Nowhere to Hide (6 page)

September had told Auggie she and Gretchen were reworking the information they’d gathered on Do Unto Others, and today she planned to go through the murder book and find names of people to reinterview. Maybe some of them could recall things now that had escaped them during the initial interviews.

She glanced at Glenda Tripp’s information, looking down at the solemn-faced young woman. Her mother, Angela Navarone, had come down from Seattle to identify and collect the body post-autopsy, and now she’d returned home with her daughter’s remains. Glenda’s uncle was in jail awaiting trial; he’d been unable to post bail from what September had heard.

Glenda had worked as a teacher’s aide at a nearby elementary school; not Sunset, but their rival Twin Oaks. Everyone at Twin Oaks whom September and Gretchen had interviewed had expressed shock and dismay, but no one knew Glenda very well and her employment seemed to be a dead end as far as learning more about her personal life went. None of her apartment neighbors knew her well, either, although one of them, the one who’d found her door open and had called 911, was pretty sure she was a regular at a local cowboy bar called The Lariat that featured country-western music and line-dancing. When September and Gretchen went to The Lariat and showed Glenda’s picture around, the bartenders remembered her, but everyone said she was fairly serious and reserved and, once again, no one knew her very well there, either.

“A helluva dancer,” the bartender named Nick said. “Always on the beat, but she stayed back, y’know, even though people urged her to get up front so they could follow. Didn’t suit her, though.”

“Ever see her with anyone? A man?” Sandler had asked him and the other employees, but their collective answers consisted of shrugs and head wagging.

Glenda Navarone Tripp liked to stay under the radar.

So, how was Glenda picked? September wondered now. Proximity? Had she fallen into the path of the killer and possessed the same body type and general hair color as the other two victims? Is that all it was? Or, was it something to do with her uncle, the once notable Dr. Frank Navarone who had lost his medical license owing to unorthodox methodology that had cost a patient’s life, or so the yet-to-be-proven story went? Pauline Kirby had mentioned Navarone in the interview with September, and then Glenda Tripp was killed. Was she
that
connection? September herself?

She wished there was someone else to ask, but they’d bled dry every source they could think of when it came to Glenda Tripp. No one knew her. No one cared. Nothing.

September’s gaze slid over Emmy Decatur’s picture, and she grimaced as she recalled having to deal with the girl’s parents. It had been a sad, uncomfortable scene when Sandler had asked them to identify the body. Emmy had been reported missing by her roommate, Nadine Wilkerson, who worked with Emmy at The Indoor Beach, a puce-colored tanning salon in a strip mall. Nadine had been the one who first raised the alarm that Emmy was missing, and when September and Sandler met Nadine at her apartment and went through Emmy’s belongings, she said she and Emmy occasionally went to a local pub, Gulliver’s, one that September had been to a couple of times. Gulliver’s sported a suit of armor at the door and medieval weaponry displayed on the paneled walls, but its big attraction was Thursday Ladies Night—or more accurately, Wenches’ Night, where the women were served dollar beers and, if they felt like dressing the part with a full skirt and peasant blouse, the lower cut the better—they might even get their beer for free. Emmy’d apparently had a thing for one of the servers, a guy named Mark who wouldn’t give her the time of day. September and Gretchen had chased him down at Gulliver’s and really put the questions to him, but he wasn’t all that smart, and he was one of those “workout” guys who didn’t have time for much of anything else. He just didn’t seem to possess the imagination to commit the murders, so he’d disappeared into the background although they were keeping tabs on him.

The first victim, Sheila Dempsey, was the one they knew the least about. She’d been found outside the city limits and so, apart from hearing it on the news, the Laurelton police had little to do with the investigation, at least in the beginning. After the discovery of Emmy Decatur’s body, September had interviewed the county deputy assigned to the case and he’d subsequently e-mailed her a list of people he’d talked to about Sheila, which September had run off her printer. She was scowling at it when Gretchen plopped down in the “perp” chair next to her desk and leaned an elbow onto the papers on its top.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“I keep thinking we need to learn more about Sheila Dempsey. Reinterview the people listed in Deputy Dalton’s report.”

“Start with the ex-husband,” Gretchen said, her nasal tones more pronounced in the morning.

