The Last Thing She Said

by Lauren Carr

  “Is that because you don’t trust yourself?” Thomas asked with a cruel chuckle.

  Chris shook his head. “No, I trust myself and I know Helen trusts me. It’s not Helen’s rule. It’s mine. I don’t want Sierra to get the idea that it’s okay to allow herself to be left alone, at her age, with any man—even one she trusts.”

  Thomas paused. His hands trembled when he got up from his seat and paced the length of the living room.

  Lying next to Chris’s chair, Sterling watched him move back and forth.

  Chris was about to announce that he had to leave when Thomas stopped. He stood over him when he said, “Fact is you’ve done a pretty good job of inserting yourself into my family.”

  It was Chris’s turn to become silent.

  Thomas dropped back into his seat. His eyes met with Chris’s. “Here’s the score. Yeah, I divorced Helen, but I didn’t divorce Sierra.” He patted his chest. “Sierra is my daughter. Not yours. She’s my only child. I came up here to reconnect with her … and Helen. I made a dumb mistake and because of that, my daughter lost her family. I’m trying to make things right.” He held onto Chris’s gaze. “But I can’t do that with you in the picture.” He cocked his head at him. “Now, if you love Sierra as much as Helen claims you do, you’d want what was best for her. What’s best is to give her back her family.” He reached across to place a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “We’re both men here. I’m asking you, as a gentleman, to give our family a chance. The only way that can happen is if you do the right thing. You know what that is, don’t you?”

  Even though Chris had an inkling of the reason for Thomas’s visit, the words swirled around him and stabbed him in the heart. It must have shown on his face.

  Thomas smirked. “Yeah, I think you do,” he said in a low voice.

  As the sun began spilling its warm rays across the valley, owners of the outdoor cafés lining Shepherdstown’s West German Street set up tables and chairs for patrons to enjoy their gourmet coffees and breakfast fare in the morning sun.

  Bruce traveled from his Virginia winery to bump into Robert Sellers during his break between the breakfast and lunch crowd at his café on the street corner across from Shepherd University’s campus.

  During his many years in Virginia politics, Bruce had occasion to attend several events at the Bavarian Inn, which had provided ample opportunity to get to know the banquet manager. However, he had never been aware that his friend was a witness in such a famous case.

  Robert Sellers was retired, but not ready to give up his love of good food and serving it to hungry patrons. The café was busy with university students sipping gourmet coffees and assorted baked goods when Bruce arrived during what should have been a mid-morning lull.

  Inside the shop, the clerks behind the counter were busily filling orders while their boss enjoyed the warm morning sun at one of the tables outside. A stocky man, the café owner was impossible to miss with his bushy eyebrows and mustache that seemed to have a life of its own.

  “Perfect morning for a fresh cappuccino.” Bruce saluted him with the mug he had purchased from inside.

  “Judge Harris! How great it is to see you!” Robert hurriedly folded his newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and jumped from his seat to clasp Bruce’s hand and pat him on the shoulder. “It has been so long. Why have you become a stranger?”

  Bruce took the seat Robert offered across from him. “I’m not a stranger.”

  “You don’t come around anymore,” Robert said. “Guess you’re just too busy now that you’re a big important winery owner. How’s that boy of yours doing? Last I heard, he was going to college.”

  “Now it’s law school,” Bruce said with a sigh.

  “Following in his daddy’s footsteps,” Robert said with a laugh. “Maybe a future attorney general?”

  “I hope not. I was hoping he’d follow in his mother’s footsteps and become an architect. But no, he wants to be a big flashy lawyer.” Bruce grumbled.

  “There are good lawyers,” Robert said. “Honest ones. Ones with integrity like you.”

  “Few and far between, I’m afraid.” Bruce took a sip of his drink. “Speaking of honesty, I stopped by because I heard your name the other day.”

  “I hope it was something good.”

  “Maybe. I never knew that you were a witness in the Livingston case.”

  Robert’s face was blank. Slowly, realization filled it. “Oh, you mean when Mercedes Livingston and her husband got kidnapped.” He pointed in the direction of the Bavarian Inn at the other side of the campus. “Her husband was staying at the hotel for a conference. There was a big fancy banquet that night. I saw him walk out while I was talking to the event coordinator. I didn’t even know he was Mercedes Livingston’s husband. He got in the car with her and no one ever saw them again.” He pointed in the opposite direction toward the freeway several miles away. “They dug him up when they were putting in the bypass about thirty years ago.”

  “Did you see Mercedes Livingston that weekend?”

  “She was a famous author, right?” Robert chuckled. “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have known her from Adam.”

  “Did you see who was driving the car George Livingston got in?”

  Robert’s face screwed up in thought. “I …” His voice trailed off. “It was getting dark and I wasn’t really paying attention. Like I said, I was talking to that event coordinator. Only reason I knew who he was was because she’d told me.”

  “She told you?” Bruce asked. “What exactly happened?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m retired and need a hobby,” Bruce said. “I research old murder cases. This is a local one, so I thought I’d check into it.”

