Mistaken Identity (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery)

by Fanning, Diane

  As Lucinda walked back down the hall, her phone rang again. “Pierce.”

  “Lucy!”

  “Charley. What’s up?”

  “Me and Daddy and Ruby are going to the Outer Banks next week. So, I had to make sure you were taking care of yourself first.”

  Lucinda grinned and laughed. “Yeah, Charley, I’m taking care of myself.”

  “No, you aren’t, Lucy. I talked to Rambo. You didn’t come in to see him like you said you would.”

  Damn that Doctor Rambo. “Sweetie, I’m really tied up with a case right now.”

  “I know you’re busy, Lucy, that’s why I made a late appointment for you. Rambo said he’d stay and see you tonight at seven.”

  “Charley …”

  “Lucy, if you don’t go I won’t have any fun on the beach. I’ll just be worrying about you and stuff the whole time. And I’ll just make Daddy and Ruby miserable, too. Please, promise me you’ll go. Promise?”

  Lucinda knew she could see Burns and still have plenty of time to pack and make arrangements for her cat’s care before her morning flight. She also knew that Charley wouldn’t give her any peace unless she did. Damn Burns for playing dirty and dragging in Charley. She sighed. “Okay, sweetie. You have a deal. You have a good time on your trip and call me when you get back and tell me all about it.”

  “You promise you’ll go see Rambo today?”

  “Yes, Charley, I promise.”

  Charley was happy but Lucinda was filled with dread as they wrapped up the call. At her computer, Lucinda printed out her travel documents and headed over to the doctor’s office.

  “Even though it was pretty low of you to drag Charley into this, Dr. Burns, I was on my way to your office because of her.”

  “Don’t get huffy, Lieutenant,” Rambo said. “Charley is putting a lot of pressure on me.”

  “She’s a child,” Lucinda said.

  “Yes, but a very persistent one, as you well know. I’ll see you in a few minutes then?”

  “No, something’s come up in the investigation that requires my immediate attention. I’m sorry you stayed late on my behalf but I simply cannot make it.”

  “I could stay a bit later.”

  “I’m not sure how late it will be, Dr. Burns. I’ll have to call you back and reschedule.”

  “Charley will be very disappointed.”

  “There you go again with the dirty tricks,” Lucinda said with a grimace.

  “I’m only asking you to listen to what I have envisioned for your care and consider one additional procedure at a time. You know as well as I do, if you don’t, you’ll have to answer to Charley.”

  Lucinda didn’t really care what Rambo Burns thought but Charley was another story. The thought of disappointing her put a lump in her throat and a burning in her eye. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Think about it? That’s it?”

  “I’ve got a homicide case as my priority right now. I’ve got to catch a man before he flies out tonight and then I’ve got a flight out to Texas in the morning to follow up a lead. When this is done, I’ll get back to you.”

  “Charley will be pleased to hear that.”

  Lucinda sighed. “Later, Doc.”

  She disconnected and tossed the cellphone into the passenger seat of her car with a little too much force. It bounced down to the floor. “Damn you, Burns,” Lucinda said. Part of her yearned to look like the woman she was before that shotgun blast. And another side of her wanted to tell everyone to go screw themselves. But she knew one thing unequivocally: even if Burns could repair all the scarring on her face, he could never return her missing eye and he could never heal her deepest scars – the ones with no physical manifestation. She knew she would never be the same woman she was before the day she leaped in front of that shotgun to push another woman to safety.

  Arriving at the airport complex, she turned into the executive section and headed to the hangar where Ted told her she’d find Gary Finnerman. She approached a suited man with broad shoulders; a substantial guy with an impatient look on his face. “Gary Finnerman?” she said, stretching her hand in his direction.

  “Yes,” he answered, wrapping beefy fingers around hers. “Lieutenant Pierce, what can I do for you? And what happened, line of duty injury?”

  Lucinda ignored the second question and answered the first. “I’m looking for background on your ex-wife Victoria.”

