by Gregg Olsen
“They said I could go. I'm gonna be fine. Won't be looking good on the beach, but I guess I never really did. But I'll be all right.”
“You sure?”
He reached into his pocket and held out a letter written on pale lavender stationery. “Yeah, and like I said, I brought proof about Janet's plan to kill Paul.”
“What's this?” Raines asked, unfolding what appeared to be a letter written by a woman, a very young woman, judging by the handwriting. Raines recognized the penmanship instantly. It was the scrawl made by Janet Lee Kerr. A smattering of the i's had been dotted with hearts.
Deke urged him to read. “It's from Janet. You be the judge.”
The letter was dated more than a year ago.
Dear Sugarbutt,
I miss you when you aren't around. Every time a sad song comes on the radio, I think of you...I'm missing you and I can't wait for the day when we are a family. You, me and Lindy.
We gotta do what we've been talking about. Court is coming up soon and mom says that if we don't take care of our problem, we're in deep shit. Sugarbutt, you know that I'm depending on you. Lindy, too. Even mom thinks you are a real man (she doesn't think that about too many guys!)
I want him dead (bang! bang! and its over). We can make it look like a robbery or something. God, he'll probably be drunk anyhow. Better burn this little note! If you don't, could give us some trouble later.
Love you,
Janet
P.S. There's a monster truck show in Seattle on Saturday. I really, really wanna go!
Underneath the postscript, in another's handwriting were the words: Don't disappoint me or my Janet. I want this done right!
Raines asked the obvious, to be one hundred percent certain. This would be filed under the too-good-to-be-true category.
“Janet sent this to you?”
“Yeah, she did. But I didn't burn it. I saved it. I saved all of 'em.”
“I'm glad that you did, but why?”
“Because I loved her. God, no woman ever wrote me a love note before. I guess...I guess I still love her a little bit. I just wanted you to see that I wasn't lying about nothing.” His voice caught a little and it seemed for a moment that he might cry.
“You all right?”
Deke fought for composure. “Yeah, when I think about all that Janet and I could have had...our own trailer...our wedding in Vegas...taking Lindy to the beach to dig in the sand and shit.”
“I'm sorry,” Raines said, as the two walked back toward his office, out of view of the others.
“I guess even though she tried to kill me, I just now realized how much I still love her.”
Those were dangerous words. Raines had heard them before. A woman whose second husband had beaten her with more black bruises than a garbage can full of spoiled bananas came immediately to mind. She had made a complaint from her hospital bed while her teenage daughter stood in loving support.
Never again, Mother, never again.
Forty-eight hours after her release, the woman called Raines to announce that she would not be pressing charges. It had been her fault. The medication at Pac-O had clouded her judgment.
“I realize how much I still love him,” she said.
Six months later, on Christmas Eve, the daughter reported her mother was missing. The husband said she went shopping and never returned. The girl put up posters. She ran ads. She even called TruTV. Her mother was never heard from again.
Probably dead, Raines thought. Probably buried in a shallow grave somewhere off a logging road in Pierce County. Probably because she realized how much she still loved him.
Raines changed the subject. He didn't want Deke Cameron to labor over the love of his girlfriend. He wanted to nail Janet and her mother to the wall. Again, the question was an obvious one.
“Do you know who wrote the last line?”
Deke looked surprised. “Of course, Mr. Raines. It was Connie. Connie wrote that.”
The detective knew handwriting analysis would bear it out. Welcome Wagon reject Mrs. Carter was up to her neck in a conspiracy to commit murder.
The detective scooted papers off an office chair and motioned for Deke to have a seat. He wanted a better handle on the relationship between mother and daughter.
Deke Cameron was only too glad to oblige. “Like I said, it was a love-hate, really hate-hate relationship, half the time, anyway. It was like they were there for each other and against each other at the same time. Weird. One minute it was I love you, the next I wanna kill her. Janet thought her mother fucked up her life, her sister's, too.”
