“Yes, I don’t like to think about the murder. I – we moved here so that we could get away from the entire thing. Can you imagine walking into a house every day and seeing stains that wouldn’t go away. The blood never left. We repainted the walls. We restrained the floors, and still it was there. The blood never went away.” Her voice sounded a touch hysterical and more than a little like Lady Macbeth. I remembered that Lady Macbeth had been guilty of the crimes that haunted her. Was she somehow involved in this as well? I shook off the thought. Perhaps I was just projecting my own anger at my mother on to this woman. She hadn’t killed her maid in front of her entire family. I couldn’t conceive of any woman who would do that except in cases of extreme provocation. That would have been the defense here. Not a cover-up that had stuck for over a decade.
“I understand. I’ve been there.”
“I guess you have. Then you’ll understand why I don’t want to talk about this with you – or with anyone. It’s just too painful for me to think about.”
The line went dead. So much for that. The Gillespie family had all wanted to talk about Susan, but none of them wanted to say a word about the murder in their house. They’d lied and twisted words and hung up on me. I felt a tad guilty for my behavior. I had long dreaded interactions with others because they behaved in the same fashion that I was now. While logically I knew that I was trying to track down information that would bring home my sister, I knew at some level that I was inflicting the same type of pain that I personally hated.
I only had one more lead to follow up, Robert Jones, the other witness whose statement had been removed from the file. I wondered what would happen when he turned out to be another dead-end. Would he further sabotage my theories or would he shed some light on the case? I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t find out until Sheila called me back.
I thought about calling her again, but decided against it. She was obviously out on a case, and I doubted that she’d had time to look up the information on Robert Jones. That left me with nothing to do but sit around and wait. I turned on the news to see if there were any murder cases in Toledo. I thought perhaps I might see Sheila on the news, discussing whatever matter she was investigating.
However, the city apparently was corpse free. There were a few robberies and a phone scam going on in town, but nothing that would have kept Sheila busy for the last day.
I shook my head, thinking that now I had grown suspicious of everyone in my life. Of course, I had good reason to. My mother and sister were in a conspiracy to keep her presence hidden. From what I learned, she couldn’t have seen the Frias murder take place. The timetable was impossible. She’d been home for dinner that week.
Oddly, that was one thing that had been asked over and over. Had Susan done things differently in the days before her disappearance? I recalled my answer, since I’d had to repeat it to the police over the course of the first few months of the investigation. She’d been home for dinner every night. She hadn’t gone out – except for the planned date the night she disappeared. She’d been totally normal.
So if she hadn’t seen the murder, what possibly about the murder could have upset her so much? Certainly the death of a maid could not have been so upsetting by itself that she’d had to leave town. I doubted strongly that Susan had ever met Belinda Frias, much less mourned over her untimely death.
For a moment, I wondered if Susan had perhaps stumbled upon the solution to the murder case. That would have made her a potential victim of the killer if the killer had realized that she’d uncovered the truth. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she told the police? I was going under the assumption that she could have been protected until the arrest and trial of the murderer. There didn’t seem to be a good reason not to come forward and tell what she’d seen.
I came back to the idea that perhaps the two crimes had nothing in common. Sheila had said that my theory might be wrong. However, Siever had complained bitterly that I’d talked to one of the Gillespies. Mrs. Gillespie had hung up rather than admit that the two crimes might have some points in common. Adam Gillespie had lied to me about his dog and going out. There was a lot of suspicious behaviors for two unrelated events.
So I was back to wondering, what had made Susan leave her family, her town, her state to move across the country and stay away indefinitely? The only reason was that she had a reason why staying in Ohio would be bad for her, not just minor girl drama, but a crisis sufficiently dire that my mother had gone along with it. My mother’s approval meant it had to be big. She’d sacrificed the life of her husband, the company of one son, and the warping of the second son.
I remembered what Sheila had told me. The passage of time would highlight certain aspects of the case and those aspects might lead the way to a solution. I thought about the Frias family first, remembering the visit to the Mr. Frias’ new home. He’d definitely gone downhill since the murder. His wife had provided them with an income, and they’d had a baby on the way. Would he have killed her to allow himself the time to invent and dream? It seemed like a draconian way to achieve that. An abortion would have kept his income without the baby. I wondered if they believed in abortion or if murder would have been his only option. It certainly seemed contradictory to feel that killing an unborn child was wrong, but feeling that killing your spouse was okay.
So I thought about the Gillespies and what had become of them. Adam looked like he was a successful profession. Gwen had found a job that allowed her to enjoy her passions of working with animals and gossip. The parents had moved to a remote island off the coast of Mexico. I wondered if there was extradition from Mexico. A quick search showed that Mexico did have an extradition treaty with the US, so the move proved nothing. If they had been guilty, then the parents would be brought back. If I had their number, I was sure that the police and FBI would be able to find them as well. I wasn’t sure what the move had provided anyone in terms of the murder.
