by Kate White
“To anything in particular?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I really don’t know. You asked me before if Shan had been depressed or under stress, and I told you she hadn’t. But looking back, she’d probably seemed a little preoccupied, like she had a lot on her plate. So maybe all she wanted was a way to chill once a week, give herself a break.”
God as me-time. That was a concept I hadn’t heard before. But her comment triggered a memory.
“Can we circle back to something you said to me the first day we talked? You mentioned that when you called Shannon the morning she disappeared, she sounded a little off—”
“Isn’t it the police’s job to be asking this kind of stuff?” She reached up to an eyebrow and smoothed it with the tip of a finger.
“Yes, the cops are asking plenty of questions, I’m sure. But good reporting can be an asset to the cops, turning up additional information that’s extremely beneficial.”
“There’s really nothing more I can contribute,” she said. “And—and I probably made too much of that the other day when I talked to you.”
“What do you mean?”
She smoothed her eyebrow again, more lightly this time. “That thing I said about her voice, about her seeming distant. It probably meant nothing. I’m sure she was only eager to start her run.”
Okay, this was odd. Why suddenly revise her impression?
“Well, if your instincts that day told you—”
“I don’t really recall what my instincts were telling me that day. This has all been a mess. . . . Look, are we done here? I feel like my head is going to explode.”
“Sure, but if anything occurs to you about Shannon and the church, or anything else, will you give me a call?”
She threw out an arm, flipping over the hand, in a gesture that said, “Whatever.”
I rose and made my way out of the room, with her right behind me. When we reached the front hall, I paused, ready to drop the I Know What You Did Last Summer bombshell.
“Thanks again for your help, J.J.,” I said. I turned to face her. “One more question before I go. Do you think Shannon’s sister might have any insight into the church question?”
“Like I told you the other day, Kelly and Shannon weren’t super close. But be my guest and ask her if you want.”
“Are you friendly with Kelly yourself?”
“Friendly enough. Look—”
“I just ask because I happened to see Kelly’s husband coming out of your house a few minutes ago.”
Her whole body froze, as if under a spell from a sorcerer. There was no mistaking the expression that flashed on her face. “Busted,” it said. I could sense her scrambling, trying to hatch a credible cover story.
“And your point is?”
“Just curious. Are you friendlier with him than with Kelly?”
Her pale-blue eyes darkened, like the lake water when a cloud crossed the sun. Flinty Girl was back.
“Oh, that’s rich,” she snapped. “I don’t know what you people in the big city do when someone in your world dies. Maybe you just think, ‘Tough luck,’ and order another dirty martini. But up here we look out for each other. We console each other. We offer to help and send food. Goodbye.”
As soon as I stepped onto the porch, the door slammed so hard behind me that the Indian corn hanging on the outside clacked loudly against it a few times.
Back in the driver’s seat, I jotted down our exchange while it was still fresh in my mind. My gut told me that something funny was definitely going on between J.J. and Doug. She’d reacted way too defensively for me to believe it was all about people clinging together in grief, and as for her line about sending food, Claiborne hadn’t exactly dashed off with a ham casserole in his hot little hands.
If they were sleeping together, both in town and further upstate, what did that mean in the grand scheme of things? For starters, it meant that J.J. most likely had been keeping secrets from Shannon, and Shannon may have sensed it or outright suspected that there was something brewing between her friend and her brother-in-law. It was even possible that Kelly had confided in Shannon that she was worried about what her husband was up to.
Of course, if Shannon was at odds with her sister, she might not have cared if Doug and J.J. were having a fling. Yet that didn’t gel with what I knew about Shannon. Regardless of whether she and Kelly were close, she probably wouldn’t have liked seeing her sister hoodwinked and betrayed.
There was another factor I had to consider. J.J.’s weird revision of her impressions of her final phone call with Shannon. Maybe she had learned something in the past couple of days that had given her a reason to reassess Shannon’s state of mind that morning. Something Doug had told her, perhaps? There was also the chance she was flat-out lying now, covering her tracks, but I couldn’t think of why that would be. I watched her in my mind smoothing an eyebrow that didn’t need smoothing. Had that been a tell?
I slumped against the seat and exhaled loudly. My work always necessitated talking to the friends and relatives of dead people, and while I’d learned over time to steel myself for those conversations, at moments they could be wearing, particularly when they went around in circles or the other side seemed to be offering nothing but a pack of lies.
I’d talked to a number of people today, yet I had little to show for it. I wondered if I was becoming too absorbed in the idea that Shannon’s death was tied directly to her return to the church. Perhaps, as I surmised before, the killer had a religious fixation but hadn’t even been aware of Shannon finding her faith again.
Before I temporarily ceased tugging at that thread, however, there was one more person I wanted to consult with: Cody’s assistant, the red-haired woman I’d spoken to briefly the second day I was here. It was a stretch to think Riley, who’d only worked with Shannon for several months, would know more than J.J., but it was worth a try.
Please own a landline, I begged. And she did. According to the white pages, there was a listing for Al and Riley Hickok on Pheasant Road in Lake George.
