[Suburban Murder 01.0] The Forgotten Girls

by Alexa Steele

  “Kind of. I mean, I didn’t search the grounds,” she answered defensively.

  The room was silent. Doug stared down at the floor.

  Bella didn’t like this woman at all. Jenna looked back and forth at the three of them and, sounding far off, not as though she really cared, added:

  “It was late, she was gone. I don’t know. I was tired. I just wanted to go home.”

  “Had Jamie asked you to take Joslyn home?”

  Bella looked away from Jenna when she asked this and directed the question to Doug.

  “Yes, he did,” Doug replied, looking a little guilty. “But Jenna couldn’t find her. We assumed she had gotten a ride with someone else.”

  “It sounds like your wife didn’t look too hard.” Bella sounded a bit sarcastic and she knew it. She was irritated and it showed.

  “I thought she did, I mean she did, she just couldn’t find her,” Doug said nervously.

  “I did look for her. I did. I swear. I mean, I didn’t look in every nook and cranny. I didn’t walk down to the marina, for god’s sakes. Why would I think she would ever go down there?”

  “Were you worried about her?” Bella wasn’t feeling the love.

  Jenna leaned forward and took her Pellegrino off the coffee table and sipped it, slowly. Steadily and quietly she returned it to its position, exactly where it had been, and looked Bella directly in the eye. Her lips were curved in a smile but her eyes were deadly serious.

  “I was not her keeper.”

  “You were one of her close friends. Isn’t that kind of the same thing?”

  The look of disapproval on Bella’s face was clear enough that even Jenna couldn’t ignore it. In one quick pivot Jenna turned her back to the room and peered out the window at something awry on the lawn. She remarked that Mario better make sure all the rain didn’t drown her hydrangeas and confronted Doug about the garden then and there.

  “He never does what I ask, Doug. He didn’t cut the sea grass as he promised and now it’s not going to grow in straight. And the sprinklers in the front went on this morning even after all the rain. The flowers are going to drown!”

  Doug sat stoically. He clearly couldn’t care less that his wife was upset about the garden and didn’t even bother to answer.

  Jenna pouted then came back to the conversation, as though her little digression had not happened.

  “Last night was horrible. I am so scared,” she said, resting a hand gently on Mack’s knee.

  Mack looked at her husband to see if he noticed, but Doug’s eyes were still affixed to the floor, where they had remained most of the time. Mack leaned back and took her hand gently off his leg. She curled her legs up on the sofa like a child.

  Bella wondered if Doug was embarrassed by his wife. If he wasn’t he ought to be, she thought. What the hell was going on in this guy’s head? Either he was concerned for his wife or he was concerned about the murder or he was just wrapped tight. Too tight for her liking. One thing was certain—he seemed to dislike his wife immensely. Luckily for Jenna, she didn’t seem to notice.

  “How did you hear the news of her murder?” Bella continued steadily, looking at Doug.

  Doug lifted his head, but Jenna answered before he could speak.

  “Stephanie called me. Jamie had called Jack.”

  Jenna said this as though reading from a script.

  “Jack is Stephanie’s husband?” Bella clarified.

  Jenna nodded.

  “How did Mrs. Freed seem to you last night? I would like both of your impressions if you don’t mind,” said Bella, looking at Jenna and Doug.

  “I didn’t really see her or talk to her at all,” answered Doug quietly.

  “She seemed fine. Completely like herself.” Jenna shrugged.

  “We heard Jos worked at the paper in town? The Gazette?” Bella pressed on.

  “Ummm…yes, that’s right. I heard that too.”

  “You heard or she told you herself?” Bella asked.

  “Umm, she told me,” Jenna said offhandedly.

  “Do you know what kinds of stories she was working on?”

  “No, I have no idea. Do you, Doug?”

  All heads turned to Doug. He didn’t look up, only shrugged and said he didn’t know. Jenna smiled again.

  “Were you and Mrs. Freed close?” Bella asked, genuinely curious to see what this woman’s perception was.

