“I don’t know why you want to drudge up all those old memories, Jacob. That was one of the worst years in my teaching career. I wish Ethan could have paid for what he did to her. She wasn’t the only one, you know. There were other girls. Jessica wasn’t his first victim.”
I suddenly realized I was his last victim, and wondered how many others there had been before me. “Do you know how many other girls, Mrs. Simpkins?”
“More than I care to admit, Ms. Crenshaw, and way more than there should have been. I’m sure he’s still up to his old ways, and getting away with it.”
“No, ma’am,” I replied, shaking my head. “Someone finally stopped him.”
The only thing that Jake told me about our companions for lunch was that he had gone to high school with them. When we walked into Grandma’s Grub Shack, he led us to a table near the back where two women were sitting. “Jake!” one of the women said, jumping up to hug him. She was about 5’6”, but her Manolos made her appear taller. Blonde hair was swept up in a chignon, and her navy blue pantsuit and cream colored blouse reminded me of a similar outfit I had seen Trixie wear once. I suddenly felt underdressed in my jeans, t-shirt and flannel shirt. “You look great. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see you the last time you came home. Marc and I were in London for some business meetings.”
“You mean Marc was stuck in meetings while you were shopping,” he teased her.
She laughed. “You know me so well.”
Jake walked to the other side of the table where the other woman sat. “Sage, it’s good to see you,” he said, bending over to kiss her cheek. “How are the kids?”
“They’re good,” she smiled. “Chelsea is excited about singing a solo during the school program today, and Derrick is thinking of ways to make her laugh so she’ll screw up. Little Davy has started teething, and is gnawing on more things than the dog did when she was teething!”
We laughed, and as I sat down next to Sage, I felt a little better about my clothes, since she was wearing a similar outfit. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her glasses kept sliding down her nose, forcing her to push them back up. “Ladies, this is Lizzie Crenshaw. Lizzie, the lovely lady to your left with the baby food on her shirt is Sage Kingsley, and the impecibly dressed woman who would have a heart attack if baby food got on her clothes is Kassandra Sherwood.”
“Geez, Jake, you make me sound like someone with serious OCD,” Kassandra said.
“But he’s right, Kass,” Sage replied. “Remember the time you came to the house and Davy spit up on your Christian Dior dress? I thought I was going to have to call 911 because you were hyperventaliting.”
“Stop exaggerating, Sage,” Kassandra admonished her. “I calmly went into the bathroom and wiped it off.”
Sage leaned closer to me. “After she sat in the chair screaming her head off for five minutes. I wasn’t sure who was yelling louder, Kassandra or Davy.”
The waitress brought us some menus, and I looked at it while they chatted. Jake told them about our run-in with Mrs. Simpkins. It felt a bit weird to listen to them talking about things and people I knew nothing about, and I realized that was probably how Jake felt whenever he was around Trixie, Owen and I when we got together.
After we gave the waitress our orders, Kassandra looked at Jake. “Now, you want to tell me why you really wanted to have lunch with us? Although I think I have a pretty good idea…”
“And what idea is that?”
“Ethan.”
I shuddered. Jake put his hand on top of mine.
Kassandra gave me a sympathetic look. “I see we have a new member of the club.”
“Excuse me?”
“You flinched when I mentioned his name, and you got that deer in the Ethan headlights look on your face. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not wrong,” I replied, taking a drink of water.
“I have to say I’m a bit surprised. You don’t seem to be his type.”
“And what’s his normal type?”
“Blondes and cheerleaders mostly,” Sage said, “although there are a couple of brunettes in the group.”
“Have you ever been a cheerleader?” Kassandra asked me.
“No. I was in theatre in high school. I’m just a simple newspaper reporter.”
“Newspaper owner now,” Jake corrected.
“So how did you meet Ethan?” Sage said.
“At a fundraiser. Jake needed a date, and…”
“Ah, say no more,” Kassandra interrupted. She looked at Sage, who shook her head. “I understand everything now.”
“I don’t, so enlighten me.”
“Don’t say it, Kass,” Jake warned her.
“Oh, please,” she snorted. “As if you haven’t already figured it out yourself, Jake.”
“That doesn’t mean Lizzie needs to hear it.”
“Let me guess: Ethan went after me as a way to get under Jake’s skin.”
“Give the woman a crumbled cookie,” Kassandra replied.
Jake looked at me. “What? You think I’m that stupid? It wasn’t hard to figure out, especially after that first night.”
“He went after you the first night?” Sage said. “Wow, you must have looked really hot that night for him to do that.”
“She did,” Jake confirmed. It was my turn to give him the look. “Well, you did!”
Sage pointed at my bruised and still slightly swollen wrist. “Did that happen the first night?”
“No, that was a separate incident.”
“How is ol’ Octopus hands?” Kassandra said. “Obviously still as abusive as ever.” Jake and I looked at each other. “What? Why the look?”
“He’s dead,” I said matter-of-factly.
