SONGBIRD (JAX DIAMOND MYSTERIES Book 1)

by Gail Meath

  “I didn’t even notice,” she told him. “Margie isn’t here yet either. I’m going to give her a piece of my mind when she finally joins us.”

  Jax sat upright in his seat now, nervously. He watched Jeanie walk down the hall and enter the restroom. Within seconds, she came out the door. She quickly looked behind her towards the lower concourse. Then, she turned towards him, lifted her arms, and shrugged her shoulders.

  Jax panicked and bolted out of the restaurant.

  “She’s not in there in, Jax,” Jeanie told him as he flew by her.

  He shoved the door open. “Laura! Laura!” But there was no response.

  He ignored the squeals of the other women and rushed inside to check for himself. Then he darted past Jeanie again to search the lower level. He raced through the crowds of people in one direction, then he spun around and rushed in the other direction, shouting Laura’s name over and over again. People stopped and stared at him as though he were crazy, but he was beside himself. His heart was pounding in fear, and he couldn’t catch his breath.

  Finally, he stopped for a second, closed his eyes, and tried to think it through.

  There were only two ramps that led upstairs. Yet, they were at either end of the concourse that spread three-quarters of a mile. He focused on the closest ramp and wasted no time. He was hysterical and kept calling her name as he made his way up the ramp until he came to the main concourse. He didn’t know what to do, where to look next. The only thing he did know was that someone had taken her from that restroom by force. And there were dozens of passageways, too many for him to search by himself.

  He saw a security guard and rushed over to him. “Call the police!” he yelled at him. “I’m Detective Diamond. Someone was abducted. Get the police down here right away!”

  “Excuse me, sir?” the guard asked.

  “I said call the police!”

  He swore under his breath and ran over to the pay phone on the wall. He fumbled around trying to find a nickel in his pocket and several other coins fell to the floor with a few rolling away. He called Tim at home and struggled trying calm down long enough to explain what had happened. As soon as Tim assured him that he’d send a unit of men there, Jax hung up.

  He looked around, trying to get ahold of himself. But on the floor in front of him, he caught sight of a coin that he’d dropped. It was a penny with the head side up. He stared at it for a second, swallowing hard to control his emotions. Then, he bent down, snatched it, and put it into his pocket.

  Within half an hour, he was pacing across the sidewalk just outside the front entrance. Tim stood nearby, watching him. “Stan gave Jeanie a ride home, and he’s bringing Ace back with him. We have officers at every exit in the station with dozens more searching inside. We’re doing all we can, Jax. Who the heck did this?”

  He was far too upset to think straight and kept running his hand through his hair, trying to clear his head. He was out of his mind with worry and rage and couldn’t settle down long enough to figure out how someone had abducted her right under his nose. Let alone who the culprit was.

  He recalled sitting in the restaurant watching the hallway, waiting for Laura to come back to the table. He tried to envision the women who had gone in and out of the restroom. He always prided himself on his impeccable memory. Yet, it was all a blurry mess in his head as images of Laura suffering or worse kept flashing through his mind.

  “A wheelchair!” He swung around to face Tim. “Someone left the restroom pushing a wheelchair. That’s how they took her out of the restroom without anyone noticing.” He charged towards the door. “We need to get back in there and search for anyone in a wheelchair, Murph. Alert the other officers right away.”

  25

  Gone

  Three hours later, Tim found Jax and Ace sitting in a back stairwell at the station. There was nothing he could do or say right now that would ease his friend’s heartache and worry. As he watched him, there was no doubt in his mind now that Jax had fallen hard for Laura. They’ve worked plenty of tough cases together the past five years, several involving extremely beautiful women. Yet, Jax has always maintained his distance, a strictly business relationship with all of them. Even when the women hotly pursued him.

  Outside of work, he’d dated a few women, and Carla tried fixing him up with a few of her friends, but he had never taken any of them to Duke’s Club to share that part of himself. Jax had never opened up to anyone, except for him and his family, until now.

