by Tami Hoag
Dixon checked his watch and frowned. “I’ve got to talk to the press. They want me to comment on Milo Bordain’s reward.”
“What’s your comment going to be, boss?” Campbell asked as Dixon headed for the door.
“No comment.”
31
Gina Kemmer paced around her living room like a caged animal, restless and on edge and desperately wanting out. Darkness had fallen outside. She felt as if it were pressing in against the walls of her cute little house, trying to get in and swallow her whole like a monster. She had turned on all the lights in her living room to ward it off.
She was cold and had wrapped a heavy sweater around herself, holding it tight in a manner that made it seem as if she were wearing a straitjacket. Maybe she should have been wearing a straitjacket, she thought. She felt like she might go crazy. Her life had gone crazy, no thanks to Marissa.
Every time she thought of her friend, her memory flashed to that horrible picture of Marissa butchered and bloody, lying dead on the floor. The thing was still lying on her coffee table among her more pleasant memories of times past. She needed to get rid of it. She couldn’t have it there. She could imagine the blood seeping out of the photograph and running off it and spreading over the other snapshots of happier times, ruining them.
Her stomach tried to bolt again, but there was nothing left in it to throw up. She went to the kitchen and got a long-handled barbecue tongs out of a drawer. Back in the living room she inched sideways toward the coffee table, trying not to look at the photograph. Hand shaking badly, she tried to catch the corner of it with the tongs, swearing as she knocked it away.
After a couple of tries, she managed to get hold of it. She took it to the kitchen, holding it as far away from her as possible, as if it were the dead carcass of a rat or a snake. In the kitchen, she threw the picture in the trash and the tongs after it, the utensil now contaminated with the evil that had been done to Marissa.
A fresh wave of tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She had never been so scared in her life.
Gina wasn’t the kind of person who went looking for excitement or lived life on the edge. That had been Marissa—always the one with the big plan. That was how they had ended up in Oak Knoll: Marissa’s big plan.
Sure, Gina had been glad to come along. And it had worked out fine. She loved it here. She loved the town and her home. The boutique was doing well. She was satisfied. Life could have just gone on that way forever. The only other thing she wanted was to meet a nice guy—not even a rich guy, just a nice guy.
Everything was ruined now. Marissa was dead.
She pressed a hand over her mouth and tried to swallow the crying, hiccupping, and choking on it. The local news was coming on with the story of Marissa’s murder leading the broadcast. Gina grabbed the remote control and turned the sound up.
First was an exterior shot of Marissa’s house, which had always been one of Gina’s favorite places, so pretty with the porch and the flowers, and Marissa’s fanciful sculptures in the yard. Now it looked abandoned and sinister.
Then coverage went live to a press conference being given in front of the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was telling about the autopsy results. That Marissa had died of multiple stab wounds, and that her daughter was in stable condition in the hospital. He confirmed the earlier reports of a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. The number for the tip line was put up on the bottom of the screen.
Twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money. Marissa would have said it wasn’t, but it was to Gina. It was to most people. The boutique was doing well, but cash flow was always an issue with a business that had to maintain inventory. She no longer had Marissa to help her out. Twenty-five thousand dollars would take the financial sting out of her death.
But she would have to live to collect it.
Gina’s head swam and she had to sit down. The idea that came to her made her dizzy and sick. It was something Marissa would have thought of—something Marissa would have done without hesitation.
The worst they can do is say no. That’s what Marissa would have said.
But that wasn’t true. Marissa was dead.
Gina closed her eyes and saw the scene from the photograph she had thrown away.
The smartest thing she could have done would have been to pack some things and get the hell out.
But she loved her home. She loved her life here.
She had taken her phone off the hook hours before. Reporters had found out that she had been friends with Marissa. They wanted to interview her. They wanted to ask stupid questions like how did it feel to have her best friend murdered and did she know who the killer was.
Maybe she could sell her story. Maybe that was her leverage.
She muted the television and stared at the sheriff and the number for the tip line. On the coffee table lay the business card the older detective had left for her.
She didn’t know what to do.
She picked up the receiver and punched in the number.
The call went through.
“I need to talk to you ...”
Ten minutes later she was driving down the street, her mind on her mission. She turned the corner at one end of the block just as a plain burgundy Ford Taurus turned onto her street from the other end of the block. In it were two sheriff’s detectives come to watch over her and keep her safe.
32
Mark Foster was younger than Mendez expected him to be. He had imagined the head of the music department in a prestigious school like McAster, and a town like Oak Knoll—known for its summer classical music festival—would be old and stodgy in a rumpled brown suit, wearing little wire-rimmed glasses and with white hair growing out of his ears.
Instead, Foster was probably in his late forties, fit and good-looking with close-cropped thinning brown hair. He was dressed in khaki pants and a blue oxford shirt with a knitted brown necktie. The only part Mendez had gotten right was the wire-rimmed glasses.
At seven thirty in the evening Foster was still working, preparing for a rehearsal of his senior honors brass quintet. Mendez and Hicks stood in the conductor’s area of the stark white music room that rose up around them in level after level of chairs and black metal music stands. Foster distributed sheet music to the stands near them where his quintet musicians would sit.
