Jan Coffey Suspense Box Set: Three Complete Novel Box Set: Trust Me Once, Twice Burned, Fourth Victim

by Jan Coffey

  Owen could see in the inmate’s gray eyes the total lack of interest in the human life he was discussing. Just business. Interesting that Frankie’s life represented something else to Jake, Owen mused.

  “As it works out, the first step is done for me, and the second step turns out to be a piece of cake, too. Anyone with a half a brain can walk down onto the docks in Newport and get onto any one of those boats. With Hal’s help, Frankie just made sure that we got onto the judge’s boat at the right time—after the old guy was back from his regular Wednesday cruise and before the cleaning guys from the yacht club went on board to shine up the bells and whistles.”

  Christ. Owen felt the hackles on his neck rising. The double-crossing son of a bitch. Based on everything that he’d learned today, he could see killing Hal Van Horn himself. And to think that Sarah felt such guilt over what had happened to the creep.

  “My guess is your girlfriend can probably think of a few million reasons my client hated her so much. But I’ll tell you that the ax Hal had to grind with the judge was all about the old lady’s will.” Jake gave him a sarcastic smile. “These spoiled rich boys are far more brutal than mild-mannered poor boys like me, I can tell you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Absolutely.” Jake leaned back in his chair. “We’ve got one over in the intake center right now, I hear. This Billy Hamilton that got busted down in Newport the other night…another rich boy. Last night’s Journal had the whole story. You should look at it.”

  “I saw the headline.” Owen had left Sarah poring over the newspaper. She’d zeroed right in on the story.

  “An Ivy League pretty boy who gets off on raping underage Portuguese girls.” Jake smirked at him. “I know some of the cons in here can’t wait to bend Billy-boy over a steam pipe. We’ll just see how good Mr. Prep takes it up the ass.”

  “Let’s just stick to Van Horn. I do want to know if that diamond ring deal was the last time your cousin communicated with Hal.”

  Jake’s face grew hard again. “No. Frankie was always the nervous type. He had high blood pressure. High cholesterol. He smoked. If you told him something was bad for his health, he automatically reached for it. I always told him he had a self-esteem problem. Anyway, I figured he didn’t need any more stress in his life, so I didn’t say nothing about the girl not being Sarah. I figured, we were paid and the arrows for the hit all pointed to the judge, no matter who the babe was. Case closed.”

  “When did Hal call to complain?”

  “Last Wednesday afternoon. Your girl had left him a message on his machine from the airport.” Jake frowned. “Apparently, Van Horn is out on Block Island, calls into his message machine, and pretty much shits in his pants. Anyway, he calls Frankie at O’Malley’s Pub from the Block and chews his ass for not doing the job right and tells him he has to finish it. Now, my cousin was a good guy, but he was never what you would call a genius…and Van Horn shook him up a tad. And even though Frankie could talk tough, he was no stand-up guy. Anyway, Hal tells him she’s headed for the judge’s place and also tells him where he can get a key. Then Frankie just goes and hides in the house until she gets there.”

  Owen was grateful for Frankie’s lack of expertise in the killing department.

  “He didn’t want to mess around with guns and blood and all other shit like that. And he was also afraid of Sarah knowing some self-defense shit and beating the crap out of him, so he thinks, piece of cake, I’ll just turn on the gas and lock her in the kitchen.” Gantley rubbed an impatient hand over his face. “Well, that didn’t work, though the poor dope probably could’ve blown himself up and half the neighborhood for good measure. End result, Frankie’s the one who gets sapped by your girl.”

  “And was this the last time Hal contacted your cousin?”

  Jake shook his head grimly. “Hal calls him and tells him that your girl is going to be in front of La Forge by the tennis place to meet up with him. He wants Frankie to trail them into the alley behind that grocery store down the street, then he can whack her. So instead of telling Hal to fuck himself, my simpleton cousin goes for it. But when he is standing waiting for Van Horn to connect with her, he sees this other guy pull a knife. Now, according to Frankie, there’s some shoving and then Van Horn gets between the guy and the girl. Frankie didn’t think Hal ever saw the knife at all. But bang…the asshole takes it right between the ribs.”

