Dead Wrong

The two women left, Will’s mom promising to keep him informed. Then, he and Beth rehashed what they knew, Beth clearly upset.

“That poor, poor girl,” she kept saying. “She was your age?”

“A year younger.”

“Twenty-eight, then. Only twenty-eight.”

He finally persuaded her to go to bed, in part by heading for his own. With the house quiet and dark, only his bedside lamp on, Will sat up against a heap of pillows and tried to read, but kept finishing the same page without remembering a word.

He was tired, but at the same time wide awake. Antsy. Feeling as if he should do something. Fight or flight. Will recognized that he was in shock, reliving the hours after Gilly’s body was found, when a thousand, if onlys and I should haves had run crazily through his mind as if he were on crack. Replay, replay. Change the ending. He’d kept trying, over and over, until he was crazy and slammed his fist into the wall. He hadn’t even noticed he’d broken bones for a while, the pain nothing, nothing, compared to the agony in his chest.

His book fell to the bedcovers, forgotten. He couldn’t shut out the memories, the horror.

Amy, face alight when she saw him, waving in delight. “Will! Over here!” Gilly laughing up at him, staring at him with hate that in his imaginings became terror. Her face, Amy’s face, one and the same.

Pulling himself back from the abyss, Will tried to remember how well Gilly and Amy knew each other. They hadn’t become friends—nothing like that, but Amy was certainly part of the crowd he’d introduced Gilly to. They had looked a little bit alike. Both five-eight or -nine, leggy, boyishly slim, naturally blond. Neither blue-eyed. Gillian had had pale, almost sea-green eyes, Amy… He couldn’t quite picture them. Brown? He flashed on Trina Giallombardo’s brown eyes, assessing, accusing, judging, because he’d lost it with his mother. Angry at her intrusion, he shook his head and returned doggedly to his struggle to see Amy Owen. No. Not brown. Flecks of yellow and green.

Dead. Because, like Gillian, she was tall and blond and willowy? But their killers weren’t the same man. Couldn’t be the same man. Mendoza was guilty, guilty, guilty. Scum who had no business hitting on Will’s girlfriend in the bar, becoming enraged because she’d rejected him, raping, murdering, taunting.

Had Amy been chosen precisely because she looked like Gillian? A copycat crime required a copycat victim. But who in hell would imitate something like this? Could Elk Springs really have spawned two monsters? Copycat monsters?

It made no sense. None of it made sense. Gilly’s murder by a man who’d hot-wired cars and fenced stolen goods but never committed a violent crime. This one now, six years later. Why six years? Why now?

Why two women Will had known? A stranger, killed exactly like Gillian, would have been bad enough, but Amy! Less than a week after they met again, talked about old times, flirted a little.

He went cold. Was that why she’d been chosen? Because he knew her? Because he’d flirted with her? Because, like Gilly, she’d once meant something to him?

But that made no sense either. He’d dated her a few times. Kissed her. Had sex with her once—after they’d both had too much to drink at a party. So what? He’d dated and kissed a dozen girls or more in high school. Slept with several. Had a couple of girlfriends who lasted months. One nearly a year. He knew Nita and Christine both were still around. Why not one of them? Why Amy? Opportunity? Just because in a small town there were only so many look-alike blondes?

Why? God, why? he begged, even as he knew he’d get no answer.

CHAPTER THREE

LIEUTENANT PATTON HAD somehow kept word of the murder out of the morning papers, but they all knew it would be on the five o’clock local news.

The downside was that Trina had to be the one to tell many of Amy Owen’s friends and co-workers about her death. The task was made worse by the fact that Amy was apparently liked by everyone. No secret delight, no affected shock.

This particular friend, a plump, freckled redhead, turned milk-pale. “Dead?”

Seeing her sway, Trina said, “Please. Sit down.”

“Murdered?”

Gently taking her upper arm, Trina backed her up to the couch and pushed. Marcie Whittaker never took her stunned gaze from Trina’s face.

“How can she be?”

How did you answer that kind of question? It implied that there was a rational order, a why for every action, a series of logical consequences. It suggested that if you took to heart all of your parents’ warnings, you’d be safe, loved, prosperous. Trina had been a cop long enough to know that things didn’t work that way.

