It was still early morning as Wayne Stevens sat reading the newspaper in the family room of his comfortable Spanish-style house in Oakland, California. Retired two years from his modestly successful insurance business, he looked the part of a contented man. Even in repose, his face maintained a genial expression. Regular exercise kept his body trim. His two married daughters and their families both lived less than half an hour away. He had been married to his third wife, Catherine, for eight years now, and in that time had come to realize that his first two marriages had left much to be desired.
That was why when the phone rang he had no premonition that the caller was about to evoke unpleasant memories.
The voice had a distinct East Coast accent. “Mr. Stevens, I’m Joe Palumbo, an investigator for the Bergen County, New Jersey, prosecutor’s office. Your stepdaughter was Suzanne Reardon, was she not?”
“Suzanne Reardon? I don’t know anyone by that name. Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re not talking about Susie, are you?”
“Is that what you called Suzanne?”
“I had a stepdaughter we called Susie, but her name was Sue Ellen, not Suzanne.” Then he realized the inspector had used the past tense: “was.” “Has something happened to her?”
Three thousand miles away, Joe Palumbo gripped the phone. “You don’t know that Suzanne, or Susie as you call her, was murdered ten years ago?” He pushed the button that would record the conversation.
“Dear God.” Wayne Stevens’ voice fell to a whisper. “No, of course I didn’t know it. I send a note to her every Christmas in care of her father, Dr. Charles Smith, but I’ve heard nothing from her in years.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Eighteen years ago, shortly after my second wife, Jean, her mother, died. Susie was always a troubled, unhappy and, frankly, difficult girl. I was a widower when her mother and I married. I had two young daughters and I adopted Susie. Jean and I raised the three together. Then, after Jean died, Susie received the proceeds of an insurance policy and announced that she was moving to New York. She was nineteen then. A few months later I received a rather vicious note from her saying she’d always been unhappy living here and wanted nothing to do with any of us. She said that she was going to live with her real father. Well, I phoned Dr. Smith immediately, but he was extremely rude. He told me that it had been a grave mistake to allow me to adopt his daughter.”
“So Suzanne, I mean Susie, never spoke to you herself?” Joe asked quickly.
“Never. There seemed to be nothing to do but let it go. I hoped in time she’d come around. What happened to her?”
“Ten years ago her husband was convicted of killing her in a jealous rage.”
Images ran through Wayne Stevens’ head. Susie as a whiny toddler, a plump, scowling teenager who turned to golf and tennis for recreation but seemed to take no pleasure in her own prowess in either sport. Susie listening to the jangle announcing phone calls that were never for her, glowering at her stepsisters when their dates came to pick them up, slamming doors as she stomped upstairs. “Jealous because she was involved with another man?” he asked slowly.
“Yes.” Joe Palumbo heard the bewilderment in the other man’s voice and knew that Kerry’s instinct was right when she had asked him to delve into Suzanne’s background. “Mr. Stevens, would you please describe your stepdaughter’s physical appearance?”
“Sue was…” Stevens hesitated. “She was not a pretty girl,” he said quietly.
“Do you have pictures of her you could send me?” Palumbo asked. “I mean, those that were taken closest to the time she left to come East.”
“Of course. But if this happened over ten years ago, why are you bringing it up now?”
“Because one of our assistant prosecutors thinks there’s more to the case than came out at the trial.”
And boy, was Kerry’s hunch right! Joe thought as he hung up the phone after having secured Wayne Stevens’ promise to send the pictures of Susie by overnight mail.