The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland) Page 10

  Tuck interrupted. “Listen, okay? Ella says the police were at the Brannigan because someone there died.”

  “Died?” Was this why Jake looked so dumbfounded when she mentioned the Brannigan? Only one thing “died” meant in Jake’s world. “What do you mean, died?”

  “Ella Gavin says her boss, Lillian Fitch, I think, turned up dead. And here’s the thing. She’s the one who told Ella I was Audrey Rose Beerman. She’s the one who told Ella to send me to Carlyn Beerman. She’s the one who wrecked my life.”

  Jane stared at the floor. Trying to process. Tuck only cared about Tuck, what else is new. But Jake cared about …

  “So now we’re never gonna know what happened,” Tuck was saying. “Ella was going to help me try to figure it all out, but this Fitch person is the only one who—”

  “Tuck, what do you mean, died? Did she have a heart attack? A car accident?”

  Tuck was silent for a beat. “Well, shit. I don’t know,” she said. “Ella didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. Some reporter I am. Was.”

  “Was Detective Brogan one of the cops who came to the Brannigan?”

  “Why would Jake go to the—?” Tuck stopped, mid-question. “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Jane said.

  A murder at the Brannigan. At the Brannigan? Well, at least of a Brannigan employee. The one who’d possibly made a potentially embarrassing and reputation-ruining mistake. Still, who would commit murder over that?

  “Tuck? Does Carlyn Beerman know they sent her the wrong girl?”

  *

  DeLuca, on maybe the day’s fifth cup of coffee, leaned against the pitted concrete wall of the courthouse lobby while Jake punched in numbers on his cell phone. The closed double doors to Courtroom 1 towered on one side of them, on the other were doors marked Courtroom 2, propped open with a phone book. A couple of guys, witnesses awaiting call probably, fidgeted in their new-looking suits on a pockmarked wooden bench. The rent-a-cop manning the metal detector leaned against a stack of black plastic bins, reading a magazine.

  “Curtis James Ricker?” Jake said into the phone. He’d gotten Brianna Tillson’s sleazeball ex-husband’s address easily enough from his probation officer here at Dorchester District Court, a dismal scumbag magnet known as the Dot. The Dot’s offices were closing early on account of snow. But Jake and D still had time to make the call before the place went dark.

  “This is the state unemployment office, sir,” Jake lied. It was poetic justice to be conning a con artist. “We’re calling about your unclaimed benefits?”

  Guys like Ricker were always on the take. The kind who’d buy lottery tickets, convinced each time it was their turn to win. Convinced the world owed them. Jake hoped Ricker’s greed would trump any potential suspicion about this call.

  “We have to confirm your status, sir, from your file. You are no longer married to a Bry-anna,” Jake intentionally mispronounced the name, “Tillson? Divorced, let’s see, nine years ago? Okay, correct, that’s what our records show. And—what?”

  Jake smiled as Ricker fished for details about his “benefits.” This guy was hook and line already. According to Maggie at DFS, Tillson had dumped her no-account husband years ago. The state had cleared Brianna to be a foster parent, Maggie explained, as long as he was out of the picture. Sadly—for Brianna and her foster kids—it seemed Ricker hadn’t been clear on the rules.

  “Sir, your benefits are retroactive according to the regulations recently promulgated by the state legislature, as I am sure you are aware.” He read aloud Ricker’s Social Security number. “If that is your correct social, you are potentially due a considerable reimbursement resulting from the state’s miscalculations about your history. Can you describe your current employment situation?”

  Ricker was buying the phony benefits story even more easily than Jake had hoped. He began a whining recitation of his “situation,” with himself as the put-upon victim of bureaucracy and mismanagement. By this time tomorrow, if he had half a brain, Ricker would be talking only to his lawyer.

  It was gonna be a domestic, after all. After they collared this guy, they could refocus on Lillian Finch, whose body was now in Kat McMahan’s custody.

  Officers Hennessey and Kurtz had reported no valuables had been stolen from Tillson’s or Finch’s house. They agreed no crazed killer or burglary thing was going on. Each case was individual. That meant in each case it was all about motive.

