Girl Undone (TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn Mysteries Book 3)

by Marla Madison

  When TJ knocked, the door to the third floor apartment opened the distance of a chain lock, enough for her to see a woman in her twenties with blonde hair and light brown eyes. Clutching the front of a white bathrobe, she looked as though she’d just gotten out of bed.

  TJ showed her ID. “I’m working for Kelsey Blasko’s aunt. I need to ask you some questions.”

  Whitney Chamberlain belted her robe and invited TJ into the apartment, leading her to a table on the edge of a small galley kitchen whose only decoration was a wall rack showing off an expensive set of pots and pans. Chamberlain probably had ambitions to be a cook, like everyone else who worked in a restaurant since every TV station began promoting a culinary show. TJ loved food, but fancy gourmet cooking wasn’t her thing. Her taste leaned toward pizza, hamburgers, and submarine sandwiches.

  “When was the last time you saw Kelsey?” TJ asked.

  “I’ve been trying to remember. I work nights, so we don’t see each other a lot. I think it was Tuesday morning. She was still here when I got up. She was studying for her finals.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “She said she was stressed out. I think she’d been up all night because she had a research paper to submit, too.”

  “How about the last couple months? She seem any different?”

  “Not that I noticed. But Kelsey and I don’t see each other very much. I have Mondays off, so if she’s here sometimes we go out for breakfast, but that’s about it. And we don’t even do that very often.”

  “She ever tell you about a guy she was seein’?”

  TJ tried to read Chamberlain for any sign that she was being less than honest, but saw no apparent tells in her demeanor. She noticed there was a fresh pot of coffee on the counter, yet the woman made no move to offer any to TJ or even indulge in a cup in front of her as though she were hoping TJ would leave as soon as possible.

  “No. She told me she didn’t have time to date.”

  “How about last spring? Did she mention anything then?”

  Chanberlain’s gaze rolled up to the ceiling as she pondered. “Yeah, maybe then. She didn’t really say anything, but I thought she acted like she was seeing someone.”

  “But she didn’t talk about it?”

  “No, she just started looking wide-eyed and kind of exited about life, you know, that look we get when a new guy comes into our life? She would go out sometimes wearing dresses, something she’d never done before. That’s about it. Kelsey is a student and a lot younger than me, so our social lives don’t overlap. We don’t have a lot in common, but that worked for us.”

  TJ had never had a roommate, but she thought it strange that two women living in such close proximity wouldn’t have shared at least some confidences. The smell of coffee filled the tiny kitchen, with still no offer of any to TJ. Chamberlain wanted her gone.

  TJ brought out her notebook after asking Chamberlain about Kelsey’s friends. The woman didn’t know any names, but said a few times when she’d come back to the apartment after the restaurant closed, Kelsey’s study group—two men and three women, she thought—had still been there, hard at it. Kelsey had never mentioned being particularly close to one or the other.

  After learning that Whitney had to be in to work at four, TJ wrapped it up. She wanted to get to the restaurant first and question Chamberlain’s fellow employees about her.

  TJ made it to the restaurant in record time, considering the nasty maze of one-way streets that made up downtown Madison. Her good intentions to give up swearing were forgotten when she had to circle her destination a few times before squeezing the Mini into a barely legal spot a few blocks away. She was working on cutting down on her swearing, but as she always told Richard, swearing didn’t count when you were alone.

  The décor inside the darkened rooms of the restaurant was modern, the carpeting a dark gray, the chairs black leather, and the tables topped with glass. They were adorned with crystal tumblers, wine glasses, chalk-white plates, and starched red napkins peaked like whipping cream. The hostess desk was empty. A sign next to it listed the dinner specials for the evening and announced dinner would be served beginning at five.

  A few men in suits occupied stools at a long oval bar to the right of the serving area. TJ took a seat near the cash register and when the bartender, an attractive young man with freckles and curly, sand-colored hair, asked what she wanted, she ordered a Diet Coke.

  After he set it down in front of her, she casually asked if he was a student. He was, a graduate student working on a doctorate in political science, which he referred to as “poli-sci.” His name badge identified him as Zack.

  “You know most of the waitresses here?”

  He grinned. “Sure. Some of them are pretty hot.”

  “Bet you’ve been out with a few of ’em.”

  “Now and then.” He winked. “But I never kiss and tell.”

  “How about a woman named Whitney. Know her very well?”

  “She’s one I wouldn’t mind getting friendly with.”

  “So you haven’t got her alone yet. Ever talked to her?”

  “Sometimes. She isn’t real outgoing, though.”

  “Ever seen this girl?” TJ passed him a photo of Kelsey.

  “I don’t think so.” He handed the picture back and leaned forward with a sly grin. “I get off pretty soon.”

  “Interesting. I might stick around.” TJ wanted to keep him talking. “Ever see Whitney with a man?”

  “Used to a while back.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Never saw the guy. She’d just run out, say she had to meet her date.”

  “How about older guys? She go for them?” TJ was still wondering about Kelsey’s mystery man picking her out of thousands of students to hit on, and considered Whitney as a possible go-between.

  “Maybe. I don’t really know.”

