by Debra Webb
Juliette nodded. ‘But the police didn’t believe him. They believed us.’
Of course they did. These were the offspring of Birmingham’s movers and shakers. No one was going to call them liars without serious evidence. ‘Scott must have felt guilty over the incident. His father paid for Lenny’s burial and has paid his mother two thousand dollars every month for all these years. I find that curious.’
‘Scott thought that maybe something he said to Lenny pushed him over the edge, so to speak. He felt guilty about that night until the day he died. I’m certain he thought that was the right thing to do. That’s the kind of guy he was.’
‘He never mentioned to you that he was worried about Penney’s return? He gave you no impression that he believed Penney was a threat to you or anyone related to any of you?’ Jess pushed.
Juliette shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Yet his wife stated that he urged her to take their son and leave town. That’s why she wasn’t home when he was murdered. He also paid for Lenny Porter’s mother to go on a cruise so she would be out of town as well. Scott never mentioned he was worried about his family?’
‘No.’ Juliette looked puzzled. ‘I’m not sure I believe he said any such thing to his wife.’
‘You and his wife aren’t friends?’ Jess didn’t give her time to get a deep breath.
Disdain flashed on Juliette’s face before she could stop it. ‘Not really.’
‘In fact, you never married,’ Jess mentioned. Scott had sex with someone who wasn’t his wife just before he died. Corlew claimed he’d found no evidence the guy was cheating. Juliette could be the reason why. They were already friends. As long as they were discreet, who would know? ‘Were you and Scott still involved?’
‘That’s out of line,’ Gina Coleman snapped. ‘Juliette is trying to help with your investigation and you ask a question like that. I don’t like your tone and I damned sure don’t like your innuendoes. Do you want her help or not? We can end this right now.’
‘Yes,’ Juliette announced, shutting down her sister’s protests. ‘We got together occasionally. But no one knew. Neither of us wanted anyone to be hurt. I was perfectly happy being the other woman that no one knew about.’
‘Oh my God.’ Gina wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulder and hugged her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Juliette stared at her hands some more. ‘It was too painful to talk about.’
At least she was honest about her relationship with Baker. ‘Did you see Scott the night he was murdered?’ Jess would just see how honest she intended to be.
Juliette squared her shoulders and looked Jess in the eye. ‘Yes, I did. We usually got together at his office. He worked late almost every night so no one would be the wiser if we met there.’
‘What time was this?’ Jess made a few more notes on her pad.
‘At seven. I brought wine and cheese. We shared the bottle and had sex. I left around eight-thirty and . . . that was the last time I saw him.’ Her voice trembled on the last few words.
Gina Coleman was speechless. That had to be a first.
‘Did Scott mention having any other appointments that night?’
Juliette shook her head. ‘He had work to finish up and then he was going home.’
‘I assume he always turned off the security system, specifically the surveillance system, whenever the two of you . . . had your private rendezvous?’
‘Yes, I believe he did.’
Jess would need to come back to this. ‘You stated that after Scott’s murder, Kevin called a meeting of sorts to discuss the possibility that Todd Penney was back in Birmingham for revenge.’
‘Yes. Kevin got really nervous when Scott told him Todd Penney was back in town. Kevin had been warning us that we should be careful but no one paid any attention. We were cleared of any wrongdoing twelve years ago.’
‘Maybe so,’ Gina spoke up, suddenly finding her voice, ‘but I told you that neat little closures like that rarely happen when emotions are involved. If Todd Penney believes the five of you had something to do with his friend’s death, he may only now have devised a plan to see that justice is served. Isn’t that right, Chief?’
‘That’s a possibility, yes,’ Jess agreed. ‘But there are others. There may be additional motives at play. If someone else was somehow responsible for Lenny Porter’s death, he or she may be attempting a frantic cover-up before Todd starts digging around or stirring up interest in the case.’
If Elliott Carson hadn’t turned up dead this morning, Jess would most certainly have considered Baker’s wife a suspect, considering what Juliette had just shared. She couldn’t have done the job herself since she was out of town, but she could have hired someone. With Carson’s murder, the entire focus of the case shifted from Scott’s enemies to the enemies of the Five.
She’d have to let the widows know they were no longer persons of interest in this case. Frances would be relieved. Jess was relieved. That was the only good thing to come out of this mess.
‘There couldn’t be anyone else,’ Juliette argued Jess’s reasoning. ‘There was no one else there that night but the five of us.’
‘You said yourself that Porter didn’t say anything. He just showed up and jumped. Either he was making a point, to you most likely, or he was coerced somehow. Maybe by his friend Todd. Maybe by Scott or another of your friends. Until we know what really happened to Lenny Porter, we won’t know what happened to Scott or Elliott. Understanding the killer’s motive will lead us directly to him.’ That was Jess’s experience in the business of investigating homicides. This investigation was following that same pattern.
‘She just told you that none of them said anything to Porter that night,’ Gina argued, none too happy with Jess’s slightly aggressive interrogation.
‘How did Scott know Todd was back in town?’ Jess asked Juliette, ignoring her sister’s comment for the moment.
Juliette shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Kevin said he knew. You’d need to ask him.’
