“Did the police examine Jenny’s room?”
Amanda nodded. “They did.” Amanda and Sheila both looked at me expectantly.
Sheila was right. I had trouble picturing the woman I met yesterday as the suicidal type. She was a bright young woman who certainly didn’t deserve to be profiled and dismissed. I’d seen it so often in my professional life and it infuriated me. Jenny deserved more. “Would you mind if I took a look at her room?”
Amanda put her knitting down. “I was hoping you would,” she said eagerly. “Reverend Craig told me we should ask for your help, but I hated to bother you after all you’ve done already.”
“Reverend Craig said you’re good at finding answers,” Sheila chimed in, “and we want answers.”
“I’m not sure I can help, but at least I’ll look at things with an open mind.”
I followed Amanda and Sheila up the back stairs to a small, neat room that faced out onto the square. There was a single bed, an upturned box being used as a bedside table, a dressing table with a mirror, and an armoire in the corner. I could usually glean a lot about a person from their living space, but this was temporary space at best. There was little here to tell Jenny’s story.
Amanda straightened the coverlet on the bed and sat down, looking around the room forlornly. “The rooms are nothing fancy,” she admitted, “but we gather furniture from estate sales when we can and we try to make it homey.”
No More was still written on the mirror in what appeared to be red lipstick, but the words weren’t scrawled haphazardly across the middle, they were neatly printed along the top edge of the mirror. If you sat on the stool in front of the table, you could still clearly see your face to brush your hair or put on makeup. From what I’d seen of Jenny yesterday, I’d have to agree—this was an affirmation, not an expression of despair.
I opened the drawers and found the usual assortment of makeup and creams, a hairbrush, a packet of tampons, and some mints.
“Where’s her handbag?” Handbags were almost as reliable as a photo for presenting a portrait of the person who carried them.
“In the wardrobe. I ken we’ll have to do something with her things, it just seemed too hasty to start already.” Sheila roughly brushed a tear from her cheek and went to retrieve Jenny’s black pleather purse. She stood over me expectantly. I looked inside and found a front door key on a rubber key chain, five one-pound coins, some small change, a comb, a receipt for coffee from a nearby bakery, and a business card for a Wilson Clift, with Manorcare Nursing Homes.
“Where did you say Jenny worked again?”
“For the council clinic ’round the corner,” Amanda said. “It was part-time, but steady. She went on rounds to give in-home care to patients, but she was looking for a full-time job that would let her stay in one place.”
“Here in Edinburgh?”
Amanda looked to Sheila. “She told you more than me.”
“She was talking to a firm in Glasgow as well,” Sheila said. “She didn’t exactly say, but I think she fancied putting some distance between herself and that husband of hers.”
“Manorcare Nursing Homes?” I asked, holding up the card from Jenny’s purse.
“Yes. That’s the one,” Sheila said.
“Where’s her phone?”
“It’s missing. Her friend Cheryl Pullman said she’d lost it.”
“Did any of the residents here talk to Jenny last night?”
“She was out,” Sheila said. “Babysitting for Duncan Ross’s kids.”
“Duncan Ross from the board?”
Sheila rolled her eyes. “The very one. Never passes up cheap labor.”
“Anyone see her when she got home?”
“No idea,” Amanda said. “I was home last night, not here.”
“I saw her at suppertime,” Sheila said. “For what it’s worth, she seemed fine then.”
“You said she was taking Prozac for depression,” I noted. “Did that seem to be working for her?”
“Aye, she seemed to be feeling more confident and sure of herself recently,” Sheila said. “I really thought she was on her way.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “I’m sorry. You get entangled with the girls’ lives. It’s hard to distance yourself.”
“I only met her briefly, and I’m concerned.” I turned and caught sight of my own reflection underneath the red lettering. Jenny had come a long way and was on the road to better things. I admired her for taking a stand for herself. Even in death she had a right to be heard. If this was a suicide, I wanted to know why, and if it wasn’t, then I wanted to know what it was.
Amanda escorted us out of Jenny’s room and locked the door behind us. The door across the hall was ajar and Sheila knocked softly. “Cheryl? You doing okay, luv?”
There was no answer from within so Sheila pushed the door open farther. A woman sitting on the bed looked up and pulled the earbuds out of her ears. I could hear the throbbing of the music from six feet away.
Her face said she was in her mid-thirties, give or take, but the red-rimmed eyes that stared back at me were those of an old woman. “What’s happening?” she said, looking back and forth among the three of us.
“Just checking on you,” Sheila said.
“This is my friend Abi,” Amanda added, gesturing to me. “Cheryl’s had a wretched day,” she explained. “She’s the one who discovered Jenny this morning.”
“How horrible,” I said. “Did you wake her up every morning?” I cringed inwardly, realizing that was a reporter question, not a sympathetic bystander one, but it was too late, it was out there.
Cheryl looked slightly confused. “No. Well, yes, I mean if I haven’t seen her by seven fifteen or so, I go and give her a shout—so she’s not late to work.”
“You must’ve been close friends.”
