The Girl in the Woods (20 page)

“Did you ever think Jennifer was capable of murder?”

He looked down at his empty glass. The misters came on and sent a vapor moisture over the patio. It was like a steam curtain, but cooling.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I do know that we were seeing each other before Don died. I know she wanted to marry me—you know marry the doctor, it’s a big thing around here. Probably up there too.”

“Not
my
kind of doctor,” she said.

He smiled. “Yeah, I guess that’s probably true.”

She pulled the report from her purse and shook her head. “I still don’t understand why you signed off on Donald’s death cert and indicated that an autopsy had confirmed the heart attack.”

He sat mute as the cool mist fell on him. He closed his eyes.

“Doctor, can you answer, please? It’s important.”

Bobby Drysdale opened his eyes and looked off into the distance before turning back to face her.

“In case you haven’t figured it out,” he said, his eyes locked on Birdy’s, “Jennifer had a way with guys. She could get what she wanted. She was good at it. She was, and I hope this doesn’t embarrass you, the best sex I ever had. I did it for her.”

 

 

Birdy’s phone was dead. She looked around Sky Harbor for a charging station, but all the jacks were being used. She wanted to text Elan that she’d be home and to see if he needed anything. She felt warm and wondered if she had a fever. But it wasn’t that. She’d been sunburned. That almost never happened to her.

She had a beer in the bar and waited for her flight, wondering about everyone back in Kitsap County. So many people were waiting for her to deliver the truth, to put them at rest—something that she wasn’t always able to do.

The flat screen TV in the bar played the local news. The volume was down so low she couldn’t hear, but the imagery was plain enough.

Local girl Jenny Lake Drysdale Roberts had made the news.

The man next to Birdy leaned toward Birdy.

“Pretty little thing like that couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said.

Birdy kept her eyes on the screen. “She’d gobble the fly down in one messy gulp, sir.”

“M
e? Why me?”

Birdy stood in Kendall’s office and shook her head in disbelief. She’d already had a bad day. Elan was mad that she came home so late, but the weather delay hadn’t been her fault. She barely had time to get a cup of coffee when Kendall told her to get over to her office.

“Jennifer wants to see you because you’ve been poking around in the past with a sharp stick. She wants to find out what you know,” the detective said.

“I don’t know,” Birdy said, feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect. “She’s just going to stonewall with her attorney sitting there telling her what to answer and what to avoid.”

Kendall dismissed that with a wag of a finger. “That’s the best part. If there could be a best part in the saga that has become the
Jennifer Roberts Show
. She said she doesn’t want her lawyer there. Just
you
.”

“And you, right?” Birdy asked.

Kendall shook her head slowly. “Nope. Just you.”

“What if she says something incriminating?”

“No worries. Everything is recorded.”

Birdy allowed a smile to cross her lips. “Thank goodness for that. I thought you were going to make me wear a wire. What do you want me to say to her?”

“Whatever you like. The point is, let’s see what she wants to say to you.”

 

 

The Kitsap County jail was a knot of cells and offices that connected the sheriff’s department and the courthouse, which made it easy for officials to move prisoners from pickup to court to incarceration, a kind of assembly-line approach that suited the process well. Birdy had only been in the jail one time, when the coroner who hired her gave her the grand tour of the county facilities. It was a nice jail, as far as jails go.

A guard named Tobey led her to an interview room that looked a little like the shell of a gas station lavatory, plain, stark. It was tiled with white linoleum squares. A table that was better than anything she had in her office commanded the center of the space. Two bistro-style chairs were placed at either end.

“I’ll be outside,” Tobey said. “Just holler if you need me.”

“Where’s Jennifer Roberts?”

“Be down in a minute.”

He looked at her with a funny expression on his face. “Have fun with that one,” he said.

“How do you mean?” Birdy asked.

“Piece of work. No kidding. We don’t get many like her around here.”

“What do you mean?”

Tobey rolled his eyes and opened the door.

“One example,” he said. “It’s a good one too. She asked if we had any South Beach options for dinner. Like she was in some spa and not jail.”

