40
Early the next morning TJ and Donna packed their cars and left for Eric’s. His house, part of a forty-acre estate, sat back from the road, kept private by an expanse of natural trees and shrubs. Built with glass, stone, and logs, the structure fit in its setting perfectly and backed up to a thick woods, giving it a genuine northern flavor.
Lisa opened the garage door for them and they followed her into the house.
“I thought we’d put all of you in the lower level, where you’ll have the two bedrooms and plenty of room for JR’s bed.”
After they were settled in, they met Lisa back upstairs in the kitchen. The kitchen, part of a vast open area, was divided from the great room by a massive granite-topped island that acted as the usual gathering spot. TJ noticed a tall Christmas tree in a corner of the living room. “You didn’t put that up just for JR?”
Lisa grinned. “No, but we might have put it up early for him.”
“What, you were up all night?”
“No, we put it up this morning. If you look closely, you’ll see we haven’t added all the ornaments yet. I thought JR would enjoy helping us finish decorating it.”
The boy was already running toward the tree. “My boy loves Christmas trees,” TJ said. “Even Richard’s gettin’ all excited about it this year.”
“Christmas is so special when there are small children around to enjoy it,” Donna added. She joined JR by the tree and TJ turned to Lisa. “Been thinkin’ bout these two cases. Maybe they could be connected.”
“How?”
“Whitney’s missin. There’s a body no one can identify. I kinda told Kelsey I thought it was Whitney to scare her some, but what if it really is her?”
“The sketch didn’t look like her, did it?”
“That freakin’ sketch coulda been you—or me. Well, maybe not me, but I’m just sayin’ . . . Could be anybody, right?”
“I suppose, but why do you think it’s Whitney?”
“The timin’, I guess. She took off, or we thought she did, the same time they found the body.”
Lisa paused. “Couldn’t you just go back to the apartment in Madison and get a toothbrush for a DNA sample?”
Donna came rushing back into the kitchen. “I just turned on the TV. You’d better look. I think I heard you talking about this man.”
They walked into the great room where a TV set with a big-as-life screen was mounted on one wall. A reporter was talking about a murder that had taken place in Fox Point. A headshot appeared of the victim, under it a detail runner identifying him as Dr. Lyle Felhaber.
The report added no information other than that the doctor had been shot in his home in Fox Point the night before. No one had been arrested for the murder.
“Fuck,” TJ snarled. “This really sucks.”
“Do you think Kelsey might have done it?”
“If she did, that moron bodyguard must have helped her out.”
TJ’s phone pinged. She glanced at the screen. “It’s Rina. Guess she saw the announcement.”
After TJ finished talking to Rina, Lisa asked, “Is she pretty upset?”
“Not at all. She’s glad he got what he had comin’.”
“She said that?”
“Sorta. Told me Kelsey won’t even come outta her room since she heard about it.”
“Is Rina sure that Kelsey was home all night?”
“Didn’t ask her—how would Kelsey get out with that knuckle-dragger watchin’ her?”
Lisa shrugged. “He was paid to protect her, right? Not to restrain her from leaving the house.”
“Oh, man, you’re right. Didn’t think about it that way.”
“His death complicates things for us, doesn’t it? If the police investigate and don’t find out about Kelsey’s relationship with him, we’ll be obligated not to say anything. If you want my opinion though, I don’t think she’s capable of murder.”
TJ shot her a meaningful look. “We all are, just depends on the circumstances, right? Guess I’d better do somethin’. Not sure what, right now.” She put her coat on, walked over to JR, kissed him, then said goodbye. As Lisa walked her to the door, TJ said, “Merry Christmas.”
When Lisa arrived at her office later, she was surprised to see Emma Le Gesse waiting for her. The woman tended to be late most days rather than early.
Emma was dressed in a power suit done in a rich, eggplant-colored fabric that set off her pale-blue eyes but did nothing to help her makeup disguise the black eye she sported. Lisa ushered her in after unlocking the door and went to brew her some coffee.
She sat across from Emma and asked, “What happened?”
