Jumping Rise

by S. W. Hubbard

  “So you’re saying the urge to use never left her?” Frank asked.

  Denise lifted her hands palm up. “Apparently, it never leaves any heroin addict. She could never even explain what would trigger one of her binges. It wasn’t stress or heartbreak or anything you or I could understand. It was this gnawing need. She told me it felt like there was something alive inside her...like that old movie, Alien.”

  Frank felt a connection to this woman. She seemed so much like mothers he’d met at PTA meetings and soccer games when Caroline was young—just a nice, normal suburban mom. He realized he felt more empathy for Caitlin Lupton and her family than he did for Blaine Timmons. And it was because Blaine fit his preconceived notion of a drug addict, while Caitlin didn’t. But Caitlin, while superficially more attractive and talented, had destroyed her family’s happiness just as thoroughly as Blaine had.

  Denise began speaking again. “She spent the last four years committing slow-motion suicide. When we said good-bye to Caitlin before this trip, in my heart I feared it might be the last time we saw her alive. This will sound terrible to you, but Caitlin had been so close to death so many times that I had prepared myself to lose her by overdose. But I never thought she’d die like this.” The exhausted mother slumped in her chair. “Murdered. She spent the last minutes of her life terrified, struggling to breathe. This...this murder opens up a whole new world of pain. Please, I’m begging you—find out who did this and why. I need to know.”

  Frank averted his eyes from her tormented face. “I’m going to find out, ma’am—I promise to do my best.”

  Denise shifted in the visitor’s chair. “This is what haunts me. Wasn’t it enough that these dealers poisoned her? Why would they suffocate her?”

  That question plagued Frank, too. Drug dealers didn’t normally murder their customers—bad for business. Yet Kendall had been so fearful of being detected when he’d dropped Caitlin off. “Your friend Regis Kendall seemed very concerned for his own safety when he took your daughter to the Mountain Vista. He seemed to think Caitlin’s dealers had been threatening her. Is that so?”

  “N-o-o-o, not that I was aware. But maybe Regis and Jack kept it from me so I wouldn’t worry. Worry even more, that is.” She cocked her head. “Surely, you’re not implying Regis knew Caitlin wouldn’t be safe at that motel?” Denise’s tone was puzzled, but not outraged.

  Frank wasn’t yet ready to tell her about Phyllis Gartner’s belief that Regis Kendall’s note had frightened Caitlin, so he answered the question with another question. “You and your husband and Kendall and his wife have been friends for a long time?”

  “Regis and my husband were childhood friends, and we took two family vacations when our kids were young. His wife and I never really hit it off, and after they split up, I haven’t seen her at all. So lately the get-togethers were just the boys.”

  Had Frank misinterpreted what Kendall had told him? He’d gotten the impression of a much tighter relationship. “But Regis accompanied Rachel to one of her festivals, right?”

  Denise crossed her legs. “He insisted on going to watch her perform, so she’d have someone in the audience just for her. It was a nice gesture, but I had lined up other mothers I know from the music circuit to help Rachel.”

  “May I ask why you and your husband didn’t divide the chaperoning responsibilities—one of you go with Rachel and the other stay home with Caitlin?”

  She hung her head. “That would seem logical, wouldn’t it? Except I’m extremely anxious on airplanes—Rachel would have to look after me, not the other way around. But my husband was reluctant to leave me home alone with Caitlin while he traveled with Rachel—not after her druggie friends broke into the house and robbed us.”

  Frank could see the complexity of their problem. “And this plan to send Caitlin to the Mountain Vista started with Regis Kendall?”

  “Yes, but we all discussed it, examined the pros and cons. Then Caitlin overheard us and insisted she wanted to do it.” Denise’s voice rose slightly. “She wanted to go to Trout Run so her sister could go on tour, and we could see her perform.”

  “She didn’t seem...concerned...about traveling there alone with Regis Kendall?”

  Denise’s hands tightened on the arms of her chair. “No. Why should she be? She’d known Regis all her life.”

  Frank allowed a beat of silence to hang between them.

