“As far as Cora’s murder, yes, but—”
“Then we thank you. And we’ll be in touch when formal charges are filed against your suspect.” Alyssa took the governor’s arm and led him out of the house.
Kent addressed Abby. “I’m sorry, but that time period was the most traumatic of the governor’s life. He not only lost his best friends and business partners, but two months later his brother, Louis, was killed in a hit-and-run accident.” He gave a curt nod and hurried after his employer.
Luke felt his jaw slacken as the three people left with some alacrity. He watched Abby, whose face was a study in frustration.
What do you say to someone you’ve known on paper for more than twenty-five years?
“I can’t believe you’re Abigail Morgan.”
She faced him, a frown marring her features. “They sure left in a hurry.”
“I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life.” Luke felt something was odd about the hasty departure himself, but right now his needle stuck in the groove over Abby’s news.
“What?” The frown turned to confusion.
“My uncle was the cook who pulled you from the fire.” He stepped closer. “Luke Goddard was my uncle. Do you want to find your parents’ killers as badly as I want to find my uncle’s?”
“ABIGAIL MORGAN? Are you sure?” Grace stared at Luke. He’d met the family at the door when they got back from church.
“Abigail Morgan. She and Detective Hart are one and the same.”
“I can’t believe it.” His mother paled.
“Who’s she?” Madison asked in the half-interested tone only a ten-year-old girl could manage. She walked by Luke, holding up a hand for a high five.
“Someone who hasn’t been around for twenty-seven years,” Grace said as she leaned against the doorjamb.
Maddie slapped her father’s hand and continued on into the house, not the least bit interested.
Luke looked at his mother, certain her shock mirrored his own. When Abby had shared who she was, he’d been floored and wondered if he should have known, should have sensed who she was. But the picture in his mind of Abigail Morgan was that of a teary-eyed child who was all elbows and gangly limbs. For her part she seemed just as surprised at who he was.
“I’ve memorized the file,” she’d said. “There was no Murphy mentioned.”
“My mom married my stepdad about a year after my uncle’s death. In your reports she’d be Grace Goddard. If I was mentioned at all, it was with that same last name.”
Recognition had then dawned in her face. There was so much more he wanted to talk to her about, so much they had in common, but after Governor Rollins left the scene, she seemed intent on getting back to her own business.
Grace couldn’t seem to get her mind around the news. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize her.”
“The last time you saw her she was what, five or six?”
Grace gave a slight head tilt. “Still, I spent a lot of time with her at the restaurant. She knew me and I helped them interview her. But they shuffled her off to protective custody quickly. I thought she moved out of state.”
“She said she went to live with an aunt in Oregon.”
The three of them went to the kitchen, and over coffee Luke told them about the morning meeting with the governor.
Grace took it all in. “Years after the fire, I spoke to one of the detectives who told me that Abby was sent north, but he wouldn’t be more specific. We spoke at length about it, but it was so long ago.” She rubbed her forehead.
Luke’s stepdad, James Murphy, gripped Grace’s hand. “I remember you telling me that you wanted to adopt her. But at the time single moms didn’t have a chance.”
Grace pursed her lips. “I thought about it for a brief minute, but I had my hands full with Luke. And that crime scared the whole city. A lot of people were afraid for her safety. I was told she was fine in the hands of social services. Now she’s an LBPD homicide investigator?”
“I couldn’t believe it.” Luke ran a hand down his chin, remembering the scene in the small house when Abby shared who she was. “It shocked Rollins as well. He left in a hurry without either of us being able to ask him anything about the Triple Seven.”
Grace tsked. “I think you need to go easy on him. He just lost his aunt. I can understand him being shaken by anything, especially something related to the Triple Seven. You know they named it that because of their partnership. They were all born in July and considered that good luck, a happy omen.”
“Maybe he’s just shaken.” Luke could still see Rollins’s expression in his mind’s eye. “But when I saw his face, something occurred to me. He looked scared. Maybe Buck Morgan wasn’t the intended target all those years ago. Maybe Rollins was the target, and everyone missed it.”
“From what I read,” James offered, “it was Buck Morgan who had the wild reputation. That restaurant sure put Long Beach on the map. Remember when the Lakers won the championship?”
Grace smiled. “My brother was so proud when Buck hosted that party for them. Luke cooked his heart out. Magic Johnson signed his apron.”
“As I recall, Rollins was more the designer and PR guy. Buck and Patricia were the faces of the restaurant.” James rubbed his chin and frowned. “The police went over everything then, Luke. What do you hope to accomplish now after so much time has passed?”
“Maybe they did, Dad. I’ve read everything on the subject. But this morning Rollins was afraid, and Kent couldn’t get him out of there fast enough. What does he have to be afraid of twenty-seven years later? Bottom line: I want to find out who killed my uncle.”
Luke tried to focus on Maddie as they drove to the local elementary school. Sunday nights her book club met in the library there and, conveniently, the basketball league he and Bill were involved in played in the gymnasium. His daughter was excited about the book they were reading, a S.A.V.E. Squad book called Dog Daze.
