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

by Marla Madison

  “Kelsey, haven’t you thought about your life now, that it’s no longer necessary to attempt to be someone you aren’t?”

  She stood and walked to the window. “The problem is . . . part of me wants to be her, be the girl who does everything right.”

  Lisa rose and stood next to her. “Kelsey, you don’t have to be one or the other. It’s time to be yourself. I don’t know Rina as well as you do, but I know she loves you and would be so proud of you if she knew everything that you’ve gone through and still turned out to be such a fine young woman.”

  “Fine? I wanted to kill a man. I would have killed him.”

  “You don’t know for sure that you really would have gone through with it. All of us feel like killing someone at times in our lives.”

  She looked at Lisa. “Even you?”

  If you only knew. “Yes, even me.” Sometimes, sharing an experience from a therapist’s own life could help a patient. Lisa didn’t use the technique often, but the moment demanded it. “When my daughter was small and I was going through a divorce, my husband threatened to take her away from me. I was so furious with him and felt so terribly threatened, that I bought a gun and developed a plan on how I’d kill him.”

  “What happened?”

  “It turned out I didn’t have to resort to murdering him. He met another woman and lost interest in the custody battle.”

  Kelsey was studying her with a new respect. “Would you have done it if you had to?”

  “I’ve always believed I would have. But, of course, saying you would be able to kill a person and actually following through with it are two different things. You can never be sure that you would actually pull that trigger when the time came.”

  “I would have,” Kelsey said.

  “I’m not so sure. You loved him enough to maintain a secret affair with a married man and hide it from everyone. A love like that doesn’t just evaporate when you find out you’ve been betrayed. It’s true what they say—there is only a fine line between love and hate. If he’d been alive when you confronted him in his home that night, he would have turned on the charm, made you remember the good times. You might have backed off.”

  “I guess I’ll never know—just like you.”

  43

  Bart sat back in his chair in front of the coffee shop’s window and considered what he’d done. The blog he’d just sent only told the facts of the interactions between him and Headliner. He was afraid to say what he really felt about him, that he was a sick fuck. Conlin had warned him not to insult the guy, but he couldn’t get at them if he didn’t know where they were. They were switching hotels as soon as Jen finished her meeting.

  He’d finished only a few lines for tomorrow’s posting when a loud voice called out, “Hey, anyone in here own a black Bimmer?”

  He looked up to see a man in an expensive gray suit. “It’s yours?” he asked.

  Bart nodded.

  “I’m parked in front of you and some jerk in front of me parked me in. Could you do me a favor and move your car so I can get out?” Bart looked out the window. Sure enough, the car in front of his, a late model Lexus, had a car in front of it, its rear bumper kissing the front bumper of the Lexus. There was less than a foot between Bart’s BMW and the back of the guy’s car. An empty spot behind Bart’s car made it possible to move the BMW into it so the Lexus could get out.

  Bart was eager to keep going on the next blog addendum about Headliner. He had his laptop and all his stuff spread out on the table and would have to pack it all up or trust that no one would mess with it if he walked out to move his car. Instead, he pulled out his keys and tossed them to the guy. “Sorry, you’ll have to bring them back after you move it.”

  Annoyed, Gray Suit grabbed the keys and stomped outside to move the car. Keeping an eye on the cars, Bart stood and went over to get a refill of coffee. He was contemplating buying another muffin when a noise, louder than anything his ears had ever experienced, shattered the morning quiet and the windows of the coffee shop. The entire building shook. Bart felt the floor tremble, and he ducked under the nearest table.

  He peered out a few seconds later. The space where the BMW had been parked was nothing but a brilliant ball of yellow-orange flame like he’d only seen in movies. Fortunately, the coffee shop hadn’t been real busy, and no one was sitting at the windows when they’d blown. The only other customers were in booths along the wall and appeared to be all right, as were the employees, who had all been behind the counter when the blast hit. Gray Suit must have been in the front seat of Bart’s car when it blew up. Bart was shaken to the core—it was supposed to have been him in the Bimmer—Gray Suit had saved Bart’s life by a quirk of fate.

  44

  Lisa and Kelsey sat in Lisa’s office, facing each other.

  Lisa said, “Kelsey, why don’t you start from the beginning? I think you need to talk about it. Tell me how you met Felhaber and how you met Whitney.”

  “I met Whitney because she advertised for a roommate. I met him just like I told you, at that restaurant where I always went for lunch.”

  So Whitney couldn’t have taken Kelsey as a roommate with any advance plan.

  “That was a usual lunch spot for you? I don’t remember you telling us that before.”

  “I didn’t. I knew you were thinking he planned it, but how would he have been able to? I’d never met him before.”

  The obvious answer, Lisa thought, was that Whitney had clued him in to Kelsey’s lunch plans, but she said, “Go on.”

  “We talked a lot. I told him about my goal to become a veterinarian and about the horses. He was a great listener.”

  “Did you two set a date to meet again?”

  “No.”

  “Then it was just a coincidence that he showed up at the next horse show you performed in?”

  “I thought so. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “What are you sure of? Or should I ask, what were you sure of then?”

