Sleeping Beauty

by Phillip Margolin

  “I was almost there when I heard the first scream. I froze. That scream was terrible. It paralyzed me.”

  Ashley knew exactly what he meant.

  “When she screamed again I went to the boathouse.”

  “Did you see Randy Coleman running away?”

  Maxfield shook his head. “I made that up.”

  Ashley looked shocked. “If the police believed you, Coleman could have been tried for murder.”

  Maxfield’s features hardened. “He deserved to be. He tried to kill you in the parking lot at Sunny Rest. I didn’t lie about that. And he murdered Terri when he was trying to kill his wife.”

  “But you didn’t see him at the boathouse?”

  “No. He was probably hiding inside and got away when I chased you.”

  “What really happened in there?”

  “When I came in, Casey was kneeling over Terri. The knife was on the floor next to her. She grabbed it and jumped up. Then she screamed ‘Murderer,’ and ran at me. She looked terrified. She thought that I had killed Terri. She tried to stab me. It happened so fast that I didn’t think. I hit her on the jaw. She flew back and cracked her head on that oak column. The sound was sickening. I knew she was badly hurt as soon as I heard it. I was going to check on her when it dawned on me that Terri’s killer might still be in the boathouse. There hadn’t been that much time between hearing the second scream and my entering, and I hadn’t seen anyone go out the front door. Casey dropped the knife when I hit her. I picked it up for protection. A second later, I saw you at the window. I wanted to tell you that I was innocent but you took off before I could get close enough to say anything.” He looked away. “When it dawned on me that you’d tell the police that I killed Terri and attacked Casey I panicked and ran.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone what happened, later?”

  “Who would believe me after you told the police what you saw and I took off?”

  Ashley smiled confidently. “I do, Mr. Maxfield, and I’m going to make other people believe you. I know who killed my parents.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  It takes forty-five minutes to drive from Salem to Portland, and Ashley was thinking all the way. Joshua Maxfield had filled in most of the blanks, but one question still nagged at her. By the time she left the freeway, she thought she knew how to answer it.

  Jerry was waiting for her in a dark booth in the rear of Huber’s, where they had arranged to meet for a late lunch.

  “Well?” he asked as soon as she sat down.

  “He didn’t kill them,” Ashley answered, “and I know who did.”

  Ashley spent the rest of their lunch explaining her theory to Jerry. He played devil’s advocate, but she beat back all his arguments. When she had finished her presentation, Jerry sat back and thought. She watched him expectantly. Finally, he shook his head.

  “My God, Ashley, I think you’re right.”

  Ashley let out a pent-up breath. She had worried that Jerry would not agree with her or that he would find some flaw in her reasoning. It meant so much that he was on her side.

  “One thing bothers me, though,” Jerry continued. “If you’re right, the murders in your house weren’t random. How did he know that you’re Casey’s daughter? That didn’t become common knowledge until the guardianship hearing.”

  The question seemed to bother Ashley.

  “Remember when we were in court for the hearing, the week I came back to Portland?”

  “Sure.”

  “You wanted to get the file on my adoption from the firm that represented Henry Van Meter. What happened?”

  “Monte Jefferson couldn’t find it.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought it had been misfiled or thrown away by mistake. It’s over twenty years old. It happens.”

  “What if the file wasn’t lost? What if it was stolen?”

  The import of her question suddenly struck Jerry and he turned pale as he realized why Ashley was so upset. Jerry’s face crumpled.

  “Once he found your file he had the names of everyone who knew that you were Casey’s daughter, including my father’s name.”

  Ashley reached across the table and held Jerry’s hands. “He won’t get away with it. We’ll get him. He’ll pay. But we need proof. So, tell me, where did they store my file?”