  “Not a subject I like to think about but here goes. We were married for five years. Everything was fine for the first three, until she got all goofy on me. I filed for divorce but even though I instigated the separation, I was generous with the woman. Did I get any expressions of gratitude? Hell, no.

  “I offered and dutifully paid her spousal support for ten years – twice the length of our marriage. But the first month the check didn’t come, she was on my case – nagging about all the bills she had to pay and about how I owed it to her to help her maintain her lifestyle. I told her, ‘I owe you nothing. Go find another husband.’ And damned if she didn’t. Picked an old guy that time – a bit too feeble-minded to notice her wacko tendencies, I think.”

  “Mr. Finnerman, you said she was ‘goofy’ earlier and now you’re saying she’s ‘wacko’. Could you explain what made you think that way?”

  “You mean you didn’t notice?” he said with a chuckle. When Lucinda didn’t respond, he continued. “It started out simply enough with her strange spending habits. She poured thousands of dollars in psychics, palm readers, tarot card fortune tellers, crystals, videos and books. Sure, I could afford it, but it was such a waste of my hard-earned money. I told her to cut it out and for a while I thought she had since I saw no other suspicious charges on the credit card bill. Then, I realized she was withdrawing large amounts of cash from our joint checking account. I confronted her and she admitted that she was using the money for the same old crap.

  “But, you know, it was annoying, but tolerable, until it started impacting my business. At dinner parties for clients and cocktail parties with my associates, she’d go up to people like this,” he said, putting his face close to Lucinda’s. “She gets in their personal space and says all sorts of stupid shit, like ‘Your aura is damaged but I know just the crystals you need to set it right again’ or ‘Your spouse’s aura is as black as death, you need to leave your marriage or you will die’.”

  “I told her over and over that she needed to leave that stuff at home when we went to social events connected to my business, but it was like talking to a child. She kept telling me that those people needed her help. But the final straw was the night we had a holiday party at our home. The guests were a combination of clients, associates and suppliers. I asked her nicely to put up her crystals for the night but she didn’t – they filled every nook and cranny of the house.

  “So, while she was getting dressed, I gathered them all up and shoved them to the back of a closet shelf. As usual, most of the guests had arrived by the time she made her grand entrance. Everything was fine for a few minutes. Then suddenly she shrieked, ‘Gary, Gary, where are my crystals?’

  “I went up to her and whispered, ‘I just put them up for the party. They’re all safe; we’ll get them back out after everyone leaves.’ She backed away from me with a look of horror on her face. She screamed out: ‘Oh, my God, you are trying to kill me! I never noticed that darkness in your aura before but it’s there now. I can see it. You put up my crystals because you knew they would protect me from your evil. And now, they are gone. Oh, my God, I’m going to die! All of you are my witnesses. When I’m gone, look to him – look to that evil man.“

  “Fortunately, there was a doctor present, he retrieved his bag from his car and administered a sedative. But, that was it for me. I don’t know why you’re investigating that woman, but quite honestly, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “How about homicide?” Lucinda asked.

  “Murder? I never could have imagined that one. It’s a bit hard to accept
but, hell, by the time we divorced, I didn’t know that woman any more. Listen, Lieutenant, anything else? I really need to get going.”

  She asked for and got his alibi for the morning in question. It sounded solid – she’d check it out and, if she was right about this man, she’d eliminate him, too. But Victoria Whitehead? That’s another story. The more I know about her, the better I understand her; but the better I understand her, the less sense the whole situation makes.

  Twenty-Six

  Leaving the San Antonio Airport, Lucinda took Loop 410 East to Interstate 35 and headed north. Half an hour later, she spotted the first exit for New Braunfels but kept going until she saw one pointing to downtown. No matter where she went, that area was the first thing she wanted to see. She believed that the main thoroughfare was very revelatory of any city or town – it held the key to its soul, disclosing its character, economics and dynamics. The better she understood a place, she thought, the better she was prepared for an interview in a strange town.

