Threads of Suspicion

by Dee Henderson

  “For somebody who comes off a bit snarky about life, Candy, you see and sum up people pretty well. What happened with Lynne after Jenna disappeared?”

  “Don’t know.” She lifted her palms. “Jenna disappeared, Lynne wasn’t around anymore. After a while, I mean, she just wasn’t doing anything with Jenna’s friends. She was part of the search, handing out flyers, was over-the-top distraught that the police couldn’t find Jenna. She got kind of spooky for a while. I remember Lynne wanted to do a memorial event with songs she’d written in Jenna’s honor, and she got locked on what might have happened, where they should search next. She wasn’t picking up on the fact that people didn’t want to talk about Jenna anymore, but were moving on. After a while, Lynne just drifted away into her own world again.”

  Evie pocketed the photo. “Thanks.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. I have no idea if Lynne was involved in what happened to Jenna or not. From your description, probably not. But I’ll look hard enough to eliminate the possibility. You know that solving what happened to Jenna matters, and cops aren’t going to leave the case alone until it’s figured out. So if you have another name you want me to consider, Candy, I’ll be glad to hear it.” She waited a beat.

  “Kayla Quim,” Candy grudgingly offered. “Her boyfriend worked for a music company repairing and restoring guitars. Jenna was making a play for the guy. Kayla would have taken that very personally.”

  “Jenna sure was getting around for being known as Steve’s girlfriend.”

  “She liked being the benevolent queen bee in the background pulling people’s strings. I know you don’t see her that way, but I’m right about this. While Steve was her latest catch, she was quickly looking elsewhere when he wasn’t around. I think what happened to Jenna was the result of her stepping onto the turf of a jealous type, and paying for it. I’m the jealous type and I can see that happening. It wasn’t me, my alibi always did hold, but there are more women like me out there, the kind cops like to suspect. And Jenna had a knack for making a person furious.”

  Evie felt something click with Candy’s words.

  “Thanks, Candy.” Evie pocketed her notebook and offered a twenty. “For your time. I’d buy a meal and leave a tip, but then I’d have to spend hours at the gym working off the calories.”

  Candy chuckled. “Been there. It’s been a slow night, so thanks.”

  Evie said goodbye, headed out, replaying the conversation in her head, feeling again that jolt when Candy mentioned, “Wannabe Maggie?” The only question at the moment was how hard they could push on this tonight versus waiting until morning.

  Evie started the car, got the heater going, and checked the time before making the call. “Ann, sorry about the late hour, but do you remember talking with a Lynne Benoit at the Fifth Street Music Hall?”

  Her friend thought for a moment. “Check my notes. She’s the one who fingered the groups who had been banned because they did drugs in the dressing room.”

  “Did she say anything specific about Jenna?”

  “She remembered the search for a missing college girl but couldn’t recall the name—that kind of comment.”

  “She knew Jenna. There are photos of them together.”

  “She did not tell me that,” Ann replied, her voice lifting. “We need to have another talk with Lynne.”

  “I’m going to drive by the Music Hall, see if there’s a concert playing tonight. If so, I hope to catch her at the end of a work shift. Want to join me?”

  “Count me in.”

  “I’ll call you back if it looks promising. If not tonight, we’ll track down her home address for a conversation first thing in the morning.”

  Evie said goodbye and drove to the Music Hall. She called David as she drove, setting up her phone for a hands-free conversation.

  “Hey, Evie.”

  “I’ve got a name for you. Lynne Benoit. Candy looked at the photo and said ‘Wannabe Maggie?’ when I asked if she knew the girl.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Yeah. She’s still living in this area.”

  “I’m pulling up DMV now. The name doesn’t click as one of Maggie’s problem fans.”

  “Lynne works backstage at the Fifth Street Music Hall. Think back to the concert the night of your accident, being backstage with Maggie. Lynne would have been an overeager staffer, ready to get anything Maggie might need, was probably working the dressing room area.”

