Death in a Difficult Position

by Diana Killian

  “You’re trying to make me believe that David and this Powell man are—were—the same man?”

  “They were definitely the same man. The problem is we don’t know who that man was. According to his Social Security number, the real Maxwell Powell died when he was a baby. And as far as anyone can make out, David Goode didn’t have a Social Security number at all. The only Social Security numbers that show up in connection with New Dawn Church are yours and Kirkland Bath’s.”

  Oriel said mechanically, “Kirkland Bath was my uncle.”

  A.J. rose and went to sit beside Oriel on the sofa. She didn’t know what comfort she could offer, but it seemed apparent to her that whatever David Goode had been involved in, the news of it was coming as a shock to his wife.

  “Right. Your uncle founded New Dawn Church, and David Goode came along and took over the leadership after your uncle died.”

  “David was my uncle’s choice. He trusted David implicitly.”

  “A lot of people did. And a couple of them are dead now.”

  “How dare you?” Two spots of color appeared in Oriel’s white face. “You have no right. David chose not to reveal his Social Security number because he believed the government would try to target the church through him. Government agencies track people like us.”

  “The government tracks everyone,” Jake said. “That’s part of its job. I only know of two ways you can legally change your Social Security number and that’s if you’re a survivor of domestic violence or if you’ve been the victim of identity theft. Far from being the victim of identity theft, your husband appears to have been a perpetrator of it.”

  Oriel pushed upright. Swaying slightly, she said, “I want you to leave. I want you to get out of my house now.”

  “Oriel.” A.J. touched her arm.

  Oriel shook her off. “No. I’m not going to listen to another word of this. It’s ridiculous. It’s insane. Now go.”

  Jake nodded. “Okay. Have it your way. I wish we could leave it there. I know you’ve been through a lot, and it looks to me like you’re probably another of Goode’s victims.”

  Oriel was shaking her head in steady denial.

  Jake said, “We’ll discuss it again when you’re feeling better.”

  “Get out!” shouted Oriel.

  They got.

  “That was brutal,” A.J. said as Jake started the engine of his sports car.

  “Yeah. I know. Did you want to grab some takeout or did you have something else in mind for dinner?”

  She stared at him in disbelief. His ruggedly handsome profile was limned by the lights of the dashboard. “I can’t say I’m exactly starving after what we did to that poor woman. Couldn’t you have waited until she recovered from the shock of being shot?”

  Jake, who had been in the process of pulling away from the side of the road, braked and turned to face her.

  “I could have, yes. But the best chance of getting an honest answer was to hit her when she was off guard and vulnerable. I agree it wasn’t kind, but it was a useful interview.”

  A.J. had to agree with that. “She didn’t know about Goode’s other identity.”

  “Not unless she’s one hell of an actress, and I don’t believe she is. I don’t know many actresses who can actually turn white on cue.”

  “So Goode didn’t have a Social Security number?”

  “I’m sure he did, but not that we can find. Probably because it’s not under the name of David Goode. Who knows how many times that guy reinvented himself over the years. This could be the tip of the iceberg.”

  A.J. considered the implications. “You mean he could have been a-a Blue Beard, marrying women, murdering them, and moving on?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible,” Jake admitted. “We haven’t been able to track him back past the point of Maxwell Powell. The only thing we know for sure is everything in his Maxwell Powell biography was bogus. He never went to USC, not under any name. He never served in the military. Again, not under any name.”

  “Was that supposed to be part of his bio?”

  “Didn’t you read that far? Maxwell Powell had quite the glamorous background. Graduate of USC, ex-Navy SEAL, former architectural designer for Steven Holl Architects.”

  “And none of it was true?”

  “Not a damn word. His entire history was a fabrication of lies.”

  “So the question is, who was he before he was Maxwell Powell?”

  “That’s one of the questions,” Jake said grimly, and put the car into gear.

  Eighteen

  It seemed to A.J. that she had been sleeping all of ten minutes when the alarm went off the next morning. She moaned and pulled the pillow over her head.

  “Try this.” Jake’s muffled voice infiltrated the linen and down.

  A.J. lifted the pillow away and gazed blearily up. The smell of coffee and aftershave reached her. Jake came into focus. He was holding out a mug. She sat up and took it, sipping gratefully.

  “Are you sure it’s morning? It looks awfully dark out.” It had been so wonderful to be in a warm, comfortable bed again. Nothing like camping to make you appreciate civilization—even with all the pollution, overcrowding, and various death rays.

  Jake grinned, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was already showered, shaved, and dressed. “I’m sure. It’s raining again.”

  “I am so ready for spring.”

  “We haven’t had winter yet.”

  “Still.” She took another sip.

  “You need a vacation.” Jake’s expression was serious.

  “I know. It’s hard to take time off.”

  “That’s what Andy used to say, right? Before he got MS.”

  A.J. raised her head. “Wow. That’s a little heavy for first thing in the morning.”

  Jake conceded her point with a lift of one broad shoulder. “I was just thinking it’s funny how we don’t make time for what actually matters the most until something happens. Something that forces us to make a priority of the things we should have made a priority all along.”

