Colton 911--Deadly Texas Reunion

by Beth Cornelison

  Atticus’s breathing grew harder and faster. His jaw clenched, and his hands fisted. “No. Do you suspect one of those...boys hurt my baby girl?”

  “No.” Summer raised her palms to calm the obviously agitated father. “We have no evidence they had anything to do with her death. Her roommates didn’t know their last names, and we thought perhaps she’d mentioned—”

  “No,” Mr. Eccleston interrupted, shaking his head adamantly. “Patrice knew how I felt about her dating at such a young age.”

  Summer shot a glance to Nolan, wondering if he’d had the same reaction to the father’s decree that twenty was too young to date. Seriously? Overprotective much? And yet all his overprotection hadn’t saved Patrice from the hands of a murderer.

  Atticus curled his lips. “I know what boys are after, and I promised her mother I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I—” he hiccuped a sob “—I would never have let her be alone with some grease monkey wannabe.”

  Sensing the male classmates were a dead end, Summer moved on. “Were you aware that the police found Army uniform buttons at the site where Patrice was buried?”

  Atticus rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers and sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. This is all still so...hard to talk about.”

  “I understand,” she said, giving him time to collect himself.

  “I, uh...seem to recall they mentioned some button to me, but... I saw no connection between Patrice and Army buttons and I—”

  The sound of a door opening stopped Atticus.

  “Dad?” The door slammed shut. “Whose Jeep is—” Ian appeared at the entry to the living room and pulled up short when he spotted Summer and Nolan. His eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?” He hitched a thumb toward Nolan. “Who’s this guy?”

  Nolan rose from the sofa and extended his hand as he introduced himself. Ian shook hands warily as Nolan said, “I’m helping Summer look for the person who killed Patrice. Are you Ian?”

  “Yeah. What’s it to you?” Ian said gruffly, then to Atticus, “What the hell, Dad? We already talked to the cops and gave her all we knew about the case.” He jerked his head toward Summer. “What more do they want?” He faced Summer, snarling, “Stop grilling my father and get your asses out there. My sister’s killer isn’t going to be found by harassing and upsetting my father!”

  Nolan hadn’t sat back down after introducing himself, and his posture grew defensive, his muscles tensing and his shoulders squaring. Summer popped up off the couch and eased in front of Nolan, surreptitiously putting a hand on his wrist in a silent signal asking him to stand down.

  “We’re not harassing him. And I’m sorry the questions are upsetting, but we have to have a complete picture of your sister’s life and connections if we are going to do our job. When you aren’t completely open with us and forthcoming about details you know, we can’t do our job.”

  Ian snapped his head back as if slapped, and his expression soured further. “Excuse me? Just what are you accusing us of? Are you sniffing around here trying to pin this on us?”

  “No one has said or implied that you—”

  “The hell you haven’t! I know how your kind work! Look at the family. The family is hiding something. What secrets can we dig up on the family?” Ian spat in a mocking tone. “Catch them in an inconsistency and drag their name and reputation through the mud!”

  “That’s not—”

  Ian took a giant step toward Summer and yelled in her face, “You’re pathetic! We did nothing wrong!”

  The man’s vitriol sent a shiver down Summer’s spine, but she stood her ground.

  In an instant, Nolan had shoved past her and stuck his nose in front of Ian’s. “Easy there, pal. Wanna step back and cool down?”

  “Ian!” Mr. Eccleston called as Summer warned Nolan with a low, “Don’t.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Ian shouted. “Either find my sister’s killer or give my father his money back. But if I see you around here harassing us again, I’ll call the cops!”

  Atticus shoved out of his chair. “Ian Harold Eccleston, you are out of line! Sit down and be quiet or leave my house!”

  Ian blinked at his father as if stunned to hear the sharp tone.

  Atticus was shaking like an autumn leaf in the breeze, and his face was flushed. His expression crumpled when he met his son’s glare, and his voice cracked as he said, “I will not have you disrespecting the people who are trying to help us catch Pattie’s killer.”

