“One of my father’s old friends was a detective who worked on the case, just in a marginal way, and he said there were rumors back then that Colleen and Allen were … swingers?”
Vera blinked. “That’s a new one. I could maybe see Colleen being interested in that. She was … frisky, shall we say? But Allen Hicks? No. I just can’t imagine him doing anything that unconventional. Colleen told me confidentially that he hit the ceiling one time when she suggested they try something different in the bedroom.”
“This retired detective,” Drue said. “He also said Colleen might have stolen pills, from the dentist’s office.”
Vera smiled as she gazed out the window of the bungalow at a white egret picking at something in the grass at the edge of the seawall. “Did he, now?”
“Was that true?”
The older woman shrugged. “Does it surprise you that we experimented with drugs back then? We were young and curious. And it wasn’t like we were selling them. Don’t tell me you’ve never tried an occasional controlled substance.”
“No, I couldn’t say that,” Drue admitted.
“I’m curious. What’s the name of this detective you’ve been chatting with?”
“Um, well, I’m not sure he’d want me sharing his name. He sort of told me this in confidence.”
“Not fair,” Vera said, wagging a finger at Drue. “Here I am, opening up to you, and yet you seem very reluctant to share what you know. I wonder why that is?”
“I’m in an awkward position,” Drue said. “I wouldn’t want my father or his friend knowing I’m poking around in this old case.”
Vera sipped her coffee and her pale blue eyes drilled into Drue over the rim of her mug.
She sighed as she set the mug down. “Then I think we’ve reached an impasse. Trust goes both ways, you know.”
“His name is Jimmy Zilowicz, but everybody calls him Jimmy Zee,” Drue said, relenting.
“Don’t worry. I’m very discreet about my sources,” Vera assured her. “That name vaguely rings a bell. And he was a detective at the time?”
“Not when Colleen first disappeared. I think he was promoted later. At the time, he and my father were patrol officers, and partners.”
Vera closed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You know,” she said slowly. “Earlier that year, in March, Colleen insisted we have lunch at this seedy bar downtown. Mastry’s.”
“Mastry’s Bar? I’ve been there,” Drue said.
“It was not at all the kind of place we usually went to back then,” Vera said primly. “I think we were the only women in there that day. A very blue-collar kind of place, and maybe it was a cop hangout too. I remember, Colleen got up to go to the bathroom, and she stopped to talk to these two young officers who were sitting at the end of the bar. I remember asking her why she didn’t introduce me to them. After all, I was single at the time.”
“Did she say who they were?”
“I think she said they were just making idle conversation. Sort of hitting on her,” Vera said. “It was so long ago. And it was just that one time.”
She reached for the yearbook and paged back to the senior class pictures. She tapped a fingertip on Brice Campbell’s photo, then looked up at Drue. “I can’t swear it was him that day, but I can’t swear that it wasn’t, either. You don’t happen to have a photo of this Jimmy Zee, do you?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“No problem.” Vera rolled the tray with her laptop over to the lounge chair. “How do you spell that last name?”
“Z-I-L-O-W-I-C-Z,” Drue said.
Vera opened the cover and began typing at an impressive clip.
“Ah,” she said, a moment later. She swiveled the screen so that Drue could see. It was a photo of a smiling Jimmy Zee, dressed in his characteristic black polo shirt, shaking hands with a white-haired man in a dress shirt.
VETERAN POLICE DETECTIVE RECEIVES AWARD was the caption under the photo.
“That must have been taken when he retired a few years ago,” Drue said.
Vera clicked her cursor until she came to a 1978 photo of a much younger version of Jimmy Zee. The black-and-white photo showed him as a stern-faced man, wearing a coat and tie in which he looked supremely uncomfortable. His hair was thick, and his jowls were nonexistent.
“Very Jack Webb,” Vera murmured.
“Who?”
Vera smiled. “Dragnet. I suppose you weren’t even born then.”
“Do you think he was one of the cops Colleen talked to that day at Mastry’s?” Drue asked.
“I wish I could say,” Vera said. She closed the laptop. “Back to your father. Was he by any chance a patient at our office?”
“Um, I don’t know,” Drue said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vera said. “Dr. Garber has been dead a long time now. We girls all thought he was ancient back then, but he was barely fifty. A heart attack took him, poor man.”
She leaned back against the recliner’s headrest. “The police hounded all of us, for months and months after Colleen disappeared. It affected the dental practice. People were asking questions that we couldn’t answer. There was a lot of innuendo. We lost several patients. It was unbelievably upsetting. Particularly for poor Dr. Garber. The police were convinced he was having an affair with her.”
“Was he?”
Vera laughed. “He was having an affair, all right, but not with Colleen. He had a young boyfriend, a waiter who worked at Ten Beach Drive, that was a nightclub back in the day. It all came out when the police started digging around. When Dr. Garber’s wife found out, she left him and took the girls with her. The poor man was shattered.”
“Mrs. Rennick?”
“Vera.”
“You said you thought at first that Colleen had run away. Is that still your theory?”
“Haven’t you read my blog? I’ve laid it out very succinctly.”
“Forgive me, but I just discovered the blog last night. I only had time to skim.”