  Elite Storage owned a 186,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial park in North Portland. Wide, metal overhead doors opened onto loading docks at set intervals around the building. Jerry and Ashley drove past several moving trucks parked at the loading bays. The office was located in the northeast corner of the warehouse. A balding, middle-aged man in a plaid shirt and khakis was doing paperwork when Ashley and Jerry walked in. A sign on his desk identified him as Raymond Wehrman.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “I’m Jerry Philips, Mr. Wehrman. My dad was Ken Philips. You store our old law office files.”

  “If you say so. We handle about seventy percent of the law offices in town.”

  “I’m not surprised that the name doesn’t ring bells. My dad passed away and I’m a one-man outfit now. But you store Brucher, Platt and Heinecken’s files, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s a big firm. I recognize that name.”

  “This is Ashley Spencer. The Brucher firm handled her adoption twenty-four years ago. I’ve been representing her in a probate matter and we needed to see the file.” Jerry handed the man the document Judge Gish had signed ordering Miles’s attorney to hand over Ashley’s file. After Wehrman read the order he looked up. “Why are you here? Doesn’t the firm’s lawyer have to give you the file?”

  “Yes, but he told us that the file is missing.”

  “From our warehouse?”

  “Yes. We were wondering if you could try to find it. It’s very important.”

  “Even if it’s there, I can’t give it to you. I can only give it to a lawyer from the Brucher firm.”

  “That’s okay,” Ashley said. “We just want to know if it’s here.”

  The man checked his watch then looked at the piles of paper that covered his desk. He stood up.

  “Let’s go see what I can find. I’ve been sitting behind this desk all day and I can use a break.”

  Wehrman led Jerry and Ashley down endless rows of twelve-foot-high shelves illuminated by overhead fluorescent lighting until they arrived at the shelves rented by the Brucher firm. Wehrman pulled over a ladder and climbed up to the shelf that should have held the file with the record of Ashley’s adoption. After several minutes, he slid the ladder to another section. Finally, he gave up and climbed down.

  “It’s not here,” Wehrman said.

  “What does that mean?” Jerry asked.

  He shrugged. “Any number of things. The file could still be at the law office. You know, they thought they sent it over but the problem happened at the firm. Or we could have misfiled it, which doesn’t happen much, but does happen every so often. Or someone could have checked it out and forgotten to return it.”

  “If someone did take it out of the warehouse would there be a record?” Ashley asked.

  “Yeah, we have everything on computer now, even the old stuff. Cost us a fortune.”

  Back in his office, Wehrman typed in Brucher, Platt and Heinecken. Then he typed in the title of the file.

  “Says here we received the file seven years ago.” He hit more keys. “That’s funny.”

  “What is?” Ashley asked.

  “The file was never checked out. It should still be here.”

  “If I gave you a year and a name, could you find out if the person checked out a file in that year?”

  “Sure. I’ll just run a search.”

  Ashley told Wehrman the year Ken Philips, her father, Terri, and Tanya Jones were murdered and gave him a name. A short time later, Wehrman had her answer.

  “Miles Van Meter checked out a file that year but it wasn’t yours.”

  “I didn’t think it would be,” Ashley sai
d.

  Book Tour

  The Present

  Miles had been speaking for almost an hour when Jill Lane, the owner of Murder for Fun, came to the podium to rescue him.

  “We have time for one or two more questions. Then Mr. Van Meter will sign your books.”

  A middle-aged man in the front row raised his hand. Miles pointed at him.

  “Mr. Van Meter, I went online and found the itinerary for your first Sleeping Beauty book tour. Did you know that there were unsolved murders like the Maxfield murders in two of the cities on your tour, Cleveland, Ohio, and Ames, Iowa?”

  “No, I didn’t, but I spoke in twenty-six cities and it would be strange if there were no murders.”

  “These were pretty similar, though. Do you think you were stalked by a copy cat?”

  “I hope not.” Miles smiled and held up his hands in an attitude of prayer. “Please don’t make me feel like Jessica Fletcher on the old Murder, She Wrote TV show. Did you ever notice how a murder occurred every place she went? I always wondered why the cops didn’t suspect her of being a serial killer.”

