Neal did exactly as Jack directed. Once seated, he leaned forward against the table, folded his hands together, then separated them briefly before folding them again.
“We have unfortunate news about your employee, Tara Day.”
I was glad Jack was handling this. I hated being involved in notifications, even if I wasn’t the one delivering the news. Jack probably wasn’t happy that we’d been left to do the police department’s job, but given the circumstances, we didn’t have much choice.
“What’s wrong with Tara?” Neal’s voice sounded rough.
“She was found in her home yesterday. Murdered.” Jack’s last word sank in the air like a boulder pitched into the sea, without the splash.
Neal’s face paled, and his eyes misted. “I…I had no idea.” His voice was gravely.
“You were close with Tara?” I asked.
He nodded, then shook his head. “Well, she was my employee, nothing more, but she started out in the file room as a co-op student. She worked her way up to an accounting clerk position. She told me she was wanted to be a certified public accountant one day.” A tear fell down his cheek, and he was quick to wipe it away. “What happened? I mean, how did it happen? I can’t believe anyone would do this to her.”
“We’re trying to figure out who and why. We need to confirm that both Tara and Glen were expected in for overtime yesterday.” Jack’s tone was unforgiving but not altogether unsympathetic.
“Yeah, well, we’re a small firm, as you can see, but we have a large workload. I did ask them to come in.”
“Were they the only two scheduled to work yesterday?” I asked, suddenly having an idea worth exploring. Being an FBI agent, I analyzed and suspected most everyone, so Neal was no different. If he had murdered Tara, he could have arranged for Glen to find her and become the prime suspect. It was a reach, but nonetheless a possibility.
“No, I had five employees scheduled to come in.”
“And were you here?” I asked.
“No.”
That would explain how Glen had kept his no-show quiet from Neal.
“What did you know about Tara’s personal life?” Jack asked.
“Nothing really. I just knew that she was a good employee. A solid character.”
Jack continued. “She’s been described as a flirt. What are your thoughts on that?”
“It was no secret Tara liked men. And they liked her back.” His wet eyes shifted from Jack to me. “One of these men did this to her, didn’t they?”
His question was more a statement, and I proceeded to show him Cheryl’s photograph and he said he didn’t recognize her.
Jack flipped a business card on the table, and it slid across, coming to a stop in front of Neal. “Call us if you think of anything that might be useful. Are you going to be around in the next few days?”
That was Jack’s way of telling him not to go anywhere. Based on how he normally told people what to do, it kind of surprised me. Maybe he did have a soft spot when it came to notifications, too. And here I had started to wonder if he was completely without empathy.
-
Chapter 10
WHEN WE GOT TO THE firm’s parking lot, Jack checked his phone for messages. He had it on speaker until the system announced there were three.
As he retrieved his voice mail I thought about the severed ring fingers left in the two women’s laps. What was our unsub trying to tell us? Had he been cheated on and had his heart broken? Was it more complicated than that or less so?
From there, I gave some consideration to Paige’s line of thinking about Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Was our killer leaving clues associated with the phrase or were we reaching to find them? I had to admit we had potentially three out of the four after Paige’s observation that Tara’s earrings seemed to belong to Cheryl.
He hung up. “The police have notified Tara’s family, and Nadia didn’t find any connection between Glen Little and Cheryl Bradley.”
I nodded to acknowledge what he had said, got in the car, and clicked my seat belt into place. “What do you make of Glen and Neal?” I glanced over at Jack, expecting a response, but he was too busy lighting his cigarette and taking a puff. I lowered my window. There was nothing worse than hot air and the stench of tobacco.
After he seemed to get some satisfaction, the nicotine making its way through his bloodstream, he responded. “It’s too early to tell, kid.”
“I find Glen’s sexual preference interesting,” I said. His cynical attitude must have rubbed off on me, making me see everyone through eyes of judgment. “Neither woman was raped. So maybe he was seeking some sort of retribution for a past pain of his. Maybe he had started off mocking a system that didn’t embrace same-sex marriage?” I paused my brainstorming, partially assessing whether Jack was listening. He had turned the car on but sat there indulging in his filthy habit. I continued. “I guess he’d take it out on men, then, not women.”
“Not necessarily. He could be making a statement about the traditional wedding. But you are forgetting one key point.” He turned his head to me, thankfully leaving his hand holding the cigarette perched on the window ledge. “We don’t have anything connecting Glen to Cheryl Bradley.”
“Yet. It could simply be a matter of knowing where to look. What are your thoughts on Neal?”
“I wonder about him more than Glen.”
I positioned my upper body to face Jack. “He could have invented the overtime as a ruse,” I expounded on my earlier thought.
“Hmm.”
And there was the infamous guttural sound that had the ability to either render me speechless or deliver praise. In this instance, its intention seemed neutral.