“What's with the sister?” Raines asked. No one knew much, if anything, about Connie's youngest daughter.
Deke shifted his weight and grimaced. The pain pills were wearing off and he needed more.
“What's to say? I never met Jett. She was in and out of foster homes and when they didn't work out, they shipped her to her aunt's east of the mountains. It was like they didn't want her around. Connie used to say that Jett reminded her of the bad old days.”
-
THREE HOURS AFTER WAITING AROUND for a judge to sign an arrest warrant, Martin Raines returned to Seastack Avenue. Connie was still in her bathrobe when she opened the door and peered through the mesh of a torn aluminum screen. Alcohol vapors strong enough to be a fire hazard came from her heavy, smoky breath.
“Connie Carter?” the detective asked.
“You again?” she snarled. “Yeah, you know who I am. I guess you're here to apologize, but I'm not accepting it. Not on your fat butt will I accept it. I'm gonna sue.”
Raines smiled.
“You're under arrest for the conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of first-degree murder,” he said.
Connie's cigarette fell from her lips.
“You have the right to remain silent...”
-
THE NEXT MORNING, APRIL RAINES brought the paper to her husband as he toweled off from his shower.
“Look at the front page,” she said. “Your two favorite gals.”
Raines shook his head. Two photographs, one of Connie and one of Janet stared at him. Both were mug shots, blank-eyed, messy-haired.
The headline read:
LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER?
DID TWO TIMBERLAKE WOMEN PLOT TO KILL TWO MEN?
Raines gave the newspaper back to his wife.
“The public defender's going to have to run these two through a car wash to clean them up for a jury,” he said, dropping his towel and stepping naked onto the bathroom scale.
Good, he thought. He was down four pounds.
Skipping those breakfast muffins had been a fine idea.
♦
I looked over Val's markup. There were no encouraging words. No telling me what to put on my list. She caught a couple of typos that Spellcheck missed. Nothing else. I inputted her changes and stared out the window. I was sure of only one thing: None of this had been worth it. None of this would have happened if I'd only written romance or Westerns.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Saturday, October 19
MY DAUGHTERS WERE GETTING A LITTLE OLD for the annual romp in the pumpkin patch, but they were pretty good sports about going—or at least getting into the Honda to head in that direction. Whining was at a tolerably low level. I was very grateful. I had more to contend with than I could handle. About ten miles outside of Port Gamble a farmer grew some of the best pumpkins north of Half Moon Bay. We had been going there for four years in search of the pumpkin with the most character. We were not a family that aspired to carve the most beautiful pumpkin. Not at all. We sought the pumpkin that had a little personality that we could play up when we carved it. Our first year we carved Angelina Jolie out of a freakish pumpkin that had sizeable lumps on its sides. We thought they'd make perfect cheekbones.
We had yet to top our Jolie-o-lantern.
Last year we found one with an elongated oval shape and we tried to make Jay Leno of Tonight Show, but most people t
hought it was a “terrific Frankenstein.”
This year we'd outdo ourselves. Because, this year, I'd leave it up to the girls to do their own carvings. I wasn't going to compete. Valerie wasn't going to offer design tips. We were going to let them find their own and do their own thing.
It was the only way to get them to go to the patch this year.
“Kind of round,” I said to Taylor, as she gripped a five-pounder.
“Round is what I want.”
“A little smooth... a little perfect,” I added.
She put her hand on her hip, a gesture she had copied from her mother and sighed. “Dad, you said it was our turn.”
I gave in. “Right.”
I looked over at Hayley and Valerie. Hayley's selection appeared to be equally, well, perfect.
“Ready for the hay ride?” I asked.
The girls shook their heads.
“Dad, we're almost twelve. We were beyond hay rides last year,” Hayley said.
Valerie put her arm around me. “The best pumpkin patch trip ever,” she said. “I hate that damn hay ride, too.”
