by Libby Howard
I headed straight home, figuring I could finish my work from there. I’d forgotten all about the baking supplies and the pork loin, but wasn’t feeling particularly hungry anyway. Once home, I pulled the files out of my briefcase and stared at them. Murder. It had to have been murder.
If the black book was the key to this, the tell-all list of clients, we might never find it now. The best suspect for murdering Caryn Swanson would be someone on that list that didn’t want to be exposed. He probably either had the book, or Caryn had hidden it somewhere we’d never find.
But just because the book might be gone, it didn’t mean I couldn’t trace her clients from the other direction.
I pulled up several internet sites that had dating sections. I knew full well that no amount of regulation would keep interested parties from listing and looking for prostitutes of either sex on these sites. I narrowed down the zip code search a bit, then started looking through the listings. What I saw made me want to wash my eyes out with Clorox. It was very clear that just about anything could be had for a certain, unnamed and vaguely alluded to, price. I wrote down the ones that looked promising along with their messaging ID. I wasn’t a hacker, so there was no way I could find out who owned those IDs without a warrant, but I could check one more thing. Four of the ten had websites. They weren’t anything special, but they’d do. I pinged the URL, then used a lookup on the IP address. None of the four were anywhere near Locust Point. I doubted that Caryn Swanson would have driven two hours out of town to run her website, so I went on to the other six.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I muttered, sending a silent apology to Taco. Composing what I hoped were messages a prospective client might send a service, I e-mailed all six. Two sent back an auto-respond so I pulled up the IP address from the header and ran a WHOIS check and a geolocation.
And there it was, Locust Point. I wrote down the information and did a screenshot of the dating-site ad, then sat back in my chair. Next, I’d use search engine analytics to find out where this IP had been visiting online. It might yield something, it might not. I might wind up finding out that Caryn Swanson bought shoes online and searched websites for how to remove warts or something. It would need to wait, though. I was tired. Finding a dead body took a lot out of a person.
I went to pack the folder away and a slip of paper fell onto my lap. David Briscane. The mayor’s son. I was beat, and snooping around for this guy’s misdeeds wasn’t really a priority, but I couldn’t help at least running a state case search.
Oh my. Poor Mayor Briscane. It seems his son was in quite a bit of debt by the pending civil suits and judgments. A drunk driving charge, too. I closed my browser and turned off the computer, feeling a bit sorry for our mayor. No doubt his son was in town asking for money. Sad, but Locust Point had bigger problems right now than the mayor’s reprobate child.
I organized my notes on Caryn Swanson and by the time I’d stuffed the folder back into my briefcase, Judge Beck was walking through the door with his two kids in tow. Three, as the group included a girl I hadn’t seen before. Madison, head down, walked straight up the stairs, heading I’m sure toward her bedroom. The girl followed. Henry hesitated, looking at the dining room table then after his sister, choosing the latter and also heading up the stairs.
I watched them go, chewing my bottom lip and wondering if Madison Beck would ever speak to me again. It wasn’t my fault she was in trouble, but I was the one who discovered the photo and told her father. I’m sure she blamed me for the whole thing. Hopefully in time she’d come around; otherwise, we’d both be in for an awkward two years.
Chapter 14
Judge Beck stood in the hallway for a few minutes watching his kids go upstairs, then he wandered into my study and stopped in the doorway. His eyes met mine and I knew he wanted to talk. So did I. I stood and walked to the kitchen. He followed. Without asking, I pulled two wine glasses from the cabinet and yanked the cork from a bottle of Pinot Grigio that had been in the fridge from Daisy and my indulgence over the weekend.
“She’s grounded for the week. If you have any chores you’d like her to do around the house, I can add them to the punishment. I’m afraid things might be a bit frosty around here for a while, but she’ll get over it.”
I handed him a glass of wine. “I found a body today.”
His mouth dropped open. “What? You what? I don’t think I heard that right because it sounded like you said you found a body.”
