LITMIR.BIZ

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Carolyn said. “Have the police talked to you yet, Drew?”

      “They were over here this morning. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to them. They don’t think I killed her, I hope. They wanted to know where I was yesterday morning. I took the day off to do some things around the house. Veronica was after me to put up some shelves in the boys’ room, so I went to Home Depot. I spent the rest of the day puttering around in the garage.”

      “Did you buy anything at Home Depot?”

      “No,” he said. “I just wanted to figure out how much it would cost.”

      Carolyn said she’d speak to him later and disconnected. She got the number for Ventura High and waited while the cell operator connected her. A woman in the principal’s office confirmed that Jude was enrolled as a student. She started to call Drew back and tell him, then decided to think it over first. If Jude was going to school, why hadn’t she told her parents? Something didn’t fit, and when something didn’t fit, it could be important.

      Carolyn thought she’d made a fairly good start on a crime of this magnitude. Drew couldn’t prove where he was at the time of the crime, and Jude was trying to put her life together without telling her parents, even though they’d threatened to throw her out on the street.

      She turned onto Dee Drive where the police department was located, parked, and reached into the backseat to get her computer notebook. She remembered what Brad had told her as she walked toward the front of the building. Everyone is a suspect.

      Carolyn couldn’t imagine anyone with that many children not carrying life insurance. How much did Drew have Veronica insured for? If she’d been having an affair, he could have found out and killed her.

      Drew was now a suspect with two motives, and they were the oldest in existence—jealousy and money.

      CHAPTER 7

      Wednesday, October 13—2:05 P.M.

      Carolyn strode into the homicide bay at the Ventura Police Department. She said a few words to a detective named Gabriel Martinez, and then made her way to Hank Sawyer’s office. He was on the phone. He covered the receiver with his hand. “Mary’s in the conference room. I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m free.”

      Carolyn found Mary Stevens with her head down, seated at the end of the long table, partially hidden behind stacks of papers and books.

      When the detective looked up and saw her, she gathered up a bunch of photographs. “They’re crime scene,” she said, her brows furrowed. “You might not want to look at them.”

      “In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been assigned to your task force,” Carolyn told her. “If I’m going to be involved in the case, I need to see everything.”

      “Good,” Mary said, handing her the pictures. Behind her was a large bulletin board. “I was about to put them up. I guess you might as well desensitize yourself to them. We’ve got them on a CD, but we’ll have to make you a copy.” Her eyes went to the notebook Carolyn was carrying. “I can give you mine and you can load them onto your hard drive if you’ve got enough memory.” She stopped speaking abruptly. “I don’t know where my head is today. Of course you don’t want them on your computer.”

      Mary glanced at a clean-cut young man sitting a few chairs to her left. “Oh, this is Keith Edwards. He’s going to do a lot of the grunt work for us. Keith, Carolyn is a supervisor at the probation department. She was a close friend of the victim.”

      Edwards appeared to be in his mid to late twenties. He had sandy blond hair and greenish eyes, and was dressed in a starched white shirt, a striped tie, and a pair of tan slacks. He had the air of a new guy trying to make an impression. He circled to the other side of the table and pumped Carolyn’s hand.

      “Pleased to meet you,” he said with a southern drawl. “I’m sorry about your friend. This must be hard for you.”

      “Keith is on loan from patrol,” Mary explained. “He relocated here six months ago from Atlanta. Gary Conrad is also on the team, but he’s out beating the bushes for leads. Gabriel Martinez will pitch in whenever he can.”

      Gary was a seasoned detective. Carolyn didn’t know him that well, but she’d heard Hank and Mary talk about him. Gabriel was a good man as well.

      “You can set up anywhere you want.” Mary moved a stack of thick books aside. “These are mug shots. We’ve got the motel clerk coming in later today to see if he recognizes anyone.”

      “Did the lab have time to process the letter I got at the morgue?”

      “I’m glad you brought it up,” Mary told her. “We need to get the four morgue attendants to come in and look at mug shots.” She shuffled through her paperwork, and then punched numbers into her cell phone. While she was waiting for the call to go through, she said, “Just so you know, I take care of things whenever I think about them. That’s how I make certain I cover all the bases. My weakness is that I’m not good at delegating. If I do it myself, I know it’s done. Hank mentioned it on my last performance review, so I’m trying to improve.” She turned to her right. “Keith, call the lab and see if they’ve had time to process the envelope and letter yet.”

      Carolyn took a seat at the opposite end of the table, not wanting to be disturbed while she went through the crime scene photos. After she set them down on the table, she placed her hands in her lap and leaned forward. The first picture showed Veronica on her back in a bathtub, fully clothed. A large splatter of blood was visible on the back wall, the streaks heading downward. She must have been sitting partially upright when the killer shot her. Carolyn assumed the bullet had propelled her head backward, and then her lifeless body had slid down. Because of the tub’s curved sides, her neck was twisted at an awkward angle. Her legs were open as if she were about to give birth. Seeing her like this was worse than seeing her body at the morgue.

      Carolyn bit down on the inside of her lip, tasting her own salty blood. Whoever had done this to her sweet friend didn’t deserve to live. If she found him, she would kill him, regardless of the consequences.

      Her mind drifted into the past. She was seven years old, standing in the kitchen of her old house, peering into the oven at the chocolate chip cookies she and her mother were making. The doorbell rang and her mother went to answer it, returning and telling her it was Veronica.

      “Close your eyes,” the girl said, giggling.

      When Carolyn opened them, Veronica handed her a beautiful doll, dressed in a sparkly silver evening gown with a fake fur jacket. Earlier that afternoon, they had fought over the doll, and Veronica’s mother had sent Carolyn home in tears. When Carolyn had taken it from the shelf in Veronica’s room, she knew it was a special doll, the kind you weren’t allowed to play with. Veronica’s grandmother had sewn all the clothes by hand. She pushed the doll back toward Veronica. “I’m sorry I touched it.”

      “It’s yours now, silly,” her friend told her, refusing to take it. “Granny said I could give it to my most special friend in the world. We’re going to be friends forever. That means I’ll always be able to see it.”

      Carolyn surfaced from the past and forced herself to pick up another photo. Veronica wasn’t wearing panty hose, so the crotch of her white cotton underwear was exposed. One shoe was still attached to her foot, the other resting on the floor by the tub. She noticed what appeared to be a tan-colored cloth lying on her chest near her neck. She wasn’t certain if the crime scene officers had placed it there as a marker or the murderer used it during the crime. She sorted through the rest of the pictures, selected ten, and laid them out on the table as if she were playing a game of solitaire.

      Something looked wrong.

      Carolyn opened her notebook and powered it up, then returned her attention to the images. The tub was too clean and Veronica’s clothes didn’t appear to have any bloodstains on them. How was that possible? Mary saw her bending over the photos and sent a magnifying glass sliding across the slick surface of

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