Blood and Roses (Holly Jennings Thriller) (3 page)

“Oh wait. My science. It’s um, it’s uh…”

“Chloe. Think. We have to get Maddie, too, and we’ll be late. This is why I tell you to pack up your things the night before.” She shook her head, rinsed her coffee cup, and turned off the coffeemaker, tempted to pour herself a to-go cup; but time was short. She did grab her hazelnut creamer, though—the coffee at the station left a lot to be desired.

“I’m sorry. I just…oh wait, it’s in Petie’s crate.”

“Petie’s crate?” Holly asked. She started to ask why and then thought better of it. “Hurry up. Go get it.” Petie, their Yorkshire terrier, had come into their life through a brutal case Holly had worked on a couple of years back. The dog’s owners had been murdered and Holly took the poor thing in. She had to crate him while at work, until her older soon-to-be stepdaughter, Megan, could come by after school and let him out. Petie had an issue with chewing anything left out that looked remotely chewable, including a leather ottoman in her living room. Countless shoes had also gone by the wayside, thanks to Petie. Who would have thought
a five-pound dog could eat his way through an ottoman in a few hours, not to mention a TV remote or two? Petie could.

While Chloe fetched her homework, Holly headed for her room. She needed to get a sweater. The offices at the station were kept so cold that even in eighty-degree weather, as Indian summer settled in like clockwork around Southern California, it was frigid inside her office.

She searched through her closet and found a sweater she actually hadn’t worn in about a year. She liked it for the big pockets.

As she swung it over her arm, something dropped out of one of the pockets. She bent to pick it up. A charm—a plumeria flower charm.

From Hawaii.

From her honeymoon.

With Jack.

She remembered why she had the charm in the sweater. Last winter, she’d slipped it on after an argument that she and Brendan had about her work, which did seem to be the source of most of their arguments. She’d come home from his place, put the sweater on, and then gone to her jewelry box and taken out the charm, remembering when Jack had given it to her.

That night a lot changed.

“Mom!” Chloe yelled. “I’m gonna be late!”

Holly put the charm back in the pocket and donned the sweater. The pressures of the ten-year-old being late to school made her decide that she would put the charm away when she came home.

“Got my homework.” Chloe ran into her room. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”

Holly shook her head, put the dog in his house, closed the plantation blinds in the front room that faced the street, locked the doors, and headed out.

A few blocks away she picked up her younger soon-to-be stepdaughter, who was also Chloe’s best friend, Madeline. Holly’s fiancé, Brendan, was a small-animal vet and already at his office, so Holly handled the morning pickups, while Brendan was in charge of getting the girls from school in the afternoon. They would all eat dinner together if Holly was available. There were many nights when her job as a crime scene investigator/homicide detective required her to work late into the evening, which meant Chloe stayed at Brendan’s. They had been together now going on two years and had discussed cohabiting, but mutually decided that it wasn’t the best example for their girls. Only a few more months and they would all be under the same roof. Poor Brendan was going to be bombarded with what Holly had started referring to as the estrogen O-zone. Holly hoped he knew what he was getting into. She smiled thinking about him as they pulled up in front of his older, Spanish-style home, similar to hers, in the Point Loma area of San Diego.

Chloe jumped out and ran up the cement stairs to get Maddie. The two came flying back down the stairs a moment later. Maddie’s strawberry-blonde hair streamed behind her. She was as gorgeous as her father and her older sister Megan. They were indeed a pretty family, and before long they would be hers.

The girls chatted wildly in the backseat of the jeep—something about Justin Bieber. Their school was only a couple of miles away, and once they were out of the car and the energy had settled, Holly dialed her partner, Chad Euwing. Chad was one of the good guys, and he watched her back. When she was running a little bit late, like this morning, he’d cover for her.

“Hey you,” she said cheerily when she heard his voice come over her Bluetooth.

“Jennings.” He sounded alarmed. “I was just picking up the phone to call you.”

“Everything okay?” She knew by the tone in his voice that it wasn’t.

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“Talk to me,” she said.

“You know our case? The two jockeys…Del Mar…last month? The ones found in that defunct dive-suit manufacturing warehouse?”