  “Of course! But Joslyn was—she kind of did her own thing,” she observed.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “She just—I don’t know, we wouldn’t know where she was for sometimes like two whole days. Like, she’d have things to do and two days could go by and we wouldn’t even hear from her.”

  Two whole days, Bella thought to herself sarcastically. How the hell could a woman with Joslyn’s academic credentials ever have related to this woman—been actual friends with her! What in god’s name had they spoken about?

  Mack spoke up suddenly and shot some questions in Doug’s direction. He asked point-blank if Doug thought the Freeds were happily married.

  “Jamie never told me otherwise,” Doug answered, slightly dumbfounded.

  “Did you ever see or hear anything that might make you draw that conclusion on your own?” Mack asked.

  Doug looked like he was thinking of something that made him uneasy but, if he was, he didn’t share it.

  “No, not that I recall,” he said simply.

  “Do you consider him a close friend?” Mack seemed very relaxed.

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, we’re buddies.”

  “Mr. Freed told us you were part of his crew.” Mack grinned despite himself.

  Doug looked slightly embarrassed.

  “So what do crews look like up here in Greenvale? I mean, down in the Bronx the word ‘crew’ can have a bit of a negative connotation,” Mack pressed on. It seemed to Bella he was having fun.

  Doug crinkled his eyebrows, confused. “I think people just use that word to denote their group of close, personal friends,” he answered heavily.

  “And how close does one have to be to be considered part of a crew?” Mack nudged.

  “I don’t know what you mean or how to answer that,” Doug responded.

  “Well, let me help you out a little then. Close enough that you know one another’s secrets? Close enough that you always have each other’s back?”

  Mack leaned in and looked intently at Doug, ignoring Jenna. Doug looked flummoxed.

  “I guess that would describe us all, yes,” he stammered.

  Jenna interrupted. “We have always called ourselves a crew because we do everything together. We spend Saturday nights together, we vacation together—we even do holidays together. We’re like a group. I mean, we have other friends outside our group, but they are not as close to us as we are to each other. They know it, and we do too.”

  “You travel as a group? In all you do?” Bella clarified. She was trying to get her mind around that.

  “That’s right,” Jenna said bluntly.

  “Mind if I ask why?” Bella tried to imagine what that would feel like, but she couldn’t.

  A strange look came over Jenna’s face—as though she had been threatened. “Because that’s the way we like it.” Her tone was harsh.

  There was an awkward silence in the room as the women’s eyes met.

  “So in other words,” Mack jumped in, “if one of your crew were unhappily married that’s something you would know?”

  “Yes, most definitely,” Jenna said conclusively. “We are a happily married group.”

  She placed her hands squarely in her lap and straightened her back, as if that were that. The three of them watched her push the hair out of her eyes and readjust her position on the couch, farther away from Mack. Jenna was now disgruntled—she clearly hadn’t enjoyed having her social proclivities questioned.

  “We are simply trying to get an idea of what you mean when you use words like ‘close’ and ‘crew.’ Those two words ca
n mean different things to different people. I am sure you understand.” Mack smiled warmly at Jenna as he spoke, which seemed to relax her.

  “So from what you have said it sounds like you both knew the Freeds very well then indeed? Intimately even?” Mack pressed on. Bella was impressed at his ability to soften Jenna and turn the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

  “Yes! OMG—Joslyn was like a sister!”

  Sister my ass, thought Bella. She didn’t even know about her job.

  “I saw in the portrait out front that you have two daughters. Are they the same age as the Freed girls?” Mack inquired of Doug.

  Doug looked uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Jenna answered for him.

  “Yes, Carly and our Jessie are besties. Oh my god, they are like sisters. All of our daughters are. They actually call themselves a cult.”

  Doug’s cheeks flushed and Mack looked taken aback.

  “Whoa, that’s a pretty strong word,” Mack laughed. “You see, there you go again, these labels can be kind of confusing…”

  “A cult?” Bella’s eyes widened. She tried to stifle a laugh.

