“Thank you,” she said, with a soft sigh of relief.
“Don’t thank me until you’ve tasted my chili,” he quipped, trying to lighten the mood.
“Oh, great, just what I need,” she joked. “Another threat.”
After Bradley left, Mary set her laptop up on the dining room table and pulled out a couple of new yellow legal pads. She placed all of the information she had collected over the past week in a pile on the center of the table.
An hour later, when the doorbell rang, she smiled and hurried to open the door. “You didn’t have to ring…” she began, then stopped when she saw Rosie standing on the porch.
“Well, thanks, sweetie, but I always feel that ringing the doorbell is better than walking in,” Rosie grinned, moving past Mary, entering her home and looking around. “You never know what you might be walking into these days.”
“Rosie, please come in,” Mary said.
Rosie laughed and held out a plate covered with aluminum foil. “I come bearing gifts and an inquisitive mind,” she said. “Homemade cinnamon rolls for a quiet Sunday morning. And lots of questions.”
Mary took the offered plate and lifted the foil. She took a deep breath of the yeasty dough and cinnamon scent and smiled. “Rosie, these are amazing.”
“So what’s up?” Rosie asked. “Chief Alden came looking for us at about five, he said the jig was up, the doll had deflated and he wanted to know which one of us lent you a car.”
She giggled delicately. “He was quite determined,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face. “So much testosterone. What happened yesterday?”
Mary sighed. “Well, it was an extraordinary day,” she said, guiding Rosie into the kitchen. “Let me make us some tea, and I’ll give you all of the details.”
Rosie sat on a bar stool next to the counter and nodded. “It smells like you’ve already had your breakfast,” she said. “That’s pretty ambitious for a lazy Sunday morning.”
Mary shrugged as she filled the teapot. “Well, I have a lot of work I plan to do on some cases I’m working on.”
Rosie peered closer. “Your face is looking better,” she said. “How does it feel?”
Mary ran her hand over her cheek. “A little tender. But good for the most part.”
The doorbell rang again and Mary jumped.
“Well, aren’t you a busy lady,” Rosie said, turning in her seat and watching Mary answer the door.
Mary had barely opened the door, when it was pushed forward and Stanley strode into her house.
“I get a knock on the door at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and a police officer is handing me the keys to old Betsey,” he growled. “He wasn’t old enough to shave, much less drive her.
“Then he tells me that someone tried to shoot you yesterday and then someone broke into your house. And you didn’t call me to come over and help!”
“Mary, someone shot at you?” Rosie exclaimed, slipping off the stool and walking over. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“It was late… I was overwhelmed… I…”
The back door opened. “Mary, I just thought I’d sneak back in this way, so no one would see…” Bradley paused when he saw Rosie and Stanley staring at him, openmouthed.
“Rosie, Stanley, I believe you’ve met the police chief,” Mary choked.
“Well, damn,” the other three said simultaneously.
THIRTY-ONE
“So, what you’re saying is, you think this guy is targeting Mary because of the case she’s working on?” Stanley asked, pointing the remainder of his cinnamon roll at Bradley from across the dining room table.
Mary leaned over and pressed the answering machine that was now sitting on her kitchen table and replayed the message from the night before. “He didn’t just threaten—he followed through,” Mary said.
“Mary,” Rosie gasped. “I had no idea it was this dangerous.”
Stanley nodded. “What do you need us to do?”
“Sorry, this isn’t my usual kind of investigation,” she explained. “I can’t risk having either you or Rosie getting hurt.”
Stanley turned and pointed his cinnamon roll at Mary. “Listen girlie, I’ve dealt with trickier situations than this,” Stanley said. “I don’t expect you to hand me a gun, but I do expect you to let me help.”
Mary shook her head and was about to protest when Bradley interrupted. “Do either of you remember hearing about Jessica Whittaker’s disappearance?” Bradley asked.
“Yes, I remember,” Rosie said, nodding. “I remember because it was the same day Renee Peterson drowned.”
“You knew Renee Peterson?” Mary asked.
“Yes, she worked for me when I had the boutique,” Rosie explained. “It was while she was in high school.”
”I remember her, cute girl, bright as a button,” Stanley added. “Her death was such a shame.”
“Did you ever talk to her about her work with the senator?” Mary said.
Rosie smiled. “Yes, she’d stop by the store whenever there was a big event. I’d help her pick out the right outfit. Matter of fact, the dress she wore that night was one from my shop. It almost made her late to the party and the senator was pretty frantic.”
“How did you know that?” Mary asked.
“She had one of those fancy car phones, the senator had given it to her,” Rosie explained. “My shipment was late and we were in the backroom making final alterations when I hear this ringing sound. She pulls this giant portable phone out of her bag—but she can’t understand him because there was no such thing as cell coverage in Freeport back then.
“So she called him back on the store phone,” Rosie continued. “He said no one from the campaign staff had arrived yet and asked her to hurry. She teased him that no one wanted to be around a sinking ship.
”She was so happy—she was glowing. That was the last time I saw her,” Rosie sighed and shook her head.
