by Lauren Carr
With a heavy sigh, she rested her hand on her hip. “Chris, let it go. That happened a long time ago. Most people have forgotten it. If you go dredging it all up again—”
“I’m not the one dredging it up. Did you see the newspaper today?”
“Nobody reads the newspaper.”
“Victor Sinclair has asked the sheriff to reopen the Sandy Lipton case,” he said. “My shooting those two thugs brought me to the forefront of the news again. Right there. The whole Sandy Lipton case rehashed with both her picture and mine on the front page. Even before that, Katelyn had heard about it at school and asked me if I took advantage of some young girl. I need to find out the truth for my daughters. Plus, I owe it to Sandy to find out the truth.”
“Don’t you think that if Carson knew what had happened to Sandy that he would’ve said something before now?”
“Not if his mother had something to do with it. Carson told me that he thinks Victor Sinclair raped her. He claims he saw Victor’s car parked at the diner across the street when I dropped Sandy off the night of the prom.”
“Victor Sinclair is no dummy.” She peered out the window over the sink. In the moonlight, the trees in the back yard resembled skeletons. “He’s a worm, but he’s not stupid. If he’d raped Sandy, he certainly got away with it. The last thing he’d want to do is press his luck by ordering Grant to reopen the case. Did you see anything that night that makes you think Carson could be right?”
“No,” Chris said with a firm shake of his head. “And if I had seen Victor, I wouldn’t have left. Sandy was adamant about not wanting anything to do with him. If I had seen him following her home, I would’ve confronted him.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice him following you.”
“Mom, I had already served with the Army Rangers. If I was being tailed, I would have noticed.”
“Do you think Carson lied?”
“I’m not sure.” Chris’s eyes met Doris’s. “I asked for his DNA to put into the national database to see if we could get a familial match with any Jane Does to help us find Sandy. He refused.”
“Did he say why?”
“Mabel said we had Ethel’s DNA, so we didn’t need his.”
“That’s true.”
“Mom, I saw the look in his eyes. He was scrambling for a good excuse to decline before Mabel mentioned Ethel’s DNA. Afterwards, he said it was because he didn’t want Big Brother tracking him.”
“There are a lot of people who feel that way, Christopher.” She picked up the dogs’ water bowl to refill with fresh water.
Chris stepped around the counter to join her at the sink. “Do you remember the Mona Tabler and Shirley Rice murders?”
“I’ve heard all about them. Your father worked on those cases up to the day he died.”
“Mona Tabler was the restaurant manager at the Stardust,” Chris said. “She was hard hearted, just like Mabel. Some of my friends in college worked there. One guy said she made prison wardens look like pussy cats. I found out today that Shirley Rice had caused a big scene in that same restaurant just a couple of weeks before she was killed. The MO in both murders is the same. Not only that, but a woman from Lancaster had been murdered a couple years before Mona. She’d been banned from the casino after stealing another gambler’s winnings. Security caught up with her at the buffet in the restaurant.”
“Are you thinking they were all murdered by a serial killer?” She set the bowl down in the corner of the kitchen.
“A profiler I talked to says the perp would have had serious mommy issues, which Carson has.”
“Lots of people have mommy issues, Christopher, but that doesn’t necessarily make them all psychopathic murderers.”
“He even burns down the victims’ home. That indicates a hell of a lot of rage.”
“How many women do you think this guy murdered?”
“I’ve identified five,” Chris said. “The murders stopped twelve years ago. Well, that happens to be when Carson married Mabel, who ordered him to cut off all relations from Ethel.”
“That’s totally circumstantial, Christopher. Do you have any actual proof that Carson Lipton is a homicidal maniac?”
“They’d found DNA at the scene of the first murder,” Chris said. “I just need someone to help me get a sample of Carson’s DNA to have compared to it.”
“And how do you intend to get that?”
“I assume he’ll be the chef for tomorrow night’s dinner dance,” Chris said with a sly grin. “I’m hoping you have two tickets left.”
“Two tickets for whom? You and a certain police lieutenant?”
“No,” Chris said with a heavy sigh. “Helen’s mad. She’s not even speaking to me.”
“What did you do to Helen?”
“Why do you assume I did something to her? Why don’t you assume she did something to me?”
“Because Helen is a nice girl.”
“Well, some people seem to think I’m a nice guy.”
“Christopher, those people don’t know you like I do.” Doris spun around to head out of the kitchen. Mocha and Sadie scrambled to their feet to escort her.
“Aren’t you even going to ask who I’m taking?”
With a heavy sigh, Doris turned to him. “What tramp are you taking to the dinner dance?”
“Peyton Davenport.”
To his surprise, Doris’s frown deepened. “Over my dead body.”
He had not heard that tone of voice from her in years—since he had been a child under her command. “Excuse me.”
“You are not taking Peyton Davenport anywhere. I forbid it.”
“Forbid me?” Chris laughed. “What are you going to do next? Send me to my room?”
Realizing the ridiculous nature of her order, Doris circled the kitchen in search of a suitable response to her dilemma. “I didn’t even know you knew the Davenports personally.”
“I’d just met Peyton today at the casino.”