  “Whatever turns you on.” Robert chuckled. “I was working in the kitchen—getting stuff ready for the banquet. Things were hopping. We had over a hundred mouths to feed. Then suddenly this lady”— he snapped his fingers— “What was her name?”

  “Patricia Baker.”

  “Whatever.” Robert waved his hand. “Patricia. She comes in and asks me to join her outside to go over the schedule for serving the courses. I wanted to go over it in the kitchen on account that I had stuff to do, but she insisted that we go outside because she wanted a cigarette. Well, the customer is always right. So we went outside. We were going over the time schedule for serving the courses when this guy wearing a jacket and a ball cap came out of the main door. He called over to her.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Something like ‘Hey, Pat! You got everything set for tonight?’ She yelled back to him that we were going over the schedule and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Livingston. Everything will be perfect.’ Then she asked him where he was going because the banquet was starting in a few minutes. He said he was going to dinner with his wife, but not to worry because he’d be back in time for the presentation. Then, he got into this sweet red Camaro and they drove off. That’s when she told me that that was her boss, George Livingston.”

  In thought, Bruce rubbed his chin. “This was about seven o’clock in the evening. Was the sun setting at the time?”

  “I told you. It wasn’t dark, but it was getting there.”

  “And he was wearing a jacket—”

  “One of those long coats like the spies wear.”

  “Trench coat.”

  Snapping his fingers, Robert pointed at him. “Exactly.”

  “And a ball cap.”

  “Washington Nationals. That I definitely remember.”

  “George Livingston was from New York,” Bruce said. “Born and raised.”

  “Oh? Is that significant?”

  “Maybe.” Bruce sat forward in his seat. “Did you ever see George Livingston’s face?”

  Robert Sellers’s eyes grew wide. They rolled from one corner to the other before he slowly shook h
is head. “Actually … now that I think about it. No.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The local state police barracks was in Kearneysville, on the way out of town.

  Late in picking up Helen, Chris fought to keep his truck’s speed under the speed limit on the bypass—the same bypass that had been under construction when George Livingston’s body was discovered.

  Saying nothing about Thomas’s visit, he had texted Helen that he would be late, to which she had replied that she was in a meeting. “Come on back to my office when you get here.”

  The barrack’s entrance contained a bullet proof breezeway between the outer door and the security door.

  When she saw Chris with Sterling on his leash approaching, the desk sergeant buzzed them inside. She welcomed the German shepherd. “Hello, Sterling! My main man! How are you doing, old buddy?”

  His tail wagging and his ears back, Sterling planted his front paws on the counter. The service window prevented him from greeting her with a kiss. His tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, he could only pant and paw the counter as if to dig his way to her.

  “The lieutenant said for you to go on back.” The desk sergeant pressed the button for them to enter the office area.

  Darting ahead of Chris, Sterling raced down the corridor and through the door to the reception area to properly greet the desk sergeant. She had a dog biscuit waiting for him.

  “Has my favorite retired canine been a good boy?” She wrapped her arms around the dog, who licked her face with such enthusiasm that her eyeglasses slipped from her face. “Does my big handsome boy want another biscuit?”

  Sterling threw his head back to answer her with an equal mixture of a whine and a bark.

  Unable to see around his tongue, she groped for the biscuit jar on her desk.

  Leaving Sterling with the desk sergeant, Chris continued his way to the corner office of the state police’s chief of homicide, Lieutenant Helen Clarke. He had his hand on the door lever and was about to press down on it to enter when he recognized a man’s voice from inside the office.

  “Of course, we found Patricia Baker’s disappearance suspicious,” Kevin Crane said. “That’s why the Fairfax County police called us in.”

  Chris pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  Kevin Crane twisted around in the chair in which he had been lounging. Seeing Chris, a wide grin crossed his face and he rose to his feet. “Matheson! I would say what a surprise but when Clarke said she couldn’t talk very long because she had an appointment and was taking the rest of the day off, I deducted that you would be swinging by.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of a framed picture on the credenza behind Helen’s chair. It was a sweet picture that Sierra had snapped of the two of them on Christmas. After a day filled with presents and feasts, Chris and Helen had curled up together on the sofa and fallen fast asleep in each other’s arms. The picture was so good that Helen had framed and displayed it in her office.

  “Kind of dressed up for a spring day out.” Kevin noted Helen’s turquoise pantsuit, which was a couple of steps up from her usual slacks, sportscoat, and lace-up shoes. “You’re not going to the Bavarian Inn by any chance, are you?”

  “Actually, we’re going to Deep Creek Lake for lunch,” Chris said before Helen could answer. “The weather has been so nice that we decided to take a mental health day.”

  “Spencer Inn. Good choice.” A wide grin crossed Kevin’s face as he dropped back into the chair. He crossed one long leg over the other. “One of my wife’s and my favorite places. Did you know the owner used to be a homicide detective in DC?”

  “Mac Faraday,” Chris said. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “I’d run into him a few times when he was with the major crimes unit.” Kevin tapped his temple. “Very clever. Just so you know, the Spencer Inn gives discounts to law enforcement and first responders, even retirees. Show them your ID and you’ll get fifteen percent off the entire order.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Chris said. “We’ll be sure to take advantage of that.”