“I’ll help any way I can,” he said. “I was horrified when I heard the news. What’s the world coming to? The murders last year, now this. You don’t expect that kind of thing here. We live in such a pretty little bubble most of the time. I remember talking with Marissa last fall after Peter Crane abducted that teacher and tried to kill her. We couldn’t believe it.”
“You were good friends?” Hicks asked.
“We ran in the same circles. Saw each other socially, occasionally met for drinks, that kind of thing.”
“When was the last time you saw Ms. Fordham?” Mendez asked.
“A couple of weeks ago at dinner,” he said. “It was so weird. I had gone to Los Olivos to try a new little hole-in-the-wall place I’d heard about. I’m a food fanatic,” he explained. “I live to find places nobody else has discovered yet. I was shocked to see anyone I knew. But there was Marissa, smiling and waving. She was always so vibrant, so full of life.”
“We were told you dated her,” Hicks said.
“We went out from time to time,” he admitted. “Plus One was Marissa’s specialty.”
“What do you mean?”
“She liked charity fund-raisers—the social scene, dressing up, having a good time, rubbing elbows with all the right people,” he explained. “But she never had to buy a ticket. She was always somebody’s Plus One.”
“A party girl,” Mendez said.
“I guess you could say so, but she wasn’t wild. She just liked to have a good time. She was a free spirit. She liked men, and men liked her.”
“Was she ever more than Plus One to you?”
“We were ju
st friends,” Foster said, his expression carefully blank.
“Did she know you’re gay?” Mendez asked.
If Foster was shocked at the question, he did a good job of hiding it.
“I’m not gay.”
Mendez looked at Hicks, pretending confusion. “Really? Someone told us you are.”
Foster shrugged it off. “That’s nothing new. Single artsy teacher, hasn’t gotten any co-eds pregnant—must be gay. I’m not.”
“Huh,” Mendez said. “He seemed pretty sure of it.”
Foster shrugged. “Well, whoever he was, he was mistaken.”
“When did you last speak to Ms. Fordham?” Hicks asked.
Foster thought about it. “Hmm ... Sunday. She called me Sunday afternoon.”
“For any particular reason?”
He shook his head. “Just to chat.”
“How did she seem?
“Fine. Normal.”
“She didn’t say anything about being worried, or that someone was bothering her?”
“No. We talked about the holiday fair coming up. She’s been doing some work with silk. She was excited about having pieces for sale in her booth.”
“Can you tell us where you were Sunday evening?” Hicks asked.
“Dinner and a movie at a friend’s house. Home in bed by eleven thirty. School night.”
A door opened at the top of the room and two of Foster’s quintet came in carrying trumpets.
“Is there anything else?” Foster asked. “I can postpone the rehearsal if you need me.”
“No, thanks, Mr. Foster,” Hicks said. “We’re done for now.”
Mendez handed Foster a card. “Thank you for your time. If you think of anything, please call.”
Foster put the card in his pocket. “I’ll do that. Good luck. I hope you find the person that did it.”
Halfway to the door, Mendez turned around. “Mr. Foster, was Ms. Fordham with anyone when you saw her at that restaurant?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She was having dinner with her attorney.”
Steve Morgan.
“I told you!” Mendez gloated as they walked across the parking lot. “I knew it!”
“Could have been an innocent attorney-client dinner,” Hicks said.
“You don’t sneak out of town to an out-of-the-way restaurant nobody knows for a simple client dinner.”
Hicks conceded the point.
“That bastard!” Mendez said. “I want him in the box. Now.”
“It’s not against the law to have dinner,” Hicks said. “Or to cheat on your wife, for that matter.”
“He’s connected to a murder victim.”
“He’s a lawyer. He’ll never consent.”
“He’s got a big ego,” Mendez said, pulling open his car door. “Maybe he’ll want to prove us wrong.”
“What do you think about Foster?” Hicks asked as they got in the car.
“Single artsy teacher with no pregnant co-eds?” Mendez said. “Sounds gay to me.”
“He was pretty cool about it.”
“If he’s used to people assuming he’s gay, maybe it’s no big deal to him.”
“There’s a big difference between someone saying you’re gay and someone being able to prove it,” Hicks said. “We didn’t ask him who he was with at that out-of-the-way dinner.”
“Like you said: There’s no law against having dinner. Unless he was making out with another guy between courses, it doesn’t matter who he was with,” Mendez said.
“I see,” Hicks said. “It’s okay for Foster to meet a boyfriend for dinner, but Marissa Fordham being seen with Steve Morgan gives Morgan a motive for murder. That’s some double standard you’ve got there, compadre.”
“Don’t ridicule my theory of the crime,” Mendez said. “I mean, do you really think the powers that be at McAster would be shocked to find out their music director is gay? That’s like saying they’d be shocked to find out half the girls’ softball team are lesbians. Would they really care?”
“They’d care if there were photographs,” Hicks pointed out.
“So would Steve Morgan,” Mendez countered.