She stopped circling. “Well, if those are the type of people you’re socializing with—then you can go live elsewhere.”
“What are you talking about ‘those type of people’?”
“Peyton Davenport is trouble with a capital ‘T’. Anyone who gets mixed up with her ends up dead. Did you hear about the sex scandal at the high school about ten years ago?”
“A group of high school girls were seducing teachers, recording it, and then blackmailing them.”
“It was genius on Peyton’s part,” Doris said. “Of course, the victims didn’t say anything. They had too much to lose. The only way it came out was that one of those girls ended up dead. When your father investigated the case, he found a hornets nest and Peyton Davenport was in it up to her pretty eyeballs.”
“If we’re talking about the murder I’m thinking of, wasn’t a teacher arrested for it?” Chris asked.
“Oscar Newton,” Doris said. “Very nice man. Married and had two children.”
“He got a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant,” Chris said, “and then killed her to keep her quiet.”
“It was an accident,” Doris said. “They got into a fight. He gave her money to get an abortion. Here Peyton had set up a hidden camera and recorded the whole thing. Jocelyn was bleeding him dry. They got into a fight and Jocelyn slapped him. He snapped and strangled her. He still has no memory of actually killing her and dumping her body in the river.”
“Did they ever find her body?”
Doris shook her head. “Her poor parents. They think it must have washed up in a remote part of the river and gotten eaten by scavengers. It was a tragedy all the way around.”
“None of it would’ve happened if Mr. Newton hadn’t had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if Jocelyn hadn’t gotten mixed up with Peyton Davenport,” she said. “Jocelyn was a nice girl. She had
a lot going for her. Then, she became friends with Peyton. You should have seen her at Jocelyn’s memorial service. Crocodile tears flowing like a river. People like Peyton are incapable of having friends.”
“Whoever would’ve guessed that a pregnant teenaged girl getting strangled would turn out to be part of a whole sex ring operating in little old Jefferson County?”
“With Peyton as their ringleader,” Doris said. “Your father wanted to arrest her for extortion. But her father’s lawyer, Steve Sinclair was going to put her in a white dress with pearls and paint her as the victim of all these men. Your dad convinced the prosecutor to take the case to the grand jury but before he could do that, he was conveniently killed in a car accident. His replacement dropped the case.”
“I hate to say this, because I did have a lot of respect for Mr. Newton, but he was the one who decided to have sex with Jocelyn,” Chris said. “He knew the law.”
“He was set up!” Doris said. “Jocelyn seduced him with the sole motive of blackmailing him. Your dad interviewed a lot of people. Peyton and her friends had a whole scam—organized—going on. They targeted older men in powerful positions, seduced them, recorded it, and then would hang the evidence over their heads. They wanted grades, letters of recommendation for scholarships and colleges, or sometimes just plain cash in exchange for their silence. And Peyton Davenport was the brains behind the whole thing.”
“Sounds like Peyton is quite an ambitious girl. How long ago was that?” Chris’s mind swirled to the current scheme that Tommy Bukowski had been investigating at the Stardust.
She wagged a finger at Chris. “Peyton Davenport ruins the lives of every man she touches—which is why I’m forbidding you to go out with her.”
“Well that is very good information to know.”
“So you’ll take Helen instead,” Doris said with a nod of her head. “We can make it a double date.”
“Double? Who are you going with?”
“Elliott, of course. You said he could ask me. By the way, you owe me a thousand dollars for our tickets.”
“A thousand dollars? When did all this go down? Where was I?”
“Christopher, that’s why Elliott invited you to breakfast this morning—to ask your permission for him to take me to the dance.” She cocked her head at him. “Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, yes!” He let out a loud laugh. “Of course, I remember giving Elliott permission to ask you to the dinner dance. How could I forget? It’s just that I was so busy today—breakfast seems so long ago now.”
“I don’t know about you, Christopher.” Doris shook her head. “I wanted you to join Elliott’s book club because I was worried about you not going out or having any friends. But now, you’re stranger than you were before you had friends.” She let out a deep sigh. “I’ll reserve a table for four at the dance. Me and Elliott, and you and Helen.”
“Mother, I’m taking Peyton.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“According to you, yes.”
“Peyton’s young enough to be your daughter.”
“No, she’s not,” Chris said. “Maybe young enough to be my much younger sister, but not my daughter.”
“Yes, she is.” Doris blinked her eyes several times while she struggled to comprehend a fact that she knew was somewhere in her memory bank. “I remember when she was born. LeAnn Reaves—one of our parish nurses at the church—”
“I know LeAnn—known her most of my life.” Impatient for her to continue with her story, Chris uttered a deep sigh. “Go ahead. Tell me about LeAnn.” He spun his finger in a circular motion in a gesture for her to continue.
“LeAnn was a maternity nurse and sent out a prayer request to everyone at the church when Julie Davenport was brought in. She was in really bad shape—physically and emotionally. Julie wanted a baby so badly, but from what LeAnn saw, she was certain it was going to be stillborn. Well, Peyton was born alive, but she couldn’t breathe on her own.”