I nodded. “A dead body. In that drainage ditch that separates the MegaMart parking lot from the interstate. She’d been there a few days. No ID yet, but we’re thinking it may be Caryn Swanson.”
Judge Beck stared at me a moment, downed the wine, then handed the glass back to me. I gave him a refill. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but you’re a judge. I know you’ll keep your mouth shut on it. I had to tell someone. I love Daisy to pieces, but she’d have this all over town in five minutes.”
He sat the wine down and rubbed his face. “How did you find her?”
How to explain this without getting into the fact that I was either going crazy, or my eyesight had some serious problems? “I always park back there to get some exercise. I saw a shoe in the brush at the edge of the parking lot—a nice shoe that looked like it had been left there recently. I went down the hill to the drainage pond to see…” Drat, how do I make this sound like something a reasonable woman would do? “If I could find the other shoe.”
He stared at me. “You hiked down a rocky, briar-choked hill into the mud and a water-filled drainage ditch to see if you could find the other shoe? How nice was that shoe? I mean, are we talking six hundred dollar shoes here, or something?”
I sounded like a complete idiot. “No, it was just a nice shoe, not the sort of thing someone would just throw away at the end of a parking lot. The grass was trampled, like there was a path, so I thought maybe someone had fallen down the hill and needed help.” There. That was a better reason than me scavenging for shoes.
“Kay, what were you thinking? Homeless people used to live there. What if someone jumped you and robbed you? What if you were the one that fell and twisted your ankle, or knocked yourself out on a rock?”
“I was in clear view of the interstate in broad daylight. The homeless people moved out when the MegaMart went in and they tore down the trees, and they were just homeless people, not thugs. If I fell, I had my cell phone. It’s not like I’m some old lady hobbling around. I take walks. I do yoga.” I get that he was probably still dwelling on Madison sneaking out to a party, but I was not his underage daughter for him to fuss over like this. Had he treated Heather this way? If so, then my sympathies in this divorce were leaning in her direction.
“Sorry. I had a domestic violence case today. Between that and Madison, I’m overestimating the danger of pretty much everything right now.” He looked down at the wine, as if he were weighing whether to drink it or stop at the one glass he’d treated like a shot of tequila. “Was her car back there? Was it an overdose? Suicide? A drunken accident?”
“Her car wasn’t back there and I’m assuming she didn’t have any ID on her if the police are waiting to announce it. They didn’t tell us what they were thinking in terms of cause of death, but I’m leaning toward murder.”
That got him drinking the second glass of wine. Thankfully, he wasn’t throwing this one down his throat. “Murder? How do you get murder? She was accused of running a minor prostitution ring and out on bail. There was nothing in that case that would have caused her to be killed. Otherwise Walsh would have brought it up at the bail hearing.”
“She was reluctant to release her list of contacts, even though she would most likely have gotten a reduced sentence or even probation.”
He shrugged. “She was holding out for a better deal. Walsh was still negotiating with the prosecution.”
I shook my head. “Walsh didn’t have a counter offer. He was sticking fast with the innocent plea.”
“Drug
s, then. She was shooting up back there, passed out, lost one of her shoes and rolled down the hill and died either of an overdose or by drowning while passed out.”
“There was no history of drugs. There wasn’t even a rumor of drugs, and you know what this town is like. She was clean when she was arrested. You can’t tell me she got out on bail and suddenly decided to go shoot up with heroin completely alone in the back of a parking lot?”
“Not alone. That’s why her car wasn’t there. The junkie with her saw her fall and took off.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “A junkie would most likely have laughed at her falling down the hill, then passed out in her car. She was supposed to meet with her attorney on Saturday afternoon, but didn’t show. She gets out of jail on Friday and most likely winds up dead that night. Bit of a stretch to call that a coincidence.”
He took another drink of wine. “Coincidences happen. She celebrates her release from jail. Drinks too much. Falls down the ditch and drowns.”