  “Guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  Chris arched an eyebrow and cocked his head at him.

  “I’d realized that the case file I gave to you yesterday may have been out of date,” Kevin said. “I thought I’d stop in here to see if the local police force has learned anything since Livingston’s body had been uncovered. At the very least, make them aware that they can stop looking for Mercedes Livingston’s remains.” A salacious grin crossed his face. “I didn’t realize you already had such a close connection with the locals.”

  “It does help cut through the red tape.” Chris lowered himself into the chair across from the retired agent. “I heard you updating Helen on Patricia Baker’s disappearance. I was surprised during my research to discover that she’d gone missing only a month after Livingston’s abduction. Funny that none of that made it into your case file.”

  “Nor did Gavin Fallon’s murder two weeks after that,” Helen said.

  “They weren’t left out of the official records at the FBI,” Kevin said. “Remember, what you have is the unofficial folder—a copy of my own private file. The Livingston case was huge. By the time George Livingston’s body was uncovered ten years later, the case had gone stone cold, and I’d been long reassigned.”

  “But you were still the lead detective when Patricia Baker went missing,” Chris said.

  “Are you accusing me of being so dense that I didn’t make the connection between her being the last one to see Livingston alive and her suddenly going missing?” Kevin chuckled. “We did make that connection. Unfortunately, it ended up being a false lead. Eighteen months after her disappearance, the sheriff’s department nailed a serial rapist responsible for at least fifteen rapes over a two-year period. Baker’s home was right smack in the middle of his territory. I got a shot at him, and he confessed to breaking into Baker’s house and raping her. When she put up a fight, he killed her. Unfortunately, the guy was so strung out at the time of the attack that he couldn’t remember where he’d dumped her body.” He shook his head. “If Baker had anything to do with George Livingston’s kidnapping, I don’t see how she did it.”

  “She was in his room with him shortly before he disappeared,” Helen said.

  “We have statements from two witnesses who saw George Livingston after she’d been in his suite.”

  “What about Gavin Fallon?” Chris asked.

  “What about him?”

  “If they truly believed it was nothing more than George and his wife having a car accident out in the country, why call in the feds?” Chris lifted a shoulder. “In particularly, their old pal who happens to be an FBI agent. That smells like a cover-up to me.”

  “I don’t get involved in cover-ups, especially for the likes of Gavin Fallon.”

  “I thought you two were old pals,” Chris said.

  “Classmates,” Kevin said with a wag of his finger. “You weren’t paying attention, son. We were never friends. Fallon. Billingsley. Livingston. Yeah, we all went to the same boarding school. But even in boarding school, there was a hierarchy. I went to that school on a scholarship—only way I could have gotten in. My parents had big dreams for me making the right connections to climb up the ladder to heights they could never make.” He shook his head with a chuckle. “I wasn’t a part of Fallon and Billingsley’s tight little group. To answer your next question, no, I wasn’t bullied either. I was just”—he shrugged his shoulders— “pleasantly invisible.”

  “Pleasantly?” Helen asked.

  “Since they didn’t notice me, I was able to observe without being noticed. A trait I used very well when I joined the FBI.”

  “What type of things did you observe?” Chris asked.

  “Gavin
Fallon was into drugs and porn,” Kevin said. “Every month, when the latest issue of Playboy came out, he would sneak off to drink scotch and fantasize about the centerfold.”

  “How fitting that he died doing heroin and surrounded by porn,” Chris said. “What else did you observe?”

  “Kyle Billingsley had a lot of Daddy issues. Mercedes said in her letter that he was the only one she had told her plans to. Between that and the kidnappers having him deliver the ransom, I refuse to believe that he wasn’t involved. I personally handed the bag with the ransom to him. He had it in his possession for over an hour before the drop. We couldn’t keep him in our sights the whole time while going back and forth across West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He could have switched the bags any number of times without us seeing.”

  “But there was a tunnel in the root cellar that your people didn’t know about until the next morning,” Helen said.

  “Which creates reasonable doubt that the kidnappers didn’t grab the ransom without us knowing it,” Kevin said. “That’s the only reason Kyle never got arrested. His attorneys would point to that tunnel and the jury would acquit.”

  “Didn’t your people keep Kyle under surveillance after the payoff?” Chris asked. “I assume you managed to get warrants to check his financials for any sign of unexplained wealth.”

  “Yes, and I’m sure you already know the answer to that. Not a penny of it turned up. All that means is that he had set up a really good laundry service to send it to.” Kevin stood up from his seat. “Take my word for it, Kyle Billingsley is our guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t kill George Livingston out of jealousy over becoming the new heir apparent.”

  “Maybe.” Chris rose with him.

  “Maybe? Are you thinking of looking elsewhere?”

  “Well, from what you’ve said, you’ve been focused on Kyle Billingsley for the last forty years and it’s gotten you nowhere. Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look elsewhere.”