Doris snapped her finger at the memory. “You were visiting us—it was the first Christmas after you’d gone to live in Washington.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I remember when everything happened based on what you were doing at the time.”
Chris had to chuckle. “I do the same thing, too, based on what the girls are doing.”
“The day after you went home, I went to church and LeAnn and everyone was praising God for such a miracle. They didn’t think Peyton was going to make it a full day, but when LeAnn went in to work for the night shift, Peyton was breathing on her own. She truly was a miracle baby—which is why her parents spoiled her rotten.”
“And that happened that first Christmas after I graduated from Shepherd?”
Doris nodded her head. “You were twenty-two years old then—which means that you are old enough to be her father.”
“Mom, get—”
He was about to tell her to get her mind out of the gutter when their discussion was cut off by a high-pitched scream. The terror from the noise was punctuated by the impact of its owner seemingly bouncing down the front stairs to land with a climatic crash at the bottom.
In Shepherdstown, Steve Sinclair turned his luxurious Cadillac SUV off the cobblestone street and pulled around the circular driveway to park in the garage.
The thought of going into the house to face his wife and hear the latest gossip and social positioning was exhausting. Still, he had to go inside sometime.
Appearances are everything. That was why Steve Sinclair lived in the largest colonial mansion in Jefferson County. It had once been home to some of the area’s most distinguished figures in the country’s history. There had been rumors that Charles Washington, George’s brother, had at one point lived in the Sinclair home.
Steve climbed out of the SUV, turned out the light, and stepped outside to hurry up the icy walk to go inside.
“You look tired, Steve,” a voice said from out of the darkness.
Steve froze. “Who’s out there?”
“Greed weighs heavy on the soul.” Bruce stepped out of the shadows.
Steve whipped out his cell phone. “Whoever you are, leave now, because in two minutes the police will be here and you won’t be seeing the light of day until hell freezes over.”
Amused, Bruce smirked at Steve’s bravado. “Are you sure about that?”
To Steve’s surprise, his phone did nothing. He peered at the screen. No bars.
“No one can hear you, Steve.” Bruce held up a small contraption for him to see.
His wife threw open the house’s side door. “Steve! Are you out there? What’s taking you so long?”
“Unless you want her to find out about the prostitute you just paid two hundred and fifty dollars for consulting, you’ll tell her that you’re taking out the garbage.”
“I’m okay, dear!” Steve called out. “I’m taking out the garbage.”
She closed the door.
“We have to talk.” Bruce went into the garage and held the door open for Steve to follow him.
Steve refused to move. “Not until you tell me what is this about.”
“Your son and why it would be in your best interest to convince him to let the Sandy Lipton case go cold again.”
Chapter Seventeen
Each one of Emma’s pain-filled screams felt like a stab wound delivered to Chris’s heart.
The emergency room doctor and nurse at Jefferson Medical Center had to examine her broken arm, but the panic-stricken child was determined to not let that happen.
Desperate, Chris told her, “Honey, Supergirl would be brave and let the doctor help her if she broke her arm.”
“Supergirl wouldn’t break her arm.” Emma wiped her runny nose and tear-stained face with her red cape from the Supergirl costume she was wearing when she jumped from the top of the front
staircase.
Upon finding Emma sprawled at the bottom of the stairs with her badly broken arm beneath her, Chris had told Doris to stay home with Katelyn and Nikki while he rushed her to the emergency room.
Chris alternated between pleading and ordering his daughter to cooperate with the doctor, but neither technique worked. He sensed that Doris, with her maternal strength, would have been more successful.
“Emma, what have you done now?”
The gravelly voice of the elderly woman broke through the wailing. The doctor, who looked barely old enough to shave, backed away to allow the woman clad in a pink hospital uniform to step up to Emma.
“I fell down the stairs, Grandma Patty.” Sobbing, Emma held out her injured arm for her to see.
“She was trying to fly like Supergirl,” Chris said.
“Could have been worse,” Grandma Patty said with a maternal grin. “She could have tried taking off from the roof like you tried to do.”
Chris felt his cheeks flush.
Emma stopped crying to ask, “Daddy tried to fly off the roof?”
“No—”
“Yes, you did.” Grandma Patty leaned over to tell Emma, “He wanted to test out a parachute that he had made himself out of an old bedsheet. Lucky thing his father caught him before he jumped.” She grinned up at Chris. “If I recall correctly, he was the same age you are now.”
Emma’s sobs turned to giggles.
The children at their church called the motherly woman “Grandma Patty.” Every child’s favorite babysitter, Patty often spent her days off with a handful of children playing games, making crafts, watching movies, and baking sugary treats.
Even the stressed out young doctor seemed calmer upon Grandma Patty’s entrance, which made Chris wonder if he had once been one of her charges.
“Do you now understand why you can’t fly?” Grandma Patty asked while examining Emma’s arm. The doctor moved next to Patty to examine the bruised and swollen limb.
“Because I’m not from Krypton?” Emma sniffed. “Is Nonni here?” She looked around for her grandmother.
“No, she’s home with your sisters. She texted to give me a head’s up.” She smiled. “Bet you didn’t know that I worked here at the hospital, did you?”