The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

“No. Just asking a question, that’s all.”

  “I resent your tone,” Jennifer said. “I had a very loving relationship with my husband. I adored him. He was my everything and you’re . . . you’re accusing me of doing something terrible. I would never, ever. Ever.” She stopped to catch her breath. Tears had filled her eyes and her hands were trembling.

  Jennifer looked over at Birdy.

  “And you, are you the grim reaper? You invite me over here to tell me about my husband and you treat me like this? What kind of people are you? I have lost something very, very precious to me. My children are orphans again. This is one of the worst—maybe the worst—thing that has ever happened to me and I’ve had my share of hardships. Life has not been a bed of roses.”

  “I’m sorry about your loss,” Birdy said, finding her voice in the spectacle that was swarming in front of her. Jennifer Roberts was on a very defensive rant.

  “You should be,” Jennifer said. “If you had a heart you would be. But I think that people like you and the detective here get all warm and fuzzy by delivering such hateful news.”

  “The fact of the matter, Ms. Roberts, is that your husband was murdered. We want to find out who did it,” Kendall said.

  “Blame me,” Jennifer said. “Blame me for not taking better care of him. Maybe it is my fault, but I did not poison him. I loved him. I don’t know how I’m going to survive. I don’t even have any insurance money.”

  “How much insurance did Mr. Roberts have?” Kendall asked. As long as Jennifer was going to talk, the detective was going to ask her. She hadn’t been charged and she wasn’t officially a suspect. No Miranda applied.

  Yet.

  “I don’t know. A couple hundred thousand. Through the military.”

  “That’s a lot for a government policy,” Kendall said.

  “We had some supplemental. He wanted to make sure that Ruby and Micah could go to college, you know, if anything ever happened to him.”

  “And now something has,” Kendall said.

  “You are so out of line, detective. I’m going now. I’m going home and am trying to put all of this harassment behind me.”

  With that Jennifer Roberts spun around on her five-inch heels, like a pair of compasses stuck into the floor. She scurried toward the door and slammed it shut.

  “What in the world was that all about?” Birdy said. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Grim reaper, indeed.”

  Kendall got up. “It’ll tell you what that is. That’s a guilty woman trying to make a run for it.”

  “Why don’t you get an arrest warrant?” Birdy asked.

  “There isn’t enough evidence, Birdy.”

  Birdy looked at her friend. It didn’t completely compute. “She practically confessed, Kendall. She said this might have been all her fault.”

  “We’re not there yet. She’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because of the motive. She killed the supposed love of her life for money. She needs to make the claim. In order to do that she’ll need a death certificate. How long does it take you to have one of those recorded?”

  “Five days, sometimes longer with the county workers’ furlough.”

  “When will you put it in?”

  Birdy understood where the detective was going and it made her feel a little uncomfortable.

  “How long do you want me to delay it?” she asked.

  “A week?”

  Birdy nodded. “Doable. Any longer and I’d feel funny about it.”

  “Good. In the meantime, I’ll contact the sheriff down in Maricopa County. We need to file some paperwork on an exhumation. You’ll be going to Arizona.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Port Orchard, a town of under ten thousand, didn’t have many strip malls, but among the few, it did manage to have four tanning salons. After her meltdown with the Kitsap County detective and forensic pathologist, Jennifer Roberts parked in front of the Desert Enchantment location on Mile Hill Road. She held her phone to her ear for a minute or two, listening. After hanging up, she went inside. She lingered in the waiting area while her daughter, Ruby, finished upselling a customer a one-year “Guaranteed Gorgeous” tanning package (a package that workers there called “Guaranteed Cancerous”).

  “You can come in any time, five times a day if you want,” Ruby said. “We don’t really recommend that, but I just want you to know.”

  The woman, white as a porcelain platter, burbled something about an upcoming Mexican vacation and thanked Ruby.

