Chapter Ten
“Oh Hell.” Dallas threw the dead bolt and rested her head against the cool surface of the door. Reeling from Noah’s visit, she closed her eyes and delved inside herself for strength.
“That didn’t go well,” a voice said at her back.
Without turning, Dallas asked, “How did you get in?”
“The back door was unlocked. I saw Noah standing on the stoop when I got off the bus so I walked by then double-backed and waited until he left. I didn’t think you’d want him to see me.”
“Good thinking. He’s been hurt enough.” Dallas turned and looked at Allison. She wore a long-sleeved blue denim shirt and tight-fitting jeans with the knees blown out. Her long, straight black hair, that she normally left free, had been sheared to an inch from her scalp.
“You like?” she asked, patting the tips of her spiked hair.
“It’s very military-ish,” Dallas said, forcing a smile. Allison had debuted the day she graduated high school. After suffering through the astonishment of her parents and their subsequent bitter disappointment of probably depriving them of the grandchildren they eagerly awaited, she continued to fight discrimination every day of her life for her sexuality.
“Great. It’s the look I wanted.”
Dallas pushed off the door. “Let’s get comfy,” she said, leading the way to the living room. “Noah is never going to give up on me.” She offered Allison a seat on the sofa.
Allison nodded. “I’m spreading the word around campus about our love affair like you said. Hopefully, he’ll take the bait and make his move.”
Dallas watched as Allison bit the inside of her lip and gathered from the gesture that her partner in this plan experienced second thoughts about what they were doing. “Want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
She sighed and stared down at the carpet. “Someone killed Katie because of prejudiced thinking, and now you’re setting yourself up as cheese for the rat. You could end up in Meadow Rose beside your sister.”
“True, but I’m a trained professional. Katie was not.” Dallas waved off Allison’s fears. “Just so you know, if Noah doesn’t back off, things might get complicated.”
“You can always back out, or you can still tell Noah what you’re doing.”
“Katie’s killer has to be brought to justice.” Dallas shook her head, envisioning Noah’s face, his shock, disbelief and hurt at finding her in Allison’s arms. “And telling Noah is not an option for me.” Noah would not let her deliberately endanger her life for anyone, even for a noble cause. But Dallas had to be truthful with herself. The reason she was doing this was to ease her guilty conscience. She should have protected Katie, should have been able to save her. “I have to continue. I’ve come this far, and what I’ve already sacrificed would be for nothing if I give up now.”
“Your sister would understand,” Allison said.
Unbidden tears blurred her vision. She pulled in her bottom lip, fought her emotions and nodded. “She told me someone was stalking her, and I didn’t listen. I failed her.” Unable to hold back any longer, Dallas gave in and let remorse consume her, an indulgence she had refused until now.
Allison slid across the sofa and held her while she cried.
Moments later, embarrassed by her outburst, Dallas shrugged off the self-pity. “Let’s have a look at those files.”
“Did you have a hard time getting them?”
“I’m a member of the Hampstead PD now.” Dallas stopped and thought about what she said. “It still sounds strange to me. I never imagined leaving Bracebridge, let alone my job there.” Allison touched her hand, lightly as though to reassure.
“Did you make contact with Lily?”
Dallas experienced a moment of guilt for the lie she’d told. Why couldn’t she tell Lily the reason for her divorce as everyone knew it? Shame, she supposed. She considered herself unbiased, but she wasn’t, not really. If she were, she would have told Lily she was a lesbian. Another lie, true, but, as circumstances presently stood, the better population of Bracebridge thought her gay.
Unable to look Allison in the eyes, she nodded and became engrossed in unloading the files from her oversized handbag. “Lily and I hit it off pretty good, and we’re on our way to becoming best friends. I’m hoping she’ll feel sorry for me and invite me to dinner at her house. I’m anxious to see Abbott’s reaction when I ask him why his name was Katie’s last words. If he had anything to do with her death, I’ll be able to see it in his face.” She thought about Lily and wondered if she were involved somehow in whatever scheme her husband had going if, indeed, he had something going. Then, in answer to her unspoken question, she blurted, “She’s really a warm, loving person. Not at all like her mother.”
“You met her mother?”
“Oh, yeah, and I wish I could have been spared. She looked down her nose at me the whole time she drilled me about my pedigree.”
Allison guffawed.
“It’s not funny.” When Dallas pictured Alexandra O’Keefe-O’Ree standing on the sidewalk dressed in thousands of dollars worth of designer clothing, interrogating her, a cop, she laughed, too. “Okay, it was a little funny. I have a new appreciation for Lily having survived a mother like her. She turned out well adjusted and normal. Go figure. Oh, by the way, Mom wants you to come for a visit. She misses you.” Strange, she thought, that Alexandra brought her own mother to mind. They were not at all alike.
Allison acknowledged the invitation with a nod. “Did you come up with any reason why Katie’s last words were Lily’s husband’s name?”
