The Angel Creek Girls: A totally addictive crime thriller packed full of suspense (Detective Kay Sharp Book 3)

by Leslie Wolfe

  “Not as much as I would’ve wanted,” Avery replied. “You see, after Calvin died, Cheryl blamed me, even if the investigation cleared the company of any wrongdoing.”

  “The company?”

  “Montgomery Construction, my company,” he said, his voice tinted by a mix of pride and amazement that she didn’t know what should’ve been obvious. “My sons work at the company, and their children too. They will take my legacy further and build it into what will most likely be the largest general contractor in Northern California.” He paused, looking at Kay intently, like he was measuring the impact his words had on the detective. Then, as if he remembered something, he added, veering his gaze sideways, “All my sons, except Raymond, of course. He couldn’t be bothered to care about the family business. He’s an artist.” He spat the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  That was the unforgivable offense, Kay thought. Rejection. The most hurtful of them all.

  “I would’ve loved to have my great-granddaughters closer to me—to all of us—but Cheryl kept her distance and her pride, despite obvious financial difficulties. She wouldn’t even accept the college funds that I set up when each of the girls was born. After Calvin passed, she returned everything to me.”

  Kay wondered if it was worthwhile looking into Calvin’s death. Was there more to the work accident that had happened two years ago? Had it been covered up, Avery surely rich enough to afford it?

  “Detective, I promise I’ll take good care of these girls,” Avery insisted. “You have my word. And you can speak with them however often you may choose to do so.”

  She nodded, acknowledging his statement but not budging. “As soon as they can be released, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Fine.” Without another word, he left, holding his head up high and followed closely by Marleen, not before the woman glared at Kay one more time.

  The main entrance door was still coming to a close after their departure when her phone chimed. A text message from Dr. Whitmore said, Need to see you ASAP.

  The entire time it took her to drive through the relentless downpour, a thought kept bugging her, whirling in her head over and over. Why no mention of Julie from either of the Montgomerys? Why no questions, threats, or promises? Why no curiosity as to who might’ve taken her and why?

  It was as if they already knew and just didn’t care.

  22

  Nightfall

  Dusk was falling heavy, filling every corner with darkness that crawled inside the room as if it were alive, conquering all it touched, seeping from the windows as if it poured in through the glass, the white voile sheers unable to keep it at bay. On the other side of the massive windowpanes, the deluge continued, heavy rain lashing against glass in monotone obstinacy. The bulging dark clouds above rushing northeast like refugees fleeing the site of a disaster.

  He’d watched the skies the entire day and not a single crack of blue had appeared in the immense cluster of gray wads endlessly shedding water. Not one, not for a single moment, as far as the eye could see.

  Mother was still angry.

  Her tears were flooding the fields, her wounds were opening wider than he’d ever seen them, bleeding profusely, leaving the stains all over the landscape in the deep brown of displaced earth carried away by rivulets of merciless rainwater.

  “Oh, dear Mother, how it must hurt you,” he whispered, holding on to the windowsill with pale, frozen fingers. He’d been awake for the past two days, unwilling to leave Mother’s side for a night’s rest, when he was all she had. “It will be tomorrow, I promise, not a day later.”

  Distant, fading rumblings reassured him Mother had heard him. Moving slowly as if in a trance, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and tugged at the thin, silver chain he wore around his neck, pulling the small locket outside. Then, gently holding it in his hand, he pressed it against his quivering lips.

  Tomorrow morning’s sky would tell him what Mother wants. Whatever she asks of him, he will deliver. Otherwise, her rage will be destructive, taking everything away from him like she’d done it before, back when he didn’t know what she expected of him or how to soothe her pain.

  “Dear Mother, hear your child.” His breath warmed the locket he still held in his hand close to his lips, as if the words he was whispering were a continuation of the humble kiss he’d laid on the shiny metal surface moments ago. “Whatever your will, I shall deliver.” He pressed his lips against the metal once more, then slid the locket back under his shirt, where its warmth touched his chest as it had done since the first day he’d worn it. No one had seen that locket or knew of its existence, its content his best-kept secret, one that no one deserved to know.