I would put it down to a blithe move, but Mrs. Gillespie had hung up on me. I was suspicious of anyone who would just hang up quickly without trying to find out what was going on. She hadn’t even asked about my family or made any small talk. It seemed guilty. However, I kept coming back to the fact that if they had truly run away to Mexico, they could easily be extradited and returned to the States to face a trial of murder. Had they both been involved in the murder, or had one of them confessed to the other, knowing that their spouse would not have to testify against them in court? Had running away together made them closer or just turned to its own prison?
I was getting nowhere with the Gillespies, so I came back to the missing pieces of the police report. I wondered why Sheila hadn’t called me. It wasn’t like her to go so long without calling, especially as she’d been encouraging me to follow up with Susan’s disappearance. I’d not wanted to learn her fate for so long. I’d let the police file for Susan sit fallow on my dining room table for months before opening it. However, now that I was on the trail, she’d been incredibly helpful in making things happen. I decided to give her another hour before I called her. I didn’t want to push, but I wanted the number for Robert Jones, so that I could iron out the last detail.
I went back to the file and considered the things that had been removed from the file. In retrospect, those might be the things that someone had considered most damning in terms of the case. The first had been the autopsy. For the most part, the body had been as expected. Belinda Frias had died of multiple stab wounds to the face, neck and torso. The crime was personal and heated. The only real surprise had been that she was expecting.
I thought about that again in terms of the changes to the Frias family. They would have had another mouth to feed, but the fact that she was pregnant was no big surprise. Unless – I wondered if the baby could belong to someone other than Mr. Frias. What if the baby was the result of an affair? It could have been a tryst with one of her clients or someone she knew in the neighborhood. That would provide a motive both for Mr. Frias, who might have let
his passions run away with him, even if it did cost him financially. Or it could have been the lover who had killed her. Admitting that the baby was his could have cost the lover his family and his friends. I thought about Mr. Gillespie. Would he possibly have killed Belinda Frias?
The family had arrived home at the same time. They gave each other an alibi so that all of them were in the clear. Would it have been possible for Mr. Gillespie to have crept in before the rest and killed the maid? It would have been possible, yes, but the dying screams of the woman and the amount of blood on his clothing and body would have given the matter away to the rest of the family. Had they all decided to protect their own, even in the case of murder.
I looked back over the police report. 911 had been called around 7:15. In their talks to me, they had indicated that they’d arrived home around 7pm. Since Mr. Xanthus had said that he had seen Frias alive at a few minute before 7pm, the likelihood of anyone else managing to kill Frias and escape in the matter of a few minute seemed remote. The luck involved in finding the woman alone and killing her when the return of the family could be imminent either meant that the killer didn’t care if he was apprehended by the family or he knew when the family would arrive. Only the family would have known for sure when they’d return. Either one member of the family had notified someone else, or they had committed the deed themselves.
The second piece of information taken from the police file was the report from Mr. Xanthus. He’d shared the piece of information about the timing of the murder. Instead of nearly an hour and a half, the window of opportunity had been culled to nearly ten minutes. That was a significant drop in the time that the crime could have been committed and narrowed the list of suspects down to the family.
So I wondered what the last piece of information could be. I looked at the clock and saw that nearly an hour had been spent on my ruminations. I checked my phone, but no message from Sheila. I decided to call her and see if she’d found the information I needed.
I called her and got her voicemail, but in a few seconds, my cell phone went off. Then it went off again. I picked it up and read the message. The first one was a phone number, which I assumed was for Robert Jones. I scribbled down the number as I looked at the other message.
It read “I’m in a meeting with IA about the files.” I was shocked. Had Sheila jeopardized her job in letting me read the files? I wondered what the laws were on giving out that kind of information. I knew that police reports as a whole were considered public records, but most of the internal legwork would be considered proprietary information. Likely the interviews and other information I’d read through would not be considered public, and perhaps she could get in trouble for sharing that information with me. I immediately felt bad because I’d asked for that information, and she’d willingly shared it with me.
I immediately knew who had called informed the department about the police report. It had to be Siever. I was pissed beyond belief. How could he dare to continue to intrude on my family’s life? He’d done so much harm to various people over the years that I considered him an equal conspirator with my mother.
I wasn’t sure how, but I knew that there would be payback at some point. His perfidy would have a price. It didn’t make me feel better to think that Hamlet had probably made a similar comment before the last act of the play.
I decided to make everyone’s life easier, and I hid the files. Of course, I didn’t have a grand new idea on where to hide the file. So I put them in a plastic bag, and slid them in the pan under the dog cage. It was right where Sheila had hid the files originally – the same place where I’d found them at her house. Now they were in the same place at my house. I knew that Sheila would be able to find them here if need be, but no one else would think to look there.
I didn’t hear any more from Sheila after those two texts, so I knew what I had to do. I had to solve this case and clear her name. I wanted to make sure that she’d be cleared. If the informant was an active participant in the crime, I thought that the fact would mitigate whatever reprimands would be given to her.
