“You’re fine,” Paige murmured. “Where do you work?”
“I’m a nurse’s aide. I work in a nursing home.”
“Hard work,” Paige commented as Brittany led them to an old table covered in crayons. When Brittany began scooping the crayons into a plastic bin, Paige helped her. “It’s got to be even harder raising a son and going to school.”
Brittany looked up, startled. “How did you know I was going to school?”
Paige pointed to the coffee table. “Your physiology textbook. Nursing degree?”
“Yes. Aides don’t get paid squat.”
“I know. I was a paralegal working for lawyers. Big pay difference. Shall we sit?” She didn’t wait for an answer, sitting at the kitchen table. “Brittany?”
Brittany sat on Paige’s left. Grayson sat at the end of the table and waited.
“Where is your son?” Paige asked.
“Kindergarten. I have to go get him soon.”
“Then he’s five years old?” Paige asked, looking unsurprised.
Grayson did the math and his heart sank. “You were pregnant when Crystal died.”
“Yes.” Brittany looked away, her whole body shaking. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Try to relax,” Paige said soothingly. “Take a deep breath. Tell me about Crystal.”
“She was a good sister.” Brittany squeezed her eyes shut. “She was all I had.”
“And she was taken from you.”
She clenched her fists on the table. “By Ramon Muñoz.”
“No,” Paige said and Brittany’s eyes flew open, uncertainty flickering there. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You knew it wasn’t Ramon.”
“No. I didn’t know. They said it was Muñoz. The cops that came. They said they found the weapon in his house.” Brittany’s eyes filled anew. “But it didn’t matter who did it. It was all my fault. She did it for me.” The tears spilled, ran down her cheeks.
“What did she do for you?” Grayson asked.
“She went to that party for me. Because of me.”
“She planned to make money at the party,” Paige said. “Because of the baby.”
Brittany shrugged wearily. “Yes. She took care of me. Tried to keep me out of trouble. I got a scholarship to Maryland and I’d just started my first semester. And I screwed it all up.”
“You got pregnant,” Paige said. “How?”
Brittany’s lips twisted. “The usual way. Bottle of wine, nice words. I was so stupid and Crystal was so angry. She ranted that she hadn’t sacrificed everything to see me ruin my life. Then she saw me crying and said she’d fix it. That she knew where to get some really big money. That we wouldn’t have to scratch for food anymore.”
“You two lived alone, right? How did you pay the bills?”
Brittany’s eyes became suspicious, her tears slackening. “We worked. We weren’t hookers.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Paige soothed.
“Tiger can’t change its stripes,” Brittany said bitterly. “It’s what everyone said. It’s what that cop said, the detective who investigated Crystal’s case. God, I hated her.”
“Detective Morton?” Paige asked.
“Yeah, that bitch,” Brittany said angrily. “She acted like my sister deserved what happened to her, that she lured the gardener to the shed. For sex. That simply wasn’t true. It couldn’t have been.”
There was something in the woman’s voice, an acidic note that stood apart. “Why not?” Grayson asked. “Why couldn’t it have been true?”
“She hated sex,” Brittany said. “Because of what happened to her.”
“She’d been abused?” Paige asked and Brittany looked away.
“She was a good person. We ended up in two different foster homes, but she promised she’d come for me when she turned eighteen. She kept that promise.”
“She was arrested for hooking right after that,” Paige said.
“Yeah. She turned tricks to buy food, but she got caught. They were going to send me back to foster care, so we ran away. We came here and started over. She got a job waiting tables. I worked at a drive-through before and after school. Things were going so well until I got pregnant.” Brittany sighed. “And then she went to that party.”
“To make big money,” Paige said. “She couldn’t have made that much by turning tricks, not in one night anyway.”
“Exactly,” Brittany said.
“Did you tell this to Detective Morton?” Grayson asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” Paige asked.
Brittany closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Brittany,” Paige urged. “Whoever paid you for your silence may be involved in the killings yesterday. One of the men murdered was also persuaded to stay silent. His daughter isn’t much older than your son and will grow up without him. You don’t want your son to grow up without you.”
Brittany’s face hardened. “How did you know I was paid?”
“I didn’t,” Paige admitted. “I guessed.”
Grayson had guessed the same thing. Still, Paige had played it well.
“You tricked me,” Brittany snarled, furious. “You’re as much a bitch as that Morton.”
“Yeah, I did trick you,” Paige said, letting some of her own anger show. “Because I’m trying to save your damn life. I saw two of yesterday’s victims. Both had bullet holes in their heads, brains sprayed everywhere. You don’t want to be like them. Trust me.”
Brittany paled. “That’s where I saw you. You’re the woman from the videos.”
“Yeah.” Paige touched her throat. “I almost got killed yesterday, too. These people mean business. If you want to protect your son, talk to us. Now.”
Brittany looked anguished. “Don’t you understand? If they kill me or he puts me in jail for perjury, it’s the same. Nobody’s here to care for my son. He’s got only me.”
A blast from his own past hit Grayson like a brick. He could hear his own mother saying the same words. He’s got only me. But his mother had been made of stronger stuff than Brittany Jones. His mother had made a different choice.
