A Killer Plot (36 page)

Olivia opened her napkin and smiled. “Dixie, you’re a precious gem hidden amid the rocks.”

Dixie snorted. “Tell Grumpy that. He’s been promisin’ to buy me a new ‘rock’ for going on ten years now.” She elbowed Harris. “If a gal ever tells you size don’t matter, she’s lying.”

Harris’s cheeks burned red.

“Aw, lamb. You don’t need to blush. I’m just messin’ with you.” Dixie was genuinely contrite.

“It’s not what you said, ma’am. I’ve got a skin condition.” Harris put his palms over his cheeks, looking miserable. “I look embarrassed or humiliated or like I’m suffering from heat stroke at least ten times a day.”

Dixie turned to Olivia. “Such a handsome boy. Reminds me a little bit of Peter Pan.” She put a hand on Harris’s back but kept her eyes on Olivia. “There’s got to be somethin’ out there to fix his skin, am I right?”

“Actually, there is,” Olivia answered brightly.

Harris shook his head “I’ve tried every topical medicine on the market. They don’t work.” He smiled at Dixie. “If I ever
do
find a girl to propose to, it’ll mean she’s gotten used to my face and likes me despite my rosy red cheeks. We’d be a modern age Beauty and the Beast.”

Olivia touched his arm. “Personally, I’d prefer the Beast, but women your age aren’t often as wise as those of us who’ve learned what matters.” She and Dixie exchanged a wink. “And I’m not referring to creams or salves either. How would you feel about trying a laser treatment? On me, of course. It would be a favor to an aesthetician friend of mine. She’s been searching for someone with your condition to use as a test case for her pulse laser.” Olivia felt no shame in concocting such a flagrant lie. “What do you think?”

Harris’s eyes glimmered. “Cool. A pulse laser? Kind of sounds like an episode of
Star Trek
. When can we start?”

“I’ll call her right after lunch,” Olivia answered casually, though she was truly excited over the idea of watching Harris’s rosacea become a bad memory. “Let’s keep it a secret too. We’ll see if anyone notices when the Bayside Book Writers meet again.”

Dixie skated off and returned fifteen minutes later with Olivia’s check. Beneath the total she had written, “Softie!” followed by a goofy smiley face. Frowning, Olivia balled up the check and slapped it on top of a twenty-dollar bill.

“Come along, Haviland. Time to visit the chief. Perhaps we should have brought him a grilled cheese sandwich,” she mused as she said good-bye to Harris and stepped outside. A pair of journalists moved to follow her, but Dixie skated in front of them, blocking their path and giving Olivia and Haviland ample time to escape untroubled, at least for the moment.

 

 

From a distance, the police station resembled an anthill. Uniformed policemen, important Oyster Bay citizens, and many of those present at the town hall the night before streamed in and out the front doors. In addition, reporters and cameramen milled about the sidewalk. Awaiting an official statement from the chief, they passed the time smoking, speaking into cell phones, fiddling with their BlackBerrys, or accosting the more colorful locals as they left the station.

Olivia scowled in disgust as a woman wearing a pink suit dabbed at her heavily made-up face with a tissue. “I declare!” she drawled. “I won’t be able to sleep a wink until that horrible man is put away for
life!
And to think he was here among us good, churchgoing folk the
whole
time. Poor Annie Kraus! She welcomes her brother-in-law into her home and how does he repay her? He kills one of her guests and then nearly ruins our chances of getting that nice new development built.”

The reporter murmured a question and the woman squared her shoulders and declared, “Of course I’m relieved to hear it’s still going through. I am a business owner, you know. Pink Lady Cleaners, that’s me. We have two locations, here and—”

But the woman’s plug was cut short when the reporter spotted Olivia and Haviland. Several cameras swung around to capture her image and she turned her head from the penetrating stares of their zooming lenses.

“Ms. Limoges! Ms. Limoges!” voices shouted, all vying for attention. “Is it true you aided the police in their investigation?”

“Is your dog a trained tracker?” another yelled.

“Are you romantically involved with Chief Rawlings?” she heard just before entering the relative quiet of the station’s lobby. After checking in with the desk officer, she and Haviland sat down and curiously observed the comings and goings of familiar faces. Ed Campbell appeared from a closed door off the lobby. He nodded at her deferentially and then steeled himself to exit the building. Marlene Gibbons arrived in the lobby shortly afterward. Upon seeing Olivia, she came over to say hello.