She and Lieutenant Patton had divided up names. Amy had had dozens of friends. After talking with the crew at the beauty salon, they’d each taken a list and started contacting anyone who might have spoken with Amy in the days leading up to her death, or who might have been with her yesterday. Since her vehicle had not yet been located, finding out where she might have gone that night was critical.

Trina remembered Marcie from high school. She and Amy had been part of a pack of popular girls—cheerleaders, homecoming princesses, stars of the spring musicals. As remote from Trina’s world as Will Patton had been. They’d walked down the hall in groups of three or four, laughing and tossing their long, shining hair, their clothes always perfect, their complexions glowing from a weekend on the ski hill. Money was never a problem for any of the popular kids, Trina had believed then.

In the intervening years, Marcie had put on weight. She’d gotten married right out of high school and had two school-age children as well as a toddler. Trina had expected a fancy house and found her instead in a modest rambler on a street of mostly rentals. Marcie had invited her in with surprise and said, “My youngest is down for a nap. You want to talk about Amy? Why?”

Now, in answer to the unanswerable, Trina said, “Amy may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what we’re trying to determine.”

“Was she…”

“Raped?”

Marcie bit her lip and nodded.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.” They’d decided to admit that much.

“Oh God, oh God.”

“Did you speak to Amy in the last couple of weeks?”

Tears oozed from Marcie’s eyes. She nodded. “Excuse me. I need to—” She leapt to her feet and bolted from the room.

Trina used the time to study the framed photos on the mantel. Most were presumably of Marcie’s children, redheads all like their mother. Trina recognized the man who appeared in many only because Marcie had taken the last name Whittaker. In high school, Dirk Whittaker had been one of the swaggering jocks, a state All-Star tackle. Like a lot of brawny guys, he’d put on serious weight in the ten years since he’d graduated.

What interested her most was that, displayed with the family photos, there were three framed snapshots, probably taken at several year intervals, of Marcie with her old crowd, including Amy Owen. In the first, all were recognizably the same people they’d been in high school—still slim, stylish, confident. By the next photo chronologically, although all were posing jauntily and laughing, some of the crowd had changed: begun to put on weight, quit expending so much effort on their appearances. Perhaps half were still sleek and beautiful. By the most recent photograph, the distinction was obvious. Some, like Amy, still looked beautiful, privileged and entitled, while others in the crowd showed the toll taken by jobs that didn’t allow for hours at the gym, by scrimping financially, by the exhaustion of raising children.

Will Patton was in the middle photo. A young woman Trina didn’t recognize stood within the circle of his arm. She bore a superficial resemblance to Amy: she was also tall, although dwarfed by his height, and her hair was the silvery shade of ash-blond that had to be natural. Amy was prettier in a conventional way; the woman with him had a distinct bump on the bridge of her nose, ears that poked out a little, and a catlike slant to her eyes that gave her the look of an elf. Maybe not beautiful, hers was still the kind of face you didn’t forget.

Trina suspected that the fine-boned, moonlight-pale girl gazing up at Will Patton rather than at the camera was Gillian Pappas, the victim of the original murder. Her gaze lingering on the couple, Trina felt an odd squeezing in her chest she wanted to believe was pity but she knew was more complex.

“Those are my kids,” Marcie said dully from behind her.

“What a cute little girl,” Trina felt obligated to say.

Marcie came to stand beside her. “Amy is in some of these.” She picked up the most recent, framed in silver. “Right there.”

No Will in this photo. Trina wondered if he’d quit coming home, quit hanging out with his old friends. No, not entirely, because he’d been at J.R.’s with a couple of them.

“You stayed close friends, then.”

Although Marcie had given no indication of recognizing Trina, she seemed to assume that everyone knew she and Marcie were best friends. “Well, naturally. We didn’t spend as much time together, of course. I mean, I’m married and have kids. But we talked a couple of times a week and had lunch every week or two. She didn’t mind if I brought Vicki. Amy wanted kids.” Hit by the knowledge that Amy would never have a baby, Marcie began to cry again. Silently, with bewilderment.

Trina opened her notebook. “Had she mentioned anyone following her, some guy making her nervous? Anything like that?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t.”

“Was she seeing a man?”

“She went out. But not with anyone special. She got divorced just last spring, you know.”

“Are you aware of her dating in the past few weeks?”

