The Forgotten Girls (Book #1 in The Suburban Murder Series)

by Alexa Steele

  “Do you know if your wife was friends with a Mrs. Adrianna Westin? Here in town? Do you know her?”

  Jamie thought for a minute.

  “I know the name,” he replied tersely. “Is she the one with that son? The one in prison?”

  Bella nodded and looked at Mack.

  “Did your wife have any dealings with her? Were they friends?” Mack asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Jamie said slowly with a suspicious look on his face. “Why?”

  “Just needed to ask. Given her son’s connection to your town,” Mack answered.

  “Luckily our paths never crossed. As far as I know, he’s rotting away in prison somewhere,” Jamie replied stoically.

  Apparently he had not heard that his friendly neighborhood psycho had returned home to his fabled town, but neither Mack nor Bella felt the need to illuminate him. Yet.

  CHAPTER 8

  The boarded-up garage stood separate and apart from the house to which it belonged—a fortunate thing, considering its taint of death. It was a standard ivory stucco two-car garage sitting about a hundred feet from the main house, off to the side. If it weren’t for the boards still nailed to its doors, covered with goodbye messages and spray-painted testimonials to the girls, one would never suspect the horror that had taken place inside.

  Billy sent them over to this forlorn spot to view what was now, officially, a crime scene. Lieutenant Nick Glades was standing in the driveway and greeted them when they arrived. He was young, immaculately dressed in a crisp blue police uniform, and his eyes shone with excitement, as though he couldn’t believe his luck. And he couldn’t.

  He had worked in Greenvale only three years, after an injury caused him to switch gears and leave the urban jungle behind. Trading in thrill for decent hours was a good move with a wife and two small children at home. Sure, there were days so quiet he could hear himself think. And yeah, if he were asked to work a real case or go on another high-speed chase, he might not exactly turn it down. But hey, no one was asking. So he plodded forward and forced himself to focus on the big picture: his comfortable life.

  But life throws curveballs. Having two high school kids die in this town was one such curveball. Nick’s front row seat to the aftermath of the girls’ deaths placed him at the epicenter of the investigation. From the outset, he felt something was off. It was those dammed crests. It felt like they were placed there, though neither he nor anyone else could prove it—not that he hadn’t tried. He had. He just hadn’t succeeded.

  Now, with the Freed murder last night and two Bronx homicide detectives involved, he felt fired up. He had forgotten the adrenaline rush of working a real case. For the first time in a long while he had gotten dressed that morning with the old sensation he used to get when he first joined the force. If he remembered correctly, it was called excitement.

  “I can’t believe Mrs. Freed’s murder might be connected to the girls. I just can’t believe it,” he exclaimed as soon as Bella and Mack exited their car and introduced themselves. He was the only other person besides Dennis privy to this connection.

  “She came in just last week. I spoke with her myself,” Nick added.

  “Came in where? Who?” Bella asked, surprised.

  “Mrs. Freed. To the station house. She worked at the Gazette and was doing a story on whether prescription drugs were being sold at the high school.”

  Bella frowned, wondering why Dennis hadn’t mentioned this. The three of them walked slowly toward the garage and, once in front, saw the notes left to the girls—send-offs scribbled on scraps of paper or etched into the wood itself. Pictures and paper hearts surrounded a lone, forlorn-looking teddy bear clutching a valentine heart close to his chest. The bear had fallen over on the ground and lay sideways. Mack bent down and straightened it back up. Wooden boards covered the garage doors and even the small windows at the top, as if to keep a dark memory locked inside.

  Nick took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the side door to the garage. He led them into the dark and damp space, the only light entering from where the door stood propped open. He walked over to a corner and flipped a switch. A single frail, teetering light bulb instantly, but dimly, lit up the barren room. A workbench rested alongside a wall, with a toolbox, some scattered gardening supplies, and an old fan on top. Two new shiny bicycles leaned sideways in a corner, one against the other. A dozen or so plastic Rubbermaid boxes were piled high near the far wall.