  What a bitch being assigned two murders at the same time. Budget cuts, the Supe had explained. As if that made it doable.

  Luckily, it was looking like Tillson would be easy.

  Finch was tougher. Jake needed to get to her files, check out her house. Who’d hate a middle-aged middle-income adoption agency employee enough to kill her like that? A financial advisor, playing fast and lose with her investments? Maybe Ms. Finch had discovered it? But then Jake and D would, too. A relative disappointed with a change in the victim’s will? In that case, all the suspects’ names would be conveniently listed in probate court. Maybe it was someone unhappy about an adoption.

  Tuck?

  Sleeping pills pointed to a female killer. Smothering, not so much.

  Not Tuck.

  Shit. If the Supe wanted quicker answers, he’d have to hire more cops.

  Ricker’s whine seemed to be winding down.

  Jake interrupted, impatient to reel this guy in.

  “Now, finally, sir? For security purposes, to prevent the possible exposure of your Social Security number and potential theft from your mailbox, we cannot use the U.S. Mail to deliver your reimbursement. You must be at home to receive it in person. You understand it’s for your security and your protection.”

  Ricker knew about theft from mailboxes, since that’s what he’d been nailed for ten years ago. Gotta love it. Mr. Ricker was about to enter the criminal justice system once again. He wouldn’t get out so fast this time. First degree premeditated murder carried life without parole.

  “Well, as it happens, sir, yes, we do have a courier.” Jake gave D a thumbs-up. “If you’re home, we can have the money delivered to you today. Yes? Let me double-check your address? Excellent. Mr. Emerson and Mr. Hawthorne will be at your home shortly. You’ll need to show them a photo ID. Happy to be of service.”

  He clicked off the cell phone, tucked it into his pocket.

  “You were a lit major, right?” DeLuca tossed his coffee cup into an overflowing metal basket. It teetered, then stayed. “Guess Mr. Ricker missed that day.”

  “Yup,” Jake said.

  “Moron.”

  “We going there now?” DeLuca buttoned his navy pea jacket and slammed a knit cap on his head. “Snowing like a—”

  “You know…” Jake started to run his jacket zipper up and down, then stopped. “Maybe Ricker called nine-one-one.”

  DeLuca nodded, heading toward the front door. “Good thought.”

  “Maybe he’s the one who took the baby.” Jake fell into step beside him.

  DeLuca scowled. “Geez Louise. The baby thing again. I keep telling you. A person could have a cradle, a million reasons why. There’s no report of a baby, Harvard. You watch too much TV. There’s no missing baby.”

  “No, I don’t. And there could be.” Jake held the heavy glass door open, gesturing his partner though. Wet snow pelted them as they headed down the broad courthouse steps, the steep concrete already accumulating a layer of slush. “And if there is, where’s that baby now?”

  27

  Two problems. And, Jane realized, there was really no one to talk to about them.

  She pushed open the prism-glassed door of the Kinsale Pub, a dark-paneled fern-draped hangout favored by local pols and civil servants, managed by the legendary bartender Jimmy the B. She needed food.

  That made it three problems.

  She scanned the room. Deserted, this late in the afternoon. She headed for the bar, happy to be alone. She needed to think.

  First problem. Tuck insisted Carlyn Beerman did not know o
f the Brannigan’s mistake. Tuck was planning to confront the Brannigan people about it first, she’d said, after she “figured out what the hell to do and how to do it and whether we need a lawyer.” As a result, Jane couldn’t say anything to anyone. Not that she’d know what to say or who to say it to.

  Second problem. Jake had pantomimed text me, and that’s exactly what Jane had done. But no text came back. She swiveled onto the black vinyl stool at the end of the zinc-topped bar, draping her coat over the seat, lining up.

  Trying to focus on her story, Jane had battled through the city’s ancient property tax computers in the chilly basement of City Hall and found the owner of 56 Callaberry was a Leonard Perl of Fort Myers, Florida. The bad news, Boston’s perpetually outdated Residents List showed Perl as the only tenant. Clearly wrong. Since his address was Florida.

  “Talkta the Mayah,” the clerk had growled when Jane pushed him for more current data. “Budgit cuts.”

