Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1) (22 page)

I opened my folder and pulled out the picture we'd had enlarged of Jake and Clay.
I handed it to Wanda, and she smiled as she stared at the photograph.

"That's my boy, Clayton Oliver! Don't recognize the other one, though. Is this one
the roommate you visited?" Wanda asked, pointing at Jake in the photo.

"Yes, that's Jake Jacoby."

"What's all that stuff on his face?" Wanda asked as she moved the photo closer to
her face and studied the earring in Jake's eyebrow. She'd been in this facility for
so long that I doubted she'd witnessed the recent trends of the younger generation.

"Body piercings. It's a new fad. A way for young folks to express themselves—like
tattoos. I have to admit I don't see the attraction of it, but maybe that's just my
age showing."

"How old are you, by the—?"

"—Forty-eight. Probably close to your own—"

"Yeah, I turned fifty yesterday. I never thought I'd see the day that I'd live to
be fifty. But stranger things have happened, I suppose."

I smiled and nodded. I thought it must have been a very sad day for Wanda. Fifty was
a milestone. To reach the milestone of a half century in age, without the company
of another human being, must be a very lonely experience.

I was glad I'd purchased a new apron for Harriet at the pharmacy, in order to thank
her for her recommendation that I visit Wanda once again. I planned to stop at a silk-screening
shop on the way back to the inn to have it personalized. "Welcome to Harriet's kitchen"
it would read across the front. It would be a time-consuming distraction for me.

Wanda grunted and repositioned herself on the sofa, reached across the coffee table,
and picked up the other photos in my folder.

"Do you mind if I have a look at these?"

I could see she was anxious to view more photos of her son, Clayton, whom she'd said
she hadn't seen in many years. I wished I had a stack to offer her, instead of just
the two photos. Next time I visited I'd bring her one of Clay in a tuxedo, taken at
his and Wendy's wedding in August. She'd be proud of what a handsome man her son was
today. I could surely concoct a believable story to explain why I had all the photos.

"Sure. There's only one more of Clayton, however," I said, as I picked out the photo
of Clay behind the slaughtered moose. "Big moose, huh? Do you happen to recognize
the cabin behind Clayton in this photo?"

"No, never saw it before," she said, shaking her head. She looked at the next photo
in the stack and beamed broadly. "Well, I'll be damned! Here's a picture of Ma and
Pa! This had to have been taken shortly before Pa died. What a wonderful photo of
the two of them! Oh, how I wish I had a copy of this one."

I looked down at the photo of the elderly couple I'd mistakenly assumed were Jake's
grandparents. "This is your mother and father?"

"Yes." There were tears of joy in Wanda's eyes.

Wanda stared at the photo for what seemed like several minutes. Eventually, she set
the photo down on the coffee table and picked up the rest of the reprints from the
pile.

"Here's Clay's first car," she said. "He saved his money and was so proud when he
could finally afford to buy this convertible. He used to take me on rides around town
in it, with the top down. Oh, and look here. It's his old dog, Buddy. Surely Buddy
is gone by now. Buddy and Clayton were inseparable when they were both young."

It suddenly occurred to me the stack of photos we'd found in Jake Jacoby's house had
belonged to Clay, not to Jake. I thought back to a conversation I'd had with Wendy
on the phone while she was still attending college and had just begun "officially"
dating Clay. I vaguely remembered her mentioning that Clay had sold his old car and
bought the new half-ton Chevy truck. Apparently it was the Mustang that Wendy had
referred to, and Clay had sold it to his roommate, Jake.

I wasn't sure if, or how, this information would help us in any way. And I didn't
think I was apt to get anything else out of my visit with Wanda that would be beneficial.
I wanted to stop and get Harriet's apron personalized and be back at the inn by the
time Stone called. I spent a few more minutes with Wanda before giving the excuse
that I had to get back to work in the administrative offices of the care center. I
would be back to see her soon, I promised. It was a promise I intended to keep.

As I was preparing to leave, Wanda picked up the enlargement of Clay and Jake for
one last look. She grinned as she handed it back to me.

"He sure has become a handsome man, hasn't he? 'Course he was good-looking as a kid
too. Took after his daddy in that respect. Homer's always been a looker. Got to give
him that much anyway."

"How old was Homer when he... uh... died?" I asked, hesitantly. Wanda's use of the
present tense had confused me.

"Died? Hell, Caroline, Homer ain't dead, just locked up. He's still in the pen, last
I heard."

"The pen?" What happened to the damn fool bleeding to death on the kitchen floor after
he ran right into the butcher knife? I wondered.

"Yeah," Wanda said. "Someone told me a few years ago he got sent up the river for
robbing a liquor store. Shot the fellow behind the counter. Didn't kill him, but the
poor fellow's still got a hunk of lead in his skull. Pretty much a vegetable now,
from what I hear."

"But... but, Wanda, didn't you tell me you killed Homer in self-defense, and Clayton
witnessed the whole thing?"

"Now, Cora, don't be silly. Why would I tell you something as crazy as all that?"

Oh my goodness, Wanda. Because you
are
crazy, that's why! What had I been thinking? Just because Wanda sounded intelligent
and competent most of the time didn't mean anything she told me was the truth. There
had to have been a good reason for her to live in this facility for the last sixteen
years. After all, they didn't normally institutionalize perfectly sane people in homes
for the mentally ill. Occasionally, perhaps, but not very often.

"I'm sorry, Wanda. I must have misunderstood."