  “What’s going on?” Frank sensed oncoming hysteria as Denise’s eyes darted back and forth. “Regis is out on the west coast on a business trip. He called us and said a state police officer tracked him down and was asking questions as if Regis were to blame somehow for Caitlin’s death. He was hurt, outraged, really.”

  “Ma’am, it’s our job to ask difficult questions. Sometimes people don’t like them. You’re aware Regis paid the cleaning lady at the Mountain Vista to give him information on Caitlin? Why not just stop by and check in on her?”

  Denise threw her hands up. “Because he wanted to know how she was doing, but he didn’t want her begging him to take her home. You’ve never been on the receiving end of Caitlin’s pleading.”

  Fair enough. Frank could remember handing down “no TV for a week” punishments to his daughter and then intentionally working late so he wouldn’t have to bear the consequences of the harsh sentence. But what about the fearfulness that Phyllis had reported? “He gave the cleaning lady a note to deliver to Caitlin, and she says when Caitlin read it, she seemed frightened.”

  “Why would you take the word of some random woman who didn’t even know Caity?” Denise let out an exasperated huff. “Regis told us his note said something like ‘Glad to see you’re doing well. Keep up the good work.’ Probably Caitlin was unnerved by the fact that he’d been checking on her, that’s all.”

  “Was Regis’s return trip to Trout Run to check on Caitlin part of the original plan you agreed to?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure there was a formal plan.” Denise threw back her shoulders. “The preparations for taking Caitlin to Trout Run were going on at the same time I was helping Rachel get ready for her tour. She was practicing eight to ten hours a day. It was up to me to get her performance wardrobe and do all the packing.”

  Frank refused to let up on this point. “When I asked Regis Kendall if he’d been back to Trout Run after dropping Caitlin off, he said no.” Frank paused. “He lied.”

  The accusation made Denise flinch. “You must have misunderstood. Or, or maybe he got worried that you were accusing him of something.” She straightened her shoulders. “He tried to help us and you’re treating him like the criminal instead of looking for whoever really killed Caity.”

  Frank studied Denise Lupton’s face. She no longer looked like a woman plagued by doubts. Defending her friend had lifted the gloom she’d displayed when she entered the office. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. One thing was certain: Regis Kendall’s explanations had convinced both Meyerson and the Luptons.

  Yet they left Frank uneasy.

  Denise rose to leave.

  “One more thing.” As Frank walked his visitor to the door, a random thought popped into his mind. “I’m curious why an artist like Caitlin didn’t have a better camera.”

  “Oh, she did—at one time. A top-of-the-line Nikon. But she pawned it for drug money long ago. When my mother-in-law had to go into assisted living, Caitlin asked if she could have Grammy’s old point-and-shoot camera. We figured she couldn’t sell something so worthless, so we let her have it. Lucky we did, since that’s how you found us.”

  After Mrs. Lupton left, Frank swiveled his desk chair so he could look out the window. His eyes focused on Doris, fussing over some pots of flowers she’d planted in front of the town office. But his brain didn’t process her actions. Instead, it churned over the conversation with Denise Lupton.

  She had come into his office distraught and seeking answers. But as their conversation progressed, it seemed to Frank that the mother had become not quite indig
nant, but certainly a little defensive. Denise probably felt that everyone was judging her decision to send Caitlin to Trout Run. But Caitlin was over twenty-one and seemed to be a willing participant in the plan. At first, Frank had thought exiling the addict to the Mountain Vista was weird, but the more he learned about each member of the Lupton family and their unique situation, the more sense the solution made.

  Still, something didn’t sit quite right, and Frank wasn’t sure what.

  Denise’s final words about trusting her daughter with a camera only because it was worthless haunted him.

  And a terrible idea arrived. Caitlin did have one thing left to sell.

  Her body.

  Chapter 36

  Endless rumination was getting him nowhere. Frank snapped to attention and grabbed the phone on his desk. Within a minute, he heard the mellow voice of Trudy Massinay on the other end of the line. The county social worker was willing to offer him her insights, and they made a plan to meet at her office later in the day.

