SUNDAY, MARCH 7
Not even a tattered wisp of crime scene tape remained to mark the spot where Jillian Perry’s body had lain. Tree limbs lined with optimistic buds waved gently in the breeze off the lake, and a light dusting of snow made the wooded area innocuous, peaceful. Theresa studied the oak tree, waiting for inspiration. None came. The tree and its clearing had given up everything they had, the body, the few items with it. But nature couldn’t tell her what it had seen that day as the life faded from Jillian Perry. She would have to figure that out on her own.
She turned to go. After a few steps she could see a man on the path, watching her, the sky and lake one solid mass of light gray behind him. With a start she realized it was Drew Fleming.
He said, “Hi. I thought that was you.”
Somehow it didn’t surprise her to find him haunting the site, but it sure as hell startled her. “Good morning, Mr. Fleming.”
“Have you found out any more about Jillian’s death?”
“No.” She emerged from the trees and stepped onto the concrete path. Drew Fleming slouched in the same jersey jacket, not warm enough for the weather, and wiped his nose with one knit-gloved hand. He looked even worse than he had two days before. Pale as the snow around them, with eyes so reddened the insides of the lids resembled raw steak. Here lived the grief so conspicuously absent from Evan Kovacic. Or could it be guilt? She kept a healthy distance between them, and turned as he moved so that she always faced him straight on.
“Are you out here to collect more clues?”
Exactly why was she there on a Sunday afternoon, on her own time, a forty-minute ride from her home in Strongsville when she had laundry to do and groceries to shop for, to look at the scene of what might have been a suicide? Because Evan Kovacic had irritated her? Because someone needed to care about Jillian Perry? Because it beat doing laundry? “Nooo…not exactly. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve stood on this spot about ten times already since they found Jillian. I keep coming back, wondering what happened, asking her to tell me what happened. I don’t know why she won’t talk to me. Jillian always told me everything. I know she’s dead,” he added with a sudden, sharp anger. “Believe me, I know that. But my mother used to say that the dead would communicate with you if you really loved them.”
Theresa could not guess how to respond to that, and tried to tell herself that the wind off the lake had caused the prickling at the back of her neck.
“Besides,” he went on, “I live here.”
She gave that time to sink in and it still didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I live here. At the marina.” He waved his hand down the slope to the north to a largely empty maze of wooden docks. In the summer months they would house a flotilla of sailboats and cruisers. “I have a houseboat. If I had looked out my window, I might have seen her, and that’s what’s killing me. I keep wondering if she had been coming to me and sat down for a rest. They say people get disoriented before they freeze to death.”
Several things occurred to Theresa at once. Drew, the spurned lover, lived a two-minute walk from the crime scene. Also, he seemed to have gotten on board with the suicide theory…though if he wanted to murder someone, why not drag the body out to the edge of the ice and dump it into the lake? Why leave it on his own doorstep?
Unless he needed the body found. Getting hold of the funds would be difficult if Jillian were only missing and not dead. But how could he expect to get custody of Cara? Perhaps Theresa should be concerned about Evan’s safety. More likely, Drew didn’t care about the money. He cared about losing Jillian, with the finality of a marriage vow, to another man.
But if he killed Jillian, how?
While the wheels in her head smoked, she realized Drew had spoken. “What?”
“Would you like to see it? My houseboat?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Drew Fleming could, of course, be a murderous psychopath. But he also knew a lot about Jillian Perry, and she now had an invitation to question him further. She couldn’t pass it up. She clutched her coat more tightly around herself to shelter her body from the wind rushing in from the lake, and walked with him down the paved path to the boats.
Constant exposure to the elements had worn the marina’s veneer to a look of mild neglect, and a coating of frozen slush did not neaten it up, though the few boats remaining appeared large and expensive. Nylon straps and pulleys kept them above the frozen water. Theresa’s ex-husband had once kept a boat at the Edgewater marina and she had cringed over the price of the rent. It was simply not possible to keep a waterfront location tidy; of course, this was part of the charm.
