by Pamela Tracy
“I guarantee he already knows everything there is to know about Amanda’s art book.” Katie stuck a rack of rolls in the oven and shut the oven door with enough force to rattle the pot of gravy simmering on top. “Including that it’s just too convenient that it appears in Patricia’s apartment for no good reason right after her death.”
Janie rearranged the three green beans already on her plate. She covered them with a tiny shake of salt. Luke, who’d made the green beans, raised an eyebrow. Janie hated what was going on. Not only was it wrecking her life, but her sister and brother-in-law’s, too. Taking the smallest piece of glazed ham, Janie tried to pretend she was hungry, but food was the last thing she wanted. What she really wanted was for Katie to calm down and for Luke to quit hovering.
It was touching, really, but a bit overwhelming.
“I’m fine, really,” Janie insisted. She wasn’t about to tell them how very scared she was. They’d only hover more. “Really, I’m fine,” Janie repeated. “The Adobe Hills County sheriff is taking this seriously and that should deter whoever is pulling all these stunts.”
“I wouldn’t call murdering Patricia Reynolds a stunt,” Katie snapped.
“Stunt was a bad choice of word,” Janie admitted.
“Rafe’s not doing enough.” Katie pulled the rolls from the oven. “He’d better start doing mo—”
As if bidden, the doorbell rang. From the kitchen, there was a clear view of the front porch thanks to a large window.
“Doing more,” Katie finished. Her somewhat amused look wasn’t lost on Janie.
The Rafe Salazar who followed Luke into the kitchen was clearly tired. His hair badly needed trimming, and his uniform, usually spot-on, was rumpled and creased, as if he’d slept in it.
“Pull up a chair,” Luke said. “Katie somehow sensed you were coming for dinner. She made plenty.”
Rafe sat next to Janie. His eyes went from her bruised wrist to her black eye. He looked concerned and protective.
It was the protective that gave Janie goose bumps.
And for the first time in days, it wasn’t the scary kind of goose bumps. What a time to start noticing—really noticing—the opposite sex.
Finally, as if convinced she wasn’t going to pass out right at the dinner table, he took out a recorder and said, “Let’s hear it. I want you to repeat the whole conversation you had with Max Carter.”
“What about the conversation I had with Detective Williamson, and the fact that they found Amanda’s art book at Patricia’s?”
“Complete waste of time,” Katie muttered.
“We’ll talk about that later.” Rafe was back to being all cop. He pulled a tiny notebook from his pocket and while Janie spoke and the recorder taped, he added notes.
Katie ate in silence, listening to every word. Every once in a while, her lips pursed together and Janie knew her older sister was just dying to add something to the account. Rafe ate his dinner with one hand, making notes with the other.
When Janie finished, he played back the recorder. “Did you leave anything out? Want to add anything?”
Janie shook her head.
Rafe silently nodded. “Something Max didn’t share with you, apparently, is that he did ask Brittney out for a date. She turned him down.”
“He didn’t mention that.”
“I think,” Rafe said, “after seeing you in the hospital this morning, he realized just how serious this whole mess is. Nathan had him at the station for a second go-round of questions. He came up with a few more details.”
“You did offer him counsel,” Katie said, more a statement than a question.
“I’m sure Nathan did.” Rafe opened the briefcase he’d carried in with him and slid over a second stack of papers and a red pen. “Here’s a list of students who could have been in the area before and after you were pushed, taken from the witnesses and from class rosters. For almost every name we have, we’ve managed to get an accompanying picture. Nathan’s already looked into who was absent and where they were. He’s also got someone squirreling out who was meeting friends before and after class. The instructors are listed there, also. I want you to put a star by any name you recognize and then make a brief note of how you know them. Circle any picture that seems familiar. I’ve also included a few eyewitness accounts. Read them. Note any names not on the rosters.”
“Eat while you go through those names,” Katie ordered.
Janie glanced at her plate of cold ham and wilting green beans. Not a chance. Nothing tasted right. Rafe didn’t seem to mind. He dished out a second helping while Janie examined the pictures and names.
There were more than three hundred names. Janie only recognized eleven, including two professors.
“Rebecca Townsend is a full-time English teacher. She’s considered the resident complainer. CeeCee Harrington is an adjunct. She’s been teaching English for a full year and wants to be full-time. I think she has money problems. She’s always talking about going to different grocery stores to get the best prices, and once she said that the power company turned off her electricity. I don’t recognize anyone else. Being part-time and working nights means you come, teach your class and go home.”
“Did either Townsend or Harrington have a beef with your department chair?”
“No, everyone loved Patricia. Besides, Patricia wasn’t in charge of their division.”
Rafe didn’t even blink, reminding Janie that someone didn’t love Patricia, and maybe that same somebody didn’t love Janie, either.
“How about the eyewitness accounts? Did you recognize any of those names?”
He returned to his chair, finished another piece of ham, then another, and waited. When she finished the last account, she shook her head. “No. It happened so fast.”
