The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle

by Jennifer McMahon

  Reggie opened the yearbook and went through it page by page, reading the notes and autographs. And there, near the end, a photo she’d missed before. Vera and a dark-haired, serious-faced boy with their arms around each other. Her head was on his shoulder and she looked peaceful, content. Next to it, in neat cursive he’d written:

  They do not love that do not show their love.

  The course of true love never did run smooth.

  Love is a familiar. Love is a devil.

  There is no evil angel but Love.

  —Shakespeare

  Always and forever,

  Stu

  Suddenly, like the tumblers of a lock turning, everything clicked into place.

  Stu Berr.

  Stu Berr, who’d led the investigation. Who’d let his brother off the hook. Stu, a man in a position of power.

  Reggie remembered her mother’s horrified reaction at seeing Charlie’s face. And didn’t Charlie look just like his father?

  Oh God. It all made sense.

  Reggie pulled out her phone and dialed information, asking for Bo Berr’s number. She got it and punched it in.

  Frances answered. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Berr, it’s Reggie Dufrane. I was hoping I could speak to your husband.”

  “He’s resting. I’m afraid your visit wore him out. And he’s just had his pain medicine.”

  “Please, it’ll only be a minute. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Frances put the phone down and Reggie heard muffled voices. Then Bo got on the line with a groggy “Hello?”

  “Mr. Berr. It’s Reggie Dufrane. There’s something you said earlier that I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Is that right?” His words were ever so slightly slurred.

  “You said that the morning after you dropped my mother off, your brother came to see you to question you. Are you sure it was that morning?”

  A few wet coughs and throat clearings.

  “Yeah, it was early morning. Right after they’d found the hand, I think. He knew right away that I’d been the one who dropped her off at the bar. He was the one who told me the hand was Vera’s.”

  There was only one way Reggie could think of that Stu had known it had been Bo who’d dropped her off.

  A chill ran through Reggie. The hand that was wrapped around her cell phone began to tremble.

  “Thanks, Mr. Berr. Take care of yourself.”

  She hung up and dug the tiny staple from the teabag, the one she didn’t even realize she’d brought upstairs, deep into the skin of her thumb.

  DAY FOUR

  Chapter 36

  October 23, 2010

  Brighton Falls, Connecticut

  REGGIE PULLED UP IN front of Stu Berr’s house and saw a pickup in the driveway. She’d thought of calling first but decided a surprise visit might yield more results.

  She only hoped he didn’t have any surprises waiting for her: a rag soaked in ether and a surgeon’s saw.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  Her phone was ringing. Len again. She answered, thinking that hearing his voice might soothe her, stop her hands from shaking and help give her the strength and courage she needed to go knock on Stu’s door.

  “You didn’t call,” Len said.

  “I’m sorry,” Reggie told him. “I got a little swept up in things here. I think I know who Neptune is.”

  “Jesus. Who?”

  “Charlie’s dad. Stu Berr.” She looked across the street at the neat little ranch house, saw movement inside. “He was the lead detective on the Neptune case and now it turns out he and my mom went out back in high school. I think he never got over her. I think—”

  “Have you gone to the police, Reg?”

  “Not yet. I don’t have any proof. And he was a cop himself, so that makes things a little complicated.”

  “Listen,” Len said. “I’m on my way.”

  “What? No. I can—”

  “No arguments. I’ll be there in three hours or so, depending on traffic. I don’t want you to do anything until I get there, okay? Just stay at home with the doors locked. We’ll figure out the next move once I arrive. Deal?”

  “Okay,” Reggie said, thinking she should be angry, but really, she felt relief.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Reg,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she promised. “See you soon.”

  She hung up the phone, counted to ten, opened the door of her truck, and crossed the driveway. The place had been kept up well. The driveway had been resurfaced recently, and there was a fresh coat of paint on the house. The shrubs were neatly trimmed and the leaves raked. Stu Berr had not been idle in his retirement. To the right of the front door was the wooden plaque with the house number—21. She remembered the key that used to be hidden in the little carved-out niche behind it. She rang the bell and heard a dog barking behind the door. Reggie considered turning around and running.