I was shaking my head in disbelief as I gathered up the photos and prepared to leave.
Everything I thought I knew about Clay's childhood, and about his parents, had just
flown out the window. If nothing else, I still believed the old couple in the one
photo was Wanda's parents, and the photos we'd had reprinted had belonged to Clay,
not Jake.

"So long now—uh, what was your name again?"

Carlene? Connie? Wanda had called me so many different names that, for a moment, even
I couldn't remember the one I'd invented. "It's, er, Clara. Yeah, that's it."

"Oh, yes, it's Clara, of course. Be careful in the hallways, Clara," Wanda cautioned,
as I opened the door of her apartment. "Thanks again for the gifts and coming to see
me."

I said good-bye and then wished her a happy birthday once again—a birthday I now realized
could have just as likely been four months ago, as yesterday. For some inane reason,
I looked around, as if concerned about being pursued by Wanda's purple, one-eyed monsters
on the way to the parking lot.

Chapter 23

"Lexie?"

"Yes?" I said to Andy, as I spoke to him on his own cell phone.

"Uncle Stone just called. Detective Glick took him and the sheriff out to the murder
scene, as promised. He thought maybe you'd want to see it with your own eyes."

"He's right, I do."

"He asked me to bring you to the Sinclair station in DeKalb. He said he'd meet us
there, and we'd all take your Jeep out to the site."

"I'm on my way back to the inn right now, Andy. I'll be there in less than ten minutes."

"This is a pretty remote area, isn't it?" I asked Stone as the three of us stood in
the dense forest, in an infrequently traversed section of the Adirondack Mountain
Range.

"Yes. According to Glick it's not a very popular area because of the dense underbrush
and the abundance of stinging nettles."

"Did he or Sheriff Crabb happen to mention why or how Eliza's body got moved to the
location where Crowfoot eventually discovered it?" Andy asked.

"No. They are both baffled by how or why that occurred. They've considered the idea
a mountain lion may have dragged her there, but the forensic scientist nixed the possibility.
The body showed no bite marks, or anything of that nature."

"See those dozen or so stones over by the large pine tree?"

Stone pointed toward the tree.

"Yes," I said, as Andy and I both looked in its direction.

"That's where Eliza's sweatshirt was found, and also her blood, which was splattered
all over one of the stones. That particular stone was taken in for DNA testing. Glick
thinks it was most likely the blunt object used to kill Eliza."

Stone and Andy wandered off to inspect an old abandoned cottage they spied about three
or four hundred feet on the other side of my Jeep. I walked about a hundred feet in
the opposite direction, to the assortment of stones that Stone had pointed out.

I sat down with my back against an old tree trunk. The tree had probably fallen many
years earlier. I sat quietly, thinking about Eliza's gruesome death, and wondering
what kind of sick individual could do such a horrific thing to anybody, much less
a pregnant woman. There were tears in my eyes and sweat on my brow as I thought about
Wendy being in the hands of the same individual who had perpetrated this crime.

I was absentmindedly picking up the stones one by one and piling them up beside me.
"Leave no stone unturned"—Sheriff Crabb's motto—went through my mind as I dug out
the last of the scattered stones. It was tough to dislodge since it was half-buried
in the hardened mud. I placed the stone on top of the pile beside me and noticed the
sun glint off something shiny where the stone had been. The shiny object was half-covered
in fine dirt. As I reached over and picked up the shiny object, a large hand clamped
down over my wrist and jerked my body sideways. I let out an involuntary scream in
response, just as another hand covered my mouth.

"What are you doing here?" I heard a familiar voice ask.

I looked up into the square, angry face of Detective Glick. He slowly released his
right hand from my wrist, and then removed the left one that was covering my mouth.

"What are
you
doing here?" I countered. "We thought you'd left."

"I came back to pick up an exposed film cartridge that I'd left on a log back by where
your Jeep is parked. Did I hear you say 'we'? Are you the other half of Officer Van
Patten, by any chance?" he asked in an irritated voice. It had just dawned on him
he'd been tricked, and he wasn't happy about it.

"I have a right to be here, detective."

"No, you don't, Ms. Starr. This is a crime scene—the site of a murder investigation—not
just the scene for your next chapter. A young woman lost her life here, savagely.
How would you feel if you were a member of the family that's been devastated by her
death? Would you like to have writers crawling about the murder scene, interfering
with the investigation, and contaminating potential evidence?"

"I am a member of the family that's been affected, Detective Glick! That's why I'm
here. I'm almost certain the person who killed Eliza Pitt has abducted my daughter,
the second Mrs. Pitt. Her name is Wendy, and she's now married to Clayton Pitt."

"What? Clayton Pitt has remarried? He married your daughter and now she's missing?"
Glick seemed overwhelmed by this new turn of events. "So, you're not just here because
you're a writer, Ms. Starr?"

"Please call me Lexie, Detective Glick."

"Okay, Lexie. I'm Ron." He motioned for me to continue.

"I'm not a writer at all, Ron. I told you a lie because I thought maybe I could get
some information from you, but, as you well know, I was wrong."

"Why didn't you just tell me the truth? I would've helped you had I known the real
reason you wanted information about the case."

"I didn't want anyone to know I was here in New York, investigating the murder. I
didn't want any information to get back to my new son-in-law, Clayton Pitt, whom I
feared was the killer. But now it has anyway, and my daughter, Wendy, has vanished.
We've come to the conclusion Clayton is most likely not involved in her abduction,
but there is a connection there somewhere we haven't figured out yet." I began to
cry in frustration. I'd been controlling my emotions quite admirably until now.