And they were still living with the results.
“I can’t make promises,” Grayson said. “Until I know what you did, I won’t be able to. But I’ll do my best to see that no charges are filed against you for lying on the stand.”
Brittany met his eyes for the first time. “I loved my sister. But I had this life… this baby growing in me. I didn’t know how I was going to survive. I got a phone call telling me that if I kept my mouth shut, I’d get ten thousand at the beginning and fifteen more when the trial was over. I didn’t want to take it, but I was desperate.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Grayson said carefully. There was something in the woman’s eyes that he didn’t trust. Calculation. And still a lot of fear. They were probably hearing some of the truth, he thought. But nowhere close to the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“Would have been if I’d gotten it all. I got the first ten, but two months before the trial I had my son. I got a letter saying if I wanted to stay healthy for my baby, I’d keep my mouth shut for free. By then I was in too deep to tell anyone and really scared. I would have lied to anyone, good or bad, to keep him safe.”
That last phrase, Grayson thought, was probably true. “Did you keep the letter?”
“No. It wasn’t mailed and it wasn’t handwritten. And it wasn’t like I was going to tell Detective Morton. She’d already done enough, accusing Crystal of being a whore at that party. ‘Tiger doesn’t change its stripes,’ my ass,” she muttered.
“Do you have anything that belonged to Crystal?” Paige asked. “Any old diaries or notebooks or anywhere she might have written something about that night?”
“I kept some of her things. I’ll get them for you.” A few minutes later Brittany reappeared, a medium-sized manila envelope in her hand. “There’s not much here.”
r /> “You’ll get it back,” Paige said. “Do you have a place to go for a few days?”
“No. If I don’t show up at work, I’ll lose my job and we’re barely hanging on.”
“Then be extra careful. Invite a friend to stay over if you can. Borrow a big dog,” Paige said. “Keep your doors locked. We’ll be in touch.”
Wednesday, April 6, 4:00 p.m.
He checked his laptop screen. The doll hadn’t moved in almost two hours. It was in Toronto. Specifically, in a hotel on Yonge Street. Therefore he could only assume Violet was there, too. He would be foolish to assume Silas would stay with her.
If I were Silas, I’d be trying to kill me. So he’d just have to deal with Silas first.
He dialed Silas’s business phone and got his voice mail once again. “It’s me,” he said, leaving a message. “I have a job for you. Call me when you get this.”
He had no intention of tasking Silas with anything important. And this job was. He’d found that Paige Holden had met with IA, that she was their “confidential informant.” The woman had caused enough headache. It was time for her to meet with an unfortunate accident, which he’d already put into play. It would be a twofer, getting rid of an irritant and creating a beautiful new path for IA’s investigation.
Yeah, the job was legit, so he had already assigned it to another. If Silas was back in time, he’d invite him to the party, too. That way, I’ll know exactly where he’ll be, and when.
Wednesday, April 6, 4:05 p.m.
“She’s playing us,” Paige said when Grayson had driven away from Brittany’s house.
“I know. We got a slice of the truth, I think.”
“You’re being generous. She got to you,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“When she said, ‘He’s got only me,’ you looked like you’d seen a ghost.” Actually he’d looked more like he’d been poleaxed. “She totally picked up on that.”
“What can I say?” he said blandly. “I’m a marshmallow.”
Paige thought about the picture, the one with the palm trees. He’d said his father had left them. She wanted to ask questions, lots of questions, but she held back. Her questions would keep and she didn’t think he’d answer them right now anyway.
“One giant rock of a marshmallow,” she said. “Brittany knew Ramon was innocent. If the part about the phone call offering her hush money was true, she had to know.”
“It wouldn’t make sense to be paid for silence if Ramon was guilty,” he agreed. “I’ll pull over into that parking lot and we can look in the envelope.”
She reached for her backpack and the gloves she kept in one of the pouches. Snapping them on, she held out her hands like a surgeon. “I’m ready.”
“I’m impressed. What else is in that backpack?”
“Magnifying glass, safety flares, dog treats. My laptop and my Wi-Fi modem. Extra ammo. Makeup. Rope. Flashlight. Trail mix and a bottle of water. Nunchucks. A Swiss Army knife. And an Ellery Queen novel. You know, tools of the trade.”
His lips curved as he parked. “Just don’t mix up the trail mix with the dog treats.”
“I did once. Dark alley surveillance, couldn’t risk a light. Dog treat wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
He winced. “That’s just gross, Paige. Do you have any more gloves?”
She gave him a pair, then opened the envelope. He leaned over to look into it with her. “A checkbook register,” she said and handed it to him. “A high school class ring. A man’s.” She held it up. “Class of 1973. That’s an odd thing for her to have.”
“What school?”
“Winston Heights.”
“Never heard of it,” he said. “It’s not local. We’ll look it up. This checkbook register is all deposits. The same amount every month. A thousand bucks.”
Paige met his eyes. “Sounds like Miss Crystal had some hush money of her own coming in. You’d think Brittany would have looked at this at some point.”
