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Authors: Sibel Hodge,Elizabeth Ashby

Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery (6 page)

BOOK: Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery
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"So things didn't change much?" Ian said.

"I think she was still very sad about Jenna after all this time. I used to pop in to see her sometimes when I didn't have a treatment scheduled. Just to make sure she was okay. I wanted to look out for her. Let her know she wasn't alone. I invited her for days out with me, just to get her away from the house. A change of scenery can do so much good. But she always refused. Although she didn't admit it, I think she didn't want to leave in case Jenna did come back and she wasn't there."

"That sounds about right." Ian nodded solemnly. "Do you really think she found something to prove he killed Jenna?"

"I don't know," I said.

"There still isn't a day that goes by when I don't wonder if Jenna could be out there somewhere. I need to get an answer. I need some kind of closure. To find out once and for all. But Tim is denying any part in Jenna's or Mother's death, and I don't know what to do. You knew Mother," he said to Ruby. "Will you help me try to find out if she discovered something about Jenna before she was killed?"

"Of course we will," Ruby said.

"Do you have the keys to Pandora's house? We should start there and see if the police missed something. Lester Marshall isn't exactly renowned for his thorough investigation skills." I hadn't been thrilled at the thought of breaking and entering, and now, hopefully, we wouldn't have to.

"Yes, the police gave them to me. They said they'd finished examining it, and…well, everything Mother left is mine now, so we're entitled to take a look." A hand went to his pocket, and he patted the keys with a jangling sound.

CHAPTER NINE

 

Ian left his red Range Rover with the vanity plate of
Cardio1
in the tavern's parking lot, and we went in Vernon's car, while Ruby stayed to man (or, rather woman) the tavern. A chill crept through me as Vernon parked outside Pandora's house. I pictured everything as it had been when we'd discovered her body: Tim rushing out and up the path, that crazed look in his eye, as if he'd seen a ghost.

I glanced around the quiet street. Opposite Pandora's house an elderly man was in his front garden, tending to a healthy rose bush. Further along, a mom pushed a buggy, the child inside swinging her legs and licking an ice cream cone. Granted, it was only just after 1:00 p.m., and we'd arrived at four the last time, but it was still a street full of families and retirees, so someone would usually be around. Why risk going out the front door where the chance of being spotted was so high, when he could've left from the rear and become invisible? I knew Ruby was convinced of Tim's involvement, but it was bugging me. Surely a guilty person wouldn't leave through the front exit.

I took a deep breath and followed Vernon and Ian to the front door. Ian unlocked it, swinging it open, and stood frozen on the step, glancing down the hallway, up the stairs.

"It's so strange coming back here. Brings back a lot of memories."

"It's bound to." I placed a hand on his back and patted. "Take your time."

He inhaled a lungful of air. Held it. Then blew it out forcefully before taking a step over the threshold. He glanced around again. "I don't know where to start. Don't know what I'm looking for. What could Mother have possibly found that would prove Tim Baxtor killed Jenna?"

I didn't have a clue either, but I guessed it would be glaringly obvious when we found it. If we found it.

"We need to take it room by room to be thorough," Vernon said. "I'll take the dining room. You guys start with the lounge."

Ian and I walked into the lounge.

His gaze hit the photos of a beautiful young woman. "Jenna." He stopped suddenly, his hand reaching for his heart, before moving toward them.

They were everywhere. On the mantel above the fireplace, on top of the old-fashioned box TV, on a battered chest of drawers underneath the window, the glass coffee table. Jenna stared back at us at various ages. With a much-younger Pandora, Jenna sitting on her knee, a pink bow in her hair, eyes sparkling, little cherub cheeks pink. Sitting on a swing in a park, her long hair trailing behind her as she swung high in the air with a gap-toothed smile. At her high school graduation, clutching a certificate, with a proud-looking Pandora beaming at her daughter. On the beach as a teenager, sand covering her hands and face as she built a sand castle, a bucket and shovel lying next to her.

There were no photos of Ian anywhere, and my heart ached for him. It was hard enough losing a sister and never knowing what happened to her. But in the aftermath, Ian and Pandora had lost each other too.

