by Tami Hoag
“Kate Quinn. From Chrysalis.”
“No,” Nikki said. “You’re Evangeline Burke?”
“Evi. Evi Burke. Yes,” she said, clearly confused.
“I’m Detective Liska; this is Detective Seley. We have some questions for you.”
“This isn’t about the note?”
“May we come in?” Nikki asked, ignoring her question. “It’s a little wet out here.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Of course,” Burke stammered. “I’m so sorry. Making you stand in the rain . . .”
She stepped back into the house and allowed them to come in, but Nikki could feel her resistance. Not many people were happy to see them. Even the perfectly innocent wanted them to go away as soon as possible, as if their presence might attract some dark force into their homes.
Nikki pulled her hood down, ruffled a hand through her hair, and unzipped her jacket, giving the impression she was ready to settle in for a while.
At a glance, she could see that Evi Burke’s home had a cheery feel, with a palette of soft yellow, blue, and white. It had undergone a remodeling at some point, the walls having been opened up so that the spaces flowed one into another. From the entry she could see the living room, a section of the dining room, and the staircase that led up to the second-floor bedrooms.
“What a lovely home,” Seley said, smiling, setting a friendly tone.
Evi Burke wasn’t buying it. She didn’t smile back. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and crossed her arms in front of her defensively. “Thank you. I’m confused. If you’re not here about the note, I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
“I know Kate,” Nikki said to further confuse the woman. “I haven’t seen her in a while. How is she?”
“She’s fine.”
“She’s a great advocate for victims.”
“Yes, she is,” Burke said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, impatient.
“Why would she be sending detectives to your house?” Nikki asked.
“I work for the Chrysalis Center. We have a client about to testify against some potentially dangerous people.”
“You said something about a note?” Seley asked.
“Someone sent me a note that was vaguely threatening. My husband is a firefighter. He’s not always here at night. Kate said she would ask for extra patrols in the neighborhood. I just assumed you had something to do with that.”
Kate would have gone straight to Kovac with that request, Nikki thought, knowing he could pull some strings and knowing he was incapable of saying no to her. He’d been half in love with Kate forever, though he would never admit it.
“Would you mind if we sat down?” Nikki asked. “I’d like to know more about this note.”
It was the perfect hook to get them away from the door. Once they all sat down, it became harder to get rid of them without being rude.
Evi Burke nibbled at the corner of her lip. She wanted her problem taken care of, and here were two people who might be able to help her.
“Ah, sure. Yes, of course,” she said, still reluctant. “Let’s go into the dining room.”
She turned to lead the way. Now she had invited them into her lovely, cozy home, and she would feel obligated to be a good hostess.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked. “I was about to make some for myself. I already put the water on. I just got my daughter down to sleep.”
“Tea would be lovely,” Seley said. “How old is your daughter?”
“Five.”
“That’s a great age.”
They shrugged off their coats and took seats at the small round oak dining room table. A woven basket of gourds and miniature pumpkins served as a centerpiece. A kindergarten Thanksgiving turkey craft project made from construction paper sat on an antique sideboard across the room.
“Would you like help?” Seley asked.
“No, no. I’ve got a tray,” Burke said, disappearing into the kitchen.
She was back within minutes, setting the tray on the table and pouring the hot water into a trio of pretty mugs.
“So, who’s after this client and why?” Nikki asked, selecting an Earl Grey tea bag.
“Chrysalis pulled her out of a sex trafficking situation with a very bad pimp by the name of Drago,” Burke said, taking her seat. She perched on the chair like a nervous little bird, ready to take flight at the first sign of danger. “He’s still on the loose. But she came out of a religious cult background with her family before that. She’s going to testify to some pretty horrific abuse by her own brother.”
“What does the note say?” Nikki asked. “Do you have it?”
“No, I gave it to Kate. It said, ‘I know who you are. I know where you live.’”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea what that’s supposed to mean?” Seley asked. “Aside from the obvious. Do you feel like you’re being watched?”
Burke made a little fluttering motion with her hands. “I assume that whoever sent it knows I’m affiliated with Hope’s case, and that they’ve somehow managed to get my address.”
“But there was no specific reference to the case?” Nikki asked. “No actual threat?”
“No.”
“Have there been any other notes, threats, calls? To you or to anyone at Chrysalis?”
“No.”
“Has the girl been threatened directly?”
“No, but she’s in a safe house.”
“So, why you?” Nikki asked.
She gave a little shrug, a little shake of the head, looking a little more worried than a moment ago. “I don’t know. I’m Hope’s social worker.”
“Exactly,” Nikki said. “You’re her social worker, you’re not her attorney, you’re not her legal guardian—if she has one. You’re not the figurehead of Chrysalis. Why would anyone come after you?”
“I don’t know. I just know I got the note.”
“Is there any other reason someone would be targeting you?” Seley asked. “Someone who might have a grudge against you?”
“No,” she said, looking genuinely baffled.
“I saw the feature on Chrysalis in the paper,” Seley said. “Could this be somehow related to that?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you get the note?” Nikki asked.