  Ian’s eyes were glacial as he stared at his father, and Summer felt that chill to her bones. She put starch in her spine, unwilling to let the men see anything but strength, competence and conviction. This was her first serious case as a solo investigator, and she had to show her clients they hadn’t been wrong placing their trust in her abilities. Stretching to maximize her petite stature, she raised her hands, saying firmly, “Gentlemen, please! I understand this is an emotional and stressful time for you. But Patrice is not served by your bickering.” Facing Ian, she added, “Our intention is not to harass your father, and I hate to cause further pain, but we need every crumb of information, no matter how trivial it may seem, to do our job. You never know what tiny tip may lead us to something that could crack the case wide-open.”

  Ian’s hostile expression didn’t change. Summer regarded him carefully. She knew everyone dealt with grief in their own way, but was Ian’s bitterness and anger indicative of something more nefarious? She’d been quick to dismiss Patrice’s family as suspects since they’d hired her, but had she been too hasty?

  Summer divided a look between the men. Taking a slow breath for composure, she continued with her questions. “Did Patrice have a friend named Melody?”

  “No,” Ian growled.

  “Not that I know of,” his father said.

  “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “No.” Ian’s countenance remained surly.

  “Ms. Davies,” Atticus said, drawing her gaze back to him, “if you don’t mind, I... I’m not feeling well and would like to rest. I have your number and will call if I think of anything else I think could help you.”

  Beside her she felt Nolan stir, and she cast him a quick, quelling glance. “Of course.” She took her purse from the couch and shouldered the straps. “Thank you. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  Nolan fell in step behind her, and she swore she could hear his teeth grinding and his mental gears turning. Ian, too, followed her to the door. She felt his minatory stare as prickles on the back of her neck as she crossed the yard to Nolan’s Jeep.

  “Wow,” she said as soon as the Jeep doors closed. “Someone needs to talk to a counselor about his grief. That is some temper he has.”

  Nolan grunted as he started the engine. “Yeah,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “I think I’m going to take a closer look at Ian and see what shakes out.” He glanced at her as if expecting a fight.

  She flipped up a palm. “Probably not a bad idea.”

  “Where to?” Nolan asked as he cranked the engine. “The office?”

  Summer twisted her mouth as she buckled her seat belt. “I guess. But on the way, let’s stop at the home health agency where Jane Oliver worked and see what they can tell us about Horace Corgan’s nurse. Maybe they have an idea where she might be.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Then after lunch we can go talk to Patrice’s classmates. It bothers me that her father and roommates know so little about them, considering Patrice apparently hung out with them a good bit. If her father is as overprotective as he seems—I mean, really, not letting your twenty-year-old daughter date?—I wouldn’t be surprised to find Patrice wasn’t rebelling a bit behind her father’s back.” She watched the parade of houses pass the passenger window as they left the quiet neighborhood. “Was she maybe sleeping with one of these guys? Doing drugs? Using a fake ID to drink? What
else was she doing behind her father’s back?”

  A chiming tone sounded from Nolan’s phone, and he pulled to the curb to answer the call.

  “Hey, Stu. What’s up?” To her he mouthed, My lawyer.

  Summer’s gut tensed. She hated the accusations that had been hurled at Nolan, forcing him to defend his honor, fight for his career.

  “Oh, really?” he said in response to whatever his lawyer said, then dragged a hand over his face. “We can prove that? It’s not just an allegation?” He listened for a moment. “Will they testify to that? It goes to state of mind, right?”

  Summer stared out the side window, trying not to act like she was eavesdropping, even though she totally was, to the point of straining to hear what the lawyer was telling Nolan. She caught divorce and revenge and something that sounded like haunt or maybe taunt?

  “So you’re thinking she had a change of heart, and when he found the video, she had to devise a new story to defend her actions?”

  Now she did shoot a curious look to Nolan. He held up a finger, saying, Hold on. I’ll explain in a second.