Marcie named a couple of men. “Plus she was hoping this guy we knew in high school would call her. Will Patton.”

Trina’s fingers tightened on her pencil. “Had he called, to your knowledge?”

Marcie shook her head, eyes wet. “Amy would have been on the phone instantly if he had. She had this huge crush on him. I mean, she always did. She said she saw him last week, that he’s moved back to Elk Springs.”

“Was there anyone who might have felt jealous if he could tell how she felt about Mr. Patton?”

“Felt jealous? Oh. Like, did she blow some guy off so she could concentrate on Will?” Marcie shook her head again. “Like I said, she’d see men, but it was casual. The only one who might be jealous was her ex, but he had his chance.”

Interested in her spiteful tone, Trina asked about the victim’s relationship with her ex-husband.

“I think he wanted her back. But he still didn’t intend to really settle down. You know? He’s this big outdoors guy. He wants to ski all winter and mountain climb all summer. He works up at Juanita Butte in the winter, but he never even looked for a job in the summer. He got mad when she had to work. Plus, she didn’t like to climb.”

“Her parents described the breakup as amiable.”

“It was.” Marcie shrugged. “But he kept coming around. She slipped a couple of times and had sex with him, which was dumb.”

“Did she have other sexual relationships?”

“You mean, did she screw guys? Sure.” Marcie sounded surprised, as if a single woman being sexually active was a given.

No, there was more to her tone, Trina suspected; she was just a little envious. Married almost ten years, with three kids, she probably lived vicariously through Amy’s tales.

“Anyone in particular?”

“Um…” Marcie thought. “Adrian Benson. She told me the other day he wasn’t that good in bed, even though he’s hot.”

Benson was one of the men she’d said earlier that Marcie might have dated in the previous week or two. Trina starred his name. He wasn’t anyone she recalled from high school.

“If she met a man over drinks and liked him, would she be likely to leave with him?”

“Yeah, why not?” The moment the words were out, Marcie’s mouth formed an O. Amy Owen had very likely paid an extreme penalty for trusting a dangerous man.

Trina steered her gently back to the final day. Yes, she’d talked briefly to Amy midafternoon. “I told her I’d try to get a babysitter Saturday night so Dirk and I could go out.”

Trina already knew that Amy had worked yesterday, leaving the salon about four. “Did she mention plans for yesterday evening?”

“She said she was bored and might go get a drink. She didn’t say where or if she was going with a friend.”

Trina wrote down Amy’s favorite hangouts and then thanked Marcie. Handing her a card, she said, “Please call if you think of anything at all that you think we should know.”

The next friend of Amy’s on Trina’s list actually recognized her.

Bronwen Fessler had started a clothing boutique in town that Trina had heard was very successful. Daddy Fessler was a banker and had had plenty of money to bankroll her.

The clothes in the window were bold and bright-colored. Stuff that shouldn’t have gone together somehow did, like a hot-pink cashmere turtleneck and lime-green wool slacks. Maybe, Trina decided, studying the display carefully, the skinny loomed scarf worn as a belt accomplished the magic. Personally, she might have bought all three pieces and never in a million years considered putting them together.

Which, she guessed, was why she was a cop and not a fashion designer or owner of a boutique. And why everything she wore was boring.

She pushed open the door, making the bell that hung above it tinkle. Bronwen Fessler hadn’t changed much, just become more stylish. A petite brunette with short, artfully tousled hair, she sat on a high stool behind a glass case that held jewelry and on top of which was the cash register. She appeared to be attaching labels to chunky bracelets laid out on the glass top in front of her. Through the window Trina hadn’t noticed the two women browsing sweaters displayed in cubes on the back wall.

Bronwen glanced up with a practiced smile that she aborted. “Officer…” she began in surprise, then, “Wait. I know you, don’t I? From school. No, don’t tell me. Something like Teresa.”

“Trina. Trina Giallombardo.”

“Right.” She seemed pleased by her memory rather than by Trina’s appearance. “You’re a police officer, huh?”

“A detective.” Being able to say that still gave Trina a thrill. “I’m here to speak to you about a friend of yours.”

“A friend of mine?”

“Um, excuse me,” one of the women interrupted. “I’d like to try this on.”

“Certainly,” Bronwen told her. To Trina, she asked, “Can you wait a minute?”