“It was in yesterday’s mail.”
Nikki sipped her tea and considered the timing as she jotted notes in her little spiral notebook. The newspaper article on the Chrysalis Center had come out a little over a week before. The announcement of the Cold Case investigation into the Duffy homicide had happened Tuesday. The note to Evi Burke had come in Wednesday’s mail.
“Evi, we’re actually from the Cold Case unit,” she said. “We’re investigating the Ted Duffy murder.”
Evi Burke sat up a little straighter. Her expression went carefully blank. She felt ambushed. She was thinking Nikki and her partner had weaseled their way into her home under false pretenses, and now she was trapped.
“I can’t be of much help with that, I’m afraid. I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“You were at a school function that night?”
“A basketball game. I didn’t get home until nine thirty or ten.”
“Were you with Jeremy Nilsen?” Nikki asked.
“No,” she said, looking confused. “Why would you think that?”
“Jeremy was supposedly at the game, too.”
“I saw him there. I wasn’t with him. He was a grade ahead of me.”
“Were you friends?”
“Not really. Just to say hi, you know: small talk at the bus stop.”
“But you remember seeing him at the basketball game?”
“Yes,” she said. “I remember because I had a crush on a guy he hung out with.”
Nikki paused in her scribbling and glanced up at her. “What was his name?”
“Oh my God, you’re kidding, right? It was twenty-five
years ago. I can’t even remember what he looked like.”
“What was it like, living with the Duffy family?” Seley asked.
She gave the little half shrug. “It was okay. Better than a lot of places in the system.”
She fussed with her teaspoon. Her hand was trembling when she picked it up, and it clanked against her mug. She put it down. “I don’t like to talk about that time in my life,” she admitted. “It’s my past, and that’s where I want to leave it. I live in the present now.”
“Yet you work with girls who have been in that same dark place,” Seley said. “That’s commendable.”
Burke seemed uncomfortable with the praise. She didn’t know quite where to look. She made another small nervous gesture with her hand. “I’m only doing what I wish someone would have done for me—what Chrysalis did do for me in the end.”
“You went by Angie back then,” Nikki said.
“‘Evangeline’ seemed incredibly uncool at the time, so I became Angie.”
And when she hadn’t wanted to be Angie—the foster child, the orphan, the homeless kid with a pile of horrible memories—she had become Evi, Nikki surmised.
“I spoke with Jennifer Duffy this afternoon,” Nikki said. “She has some fond memories of your time with the family. She said you used to read to her. She’s a librarian now.”
“That’s good. I’m glad for her. She was a sweet girl.”
“She had a rough time after you left. She had a rough time over her dad’s murder. I think it haunts her that it happened right under her window. Not that she could have done anything about it, but she was right there. Kids think the world revolves around them. Something bad happens, they think it must somehow be their fault.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What was your impression of the family? Did they seem happy? Was there any tension between Ted and Barbie?”
She sighed, uncomfortable again.
“Mrs. Duffy was . . . very demanding,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Penny and I were supposed to do all the housework and babysit the kids when she was at work or wanted to go out. Mr. Duffy was hardly ever there.”
“Go out where?” Seley asked.
“I don’t know. In the summer she was gone a lot. Shopping. Lunch with her friends, I guess. She worked nights, slept until noon, and then would be gone a lot in the afternoon.”
“So, you and Penny Williams were basically servants.”
“Pretty much. Yes.”
“What was Mr. Duffy like?” Nikki asked. “Did you get along with him?”
She looked down into her tea as if she might see the memory playing there like a movie on a screen. A sad movie. “He was always tired and angry, and he drank too much. When he was home he didn’t want to be bothered with the kids. He spent most of his time in his office with the door shut or in the basement. He had a workbench down there.”
“How did Mr. and Mrs. get along?”
“They fought a lot. Not big fights, just constant sniping. She nagged him all the time. He called her Barbie the Ball Buster. It was sad, really.”
Sad for Angie Jeager, too, Nikki thought. The one thing a foster child needed most was a sense of safety within a family. Safe was the last thing kids felt when the adults in their lives didn’t get along.
“Did they argue about anything in particular?” Seley asked.
“Money. How he wasn’t home enough, didn’t take care of things around the house. That kind of thing.”
“Did Mr. Duffy’s brother come around a lot?”
“Sometimes it seemed like he was there more than Mr. Duffy. He came over and fixed things around the house when Mr. Duffy didn’t get to it quickly enough for Mrs. Duffy’s liking.” She shook her head a little. “I’m surprised I remember that much. That was two lifetimes ago.”
“Did you ever think there might be something going on between him and Mrs. Duffy?” Nikki asked.
“I never thought about it. I never saw them kissing or touching or anything. Although, I did think it was kind of mean the way she would use one brother against the other that way,” she said. “Like Ted wasn’t a good enough husband, so she called in his twin. She wasn’t a very nice person, but, on the other hand, she gave a home to two foster kids.”
“Did anyone ask you these questions at the time?” Nikki asked.
“Not really. They asked where I was when it happened. That was about it.”