  “I was sure I loved him right from the beginning. It was stupid, I know, but I would have done anything to be with him.”

  Lisa was pretty sure what the answer would be when she asked, “Did you agree to donate your eggs Kelsey?”

  She showed the first signs of emotion, small tears at the corner of her eyes. “He never asked me to,” she whispered. “But I would have. What kind of person would to that for a man?”

  Detective Conlin was at his desk when Bart called and gave him the news about the explosion. After muttering a few choice words, he said, “We’ll be there as soon as we can. You won’t be able to go anywhere for a while because the fire investigators and the local cops will want to talk to you. Is your girlfriend all right?”

  “I think so. She was across the street at a meeting. Oh, I see her coming now. She looks okay.”

  After getting off the phone with Bart, Conlin put Justin on the alert that they were leaving and then called TJ.

  “What?” she asked.

  Her voice was muffled. “Are you eating something?” he asked.

  “Yeah, doughnuts.”

  Richard knew TJ used sweets like an addict used his drug of choice. Her indulgence usually meant she was angry and an angry TJ was not pleasant. “What’s wrong?”

  “This frickin’ case is gettin’ to me. Wassup?”

  He explained what had happened to Bart’s car.

  “Shee-it! Was the asshat in it?”

  “Aren’t you listening? I told you it was someone else in the car. Another car was parked in front of him on the street, got boxed in, and the owner asked Bart to move his car so he could get his out. Bart gave the guy his keys to move it.”

  “Hmph, pretty trustin’ you ask me.”

  “Well, that’s what happened. You’re missing the point, though. I need to keep those two safe. I’m pretty sure we could put a uniform on them after this, but our perp is pretty resourceful.”

  “What? You want me to watch them?”

  “No, you don’t have time and
I wouldn’t want you involved in this any more than you already are because of RayAnn. I need to talk to Lisa. Is she with you?”

  Before she could ask him why he wanted to talk to Lisa, her office opened and Kelsey and Lisa came out, Kelsey’s expression softer, her face subdued.

  “Hang on a minute” TJ said to Richard.

  Kelsey said, “I’m sorry for the way I acted, TJ. I’ll call you later. I’m going to see my aunt.”

  “We need to talk,” Lisa said to TJ after Kelsey left, then pointed to the phone. “Who’s that?”

  She handed Lisa the phone. “Richard. He wants to talk to you.”

  TJ listened to Lisa’s end of the conversation, unsettled. Her husband’s request was beginning to make sense. She figured he was asking Lisa if she and Eric would take in Bart and his girlfriend. Shit, shit, shit. Bad enough she would be holed up there again—even though the surroundings were super—but to have to live with the worm and his lady worm was too frickin’ much.

  Lisa finished and handed back the phone. “I’m sure you figured out what that was about.”

  “That sucks. Don’t know if I can stand bein’ around him.”

  “None of us like the man, but we don’t want him or his girlfriend dead, do we?”

  TJ rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, don’t answer that. I’ll have to run it by Eric, but I know how he is. He’ll tell me to invite them and he’ll hire more security again.”

  “Man. This day keeps gettin’ worse. Wanna go get some lunch?”

  “Lunch, after all those doughnuts you ate?”

  “Yeah, need somethin’ to counteract all that grease and sugar.”

  Lisa checked her schedule. “Sure. I have an hour.”

  Shannon jumped up and joined them. “Wow. You guys are going to stay out at Eric’s again? Can I come too?”

  TJ said, “Might not be a bad idea. This guy is a stalker. Hard tellin’ how much he knows and who he’s followin’. Richard said they think he was even stalkin’ the girlfriend.”

  45

  Lisa was eager to tell TJ what had really happened now that she had Kelsey’s permission. “I think our Kelsey has a daddy complex and saw Felhaber as her savior. She promised to talk to Rina openly now. We’ll be seeing the real Kelsey once that happens.”

  “Hang on with the shrink stuff for a minute. Did you find out why Felhaber wanted her eggs?”

  “It’s rather complicated, but I’ll give you the short version. He told her he wanted to leave his wife, but he couldn’t because she would take every penny in the divorce. An all too familiar story, really.”

  “What’s that got to do with eggs?”

  “Felhaber claimed that his wife wanted to have a baby ever since they got married, and when they finally had fertility studies done, they found out that her ovaries couldn’t produce viable eggs. She let it go for a lot of years and then began nagging him to find her a donor so they could attempt an in vitro pregnancy. He refused, and another year went by. By then, the marriage, for him, had become intolerable as her obsession became obvious and she became more and more unstable. He told Kelsey when he broke up with her that he’d found a donor so his wife could get pregnant. He would have to stay with her through the IVF and the birth and didn’t want Kelsey to wait for him that long. He left out the part where he was going to use her as an unwilling donor.”

  “Shit, that’s wild. Sounds like one o’ Donna’s soaps.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? Anyway, it turns out that when Kelsey was in recovery after he harvested her eggs, she came out of it early and saw something he hadn’t planned on her seeing. ”

  “What?”