  “I’m begging you still, please let me keep this one.” His fingers grabbed a clump of white voile, crushing the fine fabric, feeling its delicate texture rub against his skin. “She could keep me company for a while, bring some warmth to my long days.”

  He looked at the sky again, almost completely engulfed by nightfall, only a trace of pewter coloring the horizon where the sun had set a while ago, disrobed of its glorious reds and oranges and purples, sentenced to vanish in an entourage of ashen gray. He listened for Mother’s voice, only the sound of rain unsettling the silence.

  “This beautiful girl could fill my heart, dear Mother,” he pleaded, encouraged by her silence. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to touch her. To hold her in my arms.”

  Rain-filled silence continued, yet he felt shivers traveling down his spine, the absence of Mother’s answer as ominous as her thunderous rage.

  “Show me the way,” he murmured against the soft fabric he’d pulled close to his lips. “I’ll be here, waiting for a sign.” His breath shuddered as it left his chest.

  At dawn’s first light, he’d be there, standing by the window, waiting, searching the skies for the faintest trace of azure, a sign that Mother’s rage had waned, and he could keep the girl for a while longer.

  Now that she had spoken to him once more in her punishing silence, he felt a chill in his blood, coursing through his veins as a harbinger of doom, the foreboding clear as if she’d thundered her will from above.

  Tomorrow’s sky at dawn would show him what Mother demanded of him. Then, by high noon the next day, her will shall be done.

  23

  DNA

  The peak of Mount Chester hid its white in heavily leaded clouds that swirled around it angrily, stirred by descending cold air and gusts of stormy winds. The lower slopes had borrowed their color from the surrounding gray and mist-engulfed fir green, almost indiscernible from the nearby landscape, the forests of the preserve and the pines and firs that adorned the town.

  Kay didn’t notice much of that, although she loved the sight of Mount Chester in any season and any weather. Instead, she replayed her conversation with the Montgomerys in her mind, line by line, searching for a hint as to what they knew about Julie’s disappearance and didn’t tell. She’d put money down they knew more about the subject than they’d shared, but they didn’t seem to be involved. There was no guilt in their behavior, no fear of getting caught. Marleen Montgomery seemed afraid of something, but she’d shown relief when told the police were getting valuable information from the girls. Nevertheless, Kay still had an uneasy feeling about them, something tugging at her gut, telling her she should talk with them again. Until then, Deputy Hobbs was tasked with checking their alibis, thoroughly, in person.

  Could they have been involved? How?

  Cheryl’s killer was a man, and that eliminated Marleen, although not her knowledge of who the perp was; maybe she was hiding the killer’s identity. But then, why would she be relieved the police were making progress?

  As for Avery, at his eighty-three years of age, he would’ve been easily subdued by Cheryl, with or without Julie’s help. Not to mention, people don’t invent alibis involving numerous witnesses including the mayor. That one was probably going to check out just fine.

  Finally, what motive could they possibly
have? Nah… they probably weren’t involved, Kay concluded.

  Then, why didn’t they ask a single question about Julie? About finding her, and the progress of the investigation? Was it because they’d assumed Kay would’ve led the conversation with any news about Julie? Or because she’d freely shared the progress they were making using the information gathered from the girls?

  In the absence of motive and logic, she shrugged the thought of them off. People were all sorts of strange these days, more and more self-absorbed, narrowly focused on what they wanted, and those two just wanted to get the girls. That part, she could understand; knowing the two traumatized little girls were sleeping in a police precinct, anyone with half a heart would’ve been motivated to intervene, especially when they were family, the daughters of a dearly missed grandson who’d passed. That part made sense.