I was going to shake this man. Shake him. “So instead of drinking with friends or in a bar, a successful party planner goes to the back of a parking lot in a remote area, imbibes a bottle of something, then falls and dies. And somehow the empty bottle and her car mysteriously drive off on their own?”
“She wasn’t murdered. That’s an insane theory, Kay. And we don’t even know for sure it was Caryn Swanson. For all we know that poor dead woman is a truck stop pickup that got ditched by her one-night stand and died trying to take a short cut back across the interstate.”
That was J.T.’s idea, but I knew better. “Murder. Caryn Swanson. I’ll bet you I’m right.”
I winced as soon as it came out of my mouth. Betting on the identity and cause of death of a woman who’d lost her life was so callous. Evidently a career of seeing criminals every day had jaded Judge Beck, because he didn’t appear shocked at my terribly inappropriate suggestion of a wager.
“You’re on. If you’re right, I’ll cook dinner. If I’m right, then you have to take Madison clothes shopping this weekend in my stead.”
I remembered the hamburgers from last night and didn’t think that was an equitable reward, but I’d take it. And losing the bet wouldn’t really be a loss since I hated the idea of Caryn Swanson being murdered, and clothes shopping with Madison sounded fun. Well, if she was speaking to me by then, that is.
“Deal.”
No sooner had we clinked our wine glasses to seal the deal than my phone buzzed. I looked down at it, then turned to show Judge Beck the text message.
It was Caryn Swanson. She was strangled.
I’d just won a bet. And winning that particular bet made me feel sick. There was more than a prostitution ring in our sleepy little town.
There was a murderer.
Chapter 15
Daisy and I had coffee and the last of the scones the next morning after our sunrise yoga. I hadn’t gotten my baking supplies as planned, nor my pork roast. I’d need to go to the grocery store today, but I was thinking of driving to another one on the other side of town to avoid memories of yesterday. Although it wasn’t like I was thinking of much else. Perhaps if I went there and just parked elsewhere, I wouldn’t find myself thinking of a woman’s body facedown in a ditch, her long blond hair muddy and tangled in the weeds.
I’d declined Judge Beck’s offer to share in their pizza last night and taken a rain check instead. I’d just needed the night to myself, so I’d slipped out for BBQ with a novel stuffed in my purse, coming home after everyone was upstairs for the night. My floater was back. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, as if he were sitting next to me in the booth at dinner, and across the room as I got ready for bed. Instead of the usual annoyance, I felt somewhat comforted by the shadowy presence. I honestly felt it helped me sleep soundly, even after the day’s upsetting events.
This morning, there were signs that Judge Beck had been down for a cup of coffee before I’d awakened, but no sign of the man himself, or his two kids yet this morning.
That poor woman dead. So young. She’d had her whole life ahead of her. Even if she’d been found guilty, she would have recovered. The whole thing would have faded away in a few years, of no more importance than Jess Bart’s three DWI’s and Billy Cowden’s indecent exposure arrest that time he’d peed in the City Hall fountain five years ago. Instead of a temporary disgrace, she was dead. And I couldn’t stop seeing her corpse in my mind.
After our relaxing yoga, Daisy didn’t hesitate to bring the whole thing back to the forefront of my mind.
“Did you read the paper this morning? Can you believe it? Who do you think did it?” Daisy always read the news online before coming over. Since I waited for my actual paper to be delivered, I hadn’t read the news, but I still knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Yes. I’m assuming one of her clients doesn’t want to be exposed.”
“She wasn’t going to turn over her black book, from what I heard. Do you think she was blackmailing him? That would be a good reason to kill her. And she’d hardly want to turn over her client list and cut off a source of blackmail income.”
Wow. Daisy’s mind was just as twisted as mine. “Maybe she was blackmailing him, but met with him Friday night to tell him she had to go public with the list. Blackmail money doesn’t do a lot of good in jail, and I heard they were offering her a really good plea bargain.”
