“Oh, hi. You must be Lexi. I’m Jenny, the substitute filling in until they get someone permanent.” She put the cloth in the chalk tray. “They told me you were going to be coming, so I gathered up Kayla’s things.” She motioned toward the two crates filled to overflowing with books and various items.
Lexi picked up a box from the top.
“Cuisenaire rods,” Jenny explained. “They’re math manipulatives.”
Lexi nodded. Beneath that were sets of flash cards and a variety of children’s books. She placed the items back into the box. “Are these things you can use with the students?”
“You betcha.”
“Then how about if I leave them here?” Better than letting them collect dust in a closet. Aunt Sharon would probably agree.
Lexi emptied the other box, then repacked everything a minute later, keeping out three framed photos and several objects that had most likely been gifts from students. Those items Aunt Sharon would treasure.
Jenny flashed her an appreciative smile. “Thank you for donating all the educational things. I know the students appreciate it.”
“No problem. I’m glad they’ll get some use out of them.”
She started to walk toward the door, Jenny next to her. “How well did you know Kayla?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t. This is my first time subbing at Harmony Grove. But everyone says she was a special lady. Well loved. She’s going to be a hard one to follow.”
Jenny pulled the door shut behind them and removed a key from her pocket. She was young, probably not more than twenty-three or twenty-four, with clear blue eyes that still held a touch of youthful innocence. And if the lack of a wedding band was any indication, she was probably single. Which meant she was as likely as anyone to be the killer’s next victim.
And completely oblivious to the danger.
“Do you live alone?”
Jenny raised her brows in question. “Yes, why?”
“Just be careful. Don’t ever open the door to anyone at night without calling the police first.”
Jenny nodded slowly. “O-kay.”
Lexi waved farewell and headed toward the teacher’s lounge, leaving the young substitute to ponder the warning. If Kayla had fallen prey to the killer, no one was safe.
“Lexi.” The call rang out just as she reached the open door of the teacher’s lounge. She turned to see both Evie and Miranda hurrying toward her.
She smiled at Kayla’s two best friends. “Thanks for staying to talk to me.” If anyone had little-known information that could help solve the case, it would be these two teachers.
Miranda sank into a chair at one of the four round tables. “You know we’re happy to help in any way we can. We want this monster caught as much as anyone.”
Evie sat opposite Miranda and Lexi settled in next to her.
“Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt her?”
Evie clasped her hands together on the table and frowned. “Everyone loved Kayla. I don’t think she ever made an enemy.”
“Had she mentioned being afraid? Anyone following her or taking an unusual interest in her?”
Miranda shook her head. “If there was, she never mentioned it.”
“Did she mention meeting anyone new recently?”
“Kayla was always meeting someone new.” Evie smiled wryly.
Evie was right. Kayla was outgoing and bubbly, the kind who struck up conversations with cashiers and gas station attendants. She never met a stranger.
“Anyone specific that she mentioned?”
Evie answered immediately. “Not that I know of.”
“Wait.” Miranda held up a finger. “There was the water guy.”
Lexi raised her brows. “Water guy?”
“Oh, yeah.” Evie leaned forward in her chair. “How could I forget? Some guy trying to sell her one of those whole house water-filtration systems. He kept checking back. Didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
Lexi’s heart started to pound. Was this the link between all the victims? It was possible. Nothing had turned up, but if they hadn’t purchased a system and thrown away the guy’s card, there would be no trail. “Did she mention a name, or a company that he was with?”
“I don’t think so.” Miranda looked at Evie, who shook her head.
Lexi pulled out two of her cards and scribbled her cell number on the backs. “If anything else comes to mind, call me.”
As soon as she reached the parking lot, she punched in Alan’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting ready to mow the lawn. Why?”
“So you’re off duty.”
“I can put myself back on duty. What’s up?”
“I’m headed to Kayla’s. I’ve got a lead.”
“I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
She dropped her phone into her purse and hurried toward her patrol car, ready to turn her cousin’s house upside down if necessary. Kayla wasn’t a pack rat, but she wasn’t a total neat freak, either. Hopefully she’d left behind some kind of clue. An estimate. A business card. Anything that could help them find this mystery water-filter salesman.
Because it was the only lead they had.
*
Lexi moved up the sidewalk that bordered a bed overflowing with day lilies and blooming spring annuals. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scented air. Kayla loved her flowers. Every Saturday, she’d spent two or three hours piddling in the yard, weeding, watering, fertilizing and pruning. And all the tender loving care showed.
But Lexi wasn’t there to admire the landscaping. If she was lucky, the break they were hoping for waited somewhere inside the small two-bedroom house.
She took the key she had gotten from Aunt Sharon and pushed it into the lock. The crime scene investigators were finished with their work. Fine black powder still coated the door and jambs. The results hadn’t come back yet. Otherwise, they hadn’t found anything of note.
But they hadn’t been looking for a certain salesman’s business card.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside, instantly struck by the cold and empty feel of the house. The place had always seemed warm, cozy and full of life, qualities that had obviously come from Kayla’s presence there.