“I always wondered about her death,” Rosie added. “She had been on the high school swim team. It didn’t make sense that she would drown. And I don’t think the coroner’s report showed that much alcohol in her system.”
“They did a toxicology screen on her?” Bradley asked.
“Her mother told me they did it routinely in those kinds of situations,” Rosie replied. “They made them hold off on the funeral for a couple of extra days in order to perform it.”
Mary laid her hand on Rosie’s. “I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”
“Well, at least her parents know it was an accident,” Rosie said. “Not like those little girls you’re helping. It would be horrible to not know after all these years.”
“Yes, it would be horrible,” Bradley agreed.
Mary glanced at him. There was something in his voice that made her feel his comment was more than commonplace. She studied his face—his demeanor was very professional, but she could see the pain in his eyes.
Rosie and Stanley left soon after, promising not to mention their conversation to anyone else.
“Can they keep confidences?” Bradley asked.
“Well, they both love juicy gossip and Stanley loves to tease,” Mary said with a smile. “But if they believe a slip of their lips is going to endanger me—they’ll be silent.”
“They’re good friends, you’re lucky,” Bradley said.
Mary nodded. “Yes, they took me under their wings as soon as I moved to Freeport. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
Bradley grinned. “I have a feeling you would have managed somehow.”
Mary chuckled. “Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.”
Mary grabbed a couple diet colas and handed one to Bradley before she sat down in front of her computer.
“I’ve run criminal checks on the campaign staff members, and except for a couple of speeding tickets, they’re all clean,” Mary said. “I’ve also run preliminary checks on all of the other guests. Nothing stands out.”
“Well, just because they don’t have a criminal record doesn’t mean they can’t be our guy,” Bradley said. “Most serial killers were considered up-standing law abiding citizens before they were caught.”
“So, we have two cases, two unique cases,” Mary said. “One case involves the murder of one person, Renee, and another case involves the serial murders of at least five little girls, right?”
“Well, let me play devil’s advocate,” Bradley said. “What if they are connected? What if this is not just a big coincidence?”
“Yeah,” Mary agreed, “there are no such things as coincidences.”
“Right, so what do these cases have in common?”
Mary pulled out the files that listed the disappearances of the little girls.
“Okay, we have five deaths—if we count Jessica in the batch,” she said. “The dates of the disappearances are July 6th, August 6th, September 6th and October 6th. Election day that year was on November 6th.”
“So our killer’s cool-off period was about thirty days,” he said.
“It could mean that he couldn’t have been Renee’s killer because he had already killed Jessica.”
“Yes,” Bradley agreed.
“Or it could mean that he killed Renee for another reason, because she doesn’t fit his usual profile,” she added.
“Well, let’s see what else we find that might connect the two cases,” Bradley suggested, pulling half of the pile of papers toward him.
They worked quietly, examining each document carefully. After an hour Bradley got up and walked out to the kitchen. Mary stretched and looked over.
“I promised chili,” he said, “and I’m a man of my word.”
Mary smiled. “Are you sure? We could always just make sandwiches.”
He cocked his eyebrow at her. “Are you, perhaps, disparaging my cooking abilities?” he asked.
“No. Never. Perish the thought,” she laughed. “I’ll keep reading if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest.”
The homey kitchen sounds in the background were calming as Mary read the files and tried to get her mind around someone who could indiscriminately take the lives of those innocent children. She couldn’t get the picture of the little girls out of her mind. She knew they saved her life and the least she could do is help them move on.
She picked up the folder with the information about the children and flipped through the files until she found the child she was looking for. The little girl who had placed her hand on Mary’s arm was Lillian Johnson and she was from Gratiot, Wisconsin, just on the other side of the Illinois state line. Her parents had called her their little Lily. She had two siblings, both younger and she had been a little mom to both of them. Her parents’ statement said she would have never left her five-year-old brother and three-year-old sister alone in the backyard. She must have been forcibly removed. She disappeared on August 6, 1984.
Knowing her emotions might cloud her perception, Mary swapped that folder for the one with the senator’s information. She flipped through his campaign itinerary until a date caught her eye.
“Wait a minute,” she said aloud.
“What is it?” Bradley stopped chopping peppers and walked over to where Mary was pushing through the papers, trying to find her legal pad.
“The dates, the dates that the girls ended up missing. What were they?” she asked.
“July 6th, August 6th, September 6th, October 6th and finally, November 6th,” Bradley said. “Why?’
“Look at this,” Mary said, pointing to the itinerary. “August 6, 1984—speaking engagement in Warren, Illinois—less than ten miles from Gratiot, where Lily was taken.
“And all of the other dates—all of the other months—speaking engagements in neighboring towns,” she said, pulling out the rest of the files and comparing them.
“It all leads us back to one man,” Bradley said.
“The senator,” Mary supplied.
THIRTY-TWO
The coroner’s office was just a little bit larger than a closet and was housed in a corner of the lower level at the County Courthouse. The current coroner was actually one of the local funeral directors and rarely used his county office, but did most of his work from his mortuary. So, the office itself was just row upon row of file cabinets packed side by side in the small dim room.