“I’ll have Nadia check his background and see where it leads.” I had the phone to my ear without waiting for his go-ahead. Jack liked initiative sometimes, and I had a feeling this would be one of those times. Seconds later, I was hanging up. “She’ll take care of it.”
Then I seemed to lose Jack to his addiction again. He sat there puffing away, and based on the glaze over his eyes, he was giving something a lot of his concentration. I found myself wondering what, but experience cautioned me to leave it alone. Jack was never one to talk about himself, and it was painful trying to initiate any real discussion on his life. I still didn’t know if he had a kid. He had mentioned knowing what it was like to have one, but any time I tried to start a dialogue on the topic, he shot it down before the conversation gained any traction. The last time he had essentially confessed to fabricating a child, but I think it was to get me to stop pressing the issue.
I straightened in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield at the wooden fence in front of us. With the conversation having run its natural course, I turned back to Paige’s theory.
“Something blue,” I pondered aloud. Not that I expected it to get a discussion going with Jack, but a sense of acknowledgment would have been nice. Moments like this tested my patience. And with my temper naturally living close to the surface, it wasn’t easy to master my emotions, but I was trying. Some times I did better than other times. I repeated what I had said. “Something blue.”
“I heard you, kid. When you say something worth responding to, I will.”
The familiar rush of adrenaline surged through me, heating my earlobes, raising the hairs on my neck, speeding the beat of my heart, and causing a blend of chill and warmth to wash through me. “You don’t find it interesting that the killer took the earrings off Cheryl and put them on Tara? It makes me wonder where he got Cheryl’s earrings. Was she the first?” The true meaning of what this implied finally sank in. He may have killed before regardless of the fact that the databases didn’t support this possibility. There were no other cases with this same MO—death by compressive asphyxiation or any women dressed in wedding
gowns and left in tubs.
“Now, you’re getting on point.”
Was that praise? He didn’t back it with a smile or eye contact. He just flicked the cigarette butt out the window to the gravel of the parking lot.
Maybe Jack had gone through more in his life than I gave him credit for. Maybe that explained why he rode his team in a way that left no room for error.
“We better get over to the Days’ residence,” I said.
“Yep.” He pulled out of the lot, and we didn’t talk on the way over to Tara’s parents’ place.
-
Chapter 11
TARA’S PARENTS LIVED IN A grand two-story house with a double-wide driveway spacious enough to hold the six vehicles parked there with room to spare. The three-bay garage likely held more cars.
A pale and haggard woman answered the door. She told us she was Tara’s aunt—and mentioned how fortunate it was that the family all lived in town. She led us to an upper-level sitting room where the Days sat on a couch, holding hands. “Please don’t be too long. They’re going through a lot.”
The combination of her words and the sight before me snagged in my gut. Human nature would have me recoiling and giving them space to grieve, but unfortunately, the demands of the job wouldn’t permit such an allowance. We needed to know what they knew about Tara’s personal affairs. All we had to go on was the assumption Tara was either engaged or in a committed relationship.
I sat on a sofa chair positioned at the edge of the sitting room, and Jack settled into a wingback chair situated across from the couch.
I looked over at Tara’s mother. Iris Day was trim and fashionable. Her blond hair had dark lowlights and was cropped in a bob. Her glasses had thick black rims, and the shape of the lenses and frame suited her angular face. She held her husband’s hand, and with the other, she held a bunched-up tissue, her long pink fingernails digging into the gauzy textile.
Her husband, Reggie, resembled Pierce Brosnan. Crease lines etched his brow and around his mouth, giving him a charismatic air, though it would have aged anyone else. His dark wavy hair would be the envy of some men his age who already sought Rogaine treatment and touch-ups for grays. He caressed his wife’s hand with the pad of his thumb.
“Why would someone do this to our little girl?” His voice trembled like a man twenty years older, the cause not age but pain.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I said. Jack’s strength was getting the truth from people; mine was diplomacy and empathy. “Was your daughter engaged?”
“No.” Iris sniffled and pressed the used tissue to her nose, then discarded it on the cushion next to her. She plucked a fresh one from the box beside her.
“The police told us she was…found in her tub.” Reggie paused and ran a hand over his mouth. “And she was in a wedding dress?”
“Yes.” I waited a few seconds, hating to ask the same question again. “And you’re sure she wasn’t engaged?”
“She would have told me.” Iris made eye contact with me, tears streaming down her cheeks as she did so. “She dreamed of a white wedding from the time she could walk. She’d always dress up like a bride and play wedding.” The sobs heaved from her chest.
“What about boyfriends? Anyone your daughter mentioned recently?” I asked this of Reggie, giving Iris the time she needed to compose herself.
“Our daughter was always dating. She seemed to need a man to make her feel complete.”
It was pretty much exactly what Glen had said about Tara. “What about her friends? They might know if she was dating someone and who.”