Drew lived near the end of one of the long wooden docks, and used a warped, loose two-by-four to board his home. Theresa put one foot in the middle of it and didn’t look down. The Edgewater marina used the Mediterranean system of docking; instead of fingers of walkway extended between the vessels, ropes and pulleys connected to freestanding posts kept the boats in place. The only way to get on and off a boat was from the rear. Theresa remembered that detail from her ex-husband’s boat as well. Returning to shore had been a panicky and bruising nightmare, dashing from stern to bow with a hook in hand, trying to get ropes and spring clips where they needed to be before one hit the dock or, worse, another boat. She loved the lake as much as the next Clevelander, but didn’t miss that part of it. Or the boat payments.
She landed on a teak deck lightly dusted with snow; the finish had darkened, but it felt solid enough. The straps swayed a bit with the vibration. The open area at the rear of the ship held a wooden folding chair and a plastic recycling bin. Anything else would have frozen or blown away.
Drew unlocked the door and slid it to one side. “Come on in.”
If Jillian Perry had been murdered, Drew had the best motive and the best opportunity. And Theresa stood poised to lock herself in with him, without anyone knowing where she had gone, without a soul near enough to hear her if she screamed.
But Drew had existed for Jillian, and if anyone could tell Theresa more about the woman, he could. In a worst-case scenario, Cara’s future could depend on what Theresa could learn about Jillian Perry.
She pulled out her cell phone. “Hang on a sec. I’m just going to call my daughter and tell her where I am.”
He nodded without apparent interest and slid the door shut. Trying to keep the houseboat heated must be a constant struggle against wind and water.
Theresa did, indeed, call Rachael and told her precisely where her mother had gotten to, including the number of the dock and a description of the houseboat. She could only hope her daughter retained some detail over the siren song of satellite TV.
The warmth flowed over her skin as she stepped into Drew’s living area. The inside felt as cluttered as the outside was bare; a worn but fashionable leather couch took up one wall and faced a small entertainment center and a slender wine rack. The tiny kitchen had a teak dining set wedged into one corner and stainless-steel accessories on the counter-blender, food processor, and coffeemaker, now perking with a low grumble. Instead of dead fish, gasoline, or just that musty-unused-boat odor, the smell of hazelnut filled her sinuses.
Drew offered her a cup and she took off her gloves to wrap her fingers around the hot porcelain, then sat on the couch. A space heater on the floor added a separate burst of warmth. Every inch of wall space had been devoted to shelves, stereo equipment, posters, and photographs.
“I didn’t know anyone lived on houseboats year-round in Cleveland. I would have thought it would be too cold.”
“Most people only use them as second homes, but there’s a small and dedicated contingent of us who can’t afford a first one.”
Comic book heroes adorned the posters, and comic books covered the coffee table. The cover closest to her featured a tall man in spandex holding what looked like an M60.
Drew dropped into an armchair across from her and gave his nose a discreet wipe with his sleeve. The change in air temperature made noses run. “That’s one of my more popular series.”
“You write comic books?”
He shouted a laugh. “I wish! No, I sell them. At a store on Madison.”
“A bookstore?”
“No, comics. And graphic novels. Some collectibles.”
The dead boy had been a comic book fan. “I have a piece of evidence in a case, a corner ripped from a page that has colored graphics on both sides. I assumed it came from a magazine but the paper seemed thinner. Now that I look at these, it could be a comic book. The colors look different.”
“They’re inked drawings, not photos. It’s different.”
“But it’s glossy.”
“Deluxe edition.” He pulled a slim booklet titled “Batman #663” from the bottom of the pile on the coffee table and handed it to her. “They have glossy pages. It makes the colors more vivid. They use it for special storylines, like the whole Kingdom Come series. Or any time they want to charge more. Have they figured out what actually killed Jillian yet? Did she freeze to death?”
“It’s looking that way, but toxicology results will take a while.” She had no intention of discussing confidential details with a man who was not Jillian’s next of kin, but that much had been printed in the Plain Dealer. “Does Jillian have other family in town? Now that her grandparents have died?”
“Her parents live somewhere in Parma, but they haven’t spoken to her since they found out she’s an-she became an escort. She told them she was a model, but her father took her business card and called George, pretending to be a customer, and got an earful. He screeched at Jillian and they haven’t spoken since. Not even when Cara was born.”