Sage stared at me like I had just grown a second head, but Kassandra was wearing a huge grin on her face. “So someone finally did the bastard in. I don’t believe it.” We stopped talking when the waitress brought our food. As soon as she left, Kassandra stabbed her fork in her salad and asked, “So, did you kill him, Lizzie?”
“Of course not!”
She shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”
“Did you kill him?” I retorted.
“Lord knows I’ve thought about it enough times over the last twelve, thirteen years. But thinking about it isn’t a crime. If it was, we’d all be in jail.”
“How did he die?” Sage asked quietly.
“He was shot,” Jake told her. “Anyone around with a hardcore grudge against Ethan?”
Kassandra almost choked on her lettuce. “How can you seriously sit here and ask that question? You’ve got as much reason to want him dead as we do, Jake.”
“I’m well aware of that, Kass. But I have an alibi. Do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“How do you know? You don’t even know what day he was killed.”
“I just got back into town yesterday.”
Sage’s eyes bounced back and forth between Jake and Kassandra as she ate. I just sat there and listened, wondering if I should put a stop to it.
“Los Angeles.”
“Can you prove it?”
“You want to see the receipts?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Can anyone verify you were out there?”
“You mean besides Marc? There was a very handsome Swedish masseuse that gave me plenty of attention while Marc was attending to business. Do you want his name and number?”
“Definitely.”
They glared at each other. “Are you two through?” I said. “Did you really come here to blame your friends, Jake?”
Jake sat back in his chair and sighed. “Of course not.”
“Kass has always been able to push his buttons,” Sage said.
“Why are you here, Jake?” Kass said as she took another bite of her salad.
“I want to talk to people who knew Ethan, see if they could give us some information about him that might lead us to his killer.”
“You think his killer is from he
re?” Sage said, her eyes wide in surprise.
“I don’t know, Sage. Given the number of wounds, I’d say this was personal.”
“I thought you said he was shot,” Kass said.
“I did.”
“But you said wounds, plural. Just how many are we talking about?”
“Several,” I clarified. “In various spots all over his body.”
“The police believe there may have been more than one person involved,” Jake added.
Kass put her fork down and looked at us for a minute. “You think that some of his victims may have gotten together and decided to take him out, don’t you?”
“It might have crossed my mind,” Jake admitted.
Kass and Sage looked at each other, and Sage nodded. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this table,” Kass told them.
“You have our word,” Jake said.
“A few years ago, Ethan came back to town. He had been forced to leave New York to save face after he was accused of assaulting a banker’s daughter. He showed up at the Fourth of July dance at the country club, being his usual, charming self.”
I took a drink of my Dr Pepper, thinking about my first encounter with Ethan at the fundraiser. My hand was shaking so hard, the ice cubes were rattling against the glass. Jake reached over and put his hand on top of mine.
If Kass noticed, she didn’t say anything. “Sage was at the dance by herself; she and Cooper were to be married that October. Ethan asked to dance with the bride-to-be, and she said yes. He was a perfect gentleman while they danced, and he offered to get her something to drink. She doesn’t remember much after that, but the security cameras caught some of it. When Cooper and Sage’s brothers found out what happened, they went out to the Winthrop estate. He wasn’t there, but the maid let it slip that Ethan was at the log cabin. Needless to say, Ethan was taken to the proverbial woodshed.”
“I’m sure Edward Winthrop wasn’t happy about the beatdown,” Jake said.
“He wasn’t. He wanted Cooper and the others arrested for assault and battery. But the sheriff at that time, Charlie Bascomb, told Edward in no uncertain terms that if he arrested them, he was also going to arrest Ethan and close a bunch of old sexual assault cases.”
“Would he have really done that?” I said.
Jake nodded. “Oh yeah, Charlie would have. They might not have happened on his watch, but he would have arrested Ethan to get them off his desk.”
I looked at Sage, who was calmly eating her fried chicken. “So what happened?”
“Edward backed off, and offered me money to forget the whole thing. I took the money, put it in a savings account, and then set out to get even.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “You agreed to forget the whole thing.”
“I said forget. I didn’t say anything about forgive.”
“Ah.”
“So what was your plan to get even?” Jake asked Sage.
“I got in touch with several of Ethan’s victims. We decided the best way to stop him was to kill him.”
“How many women are we talking about here?”
“Eight.”
“And the plan was to what?”
“One of us would lure him to an isolated spot, and then the rest of us would come out of hiding and attack him. “Kass tried to talk us out of it, but we were determined to do it. Ethan had made our lives miserable for years, and he lived his life like nothing had ever happened.”
“So what stopped you from carrying out your plan?” Jake said.
“Cooper. Kass told him what we were planning to do. Cooper told me that he loved me, and that I shouldn’t let what Ethan did define who I was for the rest of my life. He said that planning to kill him was stooping to his level, and that I was better than that. His final comment was that if I went through with it, he wouldn’t marry me. It wasn’t worth losing Cooper over. So I talked to the other women, told them what he had said, and we decided to call it off.”
“He sounds like a wonderful man, Sage,” I said, thinking of T.J. back home.