  “She hang with anyone that works here?”

  “I’ve seen her leave with Denise sometimes. Denise only works weekends so she won’t be here tonight.”

  “This Denise have a last name? Phone number?”

  “I think it’s Zimmerman.” TJ waited while he checked the names of the waitresses in a binder that he pulled out of a drawer. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  TJ jotted down Denise’s information and thanked him for his time, ignoring a question about why she wanted to know about Chamberlain. She dropped a false hint about returning to the bar later and walked out.

  10

  Bart called his security service after he’d gone through the entire house searching for anything else missing or out of place. The violets were the only things that had been taken, so he thought the break-in had to be personal, not random. The service told him they would be happy to come out and check his equipment after he made sure he hadn’t inadvertently left any windows open or forgotten to set the system before he left the house.

  He hung up, irritated, although he knew when he left that morning he’d turned on the system. He was sure their comment about “leaving something open,” referred to how he’d chintzed on the security system, signing up for the cheapest one available. They charged for each entry to the house they connected, so he’d had digital keypads installed on the entry doors—front and back—and wired the basement windows and the first-floor windows except the ones facing the street. Five adjoining windows faced the front, which would have brought the cost up considerably, and he hadn’t thought that anyone would risk breaking into one of them when they could so easily be seen from the street.

  He realized his mistake when he found one of the living room windows had been forced open. The service had advised him against doing it the way he had, but it was all he could afford at the time. That had been five years ago.

  No matter the cost, he had to upgrade.

  Rather than calling the service back after discovering the open window, or calling the police, who he knew hated his guts, Bart grabbed a Mountain Dew and parked in front of his laptop to go t
hrough his emails. When he finished, he turned to his iMac to see how many comments he’d gotten on his latest blog.

  Bart’s blog had a huge following. After years of investigating crimes and interviewing witnesses for his crime reports, his site had finally amassed a national readership. Thanks to all the armchair detectives in the country, his ad revenue from the blog supported him rather well, and guest spots on other blogs added nicely to his income. Bart’s long-term plan was to write a true-crime book, but he hadn’t decided which true crime to write about. He would have chosen the Milwaukee-based “Missing Women” case, a sensational one that had resulted in finding a cache of twenty-two bodies of missing women, women who’d been abused by their husbands or boyfriends. But he had managed to incense all the principals from the case with his blogs, people whose input he would have needed to write the book.

  Bart closed the website, about to leave his office to get some lunch when he noticed a Word document saved on his dock at the bottom of the screen. His appetite for lunch evaporated as he opened it and read:

  Hey, Asspipe,

  You think you know so much about that abused-women case, but like all of you bottom feaders, you have your pointy head shoved up your ass.

  Think twice about bringing up mor muck about the man who killed them. IF he was the one that killed them.

  I’ll be waching you.

  Headliner

  Bart sat back in his chair, shocked, wondering if some tool out there was claiming to be the one who killed all those women, or worse, if he could be a copycat.

  Bart closed his eyes and took five deep, measured breaths to quiet the questions running through his head. When he finished, a stark reality hit him: the note hadn’t been sent—it originated from and had been typed on his own computer. If the missing violets weren’t enough to convince him, this was—whoever broke into his house wasn’t a burglar, wasn’t looking for money. He was screwing with him.

  11

  Sun Prairie, a town of about thirty thousand people, was located northeast of Madison and served as a bedroom community for Wisconsin’s capital. TJ arrived in town, looking for the home of Whitney’s friend Denise Zimmerman and found the place easily, two streets over from a main drag that bisected the downtown area. The house, a sixties-style ranch, had a poorly tended yard and siding in dire need of replacement. She figured it for a rental and zigzagged through an assortment of children’s playthings to reach the front door.

  After she rang the doorbell, the door opened and she was greeted by a toddler wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a loaded diaper that hung nearly to his chubby knees. He laughed when he saw her and opened the door wider, the foul odor of poop following him as he ran back into the room. Two older children were lying on the floor facing a giant-screened TV. They turned away to glance briefly at TJ before returning their attention to the program they’d been watching.

  A teenage girl rushed out from a hallway off the living room, adjusting a blue sweater over a pair of skin-tight jeans. Her face was flushed and her lips swollen.

  “Denise Zimmerman?”

  The girl looked around nervously until a well-built man of about thirty walked out from the same direction, and made no move to disguise the fact he was buttoning up his shirt. TJ thought the girl looked too young to be Denise and hated to think she was a sitter entertaining a boyfriend so much older than her in Zimmerman’s bedroom. The guy looked like he had more than ten years on her. The toddler rushed to the man, grabbed him around the knees and cried, “Da, da!”

  Crap. Denise Zimmerman’s husband was porking the sitter. The man handed the laughing child to the girl and told her to change his diaper. “Who are you?” He asked. His cool blue eyes evaluated TJ, making her wish she was wearing sweats instead of black leggings, boots, and a sweater jacket. The creep’s lustful stare gave her the willies. She held up her PI creds. “I’m looking for Denise Zimmerman.”

  He held out his hand. “I’m Gary Zimmerman. My wife’s not here right now. She’s working.”