As Nikki had suspected. The detectives on the case initially had been focused on who Ted Duffy was to them: a Sex Crimes top cop with a lot of enemies in and out of jail. Their other focus had been on the love triangle theory. They had discounted the viability of the kids as witnesses to the Duffys’ relationship. The Duffy kids had seemed too young. The foster girls weren’t considered part of the family. Angie Jeager had been out that night; therefore they thought she couldn’t be useful.
“What can you tell us about the next-door neighbor, Donald Nilsen?”
“Oh, he was a horrible person,” she said without hesitation.
“Barbie Duffy told us he took a little too much interest in you and Penny. Did he approach you? Talk to you?”
She gave an almost imperceptible shudder of distaste. “He was always staring at us,” she said. “In the summer, Penny and I liked to lay out in the backyard to get a tan—and we weren’t naked or anything. We wore shorts and bikini tops, and we stayed close to the house.
“He’d be looking at us from inside the house or he’d find some excuse to be in the yard, and he’d yell at us to go put more clothes on. He’d call us sluts. He was so creepy. If he didn’t want to see us, why was he always staring at us? He was one of those: Think evil thoughts and blame the victim.”
“Did he ever do more than stare?” Nikki asked. “Did he ever lay a hand on either of you?”
“He grabbed Penny by the arm once. She went right up to him in his yard one day and called him a dirty old man. He grabbed her by the arm, hard, and started screaming in her face. It was scary.”
“What happened?”
“Penny kicked him in the shin, and he let go. We ran back home.”
“Did you tell anyone about this?”
“We told Mrs. Duffy. She told Mr. Duffy. He went over to the Nilsens’ house and had a conversation with Mr. Nilsen.”
“Did you witness this conversation?”
“No.”
Nikki sat back again and had another sip of tea as she played the scenario through her head. Was that enough reason for Donald Nilsen to plot Ted Duffy’s murder? It didn’t seem to be, but they didn’t know what Duffy had actually said or how he had put it. He could have issued a mild, vague warning, or he might have thrown his badge around and made a threat of jail time.
“What happened after that?”
“Mr. Nilsen stopped talking to us. He still looked. He still said things about us, just not to us.”
“Were there any run-ins with him in the week or two prior to Mr. Duffy’s murder?”
“There was always something,” she said. “He thought the Duffys overdecorated for Halloween. Their leaves blew onto Mr. Nilsen’s yard. He was just a horrible person.”
“Did you interact at all with Mrs. Nilsen?” Seley asked.
“No. I hardly ever saw her.”
“What about Jeremy?” Nikki asked.
“What about him?”
“What was he like?”
Again with the little one-shoulder shrug. “He was quiet. He was nice enough.”
“Not like his father?”
“He was nothing like his father.”
“Did they seem close—him and his dad?”
“It’s hard to imagine Mr. Nilsen being close to anyone. He was so angry all the time.”
“And you weren’t friends with Jeremy?” Nikki asked again.
“No, not really.”
“That’s funny,” she said, pretending confusion, “because Jennifer told me this afternoon that you and Jeremy were close.”
“I don’t know why she would have said that. But she was just a little kid. She probably just assumed. I said hello to him. I talked to him once in a while when I saw him. I’d take him something to drink when he was mowing the lawn. That kind of thing.”
“I suppose that’s possible. She seemed very matter-of-fact about it,” Nikki lied, thinking back to the questions she had asked Jennifer Duffy—or, more accurately, how Jennifer Duffy had responded. She claimed not to know if Angie and Jeremy were friends, which didn’t make sense. How could she not know? But why would she lie about it? Maybe there simply hadn’t been anything to know.
Evi smiled a sad, fond little smile. “Jenny liked stories with handsome princes who saved the day. I guess she imagined one for me and Jeremy. I never told her the world doesn’t often work that way.”
“So I guess we can assume you haven’t kept in touch with Jeremy over the years,” Nikki said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even finish the year at that school. I got moved to a different district. It’s hard to make friends when you move around that much. It’s even harder to keep them.”
“Jeremy joined the army not long after you left,” Nikki said. “He was discharged some years ago. We’re trying to locate him, but we can’t seem to find him.”
“Sorry I can’t be of more help,” Evi said, getting up. “Would you like more tea? I’ll turn the kettle on.”
“No, thank you,” Nikki said, pushing her chair back. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll leave you my card. Please call if anything comes back to you. Anything at all.”
She placed her business card on the table near the centerpiece.
“As for your other situation, keep your doors locked. I’ll put in a call and make sure the extra patrols are happening.”
“Thank you.”
Evi Burke followed them to the front door and locked it behind them. As they hustled through the drizzle to the car, a police cruiser rolled slowly past.
“Filthy weather,” Nikki muttered, starting the car and turning on the defrosters.
“Not a pretty picture of the Duffy family,” Seley said. “They were coming apart at the seams. I’d love to know where Barbie was going every time she left those kids alone with her personal house slaves.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to know what Ted Duffy threatened Donald Nilsen with.”