“He practices civil litigation, but Katie wasn’t involved in any lawsuit, so that puts the kibosh on the idea.” Dallas stood and paced the length of the living room. “If victims know their attacker, they usually try to identify them in some way. Katie saying Abbott Fenwick’s name on her dying breath might indicate he was her murderer, but Noah is adamant Abbott is not who we’re looking for. So that leaves us with one other plausible choice. Katie was trying to tell me something. What that is, I still haven’t a clue.”
“It’s just one more piece to the puzzle.” Allison cleared off the coffee table and laid out the detective’s notes on all four women.
Dallas watched her take Katie’s photo in her hand.
With a delicate touch, she trailed a finger over Katie’s face. “She was really beautiful, wasn’t she?”
Tears clouded Dallas’s vision. The back of her throat filled with saliva. Unable to trust her voice, she nodded.
Without removing her eyes from Katie’s photo, Allison said, “I miss her so much. She’s gone, yet I see her everywhere. I threw out her Cocoa Puffs the other day. ” She shrugged. “Eight months. I figured it was time.”
Dallas didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say.
Allison shook her head and dried her eyes. “Enough of that. What suspects do the police have?”
“They seem to be focusing their attention on her classmates.”
“I’m one of her classmates. Am I one of the focused?”
Dallas decided to take the upfront approach. “Yes.”
“How serious about me are they?”
“Serious. From the force of the blows, the police leaned toward male perpetrators, but given your muscular physique and lengthy frame, you fit the profile. And where you don’t have an alibi for that night…. The police always look at spouses and lovers before anyone else.”
“Do you consider me a serious person of interest?”
“I wouldn’t be discussing the case with you, if I thought so.”
“Good. Because I’m not.” Allison stared directly at her.
Dallas caught a glimpse of vulnerability in her eyes. Nothing irritated the innocent like an intimation of guilt. If she had any doubt about Allison’s innocence in her sister’s death, it vanished. “I know.”
“Good.”
“Since we have that settled, let’s work on finding my sister’s killer.” Dallas sat on the end
of the sofa and picked up the detective’s notes on the first of the four victims, Doadie Roberts. “A.J. Lance, Junior is in all of the four girl’s Psyche classes. He looked real good to the cops for awhile, but they couldn’t break his alibi, so they cleared him. We won’t disregard him.”
Dallas moved to the next sheet. “The second POI,” she said, then explained for Allison’s benefit, “person of interest, is Kirk Jacobs.”
“Any relation to Hampstead’s esteemed mayor?”
“Son.”
“That’ll put a political crimp in their investigation.”
Dallas speed-read the notes. “Not according to this. Detective Winberry went after Jacobs like a pit bull on a T-Bone and got nothing. Zip. Nada. If he had anything to do with the murders, he covered his tracks extremely well.”
“What about police corruption? Payola. The mayor’s a formidable presence, has aspirations for the PM’s residence, I hear.”
“Winberry thought of that. So clean, he squeaked is how he referred to His Lordship.”
“No skeletons, huh. There’s always skeletons.”
Dallas pressed her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. “True. The next is Robert William Ferris.”
“Billy Bob.” Allison took his photo in her hand. “He came on to me at the start of my second semester.”
“How did he take rejection?”
“Not well. Made a remark that I should be thankful someone was interested.” Allison snorted. “Imagine.”
“Too bad he doesn’t fit the profile. The guy must weigh one-twenty fully clothed.”
“Something must have gotten the police excited about him.”
Dallas read Winberry’s notes. “Very vocal, against gays. Other than that, nothing links him to the murders. On to POI number four, Bo Warren.”
“He’s a weenie. Major Geekville resident.”
“Don’t underestimate the meek or the mild. This one, though, the police say has no motive. He looked good to the police for a while. Didn’t know what ‘dyke’ meant and Winberry described him as ingenuous.”
“Where do we go from here?”
Dallas pointed to the investigation sheets. “For starters, talk to each of these guys.”
“Why? You just excluded them.”
Dallas smiled at the puzzled expression on Allison’s face. “Winberry has. I haven’t. And as much as Winberry appears to have done a superlative job, it would be foolhardy to come to his conclusion without conducting my own investigation.” She stared at the mess of papers scattering the coffee table. “I’m still puzzled how Abbott Fenwick fits in. Maybe Katie was having a will made or something, and Fenwick was her lawyer.”
Allison shook her head, vigorously. “That makes sense, although she would have told me. It doesn’t track for me that Katie said his name as her dying words for any reason other than she was trying to tell us he was her killer.”
Dallas recognized that Allison wanted Katie’s last words to be her name. The knowledge had to hurt. She placed herself in the situation, and couldn’t picture Noah saying anything but her name he loved her that much, even now. The thought threatened to bring her down a road she had no intention of traveling. She distracted herself by focusing on the reason she asked Allison here tonight. “Maybe you should move in. The maniac is still on the loose. You don’t want to be his next victim.”
When the telephone rang, Dallas said, “The machine’ll get it.”
Six rings later, her voice sounded from the answering machine. “I’m, you know where. Do, you know what. Beep.”
“Hi, love. It’s Noah. Just wanted to say goodnight. I love you.”