“I could tell you I ran into a door, but that excuse is rather clichéd.”
Lisa waited.
“My husband and I got into it again. This time, he finally had the balls to hit me back.”
Le Gesse was the kind of patient who was hard to help. Women that came in because the law required counseling, were tough to get through to. “Emma, I thought you said that your husband moved out last week.”
“He walked out that night, yes, but he thought better of it when he found out how expensive it would be to stay in a hotel, and he came back the next day. That’s what started the fight.”
“Did you try to work through it without things getting physical?”
“I tried. Really, I did. But he found out I was out all night and he was royally pissed off, told me I should get out.” She snorted. “Yeah, right. I should be the one to leave my own house. He wouldn’t let it go. I finally slapped him to get him to back off, and that’s when he let me have it.” She pointed to her bruised eye.
“Emma, you almost sound like you’re glad he hit you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I took pictures of it the next day. They might come in handy.”
“Emma, you have to want to break this cycle of violence or it’ll never end. Is that really how you want to live your life?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want to change. It’s just so hard.”
“Where do things stand with your marriage?”
“It’s in limbo. When he hit me, it kind of turned me on. We ended up in bed.”
“Does that mean you two will stay together?”
She shifted in her seat. “I’m afraid he thinks so, but for me it was just sex—how I felt at the moment. That’s my problem. I act on my feelings before I think.”
“I’m glad you recognize that. Maybe now you’ll be able to move forward.”
Emma stood and made a show of looking at her watch. “I have to leave now. I’m breaking in a new girl at the office today.”
After Emma left, Lisa finished her notes, disappointed that she hadn’t managed to get through to the woman. When she picked up Emma’s coffee cup, she remembered that she hadn’t had time to ask her about the man she said she’d been seeing.
41
Bart ordered breakfast from room service. He and Jen ate in a comfortable silence in front of the TV and saw nothing new about the woman found dead in Bart’s yard, although her picture was still being shown on the local news. The lead story on all the local stations was about a doctor that had been murdered in Fox Point
He was trying not to stare at Jen, who was comfortable enough with him to come out for breakfast in a pair of polka-dot pajamas and a red bathrobe. Or maybe, he thought, that might not be a good sign at all. Maybe that meant she thought of him like a brother.
She stood. “I’d better get going. I have some prospective clients to talk to.”
“Do you think you should go out?”
“It’s important. They want a New Year’s Eve wedding, so I’ll need to get cracking if they decide to use me.”
“New Year’s Eve? Isn’t this kind of late for that?”
“It is, but when couples decide on a last-minute wedding, that’s when they really need someone like me to help them pull it off. And I can charge more, too.”
She declined his offer to take her to the meeting
and to wait for her, until he explained he would bring his laptop with him and work in the car. Bart dropped her off at a high-rise apartment building south of Milwaukee and waited for her in a coffee shop across the street. He found a table near the window and opened his computer to finish working on his third Headliner blog.
He made a brief call to Conlin. The detective told Bart he had tried but couldn’t get permission for someone to watch their hotel room when they were there and suggested once more that they stay with someone they knew. Bart reminded Conlin neither he nor Jen had anyone close enough to put them up indefinitely and told him that they were going to find another hotel to stay in since Headliner claimed to know where they were. He ended the call, annoyed that his tax dollars didn’t cover protection for them.
After finishing the first draft of his next blog, he needed a break before he edited it, so he opened his email. In the middle of the day’s rather long list was a message from Headliner. Bart went for more coffee before opening it, nervously looking around the nearly deserted shop as if the email put Headliner right there next to him.
He opened the message.
I told you nine a.m., shit-face. Yur lucky I’m feeling generous. You have until eleven. After that things get ugly.
Headliner
Bart looked at the time on top of the screen: 10:45. Not particularly frightened by the imposed deadline since he knew Jen was safe, he opened the blog and did a final proofing. His post went live at exactly 11:08 a.m.