  Tim saw Ace by his friend’s feet, laying there still tuckered out. He had to give Ace tremendous credit. As soon as Stan dropped him off at the station, he had caught Laura’s scent in the restroom, trailed it through the lower level concourse, and up the ramp. But he lost it somewhere on the main level. Still, the devoted and determined pup spent a couple of hours trying to pick up her scent again, as though he knew exactly what had occurred and was just as scared and frantic as Jax. The two of them had traveled the entire length of the terminal, checking every passageway, tunnel, and exit, without any luck.

  “There are plenty of men still looking for her inside the station,” Tim told him. “I’ve also alerted every precinct from here to the Lower East Side, and Queens right down through to Coney Island.”

  “What about the railroad?” Jax muttered. “They could have taken her on one of the trains.”

  “We’re checking every departure, Jax. Someone boarding a train in a wheelchair would be tough to miss. Why don’t you and Ace head back to your apartment for a while? There’s nothing more you can do here.”

  “We’re not going home without her!”

  Tim sighed. He knew Jax wouldn’t agree to it, but it was worth a shot. He made his way down the steps and sat beside him. “We both know that this caper took far too much effort and planning to be a random kidnapping. Robert Ashworth is out on bail. A couple of days ago I would have been convinced that he was behind this since Laura was the only other person with a copy of that manuscript. But we didn’t find anything in his possession. Besides, he has a whole slew of different legal problems right now, too many for him to risk taking this kind of a chance.”

  “I’m trying to calm down long enough to think this through, Murph. But she keeps getting in the way, images of her, what she’s going through, and how I let all this happen. I knew she was a target. Those gardenias alerted me to that. I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight until everything was resolved and the criminals were behind bars. But she was just so excited about coming here for dinner tonight, I couldn’t disappoint her.”

  “Jax, you’re too close to this. So often, it seems like you’re way out in left field, but more times than not, you’re the first one back to home plate. Think of this as just another case to solve right now. That’s the best thing you can do for her.”

  He sat there awhile longer, silently. Then he whispered, “I told Laura that there had to be another player involved. That was right after she found the bouquet of gardenias in her dressing room and informed me about the others.”

  “Did you ever find out which floral shop sent the deliveries to her at the theater?”

  Jax shook his head, struggling to piece this together. “The lilies we found at the crime scenes tie the three murders together. All of the victims worked at the Ambassador Theater, so that’s another connection between them. Laura is the third link.”

  “Laura was acquainted with Sanders and Beacham, but wasn’t she working with the Follies at a different theater when Kitty was killed? Did they know each other?”

  “Laura was chosen as Kitty’s replacement in the current musical after her death.”

  “So, she knew each of the victims either directly or indirectly.”

  Jax lifted his head and stared at the wall in front of him. “Laura received a gardenia after each murder. Those flowers were sent as a symbol of admiration, not death.” He slowly got to his feet, and so did Ace. “Murph, the man who planned this is in love with Laura. A secret admirer. He doesn’t i
ntend to kill her, not yet anyway. But he’s not working alone. There had to be a woman waiting in the restroom who drugged Laura or something and put her in that wheelchair.”

  “Do you think Ashworth is behind it?”

  “No. Not him. Laura’s friend, Margie, didn’t show up for dinner, but she was here at the station. Cripes, Murph, I know who took Laura.” That feeling of alarm swept through him again, the same one that he felt when he recognized Margie at the diner. “There isn’t time to explain the whole thing to you right now. Just follow us back to Laura’s apartment building in Brooklyn.”

  Jax drove like a maniac through Manhattan to the Lower East Side and across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn. He wasn’t even paying attention to see if Tim was still behind him in his patrol car. He pulled in front of the building and by the time he shut off his engine, Tim pulled behind him.

  “What are we doing here?” Tim asked.

