by Kate White
As her gaze flicked away from me again, I dragged one foot slightly forward, and then the other, shifting my position enough to see around the bend. Holy cow.
Doug Claiborne, dressed in a sport jacket and collared shirt, was standing on the other side of the rock, mouth agape, hands fisted. His eyes darted over and met mine. This was clearly some kind of showdown between the two of them, but how had they ended up here? I let my eyes roam the area, hoping someone might spot us, but we seemed to have these woods to ourselves.
“Why don’t you put the gun away and tell me what happened?” I said as low-key as I could manage.
“What happened?” she barked. “This worthless dick was two-timing me. It takes a pretty big fucking ego to two-time the person you’re having an affair with.”
“J.J., please,” Doug pleaded, his voice husky with fear. “I thought you wanted to cool things with me. I don’t care about her; I don’t.”
“You expect me to believe that? You were holed up with that bitch for hours yesterday.”
Okay, pieces were speed-clicking into place, forming a story line that finally made rough sense. Doug was the guy with the Beemer who was sleeping with Lisa, and J.J. had figured it out. She was probably the one who’d been tailing Lisa around town. But where was Lisa now?
I knew I had to do something and do it fast. There was no way I’d have time to grab my phone without J.J. noticing. And it would be utterly stupid to try to wrestle the gun from her or knock her off her feet. My only recourse: try to talk her off the ledge.
“J.J., don’t do something you’ll end up regretting for the rest of your life,” I told her. “Please put the gun away.”
She snickered, bobbing the gun at Doug. “Trust me, I wouldn’t regret shooting him for a second. I’d sit in prison with a smile on my face every single minute of the day.”
“Prison is horrible,” I told her. “You wouldn’t want to be there.”
She shook her head slowly, my words not seeming to register.
“Listen to me, J.J.,” Doug said into the vacuum. “You know I’m crazy about you. I want to make this work.”
You freaking idiot, I thought. She’d have to have a brain the size of a fever blister to believe that crock of shit.
J.J. shook her head again and raised her arm so that the gun was directly aimed at Claiborne’s head. My panic was storming the barriers now. There was a chance she would take the shot, then turn the gun on me.
“J.J., you have to consider your kids,” I said, desperately playing one last card. “Think about what it would be like for them to have you in jail. All because of a loser like this.”
With utter relief, I watched her arm start to sag, and finally she lowered the gun to her side.
“She’s right. You aren’t worth the fucking bullet, Doug. Get the fuck out of my face.”
He backed away, slowly at first. Then, reversing direction, he bolted down the path toward the lake, soon disappearing from view. Maybe the jerk thought he could wave down the Minne Ha Ha twilight cruise and plead for rescue, but thirty seconds later we heard him crashing through the woods to our right, scrambling uphill like a herd of deer on the run. So much for chivalry. The guy was going to save his own ass and leave me here with an unhinged and armed woman.
But J.J. was already unzipping her shoulder bag and stuffing the gun inside. I let out the long, ragged breath that had been trapped inside my chest.
“You think he’s going to call the cops?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “What about Lisa? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. I saw her take off in her car a little while ago, like a bat out of hell.”
“Then he might not call them. He won’t want to open that can of worms if he doesn’t have to.”
“And what about you? Are you going to blast this all over the Internet?”
“No.” That was the truth, too, at least for now. “I write about homicides, and as far as I know, you haven’t committed one.”
J.J., I noticed, had begun to tremble, and I could sense her rage quickly retreating, leaving behind only the ugly muck of regret.
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“Behind the leather outlet on the far side of the motel.”
“Why don’t I walk you over there, make sure you’re all right.”
I was betting on the fact that she didn’t have any fight left in her and even if she did, she wasn’t going to direct it at me.
She nodded, looking stunned, as if what she’d done was finally sinking in. I took her arm and led her back up the hill. As we rounded the building, it occurred to me that there could be cops pulling into the lot at that very moment. Doug Claiborne might want to keep his bad behavior under wraps, but he probably also cared about his family’s safety, at least more than he did for mine.
If the cops were coming, though, they were taking their time. J.J. and I trooped the short distance to the outlet, where the bright white SUV was parked all by its lonesome in the lot. As she climbed into the driver’s seat, I opened the passenger door and slid in beside her. This was my chance to snag the backstory, which I figured she’d cough up simply to discourage me from going to the cops.
It was going to take some coaxing, though. She had her face in her hands now and was rocking back and forth. This had to be a rare sight, I realized—J.J. not being the boss of the moment.
“Are you going to be okay going home?” I asked. “I could drive you myself and take a cab back for my Jeep.”
Nothing. Just the rocking.
“J.J.?”
“No, I can drive. I need a minute, though.”
“Will anybody be home when you get there?”
I wasn’t exactly worried she’d harm her kids, but she still seemed agitated, and I didn’t like the idea of her being alone with them tonight.
“No, my kids are overnighting with my ex.”
“And what about the gun? Is it yours?”
“Yes. I bought it for protection after my divorce.”
