Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Read online

  “When did he say that? Before or after you came into my office and said you were going to make Virginia Ferguson pay?”

  “Before—the day after the election, and then we talked like an hour before I came to see you.”

  “On the phone or in person? Does Rowan have a cell phone?”

  “On his cell phone.”

  “Did you know where he was when he called?”

  “No.”

  “When was the last time you saw him—really, physically saw him?”

  “The day before his funeral, ten years ago. I bought him bus ticket back to Chicago.”

  “So he could be back in Jubilant Falls—or he was.”

  “Which is why Virginia Ferguson identified Rick as her killer,” Anna said. “And as an identical twin, Rowan is going to have the same DNA as Rick. If there is DNA of any kind on the victim’s body, the police investigation will find it and my client will go to prison for a homicide he didn’t commit.”

  Anna pulled a manila envelope from her briefcase and pushed it across the table to me. “Here’s what information we have on Rowan Starrett. It’s all we’ve got to go on. We need your help.”

  “Please, Penny, I need you to find Rowan. Please. Don’t let get me convicted of something I didn’t do.”

  *****

  I blinked as I walked back into the white winter sunlight, Rick’s envelope tucked under my arm. I had no idea what I had. What would I do from here? Researching public records wasn’t hard—but, if what I had wasn’t public record, could I find him? I didn’t want to go back to the newsroom before I knew. If Rowan Starrett faked his suicide in order to disappear off the face of the earth, it could make a search for him more than problematic. It could make it impossible.

  At least I had one person I could turn to. Three blocks beyond Jubilant Falls’ struggling downtown was the historic district and its centerpiece, the huge Victorian home that my father, retired state trooper Walter Addison, called home.

  Dad had been the Jubilant Falls post commander as I grew up, both of us under the watchful eye of his mother, Grandma Addison. She’d taken over after my mother June disappeared, the victim of her own bipolar disorder and later, a drunk driver. Dad and I shared the apartment above the coach house as our own —those times when he worked nights, Grandma tucked me into one of her guest room beds.

  If anybody could find Rowan Starrett, Dad could.

  I pulled a cigarette and lighter from my purse. I wasn’t going to open the envelope until Dad could see it too. I lit my cigarette and, snuggling the collar of my winter coat around my neck, walked the three blocks through Jubilant Falls’ downtown south toward Dad’s.

  *****

  Despite it being close to three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, Dad was still in his robe and pajamas when I walked through the back door. He was sitting in his recliner, pointing the remote at the TV, pressing the buttons and cursing. As time passed, the arthritis in his knees kept him inside more and more, keeping him from the gardening he loved and curdling his already sour attitude. The cold weather made it worse, so what I was seeing was nothing new.

  Frowning, he turned and pointed the remote at me. “Goddamn cable TV. I can’t get the channel to change. Who the hell wants to look at a bunch of idiot women sitting around a table yammering about some stupid D-list celebrity trying to win a dance show?”

  I took the remote from him. “When was the last time you changed the batteries in this thing?” Without waiting for an answer, I walked back into the kitchen toward the junk drawer. I poked through the drawer until I found two new AAAs, opened the back of the remote and switched out the batteries. Back into the living room, I pointed the remote at the TV, punching in the ESPN channel numbers.

  Dad threw up his hands as the rerun of Sunday’s football game came on the screen. “That’s more like it. I don’t know why things have to be so goddamned difficult these days.”

  I laid the remote down on the end table beside him and handed him Rick Starrett’s envelope. “I got a project for you.”

  “What’s this?” Dad shook the envelope.

  “I’m not entirely sure. I haven’t opened it myself.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Rick Starrett—the guy who’s being held for Virginia Ferguson’s murder.”

  Dad’s eyebrows arched in interest. I could see the pain in his knees wasn’t as bad anymore.

  “He says his brother Rowan did it. Remember him? The hockey player who did time in federal prison for gambling and fraud?”

  “Ahhh. The one who fixed the hockey games? Then once he got out of Club Fed killed himself?”

  “You got it. Only Rick says he didn’t really kill himself. Rowan’s supposedly still around and he’s the one who really pulled the trigger.”

  Dad struggled his feet and pointed his cane toward the kitchen. “Let’s look at this where there’s some decent light and some fresh coffee.”

  *****

  Once the coffee was brewing, we opened the envelope and spread the contents across the kitchen table: a series of photocopied money orders with no name, Rick’s cell phone bill from the last few months with numbers highlighted in yellow marker, copies of envelopes addressed to “Job Listing” at a Chicago post office box, some letters. Nothing was original—everything was a copy.

  “I’m assuming the defendant’s lawyer has the originals?” Dad asked.

  “I think that’s a good assumption. Do you still have contacts with OSP? Any of your investigator buddies still there in Columbus? Anybody you can ask a favor of?”

  He shrugged. “It might depend on what you want to know.”

  I pointed to the cell phone bills, one of them from October, just last month. “I want to know what name these phone numbers are attached to and where that phone was when those calls were made. Rick is saying that he spoke to Rowan shortly before Virginia Ferguson was shot. If he’s telling the truth the cell phone call had to have been made here in Plummer County. Maybe somebody up at OSP headquarters can find out where that call was made.”