  It was a very long speech for Jake.

  “You were just thinking that?”

  Jake reddened, but said stubbornly, “Yeah. I was.”

  A.J. swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “Well . . . I agree with you. But it’s still really hard for me to get away right now.”

  Jake nodded. After a second or two he rose and A.J. had the uncomfortable feeling that she’d missed a cue somewhere.

  She put the coffee mug on the bedside table and threw aside the bedclothes. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Hey. Be wild. Take fifteen.”

  Again, A.J. had the impression that she was missing something.

  A shower washed away most of the fuzzy-headedness. She lathered up with the Sacred Suds green tea and olive oil soap she pretended she’d bought for Jake, though he stuck to his Irish Spring with a devotion that would have warmed Mr. Meagher’s heart. She rinsed in lukewarm water that was invigoratingly close to chilly without raising actual goose bumps, toweled off, and dressed in the jeans and raw silk sweater she left at Jake’s for mornings like this.

  He was on the phone as she gathered her freshly washed clothes from the weekend out of the dryer. She cleared away the take-out debris from the evening before and loaded the dishwasher.

  She had just switched it on as Jake got off the phone. “We may have a possible lead on Goode aka Powell.”

  “What’s the lead?” she asked over the rumble of the washer.

  “According to a couple of people who knew him in Los Angeles, he had a way of pronouncing words that they thought might have been Canadian.”

  “Canadian? He didn’t sound Canadian to me.”

  “Remember, this was over a decade ago, and they didn’t say he had an accent, they said his inflection on a couple of words sounded like it could possibly be Canadian.”

  “Hmm. Well, it might partially explain the lack of a Social Security number.”<
br />
  “It’s worth following up anyway.”

  “I’ll say!”

  He smiled faintly. “It’s tempting to forget every other line of investigation, but the thing about murder is it’s usually not like the clever, complicated stuff you see on TV. It’s usually simple and stupid and obvious.”

  “Sure, but it’s not like someone ran in off the street and clunked Goode over the head in order to steal his shoes.”

  “No.” He looked at the paper bag with her freshly laundered clothes. “All ready?”

  A.J. went to fetch her coat. “Will I see you tonight?”

  Jake hesitated. “I’ll give you a call?”

  A.J. nodded.

  Denise Farber was first in to Sacred Balance that morning. “I’m so sorry for flaking out on you this weekend. I swear I really was sick. I felt so terrible when I heard what happened on the news.” Her still-pink eyes and raspy throat gave testament to her plea.

  “It’s okay,” A.J. told her. “It’s not like your being there would have changed the outcome. You’d simply have been miserable the whole time.”

  “No kidding. I was miserable at home the whole time. Have the police caught that maniac yet?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “They will. Nowadays no one can hide for long.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Sure it is. Haven’t you seen those programs where people call in and identify their neighbor as a former bank robber or their dishwasher repairman as an international hit man?”

  “I need to watch more TV.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing for two days.” Denise smothered a cough that would have alarmed Camille.

  A.J. was still considering the truth of Denise’s remarks after Denise went into her own office. The interconnectedness of all things seemed to boil down to technology. There weren’t many places left to hide in the age of the information superhighway. Yet Maxwell Powell had managed it.

  And, surprisingly, so had this woman Goode had been seeing before his death. Why couldn’t the police locate her?

  Did she even exist? Maybe there was no Madam X at all.

  Or maybe there were too many Madam Xs to keep track of. Sarah Ray, for example. Where did she fit in? Her shocked reaction to Goode’s death seemed too extreme to be merely that of a former member of his congregation.

  But if the police hadn’t yet connected her, maybe there was no connection to make. Maybe, despite Jake’s words of caution, the only solution to Goode’s murder lay in the distant past.

  A.J. was still frowning over that possibility when Suze knocked on her door a little while later.

  “Did Emma tell you Jaci’s in Burlington this morning giving her statement to the police there? She took Mocha with her.”

  “She did. Yes. How are you recovering?”

  Suze shrugged. “I feel fine. I admit I was kind of freaked last night. I still can’t get over the idea that someone was deliberately shooting at us. How about you?”

  “I need a weekend to recover from the weekend.”

  Suze giggled. “Too bad you’re the boss. You could claim PTS. Not that you’d ever take any time off.”

  That gave A.J. pause. “I take time off. I take weekends.”

  “That’s true,” Suze agreed too easily.

  A.J. frowned. “Do I really seem that driven to you?”

  Suze laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Seriously.”

  “You’re a total workaholic. We’re all taking bets on whether you’ll take a honeymoon in the same year you get married.”

  “Honeymoon?” A.J. forgot the rest of it in the wake of that single, astonishing word.

  Suze instantly went as red as though she was trying out for a Christmas ornament. “Theoretically, I mean,” she said hastily. “In case you and Jake ever do . . .”

  Startled, A.J. considered the possibility that Jake might be getting ready to pop the question. First her mother and now her staff seemed convinced this was the case. Certainly it was the natural progression of their growing closeness.