42
TJ drove to Petretti’s stables, only a few miles from Eric’s house. The white fences surrounding the grounds were adorned with red ribbons and bows. The Christmas crap was everywhere, TJ thought, but she had to admit the fencing looked pretty cool.
She found Kelsey in front of a large building that held an indoor exercise ring, walking a horse that looked tall enough to eat off of the roof. Determined not to show her fear of horses, she approached Kelsey. “We need to talk.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now,” TJ said, stepping aside to avoid the horse’s massive hooves.
Kelsey frowned, but handed the horse over to a teenage girl who came running when Kelsey waved her over. TJ followed Kelsey to an adjoining building and into a room filled with saddles, halters, and other riding paraphernalia. The smell of saddle soap and leather filled the room. They took a seat on a long bench against one wall.
“Okay,” Kelsey said, “what do you want?”
TJ watched her face carefully for signs of duplicity. Her face revealed no sign that she was grieving for Felhaber. “Think you know what I’m gonna ask you. Did you kill him?”
Her face went rigid. “Right. I killed the son of a bitch. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on his lying face when I put a bullet in him.”
TJ studied the girl. That was the first time she’d seen her angry and determined to get even. “Where’d you shoot him?”
“At his house.”
“No, I meant where on his body. His head? Heart? Face?”
Kelsey stood up. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
TJ grabbed her arm as she turned to walk out. “Not so fast, little girl. You’re lyin’ to me, and I wanna know why. You didn’t kill the rat-bastard doctor. You don’t even know where the bullet hit him.”
She snatched her arm away. “I know where the fucking bullet hit him—in the chest. I wanted to kill him, all right?”
TJ pointed to the bench. “Sit your ass back down.” Kelsey was lying. TJ hadn’t missed that she’d said “wanted” to kill him, not “killed” him. And this was the first time she’d heard Kelsey swear.
TJ said, “Tell me how you did it.”
“I watched TV with the bodyguard and waited until he was sleeping to sneak out. I have a gun—one that can’t be traced back to me.”
TJ couldn’t get over the difference in the girl. Another personality had come out.
“I left my car one block over when I came home last night so no one would hear it start. I drove to his house and got in through the garage. I know the security code because he’d mentioned it once and I remembered it was part of his cell-phone number.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. He was already dead. Someone beat me to it,” she admitted.
TJ hadn’t expected Kelsey to tell the truth, but the words rang true, although Kelsey’s face remained stony. TJ couldn’t blame her for wanting the creep dead, but what amazed her was the girl’s personality change, the soft-spoken, meek-mannered Kelsey had vanished.
“So does Rina know any of this?”
“No. And I don’t want you to tell her.”
That explained it. Kelsey loved her aunt and wanted to please her. Lisa would probably have some shrinky thing to say about it, but the girl tried to be the person she thought Rina wanted her to be. TJ had to admire her. Deep down, she was more like TJ herself, but for her aunt’s sake, she played the all-American ingénue. No wonder she was fucked up.
“Nah, she ain’t gonna hear it from me. You have to tell her.”
She flinched. “I don’t think so. See, Rina’s all about family image, this squeaky-clean thing so everyone will believe that all her businesses are legit. My relationship with a murder victim, or worse, me as a suspect, would be a big setback for her if it got out.”
TJ wondered why shit like this always happened to her, when Lisa was the psychologist and would know the right thing to say.
“Girl, you gotta talk to Rina. Trust me, you’ll feel better if you do. And to Lisa.”
Kelsey looked at her watch. “Right. I have an appointment with her in an hour. I’ll think about it.”
“I’m goin’ with you.”
TJ followed Kelsey to Pewaukee, not trusting her to go to Lisa’s as promised.
When Kelsey arrived at Lisa’s office, TJ walked in at her heels. Lisa looked surprised to see them together but asked no questions and invited Kelsey into her office. TJ went right in with them.
“Do the three of us need to talk?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, we do,” TJ answered before Kelsey could object. “Sure you seen what’s on the news this mornin’,” TJ said, although she and Lisa had seen it together that morning out at Eric’s house.