  Lisa sighed. “Whitney. She was there too. Kelsey heard him thanking her for helping him and told her how much he loved her.”

  “Shit, he had both of them snowed.” She puzzled for a few seconds. “Okay, I get it now, but then why was Kelsey in the mall that day?”

  “Remember, Fellhaber’s office is right there in front of Mayfair. He did the procedure there. Evidently what she heard gave her the stamina to run out of there.”

  “Crap. They both used her.”

  “I imagine Lyle Felhaber duped both of them. Whitney could have been the one who saw Kelsey first and realized she was a twin for Felhaber’s wife. If he gave her the same line he gave Kelsey about his wife, she would have been eager to tip him off about the likeness.”

  “So now what? The evil doctor is dead, and his accomplice is missin’ in action. Kelsey will still need you to help her work it all out, so looks like my work here is done.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lisa said. “All that talk the other night from Kelsey about not caring about her baby was just her anger speaking. She wants the child, thinks the baby shouldn’t be raised by Felhaber’s wife.”

  “Hold on a minute. Aren’t we jumpin’ the gun here? Thought the chances of this IVF thing workin’ the first time were slim to none.”

  “That could be, but we have to move forward as if it did end in a pregnancy. Otherwise, it might be too late to do anything about the child.”

  TJ grimaced. “Still don’t know what I can do about that. Think she needs an attorney, one who specializes in that stuff. Gonna be tough to bring a case against the wife without proof. It’ll be a long, nasty custody fight.” TJ’s brow wrinkled in thought. “But what if the wife wanted the kid all to herself, knew the divorce was comin’ and didn’t want to share the kid or the money?”

  “You’re saying she killed him?”

  “Makes sense. She probably nailed Whitney, too. The spouse is always the first one the cops look at.”

  “This may be a moot discussion if the wife isn’t pregnant. Or, wasn’t even the real recipient.”

  “Shit, you’re right. How long after that in vitro thing would the missus know if it worked or not?”

  “With some testing methods, pretty quick. Feasibly in a week or ten days.”

  “There you go. The missus knows she’s pregnant, and she got greedy and offed her husband and Whitney. Trick is to prove it. I’ll have to work my wiles on Richard, see what he’ll tell me about the husband’s murder case.”

  “Richard got the case?”

  “No, but he can talk to the guy who did. Somethin’ botherin’ me though. What about findin’ Whitney in Bart’s yard?”

  “Maybe it isn’t her they found. Oh, one more thing, Lisa said. “I checked with the Women’s Center. There hasn’t been a spike in missing women, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Their records would be for last year.”

  As they left the building, TJ turned toward her car.

  “I thought you wanted lunch,” Lisa said.

  “I got a job to do.”

  46

  Richard and Justin dropped off Jen and Bart at their current hotel, making sure no one followed them. Bart was in mild shock, not just from the explosion, but at being offered residence with Eric Schindler.

  “I changed my other appointments,” Jen told Bart. “To tomorrow.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “I don’t know, Bart. After what happened today, maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t want you to take any chances. Headliner won’t know where we are tomorrow, and there’ll be no way for him to find out. We just have to make sure we aren’t being followed when we leave.” She reminded him they would have a police escort when the drove to Waukesha.

  Bart said, “I feel terrible for getting you into this.”

  “Stop apologizing, Bart. It happened, and we have to deal with it. It isn’t your fault.” She grinned. “And who knew that our getting together would be so explosive.”

  “Yeah right,” Bart said, failing to find the humor in her quip. Then he spent the next five minutes thinking about what she said. She’d used the phrase “our getting together,” and he couldn’t stop wondering if it hinted at something other than what it meant at face value. The forced closeness with her was a problem. Height difference aside, he was crazy about
her, and he had to stop trying to fill in the blanks in his favor. Just because the term “getting together” often referred to a romantic entanglement, he didn’t dare get his hopes up.

  Bart quickly packed the few things he had brought with him. While Jen finished getting ready, he opened his computer and found yet another message from Headliner.

  Hey dirtbag,

  Bet yur thinking about my promise to leave you alone. Guess what?

  I lied.

  Not liking the tone of what yur writing about me. Fix it.

  Headliner

  Bart forwarded the message to Conlin, then he dialed the detective.

  “What?” Conlin answered. “You miss me already?”

  Bart fought back a sarcastic reply. “Did you read the message I forwarded?”

  “Give me a minute.” He heard Conlin clicking his computer’s keys.

  “What does he mean, fix it?” Conlin asked.

  “Not a clue. You know I’ve been careful about what I say about him. I’ve been thinking. Maybe he’s really just after me and this whole thing about the abused-women case was just a ruse.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought early on, but now we have a dead woman, a man who was blown up in your place, and a security guard that he put in the hospital.”

  Conlin continued, “We’ve checked out all of your hate mail. No one raises any real red flags. Anyone else out there you pissed off enough to do something like this?”

  “Yeah. The cops.”

  “Funny. Give it some thought. Let me know if you come up with anything. And while you’re at it, see if you can determine what it was about the blog that he doesn’t like. I’ll read it, let you know if anything pops up for me.”