The house, which was less than a mile from J.J.’s, turned out to be small but attractive, with a sleek white motorboat sitting in the driveway. Unfortunately, when I rang the bell, there wasn’t any response. I leaned across the stoop railing and peered through the picture window into the empty living room. It wasn’t decorated to the nines like J.J.’s, but the furniture seemed nice enough: a couch, coordinating armchairs, a colorful area rug, and a huge flat-screen TV on the far wall.
It was only when I went to give the bell one more try that I caught sight of the note taped on the inner wooden door and partially obscured by the outer storm door.
Viv, tried to reach you on your cell but no response. Sorry, had to run to office for a couple of hours. Can meet later if you want. R.
It wasn’t surprising that she’d blown off a friend in order to work on a Saturday. Baker Beverage had been closed for several days, paperwork had surely been piling up, and Riley probably decided to jump on the situation before she fell too far behind. Since Cody was clearly busy consoling his kids and making funeral arrangements, I realized that this might be my best opportunity to talk to Riley without him around.
When I turned into the driveway for Baker Beverage a short time later, I was struck once again by how attractive the setting was. Though there was an industrial feel to the building itself, the area was beautifully landscaped. Business was supposedly booming under Cody, but the clusters of lush, mature trees and scrubs on the grounds reinforced what Kelly had intimated: that it had done very well under the late Mr. Baker.
I spotted the car as soon as I rounded the final curve of the driveway—a dark green Audi parked in front of the building. Chances were good the Audi belonged to Riley and I’d made it in time.
I parked ahead of the other car and crossed the lawn to the entrance. A glance through one of the windows to the side of the door revealed a small, empty reception area with only a single light burning. Not unexpectedly, t
he door was locked. I rang the buzzer, hearing it pierce the silence inside. When no one responded after a minute, I tried again and also rapped on one of the windows, to no avail. I realized that if Riley’s desk was tucked toward the back of the building, she might not even hear me.
I retreated, traipsed around to the parking lot, and wandered along the long side of the building, looking for another entrance. There was a door halfway down the wall, and I gave pounding another try, without any luck this time either.
A thought flashed across my brain before I even saw it coming: What if she was in there with Cody, doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing, like screwing each other’s brains out instead of bottling beverages?
I was just about to round the back of the building to see if his Lexus was hiding out there when I heard a woman’s voice call out “Hello” from the front of the building. I darted back along the perimeter to the main entrance, and there was Riley, her brow knitted in consternation, holding the door half open.
“Can I help you?” she said with a tone that suggested she wasn’t really eager to do so. Her dark red hair was gathered in a sloppy braid and she was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a green turtleneck sweater the shade of her car.
“Riley, hi, do you remember me?” I took a couple more steps in her direction but not so close as to raise her guard. “We met outside the volunteer center the other day. I’m Bailey Weggins, the reporter from Crime Beat.”
“Oh, hi, I didn’t recognize you,” she said, her tone softening. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“First, sorry to barge in like this. I didn’t realize you guys weren’t open today.” In light of her wariness, it seemed wise not to mention that I’d stopped by her house and read the note on the door.
“We’re never open Saturdays at this time of the year. I came by to deal with a backlog.”
“I was hoping to ask you a few questions. I talked to Cody today at the parish center, and I told him that we’re trying to do everything we can to help find the killer.” It was a cheap trick, but I knew my carefully chosen words would make it seem as if I had Cody’s blessing to pump her.
“I feel horrible about what happened to Shannon, but I’m not sure how I can help.”
“I know she’d been working here part-time and I thought you might have observations to share.”
“Observations?”
“A detail you noticed or a remark Shannon made. It’s possible she’d crossed paths with the killer in the weeks before her death and mentioned something that could be relevant.”
“But they’re saying it was a serial killer, right?”
“Right, but it could still be a person she’d had previous contact with.”
“Uh . . . okay. Did you want to come in for a minute?”
“Thanks, that’d be great.”
She motioned for me to enter the reception area and then led me down a hallway into a far bigger space, which featured several glass offices along one wall and a center area with about a dozen workstations, separated with gray dividers. The recessed fluorescent ceiling lights were on, giving the place a weird, too-bright look.
“I wish there wasn’t so much to catch up on,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t exactly love the idea of being alone here right now.”
“I don’t blame you. It’s a scary time.”
“Do the police have any leads yet, do you know?”
“Not that I’m aware of—so it’s smart to be cautious. Where—where do they do all the bottling?”
She pointed a long, slim finger toward a closed door in the far wall. “Through there. This space is for the sales and office staff.”
We were at her workstation now, directly outside a large glass-fronted office that I assumed belonged to Cody. Riley settled into the desk chair and indicated that I should take the cushioned filing cabinet on wheels. Her desk was neat and well organized, and one of those mind-numbing Excel files was on her computer screen. I had a sense that she was the kind of kick-ass assistant who made sure the trains always ran on schedule.
“Have you worked for Cody long?”
