by Linda Ladd
Claire stared at him. “You don’t consider this place formal?”
“Not as much. Grandmother still owns the townhouse, but she signed this one over to me when she moved to her chalet outside Paris after she got her ambassadorship. I guess this’s as good a place to live as anywhere. It’s mine, anyway. Old Nat’s pretty good at keeping people out.”
Ambassadorship, is it? Not so shabby, that.
The rain still drummed on the roof and sluiced down the windowpanes. The fresh scent of rain was blowing in through the open front door. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
Holliday strode off toward the back of the house, and Claire looked at Black. “This is getting ridiculous. What’s going on?”
“It concerns your case. You want to hear this, believe me. He’s been putting it off. I convinced him to get you out here and tell you the truth.”
“Tell me now, damn it.”
“Just be patient. Here he comes.”
Then Holliday was back, carrying three bottles of beer. Turbodogs, like he’d ordered at the Cajun Grill, obviously his favorite kind of beer. Whatever he had to tell her, he needed some liquid encouragement or thought she needed it. She and Black took their bottles, but both set them aside on the coffee table in front of them. Jack took a swig and sat down on a blue velvet chair. Black and Claire took places on a red brocade antique sofa. Claire was getting a very bad feeling and didn’t intend to wait any longer.
“What is this, Holliday? Am I going to find some kind of evidence against you, is that it? Something you failed to tell us when we interviewed you? Please don’t tell me you killed Madonna and Wendy.”
Holliday frowned. “Hell, no. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Did you lie to us about your relationship with Madonna?”
Then came the hesitation, the dragging of feet, and the looking everywhere but at her. Crap, that did not bode well.
Finally, Holliday came out with it, or part of it. “Okay, just listen. This is complicated.”
Claire stared at him and then looked at Black. “I’m all ears. Just fire when ready.”
“It’s about your case, but it’s a personal thing, too.”
Personal? “Well, forget the personal. Tell me how it relates to my case.”
“I’m going to tell you something about somebody.”
Good grief. This guy knew his way around procrastination. She fought a desire to pull her gun and tell him to get on with it or die where he sat, but she tamped down that rather deadly impulse. Patience, patience. A virtue that Claire knew very little about. “That sounds like a good start, Jack.”
Holliday walked to a desk across the room and opened the top drawer. He pulled out a thick green file folder with an oversized red rubber band around it. He held it up. “I’ve been working on this a long time. Over ten years, to be exact.”
“So what’s this got to do with my case?” Prod, prod, pulllll it out of him.
“First off, I told you a lie when you interviewed me. I have been to Madonna’s house. Several times.”
Holy crap. “You lied to the police? That’s a crime. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I didn’t touch her. I went there for another reason, I swear to God. Something personal. And I did drink out of that glass you found.”
“Why in holy hell did you lie about it?”
Holliday stood up and started pacing around the room. Black leaned back and waited. He was the patient one, not her. Claire frowned, thinking this whole conversation was way weird. Then he started to talk as he walked back and forth in front of her. “When I first started playing in the NFL, my mom and stepdad were murdered.”
Well, that was the last thing Claire had expected him to say. “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, it was pretty awful. I went home for Christmas. They lived out in Arvada then. Colorado.” He stopped and sat down and leaned toward her as he spoke, pretty eager now that he got started. “It happened on Christmas Eve. We had dinner, sang carols, opened presents, the whole family, and then we went to bed. Somebody broke into the house that night. We never found out who it was. They shot my mom and stepdad, once in the head and once in the heart, with a silencer, execution style, and then they took my two little sisters. Neither of them has ever been found.”
Claire was appalled, mostly by the pain twisting Jack Holliday’s features. This man had not gotten over the murder of his family, not by a long shot. But the M.O. sounded a lot like the one described by Father Gerard. “What about you, Jack? You were there, too, right?”
“I left the house just after midnight to meet my girlfriend.”
“Well, thank God, or you’d probably be dead, too.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, and his eyes grew hard. “I should’ve been there. I could’ve stopped it.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Jack,” Black said in his calm and perfectly modulated shrink voice.
“Well, I do.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Claire said in her regular and un-modulated cop voice.
“That night? I was changing clothes and getting ready to go meet Amber, and one of the twins, my little half-sis, Jenny, she came into my room. She was three. I can remember that so clearly, every single word we said.” His eyes were recalling it now, reliving it, going back to that night. “Jenny and Jill were just beautiful—identical, big brown eyes and this shiny long platinum-blond hair that fell down their backs in ringlets. They looked like my mom. That night Jenny was barefoot and she had on this little red fleece nightgown with a picture of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the front. I’ll never forget that gown. It had a nose made out of one of those little red fuzzy pom-pom things. My mom gave them matching gowns to wear on Christmas Eve.”
He started prowling around the room again. Claire glanced at Black, and he shook his head.