  Still, she’d reassured herself, Perl would know who did live there. Jane checked for his phone number but nothing was listed. Damn. Cell phones were ruining reporters’ lives. No way to find anyone’s number quickly anymore. Perl was a dead end.

  Nothing was working. The Tuck thing. The Callaberry thing. Her life.

  “What’ll it be, Brenda Starr?” Jimmy the B emerged from the kitchen, a bear in a white apron. “Working on a big headline?”

  “Hey, Jimmy. Could be. A hamburger, medium-ish. No bun. A Diet Coke and, uh, just this once, French fries.”

  “The usual,” Jimmy said. “In five.”

  Jane swiveled, back and forth, hand on the bar, replaying her conversation with Maggie Gunnison. One critical tidbit, at least, came from that. The victim’s name was Bree Something.

  Bree Something. Not much to go on. She couldn’t find more about those poor kids if she didn’t get the rest of the name. Jake probably knew it by now, of course, and she could wait until the cops released it. But that was no way to get a scoop.

  She stared out the front window, an expanse of plate glass framing a colorless landscape of the snow-whitened concrete of City Hall Plaza, a flat urban tundra crisscrossed by briefcase-toting pedestrians. Three o’clock. Apparently these were the nonessential workers let out early to beat the inevitable snarls of snow traffic on the Mass Pike and the Southeast Expressway. The nonessentials scurried from the unwelcoming complex of gray stone and redbrick buildings, heading to the T or to the overpriced parking lots. “Nonessential” workers. There was a dilemma. Better to be nonessential and go home early? Or essential but work late and be stuck in traffic? Jane always picked essential. Especially now the Register bean counters were rumored to be plotting layoffs.

  She sipped her Diet Coke, stomach growling as the fragrance of deep-fat frying wafted from the kitchen, watching the commuter show, everyone wearing a hat, some losing their battles with umbrellas. If nothing had consequences, she’d race back to the office, find Alex, and chat with the city editor about what she’d learned. She’d tell him Jake had mimed “text me.” That would make her queen of the May, since having a police source was hot stuff in the news biz. Alex would be impressed, her job future would solidify, and everyone would live happily ever after.

  But everything did have consequences. Especially with the barbed wire separating a professional relationship and a personal one. Crossing that ethical boundary could topple her career. And Jake’s. To protect them both, she’d only tell Alex about her visit with Maggie Gunnison, and figure out what to do about the Jake part when the time came.

  She picked up a fork, twirling it in her fingers, focused on the front window. Luckily Alex didn’t expect her to file a story today. Another reason she didn’t miss TV.

  The double doors of the DFS building disgorged another pack of nonessentials, one of them wheeling a black suitcase, another using one hand to hold on to his—

  Her fork clattered to the zinc-topped bar. “Jimmy!” she shouted toward the kitchen. “Don’t trash my food, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  A bright green Celtics cap. A green plastic band like a gash across the forehead. Jet-black hair peeking out from underneath. Heading for the Government Center T stop. She had to get to him before he got underground.

  “I’m leaving my coat,” she yelled over her shoulder, grabbing her tote bag. No time. She had on boots and a heavy sweater. “Two minutes!”

  She powered out the front door and sloshed through the curbside slush, checking Cambridge Street both ways for frazzled drivers who’d be so distracted by the snow and the slickening streets they’d fail to see a jaywalker playing Frogger in the suddenly rush-hour traffic.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” she muttered, holding up a hand, as if that would stop anything, and tried not to slip as she picked her way, fast as she could risk it, across the icy pavement.

  Finn, right? Finn … Egleston. Everly. Eberhardt. Finn Eberhardt. Her fan. The oversharer.

  “Finn!” she called. This was exactly what she needed. She couldn’t let him get away.

  *

  Kellianne stared at the teddy bear. It sat on her bed, like an alien visitor, making a dent in one of her puffy pillows. Why did it feel so creepy having the stupid bear touching her stuff? It was only fuzzy tan fabric and a couple of black button eyes. A stupid yellow-striped T-shirt. Not even that cute. But it might be worth—something. To someone. Along with the rest of the stuff. She’d figure that out.