‘Do you remember this incident?’ Jess placed copies of the handwritten journal pages in front of Juliette. ‘Whoever wrote this was talking about you. I’m thinking since you stated that Lenny Porter was infatuated with you that his friend Todd Penney is the author.’
She read the pages, her sister reading over her shoulder. This time when Juliette looked up, she met Jess’s gaze. ‘Yes. I remember.’
‘Oh my God, Jules. How could you let them do this and say nothing?’
‘I said things,’ the younger woman argued. ‘I told them to stop or I would leave.’
How noble. Jess wanted to throw up.
‘This was two months before Lenny took that leap.’ Anger unfurled inside Jess. She tapped the first of the two pages. ‘How often were your friends torturing Lenny Porter like this?’
Juliette shook her head. ‘It was a joke. Something everyone did to someone at one time or another.’
Jess’s long simmering anger built to a boil. ‘Maybe Lenny decided he’d had enough. Maybe you and your friends were too inebriated to remember what really happened on that roof.’
Juliette shook her head and held up both hands. ‘No. No. I had a couple of beers. Nothing more. I know exactly what happened. I’ll never forget it.’
‘She came here to help,’ Gina reminded Jess. ‘If she was guilty of some wrongdoing, would she be here right now?’
Gina Coleman would be surprised how many murderers came forward to provide assistance to the police. It gave them a feeling of power. Maybe Juliette liked the power. Her friends obviously had enjoyed it.
‘If you remember anything else, be sure to let me know.’ Jess needed to interview the other two members of the group. The sooner the better. What she didn’t want was Juliette sharing her version of that night’s events with the others. Though she suspected that had happened a long time ago.
‘Juliette will be staying with me until this is over,’ Gina said. ‘I don’t want her alone.’
‘What if you can’t stop him?’ Juliette looked from Jess to her sister. ‘I swear I didn’t do anything to hurt Lenny but Todd might come after me anyway. What am I going to do?’ She burst into tears. The older Coleman sibling hugged her close.
Somehow Jess was having trouble mustering any sympathy for Juliette. But then, she was prejudiced when it came to snobby rich kids. She’d endured enough of their crap in high school herself.
‘We will stop him, Juliette,’ Jess promised, cutting her some slack. ‘As long as we have your full cooperation and the cooperation of your friends, you can count on it.’
Juliette swiped at her eyes. ‘Thank you. If there’s anything else I can do, please let me know.’
Jess had just shown the sisters to the door when Lori, Harper, and Cook returned from lunch. She was itching to start fleshing out what they had on a case board. The sooner they got the details hammered out, the more quickly they could stop the killing.
Within half an hour they had the timeline established with photos printed from the victims’ and persons of interest’s DMV photos. Not the most flattering shots, but no one cared.
‘I confirmed that Todd Penney is driving a 1999 Toyota Corolla with California plates,’ Harper said, dragging Jess’s attention back to the here and now. ‘His mother, Ramona Penney, who lives in Homewood, says he’s here but she hasn’t seen him since Monday. We’ve issued an APB in hopes of locating him.’
‘He’s a big-shot game developer now,’ Cook threw in. ‘The man needs to upgrade his wheels.’
Harper sent the younger man a look that warned he wasn’t finished.
Cook held up his hands. ‘Sorry.’
‘Former Lieutenant Corlew swears he knows nothing about Scott Baker except what’s in the case file from twelve years ago. He stands by the reports he prepared for Frances Wallace and the information he passed along to you.’ Harper added the picture of a vintage Corolla to the case board beneath Penney’s photo.
Jess was pretty damned sure her old friend Corlew was lying through his teeth. One way or another, she intended to find out. She considered the photo of Baker’s wife, Trisha. ‘Detective Wells and I will follow up with Baker’s wife. I want to rule out the possibility that she learned about his ongoing affair with Juliette and hired someone to murder him while the trust fund would still transfer to her son.’
‘Doesn’t Carson’s murder rule out that possibility?’ Lori asked.
‘Perhaps,’ Jess allowed. ‘But the journal pages set the two murders apart in a significant way. My instincts are telling me they’re connected but we don’t want to overlook the other scenarios. The story is still a little too cloudy to call it one way or the other.’
‘Mrs Baker agreed to a search of her home. If the journal or pages from the journal are in the home, we’ll find them.’ Harper added the necessary notes under Trisha Baker’s photo.
‘Sergeant, I’d like you and Officer Cook to track down O’Reilly and Taylor since we haven’t been able to get either one on the phone. I’m confident someone in this illustrious group knows more than they’re telling. We need their statements and need to ensure they understand the potential danger to them from Penney or whoever is killing off their friends.’
‘Do I get to play bad cop?’ Harper asked with a grin. ‘I think I could get them to talk.’
‘Works for me,’ Cook said as he pushed back his chair. ‘I prefer the good cop role.’
Jess wasn’t about to mention it to the young man but he was far better suited for that role. He wasn’t much taller than Jess and a little on the thin side. And with that all-American fresh face, she doubted anyone would ever see him as a bad guy. Harper, on the other hand, adapted to the role of bad cop extraordinarily well.