  All Owen remembered of the scene was thinking how quickly he could get Sarah out of there.

  “Now Frankie is actually relieved to see Van Horn dead, since that’s the end of the job. But he also knows how I’ve been trying to become a big-time writer and all that, so when he sees the girl getting into your car, he makes tracks and calls me a little later.”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment through the glass.

  “Why are you telling me all this.”

  “Simple. Because Frankie recognized the guy who dusted Van Horn. The sad thing is that the scumbag recognized Frankie, too. Get it? The guy who killed Van Horn—the guy who was really trying to kill Sarah Rand—is also the guy who killed Frankie.”

  “Who was he?”

  “One of Newport’s finest.”

  ~~~~

  The hospital visitor’s lot, baking in the late afternoon sun, contained only a smattering of cars. Scott Rosen parked his green BMW under a tree in the corner of the lot and was sweating before he made it to the main entrance.

  He frowned in the direction of the gift-and-flower shop by the front door. Closed on Sundays. His hands felt empty as hell as he headed toward the elevator. At the last minute, he veered toward the reception desk, identified himself and asked for Tracy Warner’s room number. Mrs. Warner was still in the intensive care unit, but the receptionist gave him the floor number.

  Scott didn’t want to admit that he was dragging his feet…that he was putting off the inevitable. He refused to admit that he wasn’t quite ready to go and face his wife and his new daughter.

  His new daughter. Shit, he thought. What kind of a man was he, anyway?

  A man with a job to do, he rationalized. Sarah Rand’s car was found on the Warner property. That fact linked his case in some way to the attack on Andrew and Tracy Warner. To represent Judge Arnold to the best of his ability—something he’d sworn to do—he had some responsibility in checking on this woman. He would just make one quick stop at the ICU.

  The fact that he’d seen Owen Dean having flowers sent up to Tracy Warner the day before had nothing to do with anything, even though catching up with the actor some time in the future was something Scott would enjoy.

  The corridor on the floor where Mrs. Warner was staying was a reflection of the empty parking lot, though infinitely cooler. On the counter of the unattended nurse’s station, he saw a large bouquet. No doubt the flowers he’d seen Owen choose and send up yesterday. Beyond the glass windows, in the unit itself, a number of attendants were moving briskly to and from one of the beds. He realized he couldn’t tell who was a doctor and who was a nurse. Screens had been drawn around two of the other beds.

  Frowning, he turned away and looked into the waiting room. A solitary older woman sat reading a newspaper.

  Pleasant gray eyes lifted in greeting.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “By no means. Come in, Mr. Rosen.”

  Scott glanced around him, extremely flustered by the recognition. “I…Have we met before?”

  “No, we haven’t yet had the pleasure.” She stood up with excruciating slowness. “Heavens, these old bones.”

  He moved toward her and the woman extended a cool, smooth hand in greeting. “I am Joanne Emerson, Tracy Warner’s sister. Your wife and I met this afternoon.”

  Scott felt himself reddening. He shook her hand in greeting.

  “This is a very distressing floor, especially for someone of my age. Nothing to cheer one up. I wanted to give away the flowers friends have been sending my sister. They can’t have them in
the unit, and there is no place to put them all out here.” Joanne pointed to a single bouquet on a corner table. “I love the maternity ward. I went down there earlier, and your wife was taking a walk in the corridor, so that’s how we met.”

  Lucy was already on her feet? Scott tried to keep the shocked look off his face.

  “That’s…that’s great!”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are that your wife’s doctor is letting her to stay the two nights here. Because of HMOs, you know, these days they act like having babies is no more traumatic than going to the dentist. In and out. In and out. You do have someone to give her a hand when she gets home tomorrow, don’t you?”

  She was coming home tomorrow? Another wave of embarrassment hit him.

  “Of course,” he lied, wondering if that kind of help was something he could arrange through the hospital.