  Underneath the single teetering light bulb, smack dab in the middle of the room, were two simple-looking, ordinary wooden chairs placed next to each other, a few feet apart. In front of them, on the floor, were two big X’s made with light gray masking tape. X marked the spot.

  “Did Dennis know she came in last week?” Bella asked.

  “Sure,” Nick replied, leaning against the worktable.

  “What exactly did she say to you?”

  “She said the paper received a tip and she was looking for information about whether it might be true. She was upset—took it a little too much to heart, if you ask me. I told her I found it hard to believe, but she seemed hell bent…”

  “Why was it so hard to believe?” Bella asked.

  “Greenvale isn’t exactly a mecca for drug dealing. Our high school is ranked top ten in the nation.” Nick smiled proudly.

  Bella didn’t see why the school’s ranking mattered.

  “What exactly did she want from you?” Bella continued.

  “Ya know, she was pumping me for information,” Nick replied, nodding slowly in satisfaction. “She wanted to know if we had heard about it, if we could provide a police presence on campus, if we could check it out, stuff like that.”

  “Did you agree to look into it?” Bella asked, though she already knew the answer.

  Now he looked sheepish. “No, we don’t have that kind of manpower,” he replied.

  “Did you contact the school authorities to tell them you had reason to believe something may be going down at school?” Bella asked.

  “No,” he answered blandly.

  Bella looked at him directly in the eye.

  “Why not?”

  “We didn’t have a name, a location, any other complaints, any real evidence this was happening,” he replied a bit nervously.

  Mack didn’t say a word.

  “So what exactly did you offer Ms. Freed, in terms of help? She was clearly agitated, yes? Isn’t that what you said? Did you probe into why she seemed so upset?”

  Bella fought against her growing irritation with him by reminding herself he was a newbie.

  “The way you frame it sounds bad, Detective, but she had no proof drugs were being sold at school. Just a nameless ‘source’ and her ‘gut.’” Nick gave a condescending shrug of his shoulders and a smile.

  “That’s all, huh? Just her gut?” Bella asked sarcastically.

  She hated when men put down women’s intuition as unfounded feminine emotion. It was her pet peeve and it happened all the time. She inhaled deeply.

  “Did Mrs. Freed say anything else?” Bella pressed on.

  Nick gazed into space for a few seconds. “She asked about the girls,” he answered slowly, once again nervous, as he looked around the garage and seemed to just now be making a connection. “Wanted to know if there had been any evidence they had taken prescription drugs. Specifically Adderall.”

  “These girls?” Bella pressed quizzically, pointing to the spot where the two X’s still remained taped to the floor.

  Nick walked over to the marked-up floor, looked up at the rafters, then moved his gaze away from the ceiling and fixed his eyes back upon Bella. He quietly nodded.

  “Really?” Bella replied, intrigued. So Joslyn had inquired about these girls.

  She followed Nick’s expression as he looked back up at the ceiling.

  “Let me guess—you weren’t at liberty to discuss their case with her.” Bella sounded resigned before even hearing the answer.

  “Yes, that’s correct. I wasn’t,�
�� Nick responded quietly.

  “Was your interest piqued, even a little?” She knew she sounded condescending but she couldn’t help herself.

  “I…well, yes, of course. For sure. Wait here a minute.”

  He turned and stepped quickly out of the garage, and Bella looked over at Mack, who was studying something on the floor. Nick returned two minutes later with a box of papers and placed it on the worktable. Bella ran her fingers over the top of the many files inside. Mack came over and stood next to Bella. Nick began to speak quickly and enthusiastically:

  “When those girls died, I don’t know, the whole thing was bizarre. They had everything going for them. They had both been accepted to their first choice college. They had loving families. There was a rumor they were, ya know, kind of into each other. Ya know, gay. Lesbians. With each other. And, ya know, maybe they had been shamed or something. I don’t know. No one could explain those crests. We just assumed it was some kind of lover’s gift, a secret between the two of them.”