  Frank forced himself to focus on other matters until the clock allowed him to set off for Elizabethtown, where Trudy had her office next to the county courthouse. He found his friend in the middle of her usual tsunami of forms, reports, and file folders. Frank had long ago stopped judging people on the orderliness of their offices. Meyerson was neat as a pin and lacked insight. Trudy was one step away from being a hoarder yet could slice right to the heart of a problem. He himself was somewhere in the middle—too much mess made him itchy and unable to concentrate. But he’d never seen the point of a paperless desk and an empty in-box just for appearance’s sake.

  “Frank! How nice to see you,” Trudy ushered him toward a chair stacked with professional journals and swept them to the floor. “I haven’t laid eyes on you since the Memorial Day parade.” Small iron-gray curls escaped from a clip unsuccessfully trying to impose order on her hair. Trudy’s face, always without make-up, beamed with natural warmth.

  Already Frank felt better, and they hadn’t even started talking.

  “Thanks for fitting me into your busy day,” he said. “I need some advice.”

  “More problems with Blaine?”

  Frank waved away the question—Blaine’s problems were in a separate league—and launched into background on the Caitlin Lupton case as Trudy listened intently. He ended with his conversations with Phyllis Gartner and Denise Lupton. “According to Phyllis, Caitlin was afraid of Regis Kendall, but Caitlin’s parents consider him a reliable friend. If he was threatening her, why did she agree to let him take her to the Mountain Vista? Why didn’t she tell her parents she was afraid of him?”

  Trudy thought before she spoke. “She’d lied to them many times before, right? Maybe she figured they’d never believe her over him.”

  Frank picked up a snow globe from the clutter on Trudy’s desk and watched the glittery flakes fly around the miniature town. A perfect little self-contained world. The Luptons had thought Trout Run was like this, but they were wrong. No real town is sealed off from the wider world. “I liked Mrs. Lupton,” Frank began. “She seemed like a nice, normal mom. Caitlin’s addiction had caused them all a lot of pain, but she still loved her daughter. Denise was distracted by Rachel’s needs. So she and her husband were willing to let their friend Regis come up with a solution to their problem. But I don’t think either of them would’ve let Caitlin go off with Kendall if they suspected anything amiss. So why did Caitlin agree to go to Trout Run with Regis Kendall if she was afraid? Or did Phyllis just misinterpret what she saw?”

  Trudy pushed a plump hand through her unkempt hair. “Come on, Frank—you know as well as I do that abusers are more likely to be trusted adults than creepy strangers—coaches, priests, boy scout leaders. We see a new scandal every month. Look at those young gymnasts abused by the team doctor. They warned each other about him, but they never told their parents what he did to them.”

  Frank lifted his hands. “Yeah, I didn’t understand that one, either.”

  Trudy offered him a rueful smile. “Kids want to please their parents. Even when the relationship is strained, even when there’s been defiance and rebellion, kids seek approval from the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally—mom and dad. But as parents, we often undermine the message that our love comes without strings. The cookie for eating broccoli...the extra hour of video games for getting the homework done...the car for straight As. Kids learn they have to give in order to get.”

  “Okay, you’ve made me feel guilty for giving my grandsons M&Ms for remembering to take their shoes off before they come in the house,” Frank complained. “But I still don’t understand the gymnasts...or Caitlin.”

  “The gymnasts were competing for slots on the Olympic team. Their success, their self- worth, was all tangled up with their parents’ ambition for them and their own desire to please. Each girl figured if she told her parents, all that would happen would be that she’d lose her shot at the Olympics. And don’t get me started on the power imbalance between young women and middle-aged men.”

  “Oka-a-y—that makes sense.” Frank still felt like he was groping down a dark hallway in an unfamiliar house, searching for the light switch. “But I’m not clear on how that translates to the Lupton family. Rachel was the competitive sister with a lot to lose. Caitlin had nothing to lose, so why not confide in her parents if Kendall had made advances toward her?”