Ian picked up the photo of Jenna, petite and fragile looking, at her graduation, his finger gently caressing the glass. I turned away to allow him some private reflection and opened one of the drawers in the chest, unsure what we were really looking for, while Vernon checked the dining room opposite from us. It didn't seem likely Jenna was still alive, but if she was, and if Pandora had found proof, what could that be? A letter from her daughter? A passport or driver's license application? Had Bud Ohlsen checked Jenna's bank accounts when she'd disappeared, to see if there'd been any activity? I wondered if her account had been closed years ago or whether it was kept open to monitor any deposits or withdrawals.

I found numerous wallet-style folders and pulled out a pile of papers from the first one. They were all charcoal sketches of various scenic spots around Danger Cove. The lighthouse, the harbor, the vintage tourist trolley that traveled on a loop between Main Street and the pier, a tide pool on the beach, then Pandora's portrait, and Ian posing with a fishing rod in hand as a little boy, one foot on a jagged rock.

Ian appeared at my shoulder, taking them from me and shuffling through. He sat down on the sagging sofa with a heavy slump. "These were Jenna's. She was so talented. Always sketching something. She'd just been offered a job with a prestigious design company in Seattle, when she went missing."

"Is that why Jenna wanted to break up with Tim? Because he didn't want her to take the job?"

He stared up at the ceiling. "Jenna didn't tell me about the specifics of her relationship with Tim. She was kind of a private person, and I guess she thought her little brother wouldn't understand anyway. When they first met, she seemed really happy. She told me she was in love with him, but…I don't know. He was her first real relationship. I think she just got too caught up in things too early.

"As the years went on, I noticed a change in her. She used to wear such bright and colorful clothes. She was an artist, after all, and expressed herself and her moods in the things she wore. Gradually, she started toning down the colors, wearing more black and gray. The skirts got longer, the tops less revealing. She wore less makeup. Lost touch with her friends. She'd had a best friend since kindergarten, Melanie Crook, and she used to hang out with her all the time before Tim. Then it got so she'd make excuses to not see Melanie, and she spent all her time with Tim. I don't think he liked it if she was out of his sight. In the last few months before she disappeared, whenever she was at home, she was moody and withdrawn. Something was on her mind. I'm sure. Something that was worrying her. She was probably working out how to break it off with Tim without causing too many problems."

"Was Tim ever violent toward her?"

"I don't think so. I never saw any bruises or anything. But I think he was jealous and controlling, and that's why she was going to break up with him that night. And yes, I don't think Tim wanted her to take that job in Seattle."

"Do you think she was afraid of him?"

"I doubt it. Not seriously, anyway, otherwise she wouldn't have gone to meet him that night alone, would she?" He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were glistening with unshed tears. "But it's easy to underestimate people. She should've been afraid. Even though we could never prove it, I'm sure he killed her. He couldn't stand the fact that she was leaving him, and probably lost his temper and somehow got rid of her body with no one ever finding it."

He continued looking through the sketches, a tear visibly snaking down his cheek. I left him to his grief and searched the rest of the drawers. I found a box file and pulled it out, sitting and resting it on my lap as I flicked through financial papers inside.

According to Pandora's checking account statements, she made very few withdrawals and lived frugally, which I guessed was how you'd expect a recluse to live. It looked as if she hadn't updated her furniture or home with modern items, and if she hardly went out of the house, then I couldn't imagine her doing much shopping. There were also statements from her savings accounts, and I calculated that she had around two million dollars when she died. Underneath Pandora's accounts were some old-looking bank statements, yellowed with age, the print from an old dot-matrix printer faded. The name on the account was Jenna Williams. The last statement was dated two years after she'd disappeared. Attached to it was a letter from the bank saying the account had been closed. Well, that answered one of my questions.

I flicked back through them, searching for evidence of withdrawals or deposits after July 4 twenty years ago, but there were none. Wherever Jenna had gone, she hadn't used her bank account. And she hadn't withdrawn any significant amounts of money from it prior to disappearing. After putting them back, I looked in the last drawer but found nothing that could be a clue. I closed it, and Ian put the sketches back into the folder.

"I haven't found anything yet that might help us," I said.

"Neither have I," Vernon called out from the dining room. 

We headed for the kitchen. I was half expecting Pandora's body to still be as we'd found it the other day. But, of course, that was ridiculous. The chair she'd been sitting on was still lying on the floor. The glasses had been removed, along with the bottle of rum, the syringe wrapper, and the vial.

Ian glanced around the room. "Everything is just the same as when I left. It's like stepping into a time warp." He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if trying to hold back more tears.