  “And if I can find out?”

  “It will prove to me that you can also pick up the phone to make an appointment to talk to your doctor about getting knee replacements.” I stood and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I love you, Daddy. Whatever you can do for me, I’d appreciate it. I’ve got to get back to the office. I’ll stop by on my way home tonight.”

  *****

  I managed to get my coat hung up in my office before staff started pouring through the door.

  “The police were here about Kay Henning,” Elizabeth Day leaned into the doorframe, her purple hair swinging into her eyes. “They want to get back into Marcus’s voicemail and see about those messages that were left the day she disappeared.”

  Graham was right behind her. “It looks like Kay Henning is in bad shape, but she’ll probably make it. I talked to Marcus today. He won’t go home to get some sleep. He wants you to call him later this afternoon. He’s wondering what kind of vacation time he’s got left to take.”

  I scribbled the request down so I’d remember. “I’ll find out and call him. Were the cops able to get into his voicemail? Who knows Marcus’s pass code for his voicemail?”

  Elizabeth smirked. “We’ve all got the same one.”

  “Great. Nothing like a little security.”

  “Oh, and Watterson has been up here twice looking for you.”

  Chapter 13 Kay

  The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the strong jaw, the broad manly shoulders shrouded in a leather Air Force issue pilot’s jacket… He’d been gone for nearly 20 years; now he’d come back to see me. Major Paul Armstrong at my bedside was proof that I was dying.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and for once I understood.

  His infidelity gave my children and me so much pain. His philandering even gave me PJ, whose Korean mother placed him in my care years ago, when she, like me, realized that the price of loving Paul came at too high a co
st. I was already in Marcus’s arms when I realized that painful cost, but not yet divorced when Paul’s jet crashed and made me a widow.

  “We have quite the history, don’t we?” I reached up to stroke his cheek.

  “Yes we do,” Paul said. “You know I always loved you, don’t you?”

  “You had a funny way of showing it,” I smiled and felt an incredible peace wash over me.

  The kids would be OK. Marcus—my stability, my forever love, would grieve—but he would go on. I would be with them always, like Paul was with the children, watching over them. The need I’d felt earlier to be at Lillian’s wedding, to be in Marcus’s arms again was gone. As a bright light enveloped me, I suddenly didn’t want to be anywhere else except inside that light. I felt myself moving toward it, wrapped in a peace and happiness I’d never known.

  Was this what it felt like to die?

  Then the voice I thought was Paul’s spoke again.

  “Mom? Mom? It’s me, Andy. I’m here.”

  My eyes began to focus. Andrew and a nurse were standing on either side of the bed. The nurse—young, pretty and brunette—was adjusting the IV tubing, and smiling at my son. He radiated that same magnetism his father had.

  Marcus, the antithesis of Paul with his thinning brown hair, his short stature and bandy legs, who loved me enough to raise another man’s children, was here, standing at the foot of the bed. He looked like he hadn’t slept.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “Glad to have you back.”

  “Glad to be back.” I whispered hoarsely.

  Marcus’s mouth began to move, but his words were slurred. I could see his mouth move, and clouds of bright colors floated around his face.

  “What?” I asked. “What? I can’t understand you.”

  “Don’t worry about it, honey. You’re still pretty dopey—we’ll talk later.”

  Talk to me about what? Before I could ask him, I slid back into darkness.

  Chapter 14 Marcus

  Kay was going to live. She was going to live. As Wednesday dawned, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Could we fix our marriage back to where it was before? I only hoped so.

  Andrew gripped his mother’s hand and grinned at me.

  “She can talk!” he said.

  “Yes. Yes, she can,” I said softly.

  The nurse finished her duties and adjusted Kay’s blankets. “Her surgeon will be through here probably around ten this morning,” she said. “If you two want to go get some breakfast, you’ve got plenty of time.”

  “I ate on my way over here,” Andrew said. “You go get something, Dad. I’ll stay here with Mom. I’ll call PJ and Lil and let them know what’s going on.”

  I nodded, kissed Kay’s forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I whispered.

  Heavily drugged, Kay mumbled something in response.

  I stepped into the elevator, riding down to the basement cafeteria. As I walked silently through the line, surrounded by hospital staff and patients’ families, I couldn’t keep the memories of that disastrous weekend in Seattle from filling my head.

  *****

  After lying blatantly to my wife, I ended the phone call and gathered my few belongings. Hopefully Charlie would be gone from my original hotel room—as the featured author, she was part of Saturday’s early morning panels on research and character development, then she would speak at tonight’s dinner.

  Hopefully she would also be sober—or I could avoid her completely. We weren’t on any panels together today, thank God. I had one with other first-time authors and another book signing; there was lunch then a panel on Swedish mysteries, and another on Sherlock Holmes by a local academic, then the keynote remarks at dinner, where Charlie would speak again. Sunday’s schedule included Seattle homicide detectives talking about their jobs and the basics of police investigations.

  I knocked at the door before sliding my key card through the lock. There was no answer. I opened the door: Charlie was gone, but on the night table was a short note, written on hotel stationary.