  It’d been easy, once she’d gotten the brilliant idea. Her Tyvek suit was so ridiculously big, no one would notice she’d stuffed two bears down one floppy leg, and the rest of the—what would she call them, souvenirs?—in the other. She hadn’t quite planned the whole deal in advance, so it worked nicely when Dumb and Dumber told her they’d change clothes in the truck and she could use the vic’s bathroom. Adiós, suckers. She stashed her treasures in her tote bag and walked out like it was any other day. And it was. Except for her, it wasn’t. It was the first day of the rest of her life. She’d heard that somewhere. It seemed right.

  The stupid bear stared back at her. Like he knew she had the candlestick, and the little plastic rabbit bowl, and another of the fuzzy brown bears, all in her tote bag. Hidden under the bed. Which, come to think of it, was kind of where she wanted to be. She touched a hand to her stomach. She felt a little weird inside.

  Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

  No. It was. Staring down the bear, she lifted her mop of hair onto the top of her head with both hands, then, with a sigh, let it fall back onto her shoulders. She didn’t have to decide right now. She’d left these things off the inventory, so the family, if they existed, or the state, if they didn’t, would never know they were gone. If you looked at the paperwork, this stuff never existed. And finally, finally, she’d be the one who got to make a decision.

  Then, ta-da, she’d be on her own. Not cleaning up the disgusting aftermath of other people’s lives. She looked at herself in the dresser mirror. Today was the first day of the rest—

  “Princess!” Kev’s voice grated on her, it always did. Like he was king of the—

  “What?” Her voice came out all twisty. She’d have to chill.

  “What?” she said again, working on what normal sounded like. Not like brother Kev would notice. She could always tell him she was having a “bad day.” He hated her to talk girl stuff.

  “Gotta hit the road again,” he yelled through the door. He pounded a couple of times.

  What a moron.

  “Why you telling me?” Good deal. They’d be gone, and she’d have some real privacy. “Adi-fricking-ós.”

  “Adi-fricking give me a break,” Kev said. “I’m saying, we got a call from the cops. Another job. So we gotta go make nice on the landlord. Get this puppy in the bag.”

  “Another…?”

  “Some rich old lady got killed,” Kev said. “But fine. We’ll go, we’ll check it out, we’ll make a killing of our own. You don’t have to come. Whatever. We’re outta here.”

  Rich.
The magic word. And you know what it meant? It meant she’d had a great idea.

  “Hang on, asshole. I didn’t say I wasn’t coming. Dad says I have to, remember?” Kellianne reached under her bed, grabbed the canvas handles of her empty tote bag, and pulled it to her. She picked up the bear, not really looking at those beady little eyes, and shoved it back into the tote bag.

  “Two seconds!” she yelled. She jammed the bag back under the bed and adjusted the flowery dust ruffle to look like nothing had been disturbed.

  She checked her image in the mirror. Her skin would clear up, once this was all over, and she’d get a real haircut instead of one of those student things, have an actual colorist make it blond, instead of doing it herself at the bathroom sink, like, every month. She actually had a pretty good body. That’s what she’d been told. She smoothed her jeans over her hips, imagining. Everything she thought she hated turned into exactly the opportunity she needed to make her life happen.

  She checked the dust ruffle. Perfect. Plenty of room under the bed for whatever she was about to find at the rich lady’s house.

  28

  “Finn!” No use. The wind and the honking cars and the hiss of the traffic carried her voice away from him. Jane plowed across the plaza, grateful for her chunky black turtleneck, even though it was quickly becoming a wet black turtleneck.

  “Finn!” Her ankle twisted under her, the heel of her boot stuck in a now-invisible crack in the uneven concrete. She caught herself, one-handed, on the freezing metal of a bright blue mailbox. She paused, throat dry from the cold.

  “Finn!”

  He turned her way—yes—but didn’t seem to see her. She pushed off the mailbox and sprinted, as carefully as she could, toward the retreating figure. He was almost to the T entrance. Now or never. She stopped, made her hands into a megaphone, and gathered her voice. “Finn!”

  He stopped. He turned.

  She waved and trotted toward him, like it was perfectly natural for her to be outside at City Hall Plaza at three in the afternoon in a gathering snowstorm with no coat.