“No problem.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Bronwen Fessler charmed and flattered the two customers, who looked about forty but were probably older. There was nothing like being loaded to help a woman keep her looks. These two had perfectly dyed and coiffed hair, suspiciously smooth faces, skillfully applied makeup and carefully tended figures. In the end, one bought two sweaters and the other a necklace, all for prices that made Trina gape.

Staring after them, she exclaimed, “Did she just pay almost seven hundred dollars for two sweaters?”

“And they were on sale. Sweetie, people do, you know.”

Not people in Trina’s circles.

“Wow,” she said, then flushed.

“I take it you dress from J.C. Penney?” Bronwen said with amused disdain.

“More like Eddie Bauer.”

“Jeans and flannel shirts?” Her practiced eye swept from Trina’s well-polished but sturdy black shoes to her unpierced ears. “Come in sometime when you’re off-duty and I may convert you. For old times’ sake, I’ll allow you an employee discount. The first time you come.”

Old times’ sake? Trina doubted they’d ever exchanged a word. She thought they might have been in a class or two together; she’d been advanced enough in math to often be in classes with students a year or two ahead of her.

Glancing at a mannequin dressed in a beaded bustier and a pouffy black skirt, she was tempted, though. Maybe the right clothes could accomplish magic. She could probably afford them if she wanted them….

Yeah. Sure they would. And why do you want to be transformed? she mocked herself. So that you catch Will Patton’s eyes?

Uh-huh. That was going to happen. Like he ever dated a woman who wore bigger than a size four and wasn’t blond.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said formally. “But I’m here in my official capacity today.”

“Right. I forgot. You wanted to ask me about a friend.” Her tone became flip. “Do I know someone who’s held up the bank?”

“I understand you’ve remained friends with Amy Owen.”

“Well, sure.” She laughed. “Amy’s not the bank robber type.”

“I regret to tell you that she’s dead. She was murdered last night.”

Bronwen stared at her with a complete lack of comprehension. “She can’t be dead. I saw her last night. We had a drink.” She reached for the telephone. “I’ll call her. There must be a mistake.”

Trina shook her head. “Her parents have identified her.”

“If they were upset…”

Voice gentle, she said, “I saw her body. I recognized her.”

“But…” She seemed to deflate, her vivacity gone, her face five years older. “Did somebody break in, or…”

“We don’t know yet. We haven’t found her car. That’s why we’re talking to her friends.” Trina opened her notebook, hoping if she kept Bronwen talking to avert tears. “Had you made plans in advance to get together?”

Bronwen took a deep breath and straightened. “She called at about…oh, I don’t know, six o’clock? I had some bookkeeping to do, but Amy said she was bored and pleaded with me. I met her at the Timberline. She wasn’t hungry, but I had chicken wings and we both had a drink.”

“Did she have something she urgently wanted to tell you?”

Bronwen shook her head. “We just chatted. She seemed restless. She was bummed because this guy hasn’t called her.”

“Will Patton?”

“How did you know? Oh. I get it. You’ve already talked to other people. Yeah, Will. Otherwise, I talked about what I’m buying for spring for the store and she bitched about her ex because he won’t leave her alone. She thinks…” Bronwen’s voice stumbled. “She thought her parents were sympathetic to him, which annoyed her.”

“What was he doing to annoy her?”

“Not what you’re thinking! Doug is an okay guy. He’s just been regretting the divorce. He wouldn’t get violent.” She said it as if the idea was absurd, unthinkable.

“But somebody did.”

Bronwen’s fingers twisted together. “God. How was she killed?”

“We’ll know more after the autopsy. It appears she was strangled.”

“Was she raped?”

“Yes.”

“Doug wouldn’t have raped her,” she said with certainty. “She admitted to me that she let him spend the night not that long ago. He didn’t have to rape her.”

“Rape is only peripherally about sex. It has more to do with control and power.”

She kept shaking her head. “Not Doug.”

Trina didn’t really believe that the ex-husband would prove to be a serious suspect. This murder didn’t have the hallmarks of domestic violence. But it was also possible that they were dealing with a killer who had strangled Amy in a fit of rage, then remembered the murder from six years ago and decided to imitate it to throw the police off. An impulse killer who was also able to keep his cool. Not common, but conceivable.

“Is Doug a friend of yours, too?” Trina asked.