  “Jeanie and Margie live down the hall from Laura,” Jax told him as they entered the building. “I never met Margie before, but when I was talking to you on the phone during lunch today, I saw her. She looked just like someone I knew years ago. At the time, I couldn’t be sure it was her. But she recognized me, too. That’s why she hightailed it out of the diner. Her name isn’t Margie Parker. It’s Wanda Dillenbeck. I knew her and her brother years ago when I lived at the orphanage. She’s a lunatic, Murph. If she refuses to tell me where Laura is, you’d better arrest her before I kill her.” Both he and Ace shot up the stairs to the second floor, but Ace slowed his pace when they passed by Laura’s apartment. “Down here, Ace.”

  It was going on eleven o’clock at night and the hallway was dark, but Jax could see a light shining under their doorway. He knocked and waited impatiently. Just as he lifted his fist to knock again, the door opened just a crack. When Jeanie saw it was him, she let him in.

  “Oh, Jax, please tell me that you found Laura and she’s okay,” Jeanie cried.

  “I wish I could. Where is your roommate? Where is Margie!” he shouted at her when she didn’t respond right away.

  “I...I don’t know. She hasn’t been home. I thought she might still be at Grand Central waiting to hear about Laura. You don’t think she’s missing, too, do you?”

  “No, she’s not missing. I’m sure she’s just fine. Which bedroom is hers?”

  “Jax, can I have a word with you?” Tim asked.

  “Don’t lecture me about search warrants now, Murph! I don’t want to hear it. Jeanie, who room is Margie’s?”

  “The second one,” she said, pointing towards the hallway. Then, she hurried after him. “What is it, Jax? Why do you want to look in Margie’s room?”

  He was too furious to answer, and he didn’t know himself. He was just hoping to find something, anything that would give him a clue as to where Margie and her brother took Laura. As soon as he opened the door, Ace ran inside. Jax stormed around searching her vanity and dresser. He tossed all her garments on the floor to make sure nothing was hidden underneath while Ace was frantically sniffing around.

  Jax headed over to the closet. He started yanking clothes off the hangers, but he stopped when he saw a shoebox tucked in the far corner of the shelf above him. He pulled it out and threw the top off. It was filled with cutout newspaper articles. He turned around and set the box on the bed. Then, he started sifting through each of them.

  He looked over at Tim, who was holding Jeanie now, trying to calm her down and stop her from crying. “These are all the articles and reviews that had been written up about Laura, dating back to January after she arrived in the city.” He held up one of them. “This was the first review when the New York Times nicknamed her, ‘Songbird’.” He looked at the paper again with his stomach in knots. “Murph, send a couple of officers over here. She’ll be back eventually.”

  26

  Unhinged

  Jimmy opened the back door of his apartment wearing rubber gloves and carrying a watering can. He walked around the rooftop terrace that he’d conformed into a homemade greenhouse, whistling a cheery tune from the musical, and feeling pretty proud of himself. He had outsmarted his sister. The second time ever.

  There probably would be hell to pay as soon as she caught wind of it. But for now, he was pleased as punch. All his life she has egged him into doing things her way rather than his own, as though he couldn’t think for himself or come up with a clever way to accomplish the deed. Too many times, her ideas had put him smack dab in the middle, and he ended up dangerously close to getting caught and punished while she sat on the sidelines, shining like a rainbow. And it had always been his own quick thinking that got him out of the scrape rather than her shrewdness.

  Maybe it was her idea to plan their phony demise back at the institution. But it was her fault when that little girl got in the crossfire of one of their pranks and ended up in the hospital. She didn’t survive, but at the time, they figured it was only a matter of hours before the little girl told the authorities who was behind it. So, he took care of the rest.

  He chose the perfect scapegoats since the Berkley twins, a brother and sister duo, had the exact same hair color and built as they did. While his sister planted some damning evidence in the twins’ bedroom, he lured them down to the river, killed them, changed them into his and his sister’s clothing, and dumped them over the cliff into the rushing waters. Then, he and his sister disappeared. Weeks later, they heard that the police had found the bodies and were looking for the Berkley twins as the perpetrators. It was genius and worked like a charm.