  “Everyone has something to lose, Frank. Let’s figure out what that was for Caitlin.” Trudy rocked backward in her desk chair. “Off the top of my head, I’d say she didn’t want to disappoint her parents yet again. She seems to have loved her sister, so she wanted to give the three of them the gift of this trip to Europe. She could only do that by cooperating with the plan to go to Trout Run. If she complained about Kendall, her parents’ friend, they might perceive it as just another excuse to escape from their supervision so she could go back to using drugs.”

  Frank nodded. Now ideas were pinging through his brain. “And if Kendall was leaving her alone at the Mountain Vista, she probably thought she had nothing to worry about from him. But then he showed up, checking on her. Spying on her. But from what Sanjiv had observed, she hadn’t done anything wrong. There’s absolutely no evidence that she’d returned to using drugs. And Kendall didn’t try to visit her in her room. So what was she afraid of?”

  Trudy arched her eyebrows. “I would return to the earlier question: what did she have to lose?”

  “Her parents’ approval.” Frank saw where Trudy was guiding him. “But the loss of approval wasn’t related to her drug use, so....”

  Trudy looked at him like a teacher willing her student to come up with the answer on his own.

  Frank massaged his temples. “We’re maybe back to sex? Denise said they’d given Caitlin her grandmother’s cheap old camera because it was too worthless to sell for drugs. And that made me think of the one valuable thing Caitlin had that they couldn’t take away.”

  “Her sexual attractiveness.” Trudy didn’t mince words. “Kendall might have figured out Caitlin had prostituted herself for drug money and threatened to tell her parents.”

  Frank shuddered. “No father would want to know that about his daughter. But what was Kendall’s game? He’d tell the parents about the prostitution unless Caitlin had sex with him? If that’s what he wanted, why not sneak in to see her at the Mountain Vista?” His foot tapped a nervous staccato on the worn institutional carpet of Trudy’s office. “None of this brings me closer to understanding how Caitlin wound up dead in Mallard Lake. Except that I know Regis Kendall lied to me at least once. And I think he lied to the Luptons as well.”

  “I can’t help you with tracing her movements to Mallard Lake,” Trudy said. “But I’ll tell you this: In my experience, a man doesn’t suddenly become a sexual predator in his mid-fifties. Why did he get divorced? What happened to his kids? If you look into Regis Kendall’s background, you’ll find something.”

  “I checked. He has no record.�
��

  “I didn’t mean illegal.” Trudy leaned across her desk. “I meant nasty.”

  Chapter 37

  When Frank got back to the office, he tossed a cranberry muffin the size of a shotput onto Earl’s desk and asked, “Are you interested in assisting me with some deep background research on Regis Lupton’s wife and daughter?”

  Earl broke off a chunk of muffin. “Does that mean you want me to sift through their social media presence even though I did the afternoon patrol while you were in Elizabethtown and never got my filing done?”

  Frank picked up a stack of reports. “I’ll give these to Doris.”

  “No! She misfiles them, and then I can’t find anything.”

  “Fine. I’ll work on them.” The tedium of filing would give him a chance to think. The tangle of emotions and loyalties among Caitlin, her parents, her sister, and Regis Kendall baffled Frank. Kendall had seemed genuinely shocked when Frank had informed him of Caitlin’s death. But the ability to project empathy and caring was an essential skill for a true predator. Frank wished he could relive that interview now and watch Kendall with wiser eyes. Round and around went the theories in his head, and still he found no clarity.

  “Okay—you ready to listen?” Earl asked just as Frank finished filing the last report.

  He mistrusted his assistant’s timing, but he looked forward to his results. “Go.”

  “Regis Kendall has a presence on all the major social media platforms,” Earl reported. “His wife and daughter are only on Instagram, Facebook, and Goodreads. The wife and daughter are friends with each other, but neither one of them is friends with Regis.”

  “Hmm, so some bad blood there?”

  “Yeah, I guess it makes sense that Kendall and his ex aren’t social media friends, but the mother and daughter’s feeds are full of pictures of the two of them together, and they’re always tagging each other, but the daughter doesn’t follow her father anywhere.”