Ice (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 1)

by Lauren Carr

  “So Seth went to his sister Loco Lucy to arrange for a couple of goons to do a drive-by for him,” Elliott said.

  “Josie sounds like a real piece of work,” Chris said. “Does Wanda know how Rachel knows Josie? I don’t think she works at the casino because the bartender said she wasn’t a regular. As a matter of fact, he told me he thought she was a prostitute.”

  “No, she’s not a prostitute,” Elliott said. “You’re right. She doesn’t work at the casino.”

  “But she does have access to the stables,” Chris said. “You need a security pass to get through the gates after hours. That means Josie has to be connected to Stardust in some way. If she has a security pass and used it to enter the stables on the night of the murder, there’ll be a record of it.”

  “You’ll still need Rachel to make a statement about Josie’s role in Tommy’s murder.”

  “As nervous as Rachel was yesterday, I don’t think it would take much pressure to flip her on her partner.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”Chris was impressed. “For a bunch of geezers, Elliott, your squad really has a way of making cold cases hot again.”

  “But wait, there’s more.”

  “More?”

  “We’re five for five.”

  “Huh?”

  “Patricia Handle and Carla Pendleton both have connections to the Stardust,” Elliott said. “Both investigators had to go back to the families of the victims and do some digging, but it paid off. Carla Pendleton had a daughter who had her rehearsal dinner at the Stardust four weeks before the murder. While the daughter recalled it as a wonderfully elegant event, her husband told the detective that Carla was the mother of the bride from hell. Nothing made her happy. She complained to the restaurant manager about everything.”

  “That’s four out of five who were difficult middle-aged women at the Stardust’s restaurant,” Chris said. “That makes a pattern. What about Patricia Handle?”

  “She’s a sad case,” Elliot said. “The investigator on the case had to do some hunting to find her connection. Patricia had never been married. She tried online dating and had a blind date set up to meet at the Stardust. This was only a couple of weeks before her death. She got stood up. She waited at that table alone for over two hours. Finally, she ordered dinner. Plus, she had a bottle of wine all by herself. The bill came and wouldn’t you know it? Her credit card was declined. Of course, she was embarrassed. Between being stood up and unable to pay the bill, she broke down into a sobbing mess—caused quite a scene. Patricia told no one—except her best friend who told the detective after he asked her directly about the Stardust. Otherwise, no one knew that she had ever been there.”

  “Five for five,” Chris said.

  “That’s his hunting ground,” Elliott said.

  “Can Ray and Jacqui do something for me?”

  “Depends. What?”

  “Can Ray do that thing he does and access the state police forensics files to get a copy of Ethel Lipton’s DNA profile?”

  “To run through the national database to see if any Jane Doe’s DNA is a familial match?” Elliott asked. “They’re already doing that.”

  “Not just that. I want them to compare Ethel’s DNA to that found at the first victim’s crime scene for a familial match.”

  “Are you thinking Carson Lipton, Sandy’s brother, is the Graduate Slaughterer?”

  “Elliott, he fits the profile. He’s the chef at the Stardust, has been there since the first murder, and he’s got huge mommy issues.”

  “I’ll call Ray and tell him to get on it.”

  “There was another murder last night,” Chris said. “Felicia Bell, the deputy sheriff’s wife. Beaten, raped, stabbed, and house burnt down.”

  “Felicia lives locally, I assume.”

  “Morgana Drive in Shepherdstown. Problem is—Helen says Felicia has never been to the Stardust that she knows of. That breaks the pattern.”

  Elliott let out a gasp. “Morgana Drive was where Mona Tabler lived. Since she’s local, Carson may have spotted her someplace else. Maybe he has a friend who lives on Morgana Drive and happened to see Felicia running in the park or something.”

  “Rodney has been looking at the cold cases himself, but as far as I know, he only knows about Mona and Shirley. Maybe he got too close.”

  “If that’s the case, then you need to be careful,” Elliott said. “I should come over to guard your mother.”

  “Mom can take care of herself, Elliott. If anyone comes after her, all she has to do is feed them her tuna casserole to kill them.”

  “The Pennsylvania state police are sending the DNA profile from Angela Romano’s murder to our crime lab to compare with Ethel Lipton to see if there’s a familial match,” Helen said after Chris revealed his suspicions of Carson Lipton being the Graduate Slaughterer. “I also sent a couple of my detectives to go to the Stardust to nose around.” She tucked her phone into its case on her belt.

  “They have that big dinner dance tonight.” Chris took Helen’s coat from the hook in the mudroom and held it for her to slip on. “He’ll be too busy cooking today to kill anyone for the time being. Most of the area’s movers and shakers will be at the Stardust tonight—so he’ll have to behave himself.”

  “Including us.” She winked at him while he fastened her coat for her.

  “You’re going tonight?” Chris fought the grin working its way to his lips.

  “I’m not leaving you alone with Peyton Davenport.”

  Looking into her pretty face, he marveled at how little she had aged.

  “You smell really sexy. Did you put on that cologne for me or Peyton?”

  He laughed. “Who do you think?”

  “What are you looking at?” She moved in close to him and gazed up into his eyes.

