Double Cross (4 page)
A siren whined in the distance. Sandra looked toward the corner of the house and flipped her notepad shut. “Paramedics,” she said, as the siren became louder. She walked to the edge of the garage. “Ed, why don’t you come out for a minute and get some fresh air? The medics are just about here.”
Ed straightened up and walked back out into the sunlight. “Good idea. There’s no rush. She’s not going anywhere.” He breathed deeply. “You know, the scary thing is that you can’t smell the stuff.”
Sandra just looked at him.
My phone rang. I checked the screen. It was Michael Harrison, the FBI agent who had investigated Kacey’s kidnapping earlier that year. Since Simon’s death, Michael had taken an interest in Kacey’s welfare. In the process we’d become friends, a result that even a casual observer would have found odd. Our backgrounds were as different as our personalities. While I was being raised by a decorated Special Forces officer, he was growing up poor and fatherless in Chicago’s most notorious housing project. If anyone were to ask ten ordinary people walking down the street which of us was more likely to be a politically conservative workaholic with an economics degree from the University of Chicago, all ten would probably point to me.
Instead, I turned out to be a hard-partying mattress-back with the dubious distinction of being the only female Secret Service agent ever drummed out of her job because of extracurricular conduct. Michael, on the other hand, was so self-disciplined that he made accountants look exciting. He had become the youngest Agent in Charge of a major metropolitan FBI office.
I punched the button on my phone. “Hi, Michael. You’re not going to believe what’s happening in my world this morning.”
“I can’t wait to hear. First, though, confirm that you and Kacey are going to the gun range this evening at seven. I’m planning my schedule and I thought I’d drop by and let you kick my butt again.”
I could just picture him sitting in front of his computer calendar, plugging in activities to fill each fifteen-minute increment for the rest of the day. “I doubt if we’re going to make it to the range. We’re over at Elise Hovden’s house. She killed herself last night.” I knew that would throw our conversation off schedule.
“Holy smoke.” That was Michael’s version of swearing. He must have had one heck of a mother. “How did she do it?”
“Carbon monoxide. Got in her car in her bathrobe and turned it on with the garage door shut.”
“What time?”
Now there was a classic Michael question. Just the facts, ma’am. “I don’t know. She was stiff as a board when we found her at around 8:30.” I knew how his mind worked. He was already calculating an estimated time of death. I wanted to move the conversation along. “Sad, huh? Living here all alone and then to end it that way?”
“Yeah. I didn’t have her pegged for being depressed or anything.”
I lowered my voice and cupped my hand over the phone. “We think she was embezzling money from Simon’s ministry.” Officer Ferrell looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I turned my back to him.
“Why are you whispering?” Michael said.
“The police are here. I don’t want to spread around the embezzlement thing.”
“They’ll get to it sooner or later anyway, unless they’re incompetent. How did you happen to be over at her house?”
“Kacey and I were supposed to have a meeting with her to discuss—” I paused and looked over my shoulder at Ferrell. He was walking toward the corner of the house to meet the ambulance. “To discuss the embezzlement. We were going to give her a chance to explain. It appears she didn’t want to have that conversation.”
“How’s Kacey taking it? She can’t get a break, can she?”
“She seems to be doing okay. She and Elise weren’t close.”
“And how are you taking it? Everyone always assumes you can handle everything.” He paused. “I worry about you sometimes.”
Michael could drive me crazy, but every once in a while he said something that made me want to hug him. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“I think I’ll come by. Where does she live?”
I raised an eyebrow. A detour like that could throw his whole day out of kilter. “Lewisville. You don’t need to come all the way out here, though. What about your schedule?”
“I can shuffle some things.”
I heard him tapping keys on his computer, and I knew he was changing appointments as we spoke. “I’ll text you the address,” I said. “There’s really no reason for you to do this.”
The key tapping continued. “It’s okay. I want to do it. Just a second . . . here. You don’t need to text me. I already got her address from my directory. The map’s coming up. I can be there in thirty to thirty-five minutes.”
I couldn’t resist. “You’d better make that thirty to thirty-seven minutes, in case there’s traffic.”
He didn’t seem to get it. “I assume you’ll be there a while,” he said. “Have the cops talked to you yet?”
“Not much. I’m sure it’s coming.” The siren on the ambulance rose to a screech then abruptly died as the paramedics pulled into the driveway. “The paramedics are here, I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll be there soon.” The call clicked off.
I stuck the phone back in my purse just as two med techs jumped out of the ambulance. One ran to the back of the truck and pulled out an oxygen canister and mask while the other approached us.
“Is she in the garage?”
The man with the oxygen trotted up behind him, and Sandra pointed at the canister. “You can put that away. She’s been dead for hours—carbon monoxide.”
“Suicide?”
“Looks like it.”
The med tech took a deep breath, walked into the middle of the garage, and held up something that looked like a pocket calculator. He watched it for a few seconds, then walked to another part of the garage and did the same thing. After repeating it on the other side of the car, he exhaled and shoved the device into his pocket. “Air’s okay.”
Officer Ferrell, Sandra, and the other med tech walked into the garage, leaving Kacey and me standing in the driveway. I walked to the edge of the garage. “Do you need us for anything?”
Ferrell was reaching into the driver’s side of the car near the floorboard. He pulled the lever to pop the trunk. The lid thunked. He stood up straight. “We’ll have some questions. We’ll get to you as quickly as we can.” He walked around the door and lifted the trunk lid.