‘Detective Wells and I will interview Mrs Penney. We need Todd’s side of the story and since we can’t locate him, we’ll try to get it from the next best source. I think the variable Penney represents takes precedence over the affair and the possibility that Baker’s wife had found out.’
There were always two sides to every story. This one would be no exception. In fact, Jess suspected she might come closer to getting the truth from Todd Penney than any one or all of the Five. That bunch had far too much to lose and that was never conducive to getting the truth.
When Harper and Cook were gone, Jess paused before following them out the door. ‘Let’s take my car. If Penney is watching for us, he’ll remember your Mustang.’
‘No doubt,’ Lori agreed.
Opting for the stairs instead of the elevator, Jess was grateful to escape the building without running into Burnett. Her cell clanged and she checked the screen. Corlew. If he had new information, he would leave her a voice mail. Let him stew. She wanted him ready to talk by the time she hauled him into her office. Whatever game he was up to, she didn’t have time to play. And he was playing a game. Doling out tidbits like he was taunting a hungry pup.
A shiver went through her at the thought of players and games. She already had one game too many in her life.
Even now, Spears could be back. Watching her.
Wasn’t that what she wanted? Another chance to take him down for good?
Her cell called out to her again. If Corlew thought blowing up her phone would get him the attention he wanted, he was wrong. But it wasn’t Corlew. She frowned and immediately scolded herself for doing so. Sylvia Baron calling.
‘Harris.’
‘I don’t have anything for you on Carson yet,’ Sylvia said, getting straight to the point. ‘But I did notice something you may find interesting.’
‘What’s that?’ Her curiosity was piqued.
‘Mr Carson had the same tattoo as Baker, as you anticipated. Even had it in the same spot. But he’d had his altered in an attempt to cover it up. Looks like a baseball now but you can just see the numeral five and the lines of the other circles beneath the red, white, and blue ink used to fill it in.’
Had Elliott Carson felt guilty? Or maybe his motive for attempting to cover the mark was resentment since his big career had stalled and the other four of the five seemed to be continuing to climb. But why didn’t he just have it removed? Juliette admitted to having the same tattoo. She also admitted to having an affair with Scott Baker, something Corlew had missed in his investigation.
Or had he simply opted not to mention it?
‘There’s one other thing. Seems a little odd but it might not mean anything,’ Sylvia went on. ‘My assistant discovered a folded piece of paper in one of Baker’s socks. It may or may not be relevant to your investigation but it reads like a confession of sorts.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, 3.40 P.M.
It took some doing to figure out all the words since sweat had blurred a few here and there. But between Lori, Sylvia, and Jess, they finally put it all together.
April 1
He cried tonight. I’d never seen him do that. He received flowers and balloons at school. He was really excited when he saw the big heart-shaped balloon. The note was an invitation to a movie. She was supposed to be there. I told him not to go, but he was too excited to be reasonable.
He went to the theater, bought his ticket, and went to the seats where she was supposed to meet him. The back row, way in the corner. No one who came to watch the movie ever sat there. It was for making out and doing other shit you don’t want anybody to see.
Finally he admitted defeat. She wasn’t coming. When he started to get up to leave, he couldn’t. That bastard Baker had spread tubes and tubes of Superglue on the chair. The legs of his jeans were stuck. He was stuck since cutting off his pants in a theat
er filled with people was out of the question. The fucked-up Five were just a few rows down. They started laughing and whipped out their cameras. People crowded around, pointing and laughing.
The pics were everywhere the next day.
I hate Scott Baker and his friends. I hope they die screaming.
‘Apparently Baker and his pals had an ugly side,’ Sylvia observed.
Jess tamped down the outrage. ‘Looks that way to me.’
Lori had bagged the page. The handwriting was the same as the other.
‘We’ll get this dropped off at the lab.’ Jess prepared to go. What she wanted more than anything else right now was to find Todd Penney or at least a sample of his handwriting beyond his DMV signature.
‘I’ll let you know when I have more on Elliott Carson.’
Jess thanked her and headed for the door. ‘Let Harper know we have the journal page,’ she said to Lori. ‘And let’s see if my Audi will move like your Mustang.’
‘Let me drive,’ Lori offered, ‘and we’ll find out.’
Pansy Street, Homewood, 4.50 P.M.
Ramona Penney’s home was modest but well kept. She had offered tea or soft drinks but both Jess and Lori had declined. According to her DMV records she was only forty-five which meant she’d basically been a kid when she had her son. Yet she looked far older than her years. She smoked two packs a day and according to the story she’d given so far, she had worked two and three jobs until just a few years ago in order to survive.
She claimed her son was only in town for a couple of weeks and that he was off visiting friends. Jess found that excuse for his absence quite odd since the file on him from twelve years ago indicated that Lenny Porter was his only friend.
Maybe he’d made new ones in his detox stint after Lenny’s death. Seven days in the psych ward after a bad trip on acid. His first, he had sworn. Jess had no idea if that was the case or not but he certainly had no other police record, here or in California.
Todd was a nice-looking man. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a kind face. He didn’t look like a killer but then again few did.
Evil was rarely the expected.