“For what it’s worth, I admire your passion concerning the preservation of our current ecosystem,” Olivia told her.

Marlene’s brows furrowed in anger. “Then why didn’t you vote against the development? I thought you were on
my
side. And the environment’s side.”

“I am, but I’m on the side of the townsfolk first,” Olivia retorted gently. “This development will create dozens of new jobs. Plenty of people need those jobs. As much as I like birds and snapping turtles, these people are my neighbors. They
need
this.”

Releasing a weary sigh, Marlene rose. “I’d always choose animals and plants over people. I just see them as being more worthy of existence, I suppose.” She smiled ruefully at Haviland. “You’re a fine example of such a noble creature. I wish I’d brought of few of my pets with me today. I’d have felt much more confident with my iguana sitting on my shoulder.” She ruffed Haviland’s ears. “Now I’m going to have to fend off the press with sharp words instead.”

Olivia wished Marlene good luck and resumed a pose of patience. However, she quickly grew restless as the station continued to hum with activity.

Finally, Officer Cook strode into the lobby and waved for her to follow him to his desk.

The young man’s appearance betrayed his exhaustion. The puffy skin around his eyes, his stubbly chin, and his rumpled uniform indicated an all-night shift.

“I should have brought you coffee,” Olivia began, attempting friendliness.

Cook waved off the suggestion. “I’ve had so much I can hardly hold my pen. I’m gonna fall flat on my face when I finally get home, but it’ll be worth it. I told you we’d nail the bastard.”

Olivia studied the smug gleam in the officer’s eyes. There was no way to explain to someone half her age that there was nothing to celebrate. Many lives had been destroyed or altered beyond repair. The arrest of Atlas Kraus would never restore the damage already done. Instead, she dipped her chin ever so slightly, gifting Officer Cook with a show of respect. “So you did, Officer. So you did.”

It took over an hour for Olivia to give her statement. Rawlings had put the fear of God in all his men, saying that each and every testimony, regardless of how brief or seemingly inaccurate, had to be recorded with the utmost precision. Olivia understood the chief’s position. After all, the cases were now a matter of national significance. Rawlings undoubtedly wanted to show the world that the members of the Oyster Bay Police Department knew how to wrap up a case with professional efficiency.

Despite her appreciation of the circumstances, Olivia was thoroughly cross by the time Cook reviewed her statement for the third time. “Just let me read it and I’ll tell you if it’s accurate!” she snapped.

At that moment, an officer walked by the desk and Haviland caught the scent lingering on his pant leg. He barked excitedly, causing all of the policemen in the room to shoot dirty glances at Cook.

“He smells Greta, your K-9 unit,” Olivia explained in defense of her dog’s unwelcome clamor. “Quiet, Haviland!” she hissed at the poodle. “Your parts don’t even function, so it would be a futile flirtation in any case!”

Haviland growled and stalked off after Greta’s partner.

Olivia grabbed the printed statement from Cook’s hands, signed her name with a flourish, and marched out in search of her mutinous poodle. Cook pushed back his chair with a jerk but was simply too tired to wrangle with the obstinate woman. Instead, he placed her statement in a file folder and turned toward the lobby in order to retrieve another witness.

Haviland had followed Greta’s partner into the station’s kitchen and was sitting in front of the refrigerator in a posture of angelic expectation.

“Manners,” Olivia remonstrated, and together, they continued down the hall toward the exit. As they passed Rawlings’ office, the door opened. Roy and Annie Kraus stepped out into the hallway. They wore the numb expressions of car-accident survivors. Annie’s glazed eyes met Olivia’s but then the other woman rapidly looked away. She took her husband’s arm and hung on as though she couldn’t stand of her own volition. Roy put his hand on Annie’s lower back and Olivia noticed that every one of the cuticles on his free hand had been shredded. Several drops of blood beaded at the base of his index finger and Olivia wondered if Roy had been gnawing at his fingers throughout the entire interview with Rawlings.

“Ms. Limoges,” Roy croaked, staring at some point beyond her head.