“What about her mother?” She didn’t know why her cousin described interviewing as difficult. Drew could happily have spoken of Jillian Perry for the next three days, pausing only to sip coffee. He told her that Jillian had one sibling, a brother in New Mexico, but he never left the sunshine to come visit. Jillian’s mother would take her call every few months, but only if the father wasn’t home. Cara had been born without any significant problems, and Jillian did not seem unhappy at the absence of the baby’s father. Anyway, Evan had entered her life.
Theresa, obviously free to pry to her heart’s content, asked, “And she never told you who Cara’s father is?”
“No. I told you that before.” He shifted with apparent discomfort, as if more hurt by Jillian’s refusal to share her secret than by her refusal to share her body.
Theresa tried to think of a kinder way to say it but couldn’t. “I thought she told you everything,” she said.
“Some things I didn’t want to know,” he snapped. “Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”
The other men in her life seemed to be the only thing about Jillian that Drew didn’t want to dwell on. Theresa tried another route. “Why did Jillian work as an escort?”
“It paid enough to cover her rent and had flexible hours. That way she could keep going to Tri-C.”
“What did she major in?”
“She started in biology, but switched to education. She dropped out to have Cara. I enrolled to get an MBA to help me run the store, but I got too busy once the place developed a steady clientele.”
“How did she get the job at Beautiful Girlz?”
Drew shrugged. “I think she answered an ad. I know it seems a little sleazy, but it wasn’t, really. That job is sort of what you make it. There are sleazy girls there, sure, but Jillian just did the straight-pay, modeling-type things. Trade shows, business parties. Occasionally a date, when the guy wanted to impress his friends. But she wouldn’t even let them kiss her.”
As he went on about Jillian’s healthy beauty and sweet nature, Theresa stopped listening and looked around. She had found pink cotton fibers on Jillian’s sweatshirt, fibers that hadn’t belonged to the polo shirt. They didn’t appear to match anything in Drew’s living area and most likely had come from Jillian’s own towels. That smear of oil on the sleeve, though…there would be lots of things needing oil on a boat, right? He wouldn’t be running the engines in the middle of winter, but plumbing and electricity still had to work.
“…worried about Cara.”
She tore her gaze from a Star Wars action figure from the original movie, its packaging intact. “What was that?”
“I said, Evan doesn’t care about her. He only wanted Jillian’s body, not her baby. It worried Jillian, how little interest he showed in Cara. What kind of life is Cara going to have, growing up with Evan?”
Theresa sipped her coffee, taking a moment to think. She had never interfered with a victim’s family in any way, but for once considered making an exception. When she had suggested-well, threatened-the idea to Evan yesterday, she had had Jillian’s parents in mind. But any applicant would do. As long as Evan thought Cara’s million and a half wouldn’t go to him upon the baby’s death, the little girl would be safe. Even better than safe. If Evan needed to win a custody hearing, he’d keep the baby’s well-being demonstrably perfect. Assuming, of course, that Cara had anything to fear from Evan.
But that had been before she learned of Drew’s proximity to the crime scene. Now, though her gut wanted to trust the sweet comic-book salesman, her mind waved a few bright red flags. She perched on the fence, trying to remain in neutral territory. “Perhaps Jillian’s parents will take Cara.”
Drew’s neck slumped into his shoulders. “They’ve never even seen Cara. I was the only friend Jillian had. She said so-look at what she sent me for my birthday.”
He handed her an envelope, postmarked a month before, holding a funny American Greetings card. Under the punch line, Jillian had inscribed: Thanks for always being there for me. Love you always, Jillian. The friendship hadn’t been all in Drew’s head.
Theresa tried some gentle probing, a technique at which she’d never been particularly adept. “Cara appears to have been well cared for since Jillian disappeared, and lots of men aren’t fascinated by babies, not until they grow old enough to show some personality. What makes you think Evan would be a bad father?”
“He treated Jillian like a princess until after they were married. Then she became just a pretty body, without a mind, without feelings. Look at that apartment, how it’s decorated.”
“It’s very nice. He said Jillian did it.”
“He ripped a picture out of a magazine and told her to copy it. The colors, everything. She added a wardrobe that she found at an antiques shop and he made her take it back. It wasn’t in the picture.”
Theresa leaned forward and opened her coat. The air had felt cozy at first, but now the warmth grew too heavy. “People often have different ideas about decorating. It took my ex-husband and me three months to find a coffee table we could agree on.”