  “Room six,” Ruby said, as the woman started down the hallway, past the airbrushed posters of the most beautiful human bodies ever committed to paper.

  Ruby acknowledged her mom with a sympathetic look.

  “New bulbs in there,” Ruby called out to the new customer. “I’m only giving you six minutes.”

  “Mom,” Ruby said, reaching for her mother, “you look terrible.”

  “I know,” Jennifer said.

  “Let’s go in the dryer room so we can talk.” She turned toward a semi-orange girl named Lucerne who’d appeared with a sanitizing spray bottle from one of the rooms. “Lu, watch the counter. Mom and I need some privacy.”

  The girl took the spray bottle and went to the front desk. “Sorry about your loss, Ms. Roberts,” she said.

  Jennifer started to cry behind her dark glasses, mouthed a thank-you, and followed her daughter down the corridor past the pretty posters to a small room outfitted with four large LG red-enameled dryers. It looked like an appliance dealership. All but one was on the tumble cycle.

  Ruby had her long blond hair in a messy bun. Silver and turquoise earrings that she had made herself from looking at a magazine photograph dangled. She was tanned, but not overly so. The seventeen-year-old wore a pretty pink, almost nude shade of lip color. She probably looked exactly like her mother did when she was a teenager. She didn’t have her mother’s figure, of course. She’d been saving up for that.

  Ruby shut the door and put her arms around her mom.

  “Mom, you’re not doing okay. What happened?”

  Jennifer looked away and then started to sob. It started slowly, like a kettle just beginning to simmer. A moment later, it was a roiling boil. The sound of the spinning dryers muffled her outburst.

  “It’ll be okay, Mom,” Ruby said. “Everything will work out.”

  Jennifer pulled back and took off her glasses.

  “Can I?” she said, looking at one of the white towels.

  “Here,” Ruby said, getting her one. “It’s still warm.” She dabbed at her mother’s eyes.

  Jennifer acknowledged the gesture with a slight smile. “Thank you. I’ve just come from the authorities. They think that this is my fault. They think that I poisoned Ted.”

  Ruby put the towel down. It was tear- and mascara-stained and would need to go back in the wash.

  “They don’t,” she said.

  Jennifer held her daughter. “Yes, honey. They do.”

  “Why?”

  Their embrace was short-lived. Jennifer stepped back and started to pace. “I don’t know. Because of what happened to your dad, I guess. Maybe they are jealous. It could be anything. The people are so suspicious up here. I loved Teddy. He was my dream come true. Now that he’s gone they are trying to turn it into something very ugly.”

  “You don’t deserve this, Mom. What are you going to do? What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t do anything to Teddy. I loved him.”

  “I know, Mom. I know. What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” Jennifer said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “They aren’t going to arrest you. Are they?”

  Jennifer stopped moving about the small room and looked at her daughter, dead-eyed.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t see how. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Do you want me to talk to them? Tell them they are all wrong? That M
olly next door could have poisoned him? She gave him that stupid cake. I got sick eating some of that. So did Micah.”

  Jennifer pondered that. “I don’t think so. Molly is a stupid girl, but she’s not a murderer. I can’t think of any reason why she would want to hurt him.”

  “She was in love with him,” Ruby said.

  “Let me think. I don’t know if I should get a lawyer or what.”

  “Why would you need a lawyer?”

  “Honey, they are looking for someone to blame. I just talked to your aunt Stacy. She said that the detective called down there asking all kinds of inappropriate and cruel questions. Her friend who works at the sheriff’s office told her. I just talked to Stacy right now.”

  Ruby’s eyes widened. “About Daddy? Why are they asking about him, Mom?”

  “I think they think I killed him,” Jennifer said.

  Lucerne poked her head into the dryer room. She looked concerned.

  “What is it, Lu?” Ruby said. Her voice carried a snap.