  She drove a stretch of street dominated by newer commercial buildings. A couple of blocks later, older architecture prevailed – some buildings were constructed for commerce, others were once rambling homes turned into office space. Straight ahead, Lucinda spotted a large town square, an oval island of green grass, trees, a tall old fountain and a gazebo. Plenty of cars, lots of foot traffic – a vital downtown area like this one always made her smile.

  She looped around the circle to the other side where she realized a bit too late that the right lane was not where she wanted to be. She waited in the neutral hash-marked area until other cars passed and she could slide behind them and follow the road as it dipped under a railway trestle. Beyond the overpass was a traffic light at a park entrance to her right. She detoured into the city oasis and was stunned – this was not the Texas she expected to see. A river flowed on her left that ran clearer than any she’d ever seen. On the far side of the river a cluster of upscale, balconied apartments graced its banks.

  A little further on, a tiny train depot with its mini-train was followed by the lake with paddle boats and hoards of ducks, geese, anhinga and egrets. She knew she should head straight to Karen King’s house but she couldn’t resist a little exploration. She pulled into a parking space and walked into the grass. The broad, gnarled trees amazed her. Their massive branches, covered with small, glossy, dark green leaves, stretched out so far, they needed concrete columns and metal poles to hold them up.

  She reached the side of the stream-like river and gasped. It rushed up out of the ground with waters skimming across the stones on the bottom. She wanted to walk through it instead of beside it but restrained herself. She kneeled down and stuck her fingers into the quick-moving flow and startled. Although the air temperature easily soared above ninety degrees, her fingers were numbed by the chill in the river.

  She followed it until it reached the primitive gazebo by the lake. She continued around, approaching a large wooden bridge that arched over another branch of flowing water. She paused in the middle, amazed at the clarity below, laughing when she saw a turtle, with blue and red markings on its head, swim underneath her feet.

  On the other side, she followed the bank to a small flat bridge leading over to a dammed area where young children splashed with their parents in shallow water. She went up a hill and saw that she was back where she started. She looked out across the park; from that vantage point, she realized it covered far more area than she’d walked.

  Back in the car, she drove up a steep hill on California Street, slamming on her brakes when she reached the top as a doe and a fawn gamboled across the road. She slowed down, spotting deer in nearly every yard. She took a left on Ohio, where the large animals grew even more abundant. When she reached the high school, she turned left and entered a street where trees formed canopies across the road. She saw many of the same glossy-leafed trees she noticed in the park but had never seen before, as well as an unfamiliar evergreen. The foliage on the latter reminded her of juniper bushes but they soared higher. With their lower branches trimmed, they looked like the trees in a Dr. Seuss book. She spotted a few others she recognized – crape myrtles, ash and the ubiquitous hackberry. She pulled into the driveway of a brick two-story home and headed for the front door.

  She rang the bell and the door opened before she finished lifting her finger. The woman in front of her had big blonde hair, blatantly false eyelashes and wore a silk hostess gown in blinding brilliant colors. “Not buying anything today. Not donating either,” she said as she started to shut the door in Lucinda’s face.

  “I’m here to see Karen King,” Lucinda said, whipping out her badge and identification.

  “I’m Karen King. What happened to you?” she said, leaning forward to peer at Lucinda’s face. “Who are you? And what do you want?”

  She sure doesn’t look bedridden, Lucinda thought and, ignoring the first question, she said, “I’m Lieutenant Pierce, a homicide detective from Virginia. I’ve been trying to reach you but you haven’t returned any of my calls. I’d like a moment of your time to talk to you about your son, Jason King.”

  “So you’re the one who’s been calling me. I assumed it was a wrong number. I told the police officer who stopped by that I don’t have a son and I know no one named Jason King. It’s just a coincidence that we have the same last name. There are a lot of Kings in the world, you know. We aren’t all related.”