  Trying not to imagine where it had just been, TJ ignored the offered hand. “Where is that?” she asked. She knew Denise wasn’t at the restaurant in Madison, and wondered for a moment if both spouses were cheating.

  The convenience store where Denise Zimmerman worked on weekdays was on the highway leading south out of Sun Prairie. TJ found Denise in a center aisle, next to a shelf of candy bars, surrounded by cardboard cartons. Denise, a petite woman with a youthful look, had short black hair framing an elfin, heart-shaped face. TJ thought the woman had it all over the surly babysitter. “Denise Zimmerman?”

  “Yeah,” she said cautiously.

  TJ quickly introduced herself and told Zimmerman she wanted to ask her about Whitney Chamberlain.

  Denise put down her box cutter. “I know Whitney. Did something happen to her?”

  “She’s fine. No, this has to do with her roommate, Kelsey Blasko.”

  “Kelsey. Yeah, I met her once. She’s a student, right? Whitney lets me stay over sometimes when the weather gets bad on our shift. That’s how I met Kelsey. I never talked to her—just met her when she was leaving one morning.”

  “Whitney ever talk about Kelsey?”

  “Just that she advertised for a roommate and accepted a girl named Kelsey even though she was a student because she seemed nice—studious, not the party type.”

  “Did Whitney ever say anything else about her?”

  “I asked her once how it was working out with the roommate and she said everything was great. Why?”

  TJ didn’t want to get into Kelsey’s disappearance if she didn’t have to and ignored the question. “Does Whitney have a boyfriend?”

  “Why do you want to know about Whitney if you’re interested in Kelsey?”

  “Just need to talk to everyone who knew her. Thought if Whitney had a boyfriend he might have hung around the apartment, maybe had a key.”

  “Whitney doesn’t date much as far as I know. I haven’t worked with her all that long. Anyway, I’m married and have kids, so it’s not like we compare dating notes.”

  “Did you ever meet anyone she went out with?”

  “No. I saw someone pick her up after work a couple times, but I never saw the guy, just the car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know one car from another. It was dark, an SUV.” Denise’s eyebrows rose as if she were gearing up to ask questions again. “How’d you know where to find me? Did Whitney tell you?”

  “No. Stopped at your house.” TJ wondered if she should break the news about her husband, but it was possible that the couple had an open marriage. Still, the girl had looked pretty damn young for a guy that age to be messing with. “That girl watchin’ your kids. How old is she?”

  “Rianna’s eighteen. She looks younger, doesn’t she? She takes care of the kids until my husband gets home.

  TJ handed her one of her cards and gave her the usual spiel about calling if she thought of anything else about Whitney. She moved away, then turned back.

  “Better get a new sitter to stay with your kids. Someone about seventy.”

  12

  Bart forced down a hurried lunch of tuna on dill rye toast, followed by an organic apple and a handful of Ghiradelli’s dark-chocolate drops. He believed good nutrition was important during times of stress.

  After unsuccessfully trying to focus on his work, Bart made the call he’d been dreading. He reported the break-in to the police and requested that they send a detective to his house. When they asked why a detective was necessary, he simply said the intruder had left information about a series of murders. Then he waited . . . and hoped to hell they wouldn’t send out someone he had pissed off recently. In his coverage of crime, Bart was never shy about pointing out times he believed the police had gone wrong.

  He paced the living room, rehearsing what he’d say to them. When he saw Detective Richard Conlin coming up the steps followed by an evidence tech, he nearly barfed up his lunch. Bart had pub
lished the guy’s picture on the blog last year and called him a possible vigilante.

  Before answering the door, Bart reminded himself this wouldn’t be the first time he would have to face a member of the MPD who thought he was pond scum. What would make the situation somewhat stickier was that he would have to ask the cop for help, which would be a real first. But realistically, Conlin wouldn’t be doing Bart a favor—he would be performing his job.

  Conlin walked in and flashed his badge; there was no need for introductions. The shit-eating smirk on his face told Bart the interview wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “Thanks for coming,” Bart said.

  Conlin looked over the interior of the house. “I saw on your door you have a security system. Is it active?”

  Bart flushed. “Yeah. For the first floor and the basement windows.”

  The detective walked over to the row of windows facing the porch and pointed at the window that had been forced open. “Let me guess. The security outfit told you that the odds of a break-in from a window facing the street are miniscule so you left these out”

  “No, actually, they told me I was foolish not to do them, but I got all I could afford when I had the system put in. I’m going to upgrade. They’ll be out tomorrow.”

  The tech, a small woman who looked more like a student intern than someone old enough for full-time employment, set her equipment box next to the window and pulled out fingerprinting tools.

  “Show me this note you said was threatening,” Conlin said.

  Bart led him to his office. The note was still open on the iMac, on the desk next to it, a printed copy. He handed it to Conlin.

  Conlin looked it over. “I don’t see any serious threat to you here, Mr. Kosik.”

  “What? This guy broke into my house and used my computer to claim that a known serial killer didn’t really do the deed.” Bart pointed to the note. “He said he’d be watching me. I’m not supposed to see that as a threat?”