“Yes. How can I forget?” They had been working on it now for a few weeks, with no leads. Nothing. They’d hit a wall and she was as frustrated as Chad. To make matters worse, they’d caught another homicide case since the jockeys’ and, because the newer case had been tied to a local judge, the pressure had been on. Their boss, Chief Greenfield, was a great boss and well respected, but like most people, he caved under pressure from higher-ups. That was what had happened when Judge Winchester’s niece had been found murdered behind a nightclub in downtown San Diego. Holly and Chad had spent a couple of weeks with the case and had come to the sad answer. The twenty-three-year-old girl had gotten herself messed up with the wrong guy, who had connections within the drug world. A seedy, scandalous story, and the girl’s family had suffered a great deal. In the meantime, their jockey case had grown cold.

“Ever hear of Marvin Tieg?”

“The movie producer? I think everyone has. I mean, at least if you either watch
Entertainment Tonight
or read the sports page on occasion. Wasn’t his most recent movie
The Guilty
?”

“That’s him. And aside from his movies, he’s the guy whose horse was expected to win the Triple Crown last year, right? But then there were all those accusations and something about illegal drugs found in the horse’s system. Big story. The guy liked the ponies.”

“Liked?” Holly asked.

“Liked. Good thing we solved the judge’s case, because the story on the jockeys is going to get bigger. Tieg is dead. Murdered in his home in Hollywood Hills.”

“Okay. Not our jurisdiction.” Her stomach sank. This was not going to be good.

“Yeah, well, the detective on the case just called for you. Tieg was tortured and left for dead with a carrot stuck in his mouth.”

3

Holly and Chad ran the lights on top of the car while working their way toward Tinseltown.

He drove and she went over the notes regarding Tommy Lyons’s and Katarina Erickson’s murders. “This guy, this detective, did he say anything else about the victim, other than the carrot in the mouth?” Holly asked. She tucked her short auburn hair behind her ears. Holly had worked CSI for several years following her years as a detective for San Diego PD. Most CSI were not trained police officers. They didn’t have to be, but she had chosen that route, and after working a case with Jack ten years ago—the case that had resulted in his death—she’d taken the schooling needed to be a CSI. She’d been pregnant at the time, and she hadn’t wanted to risk her child’s life. Then, after Chloe was born, Holly didn’t want to risk Chloe becoming an orphan due to a dangerous case.

With the economic downturn and cuts in the department, Greenfield had asked her if she would be willing to come back on as a detective. She’d agreed, with a few stipulations. One—she would not work narcotics, as those cases posed a lot of threat to an officer’s safety. Two—Greenfield had to pair her with her partner, Chad, and he had to allow them to work their cases in the best way they saw fit, affording them flexibility and the freedom of not having Big Brother over their shoulder at every turn. They were good cops who knew how to do their jobs. Greenfield had agreed, and for the past
few years now, she and Chad had made a good team, solved some solid cases, and kept costs down within the department because of her proficiency as both a detective and a CSI.

“No. The Hollywood Hills detective was very discreet. His name is Devraj Amar, I believe. Had just a hint of an Indian accent. Nice guy, from what I gathered.”

“Interesting that he would go so far as to ask us to come up and view the crime scene.”

Chad nodded and glanced over at her. His hazel eyes darkened with a knowing that she recognized.

“Yeah. I know what you’re thinking, and I am going to agree here. Either we have ourselves a serial killer, or a copycat.” A text came through on her cell.
Love you. Dinner at eight? Just us? Megan will babysit.
“Shit,” Holly muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Brendan. You know the drill. Trying to split my time between job and family.”

“I do,” he said. “I know that drill well.” He glanced at Holly. “Brooke’s due date is getting closer. I wonder how the baby will change things.”

Holly smiled at her partner and decided not to respond to Brendan’s text. Maybe, just maybe, she would be able to make an eight o’clock date with her beloved. The next few hours would dictate if that was a possibility, or not.

Chad cleared his throat, back to business. “A copycat, though?” Chad said. “I don’t think that’s as viable as a serial killer. Unless the carrot bit has been leaked to the press, but we’ve kept tight lips on this thing. I think we got one and the same guy here. The obvious connection is that these vics were involved with horse racing.”