  The audience laughed and Miles grinned.

  “We’ll take one more question,” Jill Lane said.

  A woman stepped out from behind a stack of books in the rear of the store and raised her hand.

  “Miles,” she said as she walked toward the speaker. Van Meter looked puzzled for a moment before breaking into a smile.

  “I don’t believe this,” he told the audience. “We have a special guest, Ashley Spencer. Ashley, what in the world are you doing in Seattle?”

  There had been a buzz in the audience when Ashley appeared. Some people recognized her from photographs in the book or from seeing her on television. As soon as Ashley’s identity was confirmed the crowd broke into applause.

  Ashley stopped several rows from Miles and held up his book. “I finally read the copy of Sleeping Beauty you signed for me. It was really good.”

  “That’s high praise, coming from you.”

  “I did have a question,” Ashley said.

  “Ask away.”

  “You were very considerate of my feelings and never asked me what happened in my house on the evening my father and Tanya were killed.”

  “I knew it would have been tough for you to go over that.”

  “So you got all of your information about that night from the police reports and the court testimony?”

  “Right. I think someone already asked me about that.”

  Ashley opened her copy of Sleeping Beauty. “Here’s my question. In the first chapter, you wrote, ‘Ashley lay on her bed waiting to die. Then the door to the guest bedroom closed and Maxfield, dressed in black and wearing a ski mask and gloves, was standing in Ashley’s doorway. She believed that he had come to rape and murder her. Instead, after watching her for a few seconds, he whispered, “See you later,” and went downstairs. Moments later, Ashley heard the refrigerator door open.’ ”

  Ashley closed the book and looked at Miles. “How did you know that the man who broke into my house said, ‘See you later,’ before he went downstairs?”

  Miles shrugged. “I think it was in a police report or you might have testified about it.”

  Ashley had been smiling. Now the smile disappeared and was replaced by a look of cold hatred.

  “No, Miles. I never told anyone that the man who killed my father spoke to me before he went to the kitchen. I was so traumatized by the attack that I blocked it out. In fact, I didn’t remember that it had happened until I read your book for the first time, this week.”

  Miles kept smiling. “Well, you must have told someone.”

  “That’s what I thought at first-that I told somebody but had forgotten-so I read every police report that mentioned me and I read the transcripts of my preliminary hearing and my trial testimony. Then I talked to Delilah Wallace and Larry Birch. Neither one remembers me telling them that the killer spoke to me.”

  Ashley paused and glared at Miles. “Only me and the man who broke into my house knew what was said in my bedroom.”

  A murmur began in the audience as Miles’s fans turned to each other. Miles held up a hand.

  “Whoa, Ashley, calm down. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but Joshua Maxfield murdered your father and Tanya Jones. A jury determined that.”

  “Does the name Ken Philips ring a bell?”

  Miles looked puzzled by the question. “No, should it?” he answered.

  “He’s the lawyer who arranged my adoption. He’s also another of your victims. You killed him shortly before you broke into my house.”

  There were several gasps in the crowd.

  “Why are you making these wild accusations?” Miles asked.

  “Why did you go to the Elite Storage warehouse shortly before Ken Philips was murdered?”

  Miles looked perplexed. “That was years ago, Ashley. How can I remember that? I’m not even sure I did go to Elite.”

  “The storage company records show that you checked out a file shortly after your father consulted an attorney at your firm about making me a beneficiary in his will. That was only a few weeks before Ken Philips’s murder and the break-in at my house.”

  Miles flashed Ashley a patronizing grin. “If you say so,” he said, “but I’m not following you, and I doubt anyone else is.”

  He turned toward the crowd for support but was greeted by confused and hostile stares.