Part of Olivia wanted to move toward the couple, but she recalled all too well how she’d felt after her mother’s death and her father’s disappearance. She didn’t want to speak a word or have anyone reach out to her. She only wanted to wander alone with her grief, her pain visible only to the anonymous ocean. Olivia was always deeply grateful to her grandmother for providing her with both safety and solitude. Jacqueline Limoges did not speak unless absolutely necessary and Olivia valued the long stretches of silence

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, knowing full well that the words were insufficient.

Mechanically, the couple nodded and shuffled toward the lobby. Olivia ducked into the chief’s office and exclaimed, “You can’t let them go out the front! The press will swarm all over them!”

Rawlings raced after the Krauses without comment. While he was redirecting the shell-shocked couple to the back door, Olivia and Haviland settled in his office to wait for his return.

“Coffee?” Rawlings placed a mug on the desk in front of Olivia. “Thank you for helping them avoid the media. They have enough to deal with without having microphones and cameras shoved into their faces.”

As the chief sank into his chair, Olivia scrutinized him. With more than twenty years on Cook, Rawlings looked much the worse for wear than his junior officer. The skin on the chief’s face was gray tinged, his salt-and-pepper hair was plastered to his scalp, and coffee stains were sprinkled across the front of his shirt.

“This is the miserable part of being a cop,” he said as he cupped his hands around his mug. “Times like these. I will see the hidden emotions and the private and often unpleasant faces of the people in this community. They’ll come in here over the course of the next twenty-four hours—drunk, cursing, elaborating, glory-seeking, and, like Roy and Annie back there, completely sucker-punched.” He pressed his palms against his eyes. “At least you’re a straight shooter, Olivia. Just having you sitting across from me allows me a moment to breathe.”

Olivia was surprised to find the restlessness she’d felt in Cook’s presence had passed now that she was with Rawlings.

I feel so at ease with this man
, she thought once again and was looking forward to the time when he would join the writer’s group, not as the chief of police, but as another writer. And as a friend.

Aloud, she quipped, “I suppose you had several volunteers willing to perform the lethal injection.”

Rawlings looked pained. “Half the town would prefer to bypass the court system entirely. As a society, we’re never as far away from lynch mobs as we’d like to think.”

He took a sip of his coffee and then caught a drip from the side of the cup with the tip of his finger and licked it away with a flicker of his tongue.

“How did this whole mess begin ... Sawyer?” Olivia tried out the chief’s given name. “How did Atlas become so estranged from his daughter?”

Picking up a thick case file from the surface of his desk, Rawlings smoothed the cover and shook his head, his eyes sorrowful. “Mr. Kraus was always going to lose his wife. Jessie Kraus had wanted to leave Atlas early on in their marriage. He’d roughed her up a bit over the years—not enough to create a paper trail, but enough to force her to tread carefully when she finally decided to divorce him.”

“And her maiden name was St. Claire?” Olivia surmised.

Rawlings nodded. “Well, she and Heidi moved out of their house one night while Atlas was at his favorite watering hole. The divorce papers were served early the next morning. Atlas tracked his wife and daughter from Iowa to Pasadena, California, where Jessie and Heidi had relocated to live with Jessie’s new man.”

“I can only imagine what happened when he found them,” Olivia stated anxiously.

“Luckily, Heidi was at school when her father showed up. Jessie’s fiance was at work, but she was home. Her new guy was a structural engineer, so she didn’t need to hold down a job anymore and she was happily folding laundry when her ex-husband arrived. By the time Atlas was done with her, she was so bruised and broken I couldn’t recognize her in the photos. She had ... imprints from the iron on her back and stomach.”

Olivia shuddered. “Why wasn’t he arrested?”

“He disappeared. Fled the state. He then picked up construction jobs, the kind involving hard labor. The kind where the bosses don’t ask too many questions. Atlas told me he’d routinely return to Pasadena between jobs in order to see what kind of woman Heidi was becoming. He even watched a few of her school plays, hiding in the back row with a hat pulled down over his brow. He told me he knew after the first play that she’d take Hollywood by storm. Looks like he was right.”

“Was it merely a coincidence that his brother-in-law lived in the same town where the Talbots owned a beach house?” Olivia asked in astonishment.