She took in a deep breath and headed toward the spare bedroom. A soft knock on the front door interrupted her midstep. Good. Alan had arrived. The thought of having company filled her with an unexpected sense of relief. Even though that company came in the form of one local cop whom she’d spent the better part of six years trying to avoid.
She swung open the door. Alan stood on her cousin’s front porch, clad in jeans and a T-shirt. His yard-work attire. The shirt molded itself to his muscular chest, ending just past the waistband of his snugly fitting jeans. Definitely the body of a sworn protector of the innocent.
But she wasn’t going to notice that. She snapped her gaze back to his face and stepped aside. “Come on in.”
She worked with buff, athletic cops every day and didn’t give them more than a casual glance. Alan was no exception. Whatever they’d had in the past, it had obviously meant more to her than it had to him.
Giving Alan his freedom had initially been her mother’s suggestion. It wasn’t fair to make him wait for two years while she was away at school. That was the way her mom worked, her control techniques so subtle that her victims hardly realized they had been manipulated. So when Alan had floored her with his marriage proposal, those had been the first words out of her mouth.
By Thanksgiving break, she had realized her mistake and come back to tell Alan. She’d known he was dating. Casually, he had said. Just friends. At his cool greeting, her stomach tightened. When Lauren appeared next to him, her stomach clenched. And when Lauren showed off her sparkly new diamond, her stomach almost emptied its contents. Somehow she’d made it through the congratulations and well wishes without embarrassing herself by losing her lunch or dissolving in
to a weeping puddle on the porch.
Her mom had gotten her wish. Lexi hadn’t married a cop. Instead, she’d become one.
Alan stepped into the house and closed the door. “So what’s our lead?”
“A salesman of water-filtration systems.” She shook off the last remnants of regret and led him toward the second bedroom, which Kayla had set up as a combination guest room/den. “I talked to Miranda and Evie at the school today. Some guy tried to sell Kayla one of those whole-house water-filtration systems. And according to Miranda and Evie, he was pretty persistent, kept contacting her.”
“So what are we looking for?”
“A card, a proposal, a contract—anything that might have this guy’s information on it.”
Alan picked up the trash can under the desk. It was empty except for one wadded-up piece of paper. A grocery list.
A business-card holder sat near the back of the desk. Lexi removed the cards and thumbed through them. There were about a dozen, mostly from stores around town. None had anything to do with water-filtration systems.
After almost an hour of searching, she heaved a sigh. “I’m guessing she threw it away. We’ll go ahead and contact the companies in the area that sell those things and see if any of them had Kayla down as a potential customer.”
“I have one more place to check.” He headed back into the kitchen and opened the narrow pantry door. A vague odor of garbage hit her nostrils when he took the lid off the trash can. It wasn’t very full. Kayla must have taken the trash out the day before she was killed.
Alan tipped the can and poured its contents onto the tiled floor. A plastic grocery bag stuffed with papers sat amid salad and other food scraps. Most of the discarded paper was junk mail. Lexi picked up the sheets and inspected them one by one, then released a sigh.
“Unless there are clues on the backs of these cucumber peels, I’d say we struck out here.”
Alan scooped everything up and dropped it back into the can. “I suppose I ought to take this out before it gets really ripe.”
She started to put the empty can back into the pantry but a small piece of paper in the bottom caught her eye. Something must have fallen in beside the trash bag. Or was tossed in before the bag was inserted.
She reached into the can and pulled out a business card: Martin Jeffries. All-Pure Water Treatment.
“Bingo.”
They finally had a suspect.
*
Alan opened the door to warehouse number seven in Thompson Commercial Park and let Lexi go in ahead of him. All-Pure Water Treatment was a bare-necessities no-frills kind of place. Fabric-covered office partitions segregated an area on one side of the room and a metal desk stood near the opposite wall. Except for a photo frame on the desk, a clock on the wall and one of those fake ficus trees in the corner, the space was devoid of any decorative touches.
A young woman sat at the desk, a phone propped against her shoulder. Her eyes widened as he and Lexi stepped inside, both in uniform, but she continued her conversation.
Alan pulled the door shut behind them and waited for her to finish. Maybe conversation wasn’t a good word for it. Pitch was more accurate. Apparently, All-Pure had gotten back the results of the free water test, and there were some serious issues with the water. But she, of course, had a specialist she could send to explain the details and present some options. Why drink tainted water when a person could have all the pure water he would ever need for just pennies a day?
The pitch was apparently successful because she jotted a name in the appointment calendar that lay open in front of her, then hung up the phone, smiling.
“How can I help you?”
Lexi stepped forward. It was her case. Things would go more smoothly if he let her lead.
“Do you have a Martin Jeffries who works here?”
Concern flashed across her features. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“No, we just need to ask a few questions.” Lexi pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “Do you keep a list of his appointments?”
“We do.” Hesitation filled her tone. “I’m not sure what information I’m allowed to share.” She cast an uneasy glance at the cubicle on the other side of the room and, as if on cue, a man stepped out.
“Hi, I’m Buddy Jacobs, the owner of All-Pure.” He extended his hand, that salesman air even more pronounced than it had been with the girl securing the appointment. “How can I help you?”