33
The adrenaline for the upcoming confrontation coursed through Mendez all the way to the Morgan home ... then crashed. Steve Morgan’s Trans Am was not in the driveway.
“Maybe it’s in the garage,” Hicks said.
“It was parked outside last night.”
“Last night? What are you doing? Stalking the guy?”
“I was just driving around, thinking. I came by here.”
“You’re obsessed.”
“I’m tenacious. It’s only obsession if there’s nothing to back it up.”
They sat at the curb for a moment, Mendez regrouping his thoughts.
“Let’s go in,” he said. “We’ll talk to Mrs. Morgan. Light a fire.”
Sara Morgan was not pleased to see them. It took her several moments to come to the door. She was dressed like a welder in bib overalls and a heavy leather apron with equally heavy leather gloves. Her hair was up in a messy topknot with long curls slipping free all around.
She looked like she hadn’t slept or eaten in days.
“Detectives,” she said, pulling the gloves off. Her hands were raw with cuts and scratches. She had given up on the Smurf Band-Aids. The sculpture she had told him about was taking a hard toll on her.
“What a surprise,” she said with no surprise in her voice at all.
“Mrs. Morgan,” Mendez said. “Is your husband at home? We need to speak to him.”
“What about?”
“It’s of a sensitive nature, ma’am,” Hicks said.
“Are you going to accuse him of sleeping with Marissa again?” she asked bluntly.
“Uhhhh ... well ...”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “He’ll only deny it. That’s the first three things they learn in law school, you know. Deny, deny, deny.”
“It sounds like you’ve already had that conversation with him,” Mendez said.
Sara Morgan let his statement hang. “He isn’t home,” she said. “He called to say he’d be late. Again.”
Wendy came down the stairs then, her eyes widening a bit at the sight of two detectives in the foyer. She’d grown since Mendez had last seen her. She was going to be a knockout like her mother in another few years.
“Hey, Wendy,” he said, smiling. “How are you doing?”
She shrugged with one shoulder. She didn’t smile back. “I’m okay. Why are you here?”
Sara Morgan turned to her daughter. “They have some questions about Marissa, about ... what happened.”
Wendy huffed an impatient sigh. “Why don’t you just say it? Her murder. Marissa was murdered. Somebody took a knife and killed her.”
“Wendy—”
“I’m not a baby, Mom. I know what goes on in the world. People get murdered. People die. It’s nothing new,” she said with a bitterness in her tone that made Mendez frown.
Wendy looked up at him with unblinking blue eyes. “Do you know who killed her?”
“No,” he said. “We’re still gathering information. Your mom and Ms. Fordham were friends. We thought she might be able tell us something about Ms. Fordham we don’t already know.”
Satisfied with that answer, Wendy moved on. “How’s Haley? Is she going to be all right? Where is she?”
“She’s going to be fine,” Mendez said. “Anne Leone—Miss Navarre—is looking after her in the hospital until we can find some relatives.”
Wendy’s demeanor lightened considerably at that. She turned to her mother. “Oh, Mom! Can I go see her? Please!”
“Wendy loves Haley,” Sara Morgan said, her own expression softening as she looked down at her daughter.
“Can I go see her in the hospital? Please, please, please!”
She turned to Mendez again. “I was going to get to be her babysitter next year. After I turn twelve. I could have handled it this year because it’s not
like I’m a regular eleven-year-old. I’m very mature for my age.”
“I know you are,” Mendez said.
“I don’t know if they’ll allow visitors, sweetie,” Sara Morgan said.
“I’ll ask,” Mendez offered.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Wendy said, bouncing on the balls of her feet as if the excitement weren’t going to be contained in her body. She turned toward her mother. “I’ll take her something special. Can I make her a card? Please? Can I go in your studio and make her a special card?”
Her mother ran a hand lovingly over Wendy’s tangled mermaid’s mane that matched her own. “Sure, sweetie. Make her something really special.”
Wendy bolted back up the staircase and disappeared.
Sara Morgan watched her go. There was a fine sheen of tears in her eyes when she turned back to them.
“I don’t get to see her that excited very much anymore,” she said.
“That must be hard on you,” Mendez murmured. It occurred to him that a lot of things in her life were hard on Sara Morgan. He halfway wanted to put his arms around her and give her a shoulder to cry on.
Maybe more than halfway.
“Ma’am,” Hicks said. “Do you know where your husband was Sunday night?”
“He was in Sacramento all weekend for a golf tournament. I couldn’t tell you what time he got in Sunday night. I didn’t hear him. When I came downstairs Monday morning he was sleeping on the sofa.”
“I hate to have to ask this,” Hicks said, “but do you think your husband was involved with Ms. Fordham?”
“I don’t know,” she said sadly. “And frankly, I don’t want to know anymore. My marriage is as over as it’s going to get. I just don’t know how to leave it.”
“I’m sorry,” Mendez said softly, even though a part of him wasn’t. She deserved better than Steve Morgan. She deserved to be happy.
Hicks drew breath to ask another question. Mendez headed him off at the pass.