“I can see her doing that,” Birdy said. “From what I’ve heard.”

“No offense because you’re a woman, Dr. Waterman, but she pitched a royal hissy fit when she didn’t get her way.”

Birdy went inside and sat down. She didn’t like the way the chairs were positioned—at the opposite ends of the farthest points of the table. She shuffled them around so that she and Jennifer would be facing each other in a more intimate way. Jennifer would want it that way. She liked to be the focus of attention.

The door opened and Jennifer Roberts was led inside.

“Do I have to wear these?” she asked, holding up the handcuffs and belly chain. “They hurt.”

“Sorry,” Tobey said. “Procedure.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jennifer said with disgust as she sat down. For a woman who just lost her husband and was the subject of a criminal investigation, Jennifer Roberts held up pretty good. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, revealing not even the slightest darkened roots at her temples. Her skin was bronze and luminous. Whatever face lotion she’d used up to that moment was a winner—and probably wasn’t available at any cosmetics counter in Port Orchard.

“Jennifer, I don’t know why I’m here,” Birdy said.

“You’re here because no one is listening to me.”

“That’s your lawyer’s job.”

“Yes I know. And if I had a good lawyer, the kind that I should have, I’d do some talking to him. But I don’t. The guy they gave me has been out of law school about fifteen minutes and doesn’t know his ass from a torte.”

“I know him,” Birdy said. “He’s young, but very capable. You could have done a lot worse.”

Jennifer bristled. “Worse than being accused of doing something so horrible like Detective Stark and you think I’ve done?”

“You’ll have your day in court.”

“Right. In court. If I make it that far.”

“Are you frightened of something?”

Jennifer fidgeted with her chains. “No. Maybe. Yes,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Why am I here?”

“Because I know you talked to some people down in Scottsdale about me. I know that you’re trying to blame me for Donny’s death too.”

“Who told you?” Birdy asked.

“Ruby, my daughter. She came to see me. She told me about the exhumation. I think you’re a pretty sick woman, digging up Donny like that so you could try to come up with some dirt on me for Ted’s death.”

“Who told her?” Birdy asked.

Jennifer lowered her head so she could brush a strand of hair from her eyes. “She reads. She’s in high school. This is a big story. This tragedy shouldn’t be on the news, but you’ve gone stirring up a hornet’s nest.”

“Had Donald been ill?”

“Hey, you’re not here to ask me questions. You’re here so I can ask you some.”

“I don’t have to answer, you know,” Birdy said.

“You will. If you give a little, maybe I will too.”

“Did you poison your husband?”

“Which one?”

Such a strange answer,
Birdy thought.

“Either,” she said. “Both?”

“You must think I’m stupid. That I would admit to anything. First of all, just so you know, I didn’t kill either one of them. Donny died of a heart attack and I know you think Ted was poisoned—I don’t know if that’s a lie or a fact.”

“It’s a fact. He was poisoned.”

“Says you. But if he was poisoned, like you say, why would I have done that?”

Birdy thought a second. Maybe just letting out a little of the cat would be fine. The bag was plenty big enough.

“Bobby told me that you wanted money. That you were a thief. Maybe Donald caught you? Maybe he was going to dump you and you did what you had to do to protect what you thought was yours.”

Jennifer glared at Birdy. “You’re a real
Law and Order
fan, aren’t you, Dr. Waterman?”

“I am, but that’s not the point. The point is that you have a history of getting what you want by any means possible.”

“You have black hair,” Jennifer said, stating the obvious. “I bet you’ve always hated your hair. It’s thick enough. But it doesn’t catch anyone’s eyes. I see that you don’t have a ring. Too bad. Can’t find a man? I have had no problem in that regard. I could get the officer standing outside this door if I wanted to.”

“Where are you going with this?” Birdy asked.

Jennifer seemed annoyed, not really angry. “Women like you are haters,” she said. “You hate me because of how I look. You despise me because I have more than you’ll ever have.”

Birdy rolled her shoulders. “I have no feelings about you whatsoever.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked.