  “Just thinking,” he said in a low voice.

  “About what?” Her fingertips brushed the back of his hand. He turned it to lace his fingers with hers.

  “In two years, I lost three people—well, three people and a dog—who I cared very much about. Neither Dad nor I were much for talking about feelings, but I know he knew how I felt about him.”

  “You worshipped him,” she said.

  “Blair and I had problems.”

  “Every married couple does.”

  “I could have taken a leave of absence from the FBI and taken the girls and followed her to Europe, but my pride wouldn’t let me.”

  “Then you and the girls would have been there with her in Nice during the terrorist attack,” she said.

  “My point is…” His voice trailed off. He started again. “I kept hoping things would work out. So much between us was left unsaid.” He squeezed her hand. “Lesson learned. Don’t let an opportunity to let someone know how much you care slip by, because there may not be a next time.”

  She lifted her face—raising her lips to meet his.

  He leaned forward.

  The ring of her phone made them part as if they had received an electrical shock from their lips.

  “Hold that thought.” She dug her phone from the case and brought it to her ear. “Clarke here.”

  Chris snatched his coat from the hook and shrugged into it. He noticed then that Sterling was waiting at the door for Chris to open it. He expected to go with them. “What’s the matter? You don’t like hanging out with the girls?”

  His tall ears falling to the side of his head, Sterling gazed up at him—pleading.

  “I know how you feel, big guy,” Chris said in a low voice.

  Helen disconnected the call. “Children.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Sierra forgot she has gym today and left her clothes at home. She wants me to go pick them up and bring them out to the school.”

  “Mom’s got a ton of workout clothes. She does yoga three times a w
eek. Sierra’s about the same size as Mom, isn’t she?”

  Helen smiled. “Let’s say she is.”

  He pointed to the back staircase. “Help yourself.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Smoke permeated the air when Helen turned her cruiser into Morgana Estates in Shepherdstown.

  “I didn’t realize Rodney and Felicia did so well for themselves.” Chris observed the upper middle class homes that lined the street winding through the development.

  “Do you know what house poor means?” Helen asked. “Felicia told me that they got the biggest mortgage they could to buy this house. For some reason Rodney was fixated on living here. He put so much pressure on himself to succeed to impress his dad—who didn’t care one bit.”

  “That had everything to do with it.” Chris counted the numbers on each mailbox.

  One-fifteen. One-forty-five. One-seventy-five.

  As the cruiser followed the curve in the road, Chris sat up in his seat in anticipation of the next house number.

  Two-fifteen Morgana Drive. Mona Tabler’s home.

  He pressed his finger against the cold window and counted the houses until Helen brought the cruiser to a halt at the end of the block. Four houses.

  Two state police SUVs and a red sedan were parked in the street. A team of firefighters cleaned the front yard of a smoldering French country brick home. The steam and smoke billowed up into the sky.

  “When did Rodney and Felicia move here?” Chris asked.

  Helen thought a long moment. “I was in law school. Rodney had been with the sheriff’s department one year. Felicia was pregnant with their second son.”

  Chris counted the years from when they had graduated from Shepherd together. “Rodney went to work for the sheriff’s department after he graduated from the police academy. 1995. Mid-nineties.”

  He turned in his seat to look back at the colonial-style home at the opposite end of the block. “Not only is the MO the same, but they lived only four doors down from Mona Tabler when she was killed.”

  “Maybe Rod saw something back then that struck him as peculiar,” Helen said. “He put it together recently, and that’s why he broke out the case file.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know.” She opened the door and slid out. “Hasn’t that happened to you? Something in a case strikes you as odd, but you don’t know what it means until much later.” She opened her coat and reached for the cell phone on her hip.

  “Happens to me every day,” Chris grumbled before getting out of the cruiser. When Sterling moved to the rear door with anticipation on his face, Chris shook his head. “Sorry, this is a crime scene. We can’t have you contaminating it, big guy. We’ll be back for you when we’re finished.”

  Sterling uttered a series of barks.

  “Listen to the radio. Since I’m not driving, you can listen to whatever you want.” Chris ducked under the crime scene tape to join Helen, who was still talking on the phone.

  “Are you kidding me?” The phone still to her ear, Helen turned to him with her face screwed up in an expression of disgust.

  “What—”

  Before Chris could finish his question, the cruiser’s horn sounded—followed by a bark. He turned around to find that Sterling had jumped into the driver’s seat and was repeatedly hitting the horn with his paw.

  “Stop that!” When he stepped over to the cruiser, Sterling stopped and cocked his head at him.

  Two uniformed state police officers tasked with making sure no one interfered with the crime scene and an older man in a fire fighter’s uniform watched the debate from the top of the driveway.

  “Don’t be rude,” Chris told the dog.

  Sterling responded with a bark.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you. Lay down and be quiet.”

  Sterling uttered a whine that turned into a pitiful bark.

  “I don’t care if you are bored. You wanted to come with us, but you can’t go into the crime scene.”

  With a harrumph, the dog laid down and rested his head on the door rest.

  “All right. Let me know what you find when you get there.” She disconnected the call and placed her hand with the phone on her hip. “You were right.”