I considered asking her to turn it over, but I had little experience with firearms, and I wouldn’t feel the least bit comfortable with this one in my possession.
“Do you have a safe place to store it?”
“Yes—and don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just wanted to scare that dirtbag, make him wet his friggin’ pants.”
She dropped her hands into her lap and looked up. Though it was cool in the car, she had a film of sweat on her face and black mascara had smudged like bruises under her eyes.
“Of course, I’m the real asshole, for ever falling for him.”
“When did it start?” I asked gently.
“About six months ago. I’d never socialized with either him or Kelly, but he and I went to the same gym. We had a fucking smoothie together after a workout and one thing led to another. How rich is that?”
“How did you learn there was someone else?”
“Remember me telling you that I was supposed to have company that Monday I was in the Adirondacks? That was Doug. Originally we were going to meet on Sunday—he’d signed up for this three-day professional workshop or conference-thingy in Lake Placid, so he had an excuse to go up there—but at the last minute I had to change to Monday. He said he’d keep his hotel room Sunday night because if he started switching the plan around, it might raise a red flag with Kelly.
“Once I was already up at the cabin, he totally blew me off, said his whiny daughter was having a meltdown over school stuff and he had to bag the entire trip to Lake Placid. But after I was back in town and started reading everything about Shannon’s disappearance, I saw a quote from Kelly about needing Shannon’s help because Doug was out of town Sunday night. That’s when I first smelled a rat.”
“You figured he must have been with someone else that evening?”
“Exactly. When I finally reached him on the phone and called him on it, he rushed over to my house with a totally lame explanation, like I
was an idiot. So the next day I followed him. After going to church with Kelly, he drove home, switched cars, and drove up to the Breezy Point for a couple of hours. About twenty minutes after he left, I saw the blonde sashay out of the room.”
“You started following her after that?”
“Yeah, I wanted to know what her story was since I could tell by her plates that she wasn’t local. Doug was here earlier today, and I was hoping he’d come back tonight so I could finally confront the two of them together.”
“How did you and Doug end up down by the lake?”
“It’s a long, boring story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“After the blonde bolted, I was about to take off when I noticed Doug’s BMW show up. But he parked it across the road, in the lot for the taxidermist, and he sat for a while as if he was casing the place.”
I could now make a good guess as to what had transpired. Lisa had grown antsy waiting for my arrival and split. Doug, having finally heard Lisa’s voice mail about the stalker, had sped over here, but gutless and yellow-bellied, he pulled in across the street to assess the situation from a safe distance.
“He eventually crossed the road and let himself into the room,” J.J. continued. “When he came out a minute later, I saw him tiptoe around to the back—probably wondering where she was. I followed him.”
“He hadn’t noticed your SUV so close to the motel?”
“I don’t think he ever realized it was mine—everybody drives an SUV up here—and I kept my head down. You should have seen the look on his face after he saw me on the path.”
She exhaled loudly and slapped her hands on her face.
“Look, I need to go home and pour myself a glass of wine. Plus, if he did call the police, I don’t want to be here when they show. Let ’em come find me.”
For a moment I thought Flinty Girl might be back, ready to kick ass and take names.
“I need to repeat myself, J.J. You have two kids. Don’t jeopardize everything by getting into it with Doug again.”
“I won’t, I won’t. I’m done with him.”
“One more question. Do you think Shannon had any idea you were carrying on with her brother-in-law?”
She pinched her lips together and nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Why?”
“Remember when I talked to you that first time and I told you about my call to Shan, how she was on the phone?”
“You mean about her voice sounding odd?”
“Yeah. I started to think a little more about it. I’d called that day to say I was definitely going to the cabin and now that I know Kelly told her that Doug was in Lake Placid, I wonder if she put two and two together. Even in the weeks before, I think she sensed I might be seeing someone on the sly. That was the thing with Shan. She had a way of reading people.”
“Is that why you played it down the next time we spoke?”
“Yeah, I certainly wasn’t going to confess my new theory to you.”
“Did—?”
“Look, I need to go. I can’t stand to be here one more second.”
I nodded and reached for the door handle. I told her to phone me if she ran into any issues—which I hoped translated as “If you feel the urge to whip out your Glock again and point it at someone’s head”—and she even muttered a thank-you as I slid out of the vehicle. I waited for her to exit the parking lot and then scurried back to my Jeep. She had a good head start, but I drove quickly and before long, I was only one car length behind her.
I used the first red light in the village to try Lisa. I was inclined to believe that J.J. hadn’t harmed her, but I had no proof. Reaching voice mail, I asked her to call me back pronto. I was relieved a minute later to see J.J. take the right-hand turn that led to her home.
Back at the Courtyard I made a beeline for the bar and ordered a glass of red wine—J.J. wasn’t the only one in need of vino therapy at the moment. As I reached for the glass, I realized that my shoulders were still somewhere up near my ears, rock-hard with tension. The experience had really rattled me. There’d been a moment when I’d been almost certain that she was going to shoot Doug, and that I’d end up as collateral damage.