“Reanne is her closest friend. Her BFF, she calls her…called her.” Iris blew her nose. “I mean, was and she used to…”
Again, a twist of pain curled through me in empathy as to what they must be going through. I needed to make time to call my parents. I wasn’t the best child, by any means. They lived their lives, and I lived mine. It was the excuse I made for myself, a justification for not calling, for not having an active role in their lives.
“We’ll need her last name and a way to reach her,” Jack said.
I was glad he’d stepped in on this one. I wasn’t really sure what was going on with me just then. I’d been around those who’d lost loved ones before, many times. Maybe being cold and distant had its purpose, too.
-
Chapter 12
REANNE OFFERED TEA TO ME and Jack as she topped off her glass with whiskey from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table next to her. After screwing on the lid and putting it back down, she settled deeper into the sofa chair, tucking her legs beneath her.
“I can’t believe she’s gone.” She held the drink to her lips, her hand quaking and causing the liquid to slosh over the edge. She wiped it with her fingers and licked them.
Jack and I were sitting across from her on the couch. I was impressed it held our weight as it looked like one of those cheap, slap-together models.
“Was Tara engaged?” Jack asked the question, getting right to the point.
Reanne shook her head, a slip of her tongue darting out between her lips. “No. She desperately wanted to be, though. She had been before.”
I had been wondering about that since we’d learned she hadn’t been engaged at the time of her death. Where did the ring come from, then? Did the unsub bring it with him? Was it something borrowed like the earrings were? It was ironic that Iris was so adamant about knowing if her daughter had been engaged when Tara actually had been at one time.
“Did she hold on to the ring?” I asked.
“Yeah. She was hopeless. She thought having a man defined her, determined importance in life. If she didn’t have a guy, well, she was a loser. I can only imagine what she thought of me.”
I looked down at Reanne’s left ring finger. “You’re married.”
“Yeah, exactly. She probably secretly hated me. After all, who was I to preach that she didn’t need a man when I’m a kept woman? My husband makes enough for the household. I go to yoga and Zumba classes during the day. I could have a maid if I wanted to, but I view housecleaning as another workout.”
“Did you ever see the ring?”
“Of course. She wore it on a gold chain around her neck.”
I couldn’t help thinking Iris Day wasn’t very observant when it came to her daughter. I also wondered why she kept the engagement from her parents. “When was she engaged?”
“A couple years ago. He was in a bad car accident a year ago that left him paralyzed and brain damaged.”
Given that new information, we could rule him out as a suspect, but it didn’t hurt to gather details for the record. “What was her fiancé’s name?”
“Shane Bishop. He lives in town.”
“Did you know that her mother never knew about the engagement?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Tara didn’t want to be a disappointment to her mother.”
“A disappointment?”
“Yeah. Tara wanted to make sure the relationship was solid before telling her anything… You’d have to know Mrs. Day.”
I nodded and unclipped my phone. Selecting a picture of Tara in the tub, I zoomed in on the ring and held it out for Reanne. She would see a bit of her friend’s severed finger, but there was nothing I could do about that. “Is that the ring?”
Her eyes were full of tears as she bobbed her head.
I glanced at Jack. Finally, some confirmation. The ring was Tara’s and hadn’t been brought by the killer. So he’d need to have been close enough to Tara to know she was engaged at one time and still had the ring in her apartment. And, by extension, where to look for it. I didn’t remember a jewelry box on her dresser.
“You said having a boyfriend was how she defined herself,” Jack began. “Was she seeing anyone recently?”
Reanne’s eyes darted between us. “I think so, but before you ask, I don’t know who. She never told me his name. I have a feeling he was married, whether I want to believe it or not.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“She was always the kind to kiss and tell, but with him, it wasn’t the same. She was quiet and secretive.”
A form of abuse could be one cause for such a change in behavior. The man might have been prone to jealousy. It didn’t necessarily mean he was married, but if he was our unsub, then he’d have had other reasons to request Tara’s discretion.
Reanne took a gulp of her drink and ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “Actually…” She paused there, her eyes glazing over as though she was lost in thought. Her gaze aligned with mine. “She said he was older than she was. I asked by how much and her answer was ‘never mind.’”
So Tara had gotten involved with an older man who may or may not have been married. He’d had the ability to change the way she normally responded in relationships. It told me he’d wielded some kind of control over her.
“Tara never appreciated me telling her she had her whole life ahead of her,” Reanne went on. “I mean, look at all I have.”
I took a second to assess her claim. She was married and supported financially by her husband. Their house was one I would consider average, but what Reanne truly had, aside from the wedding band, was freedom to live her life the way she saw fit.
“I got married at nineteen,” she continued. “I love my husband, don’t get me wrong, but I sometimes wonder if I should have lived carefree first.” Her eyelids narrowed as she leered at me. I dismissed it as the alcohol.
Jack and I got up, passed her a card, and thanked her for her help. Part of me hated to leave her alone, but there wasn’t any other option. I wondered where her doting husband was now that she needed his support.
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