  “That describes a lot of people. But cross it with a devoted fan and that contact could have sparked an obsession,” David said. “Hold on here . . . okay, DMV shows six matches for the name.”

  “She was in college with Jenna, so you’re looking for late twenties.”

  “It’s going to help to see that photo you have of her from nine years ago. None of these images are ringing a bell. Wait . . . okay, here—I think the one you’re looking at is a Lynne T. Benoit. The age fits, and she’s still in Ellis. She lives at 37 Garver Road.”

  Evie felt a surge of adrenaline. “I recognize the street. That’s about midway between Brighton College and the Fifth Street Music Hall. Single-family homes are along that stretch. Ann and I walked the cross street to it.”

  “I’m checking property records now. I get a Nancy and Kevin Benoit, property purchased in 1982, probably her parents. Lynne would have grown up in that house. Goes to the nearby college, lives at home, works at the Music Hall. Let me guess, music major?”

  “Another yes. That night was huge in Lynne’s life. Getting to meet her idol, a photo with Maggie, an autograph, to speak with her in person, help her get ready to perform—Lynne would have been layers above cloud nine by the end of that evening. She leaves the Fifth Street Music Hall after that experience, she’s not going to want to go home to her parents, be alone in her room. No, she’s going to want to share every detail with friends. Who better with than a girlfriend who was at the concert?”

  “Jenna.”

  Evie nodded as she drove. “I don’t know much about Lynne yet, but put Jenna and Lynne together, something gets said wrong about Maggie, or Jenna steps on Lynne’s dream to make it as a singer one day—according to Candy, she had talent—maybe Lynne lashes out at Jenna and that ends this mystery.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “On my way to the Music Hall to see if a concert’s on tonight, catch Lynne at work. Ann said Lynne was vague on the search for a missing college girl, but I’ve got photographs of Lynne with Jenna and her friends. Lynne is conveniently erasing Jenna from her memory, something you might do if you had a hand in her death.”

  “Call me if there’s a concert and I’ll come meet you. Otherwise I’ll start digging up more data.”

  “Will do. I’ll know in about fifteen minutes.”

  Lynne Benoit . . . Maybe Jenna had disappeared because of a her.

  The Fifth Street Music Hall was lit up, but there weren’t the cars and crowds to indicate a concert. Evie debated finding the night manager, getting a read on Lynne, a copy of her employment records, but reined in the impatience. Odds were high Lynne would be working tomorrow night. The marquee announced the band Priceless was being promoted for Friday and Saturday nights, with The Chili Peppers once again warming up the crowd.

  Evie called David, then Ann, letting them know a conversation with Lynne would happen in the morning. She then drove south to Garver Road and slowed enough to snap photos of house number 37 as she passed. A well-maintained, single-family two-story home, bushes lining a narrow driveway, a detached garage behind the house, probably three bedrooms, built in the 1950s. There was an older model blue Civic parked in the driveway with both a college bumper sticker and a Music Hall sticker. The plate read LYN 3356.

  Evie relaxed. Tomorrow morning there would be a conversation with an actual person of interest. Lynne had downplayed the fact she had known Jenna. The rest was speculation. But it was David’s approach of looking for who lied to you. Lynne had made herself a person of interest.


  Returning to the office complex, Evie parked and took her time walking across the slippery parking lot so she didn’t land flat on her back. She did, however, put on a burst of speed down the hallway, took two deep breaths, and swung open the door. “Tell me she still looks good.”

  David laughed. “Catch your breath, Evie.” He swung back to the screen. “Lynne Benoit looks incredibly interesting.” He stood and gestured to the whiteboard and the new data he was building. “Her social media is a treasure trove of Maggie trivia. She actually acquired a photo of Maggie and me having dinner last month at Revere’s Pizza in New York. I didn’t even know it was out there, and I keep pretty good track of things like that. Lynne’s in Maggie’s fan database, no surprise there. She’s flagged for having repeatedly sent song lyrics via email, so there’s a file kept on her. But nothing in that correspondence has crossed the line to suggest a security concern, so no separate security flag.