Next to the coroner’s office was the county clerk’s office, a large spacious area encompassing the rest of the lower level of the courthouse. It consisted of an open area with a counter that separated the clerks from the general public and six offices with glass walls that surrounded the open area.
Mary waved to the county clerk as she entered the building and walked over to the counter to meet her. “Hi, Linda, happy Monday,” she said.
The trim, dark-haired middle-aged woman groaned, “I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. What can I do for you?”
“I need to have some records pulled from the coroner’s office—a file that’s more than twenty-four years old. Do you know how I can get access to it?”
Linda Lincoln knew everything there was to know about Stephenson County. Mary had learned that Linda could have run the entire county single-handedly, but the entire county could not have run without Linda.
“Which file?” Linda asked.
“The autopsy report on Renee Peterson,” Mary replied.
“Why, isn’t that the strangest thing,” she said slowly. “That file was taken from the courthouse last week. A junior clerk noticed the file drawer was open and saw that the folder was empty.”
Mary’s stomach dropped. Now what was she going to do?
“You’d think that someone didn’t want you to have that file, Mary,” Linda continued. “But fortunately for you, I know that the coroner at that time had a real bad habit of losing files, so we always made duplicates of everything. I’m sure it’s in the vault. Why don’t we take a little walk together?”
Mary grinned as Linda grabbed her keys and made her way around the counter. “Have I mentioned lately how much I admire your style?” Mary asked.
Linda laughed. “You just always got to be one step ahead of the crooks, honey,” she said, “and then you’ve got it made.”
They walked to the end of the hall and stopped in front of a solid steel door. Linda inserted the key, turned the lock and pushed it open.
The vault was actually a large room surrounded by reinforced steel to protect all of the county’s records in case of fire. It had steel file cabinets standing side by side in aisles that were only about three feet apart.
“It gets a little tight in here,” Linda said as she walked down the third aisle. “But it’s as solid as Fort Knox.”
Linda found the correct cabinet and pulled open the drawer. She ruffled through the folders and finally pulled one out.
“Here you are, Renee Peterson, autopsy performed on November 7, 1984,” she said. “Do you need the whole file or just a part?”
“I’d like to look at the whole thing if I can,” Mary said, “but I’m mostly interested in the toxicology report.”
“Sure,” Linda said, with a wink. “Why don’t we just run back to my office and I’ll make you a copy of everything. Then, when you return it, we can file it where the other one used to be.”
“Thanks, Linda,” Mary said. “You are a life saver.”
It always amazed Mary at the way little things like phone numbers seemed to stick in your memory, even after not using them for years. Once back at her office, she dialed the number that she had used weekly when she was a Chicago cop.
“Cook County Coroner, Wojchichowski,” the voice on the other end answered.
“Hey, Bernie, it’s Mary O’Reilly,” she said.
“Hey, little O’Reilly, how ya doing?”
Mary smiled. “I’m doing well,” she replied, “although they don’t have any good Polish food in Freeport.”
“No kidding?” he said. “What kind of uncivilized place did you move to anyway?�
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“I moved to Mayberry,” Mary said.
“You know, Aunt Bea was Polish,” Bernie said.
Mary laughed. “Yeah, I heard that.”
Bernie chuckled. “So, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a tox report I’d like you to look over, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “It’s almost twenty-five years old.”
“Yeah, I was around back then,” he chuckled. “Sure fax it on over. I’ll take a look and call you back.”
“Thanks, Bernie, you’re the best,” she said.
“Well, kochanie, it’s because I’m Polish.”
“Are you swearing at me in Polish again?” Mary teased, knowing that kochanie meant sweetheart.
Bernie laughed. “Look it up, kochanie, look it up.”
“Bernie, thanks for doing this,” she replied.
“Hey, no problem,” Bernie said. “By the way, Mary, I got this nephew, nice kid, owns a bunch of apartment buildings. Want I should set the two of you up for a blind date?”
“Bernie, Bernie,” Mary called into the phone while slapping her hand against the mouthpiece. “There seems to be something wrong with our connection.”
Bernie laughed. “Yeah, just fax the report and we’ll talk.”
“Thanks, Bernie.”
After she faxed the report, she sat down at her desk and dialed another familiar number. She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on the corner of her desk.
“Hi, Dad, how are you doing?” she asked when her father picked up the phone.
She could picture her dad sitting at the kitchen table in their spic and span kitchen. His blue eyes would be sparkling and there would be a smile on his face. He’d sit back in his chair and, if her mother wasn’t home, prop his feet up on the chair next to him.
“Hey, Mary-Mary, how is life in the country?” he asked. “How’s the ghost-busting business?”
“It’s good,” she said, running her hand over her cheek. “I had a run-in with a fort the other day—but I’m doing much better now.”
His deep chuckle cheered her. “I remember the time we were all downtown looking at the Christmas lights on State Street and you walked into a street sign,” he said. “As I recall, they had to replace the sign. So, did the fort come out better than the sign?”
Crimes of Passion Page 99