice,” Karen muttered sourly.

  Jessie saw Veronica tense up at the comment, apparently realizing that she wasn’t making any friends with her ostentatious description. With her on the defensive, it seemed a perfect time to start asking questions.

  “So we know Claudia slept with the stripper,” she said loudly, letting the words echo around the empty room.

  Veronica stumbled slightly and reached out for something to steady herself.

  “Stop!” Karen ordered.

  Veronica pulled back her arm and looked over to see that she’d almost rested her hand on the exposed blade of an upturned automatic wood saw. She gasped in shock.

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” Jessie suggested, nodding at some bags of cement piled three high just beyond the saw.

  Veronica nodded and settled in on them, trying to adjust herself in her dress. She brushed the dark hair out of her eyes, searching for any familiar habit to regroup.

  “You kept what happened with Rock Harder from us,” Jessie said, boring in on her again. “That doesn’t reflect very well on your credibility.”

  Veronica nodded before whispering, “How did you find out?”

  “Not really important right now,” Jessie countered. “Why did you lie?”

  “We were trying to protect her memory.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Karen asked.

  “What?”

  Jessie knew where the detective was headed and steeled herself for the potential ugliness.

  “In the course of our investigation, it’s been suggested that you were seriously envious about Claudia’s seemingly perfect life—great husband, good kids. Maybe also getting to have a consequence-free night with a hot stripper was a bridge too far. Maybe the more you thought about it, the angrier you got. You’re lying awake looking at that clock. She’s snoring in the other room, helpless. And something just snapped. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds crazy,” Veronica hissed, quaking with fear, anger, or some combination of both. “I never thought about Cloudy that way. She was like a sister to me. You got some bad information and I can guess where it came from.”

  As she spoke, Jessie noticed her hand brush the handle of a hammer on the floor beside her. She didn’t seem to register it, but all the same, Jessie casually moved her own hand on top of her gun holster.

  “Where’s that?” Karen demanded.

  “Probably the person who really resented Claudia, the one whose whole life is a carnival fun house of chaos and alcohol. Only Lauren would try to pull that crap.”

  “Is this the same Lauren who ruined your night of grinding in a dark corner of Fête by getting thrown out?” Karen batted back.

  Jessie stared at the detective in awe, stunned at her willingness to go for the jugular. Veronica’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  “That was a moment of weakness,” she insisted once she’d recovered. “I don’t drink a lot and when I do, it hits me hard.”

  “How hard?” Karen challenged. “Maybe hard enough to completely forget bashing in your friend’s skull in the middle of the night, so that you were genuinely shocked when you found her the next morning?”

  “I didn’t do that!” Veronica screamed.

  Her hand had rested on the hammer now. Karen noticed it too and glanced at Jessie, who nodded down at her waist to indicate she was prepared. Neither of them spoke.

  “Look,” Veronica continued, only slightly more controlled now. “I’m far from perfect. Yes, I behaved badly at the club. I drank more than I should have. I wasn’t forthright about the stripper. But I would never hurt my friend. I was there to help her celebrate a milestone. And I ended up finding her lying on a bed with a caved in skull. I can’t get it out of my head—her eyes staring lifelessly at me, the blood dripping down the white sheets. I’m afraid to close my eyes because every time I do, that’s what I see. I didn’t do this.”

  As she said those last words, she took her hand off the hammer and wiped away the tears streaming down her cheek.

  “Everything okay in here?” someone asked from behind them.

  Jessie turned around to find Veronica’s husband peeking through the plastic tarp, a worried look on his face.

  “We’re good,” Karen told him. “Why don’t you go on back with the kids?”

  “I’d like to hear it from my wife, if you don’t mind,” he shot back. “Should I be calling someone, Veronica?”

  She looked up blankly. It took her several seconds to register that he was asking if she needed a lawyer. Jessie saw her mentally playing out how that would go down: admissions of furtive foreplay in a Hollywood club and a stripper in her hotel room. She shook her head.