It was true. The countertops were chipped and peeling, the freestanding stove looked as if it was on its last legs.

Pandora's purse hung from a hook behind the door. Ian went through it, finding her wallet, complete with a hundred and fifty-two dollars inside, a credit card, a packet of tissues, a comb, a slim book on crystals, and a few loose toothpicks. At least if her wallet was still here, it could definitely rule out a burglary of any kind as a motive for her murder. And I very much doubted a thief would've wanted to steal the old TV. Nothing seemed to have been searched or rifled through by a thief, either.

As Ian and Vernon searched closets, I opened a drawer of cutlery, but there was nothing of interest. The next drawer down held some dishcloths, a diary, and an address book. I flicked through the address book, but nothing was marked on any of the pages. I put it back and called out to them. "I found a diary here." It was small and cheap and didn't look well used.

Ian and Vernon stood beside me as I went through every page. No entries. Nothing to say she'd arranged to meet Tim on that fateful day.

"There's a calendar." Vernon pointed to a hook on the wall next to the ancient fridge and removed it, placing it on the counter. It was long and narrow, with a picture of a tropical beach at the top of the page. There were several things written on it.

Ian ran his finger down the page. "Two weeks ago she had an appointment with a Dr. Trower." He scrunched his face up, thinking. "Trower. That sounds familiar, but I can't place it. Is he a GP here?"

"No," Vernon said. "I don't think he's local to Danger Cove. I've never heard of him."

"Tania Fuller—2:00 p.m." Ian tapped another entry a couple of days before Pandora's death. "Do you know her?"

I nodded. "She works in Veggie Tables." I pointed to some more entries. "Look, there she is, once a week. She obviously had a regular appointment with Pandora for Reiki treatment."

He pointed to the only entry listed for the day Pandora was killed. "Yours and Ruby's names are here but nothing listed for Tim."

"Yes, Ruby phoned her in the morning, and she said we could come over the same day."

Ian flicked back a month. Tania's name regularly appeared, along with some other names.

"Looks like they're all clients too." I pointed to other names with a single note next to them about which kind of treatment they were booked for.

"And another appointment with Dr. Trower." Ian laid the diary on the counter. He slumped down at one of the chairs. "Was Mother ill?"

"I don't know," I said. "I never met her before that day, but Ruby didn't mention anything like that, so she obviously hadn't said anything to her if she was."

Ian's eyes glistened again. "I never got to say good-bye to her. I should've tried harder to get our relationship on track." He flopped his head into his hands. "And now it's too late."

I reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder. My heart welled up inside.

"Let's look upstairs," Vernon suggested.

"I don't want to go into Jenna's room," Ian said. "Mother always left it exactly how it was when Jenna died, and I don't think I can face that as well. I'll search my old room."

Vernon took Pandora's room and the bathroom. When I stepped into Jenna's, it was like stepping back into the mid-90s. The place was a shrine to Jenna's memory. There was an empty, hollow feel in the room, and it smelled musty. A single wrought iron bed sat underneath the dormer window, a clean white duvet on top. The headboard had ornamental poles at either end, and looped around one were various beaded bracelets in different colors. A selection of reproduction prints hung on the walls. I didn't know much about the classic painters, but I recognized an Andy Warhol and a Picasso. There were also several more sketches in frames up there. I inspected them closer and saw Jenna's now familiar signature in the bottom corner. There was a large stereo on the edge of a white dressing table. I flicked through a pile of CDs stacked at the side of it. Simply Red, Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey. I could picture Jenna propped up on her bed all those years ago, listening to music, sketching away, her long hair fanning across the pillow.

There was a bright-blue jewelry box on top of the table. I opened it and found tangles of silver and beads: an amethyst crystal bracelet, one made of hematite, a big lump of rose quartz, a silver bracelet with charms of feathers attached, dangly earrings.

Next, I tackled the drawers in the dressing table, but there was nothing much there except more costume jewelry, hair products, makeup, all crusty and congealed. I worked my way through the wardrobe, running a hand along the clothes—dresses, jeans, T-shirts that had been hanging in the same spot for twenty years, gathering dust, waiting for Jenna's hopeful return. There were a couple of cardboard shoe boxes on the top shelf, which I rifled through, but they only contained a pair of cork wedged heels, a pair of boots, and several pairs of flip-flops, nothing that showed Jenna was alive and well today.

BOOK: Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery
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