  “Up in the right-hand corner is a printout of her email dated the day after the concert in question where she met Maggie. Wow, did it ever register as the event in her life. Obsession, here it begins. There are 672 emails in her folder now, a big number but by no means a lot. There are some fans who email daily. Still, it’s up there. Once it touches a thousand, someone would routinely run a background check, and I would have heard this name. Lynne has bought tickets from the band’s website for Illinois and Wisconsin concerts—but not the one Tammy attended in Wisconsin—as well as bought every kind of band memorabilia: T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, key chains. She’s got a bunch of Triple M stuff.”

  David reached over to the printer now spitting out additional pages, scanned them quickly. “Moving on, she owns a Honda Civic, has since 2006, so was likely driving it during her college days. One ticket in the last year for speeding, doing thirty-four in a thirty-mile zone—some cop must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that day.

  “Graduated from Brighton College,” he said, reading from the papers. “Looks like it took her six years, suggesting some part-time enrollment since I have her on the dean’s list for three semesters. She appears in the college alumni newsletters four times—twice for musicals she performed in, twice for stage performances where she sang, all local events. She’s an only child, no birth records for siblings, no adoptions on file for her parents. No criminal history. She’s apparently single, no marriage or divorce on file in this state.”

  He flipped further through the printer pages. “Employment is with the Fifth Street Music Hall for the last eleven years, with several breaks lasting a few months, and one with a stretch of eight months.” He held up the pages. “I woke the Music Hall owner, didn’t tell him who I need info on, just asked if he was going to make me get a warrant. He made a call, told their accountant downtown to send me whatever paycheck records I wanted to see.” He thumbed through them again. “These are all the paychecks issued for her social security number. I don’t have it down to days and hours worked, but we can see gaps when she wasn’t getting paid.”

  “Nice. You’ve been busy,” Evie said.

  “Give me a name and there’s all kinds of information available. I’m just getting started if you want to wake a few more people up tonight. The college strikes me as a good place to look further.”

  “Let’s talk it through. I took a few photos of the house.” Evie handed David her phone, walked over to the aerial map and attached a Post-it note with the address on it, studied the neighborhood around it. “If she’s still living with her parents, she’s probably got decent spending money. She could travel to enjoy the music she likes. We can see if the credit card she was using at the band website shows her traveling out of state.”

  “The FBI is busy chewing through historical credit-card numbers along the travel routes, and we can ask them to search out her card number in that data set,” David agreed. “Nothing in Lynne’s social media suggests she’s traveled outside of, say, a hundred miles, even on vacation. No posted photos of the ocean, New York in the summer, ‘Here’s me skiing in Colorado’ kind of shots.

  “I don’t think she’s attended a recent Maggie concert, at least not since Maggie moved to New York,” he noted. “And it surprisingly doesn’t look like she was at the St. Louis concert last year. There’s nothing in her email correspondence that raves about seeing Maggie in person and how great the concert was. A devoted fan is going to splash that in big, bold terms. This obsession isn’t fading, but it’s not getting Lynne on the road. She might be tied to here because of family—a parent in ill health or the like. But I don’t think from what I’ve seen that we’re looking at someone who ever did the concert loop into Indiana and Ohio and left behind three smothered victims. Her emails didn’t change tone during those years, and they should have.”

  “Okay. That’s useful to know.” Evie studied the information on the board. “So this is the life of an infatuated fan.”

  “Pretty much,” David confirmed, “but one we haven’t considered to be of particular concern, and nowhere near our most-dangerous list. The next circle over from obsessed is groupies, those who do have the freedom, with time and money to travel to every show. They’re not always as passionate between shows, but will know the music just as deeply. Lynne’s not a groupie, even though she appears to be an all-things-Maggie trivia buff, or a stalker, not even an overly obsessed fan—those want to marry Maggie or ask if they can have her trash. The requests get a bit strange.”