“Because you asked me to come.”

“Fine, I did. I wanted you to know that I loved my husbands. All of them. Well, except maybe Bobby.”

Birdy kept her expression flat. “That’s interesting,” she said. “He’s the only one that’s still alive.”

“I know you saw him down there in Scottsdale.”

Birdy saw no reason to lie. “That’s right, I did.”

“Did he tell you that I was devastated when my husband had that heart attack?”

“I can’t remember what he said your reaction was,” she said.

Jennifer fiddled with her belly chains. “Did he tell you that Donny had high blood pressure?”

“He mentioned it.”

Jennifer stared at Birdy with a strange and awkward intensity. “That he didn’t take his medication?” she asked, sputtering out her words. “That he ate too much? Drank even more? That he was screwing the hostess at his restaurant—the restaurant that could have been an empire if he hadn’t keeled over and died?”

“Look,” Birdy said. “This isn’t going anywhere.”

The switch had been pulled. Jennifer in her orange jumpsuit, a color that she considered less than flattering, started to cry. It wasn’t sniveling either. A gusher, accompanied by the kind of guttural moaning and crying that comes when a wild animal is caught in the rusty jaws of a snare.

Like Birdy felt right then.

“I loved Ted,” Jennifer howled. “Damn! I loved him with all my heart. I moved away from the sun for rain-soaked rust bucket Bremerton to be with a man that gave me the safe harbor I’d always been looking for!”

Officer Tobey, a concerned look on his face, poked his head in.

“Dr. Waterman, everything okay in here?” the corrections officer asked.

She waved him away.

Train wrecks like Jennifer Lake Drysdale Roberts were dangerous, but in a twisted way they were captivating too.

“He was the man of my dreams. Honestly, you, having no husband, can’t comprehend what I’m saying, Dr. Waterman. He was the love of my life,” she said, gulping air.

“You’re going to hyperventilate,” Birdy said. “Please try to calm down.”

“I can’t,” Jennifer said. “I’m trapped in here. My kids are going into foster care.”

“The kids aren’t. Ruby is about to turn eighteen. The judge might allow her—with monitoring of course—to eventually watch Micah, pending the outcome of your case.”

Jennifer looked surprised. “She is? Oh, that’s good.” Jennifer calmed down a little.

“Yes, don’t worry about them,” Birdy said. “Worry about what you’ve done and why you’re here.”

Jennifer tried to dry her eyes, but the chains on her wrists made it a struggle.

“That Molly O’Rourke wanted Ted for herself,” she said. “You’ll see. I was set up. You have to do something about her. This is all her fault. I don’t know what I’ll do when I get out of here. Since you think I’m already a killer, what would it matter? I’d slit her throat from ear to ear.”

 

 

Birdy called Kendall after the interview.

“How was it?” the detective asked before even saying hello.

“Just your garden variety glimpse into a mind of a narcissist,” Birdy said, as she walked across the back parking lot to her office, “if you really want to know.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. What did she want?”

Birdy laughed. “What they all want. She wanted to win me over. She wanted to find out what I had dug up—pun meant—in Arizona.”

“Anything we can use?” Kendall asked.

“She blames Molly. So, no, not really. It would have made good TV.”

“That’ll come.”

Birdy stopped while a car backed out of a spot. “I can hear
Dateline
producers circling now.”

“Speaking of which, guess who I’m going to see?” Kendall asked.

The driver was an elderly man and he was taking his sweet time. Birdy, tired of waiting, went around him. “I don’t have the slightest.”

“
Dateline
’s pin-up, true crime star attraction,” Kendall said.

It could only be one person.

“The one and only?” she asked.

“Yup,” Kendall said. “The one and only Brenda Nevins.”

“I’m not going.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Do you think she’ll tell you if she put Missy up to killing Darby?” Birdy asked, going up the steps to the front door of the coroner’s office.

“Nope,” Kendall said. “But like you and your interview today, I’m going because I can’t wait to be manipulated.”

“Manipulation is such fun,” Birdy said.