He nodded, and scanned Janie up and down, starting with her bandaged arm and lingering on her black eye. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“She’s not fine. She didn’t eat one bite of dinner, and she’s going to need pain medication to sleep because her arm is hurting so badly. And look at her face!” Katie wore her Defender of the Universe expression. Janie’d seen it often during their childhood—usually when she went one-on-one with their aunt over some injustice.
Katie could always talk her way out of trouble, using logic and maturity. She’d always been mature for her age. Little sister Janie had always tried being creative. She’d spent a good deal of her youth getting nowhere.
Right now she was too tired to care.
Rafe didn’t flinch at Katie’s outburst. He just stared at Janie, his brown eyes so searching that Janie felt a blush warm her cheeks. At least the bruises would hide the proof of what his scrutiny was doing to her.
He glanced away before she started to squirm.
“I’m fine. I just want to find out who really pushed me, and what has happened to Brittney.” She didn’t mention how scared she was.
Rafe finished his glass of milk and took some more photos from the briefcase. “I was hoping you’d feel that way. Apparently your trip down the stairs—no pun intended—caused Nathan to have second thoughts about how he’s handling this case. He’s even leaning on the medical examiner to take a closer look at Derek’s death—the family’s happy about that, by the way—and he’s even cool with Scorpion Ridge having equal footing in the investigation.” He laid the new photos on the table.
“Why is the family happy?” Luke asked.
“It will prove what one of our informants has been saying all along. Derek wasn’t a cook. He didn’t make the drugs. He didn’t die because he was stupid.”
No one had to say what they were all thinking—Derek Chaney had died because of what he’d written in his art book. The one that only Janie and Patricia had read.
Closing her eyes, Janie fought off the
waves of dizziness that threatened to end her participation in tonight’s queries. She wanted, needed, Derek’s killer found so she could go back to feeling safe. She also needed to understand how the killer had found out that Derek had even submitted it, and how the killer had taken the book from the AHCC’s campus security safe.
Janie had to believe that someday she’d feel safe again. Right now, the people she loved most didn’t even seem to notice her fear or require her input. Katie was so busy poring over the pictures Rafe had laid on the table that she wasn’t clearing the plates. Luke, too, was peering over Rafe’s shoulder. Of the three, he was the most squeamish.
“Hey.” Janie started to get up. It was that or pass out. She chose getting up. “Do I get to see or what?”
“Sit!” Rafe ordered. He gathered the photos and walked over to kneel beside her.
“Ahem.” Katie cleared her throat.
Janie examined the pictures Rafe spread out in front of her. They were photos of Patricia Reynolds’s office. The office was cluttered, but Janie barely noticed the stacks of papers and towers of books. In the middle of the room, Patricia slumped back in her chair. One pale white hand held a stack of papers in place. Her legs were lost between two towers of books. Janie could see one red heel still on her left foot, the shoe leaning against a toppled book tower. Her face—eyes open, mouth in a silent scream—was tilted upward.
She hadn’t died pretty.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Luke asked, looking more like he wasn’t up to it.
“She’s up to it,” Katie said.
“I’m up to it,” Janie agreed.
“Janie?” Rafe said gently. “You were her lab assistant. Do you notice anything out of place? The secretary says nothing else is missing. All the books are in place, the files were not riffled through, papers were undisturbed.”
Janie peered closely at Patricia. Her blue pantsuit was not the type that wrinkled. The red blouse she wore underneath it perfectly matched the red high heels.
“The pin.”
“What?” Rafe looked into Janie’s eyes.
“Patricia always wore an angel pin, on her pantsuit, right above her heart. It’s missing.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RAFE HUNG UP the phone and leaned back in his chair at Katie’s table. “Nathan is sending an officer to search Patricia’s office again. According to the bag-and-tag records, the pin was neither on the body nor on the floor. Of course, that office was a mess, so something as small as a pin could have been misplaced.”
“Sometimes on a hit, the killer takes a personal object in order to prove the hit’s been made,” Janie suggested. “I’ve seen that on television more than once.” Luke nodded. Katie and Rafe both shook their heads.
“You’re thinking of a mob hit,” Rafe said. “Patricia’s death was not a mob hit. And if it had been, it probably would have been her driver’s license that would have been taken as proof.”
“A pin means nothing,” Katie added, removing the dishes from the table. “You can buy an angel pin just about anywhere.”
“That angel pin meant a lot to Patricia. She always wore it,” Janie said, pointedly ignoring the look Katie gave her about not touching her dinner.
“You know,” Rafe said, “there might be something to the angel pin’s disappearance. Patricia let her murderer into her office, probably welcomed them in. That somebody had the wherewithal to provide the brownies in a way that didn’t arouse Patricia’s suspicion and keep her from using her EpiPen in her purse. Her death wasn’t a hit. It was much worse. I’m sure of that. It was most likely committed by someone she considered a friend.”
“Someone who either attends the college or works there. And someone who could doctor Amanda’s art book and then plant it at Patricia’s,” Janie added, closing her eyes and picturing her boss’s office—the scores of people who traipsed in and out all day.
“Do you have any suspects?” Katie asked, settling down, no longer in housewife-cleaning-the-table mode.