“It’s okay. Take your time.” I nudged Kacey and whispered, “Let’s take a look in the house.”
“Do you think we should?” She inclined her head toward the garage.
I knew the police wouldn’t want us rummaging around in Elise’s house, but there was nothing but boredom and a chilly wind out there in the driveway. Besides, I was curious to see the final surroundings of a woman who had somehow convinced herself to leap into an abyss that most of us scratch and kick and claw to avoid. So I looked Kacey in the eye and said four words that nearly always lead to trouble: “Nobody said we couldn’t.”
CHAPTER
FOUR
WITH ONE EYE ON the garage, I edged across the driveway toward the gate. I raised the latch and we sidestepped as quietly as possible into the backyard. Once I had eased the gate shut, we crossed the short expanse of lawn to the deck and the back door. When we reached the door, we tiptoed to minimize any crunching on the broken glass. Swinging the door open, we stepped into the house.
The family room was large and high-ceilinged, and stretched seamlessly into the kitchen on our right. A person standing at the kitchen sink could look directly across the family room to the stone mantle of the fireplace on our left. A blue-and-white checked couch faced the fireplace, with red upholstered wing chairs on each side. In the middle was an oak coffee table.
Looking around, it was easy to understand Elise’s sparkling garage. She must have been a clean freak. The room smelled of pine needles, but with three weeks until Christmas, there was no tree in sight. Everything was in perfect order, with not so much as a magazine or newspaper lying around. The Spanish-tile floor was spotless, and even the cream-colored throw pillows sat fat, happy, and perfectly positioned on the couch. If she had had a more upbeat personality, she would have been a great match for Michael Harrison. They could have had a riot comparing electronic calendars over dry Chardonnay.
In the corner to the left of the fireplace, next to one of the huge windows that looked out over the deck, was a white pine secretary with a computer monitor and docking station for a laptop. In the center of the table lay what looked like a sheet of computer paper, with a pen resting on top of it.
I set my purse on the couch and walked over to the table. Part of the typed sheet of paper had been scored and torn off precisely along a straight edge. I bent over to read it.
By the time anyone reads this, I will be gone. I know that everyone will be disappointed in me. That’s nothing unusual. People have looked down on me my whole life. Never mind, that’s not the point. I didn’t set out to do something bad. I know that in my heart.
Mom, I love you. Please don’t agonize over this. I think you’ll understand why I had to go this way. Please remember that all my life I’ve done things the way you taught me. Until now.
Kacey, despite what you will probably think, I loved your father very much and would never have done anything to hurt him. I want you to know that the bad part of what I did came right at the end, after his death.
The paper was torn after that. There was no signature.
I motioned to Kacey. “She left a note.”
She put a hand on the corner of the desk and read while I checked the wastebasket on the floor for the missing half of the page. The trash can was as clean as the rest of the room. On the tile beneath the desk was a printer, but there was nothing in it but blank computer paper. I opened the single desk drawer, which contained only yellow Post-Its, paper clips, and a mechanical pencil, arranged precisely in a built-in tray.
Kacey lifted her hand from the desk. “It’s so awful.”
“I guess she couldn’t handle the thought of jail time.”
The door that led to the garage opened and closed. A moment later Sandra walked into the room.
She crossed her arms. “What are y’all doin’ in here?”
Kacey rubbed her hands together. “It was cold out there.”
“We didn’t dress for being outside in the wind.” I crossed my arms and shivered.
Sandra’s expression softened. “I suppose you two got more than you expected on this trip to Lewisville. I’m sorry about your friend out there.”
“Thanks,” Kacey said. “We weren’t really such good friends, though. I think that Elise didn’t have a lot of good friends. That makes it even sadder.”
Sandra stuck her hands in the back pockets of her dark blue pants. “Yeah. Look, you may as well make yourselves comfortable in here. Ed should be ready to talk to you in a few minutes. Let me just prepare you. He can be kind of intense, but he’s an okay guy. Just go with the flow and you should be out of here in an hour or so.”
“We found a suicide note,” I said.
“Where is it?”
I pointed toward the desk.
She walked over to the note. “Is this where you found it?”
“We haven’t touched it,” I said. Kacey nodded.
“Who tore it off?”
“I don’t know. That’s the way it was when we found it.”
“Did you look for the rest of it?” She bent over and looked in the wastebasket.
“It’s not in there. We already checked.”
When she finished reading the note, she shook her head. “Her poor mother. I’ll be right back.” She walked out to the garage.
I turned to Kacey and touched the lump in my pocket where I had put Elise’s flash drive. “I found something in Elise’s car.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “What do you mean you found something?”
I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and held it up.
“Where’d you get that?”
“It was on Elise’s key chain in her car. I thought it might have some computer files that could have something to do with the missing money.”
“Isn’t that tampering with evidence?”
I pictured Officer Ferrell pushing my head down as he shoved me into the backseat of the police SUV. I shook the image out of my head. “This isn’t a crime scene, it’s a suicide. Besides, her computer files belong to your father’s ministry. You’ve got a right to them.” I stuck the flash drive back in my pocket. “Maybe this will help us figure out what she did with the money so we can try to get it back.”
I walked over to the couch, picked up my purse, and held it out to her. “Would you mind doing me a favor by taking this out to the car? It’s got my gun in it, and I don’t want that to cause a problem with the police. I want to look around for Elise’s laptop before they come back in from the garage.”
Her eyes widened. “You brought your gun?”
“People can do unexpected things when they’re cornered. Did you expect what we found in the garage?”
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