“I think you’re probably right, partner. Here we have two young, up-and-coming jockeys. Now an owner. As far as what we know about the jockeys, it seemed that everyone we spoke to thought
the world of them. Trainers liked them, owners liked them, other jockeys. I did have one red flag but couldn’t take it anywhere.”

“What was that?”

“The guy training the horse Katarina had ridden that afternoon.” Holly read back over the extensive notes on her tablet. “Geremiah Laugherty. He was a charmer for sure, but something went off in my gut when we spoke. I could never put a finger on it.”

“I didn’t get that. Tall guy, right? Kind of looked like Clint Eastwood back in the day?”

Holly laughed. “Right. Before he shouted at an empty chair.”

“Don’t get me started.”

“I’m just saying…You brought up the gunslinger. But as far as good-looking and seemingly genuine, then yes, that is the guy,” Holly said. “Nothing stands out in my notes from the investigation, though. Everything has been a dead end. The killer was clean, no prints, nothing but the dead kids and the note in the racing form. I’ll be interested to see if maybe Geremiah Laugherty had any association at all with Marvin Tieg.”

“Your gut is usually decent. As far as that note left by the killer goes, I’ve played out every puzzle I could with it. Sorry, but nothing. Until now…”

“Until now. Maybe,” she replied.

They exited the freeway and followed the GPS, making the turn off Sunset onto Laurel Canyon and winding on up the palm-tree-lined street—serene, clean, and speaking volumes of wealth.

“Wow,” Holly said as they pulled up into the driveway. The place was a monstrosity of glass—truly a glass house, built to take in the views of Los Angeles below.

LAPD had a line of vehicles parked up top in the circular drive, along with the coroner’s van. As odd as she had felt asking the detective who had called her to see if they could hold off moving the body until she arrived, he had agreed. This wasn’t her case, and
she didn’t know if the dead producer was related to her case with the two dead jockeys. But if this was the same perp, and from the sounds of the carrot-in-the-mouth move it might be, then Holly was hoping to discover some answers.

Anything
.

She wanted to be able to call poor Katarina Erickson’s family back in Ireland and let them know that the devil who had destroyed their beautiful daughter was locked away. And Tommy Lyons’s father, who had been crushed by the news, would possibly be able to move on in some small way.

The families of murder victims never really moved on completely, but when the perp was caught—or better still, dead—there did seem to be closure and some small sense of peace. If Holly could in any way provide that for the families, then she would. Even if that meant going out on a limb and asking a colleague from a different jurisdiction to do this favor for her.

Chad ran his hand through his sandy-colored hair. He gave her a grim smirk and a nod as they got out of the car. The temperature was warm under the sunny LA sky, the smog lighter than usual as a westward breeze pushed the pollution out over the Pacific. Even with the clarity of midmorning, a heaviness hung in the air—the kind of heaviness that seemed to always accompany death, especially as dark a type of death as murder.

The twelve-foot-high, double-wide wooden doors stood open. Holly and Chad flashed their badges at the cop standing guard. He gave them a funny look, and Holly knew he had made the badge from outside of LA. “Detective Amar requested us. I’m Detective Jennings. This is Detective Euwing.”

“Let them through.”

The officer stood out of the way, and Holly could see a thin man in his midthirties, with dark hair, dressed in khakis and a white polo, standing in the massive foyer. He approached them and
took off his rubber gloves to shake their hands. “Good morning, Detectives. I am Devraj Amar, detective in charge on this case. I am the one who phoned you.” He smiled. “Thank you for taking the time to come up.”

“Holly Jennings and Chad Euwing. Of course. We appreciate your asking us. We have been at a loss with the jockey case in San Diego, and if this is tied in, we’re more than happy to cruise up the coast and see what we have.”

“Why don’t I show you?” Amar replied. He spun on his heels and led them to the back of the house, his shoes clapping against the cream-colored marble floors. They passed through glass-walled hallways and through a bachelor-chic interior—a lot of beige, shades of browns and grays, leather and suede furniture with interesting artwork that ranged from nude women to movie posters, and photos of different horses either in racing mode on the track, or in the winner’s circle.