I shrugged. I wanted the outing to last longer than five minutes. If I had known they were going to pick out globe-shaped pumpkins the size of perfect basketballs, I'd have taken them to the mountain of orange piled in front of Safeway.
“Cider?” I asked, a little hopefully.
Three quick affirmative responses told me that I had found something on which all four of us could agree. The cider tradition would remain intact. As we sipped the sweet, cinnamon-scented drink, I knew that the next time my girls would likely go on a hay ride was when they had children of their own. Then, again, I thought, maybe they'd just send grandpa.
When we got home, we spread out a layer of newspaper and got out the carving tools, the knives, and big spoons. Val and I drank coffee, and once the girls removed the pumpkin's cold, slippery guts, we rinsed and seasoned the seeds for roasting. I resisted offering advice to the girls on how to make their pumpkins look more original.
In the end, they were wonderful. They looked just like...jack-o-lanterns.
Taylor asked me to cut in some eyebrows to overhang her triangle-eye cutouts. I rooted around the kitchen for the littlest Ginsu knife.
“Valerie, have you seen Hop Sing?” I asked. I hated to ask because I had the feeling that it was probably my fault that it wasn't in the case. I had failed at consistency when it came to putting things back where they belonged.
She looked up from the oven where she was turning the pumpkin seeds with a wooden spoon. A sweet and savory scent drifted through the kitchen. “The Bonanza character or the Ginsu knife?
“The knife,” I said, annoyed.
“Top drawer. In the case.”
I shrugged. “I looked. Couldn't find it.”
She shut the oven door. “Probably in the dishwasher. I hate it when our kids play with knives.”
“Yeah, me too. Those knives aren't dishwasher safe.”
“That's not what I meant,” she said, smiling at me.
“I know, just joking, just trying to put a little humor back into our lives.”
♦
THAT NIGHT I COULDN't SLEEP. I dragged a pillow to the white sofa and pulled an afghan that Val had casually draped over one side to conceal a few of the most notable stains. I wondered about our missing knife. It dawned on me that I hadn't seen Hop Sing in weeks. Nobody had. I thought of the pennies my daughters had sliced in two. I thought of the infomercial on QVC that had induced me to dial the 800 number to order the set of knives.
The host, a Papa Smurf-coiffed guy in an expensive sweater, spoke over a video clip showing a little Asian girl as she sliced and diced everything from pennies to a sorry-looking chicken carcass.
“Easy as can be! The knife that can cut through coins and loins...we make no bones about how good these knives are! No bones? In fact, this knife cuts through bones like butter.”
The little girl whacked a rib bone in two and smiled.
“Dear God,” I said to myself. My heart almost stopped beating.
Mrs. Parker had been slashed with such force that the lab geeks assumed it had been a man who had done so because the knife used had cut into her bone. They assumed only a man could have wielded such fury. But as I sat up on the couch, clutching the afghan, I knew it might not have been a man. It easily could have been a woman accompanied by Hop Sing.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I buried my face into the crochet webbing of the afghan. I didn't want to think the thoughts that were spinning in my head. I fought it. I wanted to think of anything—anyone—else. If the murder weapon was our missing Ginsu knife and I hadn't been the killer, the only other person in our household who could have done it was—Valerie.
My wife's words came back to haunt me.
Tell me what to do, Kevin. Tell me how I can help you make this book a success. I'll do anything.
And...
Sometimes a wife has to take matters into her own hands.
I tried to sleep. I tried to forget. I wanted to put it out of my mind. I could do none of that. I was awake with worry until the pink light of dawn filled the gaps in the blinds.
The next morning Valerie, her hair piled up in a faded yellow towel that had been a wedding gift thirteen years before, came into the kitchen while I was putting the rosewood case holding the four knives into a plastic bag. She pushed the button on the coffee maker she had filled with coffee and water the night before. The water burped, the machine sputtered, and steam puffed from its top.
“Where are you taking those?” she asked, getting the milk out for her coffee.
“They're getting a little dull. I think the pumpkin carving was a little hard on them. I'm taking them in for sharpening.”