But what, I wondered, did all this Real Housewives of Lake George stuff matter in terms of the case? J.J. had been sleeping with Doug. Doug and Kelly had briefly put their house on the market. Doug had ditched J.J. the week of Shannon’s murder in order to sleep with another woman, one who looked vaguely like Shannon. And there was a chance Shannon had picked up a whiff of what her BFF and Doug had been up to. It was a hot mess of a family drama, but in the end I couldn’t see how it was related to the murders.
I paid my tab and grabbed my glass, which was still half full. As I crossed the lobby toward the elevator bank, I heard my name. I knew even before I swung around that Matt Wong was paging me.
“Wait, I thought you were going to have a drink with me tonight,” he said, his tone petulant.
“I am, promise,” I said, though it had totally slipped my mind. “I’m just taking this to my room for now.”
“You’re here at the Courtyard? Why haven’t I seen you?”
“This is my first day at this location. Why are you staying here? Can’t you drive back and forth to Albany each day?”
“Usually I do, but I decided to book a room for a couple of days. There’s a ton of reporters and TV producers around here. You’re not the only one who’d like to be on the tube one day.”
“For the record, Matt, I have absolutely zero interest in being on TV. My boss insisted on me doing the video.”
“It might be smart to learn to like it. It’s all going to pivot to video in the future.”
“Wow, aren’t you the trend guru. . . . Sorry, but I really need to head upstairs for a bit.”
“And what about the drink?”
“Later, okay?”
“Nine at the bar here?”
“Um, yeah, okay.” I didn’t really have the energy to deflect him another time, plus as annoying as I found the guy, he was correct about the necessity of mingling. Who knew what you might learn at the bar.
Back in my room, I took another gulp of the wine, which unfortunately had a vague aftertaste of cherry cough medicine. Probably because my stomach was still churning from this afternoon’s showdown. Once again I warned myself not to let it distract me. I needed to return to what mattered.
I shrugged out of my jacket and changed into a new shirt since the one I’d been wearing was still damp with perspiration. As I reached for my laptop, my gaze fell on the composition book I’d been using over the past week. Jessie had said over lunch that I had a skill for seeing information from fresh and different angles, and if that was true—which I liked to think it was—the credit lay in part to my endless composition books. On more than one occasion, I’d had a eureka moment simply from rereading my notes.
I’d been good about scanning each day’s notes before turning in, but I hadn’t gone over them from start to finish. Maybe it was time to do that.
I opened the book to the beginning and began to read. On one of the earliest pages, I lighted on the rough timeline I’d sketched out for Shannon once I’d gathered bits of information. I’d been hopeful that if I kept fleshing that out, it might eventually point to a place or time where she’d intersected with her killer, but nothing had even whispered to me.
I stared at the points on the timeline: her cousin’s death last September, her return to work in March, her reinvolvement in the church midsummer. Not exactly much to work with.
Staring at the page, I was reminded of something Keith Windgate had mentioned when he shot the video. He worked with timelines, too, he’d told me. He would create one for each video he was doing and plug in various clips at points where he thought they would have the most impact.
Something began to tug at my memory, but it stayed stubbornly out of reach, as if I were patting around inside a desk drawer for an item I needed—an envelope, or a note card, or a take-
out menu—but couldn’t put my hands on it, or even recall what I was looking for.
And then I realized what it was. I had Shannon’s timeline wrong. When I’d met with Riley at Baker, she’d mentioned that Shannon had been working at home for a period, which meant I had the wrong date for when she’d appeared regularly at the main office. During the interview with Riley I’d been so caught up in the significance of Shannon restarting her career that I’d neglected to adjust the timeline. It was probably insignificant, but I wanted to be sure I had everything right in my mind.
I snatched my phone from the bed where I’d tossed it and called Cody. To my surprise he picked right up.
“Is there news about Alice Hatfield?” he asked bluntly.
“No, not that I’m aware of. I have a question on another subject, though. I heard that when Shannon started working for Baker back in March, she did it mostly from home for the first few months. Can you confirm that for me?”
“Look, I’m trying to clock a few hours at my desk this afternoon because I haven’t shown my face here in days. I don’t see how this is relevant.”
“I’ve been trying to create a timeline for the last months of Shannon’s life, see if it points me anywhere.”
“Uh, okay. She began helping me around March. And yes, she worked from home at first—developing a batch of marketing materials.”
“And when did she start coming to the office several days a week?”
“Jeez, I don’t know. June maybe. Yeah, June. The kids had just started camp.”
I used my free hand to pencil in the new detail on the timeline.
“It’s probably nothing, but I’ve always wondered if the killer could have targeted her, that he might have crossed paths with her in the weeks or months before her death. I’d been thinking she started at your office in March, but I realize I had that wrong. Could one of the workers have become fixated on her?”
“You mean like one of the loaders or drivers? I don’t see—”
A pause.
“What?” I prodded.
“We actually had a couple of new drivers come on for the summer. But they’re good guys. Both of them.”