“I think it was Allen,” she said finally.
Drue leaned forward. “But I thought he had an alibi. Wasn’t he down in the Keys on a fishing trip?”
“Alibis can be cooked up,” Vera said. “And remember, Allen’s alibi was his own father. A prominent doctor in town. Chief of staff at Bayfront Medical Center, as it was called back then.”
“Why would Allen Hicks kill his wife?”
Vera shrugged. “Lots of reasons. I always suspected there was another woman, a girl who worked in his insurance office. He didn’t waste much time marrying her, either. Got himself a quickie divorce in Mexico just three years later.”
“Why didn’t he just divorce Colleen while she was alive?”
“You don’t know very much about men and murder, do you?”
“I guess I don’t,” Drue admitted.
“Well, I do,” Vera said. “There’s a name for it, you know. Uxoricide. It means the killing of one’s romantic partner. The vast majority of the time a woman is the victim. And the men who kill them are jealous, possessive and controlling. For the man, it’s a power thing.”
“Makes sense,” Drue agreed.
“He beat her, you know.”
“Who?”
“Allen. Her husband. The bastard knocked her around. He was abusive. There’s been a study done. In England. Did you know that sixty-five percent of men who kill their romantic partners have been physically abusive in the past?”
“Did Colleen tell you he was hitting her?”
“She didn’t have to,” Vera said. “This one time, I remember, I got to work early and saw Colleen was in one of the examining rooms with Dr. Garber. He was stitching up her lip and she had a tooth knocked out too. She claimed she’d tripped, but that was clearly a lie.”
“Did the police know about that?”
“I told one of the detectives at the time, but he didn’t believe me,” Vera said. “There were no police or hospital records, and Colleen hadn’t complained to friends or family t
hat her husband was abusive.”
“Probably she was ashamed,” Drue said.
“And that wasn’t the only time he hit her. She’d come to work with bruises on her arms. It got so that she’d wear long sleeves every day, even in the summer.”
“I don’t understand. If her husband was beating her, if she maybe suspected he was cheating on her, why wouldn’t Colleen leave?”
“People always ask that question,” Vera said. “But forty years ago, a girl like Colleen didn’t have many options. She didn’t really get along with her parents, and Allen controlled all the money. He actually had her on an allowance!”
Drue thought back to the binder on her kitchen table, of the picture of a demurely smiling Colleen on her wedding day.
“Have you talked to the police lately, about your theories about Allen Hicks?”
Vera shook her head. “Not in any official kind of capacity. Everybody’s dead now, you know. Colleen most likely, Allen, both their sets of parents, even Dr. Garber. Plus, it’s hard to investigate a cold case when you no longer have any of the official investigative file.”
Drue feigned surprise. “Really?”
“It’s gone. The whole file. It was only discovered missing ten years ago. But it could have been gone much longer than that.”
“What happened to it?”
“I wish I knew,” Vera said. “I’d give anything to read it. I’ve put out feelers, on my blog, but it’s still missing. Like Colleen, come to think of it.”
44
August 1976
She slid the Camaro into a slot around the back of the Dreamland and walked rapidly through the light drizzle that had begun falling at dusk, cinching the raincoat tighter as she walked, her heels clicking against the parking lot pavement.
As she approached the unit, the blonde began unbuttoning the coat. She’d seen his cruiser parked in the usual spot so she knew he was inside, waiting. She’d had to cancel the previous week because it was Allen’s mother’s birthday, and all day she’d been fantasizing about the coming evening.
Colleen threw the door open and stepped into the darkened room, holding the raincoat open to reveal the outfit she’d spent a week’s grocery money on: black lace push-up bra, black lace garter belt, black fishnet hose.
“Surprise!”
He was reclined on the bed, illuminated only by the blue flicker of the television set, wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
His chuckle was low and throaty and only vaguely familiar.
“Well now, that is a nice surprise.” He stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray resting on his chest.
The blood drained from her face, and her fingers fumbled as she hastily belted and buttoned the raincoat.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Where’s Brice?”
Her lover’s partner, the cop he called Jimmy Zee, was obviously highly amused. “Brice couldn’t make it tonight. He sent me instead. In fact, your boyfriend won’t be making it with you ever again. It’s over.”
“I don’t believe you.” She glanced around the room, unsure of her next move.
Before she could leave, he made a show of holding up a rectangle of laminated paper. “What? You’re going to leave without taking what you came here for?”
She felt herself flush, and she released the doorknob and tightened the raincoat belt. “What I came here for is none of your business,” she said haughtily.
Jimmy Zee swung his feet off the bed and laid the rectangle on the nightstand. He reached into the pocket of his sports shirt and produced another rectangle of paper, which he placed beside the first.
“Driver’s license. Social security card.”
He studied her face. “You’re now officially Donna Woods. You look like a Donna, you know that?”
Colleen edged closer to the bed. She snatched up the documents, then turned on the lamp on the nightstand to get a better look.
“This picture,” she said coldly, holding up the driver’s license, “looks nothing like me. The hair is the wrong color. The weight? Are you kidding me? I’ve never weighed one hundred sixty pounds in my life. Ever. This thing is a joke.”