  “I’m fine, John,” she assured him. “This is all just upsetting to talk about. Go back to the kids. I’ll be back in soon.”

  Reluctantly, he left. Once he was out of earshot, Veronica posed a question to them.

  “Was I lying? Will I be back in soon?”

  It was a good question. Did they have enough to bring Veronica in to the station? Or was she just a woman who made some bad choices under incredible stress?

  Jessie realized that after spending all morning questioning the people who’d last seen Claudia alive, she was no closer to an answer. That reality left her feeling the one emotion she hated most: helpless.

  The truth was that they couldn’t arrest Veronica. Despite all the smoke, there wasn’t any fire, at least not yet. So despite spending most of the morning in Orange County, they would be returning to L.A. frustrated. They’d conducted four interviews, and with the possible exception of Kimberly, they still had three credible suspects, including Claudia’s husband and two of her friends.

  That meant their next best hope was waiting for them back in the city, where they would try to put the squeeze on a stripper named Rock Harder.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hannah wondered if this was what people meant by having butterflies.

  She had the rideshare drop her off a block from convicted sex offender Jimmy Poston’s house in the West Adams District. As each step got her closer, she became aware of an unusual feeling. It was as if small creatures were fluttering their wings in her stomach. She relished it.

  The house came into view and she forced the giddiness to settle. If Jessie or Kat was approaching the home of a dangerous felon, they wouldn’t allow nervousness or excitement to blind them to their task. She couldn’t either.

  She had to keep her mind focused on the reason she was here: to determine if this man, once convicted of raping a sixth grade girl, had also abducted Mindy Stokes. The tree-lined sidewalk and manicured lawns that adorned most of the houses on the street offered a deceptive façade, a sense that nothing truly bad could happen here.

  Hannah knew better. Only a year ago, she’d lived on a perfect-seeming street in a family-friendly neighborhood. But that didn’t stop her own birth father, a notorious serial killer she’d never met, from abducting her and her adoptive parents and butchering them in front of her. She’d seen her own sister tortured in a house like these. Just months earlier, she’d learned that a gorgeous seaside mansion was the headquarters for a sex
ual slavery ring. She’d learned not to be fooled by appearances.

  She stopped briefly at the house adjacent to Jimmy Poston’s to review her plan one last time. It wasn’t complicated. Convince him to let her in to his place, look around for anything suspicious, get out, and call the authorities if need be.

  She knew it might not be as simple as that, which was why she had both the can of Mace and the retractable baton Jessie had given her for protection. Armed with those and with the training from her periodic self-defense sessions with her sister, she felt equipped to handle whatever situation developed.

  She walked up to his house. Like many neighborhoods in this part of town, the variations in the style of residences varied wildly. There could be impressive, hundred-year-old, three-story affairs right next to matchbook-sized dwellings that looked like they might collapse at any moment. The rental place Jimmy lived in was among the latter.

  The grass out front was brown and overgrown. The exterior needed a good paint job. Some roof shingles were missing and the ones that remained were in bad shape. Many windows had been painted over in black and others had brown butcher paper taped to the insides of them. The wooden front door was rotted through in places. She imagined that a couple of well-placed kicks from someone who knew the right technique would splinter it into pieces.

  She pulled a clipboard out of her backpack and looked for a doorbell. Seeing none, she knocked on the door. There was no response so she knocked again. As she waited, she noticed that there was no peephole. Poston would have to open the door to see who was there.

  “Who is it?” demanded a surly, male voice from behind the closed door.

  “Hi, I need your help please, sir,” she said in her most enthused, girly voice.

  “Not interested.”

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Just hear me out. If you’re still not able to help, okay. But at least listen to what I have to say.”

  After several seconds, during which she could hear him breathing heavily on the other side of the door, it opened slightly. There was a chain lock on it. She could barely see Poston, who stood back in the small slit amid the darkness of the room behind him.