“Oh, I thought they came with a guarantee they'd never need sharpening.”
I played dumb and folded the bag over and used a strip of masking tape to seal it.
“Really?” I said. “Guess I didn't know that. Besides, after the Rita experience, nothing on TV should be taken for gospel.”
I hoped that I was wrong about everything.
♦
Monday, October 21
THERE WAS FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE the bus dropped the girls off at the corner, and though it had been my practice to wait in the LUV for them when they were younger, I felt secure enough to let my sixth-graders walk the block home. Valerie and I had argued about that decision a bit. She reminded me of recent news stories of young girls from New Mexico and Oregon who were snatched a few steps from their front doors.
“We cannot be with them every second of the day, Val. Sometimes we've got to stand back a little. They have to grow up.”
After I had said that, I agonized through every second after 3:45 when the bus screeched down the hill and stopped. I often timed the pickup of the daily newspaper for 3:45 p.m., though the Kitsap Sun was a morning edition. I was certain the girls saw through my ulterior motive, but I didn't care. Nothing was going to happen to my children on my watch.
I had fifteen minutes.
Among Valerie's graphic design magazines, I recovered a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of Artist Today. It was stacked neatly in the bookcase, as neat as a librarian would, I thought. I flipped to the article on silk-content papers. Kubuta's bright orange sun logo with the blue background stabbed at my eyes. I found the article. There was no mistaking it. I turned to the back of the magazine, hoping to find a reader service card still bound to its spine.
God, let me be wrong about this.
But the card was missing. The slim edge, the remnant of the perforated card, taunted me. It was gone. Valerie had indeed ordered the samples from the magazine. It could not be true. I ran the scenario over and over. Yes, she had access to the Weasel-Die; yes she ordered Shantung Rag, yes she wanted me to be successful...all of that checked out. But murder? Valerie, the woman I loved above all, could not have done the unthinkable. I stopped thinking and let my sense of self-preservation, or
rather the preservation of my family, take over. I felt like some kind of animal as I lunged toward the woodstove and stuffed a bunch of newspapers into the firebox.
Matches! I needed matches! Where in the hell are the matches?
I ran to the kitchen and pulled open drawer after drawer. Summer had ended. We had no fires. Our goddamn barbecue was gas and its ignition was a flip switch. No one smoked in the house. God, I had wished I smoked. I turned on a burner and watched it slowly grow from black to red.
The girls will be home...five more minutes!
I took a wooden shish kebab skewer and pressed it against the hot coil.
Dear God, why, Valerie, why?
Of course I knew the answer. It had been for me. For us. For Taylor and Hayley and even Hedda. I put the thought from my mind and took the burning bamboo stick to the open black jaws of the woodstove and lit the mass of crumpled papers. Fire burst from the door and I tore off pages of Artist Today and threw them into the flames.
Two minutes and the girls would be home. I was never good at math, but I knew I only had one hundred and twenty seconds.
Better burn all the issues. Better to leave nothing for anyone to find. Not now. Not ever.
If I was destroying evidence, I didn't care. I didn't care if I went to prison. It would serve me right. It was my fault that this happened. It was my fault for everything. I would say nothing to Valerie. I could never let her know that I knew.
I loved Val too much for that.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Monday, October 28
TAYLOR AND HAYLEY'S JACK-O-LANTERNS GLOWED their firefly eyes and Hedda barked as if she were a mad canine when I got up from the dinner table to answer a persistent knock on the door. I was met by the shock of my life. Standing on the front step was the last person I expected to see. It was Wanda-Lou Webster, looking like a seven-figure book advance. Her hair was blonder than it had been when she was on Inside Edition trashing me. She was thinner, too. Her eyes weren't so sapphire blue after all. I could see where her contacts had shifted slightly, revealing a so-so blue hue. Around her neck she wore a Cousin's Loss pendant. Pewter, I thought. She looked good. Damn, she looked successful.