Zee was unmoved. “Women change their hair color all the time. They lose weight. That’s what Donna Woods did.”
“I want to see Brice,” Colleen said. “Does he even know you’re here?”
“How else would I know to show up to this dump on a Thursday night? He sent me.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Why would he do something like that?”
“Because you and Brice are through, Donna. The two of you had some laughs, but that’s all it was. He’s not leaving his wife for you. And he’s not giving up his job and his future to run away with you.”
Colleen walked over to the desk on the opposite side of the room and picked up the phone. “We’ll see about that.”
“What? You’re gonna call the house again and hang up when his wife answers? Put the phone down, Donna.”
Zee’s tone was calm. “Like I said, you’ve got what you need. A new set of ID papers. You can go anyplace you want, be Donna Woods. But you’re done threatening Brice Campbell. And you’re done driving past his house and harassing his wife.”
“I never…”
“Shut up,” Zee said. “You’re done. End of story.”
He took a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth, dropping the foil wrapper to the floor.
“And what if that’s not what I want?”
“Tough shit. Do you want your husband to find out about your Thursday night action at the Dreamland motel? The same joint where you were screwing his brains out last December? Because I can make that happen. And then what, after he finds out you’ve been screwing around on him?”
“Allen would kill me,” Colleen said, lifting her chin defiantly. “Brice knows that. He wouldn’t let you…”
“That’s why I’m here tonight,” Zee said. “Looks to me like you’ve got two choices. Stay here, let that asshole keep beating on you until he kills or cripples you, or leave. Hit the road and don’t come back. Which is it?”
Colleen stared blankly down at the driver’s license. “This doesn’t seem real,” she said, in a very small voice. “I know we talked about it, my just walking away. But I’d be leaving everything behind. My job, my friends, my family…”
“Your homicidal husband,” Zee added. “Spare me the pity party, okay? You chose the guy. How long were you together before he started hitting you?”
Her hair fell across her face. “He twisted my wrist so hard I got a spiral fraction. The third night of our honeymoon.”
“And you stayed,” Zee said. “So now, what’s your plan?”
Colleen sank down onto the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes as she reviewed the loose plan that had begun forming in her brain.
“Allen and his dad go fishing in the Keys every year. They leave next Thursday afternoon. If I time it right, I can go to work, pick up my last paycheck, get the money out of our savings account and leave that day, after work.”
“Leave, how?”
“Just … drive away.”
“No good,” Zee said. “As soon as he gets back and finds you gone he’ll call the cops and report you missing. They’ll put out an APB. It won’t be hard to spot that flashy orange car of yours.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Hop a dog,” Zee replied. “Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us.”
Her upper lip curled in distaste. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious,” Zee said. “Leave the car at work or someplace like that. Then you buy a bus ticket with cash. Get where you’re going and then get yourself a new car and a new life. But a quiet one, you know? Change your hair color. Tone down the way you dress.”
Colleen got a faraway look in her eye. “Atlanta. That’s what I’m thinking. One of my FSU sorority sisters is from there, and it’s a great place. There’s always something going on there. Not like this place. God’s wait
ing room. I’ll have to figure out a new kind of job, but that’s cool. I’m sick and tired of scraping crap off people’s teeth anyway.”
“Good for you.” Zee stood up. “Sounds like you’ve got yourself a plan, so I’m gonna shove off.”
He glanced meaningfully back at the bed. “Unless you wanna…”
“Dream on,” Colleen snapped. “And you can tell Brice Campbell for me that I hope he rots in hell. He could have at least had the decency to show up here tonight in person.”
Zee stood very close to her. So close she could smell the cinnamon gum he was chewing.
“Decency? You’ve been shacking up with a married man at a fleabag hot sheet motel for months. I don’t think you get to decide what’s decent or not. Donna.”
She slapped him as hard as she could across the face. He was so startled, he just stood there, stunned, as she swept from the room. Moments later, he heard the screech of tires on the wet pavement, and the Camaro’s headlights flashed past the flimsy sheer curtains.
He lit another cigarette. “Bye, Donna,” he said.
45
Drue almost felt guilty, sneaking in to her cube two hours late after her Friday morning meeting with Vera Rennick. Almost. For once, she thought, Wendy would be none the wiser. But when she turned on her computer she saw a lengthy email from her stepmother, outlining everything she expected Drue to accomplish that day. She would have to skip lunch to catch up.
Jonah paused at her cubicle on his way back to his own desk after lunch. He was freshly shaven and she could detect the faintest hint of aftershave. “How’s it going?”
If he was trying to act casual, he’d failed miserably.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “Wendy might be home on bed rest, but she’s still keeping an iron rein. I’m in callback hell, trying to reach out to potential clients who left messages over the past two days. Not a single person I’ve called has bothered to pick up the phone. I’m starting to get a complex about it.”
“You wouldn’t want the clients who are picking up when I call,” Jonah said. “I just spent twenty minutes listening to a guy who wants to sue Miller Brewing because he insists they secretly increased the alcohol content of Natty Lite, causing him to get drunk and back with his ex-wife after the company picnic.”
Sunset Beach Page 28