  “Not literally a cult.” Jenna giggled. “Oh my god, you didn’t think I meant, like, literally a cult? No, they just say that to let others know how close they are, that’s all. As a statement.”

  “Lucky it worked out they are all so close. Would have been messy if one of them didn’t get along, eh?” Bella observed.

  “For sure.” Jenna smiled. “Very messy.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Stephanie’s home was quite different from Jenna’s. A large Tudor, it was nestled on a block of similar houses, each on about one-third of an acre, surrounded by old oaks, green lawns, and winding streets that looked as though they had been there forever.

  A wide blue stone path lined with low, cleanly cut evergreens led to the front entrance where a dolled-up woman answered the door.

  “I can’t believe you’re a detective,” Stephanie exclaimed to Bella in a dramatically high, squeaky voice. “Oh my god, that’s crazy!”

  Stephanie was a slender, petite 5’ 3”, with brown hair and brown eyes—well maintained yet too made up to look truly pretty. She wore flip-flops with tissues in between her toes from the morning pedicure she received to help her relax. Like Jenna, she wore Lululemon workout clothes. Unlike Jenna, Stephanie stared at Bella with awe, seemingly more taken with her than with Mack.

  “So you’re not married, are you?” She looked at Bella’s ringless hand. “I mean it would be hard, right, to be married and do what you do? Or to have kids?” she added.

  “I am happily single,” Bella answered, caught off guard and displeased at the personal questions. Bella caught Mack’s smile out of the corner of her eye. Stephanie saw it too.

  “You must work with all men, right?”

  “I work with men and women, Stephanie. All different kinds of people,” Bella said slowly.

  Bella’s tone was firm; she wasn’t smiling and her eyes pretty much said go to hell. But Stephanie didn’t take the hint.

  “I’ve never known a real detective,” she continued. “I just don’t understand, though, like, why you would want to surround yourself with such horrible people. Like, don’t you spend your days in really scary places and deal with dangerous people all day?”

  “I spend my days trying to solve the murders of young girls and women and trying to put murderers behind bars,” Bella responded bluntly.

  “Exactly! That’s what I am saying! Isn’t that, I don’t know, isn’t that so stressful?” Stephanie had a sympathetic look on her face.

  After meeting Jenna, Bella had assumed it would only get better. She was shocked to see it hadn’t.

  “Stress is part of life, no?” Bella was irritated. “I love what I do.”

  “I just could never be around those kinds of people, ya know? So scary...” Stephanie trailed off as she ushered them through her home toward the kitchen, where the three of them now stood at an immense white marble island.

  Despite her annoyance, Bella had taken in the interior design of the home. Dark oak floors throughout contrasted well against crisp ivory walls. Family photographs in delicate gold frames lined the walls. The color scheme, pale blue and chocolate brown, was echoed in delicate needlepoints adorning the foyer and living room. Thick white wooden box molding covered the bottom half of the dining room walls below chocolate brown walls above. The only other color in the house came from the fresh, pink azaleas in a tiffany vase on the kitchen island.

  “Someone’s gotta do it, right?” Mack said disarmingly with a laugh, trying to come to Bella’s aid. He smiled, hoping it would be the end of it. But it wasn’t.

  “I know, but someone like her,” Stephanie said to Mack. “She’s so young and pretty.”

  Then she turned to look at Bella.

  “You are really pretty. I would think you wouldn’t want to spend your life like that. I mean, don’t you want a family?” she asked, concerned.

  Mack saw Bella’s cheeks flush and came to her rescue by complimenting Stephanie’s home—her choice in furniture and colors and, of course, the photos of her children. This did the trick. The focus was finally off Bella. A few minutes later, Stephanie sat them on a white linen upholstered window seat at a corner kitchen table and quieted down.

  “White linen in the kitchen, huh? You must have the world’s neatest kids,” Bella said.

  “My kids eat at the island,” she answered calmly. “No one really uses this table.”

  “Really?” said Bella. “So dinner time is short and sweet?”