“He talked about his new video game constantly, but never listened or asked about her work. Think about that-you’re a guy with a beautiful fiancée whose job it is to meet other men, and you don’t ever ask where she’s going or who she’s going to be with?”
“Maybe he trusted her.”
Drew straightened, and gave her a look so knowing that she decided to stop writing him off as a slightly warped dweeb. “No man trusts like that.”
“That still doesn’t make him a bad father.”
Drew got to his feet with an agitated twitch. “The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One, Evan murdered Jillian to get Cara’s money. Two, Evan drove Jillian to-” He stopped, gulped, went on. “Suicide. So how can we stand back and let someone like that raise her child?”
We? Again Theresa felt as if she tottered on a precipice, balancing between the safety of not getting involved and the possibility that Cara could be in danger. Instead of jumping, she tried to calm Drew-and herself-with reason. “But they’d only been married a few weeks.”
“I can show you.” He dove for the table in front of her, rummaged around in the slippery piles of comics, and came up with a pink vinyl photo album. He plopped it on Theresa’s knees, startling her into spilling the coffee on her jeans.
She set the mug down after Drew cleared a spot among the comic books for the wet bottom. The photo album had a Hello Kitty emblem in one corner but no other markings. It had one subject: Jillian Perry.
Photos of Jillian on the houseboat, at the beach (in a maternity bathing suit), the grocery store, a few with endless racks of comic books behind her, obviously Drew’s shop. At the hospital, a scrunched-up, red-faced Cara in her arms. Aside from the baby, no one else. In a few shots, other people stood near Jillian but Drew had cropped them out, cutting people off to just a sliver of human. Only Jillian remained.
“See?” Drew seated himself next to her on the couch, too close, reaching over to turn the pages faster to point out photos in which Jillian appeared as especially lovely. “See how happy she was? She glowed when Cara was born. Just glowed. Here’s her old apartment, before she moved in with Evan. She made the curtains in that nursery by hand. They matched Cara’s eyes, see?”
“Uh-huh.” She really wished he’d move over.
He flipped another page. “Now this is after the wedding.”
He missed a photo op like Jillian in a veil? “Did you go?”
“To the wedding? Yeah.”
“But you didn’t take any pictures?”
The muscles in his cheek tightened to cords. “Nah. Look at her face. This is a week after the wedding.” He pointed out a photo of Jillian on the deck of the boat, a comely Eskimo in a pink parka, the baby a bundle of swaddling against her chest. Jillian smiled, but only smiled. No glow, and even a tiny line of worry above her eyebrows.
“Perhaps she was uncomfortable. It had to be freezing out.”
“And here.” Jillian by her car, obviously the same day, inserting her key into the door lock, only the barest of smiles and a discomfited one at that.
Jillian in her apartment, scrubbing a pan in the sink. Jillian holding Cara, with a smile, yes, but a tired one, apprehensive around the corners. The carefree grin of the earlier photographs had been erased. If Jillian hadn’t been afraid of something, she’d at least been very, very concerned.
Still, Theresa thought it might not be wise to encourage Drew to blame Evan. That might invite further disaster. “Having an infant is exhausting, Drew. I can attest to that.”
“She could have given perky lessons to Disney employees two months after Cara’s birth. All of a sudden, at five months, she’s tired? The only thing that changed was Evan.”
“And her apartment. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping well in a new place. Maybe Cara wasn’t. That’s the way it is with babies, Drew, one month isn’t necessarily like the next. And marriage is a big change.”
He sat close enough for her to notice the ink stains on his fingertips, and that perhaps he should launder his clothing more often. “She went from smiling to not in just a few days. Maybe I haven’t walked down the aisle myself, but I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”
She studied the photographs, the creepily plentiful photographs. The change in Jillian’s mood did seem apparent…but there could be many reasons for that. Perhaps Jillian didn’t like living on the old factory grounds, or couldn’t sleep with the noise of the train tracks nearby. Perhaps Cara had developed a health problem, even something mild, that Jillian worried about but did not discuss with the childless Drew. And the first few months, the first year, of marriage were the hardest. She might have had a habit of calling her old friend after a good blowout with her husband. And perhaps Drew had kept only pictures that proved his theory, that Jillian had married the wrong man.