  But then the door open slowly and Stu Berr stared out at her. Reggie was startled by how much he looked like a slightly older version of Charlie. In fact, he could have passed for Charlie’s older brother rather than his father. Gone were the jowls and the rolls of fat above his waist. He wore a T-shirt and running shorts, showing sculpted muscles. His hair was short and gray. The mustache was gone.

  With his right hand, he held a large German shepherd by his thick leather collar. The dog continued to bark and growl, pulling on Stu’s arm as his muzzle pressed against the flimsy screen.

  “Help you?” he said.

  “Mr. Berr. I’m Regina Dufrane. Vera’s daughter?”

  He stared at her a minute through the screen door. “Oh my goodness, yes,” he said. “I heard she was back at home. Come in, please.” He unlatched the door, then stepped aside, waving her in. He continued to hold the dog.

  Reggie hesitated.

  “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you.”

  Reggie reluctantly opened the screen door and stepped inside, keeping her back to the wall, not taking her eyes off the enemy. Her body went rigid and cold. The dog continued to roar at her, teeth bared. Reggie felt a strange tingle at the scar tissue under her prosthetic ear.

  She still hated dogs. They were the one fear she couldn’t seem to conquer.

  “Duke!” Stu said in a firm voice. “Go lie down.”

  The dog stopped barking, put his ears back in defeat, and sulked off to a corner of the living room. He walked in circles over his plaid flannel dog bed, then settled down, curling himself into a surprisingly small ball.

  “Smart dog,” Reggie said, letting out a breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding. Her entire body was chilled with cold sweat.

  “He was a police dog, but he was getting a little gray in the muzzle, so they let him retire with me.”

  “Nice,” Reggie said.

  “We’re good company for each other,” Stu said. “Can I offer you some coffee? I just made a pot.”

  “Sure,” Reggie said. She followed him into the kitchen and watched while he poured her a cup of coffee.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “No thanks. I take it black.”

  “Let’s go into the living room. It’s more comfortable there.”

  She took the coffee from him and followed him into the living room, choosing the seat that was farthest away from Duke. The dog raised his ears, kept his eyes trained on her.

  “Does the dog bother you?” Stu asked. “I can crate him.”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks. I’m not sure he likes me much, though.”

  Stu smiled. “Dogs smell fear.”

  Reggie swallowed a sip of bitter weak coffee and set her cup down on the table. “Charlie says you’ve got a boat you’re fixing up?”

  “Yeah. Down at the shore. She’s a mess, but I’ll get her into shape. I’m actually heading down there today to do some painting.”

  Reggie nodded, picked up her coffee, and took another sip. Stu stared at her with his best ex-cop look. It was the s
ame way he’d looked at her years ago when she went to the station to explain that she believed the scarred hand that showed up was Vera’s. His eyes were steely and alert, taking every detail in, but his face showed no emotion.

  “So what can I do for you, Regina? I’m guessing you didn’t come out to see me to ask about my boat,” he said.

  Reggie set the cup down, pushed it away. “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “It’s about your mother, then?”

  Reggie nodded.

  He looked at her, waiting. Then said, “Has she remembered anything? Anything at all?”

  Reggie shook her head. “Not that we can tell.”

  Stu took a sip of his coffee.

  “I found something when I was going through my mother’s things. Her old high school yearbook. There was a picture in it of the two of you. And you’d written down a poem.”

  Stu’s jaw clenched slightly. He nodded, but said nothing.

  “But she was also involved with your brother Bo, right?”

  He sighed. “Ancient history,” he said.

  Reggie smiled. “But history repeats itself, right? Like my mother coming back and moving in with Bo?”