So I dialed the number of the last missing witness and waited for him to answer. It was a local number, but I had known that going through the 50 or so Robert Jones in the directory would have taken too long. From Sheila’s texts, time would be of the essence from here on out.
A woman answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Is Robert Jones there?” I asked, hoping against hope that I had the right phone number.
“Robert’s been dead nearly a decade.”
I cringed. My last lead in this case was gone. I decided to see if this woman knew anything about the interview. I was really grasping for what I could get now.
I tried to make my voice sound as official as I could as I spoke. “I’m working on the Frias murder case. We apparently had a statement from Robert Jones about that case, but it’s gone missing. I’m trying to look at the cold case, but obviously it’s more difficult when I don’t know what was said.”
The woman’s voice had gone up an octave when she spoke again. “Oh that case. I remember it like it was yesterday. What can I tell you about it?”
I felt a rush of hope that maybe I’d learn something here. “Do you know what the statement was about? If I could know the content, it would go a long way towards helping me solve this case.”
“Certainly. Robert had gone to the local convenience store.” She named a street address that was a mile or so from the Gillespie house. “While he was there, he saw Mr. Gillespie buying some cleaning products. He reported it to the police, and they took a statement from him.”
“I’m assuming that this was the night of the murder? It had to be, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct. It was about 7pm. I remember that because Wheel of Fortune was just coming on. That used to be Robert’s favorite show, and instead he had to run to the store to buy something. He was not happy.”
“And he saw Mr. Gillespie? Was he sure?” I thought about the statements made by the family where they were all in each other’s company for the day. If the father had been at a convenient store, what did that say for the rest of the family? Had they all lied for their father? They’d given him an alibi when he’d had none.
“Yes, he was buying some lotion or some such. I don’t remember the details, but it was him. Robert was certain of it.”
I thought about what she’d just said. That fit with the other witness who had indicated that the murder had occurred in the few minutes leading up to 7pm. Now we had the fact that the Gillespie family had lied for their father. The alibi was shot, and the family was all present at the time of the murder. Mr. Gillespie had fled the country after the fact, and they had not returned. Sheila was right that things tended to become clearer long after the fact.
“Why did the police follow up on this?” I asked, thinking that this case could have been solved within days if they’d done a proper investigation of the crime.
“They did, but it was four against one. The family all swore he was there with them, and they were convinced that an older man had to be the one who was confused. Robert was angry about it, but what could he do? Unless they brought up charges, he couldn’t testify, and if he made a deal of it in the newspapers, providing that they even would print it, then his testimony wouldn’t be worth much in court. The defense would call him a publicity hound. So his only recourse was to wait and hope that that case would be solved. He died hoping.” I could hear the frustration in her words, and I knew I would have been the same way. Actually, I would likely have just made the fuss.
Now though, there was no one to testify to this event if there ever was a trial. Jones’ statement was gone, and they wouldn’t allow the second-hand record of the events into the trial. So the wait had made it more difficult to prove this. I thought back to Susan. If she’d told what she’d known at the time, then there were people who could have supported her claims and helped to convict Mr. Gillespie. Now he was gone, and she was afraid to come h
ome.
I thought about this for a few minutes and tried to understand why it was still so dangerous for her to come home. There had to be some aspect to the case that I wasn’t getting. She’d left when she was just a teenager, and still felt that she couldn’t return as an adult. I wasn’t sure of the reasons if Mr. Gillespie was lived out of the country.
I had a few ideas on what to do next. The interview had opened up some more ideas. I was still stuck on putting together a new theory on the case, just from the evidence that was missing from the police report.
I’d started a new idea from the missing evidence when the doorbell rang. It was my mother and her sidekick, Sergeant Siever. I looked at both of them and moved away from the door so that they could come into the house.
I knew this wouldn’t end well. My mother’s lips were pressed thin, and she had that look of someone who was about to smell something unpleasant.
“You certainly get around a lot for someone who doesn’t like to go out,” I started, knowing that they had come to argue.
“I go out when I need to, and now I need to.” My mother didn’t look at me as she spoke. I recognized the gesture, but I wasn’t sure what it meant in this case. Typically that was her maneuver when she’d been caught in a lie. I just wasn’t sure what lie was applicable here.
Siever hadn’t said a word. I was glad, because I was still angry that he’d told IA about Sheila getting the file for me.
I sat down, crossed my legs, and waited. I had nowhere to go at the moment. It was my home, and I felt like I had the home court advantage. I could wait for whatever they had to say.
My mother took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa, opposite of me. Siever continued to stand where he was.
“So why exactly did you need to go out today?” I asked. The dogs were in the backyard, and hadn’t heard people come into the house. I was fine with that, because I knew it would get tense. Bess wasn’t good at handling upset people, and I was glad that she was going to miss this.
SLEEPING DOGS (Animal Instincts Book 6) Page 8