Cheryl nodded. “I’ve only known her for a couple of months, but we’d got to be mates. I just can’t believe it.” Cheryl began to shiver violently. She reached for the blanket at the bottom of her bed and wrapped it around herself like a cocoon.
Sheila walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you let me bring up a tray? Some tea, or a bite to eat maybe? You haven’t had anything all day. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Cheryl shook her head. “I’m fine, really. I just need to get some rest.”
Sheila hesitated. “If you’re sure, but you let me know if you need anything in the night. You know right where to find me, and don’t worry about waking Nora. She’s a sound sleeper.”
Sheila and Amanda walked me downstairs and showed me out. I promised to stop by tomorrow after class to chat with some of the other girls. I didn’t say it aloud, but I had the distinct feeling that Cheryl from across the hall knew more than she was saying. If she wouldn’t talk, maybe someone else would.
I walked back to my car, unable to reconcile the police’s view of the situation. They saw the Prozac tablets and the words “No More,” and were content to conclude that they added up to suicide. That wasn’t enough for me, not after seeing Jenny the day before. Something happened between dinner and daybreak that caused her to wind up dead and I felt I owed it to her, and her friends, to find out what.
Chapter 6
I spent a restless night dreaming that I was in a small boat, on the sea, in the dark. I was alone. Not just spatially, but at the deepest level of my soul. Rudderless and adrift in my life with no control. Just before dawn I saw a young woman with her arms outstretched sinking beneath the water. Every time I reached for her, she slipped farther and farther away. I awoke drained, confused, and unrefreshed.
I forced myself to drink an entire pot of tea before I felt comfortable getting behind the wheel for the drive back into Edinburgh. I was more awake, but less than three minutes from home I already needed the facilities, so I turned into Balfour’s high street and pulled u
p in front of the building that housed the Bennett Logan Memorial Trust, sprinting past a surprised Trish.
“Hiya, boss. What’s up?” Trish’s voice echoed down the hall after me with annoying chirpiness.
“Be there in a minute,” I called. Lying awake last night, I’d decided that I needed to know more about Jenny Woodyard if I had any chance of understanding why she died. If anyone could find out more about her, it was Trish the social media queen.
“I need you to do me a favor,” I said, emerging from the loo. “See what you can find out about a young woman named Jenny Woodyard. At least, that’s her married name. She might’ve gone back to her maiden name after she left her husband. You’ll have to check. I want to know if she’s been active online recently, and especially look for signs that she’s been bullied or confronted. Anything out of the ordinary. Just let me know what you find.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“Keep up with the filing project I left you, and well, yes, see if you can find out anything about a place called Manorcare in Glasgow.”
“Will do. You comin’ by again later today?”
I hated to say no because I knew that meant Trish would be varnishing her nails and popping off to the pub for a long lunch. “Maybe,” I hedged. “I have to make a couple of stops in town today, but I plan to be back by late afternoon.”
“Right, well, I have some more wedding things to do so I may take off a bit early.”
Translation, don’t look for me after lunchtime.
* * *
—
At the university, I did my best to focus on my lessons, but honestly the minutia of chemical reactive rates in brewer’s yeast was drifting over my head. I cleared out as soon as the lecture was concluded and showed up at the Rest at lunchtime, anxious to see if anyone had more to say about Jenny and Duncan Ross. Sheila answered the door and showed me in to the kitchen. She introduced me to the two women sitting at the table before going back to serving up tea and plates of sandwiches. “Girls, this is Abi Logan. She’s a friend of Amanda’s.”
The reception was underwhelming. Neither woman so much as looked my way. “I was so sorry to hear about Jenny,” I offered the room in general and received a brief nodding of heads. “Have you heard anything more from the police?” I directed that question toward Sheila.
“They’re waiting for the results of some kind of blood test before they say.”
“I thought it was suicide,” the woman across the table from me said with a frown.
“The police haven’t confirmed that,” I pointed out. “I only met Jenny the one time, but I have to say she didn’t seem suicidal to me.” No response. “Either of you think she was suicidal?”
“Didn’t really know her that well,” the woman across from me said, claiming another sandwich from the platter in the middle of the table. “Name’s Peggy, by the way,” she said through a mouthful of egg salad.
I smiled encouragingly. Peggy was a bit plump, with broad shoulders and large hands that looked like they’d washed more than their share of dishes over the years.
“Jenny was a hard worker. A lot of what she did was doling out meds to her geriatric patients. She was very particular. Can’t see her screwing up her own meds, unless it was on purpose,” Peggy concluded sadly. “I thought this place was going to be safe from all the outside madness.”
“It is,” Sheila insisted. “The others will tell you. Right, Karen?” Sheila directed her question to the woman at the head of the table. So far she hadn’t even looked up from the food on her plate.
I studied her from beneath my lashes, not wanting to pressure her. She looked to be quite young, but whether she was shy or unfriendly was hard to tell. Her dark hair looked as if it had been rinsed in juice from Greer Templeton’s beets. The magenta-tinged tresses were thick and straight and fell just below her shoulders. She tucked one side behind her ear but left the other to hang across her face like a curtain. She reminded me of a sullen teenager.