“He is.”
“Are you sure that the others were okay with you calling things off?”
“They all seemed relieved, actually. I’m not sure how many of them would have shown up, had we decided to go through with it.”
“Is it possible that someone decided to resurrect the idea and carried it out?” Jake said.
Sage shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose, although I’m not sure why any of them would.”
“You do realize how far-fetched this all sounds, don’t you?” I said. “I don’t understand why you would even think about killing him.”
“Because I knew what would happen. There used to be a support group that would meet at Mrs. Simpkins’ house twice a month. At the first meeting I went to, they told me about Ethan’s usual pattern of behavior. It would start with flowers and a note of apology. Then he would send flowers every day, followed by small gifts. After a month or so, he would ask you out on a date, thinking everything was forgiven. I didn’t want to go through that.”
That would explain why he complained about the gifts I had returned. He wasn’t used to someone standing up to him like that.
“What an ego that man had!” Kass said. “I accepted his dinner invitation, and when he came to pick me up, I gave him a knee to the jewels, followed by a vase to the back of his head when he doubled over. When he turned around to leave, I kicked him down the front steps. I never heard from him again.”
We all laughed. “Lizzie gave him the knee the first night they met. I gave him an upper cut to the jaw. We’ll probably never be allowed in that hotel again.”
“Fine by me,” I replied. “I don’t think I could go back there without remembering that night.”
“In time, it will get easier,” Kass assured me.
“Is it possible that someone in the group decided to carry out your plan after all this time?” Jake asked Sage.
“I guess, although I don’t know who it would be,” Sage said. “Three of them are married, and two of them moved away.”
“Do you know where they went?” I said.
Sage shook her head, but Kass apparently knew. “One moved to Albuquerque, and the other one moved to Dallas.”
“Maybe we should get in touch with the woman in Dallas,” I suggested. “She might know something.”
Kass shook her head. “I doubt she would talk to you, Lizzie. Ethan really did a number on her, and it took her a long time to get to the point where she could go out by herself. I was shocked when she moved so far away from her family. She insisted on it, saying she needed a fresh start.”
“Do you think she knew that Ethan had moved to Dallas, too?” Jake said.
“She’s lived there for two years. Dallas is a pretty big city. There’s no way they would have run into each other,” Kass replied.
“I think she would have known,” I said. “There was a big write up in all the local papers about the fundraiser, and his picture was featured in every article. There’s no way she could have missed seeing them, or even hearing about it from someone.”
“I’m sure Owen will want to talk to her,” Jake said, “considering her history with Ethan. He’ll want to rule her out as a suspect.”
“Her name is Marie Erickson,” Sage said, taking her phone out of her purse. “Here, this is her number.” She handed it to Jake, who entered the number into his phone. “Tell her I said it was okay to talk to you. She won’t talk to strangers, for obvious reasons.”
Kass looked at her watch. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment in about twenty minutes. It was nice meeting you, Lizzie,” she said, shaking my hand. “If you ever need to talk, give me a call.” She gave me her business card. “I’ll drop you off at your house on the way, Sage.”
Sage took one last bite of her chicken. “It was good to see you again, Jake. Don’t be a stranger! The kids would love to see you. Lizzie, take care of this lug.”
“I’ll do
my best.”
I watched them leave. “Do you think they’re telling the truth?”
“Hard to say,” Jake shrugged. “Kass has always been a good liar.”
“And Sage?”
“She’s a follower. Whatever Kass said, Sage did. No questions asked.”
“We should talk to Owen.”
“I agree.” He signaled the waitress, who brought over the check. “Let’s go.”
Edward Winthrop was sitting at his desk, looking over some papers his lawyer had sent over, when his phone rang. “Winthrop.”
“You might have a problem,” a female voice told him.
“You’ll have to be more specific. Is this business or personal?”
“Ethan.”
“Oh, him. He’s hardly going to be a problem, darling. He’s a bit…under the weather at the moment.”
“What a crass and heartless thing to say about your own flesh and blood, Edward.”
“Don’t worry, my dear. I’m the perfect picture of a grieving father in public. But since it’s just the two of us, I hardly need to put on a pretense. We both hated him with equal venom.”
“Well, your façade may come crumbling down.”
“And why is that?”
“Because there are two people in town, asking questions, and they know more than you thought they did.”
“Mathias,” Edward growled.
“I’m afraid so, and Ethan’s latest victim is with him.”
“Elizabeth Crenshaw?”
“Jake calls her Lizzie.”
“Elizabeth, Lizzie, who cares? What do they know?”
It took a few minutes to tell Edward everything. “They also know about Marie.”
“How did they find out about that?”
“Sage gave them her contact information.”
Edward sighed. “Wonderful. I’m sure she thought she was being helpful.”
“Probably. What are we going to do?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. I will call Marie and tell her to disappear. Then I’ll deal with Jake and the Crenshaw woman.”
“What are you going to do?”
Death Vetoes The Chairman (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries Book 7) Page 15