  She turned the blinker on and pulled onto the small street where the single-story morgue awaited with its rain-soaked brown stone walls, almost empty parking lot, and a single tall palm tree in front. Pulling in, as close to the entrance as possible, she smiled without realizing it.

  Elliot’s SUV was there.

  The taillights of his vehicle were on, the engine still running. Her partner was in the car, waiting with his foot on the brake.

  She parked by his side, hiding her foolish smile. The proximity of her approaching car must’ve caught his attention, because he lifted his gaze from his phone and looked her way. The moment he recognized her, his face lit up and he smiled, a wide grin that had matched hers, all for a split second before he lowered his head and hid everything under the wide brim of his hat. When he looked at her again, only his eyes retained the spark of that initial moment that had lit an unexpected fire in her blood.

  Rushing through the rain, she reached the morgue door at the same time as Elliot did. He opened the door for her, and she stepped in, somewhat hesitant to make eye contact with him again, the fleeting moment they had shared still resonating in her entire being. If there was one thing she didn’t want, that was for her partner to learn about the effect he had on her.

  “Did he text you too?” she asked instead, leading the way to Dr. Whitmore’s autopsy room.

  “He sure did.” Elliot removed his hat and shook off the raindrops that had clung to the felt. Then he put it back on. “It’s not my first visit here today either.”

  “Huh,” she said, while a frown scrunched her brow. They were working two different cases; she wondered why the doc would’ve summoned them both. “We’ll learn soon enough.” As she walked through the morgue doors, the smell of death greeted her with a chill down her spine.

  Dr. Whitmore was seated behind his wide desk, rolling from one piece of equipment to the next on his four-legged stool on smooth casters that didn’t make a sound. Behind him, two of the six refrigerated body-storage shelves held the bodies of Cheryl Coleman and Elliot’s John Doe, the compressor humming quietly, harmonizing with the fluorescent light above and the centrifuge still spinning on a lab table, in an orchestra of droning lab implements.

  Even if the bodies were laid to rest on their temperature-controlled shelves, a faint smell of formaldehyde still lingered, mixed with disinfectants and some other odors that she couldn’t identify. She didn’t mind them as much as Elliot did though; since he’d entered the morgue her partner had resigned himself to breathing though his mouth.

  After giving the doctor a side hug and a smooch on his cheek that caught him a little by surprise and made him blush, Kay pulled out another stool and sat by the desk. “What are you still doing here so late? I thought you’d gone home by now.”

  The medical examiner let out a soft, tired chuckle without veering his attention from the test tubes he was manipulating. He extracted serum from one of the two tubes, then put two drops into one small container and closed its cap. Then he wrote the initials “CC” on the tube and inserted it into the specimen holder of an automated testing machine, closing the lid. Another tone of quiet whirring started contributing to the symphony of sounds. “I thought I’d be home by now too, and so did my wife. But I knew once I was going to share with you the fruits of my labor, you’d ask me if I could test everything again.” He shrugged with an amused grin. “So, preemptively, I’m doing exactly that. Only, you see, I’ve already tested these twice.” He touched her arm after removing his blue glove with a quick, well-rehearsed gesture. “Not that I don’t like your questions, my dear.”

  “Okay, you made me curious, Doc. What’s going on?”

  She threw Elliot a glance, wondering, again, why they’d both been summoned by the medical examiner when they were working on different cases. Elliot was keeping his distance, his aversion to everything morgue no secret to anyone who had eyes.

  “It’s about Cheryl Coleman.” The doc stood and walked over to the large, wall-mounted screen, where several images were displayed. Clicking a small remote, he shifted through them until he found the image he was looking for—a close-up of the abdominal stab wound that had sealed her fate. “Single stab wound to the abdomen. The blade nicked her ribs and sliced through her abdominal aorta. She was dead within minutes.” He cleared his throat and propped his hand on his hip, stretching his back with a groan. “The angle was downward and twisted, consistent with an unskilled killer, but your unsub is strong; the blow was forceful enough to cut through bone. You’re looking for a well-built man with significant upper-body strength. I heard the nine-one-one call, so that clarified the gender at least.”