  Jimmy heard someone pounding on his front door and smiled. He made his way back inside. “Coming!” He unlocked the door, and Margie burst inside like a raging bull.

  “Where is she!”

  “Quiet, you’ll wake up the neighbors,” he told her.

  Margie ignored him and stormed across the room to the terrace. “Are you keeping her out here, Jimmy? I want to know what you did with her!”

  He popped open a bottle of soda. “Did you want a drink, Wanda?”

  She charged back into the room and got in his face. “No, I don’t want a drink! And don’t call me that! Tell me what you did with her, Jimmy. I know you didn’t kill her as I told you to. Once you took her from the terminal, you were supposed to head east and dump her in the river. You drove south!”

  He lost his temper now and pointed a finger at her. “I have done your bidding for twenty-two years now! I never once talked back to you or denied you anything. I have deliberately hurt other kids, killed two of them, and murdered a few others to stay in your good graces. The only thing I have ever asked in return is for you to let me take care of Laura in my own way.”

  She stood there glaring at him, breathing so heavily, it looked like she was ready to burst. Then, in a flash, she smiled and softened her tone. “We’ve always been as thick as thieves, Jimmy. Didn’t we promise each other that we would stick together no matter what?” She wandered around the room, cool and calm. “I know it’s been killing you watching Jax Diamond, of all people, make the moves on the girl of your dreams. Then, Laura moves in with him after you searched her apartment. That has to be eating you up alive.” She peeked over at him. “I told you, sometimes murder is necessary. Other times, the best revenge is killing the people closest to them. Think about how crushed Jax will be when he finds out that she’s dead.”

  He gulped the rest of his soda down.

  “Tell me where she is, Jimmy,” she said sweetly. “I’ll take care of it for you this time.”

  “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it.” He walked away from her, silently counted backward from six, knowing that’s how long it would take for her to explode again.

  “She doesn’t deserve to live!” Margie screamed at him. “I was the one next in line for Kitty’s part after we killed her. That was the whole point of it. But that witch weaseled her way into the lead without a drop of blood and sweat that the rest of us go through to work our way to the top. Then, Samuel Sand
ers writes a play for her, like she’s some sort of goddess. I knew she was trouble the minute I met her. Wake up, little brother! She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. You’re just some stupid stagehand.”

  He swung around, glaring at her now. “Shut-up. I already took care of it!”

  She backed away from him, smiling again. “So, you did kill her. Tell me how you did it, Jimmy. I want to hear every gooey detail.”

  Jax and Ace left Tim and the other officers in Jeanie’s apartment and slowly walked down the hall. They both stopped in front of Laura’s door for a minute, then they climbed down the stairs and went outside.

  Jax stood on the sidewalk, not knowing what to do next. It was almost midnight, six hours after Laura had disappeared. Tim had agreed to have a couple of officers dig around for someone named James Dillenbeck in the city, but he knew it was useless. If Wanda had changed her name, her brother did, too. So, they could be anywhere. Tim was also going to have his men check out all the flower shops to see if they could pinpoint which one delivered the gardenias, and who had sent them. But the shops wouldn’t open until morning.

  Tim approached him. “The officers parked around the corner so Margie or Wanda wouldn’t see them when she comes back to her apartment. And they have their orders to arrest her.”

  “If she comes back here,” Jax muttered.

  “You only told me a little bit about her, Jax, and you don’t have to get into all of it right now, but are you sure that she took Laura?”

  “Positive. Like I said, when I saw her briefly at lunch today, she looked familiar. So, I drove to the orphanage where I grew up. Wanda and her brother had lived there for two years, but I heard they both died in some drowning accident in the Hudson not long after I left. I was hoping that someone at the orphanage would have a copy of the police records explaining their deaths. I needed to be sure that they really did drown. I swore I would never go back to that orphanage, Murph.”