  Evie smiled. “The things I’m learning about the music world astonish me. So Lynne’s an obsessed fan, but a normal one.”

  “Basically.”

  “Does her social media show a current boyfriend? Links to other bands?”

  “There’s no boyfriend she’s highlighting in current pictures or mentions spending time with. She steadily puts up posts about bands appearing at the Music Hall, but she’s loyal to Triple M and Maggie. Other music is ‘good’ or ‘I liked this’ or ‘this singer is promising.’ But it’s not the gushing you get about Maggie, what Lynne thinks of her newest songs.”

  “How early do you think we can talk with Lynne?” Evie asked.

  David weighed the question. “She’s accustomed to working nights, so I doubt she’s an early riser. The Music Hall opens its doors at five p.m., staff probably start work around three p.m. for sound checks, four for concession prep. If she’s working the dressing room, let’s split the difference—she works an eight-hour shift, three-thirty to eleven-thirty p.m., with a half-hour dinner break. That matches up with the recent paychecks.

  “We can sit on her house early, probably see her parents get the newspaper, leave for work, and wait for Lynne to appear. Or we can deliberately ring the doorbell to wake her up once we think she’s alone, catch her off-balance. Low-key would be to stop by the house at noon, one p.m., figuring she’s either up by then or getting up. ‘We have a few more questions about the Music Hall. We would have called, but we were in the area and thought we’d see if you’re home.’ Or we can deliberately approach her at work, then it’s routine. ‘We’re making sure we didn’t miss anyone last time, and oh, did you say when you spoke to Ann that you were friends with Jenna?’”

  Evie could see advantages to all three options. “At the house is the most promising, though I think it’s better to have her parents out of the picture when we make the approach. Lynne sees you, she’s going to enter orbit—Maggie’s boyfriend is here at my house talking to me. We can use that if it makes sense to do so or keep you in reserve.”

  “Use it. She’s going to get an adrenaline spike, and if I’m the one asking the questions, she’s going to find it very difficult to lie or be that careful in choosing her words. With something to hide, the most revealing moment is when they’re talking without a lot of time to think.”

  “I’d be feeling guilty with you taking the lead, knowing how she’ll react, if I didn’t need that utter honesty from her on every fact she has about the night Jenna went missing. But I’m rather relieved to know we’ll get
the truth in one conversation. We can figure out if we should be looking at Lynne or clear her of any involvement.”

  David studied the whiteboard. “Lynne’s local, has lived in that neighborhood all her life. She would know where to hide a body so it doesn’t get found. She’s got a personality that can lock on to things and make them bigger than what they really are. She gets asked by a cop about the college student who disappeared and doesn’t remember they were friends?” He shook his head. “She over-anticipated how to handle the question because she has something to hide. She could have had a falling-out with Jenna that night, lashed out, and her friend is dead. You may have found your answer to Jenna, but unless we can confirm Lynne is making road trips that aren’t obvious from this first look, it probably doesn’t answer the three smothered victims. But let’s go see Lynne.”

  Evie nodded. “Let’s try for casual, noon or one p.m. at her house, before she goes to work. We were in the area, a question came up about the Music Hall, you work in the dressing room area, likely know the answer, can you help us out? If she hasn’t already recognized you, then it’s, ‘Oh, by the way, this is Maggie’s David. We heard you’re a fan of the band Triple M—”

  David lifted both hands, palms out, to stop her as he laughed. “I think I can do it a great deal smoother than that, but yeah, that’s probably the best way to play it. We approach it low-key and then take the conversation in the direction we want. If I can get a look at her scrapbook, her Maggie wall—she’ll have one or both—I’ll do so and see if I can spot anything far enough back to be useful around these five concert dates. If she attended one of those other concerts, there’s going to be a ticket stub, a photo at the concert, something. I’ve been to enough Maggie concerts that I can recognize stages, outfits, band members, and pretty much date a photo to a specific show.”