Rafe shook his head. “Nathan and I agree that Adobe Hills Community College strongly figures into Brittney’s disappearance. The one thing both Derek and Amanda’s drawings claim, even if Amanda’s are fake, is that Brittney was with other young people in a car. Derek’s shows that they were on their way to kill her. Amanda’s indicates that they were on their way to the middle of nowhere to party.”
“On the coldest day of winter?” Katie clearly didn’t buy it.
“Wouldn’t matter to kids,” Janie said.
“What’s Amanda got to say to all this?” Katie asked.
“The family has made themselves scarce. Until we can talk with Amanda, we’re focusing in on Chads and Chrises.”
“Exactly what I expected, but you didn’t answer my question about Amanda.” Katie pointed out.
Rafe shifted in his chair.
“Hey,” Katie said. “Janie’s the victim here. She has a right to know what’s going on in a case that involves her so much her life is threatened.”
The expression on Rafe’s face was so comical, Janie had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Katie demanded, indignant.
“You two are what’s so funny,” Janie admitted. “You’ve stopped being my sister and become my lawyer. And Rafe here is about to fall out of his chair because you’re asking him to share information about a case.”
“I never stopped being your sister. It’s just—”
Rafe held up his hand. “The only thing I can share is that Amanda wasn’t in class when Nathan took the art books from the other students.” He looked at Janie. “Remember, she left the room crying.”
Janie nodded. “I remember. Which means we can’t verify that the one you found at Patricia’s house is, in fact, Amanda’s. But it seems as if...”
“Someone’s gone to great lengths to throw a second trail,” Rafe said softly.
“Poor Derek,” Janie said. “He was afraid turning in that art book would make him the target of a killer.”
“So,” Luke said. “In a way, he was brave.”
“No,” Rafe said. “If he’d been brave, he’d have confessed to a cop, someone in authority. The way he did it, with that art book, he basically signed two more death warrants. Patricia’s has been carried out.”
“Rafe,” Katie said, “you can’t keep what Amanda allegedly wrote a secret from us. Janie’s in danger. You did bring a copy with you for Janie to verify.”
Rafe bent down and pulled a folder from his briefcase. In it were several pages photocopied from Amanda’s art book. Katie reached for the papers, but with just a look from Janie, she withdrew her hand and Rafe handed them to Janie.
“This is my problem,” Janie said.
Katie opened her mouth and then wisely closed it as Janie began to read.
The writing looked like Amanda’s. The words were slanted and loopy, and in a few places the i’s were dotted with tiny hearts. Unfortunately, Janie had done no more than glance at Amanda’s handwriting before.
Her drawing, now, that was a different story. In her re-creation of the murder, Amanda had drawn the same weather as Derek, the same time of evening, but different people and events.
“Nope, not a chance. These first few pages are hers, but the last few drawings... This isn’t Amanda’s work,” she muttered.
Katie started to issue another sounds-like-a-question-but-is-really-a-statement but at the last minute her tone changed to a command. “You are having the handwriting analyzed.”
“We are,” Rafe said. “Why don’t you believe this is Amanda’s work?”
“She’s a meanderer.” Janie studied the drawings for a while, then paused to explain. “She’ll start on one part of a drawing and then leave it halfway through just to start on another section, so her lines are never
fluid. Ever. It’s an interesting style, and not depicted here at all.”
“You haven’t read all the words, have you?” Rafe asked.
“No.”
“Finish,” he ordered.
The last sentence of Amanda’s art book was a bit different from Derek’s, but no less powerful. While Derek had ended with She tried to run and stumbled. Then, Chad shot her in the back. Amanda had finished with All partied out. She was dead, and no longer pretty.
“Was there any sign that Amanda was jealous of Brittney?” Rafe asked.
“If anything,” Janie said, “Amanda was in awe of Brittney. And, if Amanda had been at this kind of party, she’d have fainted dead away.”
“She has a brother who’s an avid partier,” Luke pointed out.
Katie was done being patient. She snatched the pages from Janie’s hands and read quickly. Her face went red and then white. Her hands shook as she aimed her anger at Rafe. “What do you plan to do about this? You will keep Janie safe.”
“She’s my top priority,” Rafe agreed. “I’ve already arranged to have officers drive by the house on the hour. Of course, that’s not enough. We’ll make sure she’s never alone. It’s a plus that she’s here with you. That’s round-the-clock protection, in a way.”
“It also puts them in danger,” Janie pointed out. “Maybe I should do what Amanda and her family have done—just disappear. I already have my passport. Maybe I should go to South Africa alone, do what I’ve been dreaming of.”
“You have that kind of money?” Rafe asked.
“I have it,” Katie offered.
“If I head to South Africa,” Janie asked, “what happens to the investigation concerning Brittney?”
Rafe and Katie shared a look. “Seventeen-year-old Amanda Skinley would become the cornerstone,” Katie said.
Janie felt the walls closing in. She couldn’t leave. Amanda wasn’t just seventeen, she was a young seventeen.
“Or the investigation will grind to a halt,” Rafe said, “unless we can find a tie between Brittney’s death—”