  Marcus—

  We make a beautiful pair of bookends, don’t we? Missed you this morning, my darling, but am looking forward to seeing you again tonight. Sit with me at dinner.

  Charlie

  The hell with the rest of the conference—I had to leave and leave now. I threw my clothes into the suitcase, grabbed my sport jacket, my briefcase containing my laptop computer and left.

  I paid my bill and grabbed the first taxi to the airport, practically running out the door of the cab through the airport lobby to the airline counter.

  “I need to change my flight back home,” I said. “If I could get on the next plane back to Collitstown, please?”

  “Certainly, sir.” The haggard middle-aged airline employee wore a cheap polyester uniform and glared at me over her white plastic reading glasses as she feigned sounding pleasant. “I’ll need to see your driver’s license or any other identification.” A lock of her gray-brown hair swung across her face. She continued to glare.

  I reached into my breast pocket to get my tickets and felt something stringy and slick jammed into the pocket next to my wallet. Without thinking, I pulled out the wallet—the agent smirked, and then guffawed.

  It was Charlie’s red satin thong, wrapped around my wallet.

  *****

  The elevator stopped its gentle downward drift and the doors hissed softly as they separated. A sign pointed to the hospital cafeteria, down the hall to the left. As I stepped from the elevator, a painful realization struck me.

  My lies, however casual, however designed to protect my darling, darling Kay had come home to roost.

  The insistent phone calls we got at home, forcing us to change our telephone number, weren’t from readers as I told Kay they were: a legion of goofy fans. While a few of the calls were truly fans, nice earnest folks who truly admired my writing and hoped for a few words that inspired their own writing—it was largely one voice.

  One frightening voice.

  The man who left the repeated voice messages in the newsroom was no man.

  The police wanted to listen to those voicemails, thinking they might have something to do with Kay’s kidnapping and gunshot wounds. If I hadn’t overslept and Elizabeth Day had never taken those original calls and forwarded them to my newsroom phone, I would have heard that voice—Charlie’s gravelly voice.

  I never saw her after that weekend in Seattle. I made certain we never traveled together again, although our book tour continued through another six cities. I arrived a day earlier and made certain that my schedule never ran anywhere close to hers. If she spoke in the morning, I never came out of my room to speak until the afternoon. I signed books early in the morning, when she was sleeping off her late night binge. I left well before she did—or well after.

  I changed my home phone number. I changed my cell number. I couldn’t change the newspaper’s phone number, so she still haunted me.

  The fact was that the mystery world’s best selling author was a stalker.

  My stalker.

  If I’d been honest when this whole mess began, if I’d arrived at work on time, if I’d talked to her, I could have saved my wife from being shot.

  I might have even kept her from leaving me.

  I stopped outside the hospital cafeteria door and sighed.

  The police wanted to talk to me and now, I would tell them the entire story.

  Chapter 15 Addison

  “The publisher wants to see you.” Dennis Herrick punctuated his sentence by pushing his thick-lensed glasses up his nose.

  I looked at my assistant editor and knew it was serious.

  “Yeah—you’re the second one to tell me. Do you know what it’s about? I just got back in the office.” I sighed and tossed my notebook on my desk.

  Dennis shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “Jane down in advertising was telling me there’s rumors of more furloughs the first quarter of next year. Maybe it’s about that.”r />
  Jane was the advertising department’s secretary. If I couldn’t find Dennis, he was usually hanging around at her desk. One of these days I was going to ask him if they were dating, but not now.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said and headed downstairs, past the advertising department and the front office staff to the hallway that led to J. Watterson Whitelaw’s mahogany-lined office.

  As I walked down the hall, I passed framed Journal-Gazette editions of local importance: the end of World War I, V-E Day and V-J Day, Nixon’s 1974 resignation and the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing with the Pulitzer Prize winning photo of an Oklahoma City firefighter carrying the bloodied body of a gravely injured baby.

  At the end of the hall were two final framed editions—one was the Sept. 12, 2001, edition with the World Trade Towers crumbling and a simple headline: UNDER ATTACK. I’d put that page together myself as tears rolled down my face.

  Beside that edition hung the front page with Rowan Starrett holding the Stanley Cup aloft, following the Detroit Red Wings’ 1997 win over the Philadelphia Flyers.

  His black curly hair, so much like his brother’s, was wet from sweat and plastered to his forehead. His grin—missing his front four teeth like most hockey players—was wide and triumphant and victorious.

  That was no Associated Press photo. We’d sent a sports writer to cover the game. I still had the originals and the negatives in my desk.

  The following year, he would be traded to the Black Hawks and it would be revealed that Rowan had bet extensively—and lost—against his own Red Wings.

  The year after that would be the first of many convictions for fraud, theft, drugs and gambling. When he began missing the opposing team’s shots at the goal more than usual, Chicago sports writers began calling him “The Sieve.”

  When it was revealed that he intentionally missed those pucks to fix his bets, he was suspended for a season. When he couldn’t pay his bookie, he was beat up and hospitalized. When investigators learned the extent of his gambling debts, and when prominent Chicagoans, came forward to tell how they’d been conned so Rowan could pay those debts, he was banned from the National Hockey League for life.