After they each accepted the handshake, Lexi continued, “We need a list of Martin Jeffries’s appointments going back, say, six months. Is that something you keep?”
“Of course we do. We don’t have anything to hide.” He nodded toward the girl. “Anne, go ahead and print out his weekly calls going back to the beginning of October. If the boy’s up to no good, I want to know about it.”
After several clicks of the mouse, pages began to spill into the printer.
Lexi continued, “How long has he worked for All-Pure?”
“Since September. So about seven months. Moved here from out of state.”
“Have any of his customers ever complained about him?”
“A couple of times.”
“What kind of complaints?”
Buddy laughed. “He’s a salesman. Some people think he comes off a little too…high pressure. But I can’t argue with his sales figures. He’s good at what he does.”
“Where can we find him?”
“He’s off today and tomorrow. Won’t be back in until Saturday.”
Anne removed the small stack of pages from the printer and handed them to Lexi.
“Do you think Martin might be at home?”
“He might be. I’ll have Anne get the address for you. It’s new, as of about a month ago. I think he’s living with a lady friend.”
By the time they got back into Lexi’s cruiser, she had added an Auburndale address to the pages of customer appointments. She handed Alan the list and began to program the address into the GPS.
“See if you can find any of the victims’ names on those lists.”
He picked up the file between the seats—Lexi’s notes, duplicates of the information she needed quick and easy access to. While she drove, he read through the names Buddy Jacobs had provided. Halfway down the second page, anticipation surged through him. One name matched.
“In early November, he had an appointment with a Stephanie Wilson in Winter Haven.”
“She was the third victim, killed about two months ago. What address?”
“Cypress Gardens Road.”
Lexi frowned. “The victim lived in the Inwood area.”
“Maybe she moved.” He continued to search for the other names, scanning the single-spaced pages. This guy saw a lot of people.
Finally he slid the sheets into Lexi’s folder. “That’s it. Just Stephanie and Kayla. The others aren’t here.”
Lexi nodded. “If it’s the same Stephanie Wilson, that’s two out of five. There’s definitely enough of a lead to follow up on. He may have even deleted the other three names. I mean, if you were killing your customers, would you leave that kind of a paper trail?”
“You’ve got a point. If he had access to the computer.”
She turned into an upscale neighborhood and moved slowly down the road until she reached the number she sought. If the grand, two-story Colonial at the end of the driveway was any indication, Jeffries’s lady friend had some bucks.
Chimes followed the ringing of the bell, then faded to silence. Apparently no one was home.
Lexi turned to head back to the car. “I’ll try again this evening.”
Alan shook his head as anxiety spiked through him. “Let me do it.”
“I live about a mile that way.” She pointed over his shoulder. “It doesn’t make sense for you to drive over here from Harmony Grove.”
“You shouldn’t come here alone.”
She reached the patrol car and nailed him with a withering glare over its top. “This is my
case. I know we’re working together, but I’m the lead detective.”
It wasn’t going to do any good to take a stubborn stance with her. When it came to stubbornness, Lexi took the prize. She hadn’t always been that way. She had been happy and agreeable and perpetually optimistic. But life’s knocks had stamped out most of that youthful innocence and left her with a hard edge. And something told him he had unwittingly contributed to it.
“Look, Lexi, you fit the profile of the victims.”
“That’s a pretty broad profile.”
“Still, you fit it. I don’t mind the drive. Let me come back with you.”
She hesitated for a moment longer then sighed. “All right. Meet me at my house at eight.”
Within moments of turning onto Berkley Road, a gold Lexus moved toward them in the opposite lane, slowing as it approached. A male driver sat at the wheel. As near as Alan could tell, he was the only one in the car. Lexi slowed, casting several glances in her rearview mirror.
“He just turned into Somerset. You think that’s our Mr. Jeffries?” She was already turning around as she posed the question.
When they pulled into the driveway, the driver of the car was bent at the waist, removing shopping bags from the front passenger seat. He straightened and spun to face them. His eyes widened. A split second later he dropped the bags in the driveway and shot off toward the right side of the house at a full run, disappearing through a wrought iron gate.
Alan jumped from the cruiser and ran toward the break in the wall. Jeffries was guilty of something. If it was murder, they just might end this thing a lot more quickly than he had anticipated.
If they could catch him.
Alan came to a sudden halt, Lexi next to him. The lavishly landscaped backyard offered numerous places to hide. And Jeffries was nowhere to be seen.
He cocked his head to the left. Lexi gave a slight nod and moved across the back of the house with sure, silent steps. She would make a good partner.
But he didn’t spare her more than a brief glance. He moved deeper into the yard, hand on his revolver, eyes peeled for the slightest movement. Manicured hedges wrapped curved walks and a figure of some Greek goddess stood framed on three sides by walls of vine-covered lattice. Somewhere nearby, the gurgle of a fountain masked the sound of their steps.
Love Inspired Suspense June 2014 Bundle 2 of 2: Forced AllianceOut for JusticeNo Place to Run Page 24