  “I’d like to talk to you anyway, Ms. King, because there’s a woman in Virginia who claims you are his mother and who also said that you were bedridden.”

  Karen arched her eyebrows and raised her arms, the oversized sleeves trailing like wings by her sides. “As you can see, I am hardly bedridden. The only person I even know of in Virginia is my boyfriend’s mother, whom I have never met, so I doubt we have anything to discuss.”

  “Could I please come in, just for a minute?” Lucinda asked.

  “What do you want?”

  Lucinda pulled out a photograph of Jason King and held it up facing Karen. “Does this man look at all familiar to you?”

  Karen laughed. “Of course he does. That’s my boyfriend. Where did you get his picture?”

  “This, Ms. King, is Jason King.”

  “No, no, no.” She grinned. “That’s Jeremy Kneipper. Who gave you this photo?”

  “His girlfriend gave it to me.”

  Karen’s mouth drooped and her brow furrowed. “You’d best come in,” she said as she opened the door wide.

  As Lucinda sat in a chair in the living room, Karen asked, “Is she a younger woman?”

  “Younger than you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course that’s what I mean. Is this woman in Virginia younger than me?”

  Lucinda tilted her head and studied the other woman. “Probably not, Ms. King. You’re probably the same age. Then again, she might be a couple of years younger.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Lucinda paused, considering whether or not it was wise to share this information. She quickly decided that what she might gain from the revelation exceeded any risk. “Victoria Whitehead.”

  Karen flapped a hand at her and laughed. “Oh, you silly thing. That’s not his girlfriend. That’s his mama. And, my stars, girl, she’s a lot older than me.”

  “Ms. King, Ms. Whitehead said the same about you. And she certainly does think she’s his girlfriend.”

  Karen’s smile fled again and she stared, blinking her eyes. “None of this makes any sense. I wish Jeremy were here. I bet he could straighten this all out.”

  “So, he’s not here?”

  “No, he’s out somewhere running errands.”

  “I would like to wait until he returns home.”

  “Well, I’m not really sure when that would be, Ms. – uh, Lieutenant – Pierce. He’s quite a bit younger than me and still has his wild times with the boys, if you know what I mean? What in heaven’s name do you want to talk to him about?”

  “His fingerprint was found a
t the scene of a double homicide in Virginia.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said, rising to her feet. “Could you please excuse me for a moment?”

  Lucinda listened to Karen’s footsteps as they walked to the second floor. She heard a door open and close. Then, she heard nothing. She strained to hear any other noises. At one point, she thought she heard the sound of distant voices but she wasn’t sure if they were inside or outside of the house or if it was just her imagination.

  Karen returned to the room, with a forced smile plastered on her face. “I was just checking my datebook and, as I feared, I’m fixing to go to a luncheon meeting in just a little bit, so it’s not going to be possible for you to wait for Jeremy here. So, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “You know, Ms. King, I sure would feel a lot better if you’d let me walk through your home and make sure he’s not here – not that I’m doubting your word. But I have to report back and …”

  “Of course, don’t say another word. I watch those TV programs. I know how that is. You just roam around down here. I’ve got to pop upstairs for just a moment. When you finish down here, I’ll show you around the second floor.”

  Lucinda walked through the kitchen, family room, bathroom and home office, peering in closets, behind draperies and under large pieces of furniture. She slid out a couple of drawers but knew she was overstepping her bounds when she did.

  She hoped to find a clue to Jason/Jeremy’s whereabouts or something more about him but uncovered nothing of use. She wanted a DNA sample, too, but knew she’d yet to find adequate grounds for the locals to issue a search warrant – even if they were willing to bend the rules a bit in the name of inter-agency cooperation.

  Something was hinky about Karen, this house, this situation, but Lucinda couldn’t put a finger on what it was. As she started up the steps to the second floor, a door to the left flew open and Karen popped out of the room and fast-walked to the top of the stairs.