“Jenny was scared. She said the bogeyman was out in the yard. She said that she saw him hiding out in the trees when she looked out her bedroom window. I was in a hurry, and young and stupid and self-centered, so I told her to quit being a baby and go back to bed, that there wasn’t any such thing as a bogeyman. Then I told her that Santa Claus wasn’t going to come if she didn’t hush up and go to sleep.”
His voice actually broke when he said the last part. Claire understood his guilt. She had done things she regretted in her past, was still doing them. “And you think the killer really was outside, waiting?”
“Yes, and so did the police. Mom and Roger were material witnesses to a Mob hit. They were going to testify that coming February. That’s what the police believed. But the killer was a real pro. He left nothing behind. The case eventually went cold.”
“Jack, I am so sorry that happened to you.”
“I got home around three o’clock in the morning. That’s when I found my mom and stepdad shot to death in their bed. The back door was open. Jenny and Jill were gone. I called 911, and then the real nightmare began.”
“They accused you.” Claire realized how that could happen. In fact, that would be proper police procedure. Always check out the remaining family members first. “But you managed to prove yourself innocent.”
He nodded. “My girlfriend and her parents vouched for me. I was at their house the whole time.”
“But you still blame yourself.”
“I could’ve stopped it. I know I could have. If I hadn’t gone out that night, if I had just listened to Jenny and looked around outside, told my parents, let them call the police, they’d all still be alive.”
At that point, it occurred to Claire that this was the kind of story that would be hard to hide from the media. “I did a background check on you, Jack. Nothing about these murders turned up.”
“My mom had remarried, had a different name. We lived in a different state. I hadn’t played in the Super Bowl yet so wasn’t all that famous except at Tulane. The media never got hold of it.”
“And they never found the perpetrator?”
So Jack Holliday hadn’t led such a charmed life, after all. He had mourned, lost loved ones, suffered survival guilt and loneliness. Claire knew exactly how all that felt, and all too well. “Has he found out anything? Do you think it’s the same guy we’re looking for? The one who killed Madonna and Wendy?”
“Yeah, I do. Book finally ran that down. He uncovered other murders around the country with the same M.O. as my parents.”
“Good, I need to talk to him. Compare notes. This could be the break that we’ve been waiting for.”
Jack frowned, heaved a deep sigh, and took another swig of beer. “Nick doesn’t like you being involved in this, but I can’t help it. You’re already involved.”
Suddenly, something in their serious expressions brought up a new wave of innate wariness that gripped Claire hard, because now she was not quite sure where it was going. But it wasn’t going to be good, no matter what it was. “Of course, I’m involved. I want this guy as much as you do.”
Black put his hand on her knee. “Listen, Claire, one of the cases Booker turned up concerns Madonna and Wendy.”
Claire turned and searched his face. “So Madonna Christien has a credible connection to the murder of Jack’s family? How is she connected?”
Jack said, “It’s the abduction when she was little, but she survived. Her parents were also murdered when a killer came into their house and took her captive, but she and Wendy got away. The killer marked the inside of their wrists with that voodoo symbol, but they didn’t see his face. He wore some kind of mask.”
Claire nodded. “Yeah, we saw the tats. Wendy told us about the abduction and so did Madonna’s grandmother. It’s got to be the same guy.”
“Yeah, that’s what we think, too. He took my sisters, just like he took Maddie and Wendy. They were just too little to get away from him.”
“This is going to complicate our case, but maybe the information Booker’s got on the killer can help us. We’re getting close now. We found information that this guy is a homegrown assassin or Mob hit man, something like that, and he’s probably still around here, waiting for his next contract kill.”
Jack said, “We think he’s killing off any surviving victims, one at a time.”
Everything he said had concrete connections to her case. Claire was getting excited and eager to compare notes. She jumped up. “Let’s go. I want to talk to Booker and read that file. I’m calling Zee and getting him in on this.”
Black shook his head. “Wait a minute, Claire. There’s more.”
Claire sank back into the chair. “What? Tell me. Hurry, we need to get going on this. This could be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”
Holliday looked uncomfortable. Apparently, they’d saved the best for last. “You’re involved, too, Claire.”
“You bet I am. I’m gonna help you get this guy. I can’t wait to get him. And the puzzle’s coming together. I just found out that this assassin was known to take children out of the home after he hit a family. Don’t you see? That ties him to your family and Madonna’s, just like you said. We’ve just got to put together the connections, figure out how the two families were chosen, find the common denominator.”
“Your involvement’s more than that, Claire,” Black said quietly.
Now he had her. What was coming next, she could not imagine. “Okay, shoot, out with it. Just tell me! For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you two?”
Holliday looked away, looked back, looked everywhere but at her. “He hit somebody close to you, too, Claire.”
Relaxing, Claire knew then that he was way off base. “A lot of stuff happened to me in my childhood, bad stuff, but nothing that concerned a sanctioned hit.”
Black said, “It’s Gabe, Claire.”
“Gabe?”