  Nick paused for a second. He looked a bit self-conscious when he continued:

  “There were no prints in the room other than theirs, no witnesses, nothing pointing to foul play.”

  “Did you share your doubts with anyone?” Mack spoke for the first time.

  “I told the captain what I thought. But there was nothing we could find to point to anyone—no motive, no evidence. Nothing.”

  Bella noticed Nick was starting to look upset. “Did you ever learn anything about the crests?” she asked.

  “Only that the ribbon is common—found in most arts and crafts stores,” Nick replied. “But no one had seen those crests or knew what they meant. The athletic department here uses the standard ones with the tiger on the front under a flag. These were different. Take a look.”

  He reached over and pulled a file out of the box. Two seconds later he was holding a photo. He certainly knew his way around the files.

  “Look at this. You see how the shape is oval?”

  “Yes, but I’m more interested in the Latin. What does it mean?” Bella leaned forward as she looked at the photo of the crests and the inscription written on them, eager to hear.

  Nick gave her a blank stare.

  “What does it translate into?” Bella repeated.

  Again nothing.

  “No one checked, huh?” Bella’s voice was laden with disappointment.

  Nick looked down at his feet.

  Bella had had enough. “A disgrace. Put it back in the box. I am taking the whole thing with me. Tell Dennis these are mine now,” she said, her mouth tight. She lifted the heavy box of files and walked out.

  “You coming with me?” Bella shot Mack a look as she exited.

  “Where else would I go?” Mack answered serenely, a small smile playing about his lips.

  Nick looked crestfallen, like he had been spanked a few too many times.

  “Don’t worry, man,” Mack consoled him as he passed. “I’m the one who has to live with her until this case is over, not you. Count your blessings, huh?”

  CHAPTER 9

  “My wife woke me with the news last night, right out of a dead sleep. What a thing to wake to,” Ethan said, as he leaned back in his worn brown leather swivel chair and grabbed his suspenders with both hands.

  “She’s a night owl, my wife. Was awake when Gertie called to tell her what happened at the club. You know how ladies are, nothing gets past ’em,” he added with a sad smile.

  Ethan Jeffries, owner of the Greenvale Gazette, had been a resident of Greenvale for forty years and his family forty years before him, he bragged, as soon as the three of them sat down. He looked to be in his seventies, and seemed supremely at home at his desk in the large open space the Greenvale Gazette occupied. Three empty desks lined the far wall and copies of the Greenvale Gazette lay everywhere.

  “It’s a bad business, it is,” he continued. “There hasn’t been a murder in Greenvale since 1978 when Charlie Jackson shot an intruder who turned out to be his brother. Not a murder in town since,” he lamented.

  He seemed sadder about his town losing this distinction than about the actual murder itself.

  “The murder of Margaret Rapper eight years ago doesn’t count?” Mack asked sarcastically.

  “Margaret?” Ethan looked surprised. “Well, yes, I guess officially we would have to consider her death a murder, wouldn’t we, as that poor boy was found to be guilty. But if you ask me, and many others here in town, she shot herself in a fit of drunkenness, blackout drunk like she was most nights. I just don’t consider her death a murder no matter what that jury said. So my statement still stands.”

  Ethan changed subjects quickly to regale them on his lineage—how he had run the Greenvale Gazette out of a two-hundred-year-old building that had been home to a printing press smack dab in the middle of town. It had floor to ceiling windows on the ground level so those on the sidewalk could see all that was happening inside—which wasn’t much. Most of the people who rushed by in the rain waved as they passed by.

  “Can you tell us about the article Mrs. Freed was working on?” Bella asked, not particularly taken by this cute little man who sat before her. He seemed like a provincial braggart.

  “The college destination piece? Yes, she was putting that together for me,” he said wistfully.

  Bella and Mack looked at one another.

  “No, the article she was working on about prescription drug abuse at the high school, specifically about a drug called Adderall,” Bella corrected him.

  Ethan looked at Bella, then at Mack, then back at Bella. He seemed confused.