“Makes you think,” Daisy mused, taking a sip of her coffee. “Why would the police care that much about the client list? I could see reduced jail time, but it would have to be something that pretty much got her off completely for her to expose someone she’d been blackmailing. And somebody the police really wanted to catch to offer that kind of deal.”
It did make me think. Maybe they were after a murderer, someone who had murdered prostitutes, and Caryn’s black book held key evidence. It was totally plausible that someone wanting to cover up a previous murder, or murders, wouldn’t have a problem killing the one person who could expose him.
Daisy left. I got ready for work and managed to come down the stairs into the chaos of school-day prep. Backpacks. Lunches. Henry had to take a hand-held game system back upstairs that he’d been trying to smuggle to school in his coat pocket. Madison had to go back upstairs to put on a shirt that didn’t show half her midriff every time she raised her arm. I couldn’t completely blame the girl for that one. She was tall and thin, and I was pretty sure any shirt she bought was going to be on the short side.
I grabbed my briefcase and eyed Judge Beck. “I’ll take her shopping Sunday. We’ll see if we can’t find some longer shirts.”
His shoulders slumped in relief. “Thanks. And if you’re going to do that, then we’ll go out to eat tonight instead of the sausage-noodle-casserole thing I was going to subject you to.”
“Steak?” I asked hopefully.
He watched Madison stomp down the stairs, holding her arms up to display the coverage of her shirt. “Steak. And champagne. And dessert of your choice. If you’re going to take her shopping, it’s the least I can do.”
Once at the office, I noticed that J.T. was looking rough this morning. His button-down shirt was rumpled, and both his bald head and chin were sporting some stubble. He looked up from his computer and gave me a wan smile. “A murderer in our town.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure what to say. We’d had overdoses, accidents, the rare drunk-driving accident that ended in fatality and a manslaughter charge. That was pretty much it. People didn’t go around killing each other in Locust Point. It was something I hoped would ever happen again.
“Here.” I handed him the folder I’d taken home last night. “I did more research on Caryn Swanson. I think I found the dating site and listing she was using for the prostitution business. The police might be able to get more off of her computer or phone through her history.”
“Thanks.” J.T. took the folder and looked through it. “I spoke with the detective in charge of the investigation. They’re going to s
earch her house, but her car isn’t there. I’m assuming she drove it and met someone somewhere and he dumped her body in that ditch as opposed to killing her there.”
It made sense. And it also made me think. Where was her car? It had to be near, because I couldn’t believe someone would risk driving a huge distance with a body in their car, or in Caryn’s car. Was her purse and phone still in her car, or had the killer taken them?
“So, what’s on my agenda today?” I had an idea I wanted to check out, but paying jobs came first.
“Two car repos I need you to track down for me, and another Citicorp debtor.”
I took the files from J.T. There went my morning, my afternoon, and probably my evening. But two car repos… Maybe I could check something else while I was tracking them down, and squeeze in a little time this afternoon to follow up if things worked out.
“I’ll get right on these,” I told J.T. “Think I can sneak out to MegaMart for a long lunch? If I’m not done by five, I’ll finish up tonight from home.”
J.T. shrugged. “Sure, go ahead. But if you’re going to nose around that drainage pond, it’s still roped off.”
I shuddered at the thought. “No, just going to grab some baking supplies and a few other things.”
And swing by the truck stop, but J.T. didn’t have to know about that.
Chapter 16
The Creditcorp job was involved, so I sat it aside for later and worked on the repos. I’m ashamed to admit that I always found these fun. Maybe J.T. wasn’t alone in his love of drama and old fashioned investigative work, because automobile repossessions weren’t the usual skip trace. These people knew someone was one tow truck away from snatching their car and went to all sorts of lengths to hide it. Sometimes it was at a friend’s house. Sometimes it had swapped out license plates. Sometimes it had a new paint job and enough cosmetic modifications to render it virtually unrecognizable. All I could do was list the likely places, note down any traffic and parking tickets, then send J.T. out to look in windshields for VIN numbers.