  It was sort of ironic, because when she’d first come to Stillbrook a few people had warned her not to get serious about Jake. That he wasn’t the settling-down kind. But they spent most evenings and weekends together. She knew Jake cared about her and she cared for Jake. So what was the problem?

  Was there a problem?

  Not a problem, perhaps, but it didn’t seem so very long since her first marriage had fallen apart. She certainly hadn’t expected to be contemplating remarrying again so quickly.

  Then again, she hadn’t expected her marriage to fall apart or to leave her successful career in marketing to inherit a yoga empire.

  Things changed.

  It could happen. But did she want it to?

  She changed the subject. “I wanted to ask you about Saturday night. The night Mocha thought someone opened your tent and looked inside.”

  Suze’s expression was apologetic. “I sleep like a bear in hibernation. The Jersey Devil could have climbed inside that tent and played Twister over me and I wouldn’t have noticed. The only thing I can say is I’m sure Mocha wasn’t faking.”

  A.J. thought back. Suze was right. Mocha’s terror had been genuine. That didn’t mean the cause of Mocha’s fear had been genuine, only that Mocha’s belief in it was.

  “What about when that demented hunter or whatever he was opened fire on us? Did you get the impression that he was targeting any one person?”

  “Are you kidding me? You think I stopped running long enough to take notes?”

  “No. I just meant if you happened to notice . . . something.”

  Suze frowned. “Well, I think he was following us for a while. That’s what I told the trooper who took my statement.”

  “Is that true? Why do you think he was following us?”

  “Because someone was following us. At least . . . I don’t know that he was following us, but there was someone way back behind us for a while before anything happened and then he didn’t show up after the shooting, and he would have, right?”

  “If it was some innocent hiker, you’d expect so. Or maybe he just took cover and hid till it was safe to come out? I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. I think guns have to be one of the scariest things around. Were you able to get a good look at him?”

  “No. Every so often I’d spot someone way back in the trees behind us. I even thought it might be a kid. He wasn’t real big. Maybe my height, slender, and he had one of those olive hunting caps pulled over his face.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “What would I have said? Oh look, another hiker?”

  Suze’s pale brows made one line. “We’d seen hikers on our way in and nobody thought anything about it. It isn’t the kind of thing you think about except in hindsight. Anyway, I think I did mention it to Jaci. It seemed odd that a hiker would be wearing camo.”

  “Was this guy carrying a rifle?”

  “I don’t know.” Suze looked contrite again. “I wasn’t watching him. I just noticed someone behind us. It wasn’t until later that I realized he’d probably been following us the whole time.”

  It sure sounded that way, although it was possible this hiker or hunter or whatever he had been had simply been someone traveling behind their party.

  “Oh well. I guess the State and Park Police will start looking for him, whoever he is.”

  “One good thing to come out of all this,” Suze said cheerfully. “Mocha really seemed to blossom on our retreat, didn’t you think?”

  A.J. smiled faintly. “She did, yeah. Especially considering everything she went through.”

  “She’s a kid. Once she gets over the drama, she’s going to love having those stories to tell the other kids.”

  “I guess.”

  “Mark my words. She actually called first thing this morning to tell us that she’s lost ten pounds since she started at Sacred Balance.”

  “Nin
e of them yesterday.”

  Suze laughed. A.J.’s cell phone rang and Suze excused herself.

  A.J. fished around for her phone. Her mother’s photo flashed up. She braced herself and clicked to accept the call.

  “What on earth have you been doing?” Elysia greeted her. “You’re all over the news this morning.”

  “I’m all over the news?”

  “You and Sacred Balance studio. I do wish they’d use a more flattering photo of you, pumpkin. This one looks like a mug shot taken after a pub fight.”

  “Swell.”

  “They’re saying some bloody madman opened fire on your students while you were on some kind of religious retreat.”

  “It wasn’t a religious retreat. It was just a . . . retreat.” Some parts more retreat than others. “Just a chance to get away for a couple of days and get in touch with—”

  “The local crackpots?”

  “You know, up until that lunatic opened fire on us it was a perfectly successful trip.”

  “You’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t sue you. According to that delicious young reporter, you had children with you.” One would have thought they were an illegal substance from Elysia’s tone.

  “One child. A teenager.”

  “Was the child the one who was shot?”

  “Oh God.” A.J. closed her eyes. “Is that what they’re saying? One student, Oriel Goode, was very slightly wounded. She’s fine.”

  “Oriel Goode. The Oriel Goode? Now isn’t that interesting?”

  “I don’t know if it’s interesting or not, but Oriel was the one hit by gunfire.”

  “Speaking of interesting,” Elysia said with one of those dizzying about-faces that always made A.J.’s head swim, “I thought you might be interested in what the girls and I discovered in our investigation this weekend.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask. Who were you investigating again?”

  “Lance Dally. Goode’s right-hand man. Except since he was really an undercover reporter, I suppose that makes him Goode’s right underhanded man.”

  A.J. snorted. “What did you find out?”

  “Unfortunately our theories about Dally were all wrong. It’s back to the drawing board.”