  “Vera and I were over before she left for New York. Nothing between us was ever rekindled.”

  “So you weren’t involved with her in any way before she went missing?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but, no.”

  “But you were there in the bar that night, weren’t you? At Runway 36? You either saw Vera get out of Bo’s car or she told you he’d given her a ride.”

  Stu gave her a long hard look; then his serious face broke into a smile. His teeth were so perfect and white that Reggie wondered if they might be dentures. “I’m afraid you missed your calling, Regina. You may be a world-class architect, but you would have made one hell of a detective.”

  Had he been keeping tabs on her over the years? She thought of the mysterious phone calls she’d been getting since leaving home—had it been Stu Berr on the other end, breathing into her good ear?

  Reggie looked at the dog, who was still lying down, but his eyes and ears showed that he was at full attention, much like his owner. Reggie was close to the door and had no doubt she could get to it quicker than Stu, who was several feet away with a coffee table between them. But she doubted she could outrun the dog. She touched the cell phone in her pocket, wondering if she could dial 911 without looking at the numbers.

  “I was there that night. I was the man in the Yankees cap that people saw talking with Vera.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say so?”

  “Because my visit with her was part of an ongoing investigation into the Neptune killings.”

  Reggie gave him a questioning look. She didn’t want him to know the full extent of her suspicions. “Why Vera? Did you know she was going to be taken next?”

  He shook his head. “No. I was there to talk to her because she was a suspect.”

  “Suspect? In what kind of case?”

  He cleared his throat and gave her a long serious look. “I was fairly certain your mother was the Neptune killer.”

  Reggie sank back in her chair. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Detective work is all about finding threads. Connections. In the case of Neptune, all these threads led me back to your mother. She was the one thing all the victims had in common.”

  Reggie remembered all her mother’s talk of threads and connections, how everyone was linked, whether they realized it or not.

  “But she only knew Candy! Not the other two.”

  “True. Which is where the real detective work comes in. Candace Jacques had been dating James Jacovich. In fact, Jacovich dumped Vera for Candace. Andrea McFerlin had been dating a man named Sal Rossi. Does that name ring a bell?”

  “My mother dated a guy named Sal. She said he was a photographer.”

  Stu shook his head. “Sal Rossi was the manager for Airport Cab company. He didn’t date your mother long. When he broke up with her, he took up with Andrea McFerlin. They met through a dating service.”

  “And what about the young woman—the film student?” Reggie asked.

  “Here’s where things get interesting. Ann Stickney was making a documentary about the tobacco sheds and the men who worked there. One of the men was Wayne Abbott.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You mother dated him for some time. He was a younger man. Dark hair, very handsome. He drove a VW bus and went around telling people he’d had small parts in movies. Total bullshit, by the way.”

  “Mr. Hollywood,” Reggie said under her breath.

  “Young Wayne thought Ann was a better prospect than your mother, so he ditched poor Vera, thinking that maybe Ann’s film would make his fictional movie star identity a reality. It didn’t work out that way.”

  Reggie’s head spun. “So all three women . . .”

  “Had taken men away from Vera.”

  “But this doesn’t make sense!” Reggie said. “Because the killer came for Vera next!”

  Stu smiled. “Clever, isn’t it? What better way to cover your tracks than to be the final victim, the one whose body is never found?”

  Reggie sat forward, perched at the edge of her chair. “What? You’re saying she cut off her own hand? That’s insane!”

  Stu shrugged. “My theory wasn’t very popular with the rest of the police force, either, and of course there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue it. But it made sense to me.”

  “And what about now? Is my mother supposed to have taken Tara and cut off her hand, too? Just hopped out of her deathbed for one last go-around with the saw?”