  “So when is your meeting with them?” Nolan closed his eyes, listening. “Why not? Stay on them. Of course it’s relevant! It could explain everything!” He nodded. “Right. Thanks for calling.”

  He disconnected the call and stared out the windshield for several excruciating seconds before he looked at her. “So Stu says that Charlotte was planning to divorce the senator a couple of years ago because he had cheated on her. Stu found a couple of Charlotte’s friends who are willing to testify to the fact that on a girls’ weekend to Cape Cod, she’d said she wanted revenge. She was going to have an affair of her own. She had gone so far as to plan how to flaunt her infidelity.”

  “She told these friends her plan? Seems kinda careless. Especially for an FBI agent.” She waved a hand, adding, “I mean, it’s great for you that she did, but jeez!”

  “I’m sure alcohol was involved, but yes. It was careless of her, no matter how much she trusted her friends.”

  “‘Friends—’” she made air quotes “—who are now ready to break her confidence and sell her out. Again, great for your case, but odd that these women would turn on her.”

  Nolan just grunted as he started the car again.

  She angled her body to face him more fully. “What else did these friends say?”

  “That her plan was to get pictures of herself having an affair with a younger man to make the senator jealous.”

  Summer made a disgruntled noise in her throat.

  “But...”

  “There’s always a but,” Summer muttered.

  “But...apparently her lawyer reminded her that, thanks to a prenup she’d signed, if she was caught in an affair, she would get nothing in a divorce. The senator comes from a great deal of inherited wealth, and his family wanted to be sure he protected that money. Once reminded of the terms of the prenup, she changed her mind about her revenge plan and was going to just grin and bear her husband’s philandering.”

  “What changed to make her come after you?”

  “Her friends claim the senator discovered the photos she made of us on her laptop. Charlotte had to come up with some explanation that would keep her husband from using the prenup to dump her and cut her out of all that money. So, of course, I became sacrificial lamb.”

  Summer said something unladylike, then, “So now what happens? You said these friends will give sworn testimonies?”

  “Yeah. Stu’s working on getting the women’s statements on the record before they change their minds or their stories. He’s also talking about counterlawsuits and suing her for defamation of character. But, really, all I wanna do is clear my name so I can get my job and my reputation back.”

  Summer wasn’t sure she’d be quite so forgiving if someone lied so egregiously and harmfully about her. “Won’t this information go a long way toward doing that? I mean, if you get the friends to back you up saying you were framed, wouldn’t the FBI have to drop the case against you?”

  “I wish it were that simple. Remember, the woman’s husband is a US senator. He has power and pull. Stu said when he first approached my bosses with this new information, they refused to talk to him. The Bureau is only trusting the facts they turn up with their own investigation. They promise to talk to the women, but...who knows what they’ll say when Charlotte, the senator and his band of lawyers are sitting in the room.”

  Summer groaned and leaned her head back against the seat. “Great.”

  He pulled back into the traffic lane, and she and Nolan made their way to the home health office where Jane Oliver was employed.

  As expected, they were told that their interviewee was not available. Dallas had mentioned something about Jane Oliver disappearing after Corgan’s death. The receptionist at Whisperwood Home Health confirmed that no one had spoken to or seen Jane Oliver since Horace Corgan’s death.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Does she have family in the area—or anywhere, for that matter?” Summer asked.

  The receptionist shook her head. “None that she’d have anything to do with. She had an ex-husband, but she wouldn’t see him if you paid her all the money in the world. That split was bitter, I tell you.”

  “No other family then? Parents, siblings, maybe some children?” Summer tapped her pen against her notepad, the lack of helpful information making her restless.

  “Sorry, no. None that I’m aware of.” The receptionist leaned to the side and waved to a nurse who was crossing the lobby. “Genny, come here, please. These folks are looking for Jane Oliver. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  The dark-haired woman wearing pale blue scrubs and a name tag that read Genevieve stepped over and eyed them warily. “Like I told the police when they were here a couple weeks ago, I haven’t seen her. I don’t know nothing about where she went.”