  “Sorry to bug you, Ruby and Ms. Roberts. I know you have a lot going on. But a sheriff’s detective is here. She wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m not talking to her,” Jennifer said. “I’ve said everything I’m going to say.”

  Lu shook her head. “Not you, Ms. Roberts. She’s here for Ruby.”

  Kendall Stark had only been in a tanning salon once in her life. Three years prior she reluctantly agreed to be in her cousin’s December wedding in Spokane. Someone suggested the hideous pale purple dress she’d been forced into wearing would look better if she had a little color added to her winter-white body. She ended up getting a spray tan that made her look like an orange and grape Popsicle.

  Never again.

  “Why are you harassing my family?” Jennifer said as she and Ruby faced Kendall in the lobby of Desert Enchantment.

  “Lu, go fold some towels,” Ruby said.

  Lu, miffed about missing out on some family drama, left.

  “I’m not harassing anyone, Ms. Roberts. I’m investigating the case.”

  “I want you to leave my family alone.”

  “Your daughter can talk to me,” Kendall said. “She’s free to do so.”

  “I don’t—I won’t—and neither will my brother,” Ruby said. “We love our mother and you’ve got her all wrong. We loved our father. He was a good man and you are making this worse.”

  “Stepfather, Ruby,” Kendall said. “He was your stepfather.”

  “He adopted us,” Ruby said. “He loved us. We were a happy family.”

  The detective turned to Jennifer. “It would really help the investigation if your daughter and son came in for a statement. It’ll be all over the news tomorrow.”

  “What will?” she asked.

  “That Ted Roberts was the victim of a homicide.”

  “Why are you putting that on the news?”

  “I don’t put anything on the news,” Kendall said. “The Kitsap Sun has already talked to the coroner’s office.”

  Ruby looked at her mother. “Mom, shouldn’t Micah and I make some kind of statement?”

  “Absolutely not. We have nothing to hide, but it’s obvious that I’m being blamed for all of this. I know what you think. I still have friends in Arizona.”

  “Mom?” Ruby asked. “What’s going on?”

  Jennifer kept her eyes on Kendall. “She thinks I killed your father too.”

  Ruby’s face went a shade darker on the spray-on tan scale. “He died of a heart attack, you bitch!” she said to Kendall.

  Kendall took a step back. “Look, I know you’re upset. I understand. But real life is messy. Things aren’t always what they seem.” She glanced at one of the posters. It showed a woman in a retro bikini standing at the edge of a pool, a forest of saguaro cactus marching into the background of a flawless blue sky. There was nary a wrinkle on her face, a bulge or ripple on her lithe figure. She noticed the sloppy edge of the Photoshopper’s handiwork.

  “No thing and no one is perfect,” she said. “Mistakes can always be found.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Birdy Waterman was old school enough to get the daily paper delivered to her home. A copy was also delivered to the office. The top story had to do with the homecoming of a Trident submarine that had been out at sea for more than three months on some hush-hush mission. In a navy town like Bremerton, the editors at the paper knew the importance of those kinds of stories. In a way, Bremerton, Washington, was a company town. Its business had been either war or peacekeeping, depending on one’s political perspective.

  It was the second article that held her interest.

  NAVAL OFFICER ROBERTS VICTIM OF POISONING

  The Kitsap Sun reporter did a fair job with the piece, as he always did. He wrote how autopsy results indicated that the victim had died of acute kidney failure caused by ethylene glycol.

  Ethylene glycol is a key ingredient in antifreeze and unlike other poisons is readily available in grocery and automotive stores throughout the county.

  There were no quotes from Birdy, just some vague attribution—“according to the county’s forensic pathologist.”

  That was just as well.

  Kendall, however, did get a shout-out.

  “We have no suspects at this time,” said Kitsap County homicide investigator Kendall Stark. “However, we are looking into a person of interest closely associated with the victim.”