“Estranged husband.” September wanted to talk to Sheila Dempsey’s parents as well, but she didn’t think Gretchen was wrong about Dempsey. The guy had given the deputy next to nothing, according to the report.

“Sounds like as good a plan as any. We need to kick-start this investigation before the feds learn about it and swoop in and take it away from us.”

“I wish Wes were back,” September said, thinking aloud. “He met Sheila once, or maybe twice, at The Barn Door. The bar with the mechanical bull.”

“I know—the seventy-two-ounce steak place. Eat it all and you get it for free. Weasel tell you he tried that once?”

Wes “Weasel” Pelligree was another detective with the Laurelton PD. He was African-American and had that lean, cowboy look that September found appealing. He’d gotten wounded helping Auggie on the Zuma case and had taken a bullet to the abdomen. Luckily, he was going to be fine, but he was still recuperating after surgery and in the care of his longtime girlfriend, Kayleen. No word on when he’d be back.

“He said he puked it up in the alley behind the place,” September remembered with a smile. “But he said Sheila was cheering him on while he was eating it. A couple weeks later she was gone.”

Gretchen nodded and looked at the bulletin board. Before Decatur’s and Tripp’s bodies had turned up, Wes had kept Sheila’s picture on his desk, a reminder. Now all three victims’ photos were on the board with pertinent data about each crime listed beneath them. Everything else was in the file.

“All three of them frequented bars,” September pointed out.

“Who doesn’t?” Gretchen stood up and stretched. “I mean, yeah, some people have problems with alcohol and all that, but these three women . . . that doesn’t seem to be relevant with them. They were looking for a good time. Even Glenda, she just liked to dance.”

“I was thinking that . . . maybe he picked Glenda after I talked about Frank Navarone in that interview with Pauline Kirby.”

Gretchen frowned. “You think you influenced him?”

“She was killed that night. My interview ran at ten, and Auggie and I were called to her apartment the next morning. The neighbor saw the open door.”

“Huh.” Gretchen thought that over, then asked, “What’s Sheila Dempsey’s husband’s name?”

September looked down at the notes. “Greg Dempsey. Sheila’s parents live in Portland. Diane and Rick Schenk.”

“Let’s start with hubby. I like the idea of a face-to-face. Get something going. It’s been like a morgue around here.”

George showed up, yawning as he settled his bulk into his desk chair. “You guys are sure early.”

“No, George. You’re late. Again,” Gretchen said.

“Shut up, Sandler,” he said without heat.

“Get yourself some coffee and try to be nice.”

He gazed at her blandly. “Like you are?”

Gretchen’s mouth turned up at the corners briefly.

The Dempsey home was a modular house in a park of many such homes. Most of them were trimmed and tidy, but Greg Dempsey’s was rampant with dandelions, the lawn brittle and bleached tan, the asphalt drive cracking at the edges and one big chunk of it had fallen and tipped into the yard. The front gutter had a big ding in it, as if struck by a rock, and when September rang the bell the plastic covering fell into her hand, exposing hanging wires. She knocked loudly twice instead.

“Think he’s mourning his wife’s death or just your average slob?” Gretchen asked.

“Guess we’re gonna find out,” September said as she heard heavy footsteps just before the door swung inward.

Greg Dempsey was somewhere in his mid-thirties with lanky, dirty-blond hair and that super-thin, fragile look of someone who’d been sick a long time or an inveterate junkie. He eyed them speculatively as both September and Gretchen introduced themselves and pulled out their identification.

“More cops? I thought I was done with you guys.” He swung the door wide and walked back inside.

September started to step inside, but Gretchen held out an arm and called, “May we come inside, Mr. Dempsey.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“You never know,” Gretchen said in an aside to September. “You find something in the house, try to arrest the guy. His lawyer says in court that you weren’t invited in. Unlawful search and all that. Besides, it’s polite.”

“Okay.”

The living room smelled like sour beer, which wasn’t a surprise given the cans that were tossed into every corner and spilled off a table onto the matted carpet. Dempsey was sprawled on a couch, staring at a television that had been muted. “What do you want to know now?” he asked.