  She exchanged a quick glance with Elliot. “I was kind of expecting this,” she replied. “Still waiting for the punch line that will have me ask you to repeat the tests.”

  “Yeah, about that,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his fingers, as if trying to scare off a migraine, or maybe just his tiredness. “I had Cheryl’s DNA run first thing, just in case we’d learn something interesting from it. Then I ran DNA samples from blood collected at the scene in various places in the kitchen, hoping I’d find the killer’s mixed in there. Since I got my own sequencer, I go nuts with DNA testing.”

  Kay whistled. “You got your own sequencer, Doc? That machine must’ve been expensive.”

  “I know,” he laughed, “some people buy golf clubs when they retire. I got tired of having our cases lining up forever behind San Francisco County, so I splurged.” He raised his hands in the air in an apologetic gesture. “What can I say? I like collecting favors from other MEs across the state. It’s my kind of fun.”

  She couldn’t help laughing and shaking her head in amazement, as one would do when seeing a talented child invent a new, interesting game. “So, what about the DNA samples found at the scene?”

  Elliot took a couple of steps, approaching them, his interest piqued.

  “There were two different blood samples found. One was Cheryl’s, of course, and there was a second sample mixed in there—male.”

  Kay rubbed her hands together. “I profiled the unsub that he might’ve killed for the first time. Please tell me he cut himself, and we have his DNA.”

  The long pause that followed was a bad omen and wiped Kay’s excitement completely while the doctor seemed to collect his thoughts.

  “The way I set up my system is simple. First, after a new sample is sequenced, the system will search for a match against the local samples here, already in the database, then go to county level, then state, then national. It makes sense to do it this way, because it saves time.” He plunged his hands into his pockets, then his left hand emerged with a pack of gum. He didn’t extract a piece; instead, he just played with it as he talked, twirling it between his nimble fingers. “I had just finished sequencing John Doe’s DNA when I got a match.” He paused for another beat. “A local match.”

  She tilted her head, not sure she understood correctly. “You mean to say—”

  “Yes, John Doe’s blood was found at the Angel Creek crime scene. On the Coleman residence floor.”

  The frown returned to Kay’s forehead, as she tr
ied to imagine scenarios in which that made sense. Okay, so John Doe couldn’t’ve killed Cheryl and taken Julie, because he was already dead at the time. “Did you test it again?” As she asked the question, she remembered how their conversation started, and let a long breath of air deflate her lungs. She wasn’t expecting an answer, but Doc Whitmore was pointing at the whirring machine.

  “Twice,” he replied. “This would be the third time I’m testing, with brand-new test tubes, never used, and freshly unsealed chemicals and cleaners.”

  “Walk me through the timeline of these deaths again,” Kay asked, since she wasn’t very familiar with the details of John Doe’s case.

  “We all know when Cheryl was killed, on Monday night at precisely nine forty-two p.m. I’m putting John Doe’s time of death roughly one day, maybe thirty-six hours before that, so on Sunday, or, at the earliest, late Saturday night.”

  “Any other matches in your system?” Elliot asked. “Do we have his name?”

  “He’s still John Doe for now, I’m afraid. His shrink was the best lead I had to offer. I’m taking it didn’t pan out?”

  “Nope. He was using a fake name and paying cash. But if he visited with Cheryl Coleman, we have a place to start, I guess.” Elliot hesitated for a brief moment, then added, “If you’re sure he was there, Doc.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure,” Dr. Whitmore replied. “I got more; maybe that will help.” He turned over to the screen and clicked the remote a couple of times until it displayed the photo of a long, dark hair fiber. “This is the hair fiber we found on John Doe’s body. It had the root follicle still attached, so I ran DNA. Again, it pinged locally. The hair fiber belonged to Cheryl Coleman.”