  “Dinner time?” Stephanie asked, looking confused. “Yes, it is short and sweet. Very short, but not always very sweet.”

  She laughed at her own joke.

  “The island is where the girls grab and go,” she continued, unsolicited. “That is their main way of eating. The dining room we only use when we have people over on holidays or big birthdays. A few times a year.”

  She was flushed with excitement at having an audience interested in her family’s eating habits. You’d never know she lost her best friend the night before.

  “So that leaves you and your husband,” Bella replied. “Where do the two of you eat mostly? So many choices.”

  Stephanie thought this was funny and giggled.

  “He comes home late from work, at like nine thirty, ten o’clock, and by then he has picked something up for himself and I am done.”

  “So you guys don’t eat together?” Bella asked pointedly.

  “Rarely,” she responded.

  “Huh. I am sorry.” Bella couldn’t resist this dig.

  “For what?” Stephanie wondered.

  Bella didn’t answer.

  Stephanie simply shrugged.

  “For such a big home it sounds like you don’t use half of it,” Mack said with a phony laugh.

  “We don’t!” Stephanie laughed back, but hers was real. “Are you thirsty?”

  Before they could answer, Stephanie jumped up from the table, went to the large stainless steel refrigerator, and brought out a glass pitcher of iced tea with lemons and basil leaves floating in it. She poured the iced tea into three polka-dotted glass champagne flutes.

  “Would you like some Splenda? Or Equal? Or I have Sugar in the Raw,” Stephanie said, pointing to her sugar holder.

  “Good old sugar will do the trick,” Mack answered. Ignoring him, she slid the choices over to where he sat. Bella nodded to Mack that he should begin. She found herself needing a moment’s respite.

  He asked the same questions Bella asked Jenna but Stephanie added nothing meaningful. She called Jos one of her “best friends” for fifteen years. She claimed her husband Jack and Jamie were best friends, as were their daughters. And, while she seemed sadder than Jenna when she spoke of Joslyn, she was not sad enough for Bella’s liking.

  “Did Joslyn seem OK to you? Last night?”

  “Yes, she seemed fine.
”

  “Did she mention her plan to go down to that yacht?”

  “No. Not at all! She was with us all night!”

  “Do you have any idea who she would have been meeting on that yacht?”

  “Oh my god, of course not!” she replied.

  “What time was it when you left the club?” Bella asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. Eleven thirty-ish, I think?”

  “Did you see Joslyn when you left?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “When was the last time you remember seeing her?” Mack asked.

  “After the memorial speech Principal Harding gave for two girls who recently died in our town. Jos was teary-eyed. We all were. We were all in the restroom together. It was crowded and hot. We all just wanted to go home. I said goodbye to her there and left.”

  “Who is we all?”

  “Me, Jenna, Kim, Jos...”

  “Was Joslyn drunk?”

  “A little tipsy, I guess. Not much. Oh, I don’t know really. I was a bit woozy myself.”

  “Did you see anything or anyone strange that you can remember? Something that may have struck you as odd that you didn’t give much thought to at the time?”

  “No, nothing unusual at all. Just a typical night out at the club,” Stephanie answered quietly.

  “Nothing typical about that memorial speech, huh?” Mack added.

  Stephanie nodded.

  “It was terrible. Vey upsetting. Those poor girls’ mothers.”

  “Was there anything going on in her life recently upsetting Joslyn? Anything or anyone she was worried about? Any problems at home? At work?” Mack asked.

  “At work? Oh, you mean the Gazette? No, I don’t think that was a particularly high-pressured job.” She giggled nervously and pulled her hair behind her ears.

  “At home?” Stephanie continued. “No. I mean, what could she possibly have been upset about? Carly was accepted to Vanderbilt early decision—by Christmas the nightmare of college applications was behind them. She had won.”

  A strange look suddenly crossed her face.

  “Who had won? Jos?” Bella asked.

  “Yes. She had won. A coveted spot at a top-tier school,” Stephanie replied quickly, but she seemed preoccupied.