  “I’m not surprised.” Joanne continued on without a pause. “Your Lucy is a lovely young woman. She is also very proud of you. That is a very nice picture of you that she carries in her wallet. That’s how I recognized you—she showed it to me. We got to talking about all sort of things. She even told me that you’re quite involved with this Rand murder case. I have been following the whole thing through the newspapers in Boston. The poor dear. Sarah Rand was from Boston’s South End, you know. She also went to Harvard. As you can imagine, she is a favorite topic for the media at home.”

  Joanne went on talking about the coverage of the case and about Sarah’s life as it had been revealed in the papers, and Scott tried to appear attentive. All the while, however, his mind was stuck on the woman’s words about Lucy being proud of him. He couldn’t even imagine her pulling a picture of him out of her wallet to show a stranger. Shit, he didn’t even know she carried a picture of him in her wallet.

  Proud of him? For some time now, he’d been afraid—and was still afraid—of Lucy waking up and realizing what a failure he was as a husband.

  He glanced at his watch. “If you’ll excuse me. I think I’d better head down there myself.”

  “Wonderful!” Joanne ushered him toward the elevator. “Tell Lucy I might stop by to see her and the baby tomorrow morning before she leaves.”

  “I will.” He turned to go, but at the last minute turned. “I forgot to ask. How is your sister?”

  “The doctors tell me they’re seeing some encouraging signs this afternoon, whatever than means.” She lowered her voice. “If you ask my nonmedical opinion, my sister is not going to come around until she can unload fifty years’ worth of crap, if you’ll excuse the term. I mean no disrespect to the dead. But it’s amazing how some women need to be hit hard over the head with a bat before they realize what an ass they’ve chosen to spend their lives with.”

  As the elevator descended to the maternity floor, Scott decided on the perfect gift he could buy Lucy to preserve their marriage. A hard hat.

  The problem with that, though, was that he didn’t even know what size hat she wore.

  Chapter 25

  Hal had taken out the contract on her life. Hal.

  Sarah wasn’t surprised, somehow.

  The information Owen brought out of the prison made her feel wounded, lied to, betrayed, angry. But after having had a chance to sort out her thoughts during the memorial service earlier today, she could no longer feel surprise at the news.

  “Four years ago, he courted me to help strengthen his battle against his family, but things didn’t work out the way he’d planned. He must have felt deserted in seeing me go over to Avery’s and the judge’s side.” Sarah leaned her head against the side window and thought of the events of recent months as they sped along the highway toward Providence. Blurred lines of blue and green and pink houses along the highway blended with the grimy brick red and black of deserted shops and factories.

  “But that is hardly reason enough to have someone killed.” Owen’s hand reached for hers.

  “I guess it was for Hal. Everyone had a purpose for him. My purpose for existing was to get Judge Arnold off his back. Avery’s purpose was to set right the will left by Hal’s father and make sure he received all that was his by birthright. We both failed to act as he expected us to act.”

  She swallowed hard. “You know, I should have guessed how angry he was at the time of the reading his mother’s will. He shut down on me. Wouldn’t tell me how he felt about anything. I even advised him that it was within his rights to challenge the will. Although I was executor to the estate, I was well aware of how ill she’d been in the last months of her life and how influential her husband had been during that time. It was no secret that Hal and Judge Arnold never saw eye-to-eye on anything at all.”

  “He didn’t contest it, did he?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Foolishly, I assumed his decision was made out of respect for his mother. He seemed to be doing well enough with his company, so I thought he was happy to let things stand as they were.”

  “What were the stipulations of the will, anyway?”

  “Hal would continue to get a yearly allowance, which was relatively small compared to the size of the estate. This was consistent with the trust that had been set up by Everard Van Horn. Outside of that, he could draw lump sums on the principal, but not without all types of trustees’ approvals and signatures. The level of approval depended on the amount he wanted to draw.”