“We’re heading up the investigation of possibly three women, maybe more, who’ve been killed in essentially the same manner,” Gretchen said. “Your wife is the first that we know of. We were hoping you could just fill in a few things for us.”

“Me and Sheila were done,” he volunteered. “Kaput. She’d moved on. Kicked me out of the place and started screwing every guy she could find. I moved back here after she . . . died.”

September had a picture of Sheila living at the house and thought it had probably been a lot nicer then. “Do you know if she was seeing anyone in particular?” she asked diffidently.

“Jake Westerly, the miserable fuck.”

Jake Westerly!

September hid her intake of breath behind a short cough. She’d just been thinking about him. But Jake . . .
linked to this investigation
. . . it couldn’t be. The idea made her so uncomfortable that it took an effort to snap herself back to the present.

“You know that she was seeing Westerly for certain?” Gretchen was asking skeptically. “You didn’t mention it before.”

“You mean to that deputy who told me my wife had been murdered?” Dempsey sneered. “He was more interested in me and my whereabouts than listening to anything I had to say, so I just shut up. Fuck ’em.”

“But you’ve thought it over now . . .” Gretchen prodded.

“Sheila knew Westerly from way back. She cut his hair and they were . . . friends,” he said with a twist of his lips.

September remembered, then, that Sheila had worked as a part-time hairdresser. Deputy Dalton had reported that Sheila had no particular client list and had only worked at the salon a short time. He hadn’t followed up, apparently, so maybe he did put the blame for Sheila’s death at her husband’s feet.

But
Jake Westerly!

September suddenly recalled the slide of his hands across her skin, the heat of his mouth, the shock and thrill of intimacy. She felt slightly dizzy. Almost ill. She’d had a few other relationships since Jake, but they’d never had that same, throat-grabbing power. Now she clenched her teeth together until her jaw ached and tried to stay in the moment.

Gretchen asked Dempsey more questions about Sheila: who else she was friends with, how she spent her extra time, did she have any enemies that he knew of. Dempsey didn’t have much else in the way of real information. Kept circling around to the fact that “she couldn’t keep her legs together” after they’d split up, and that she had a real thing for the cowboy type.

September kept silent throughout. Jake Westerly had been a three-sport athlete in high school, tough and strong, but from her recollection, not a thing about him read “cowboy.” At least not then. She wondered now if he hung around The Barn Door . . . his family had lived in the Laurelton area back in the day, and his father, Nigel Westerly, had worked as a foreman/overseer at The Willows when her father first invested in the winery, commuting the forty minutes each way every day. Nigel had been first on the scene of September’s mother’s accident as Kathryn had been driving away from the winery. He’d tried to save her, but she was gone before the ambulance arrived. Braden, in his grief, had half-blamed Nigel for not saving his wife, and even September, dealing with her own loss, had lashed out at Jake’s father. But Nigel was as torn up as anyone. He’d liked Kathryn. She’d been nice to him, he’d said, over and over, like a litany. Treated him like an equal. It didn’t stop Braden from firing him, though maybe it was a blessing in disguise because Nigel purchased a small vineyard nearby and began cultivating his own Pinot Noir grapes.

But September hadn’t known any of that when she was a girl. She’d only known that her mother was gone, and then her sister, and that she’d wanted something special her senior year and she’d done her damnedest to make Jake Westerly notice her . . . and had succeeded.

She forcibly shut her mind down to those events, concentrating instead on the fact that, when they’d hooked up, Jake had mentioned the accident that had taken her mother’s life, saying Kathryn’s death had really hit his father hard. His words made September feel even smaller and meaner that she already had for the rash accusations she’d hurled when she was eleven. She’d been just a kid, sure, but the way she’d transferred her pain to Nigel—going so far as to tell him it was
his fault
, and she
hated him
!—was like a splinter under her skin to this day, one that still had the power to hurt at unexpected moments. Nigel’s dismissal from The Willows by Braden was another attack on an innocent man.

“But she was still married to you,” Gretchen questioned Dempsey, unable to keep from inflecting disbelief into her words.

“I didn’t see her much,” he muttered. “Stayed with her parents some . . . or at friends, whoever they were. That other policeman asked me all this, y’know.”