  “You haven’t heard from her?” Nolan asked.

  “No.” Genny shifted the stack of files she held from one arm to the other, and her expression seemed nervous to Summer. Or maybe just impatient.

  “Did she ever speak of a favorite vacation spot? Was there some place she liked to go to relax when the pressure was on?” Nolan asked.

  Genny gave a snort of wry amusement. “Who has time for vacation? We’re understaffed, and it’s all hands on deck to cover all the patients. With Jane gone, things are even tighter. I haven’t seen my kids in four days.”

  A wild thought came to Summer that prompted her to ask, “Do either of you know if Jane was a friend of Patrice Eccleston’s?”

  Nolan cut a surprised look at her, one eyebrow arched. The two women exchanged a blank look and shook their heads.

  “I don’t think so.” The receptionist tipped her head in query. “Wasn’t that the college girl they found buried in the Lone Star Pharma parking lot?”

  Genny’s mouth opened in surprise. “Do you think Jane had something to do with murdering that girl? That’s insane!”

  Summer raised a hand. “I didn’t say that.”

  The receptionist narrowed her gaze. “Maybe you think there’s a link between the murdered girl and Jane’s disappearance. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Summer sent a side glance to Nolan, who was watching the women with a honed intensity. She shook her head. “I’m not. But I’m trying to find out who killed Patrice, and I can’t ignore the fact that Jane has also apparently disappeared. If there is a link between the two women, it could help us find not only Patrice’s killer but what happened to Ms. Oliver, as well.”

  “I never heard her mention anyone named Patrice. She said she knew Chief Thompson’s sister, who was one of the Mummy Killer’s victims, because they were neighbors growing up.”

  Summer made a note of the Oliver-Thompson connection, though she didn’t see that it helped their case concerning
Patrice.

  A sense of defeat weighted Summer’s chest, and she sent Nolan a frustrated looked before asking, “Can you tell us anything about Jane or her patient Horace Corgan that might help us figure out what happened to her or what went down the day she disappeared?”

  Genny’s anxious fidgeting returned, and her face creased with concern and reluctance. “Look... Jane is my friend. I don’t want to get her in trouble. While I don’t know where she is, she was bragging before she disappeared about expecting to get a ‘big load of cash.’ She wouldn’t say from where or how, but she was counting on that money to pay off a bunch of loans and make a down payment on a new car.”

  Car. The word triggered a new thought for Summer. “Do you have any reason to believe she was involved with the illegal distribution of opiates in the area? We’ve heard from a few people that the owner of Kain’s Auto Shop is the local dealer, and he’s got help from nurses in selling prescription pain pills.”

  Genny straightened her spine. “I’ve heard that rumor, and it offends me. Nurses are healers. There’s not a nurse I know that would push meds to addicts.”

  “Not even for a ‘big load of cash’ to pay off loans and make a down payment on a new car?” Nolan asked.

  The receptionist gasped, and Genny divided a glare between Summer and Nolan. “I’ve said too much. I can’t believe Jane would be involved with anything so nefarious, and I don’t know where she is, so... I’m done here.” She leveled her shoulders and drew her lips into a taut line. “I have work waiting.”

  Summer stared after Genny as she stalked away, wondering what they were to do with this information.

  The receptionist broke Summer’s line of thought, muttering, “She might not believe it of Jane, but I do.”

  Chapter 9

  Summer faced the receptionist, blinking her surprise. “You believe Jane could have taken a payoff for something illegal?”

  The receptionist folded her arms over her chest and twisted her mouth. “Jane always struck me as the sort who’d cave to temptation and was willing to take shortcuts if it made her life easier. What’s more, I think there’s truth behind the rumors about nurses helping sell drugs. I know a couple folks who’ve suddenly been able to buy nice things, move to a better neighborhood or go on fancy trips to Italy and Paris. Things their salary had never afforded them before.”