“I’ve been here almost six months,” she said finally. She didn’t look up but methodically traced the grooves in the wooden table with her fingernail. “There’s never been any trouble like this.”
“Did you know Jenny well?” I asked again.
“Yea. She was a tough kid. Still had demons to face down, but the depression gets us all. She was healing and clawing her way back to a good place and she wasn’t takin’ shite from anyone.”
“That doesn’t sound suicidal,” I remarked.
“Tell the cops that,” Karen muttered.
“Was anyone making her life difficult lately? Had her husband been in touch?”
“She said he wasn’t around now,” Peggy volunteered.
Karen retreated behind her hair again as the sound of footsteps in the hall announced a newcomer. Cheryl paused in the doorway and I had the feeling she would’ve turned and bolted if she hadn’t already been seen. Instead she came in, grabbed a sandwich from the platter on the table, and sat down next to Karen.
Sheila joined us at the table. “Did any of you talk to Jenny when she got back from Ross duty?”
Karen looked up suddenly. As she raised her head, I caught sight of the fine white scar that ran down the length of her cheek. Something sharp and thin had left that mark. A knife, if I had to guess. She quickly rested her hand on her face, covering the mark, her elbow on the table, but she continued to look at me.
No one answered. “Did Jenny often babysit for Duncan Ross?” I pressed.
“He uses all the women here as his own private household help,” Peggy muttered.
I looked to Sheila and raised an eyebrow. I hoped if she got the ball rolling the others might chime in, especially if they saw that she was comfortable sharing with me.
“Nasty piece of work that one,” Sheila said, taking the hint. “Just the way he looks at you gives me the creeps, and that wife of his is a right mess. Gone most nights,”
“Avoiding him, I’d say,” Peggy interjected.
Sheila smiled faintly in acknowledgment. “She has a problem with the drink,” Sheila explained for my benefit, “and neither of them gives a damn about those kids. They’re left to run wild. I worked as a nanny for them for three weeks not long after I arrived here, but you couldn’t pay me enough to stop with those little monsters any longer.”
“Does Ross pay you for babysitting?” I asked the other three.
Peggy looked from Karen to Cheryl before nodding yes. She seemed reluctant to speak, almost as if she were seeking permission.
“You ask a lot of questions,” Cheryl observed.
“Amanda doesn’t trust the police to find out what happened to Jenny,” Sheila said point-blank. “Seems like they’ve already made up their minds. She does trust Abi, so if you have anything you think might help, out with it.”
I hoped Sheila’s honesty would help, not hurt. “Do the Rosses live nearby?” I asked, changing tack.
“Cross the other side of town,” Peggy said.
“If you’re babysitting, how do you get there?
“Bus.”
“And you take the bus home?” I prompted.
Peggy narrowed her eyes slightly and paused before responding. “Yes, if it’s not too late. Otherwise, Ross usually drives you back here.”
“So you’re alone with him in the car,” I said. The statement was greeted by a deafening silence.
“Is it a problem, being alone with him in the car?” I pressed.
Sheila looked back and forth between me and the other women.
Cheryl finally offered, “I was told to steer clear of him when I first came here.”
“Why?”
“He’s a handsy bugger who doesn’t take no for an answer,” she snapped.
“Is that true?” I asked Peggy, watching Karen’s face all the while.
; “ ’E’s never touched me,” Peggy said. “I suppose I should be glad I’m not his type, but I don’t escape completely. He’s got a nasty mouth on him. Sees your weak spots and plays on ’em every time. Calls me Piggy.”
I looked at her with eyes wide. “And you still went.”
Peggy nodded. “Needed the money, didn’t I.”
“He’s creative in the ways he gets what he wants,” Karen said finally. “Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s threats. He’s been known to threaten to tell your man where you’re hiding if you don’t cooperate. He’s a predator.”
Karen looked like the youngest in the group, yet for some reason the women were taking their lead from her.
“Good God.” I looked straight at Karen. “And you never reported him?”
“Our word against his, isn’t it,” she insisted. “They barely believe us when we say we’ve been brutalized at home. Try tellin’ ’em you were assaulted by the likes of Duncan Ross. You’d be laughed out of the cop shop.”
“If he’s such a jerk, why keep going back?”
“He pays extra if you’re willin’ to play his games.” Karen scowled. “We sure as hell don’t need him, but we all need his money. That’s the hard truth of it.” Peggy and Cheryl nodded in agreement.
“Did he threaten Jenny? Maybe told her he’d tell her husband where she was?”
“No idea,” Karen said.
I leaned my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands. What a mess. Duncan Ross had been unassuming enough last night, but I’d known plenty of men like him. One thing around their peers, and something completely different on their own turf. Small men who crave power and assert what little they have whenever they can.
I looked back at Karen. “Were you with him often?”
Karen shrugged. “For a bit, until new girls came along. He likes fresh meat.”
I turned to Cheryl. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you manage to steer clear of him?”
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