“Mine? Heavens, no! Like I said, he’s a nice guy. But honestly, he’s not that bright. Just kind of big and dumb and fun-loving. Not my type.”

No, Doug sounded like a lousy prospect to have kept his cool and used his head.

Trina determined that Bronwen and Amy had parted in the parking lot at just after eight.

“Do you think she might have gone back in?”

“No, we were parked next to each other and she pulled out of the lot right behind me. I had to get some work done, and I assumed she was going home even though she still seemed…I don’t know.” She visibly groped for a word and settled for the same one she’d used earlier. “Restless. Maybe a little unhappy. Not in the mood to go home and watch reruns and sip cocoa.”

She suggested other brewhouses and pubs where they might show Amy’s picture, other friends Amy might have called.

“Guys? Wow. Adrian Benson. Maybe. She was getting bored with him. I mean, they didn’t have that much of a thing, and she was losing interest, but just for something to do… Um, Travis Booth. They were sorta friends, sorta something more.”

“Travis.” Wasn’t he one of the friends Will Patton had mentioned being with the evening he ran into Amy at J.R.’s? “I remember him. He was a friend of Will Patton’s.”

“Right. Only he didn’t do high school sports because he ski-raced. He actually made the U.S. ski team, but then he was hurt really badly training for the downhill.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” Like most guys that age, Will had run in a pack. His buddies were jocks, but the smart ones. Most had gone on to college after they graduated. “I didn’t realize he was still in Elk Springs.”

“He’s head of the ski school at Juanita Butte. But he’s getting some success as an artist, too. Don’t you read your newspaper? They did a feature on him—I don’t know—a month or so ago.” Her voice changed, relaxed fractionally as she reminisced. “He used to draw really wicked caricatures. He did this fantastic one of Mr. Jones, only one of the teachers snagged it when it was being passed around, and he ended up in detention for a week.”

Mr. Jones, then high school principal and not a popular one, had been ripe for caricature with his double chins and beady eyes.

Trina forced herself back to more relevant subjects. Travis Booth, for one. He’d seen Amy fall anew for Will Patton, maybe resented it. Trina starred his name, too.

She flipped back through her notes. “Do you know a Gavin, who seems to be a friend of Travis’s?”

Bronwen pursed her lips. “Gavin. You mean Huseby? He kind of hung around Will. I never paid any attention to him. I know he’s around again.”

Bronwen supplied a few new names of people in Amy’s circle. At the end, she asked, “Do you think this guy killed Amy in particular? Or was she just…”

“Convenient?”

“That sounds awful, but…” She fidgeted. “Yeah. I mean, should single women be scared?”

“At this point, we simply don’t know the motive. It wouldn’t hurt to use extra caution.”

“Okay.” Bronwen gave a wry smile. “Thanks, Trina. Wow. Business is slow, anyway. Maybe I’ll close. Or maybe not.” She shivered. “I don’t want to go home alone. I could call around. Some of us could get together and have a kind of wake.”

“That might help all of you.” Trina nodded. “I appreciate your assistance.”

She was at the door when Bronwen called, “Trina? That employee discount? I meant it, you know. Come back someday.”

“I just might.” Trina nodded and left, the bell tinkling as she let the door shut behind her.

She started her Explorer to get the heat cranking, but didn’t pull away from the curb immediately. Instead, she thought about Amy Owen as her friends described her.

On the surface, a party girl. An easy victim, because she’d bar-hopped, lowered her guard by drinking and been sexually promiscuous enough to end her evening with any man who appealed. Yet, it was clear from what her parents, Marcie and Bronwen had said that Amy wanted something different. That she was filling time until she found the white-picket-fence ending she craved. As much as she liked to party, she also possessed a quality of sweetness that drew people. She had a huge circle of friends. Trina had two best friends, a couple more casual ones and a few other people who might invite her to Christmas gatherings. She thought she was more the norm than Amy Owen.

An amazing number of those friendships dated from high school. In fact, it seemed every conversation today had twisted back to the halls of Elk Springs High School. Maybe that was natural in a small town. But given that they’d all graduated ten years ago, wouldn’t you think the group would include more newcomers, and that more of the high school crowd would have left town? The jocks were still the only desirable guys for the popular girls, who still clustered to flip their shiny hair and giggle at jokes no one else would get.