“I have,” Lisa said.
TJ glowered at Kelsey. “Accordin’ to this moron, she was at Felhaber’s place last night prepared to off him herself, but someone already shot the guy.”
Lisa looked from Kelsey to TJ. “I think I’d better make us some tea.”
Lisa went out into the real estate office where Shannon was talking to one of Earl’s clients on the phone. She grabbed a box of baked goods Shannon had bought, and whispered, “Sorry, this is an emergency.” Doughnuts had a calming effect on TJ.
When she walked back into her office bearing a plate of treats and a pot of tea, the atmosphere still reeked of hostility. Lisa poured the tea and set the plate close enough to TJ for her to smell the scent of bakery. TJ grabbed a chocolate doughnut and took a bite that nearly halved it.
Lisa said, “Kelsey, this is your time, so why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I snuck out last night.” She glanced sulkily at TJ. “It’s like she said. I went there to kill the bastard.”
“Kelsey, I understand why you would want to do that, but when we talked last night, it sounded like you still had some feelings for Lyle.”
Kelsey didn’t respond.
TJ looked over at Kelsey and swallowed the last bite of her doughnut. “You don’t wanna tell her, I will.”
“Go ahead if you think you know so fucking much about me.”
TJ pointed an angry finger at Kelsey. “See? There it is.” She reached over and grabbed a strawberry-filled long john. Pointing it at Kelsey, she said, “This little girl here? The one looked so sad and broken hearted, the one that still sticks up for the asshole that invaded her body, the one who is a good student and never does a thing wrong?”
She took a huge bite of the bun she held
, swallowed dramatically, and then got up and stood behind Kelsey’s chair. “Turns out we got two Kelseys we’re dealin’ with here. We got Miss Goody-Two-Shoes Kelsey who loves horses, loves to please her Aunt Rina, and works hard on her classes.” TJ put a hand on Kelsey’s shoulder. “Then there’s this one you see today, the badass Kelsey, who used to be a druggie’s kid, had to be tough, fend for herself a lotta the time, and make sure her mother’s lifestyle didn’t eat her up and swallow her.”
Lisa raised her hand before TJ could continue. Kelsey’s expression as TJ ranted about her split personality told Lisa what she needed to know. TJ had nailed it, everything was clear now. “TJ, I think you should let Kelsey and me talk now.”
“Why? She’s just gonna go back to bein’ Miss Goody, feed you all that crap she knows you shrinks like to hear.”
Lisa bit back an angry retort, then stood and faced her friend. “I need to talk to her—alone.”
Nostrils flaring with anger, TJ moved to the door. Then she abruptly turned, grabbed the plate of doughnuts and left the room. Poor Shannon, Lisa thought. She would have to listen to TJ gripe and watch her stuff down the bakery, but maybe if she were fast enough, Shannon would get a piece for herself.
Alone with Kelsey, Lisa asked, “Was TJ right, Kelsey? Do you work at being someone else for your aunt’s benefit?”
Gazing out the window now, Kelsey said nothing, which Lisa interpreted as a yes.
“Trying to be someone you aren’t is a painful way to live, Kelsey. Rina is a strong woman and she loves you very much. Why do you believe you can’t be yourself with her?”
Kelsey picked up the doughnut she had in front of her and broke off a small piece. “It’s what I’ve always done. All those times I stayed with Rina when I was little—I missed my mom, sure—but being with Rina, staying in that super house, away from all my mom’s shit, made me want to be someone else, the kind of little girl who deserved all that, because I wanted to come back again. I always wanted to come back. I knew my mom would clean up for a while after I left and then come get me. The bad stuff always started again, though, and I had to learn how to deal with it—how to get to school by myself, keep my clothes clean, stay away from the men who came over, and take care of my mom the best I could. I got hardened. Who wouldn’t? I learned how to swear, how to hide when I had to, how to keep my life different from my mom’s. The girl I was when I was with Rina didn’t have to do any of those things.”
Girl Undone (TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn Mysteries Book 3) Page 13