  “Unlikely,” Stu admitted. “I’m guessing it was a copycat. Or maybe Vera had an accomplice? Someone who was in on her secrets. Or maybe it’s just some random sicko drawn out of the woodwork by the news that Neptune’s last victim is alive. I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. I’m afraid I’m more of a boatbuilder than a detective these days.” There was a little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  Reggie’s head began to pound as all the new information flooded in, swirling around in her brain like a logarithmic spiral. And there, at the center, was the one thing she felt certain of, held to like clinging to a rock in a storm: Stu Berr was wrong.

  AN HOUR LATER, REGGIE sat in her truck down the street from Stu’s house, waiting for him to leave, hoping he hadn’t been telling a story about going down to do some painting on his boat today. The bag from her quick trip to the Super Stop & Shop was on the seat beside her. She wasn’t sure if Stu still kept a key behind the street number plaque, or what she would do if he didn’t (break a window in the back maybe?), but she had to get into that house. She wasn’t sure just what she hoped to find—Tara bound and gagged in the basement? Not likely. No, if Stu was Neptune and did have Tara, he’d have her more carefully hidden, not in a quiet residential neighborhood.

  In spite of her best intentions, Stu’s theory worked its way into her brain like a parasitic worm. Once there, it got its hooks in and held tight. She was sure—no, positive—that he was wrong. Vera was not a killer.

  But what if . . .

  She pushed the thought away, went back to watching the house. The curtains were closed now.

  She eyed her cell phone, thrown on the passenger seat, then picked it up and dialed the number for Monique’s Wish. Reggie spoke to the answering machine until Lorraine picked up.

  “I’m here,” Lorraine answered, sounding a little flustered.

  “Listen,” Reggie said. “Do you remember—was Mom gone when each of the women Neptune killed first disappeared?”

  She could hear her aunt breathing, but she didn’t answer. At last Lorraine said, “Regina, what’s this about?”

  “Nothing, probably.” Reggie bit her lip, feeling like an idiot.

  Across the street, Stu Berr emerged, duffel bag in hand. Reggie sank down in her seat. “I gotta go,” she said to Lorraine.

  Stu got into his
truck and pulled away. Reggie waited a good ten minutes, just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something and decided to double back. Then she slung her messenger bag over her shoulder, grabbed the plastic grocery bag, and headed for the front door. She turned the plaque on the siding, and there, just where she remembered its being all those years ago, was the key.

  Bingo.

  She replaced the numbers and unlocked the door. Then, before opening it, she reached into her grocery bag and unwrapped one of the two T-bone steaks she’d bought. Gingerly, she pushed the door open.

  “Here, Duke,” she called, voice wavering. “Here, boy!” Cold sweat beaded between her shoulder blades. Her scar tissue tingled. As she heard his toenails clicking against the floor, she imagined the three-headed beast, guardian of the underworld, coming for her.

  Duke (with only one head—thank God) came trotting over, gave her a warning growl. She held the door open for him and tossed the steak into the driveway.

  He hesitated a moment, glancing from her to the meat.

  “Good boy, go ahead. It’s for you.”

  He licked his lips nervously.

  “Go on,” she said, gesturing to the driveway.

  At last his desire for meat overpowered his guard-dog self and he trotted into the driveway, pouncing on the steak. Reggie slipped into the house, locking the door behind her. She left the second steak by the front door to use for her escape.

  Stu had tidied the kitchen, washed out the coffeepot and cups. The place smelled like bleach. Too clean.

  She went back into the living room, saw the neat bookshelves with old encyclopedias, sportsman’s guides to hunting and fishing, boatbuilding books, some marine biology textbooks that must have been Charlie’s. Her eye caught on the old photo of Stu with his buddies in Vietnam, all in uniform, raising tin cups in a toast, an ambulance behind them. “Holy shit,” she mumbled, another piece of the puzzle coming together. She’d forgotten he’d been a medic in the army—that’s where he’d had the medical training, where he learned about tourniquets and pressure dressings. And didn’t they sometimes have to do amputations right on the battlefield to save soldiers? Reggie was sure she’d read that in a book about the Civil War, so maybe it was true for Vietnam, too.