  “I assume Judge Arnold was one of those trustees.”

  “Of course.”

  Sarah stared straight ahead. Unexpectedly, a fierce anger bubbled to the surface.

  “I was so naïve. I can’t believe I let myself get caught in the middle of all this. Both of those men tried to use me for their own purposes. I was a loyal partner to the judge, worshipping the ground he walked on. I did as he advised, and learned, and saw my own practice begin to flourish. And that was just fine, so long as I didn’t try to exert my own independence in anything that the judge already made up his mind on.” She laughed bitterly. “And Hal…I tried to remain a friend to him. But from his perspective I was a horrible human being all the way around. I was his mother’s lawyer, and the office partner of his worst enemy. I knew about the stipulations of the will and did not warn him about it. And I was the ice queen—”

  “Don’t.” He immediately pulled the car onto the shoulder of the highway and turned to her. “You can’t blame yourself for a family that was clearly dysfunctional long before you ever arrived on the scene.”

  He cupped her chin, looking into her eyes. “You should be proud of how you have acted. You’ve been walking a tightrope with balance and integrity. You used great judgment. And in the end, you didn’t let either of them manipulate you.”

  He kissed her with such tenderness that Sarah felt the warmth wash down through her, wrapping itself around her heart. When he pulled back, her eyes saw only him.

  “What scares me now is what we still don’t know. We can’t forget what Gantley said about arriving at your apartment and finding that someone else had done the job.” His gaze lingered on her face a moment longer. “Frankie recognized the guy who knifed Hal. Jake Gantley says the recognition went both ways, and that’s why his cousin was murdered.”

  His face was all business again as he pulled back on the highway

  “Did he have a name or a description? Anything we can go by?”

  “Uh, yes he did. The killer’s name is Paul Yeats. From what Gantley says, he was a—”

  “Newport cop until six months ago.” She finished the sentence for him.

  Owen’s head snapped in her direction.

  “Remember what I told you about the run-in I had with the Newport Police? About the fifteen-year-old and the cops who had intimidated the girl?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, the younger cop—the one who was forced to resign—that was Paul Yeats.” She leaned down and gathered the newspapers she had folded at her feet. She opened it up to the front page and headlines. “This is the same case. They just cracked it. William
Hamilton was the creep who’d raped my client. And this woman, Cherie Lake, was the one who’d arranged it back then, too. This has been going on for a while, and there were a number of underage girls who’d been lured in and used.”

  Sarah leafed through the pages again until she found the section she was looking for. “They even mention my name and the lawsuit against the department last spring. But here…they also mention the two officers involved. The older one is in Florida and refused to make a statement to the reporter who contacted him. The other one, Paul Yeats, still lives on the island but couldn’t be reached.”

  “That’s why Jake mentioned the article.”

  “What do you mean?” She dropped the paper on her lap. “Is Yeats trying to kill me because of that lawsuit?”

  “What else do you know about Yeats?”

  “He had military background. I believe he was a marine MP. No wife or kids. He’d moved in the area after getting out of the service. A real man’s man. Uncomfortable…in fact, I’d say hostile toward women. An Ollie North type when it came to following orders, though not as bright. Not surprisingly, he was well-liked by other men in the department, though the female officers didn’t have much to say on his behalf.”

  “Following orders,” Owen repeated. “An ex-cop, possibly with good connections to area police departments, perhaps even with access to police cars. Also an ex-marine having expertise with close combat.”

  “He wasn’t the one, who stuck a gun in my back this morning.”

  “You said there were two officers who stopped you on the road last Wednesday night.”

  “That’s true. He could have been the other one.” She watched Owen maneuver the car through the S-curve in Providence before heading south along the eastern side of the Narragansett Bay. “But these two are only peons, aren’t they?”

  “Damned ruthless peons, but peons nonetheless. They had to be operating on orders from someone else.”