“I’m sure she did. She was eighteen, working her own part-time job. She had an idea of what waitresses made and had to know it wasn’t enough. The last deposit was a week before Crystal’s death. There’s a motive for you.”
“Especially if she’d upped the price tag to pay for baby-on-board. How long did this go on, the deposits?”
He flipped pages. “For two years. Starting right after her prostitution arrest. We need to trace where this money came from.” Then he frowned. “Wait. I ran Crystal’s financial records. This account didn’t show up. I would have noticed a grand a month coming in. Her credit cards were maxed and her checking account was empty.”
“Is it an offshore account?”
“The register book says it’s a local bank. I can get the account holder’s name without a warrant. I know someone who works at the bank and can ask her to run it for me. We’ll need that information anyway, for when we request a warrant to trace the funds.” His expression grew dark. “But I won’t be requesting a warrant anytime soon. Anderson will block it.”
“Sonofabitch,” Paige muttered, then pushed her own spurt of fury aside. Their energy would be better spent proving Anderson was dirty slime. “What if we tackled this from the other end?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, still scowling.
“You said the deposits started after her prostitution arrest. Did they arrest her john with her? Would that have been in the report?”
He shook his head. “If they’d arrested him, it would be public record. There’d be no need to blackmail him.”
She winced. “True. Dammit. We have the class ring. We might be able to find out who she was servicing.”
He looked doubtful. “Maybe. A call to the arresting officer wouldn’t hurt, but I’m not holding my breath that he’d remember, not after this much time. Let’s find out who owns the account first. Then we’ll reevaluate. What else is in there?”
“This.” She drew out a ribbon, red, white, and blue striped, from which a gold-colored plastic medallion dangled, the inscription on which made her whistle. “It says, ‘I’m a MAC, Loud and Proud.’ MAC, Loud. It looks like one of those freebies you see at rallies. Maybe from Senator McCloud’s campaign?”
“I’ve never heard the slogan, but that doesn’t mean anything. McCloud last ran for office in the nineties and this isn’t his district. I wonder how Crystal came to have this.”
“From Rex, maybe?”
“That was my first thought, but we can’t assume that.” Gingerly he took it from her and held the ribbon pooled in his palm. “Look at the ribbon.”
“It’s… kinked. Like it was wrapped around something small,” Paige noted. “The class ring?”
“No. It had small sharp points.” He looked up, a gleam in his eye. “A key. The kinks look fresh. It was wrapped in the ribbon recently. I’m thinking Brittany took whatever that was out of the envelope.”
“And left us exactly what she wanted us to find.”
Grayson put the car into gear. “Let’s pay her another visit.”
Paige put everything back in the envelope. “I think so.”
Wednesday, April 6, 4:20 p.m.
“She’s gone.”
Grayson’s fist paused midknock and he and Paige turned to the right where a woman stood on her front stoop, watching them. “When did she leave?”
“About ten minutes after you left, she did, too, and with a suitcase.” The woman’s eyes widened. “You two were on the news. That was so romantic, how you took care of her. I hope you’re okay.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Paige said, “but we need to talk to Brittany. Do you know where she went?”
“Has she done something wrong?” the woman asked.
“Not that we know of,” Grayson said.
“Good. I’d hate to think of that sweet little boy being in any danger.”
“She said she was about to pick him up from school,” Paige said urgently. “Do you know where he attends?”
“Private s
chool. Brit was determined he’d have the best. He goes to St. Leo Academy. It’s downtown. Very exclusive.”
And very expensive, Grayson thought, hiding his surprise. “Do you know why she chose that school in particular?”
“I asked her once. She got sad and said it was something her sister had wanted. I don’t get it myself. The local public school was good enough for my kids. Brittany works her fingers to the bone paying his tuition. Lots of overtime. Sometimes I watch little Caleb when she works an extra shift.” She looked distressed. “I hope they’re okay.”
“If she comes back, can you call me?” Paige gave the neighbor a card. “My cell’s on there. We’re not trying to get her in trouble. We’re trying to keep her safe.”
“I know,” the woman admitted. “I heard you through the wall. Most of it was muffled, but at one point you raised your voice and that’s what you said.”
“You never told me if you knew where she might have gone,” Paige said.
“She has family north of here, but I don’t think they’re close.”
“What, like, New York?” Paige asked.
“No, like Hagerstown.”
“Up near Pennsylvania,” Grayson clarified when Paige shot him a puzzled look.
“She’s also seeing a guy,” the neighbor volunteered. “His name is Mal.”
“Last name?” Grayson asked.
The neighbor grew uncomfortable. “I only heard her call his first name… you know, in the throes, but only when her son was at school. Mal works for the cable company. The van was parked out front during his lunch hour.”
“When was the last time Mal was here?” Paige asked.
“Yesterday.”
“Can I have your name and number in case we need to reach you?” she asked.
“Miriam Blonsky.” She gave her phone number. “Should I be afraid?”
“No, just careful,” Paige said. “Thank you.”
They hurried to the car and Grayson started driving. Paige took out her phone. “I’ll get the address for the St. Leo Academy.”
“No need. I know exactly where it is. We all went there, the Carter kids and me. It’s very exclusive and very expensive.”