  That designation was a favorite line of law enforcement. A person of interest was just a mere notch below “suspect” and was frequently used to apply a little pressure on the case. Not in a public relations way, but pressure on the perpetrator and those surrounding him or her. Sometimes the specter of being a person of interest accelerated the momentum of a case.

  Sometimes people lived the rest of their lives as a person of interest.

  With the information coming out of Arizona, it was possible that Jennifer Roberts had experienced both—or was about to.

  Birdy flipped through the pages to the obituaries and funeral notices. Some people skipped right to the sports page, or the classifieds. Her go-to spot was always the section in which people were remembered. It was work-related, but not completely. Most who died were not autopsied. Even most of those who were, were examined in the hospitals in which they’d died. Birdy was fascinated by the continuum of the living process.

  She always had been. She’d collected those bones. She’d attended more funerals than weddings. She sent sympathy cards to strangers when it looked like there were not many left to mourn their passing.

  Tess Moreau had told her that her daughter’s memorial would be that afternoon. And while she almost never went to anyone’s funeral that had been a part of an ongoing case, she felt like Darby’s would be a bit thin on the mourners’ side because of the way she’d lived—isolated in that catastrophe of a household in Olalla. She looked at her phone.

  11:45.

  The service was at noon. Birdy grabbed purse and jacket. There was still time to get there.

  No funeral is a happy occurrence. Really. Even when it is wrapped up with the words “celebration of life,” there is seldom any genuine celebrating. Birdy Waterman parked her car in the lot at Sunset Lane Memorial Park at the bottom of Mile Hill Road. She wore her office attire that consisted of dark slacks and a plain blue jacket over a powder blue blouse. Her long dark hair was pulled back in her usual clip. She hadn’t planned on going to a funeral that day, but it crossed her mind on the way there that she often dressed like she was ready for one.

  From across the grassy expanse of markers and flags, she saw the small gathering that had assembled to memorialize the girl found in the woods off Banner Road. A girl who’d been murdered by someone who was still at large was being laid to rest next to her father and her sister.

  There had been no viewing for obvious reasons. This was Darby Moreau’s good-bye.

  Birdy spotted Tess and her friend Amanda, along with some adults she assumed were co-workers
from the prison. Also there, a small group of teenagers—friends of the deceased—she assumed. A few adults stood with the kids and Birdy wondered if they were also from the school.

  Just behind her, Birdy noticed Kendall approaching. She slowed her pace so they could walk together. They both had the same idea. Tess acknowledged them with a slight, but appreciative, nod.

  The minister, a large round man with photosensitive glasses that obscured his eyes, spoke about Darby and her dreams, but he really could have been talking about any sixteen-year-old girl in the world.

  “An unfinished life never seems like it is part of God’s plan, but it is. Praise the Lord! Darby has gone home and she will always live there in the celestial kingdom, but also within all of us who knew and loved her.”

  He pressed a button on a small CD player and P!nk’s song, Glitter in the Air, played at a respectful volume.

  Darby’s favorite color. Her favorite musician.

  Tess let out a cry during the chorus and one of the teenagers went over to her.

  “She was my best friend,” Katie Lawrence said.

  “Katie?” Tess asked. “I hoped you’d come. I didn’t know how to call you.”

  “I’m here,” she said. “A bunch of us are here from art class. She had a lot more friends at school than just us, and we had to get special permission to be here.”

  Tess gripped the girl’s hand. She looked over at the kids and the teacher.

  Like a switch, her face went from sad to anger. “Is she Ms. Mitchell?”

  Kendall looked at Birdy. This was going to be trouble. Kendall wished the song were shorter.

  Tess let go of Katie’s hand and lurched toward the art teacher.

  “I know who you are,” the grieving mother said, her voice beginning to crack into tiny, bitter pieces. “I know what you are!”

  Connie Mitchell took a step back, away from the casket.

  “I was her friend, Ms. Moreau,” she said over P!nk’s soaring and heartfelt vocals. “I’m here because I loved her too.”