  “I am sorry. I think there has been a misunderstanding,” was all he said.

  “A misunderstanding?” Mack asked.

  “Yes sir,” Ethan said cautiously. “She did ask me about writing an article on that topic but I couldn’t have been clearer. I told her I had no interest. It is not the kind of thing we do here.”

  “So you did not have Mrs. Freed working on that?” Bella frowned.

  “To do a piece that might blemish my alma mater?” He chuckled and shook his head. “Every kid nowadays takes ADD medicine—hell, how else can they do all they need to without it? Even my grandson takes Adderall and he’s only five!”

  Mack looked at Bella.

  “How did Mrs. Freed react when you told her not to write it?” Mack asked.

  “Well enough. I gave her the task of putting together the college destinations of the senior class by name. It was an opportunity to have her girl’s name in print next to Vanderbilt. Instant bragging rights. Thought it would make her happy. She agreed.”

  “What exactly did she say to you when she proposed writing about Adderall?” asked Bella.

  Ethan squinted his eyes and caressed the side of his face with his hand.

  “She told me she had information suggesting that it was being sold on campus, up at the high school. She said she had done some research and learned Adderall had all kinds of side effects no one really knew about.”

  He stopped for a minute.

  “OK. Did she say anything else?” Bella prodded.

  “She said a lot of things, my dear,” Ethan chuckled. “She was a very smart lady, that she was. She could talk till the cows came home, and not just about rubbish. Gertie didn’t know how I could stand it, if you want to know the truth. But that’s just not Gertie’s way. She’s more of a…how should I say? A gentler type.”

  Bella managed a fake smile.

  “What kinds of things did Mrs. Freed say about Adderall, Ethan?”

  “She had it in her head that too much of it, or the wrong dose, can cause all sorts of problems. Everything from irritability and lack of appetite, which is pretty well known, to paranoia. Even psychosis,” Ethan said flatly.

  “Did she say why she was interested in writing about it?”

  “I think it had something to do with those two girls who killed themselves,” he responded. “Her daughter was friends with them I think. It
hit her pretty hard.”

  He snapped his suspenders and shook his head and continued:

  “Look, she wasn’t working for the money. So I asked myself, why did she want to work here? Or anywhere for that matter? With a husband so well off and all? I mean, she was one well-educated woman—Princeton, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism—so I said OK, she needs something to do, that’s all. But I wasn’t counting on her being such a handful, if you know what I mean. When she wanted to start digging into people’s lives…” Ethan trailed off, shaking his head.

  “So you had no idea she was working on this story?” Mack repeated.

  “Are you kidding?” Ethan responded. “I told you—absolutely not. Bring more bad publicity into town after what those two girls did? No way, Jose.” He shook his head. Then his eyes widened and he looked at Mack. “Oh, excuse me, didn’t mean anything by that,” he stammered. “No way, no how, I meant to say.”

  Mack shot him a look.

  “Have you ever met her husband, Ethan?” asked Bella impatiently.

  “No, I never met Mr. Freed. Heard enough about him though. Gave huge to the high school—two new wings—quite a fella. That’s what we need more of around here if you ask me. Men like Mr. Freed.”

  “Is there anything else you can think of that might help us, Ethan? Anything at all you may have seen or heard?” Bella asked.

  “If you’re trying to imply this business was done by someone she knew, well I would think you’re barking up the wrong tree, little lady. We border Newtown and, well, ya know, they’ve had quite a change in their demographic these past years. Whole new subset of the population has moved on up. I hear stories and, well, let’s just say, murder isn’t on the menu for the kinds who live in Greenvale.”

  *

  “That guy’s gotta be kidding,” Mack said contemptuously when they left. “What a load of horseshit. He’s one smug…”

  Mack didn’t finish the sentence. He was too peeved. Big tough guy like Mack rattled by little old Ethan, Bella observed, as Mack moseyed his way to the car. I guess we both had soft spots hit today, she thought.