Or perhaps Jillian thought marriage would finally dampen Drew’s obsession with her, and that had not happened. After all, Evan did not appear in the photographs to prompt that touch of fear in Jillian’s eyes. Only Drew had been present.
“You’ve known Jillian for four years, you said?”
“Yeah, four years and a couple of months.”
“Did you only recently get a camera? This album begins, what, five months ago?”
He spoke without hesitation. “This is the current one. I have others, um, at least seven. Would you like to see them?”
Eight photo albums of nothing but Jillian Perry. How had she walked that precipice of her own with this man for four years? Maintained a friendship without anger or despair? Kept him from falling into the abyss? Even marrying hadn’t helped. No wonder she had trouble smiling for the camera.
All at once Theresa’s skin crawled. She had done enough investigating for one day. The album slid from her lap as she stood; Drew Fleming caught it, cushioned it from harm. “Sorry, no, I have to get going.”
He grabbed her arm just above the wrist. “But I have some really good ones.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“You have to understand, Theresa.” His fingers tightened. “I’m trying to show you what happened to Jillian. I knew her better than anybody else.”
Her thighs gave a twinge as she struggled to rise, her arm beginning to feel pinched. Afraid she didn’t want to know the answer, she asked, “What happened to Jillian?”
His eyes were shiny, the blue glacier hard. “Evan did.”
She breathed out in relief. For a moment she had expected a confession. Then she slid her arm from his fingers, stammered something about her daughter needing help on a school project, and thanked him for telling her about Jillian. She crossed the floor in four steps and pulled at the sliding door, her fingertips slipping from the shallow handle.
“No problem.” He slid the door open for her and she escaped the cabin. Frigid air slapped her cheeks, woke her up. The deck swayed under her feet.
Still think he’s harmless? Theresa asked herself.
Now Drew looked up at the gray haze that represented the sky. “You’ll let me know what the doctors say, right?”
“I’ll ask them to call you.” This didn’t guarantee that they would-normally medical information would be released only to the next of kin-but there was nothing she could do about that. From the rear deck she could see the copse of woods where the body had been found, and again felt that frisson of worry. Jillian Perry had practically died on her stalker’s stoop. “You said you thought that Jillian might have been coming to visit you?”
Drew had already followed her line of sight. “Yeah. I mean, it’s right there. I could have seen her from here.”
“Were you home all day on Monday?” A nice way of asking if he had an alibi for the time of the alleged crime.
“No, I was at the shop. I’m open nine to seven.”
“Did Jillian often walk here to visit you?”
He thought about this, holding his body tighter in his too-thin coat. “No, she always drove.”
“Always?”
“Yeah. Jillian wasn’t into exercise, believe it or not, despite her figure. She always told me, ‘I’ll jog only if someone’s chasing me with a gun.’” The laugh faded from his lips as quickly as it had appeared; obviously he thought someone had chased Jillian, right into an icy death.
She climbed onto the back of the boat. “Does this…craft…have a name? I don’t see one.”
“It’s on the front.”
She waited.
“What else? It’s Jillian.” He shrugged as he said it, with a wry smile that seemed so reasonable, so normal, that her anxiety dissipated like a wisp of hot air on an icy day. Drew Fleming was not the only man who had ever carried a torch for an unattainable woman. And if Drew Fleming had killed Jillian, why wouldn’t he sit back and let her be written off as a suicide? Why show up at the lab insisting on murder? Obsession could turn every bit as murderous as greed, but not as often. Greed remained the far more common motive.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he added. “I’m just glad that someone else cares about her besides me and Cara.”
Theresa placed one foot on the two-by-four, preparing to make the leap to solid ground. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Jillian’s parents will win custody.”
“I told you-they’re not going to ask for it. They may not even know Jillian is dead, unless Evan told them. I certainly didn’t.”
“They’ll be told. They’re the official next of kin, so they’ll have to at least be informed of Cara’s guardianship.”
Drew frowned. “But Evan is already the guardian. Isn’t he?”
The two-by-four bent under Theresa’s weight. It would hold her for a quick leap, but if she tried to balance on it for any length of time, it would bow too deeply, and she would fall to the frozen ice below.
“Not exactly,” she admitted.