  “I’m always right.” He ducked back under the crime scene tape to rejoin her. “What am I right about this time?”

  “Lipton didn’t show up at the Stardust this morning. Neither did his wife. The detectives found the kitchen and restaurant staff in a panic because of the dinner dance tonight. The Liptons are nowhere to be found. Neither of them are answering their cell phones. My detectives and a couple of uniforms are going to their house to check it out.”

  The arson investigator, Brad Miller, met them at the door leading into the attached garage. Chris recognized him as the father of one of his childhood friends.

  Brad recognized Chris as well. “Matheson? Right? Your mother is the librarian.” He clasped Chris’s hand. “I’d heard through the grapevine that you came back. Sorry about your father. How’s your mother doing?”

  “Fine,” Chris said. “She keeps herself very busy.”

  “That’s Doris all right. Is she seeing anyone?”

  Stunned, Chris glanced at Helen who suppressed a smile. “My dad only died eight months ago.”

  “I know,” Brad said, “but classy ladies like Doris don’t stay in circulation very long—”

  “Aren’t you—”

  “Oh, my wife divorced me for a FedEx delivery guy over seven years ago.” Brad fished a business card out of his pocket and shoved it into Chris’s hand. “Can you do me a favor? When your mom is ready to start dating, can you…” There was a plea in his voice when he added, “Put in a good word for me?”

  Disbelief struck Chris speechless.

  Helen changed the subject by shaking his hand and introducing herself.

  Seeing that they had returned to business, Brad reported the cause of the fire was “pretty obvious. You can smell the gasoline.”

  “What time did 9-1-1 receive the call?” Helen asked while she and Chris slipped on paper booties to prevent them from leaving footprints that would contaminate the crime scene. They also put on hard hats for their own protection from any falling debris.

  “Eight-twenty-one,” Brad said while referring to his notes. “The call was made by the owner’s security and fire alarm system. The trucks arrived at eight-twenty-seven. According to the captain’s report, the victim jumped out the bedroom window.” He pointed in the direction of the front of the house. “They didn’t even have the hoses out yet. But that’s not the interesting part.”

  Crooking his finger at them, he led them through the garage door leading down a hall that opened into a smoke and water damaged country kitchen.

  They crossed the kitchen to a set of glass patio doors that opened to a wooden deck. There was an in-ground pool in the back yard. The spacious yard ended at thick woods. Morgan Park was located on the other side of the woods.

  Two crime scene investigators were lifting footprints from the tile floor on which a liberal amount of soot had fallen.

  “Any luck?” Helen asked them.

  Both of the investigators shook their head. “The fire fighters were more focused on getting the fire out than securing the crime scene,” one said.

  “No sign of anyone other than the fire fighters forcing their way inside,” the other one said. “The home security system was on.”

  “Almost sounds like she had let him in, or he found a way to bypass the system,” Helen said. “I wonder if he had gotten inside earlier in the day and waited for her.”

  Brad led Helen and Chris up the carpeted staircase. The upstairs was only a charred shell of what it had once been.

  “Oh, dear,” Helen said in a soft voice.

  Brad pointed out a black trail that
snaked down the hallway and into every bedroom and bath along the floor. Even though everything was black from the fire, with burnt out holes in the wall, the arson investigator had picked up the fire’s path. “He splashed gasoline into every room and over to the top of the stairs. I’m sure the arsonist assumed that the second floor would collapse and destroy all the evidence. Either the fire company got here too fast, or the house was built more securely than he thought.”

  He led them into the master bedroom which was as black as a cavern. “This is where it started.” He pointed at the wall behind the skeleton of what had once been a four-poster king-sized bed. The charcoal remains of an end table lay crumbled on the far side of the bed. With his arms, Brad illustrated a dark, smoky V-shape going up both walls in the corner. “Right there is where the fire started.”

  He picked up a lamp from the floor and showed them a part of the melted electrical cord. “To most people, this would look like a lamp that had been destroyed in an arson fire. See these exposed wires.” He held up the bare ends of the cords that had been twisted around and bent to form a circle. “The fire did not twist these cords around like that. The arsonist did that. He cut off the insulation to expose the bare wires and twisted these cords around something to start the fire. Most likely a match. Then he set the cord with the match down in a pool of gasoline. When the lamp was turned on, the current caused a spark to light the match, which ignited the gasoline that he had spread throughout this upper floor.”

  “Does the wall switch next to the door turn on the lamp over here?” Helen asked.

  “Probably,” Brad said, “but if he’d done that, we’d have two bodies up here because the gasoline was spread throughout the second floor. I found an empty gasoline can next to the lawn mower in the garage. Bet you that’s where he got it.”

  “Then how did he turn on the lamp to start the fire without getting caught in it himself?” Helen asked.

  Brad turned the lamp over to show them the broken light bulb. “See this bulb? It’s a wi-fi light bulb and lamp.”

  “The killer turned it on remotely,” Chris said.

  “All he’d have to do is gain access to the house’s secure wireless network,” Brad said. “He could have turned it on with a phone all the way across the country.”