“Since he took over as president three years ago, though I’d been an assistant to a bunch of the sales guys for a few months before that. When Mr. Baker retired, Cody asked me to work directly for him.”
“And Shannon had been working here, too, right? Starting in March?”
“March? Yeah, I guess that’s when it was. She worked from home for a while, though more recently she was coming in here on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. With the kind of stuff she was doing, she didn’t have to be on-site every day.”
“And what kind of stuff was that?”
“Marketing. Promotional materials, creating buzz for the company.”
“Marketing?” I said, stifling my surprise. J.J. had used a phrase like lending a hand to describe Shannon’s efforts at Baker, as if her duties had included filing and manning the phones when the receptionist went to lunch.
“That’s what her background was in. She’d done marketing for the hotel she worked at in the Caribbean—and she’d helped her dad out here years before. I had the impression that she was pretty eager to restart her career now that her kids were a little older. And we were happy for the help, of course.”
“Did you have much chance to talk to her during the past months?”
“A little bit here and there. I would have liked to have spent more time with her, but Cody keeps me pretty busy.”
“Did she ever mention anything to you about going to St. Timothy’s?”
“No. But Cody told me about it the other day. That she became a Catholic again. He’s been planning a funeral service for when Shannon’s body is finally turned over to him.”
“Were there ever any times when Shannon seemed nervous or upset to you or made a comment about feeling that way?”
“Not at all. She always seemed really sunny.”
“And Shannon got along with everyone here? There wasn’t any friction with another employee when she came on board?”
“Oh no, everybody liked her, and she worked hard. My husband’s in sales here, and the ideas she had for the new promotional pieces were really super.”
I glanced across the sea of gray, racking my brain. Was there something I was missing?
“Crazy question,” I said, turning back to Riley. “But is anyone else who works here a Catholic?”
Riley bit her freckled lower lip. “I’m sure some people are—I think St. Tim’s has a decent-size parish—but that’s not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation. Mostly the guys here talk about football, basketball, and how big their boats are, which drives me insane.”
She patted the desk with her hands, eager, it appeared, to return to that tantalizing Excel file.
“Well, I should let you finish up. If you think of anything else about Shannon, will you let me know? Even the most minor thing.”
“Of course. . . . I’ll walk you out.”
I followed her back to the reception room. She looked tense, and something told me she wouldn’t be staying much longer today herself.
“I can’t believe they don’t have any leads,” she said, opening the door. “Can’t DNA tell them who did it?”
“DNA helps solve a lot of crimes but investigators don’t always find traces of it at a crime scene. And if the killer’s DNA isn’t in the system, there’s no one to match it to.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“I know, but let’s stay positive. With any luck they’ll find him.”
In the parking lot, I took a couple of minutes to jot down notes from the conversation. Nothing much stood out to me as significant, but my mind was snagging on the weird discrepancy between how J.J. had characterized Shannon’s role at Baker and Riley’s description of what she’d actually done there. Had J.J. been jealous of her friend’s ambition and thus downplayed her efforts?
Before departing, I checked my phone for email and messages. Keith Windgate
, the videographer Dodson had in mind to shoot me, had written to say he’d like to pick me up at my motel at noon tomorrow. Yippee. There was still no press release from the sheriff. And no word from Tom Nolan. He might have to be prodded.
Speaking of prodding, it was close to four and I needed to pound out my post. I pointed my Jeep north and headed back to the lovely Breezy Point. There wasn’t a single car in the parking lot when I arrived, but as I killed the engine, the white Camry I’d spotted this morning pulled in a few spots away.
I quickly hauled my butt out of the car, and, pretending to check my phone, loitered on the walkway in front of my unit. I was curious to finally set eyes on who had possibly paused outside my door last night. I heard the Camry door swing open and glanced up.
I nearly dropped my phone as the driver emerged. It was the tall blond woman I’d seen jogging down Wheeler Road the day I arrived, the one who had been a dead ringer for Shannon Blaine.
Chapter 13
FOR A SPLIT SECOND, I THOUGHT MY MIND WAS PLAYING a trick on me, conjuring up an apparition of the jogger simply because she’d been tangled up in my thoughts. What was she doing here, at the Breezy Point? She’d obviously checked out of wherever she’d been staying, which I’d already determined wasn’t the Lake Shore Motel.
Maybe she’d found the previous place lacking. Or maybe she’d been vacationing with a partner or lover and they’d had a major blowout last night, the kind where you not only call the person the greatest fucking asshole who’s ever lived, but you also storm out, slamming the door so hard that pictures bounce off the wall. There’s always a moment following one of those kinds of fights, as you are wheels up and headed south—or north or east or west—when you wonder if you’ll rue your decision because now the day or the night or your entire vacation is ruined, but you let it go because the smug satisfaction you’re experiencing makes mincemeat of regret. As a connoisseur of the cutting-off-one’s-nose-to-spite-one’s-face gesture, I could totally relate.
Well, at least the jogger hadn’t come to any harm, as I’d initially feared.