“Booker found out about him. He was abducted, too, when he was young. He and his little sister named Sophie. We think the same guy that took them also took Jenny and Jill.”
“No, his parents and sister died in a car crash somewhere down in Alabama a year or so after I left. Gabe survived. I didn’t find out about it until years after it happened.”
Holliday said, “We think Gabe and his sister were taken by this same man. We found out that he held them for a month, after he shot Gabe’s mom and dad to death. Just like my mom and stepdad.”
“But that’s just crazy. Somebody would’ve told me. Gabe would’ve told me.”
Black said, “Maybe they had a reason to cover it up. We’re sure of our facts, Claire.”
Claire got up and did some pacing herself. “Why would they want to cover it up? It doesn’t make sense.”
Black stood up. “Maybe we should go down to the Bayou Blue and ask the LeFevres brothers, or simply confront Gabe about it. See if they’ll tell you the truth now. But we’re gonna have to talk to them, Claire. We didn’t want to do it without telling you first. Gabe survived. He just might have the clues we need to find the killer. If he does, we want them.”
Claire stared mutely at them, lapsing into near shock mode. She stared at Holliday and then at Black. What they said didn’t make sense, but they were both convinced it was true. Something bizarre was going on. “If this is true, I can’t think of a single reason why they wouldn’t tell me. Gabe and I are tight. I haven’t seen him much through the years, but we’ve run into each other a few times.”
Jack said, “Maybe the killer saw everyone coming back here, saw me talking to Madonna, saw you investigating, meeting up with Gabe, all of that stuff. Maybe that’s the reason he lobbed a grenade at you the other night, to get rid of Gabe and you both, since you’re investigating him. All that together could be making him nervous enough to try to kill off anybody that might be able to ID him.” He paused. “And there’s something else.”
“Great.”
“Madonna didn’t seek me out. When Booker told me that she and Wendy had been kidnap victims, I approached Wendy and tried to get her to talk and see what she remembered. When she told me about Madonna, I spent time with her, too, secretly, you know, buttered her up some, I guess you’d say. That’s when she started hounding me. Wendy was more sensible. I found out they were scared back then but that they’d seen him with paint on his face and a mask. They were going to let us do an artist’s sketch of the kidnapper’s mask. Somehow he found out about it, I guess. I don’t know. Then all of a sudden she was dead. And then Wendy was dead. And then you and Gabe and Nick were attacked on the houseboat and left for dead.”
Trying to absorb it all, Claire had to have time to think about it. And there were lots of people she wanted to talk to. “Okay, I’ve got it now. Gabe will talk to me, if I confront him. He trusts me. Let me look into this. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not so sure I believe the part about Gabe. But I’m sure as hell going to find out right now.”
“And I’m going with you,” Black said.
Jack handed over Booker’s file, and they took off in Claire’s SUV and headed back to town. “Let’s go to the Bayou Blue first, Black. I want to know what Clyde and Luc and the others know about all this before I bother Gabe with it.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. This is all crazy. We’re talking crimes that were committed decades apart.”
“Take a look in Booker’s file. See if that convinces you.”
Claire picked it up and used her new phone’s flashlight app for illumination. She did not want to do thi
s, but she had to. She opened the green file and picked up the first page and started to read.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Bayou Blue looked deserted, both restaurants closed up for the night. The rain poured down in a flood and made it hard for Black to see the road. He pulled in close to the steamboat’s gangplank. Claire felt confused, trying to figure out where all this was going and if Gabe had really played a part in Jack Holliday’s scenario of the killer’s past crimes. Had the murders of Madonna Christien and Wendy Rodriguez really been perpetrated by the same man who’d killed Jack’s parents? And why hadn’t Gabe told her about that, instead of allowing her to believe his family members had died in an automobile accident? They had mentioned it just the other night.
It was just way too bizarre, all of it. Right now, she was after answers. And she was going to get them from the LeFevres brothers, whether they liked it, or not. The more she had run through the facts with Black during the ride over, the less likely it seemed that everything was connected. Black believed Jack’s theory, but she felt there had to be another explanation, mistaken identity or something.
Clyde LeFevres was sitting at the bar in the Cajun Grill, relaxing in a sleeveless ribbed undershirt and khaki pants, white suspenders hanging down at his sides. He was drinking the strong mud he actually described as coffee. When he saw Claire barge through the door in a state of stiff-jawed determination with Black right behind her, he stood up, seemed delighted to see her, waving and grinning, but that certainly wasn’t going to last long.
“What you doin’ here so late, chère? C’mon, let me get you a bit of dis nice strong coffee, yeah?”
“Okay. Sure.”
“How ’bout you, Nick?”
“Yes, please.”
Keep calm, keep calm, approach the interview like a detective, not a betrayed friend. Claire perched herself on a stool and watched him round the bar and pour all of them a cup from a carafe. “You just in time. Rene comin’ in to play some poker wit’ us. He be here any time. How you doin’, Nick?”