“The kids in the book save animals,” she said and went on to explain her favorite character. He only half listened, and when they arrived at school and she and Olivia darted off to the library, he felt guilty for not hearing everything she’d said.
Oh, well, he thought. I’ll make it up to her. As soon as he got to the gym and found Bill, he told his friend about the events of the morning.
“What are you saying?” Bill gave Luke the same astonished expression that Grace had worn when he broke the news. “How is that possible? What was she, six when her parents were killed?”
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to her at length about it, but the news about who she was sure sent Rollins spinning from the house.”
“It could have just been emotional for the guy.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “I have a different theory. Suppose Rollins knows something but has stayed quiet out of fear? Suppose he was the real target twenty-seven years ago? Maybe keeping his mouth shut has kept him safe?”
Bill raised his hands, then let them drop. “Ah, my friend, you’ve been watching too many TV movies! The guy has never laid low, and he is a well-respected man. I can’t believe it would have been missed if someone had a motive to kill him.”
“Suppose he made a deal with the devil?”
“You mean he’s known who did the killing all these years and his silence has bought his safety?”
Luke nodded, and Bill put his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I know it’s important for you to find out who killed your uncle, but don’t waste your time barking up the wrong tree.”
Luke said nothing.
When the game started, he tried to lose himself in sweat and twenty-foot jumpers. He was thoroughly exhausted when Maddie skipped toward him an hour later and it was time to go home. But he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. The reaction he’d seen from Rollins that morning was one of a man hiding something.
IT WAS STILL DARK Monday morning when Abby parked her car in the lot of a twenty-four-hour coffee shop to wait for Woody. Abby was agitated al
l day Sunday after the meeting with Rollins, and church that night hadn’t helped. She hadn’t been able to go to sleep, so she’d given up at 4 a.m. and called Woody. At 9 a.m. she and Roper had a meeting with the DA about Lil’ Sporty, so she sipped coffee and laid her notes out on the trunk of her car to prepare while she waited for Woody’s black-and-white to appear.
Luke Goddard . . . Luke Murphy.
Something in common.
Rollins was hiding something.
The scene from yesterday morning wreaked havoc with her concentration. She’d worked herself up to believing that finally meeting the man and telling him who she was would be a watershed moment and she’d learn some new insight or gain an ally to get the investigation reactivated. But in the end it was anticlimactic. Rollins, his wife, and Kent took off as if hearing who she was made the room smell.
“He not only lost his best friends and business partners, but two months later his brother, Louis, was killed in a hit-and-run accident.”
They’d left Abby to lock up and to deal with Murphy. She was grateful she’d gotten in the question about Bandit. But she’d had no chance to ask about her parents’ murders. And then there was Murphy. The PI had stared at her openmouthed. If the governor’s reaction was odd, Murphy’s was downright shocking.
“I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life,” he’d said. “Luke Goddard was my uncle.”
Abby still had trouble digesting that bit of information. She remembered his uncle—“Cookie,” she’d called him—mostly from the police reports and the newspaper articles that hailed him as a hero. But now bits of her memory were conjuring up images of a warm, smiling man. And fire. Her nightmares slid into perspective. For whatever reason, the bad dreams she’d been having recently were of the day Luke Murphy’s uncle saved her life. Now Murphy was a new variable in her investigation.
As far as the question of why the cook had been left to die, the two Puffs had documented their theory in the pages of the crime report.
The investigation concluded that the first two victims were shot and killed in the main dining room. Both bodies showed traces of accelerant. Evidence of accelerant usage was detected throughout the restaurant. Per arson, the fire was started in the dining room, adjacent to the first two victims. Further investigation determined the suspects fled through the kitchen and exited the rear door as the fire spread. As they exited, they blocked the rear door with a large trash bin. The only conclusion investigators could draw from this was that the suspects knew there were still living victims in the restaurant and the door was blocked to prevent their escape.
Investigators believed the murderer or murderers confronted the couple where their bodies were found. They were dead when the fire started.
The Puffs also believed that when the murders happened, Goddard had been in the kitchen freezer completing an inventory. Abby had been in her parents’ office napping, something she did often—so often her parents had the room soundproofed, other employees told the Puffs. Goddard wrapped her in wet towels and tried to get her out the back door. If Woody and Asa hadn’t shown up when they did, rushing to the restaurant when they saw smoke, there would have been four victims in the restaurant instead of three.
Woody and Asa opened the back door when they heard Luke Goddard call for help. He handed them Abby. Goddard died two days later in the hospital from smoke inhalation without being able to make a statement.
Because there was no evidence that the killers knew Goddard was there, investigators concluded it was Abby who was intended to die in the inferno, and that resulted in her lost years in social services. For all her adult life the deaths of her parents had been two-dimensional: a collection of police reports, newspaper articles, the occasional regurgitation on a television program devoted to cold cases. Standing there face-to-face with Luke Murphy and hearing his connection suddenly brought everything into three dimensions, made it jump off the page, made the brutal murders of her parents painfully real.