  “You learned that your father was changing his will,” Ashley said. “I’m guessing that you looked in the file of the partner who was preparing the new will-probably after everyone had left for the day. You learned that ‘Ashley Spencer’ was going to get part of Henry’s fortune. You had no idea who ‘Ashley Spencer’ was, so you went through all of Henry’s personal files at the firm. When you couldn’t find anything there you went to the storage company on the pretext of getting an old file.

  “You knew that my father had made your sister pregnant and that she’d given birth in Europe, but you were never told what happened to her child. My adoption file was stored at the warehouse. You went there on the pretext of getting another file for a case. It must have come as a shock to learn that my father had adopted me and that I was living in Portland. But you also learned that my adoption was kept secret and that only a few people knew about it. Anton Brucher was dead, but my father, Terri, and Ken Philips were alive.

  “Henry was cruel and dictatorial when he was younger, but his personality changed after his near-fatal stroke. You were afraid that he would go through with his plan to make me an heir or that I would try to assert a claim to his estate once I learned that I was Casey’s daughter. Or maybe the hatred you bore my father for making love to your sister was rekindled. Whatever the reason, you decided to kill me and everyone who knew I was Henry’s granddaughter. You tried to kill me at my house and in the Academy dorm after Maxfield escaped. You knew everyone would blame him.”

  “This is insane, Ashley. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you’re a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “You’re forgetting Joshua Maxfield’s book. If I’m the man who broke into your house, how did he know that the killer ate some food in your kitchen after raping Tanya Jones?”

  “That’s an easy question to answer. Sleeping Beauty is your first published work but you’ve been writing for a while. You were proud of the murders you’d been committing. You wanted to brag about them but that would have sent you to death row, so you did the next best thing-you wrote a novel about your crimes and you sent it to Joshua Maxfield for editorial help. You didn’t put your name on the manuscript for obvious reasons. There was a post office box as a return address. What you didn’t know was that Maxfield had writer’s block and was desperate for a story idea. He plagiarized your novel and planned to sell a rewritten version as his own.”

  “Ashley, I know you’ve been through a lot. I hoped that Maxfield’s conviction would bring closure to your tragedy. But this just shows that yo
u still need professional help to work through your problems.”

  “You mean, you think I’m nuts?” Ashley asked.

  Miles shook his head. He looked sad. “I know exactly what you’re going through. Remember, I almost lost Casey. Experiencing that type of loss does funny things to a person.”

  “That’s true, Miles, but does it make your fingerprints appear in odd places, like the first draft of Joshua Maxfield’s book?” Miles froze. “The draft that Maxfield read to his writing seminar was a heavily rewritten version of a previous draft. Until recently, everyone thought that he wrote the draft, but once I figured out that you might have written it Delilah Wallace had the crime lab test each page for fingerprints.” Ashley gestured toward the audience. “Would you like to explain to these people how your prints could have ended up on several pages of the manuscript?”

  All eyes turned toward Miles, but Miles just stared at Ashley.

  “The FBI got a search warrant for your house after they found the prints,” she continued. “They found the critique Joshua wrote in the desk in your study. He was very discouraging. He wanted you to give up on the book so he could steal the idea without worrying that you would try to publish.”

  Miles turned quickly and took a step toward the backroom of the store but two men wearing blue windbreakers with “FBI” stenciled on the back were standing in the hall blocking his way.

  “Freeze, Mr. Van Meter,” Claire Rolvag said. The escort was standing inches from her author. “I’m an FBI agent and you are under arrest.”

  As Claire spoke, several members of the audience who had asked questions following the reading moved toward the front of the room and surrounded Maxfield. He gaped at them, then glared at Ashley.

  “This is a setup. You set me up,” Miles said incredulously as he was handcuffed.

  Ashley walked up to Van Meter and glared at him. “Yes I did, you bastard.”

  Miles stared back. There was nothing behind his eyes. “I’m completely innocent, Ashley,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice that was more threatening than a scream. “When I’m cleared, you and I will have to have a long, private talk about your error.”