“I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life.”
She’d gone home and pulled out everything she could on the cook. There wasn’t much. Goddard had been a clear-cut picture of collateral damage: in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’d been an investigation into his background to eliminate him as possibly the target. He wasn’t even supposed to have been at the restaurant that day but had come in early so he could take the night off. She’d mentally closed the door on that dead end and concentrated on her mom and dad.
Could Murphy know more than I do?
Unsettled after her search, she’d tried to contact Asa. He’d retired to Idaho and didn’t often answer his phone. Woody was the only other person she could talk to, and she needed to talk.
A black-and-white pulled into the coffee shop lot, and her friend stepped out, a worried look creasing his brow as he joined her. “What’s wrong?”
Abby gulped the stale coffee she’d purchased and tried to keep her voice level, not completely understanding why she was so antsy.
Woody listened to what she had to say without interrupting.
“Murphy . . . That name was never part of the original investigation. There’s no way you would have known he was related to the cook. I remember talking to the Goddard family at the hospital. Told them the cook died a hero.” He leaned against her car. “Man, oh, man, this takes me back. Goddard barely got you out of the office. We’d just put him in the ambulance when the alarm went out about your house being on fire. After that, Asa and me and the Puffs just wanted to keep you safe.”
Abby rubbed gooseflesh on her arm as the wisp of a memory surfaced. Fire. She hated fire.
“You okay?” Woody put a hand on her shoulder.
Abby realized she was breathing hard. “I don’t know. I’m remembering. I remember coughing and calling for my dad. . . . It was smoky, it was dark, and it was scary. Cookie was the one who told me that God would protect me.”
She jerked away from Woody, jammed her notes under her arm, and tossed her cup in the trash, pacing the lot, working to relax.
“I remember him picking me up and telling me not to be afraid, that I’d be okay.” She put her hand over her mouth as her breathing returned to normal. Facing a worried Woody, she asked, “Why didn’t I remember this before? Why now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe meeting a guy like Murphy triggered something. Do you remember the shooting?”
She hugged herself. “Just heat.”
They were quiet for a minute.
“I didn’t even get to ask Rollins anything. Do you remember his brother getting killed sometime after the Triple Seven burned?”
Woody tapped a fist with his palm, frowning. “Traffic accident. I recollect a fatal involving his brother. I was off that night, but Asa told me about it. Louis Rollins was riding his bike somewhere in East Long Beach; I don’t know where exactly. It was bad, a hit-and-run.”
“They catch who did it?”
“No, but I was there when they found the car a few nights later at Marine Stadium. Driven into the water at the boat launch. Stolen.”
Abby felt her world shift back into perspective. Woody’s presence usually did that for her. Plus, she now had something else to take a look at—the unsolved hit-and-run traffic accident report.
“Wonder if it’s worth looking up the report.”
“You think it’s related?” Woody frowned.
“On the surface, maybe not. But Rollins knows something. I’m convinced. The look on his face yesterday is frozen in my head.”
“About the murders?” Woody frowned. “He was looked at hard and came back clean as a whistle. The Puffs were good. If they’d thought he was involved, he’d have gone to jail. He wasn’t no governor then.”
“I’m not mistrusting the Puffs, but I do trust my instincts—you know that. The Rollins I saw yesterday was afraid and maybe guilty.”
“And he’s a murderer?” He grunted, not convinced. “He’s a saint in this state, done a lot of good over the years. Leopards
don’t change their spots. If he were a cold-blooded killer two decades ago, he’d still be one. How’d he hide all these years?”
Abby hiked one shoulder. “It’s just a feeling, and it’s all I’ve got right now. I wish I could talk to Asa.”
“If you left a message, he’ll call you back.”
Woody’s call sign came over the radio; he needed to answer.
“Thanks for everything.” She held his gaze, glad to see he wasn’t worried anymore.
“Just be careful. Whoever murdered your folks was as ruthless as they come. Like I said, leopards don’t change.”
He gave her a look that she recognized before he headed back to his patrol car, and it tugged at her heart. It was his look when things got serious or dangerous, and it said he feared for her.
Abby stayed in the parking lot after he drove away. She knew that her parents were considered the main targets twenty-seven years ago. The idea that Rollins was the killer had been ruled out quickly and thoroughly. If there had been any shadow over him, he never would have won his first political contest. To find anything that would implicate him would truly be a new lead.
I need to talk to the governor now more than ever.
WHAT COULD MURPHY KNOW about the Triple Seven that I don’t?
Abby bought a carton of milk from the doughnut shop and sat in her car munching Oreos while her thoughts dwelled on Luke Murphy. Yes, they had something in common, as he had observed—something big. But where could it possibly take them?
She finished her milk and cookies and had started the car when her phone rang. Fear jolted through her when she saw it was Ethan at this time of the morning, not yet 6 a.m. It was, of course, a normal hour where he was, but if he needed to call her now, something must be wrong.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. A little better now that I’m talking to you. Is everything okay on your end?”
Drawing Fire Page 12