“And you could save a few more if you helped me locate other women whom you might have fathered.”
He was already reaching for the phone. “I think we're done here.”
“I'm going to the police.”
The back of his neck tightened, but he controlled himself. “They'll laugh you out of the room. You'd better be careful what you say, Acacia, or you may find yourself institutionalized.” His smile was cold. “There is a history of mental illness in the family.”
A sharp rap was followed by one of the double doors being pushed open by a tall woman, made even taller by her three-inch heels. With high cheekbones, and a nose reminiscent of the man seated across the desk, she swept inside as if she owned the place. “Sorry to interrupt you, Dad, but we had an appointment. Oh! I didn't know you had someone in here. Roxie's left for the day.” She rained a smile on Kacey.
Gerald stood. “You're not interrupting anything, Clarrie. In fact, it's probably a good thing you showed up. I'd like you to meet your sister. Clarissa, this is Acacia. Acacia, my daughter Clarissa.”
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What the hell had he gotten himself into? Trace wondered as he once again checked on Eli, who was curled on the couch, sleeping, Sarge next to him, the huge cone still in place around the dog's head.
Trace had left the police station knowing that the two copsâPescoli and Alvarezâhad been disappointed that they couldn't nail him for Jocelyn's death and Leanna's disappearance. But that was not what was worrying him now.
No, it was Kacey and how she was involved in this mess.
Obviously, she wasn't safe in her own home, dog or no dog, no matter if she did have her grandfather's shotgun. Someone had gotten inside, planted microphones, and listened in.... Why? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the other women's deaths?
It just smelled bad.
“So, what about some mac and cheese?” he asked his son. Eli was supposed to drink tons of fluids, but the untouched soda, Gatorade, apple juice, and vitamin-water bottles on the table near the couch were testament to the fact that it still hurt his throat to swallow.
“Not hungry.”
“Well, you've got to eat, and you've got to drink, a lot.” Trace cracked open the bottle of reddish vitamin water and held it in front of his boy's nose. “Remember you promised the nurse when you left the hospital. I just don't want to see you have to go back.”
“No way!” Eli said with a frown. His voice was hoarse and he still coughed, but he got the message and took the bottle from his father's hands, managing a couple sips from the bottle.
There was homework piling up, compliments of e-mail from Eli's teacher, but Trace figured he'd fight that battle later. First, he wanted his boy healthy. Last night had been scary for all of them.
Now that he had his son home, his mind was working overtime with worries for Kacey, a woman he barely knew but was already fantasizing about.
Eli picked at the macaroni and cheese, drank part of his juice and Gatorade, and generally vegged out in front of the television, which was tuned to his favorite kids' channel. He slept a lot, but each time Trace took his temperature, it had gone down a little bit more and now was hovering near one hundred degrees.
Now, if there were just some way to make sure Kacey was safe, he'd feel a whole lot better. He tried her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail, so he hung up without leaving a message.
Relax,
he told himself.
She's at work.
He just couldn't quite shake his misgivings. He didn't know what to believe, but the hidden microphones were real. There was no escaping that.
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All the wind had been stripped from Clarissa's sails. She stared first at her father, then let her gaze move to Kacey.
“Are you serious?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing a bit.
“What do you think?” For some reason Gerald seemed a little amused, as if he liked pulling one over on his firstborn.
“Dad, really . . .”
“She's Maribelle's daughter.” Gerald stated the fact as if his affair with Kacey's mother were a known fact.
“The nurse who worked for you? I remember her. . . .” This time when Clarissa rained her gaze on Kacey, it was more than a passing, dismissive glance. As if she were mentally ticking off the genetic similarities, her expression slowly changed from shock and confusion to revulsion.
“Oh, God, Dad, tell me this is some kind of sick, twisted joke,” she said, crossing the expanse of carpet to her father's desk, keeping her gaze focused on Kacey.
“No joke. Acacia's my daughter. As much as you are.”
“But . . . no . . . Jesus, does Mom know?”
“Suspects, I'd guess.”
“You don't
know
?”
It was never discussed.”
“For the love of God. First Robert and now ... now you?” Turning, she faced Kacey. “What're you doing here?”
“Looking for answers,” Kacey said and added, “Nice to meet you.”
Clarissa's eyebrows shot upward. “Excuse me if I forgot my manners. I've kinda had a shock here.” To her father, “What's the matter with you? How many more of these are there?”
Gerald inhaled through his teeth.
“Oh, no . . .” Clarissa's gaze fell to the desk, to the pictures that were still lying faceup on the polished mahogany. Her eyebrows slammed together as she picked up the head shot of Shelly Bonaventure. “Isn't this that actress from that vampire series that ran a few years ago? The one Lance was so into?”
“
What's Blood Got to Do With It,
” Kacey verified as Gerald quickly swept up the rest of the pictures. But he was too late. The damage was done.
“And one was of that woman who fell while jogging,” Clarissa said, her face drawn. “Who was the third one, Dad?”
“Elle Alexander, a patient of mine,” Kacey responded. “Had two kids.”
“These women all died recently, didn't they?” Her blue eyes clouded. “What's going on here?” she asked her father, then once again turned to Kacey. “And why are you here?”
Gerald let out a long, low sigh. “We should probably have a family meeting.” He was pale, and for the first time since she'd walked into his office, Kacey thought Gerald Johnson appeared his age, the crow's-feet near his eyes deepening, the knuckles of his hands looking larger.
All an illusion,
she reminded herself.
“Judd's here today,” he was saying. “And Robert, right?”
“I'm not sure,” Clarissa demurred. “I just got back from meeting with the accountants, but Robert was in the lab this morning.... Both Cameron and Colt are out. Cam was in Spokane, in a meeting with a distributor there, and Colt . . .” She glanced at her watch. “He should have landed by now. He was in Seattle earlier, talking to the head of cardiology at the medical school.”
Kacey's heart nearly stopped when she thought of the city where she'd been attacked and the hospital where she'd learned her practice, the place where JC held a position in the cardiology department. How ironic that the man who had spawned her had been a heart surgeon as well.
Just a coincidence, right? Seattle was a big city.
Still, a ripple of unease swept through her.
Clarissa never missed a beat. “As for Thane, who knows?” She glanced out the window and added, “Who ever knows?”
“Tell everyone you can to meet in the boardroom. Leave a message for Colt on his cell, tell him to get here when he lands, and see if Cam can link up through Skype.”
“And Thane?”
“Call him, too. See if he can make it or Skype in.”
“Thane doesn't Skype,” Clarissa reminded, and Kacey had the distinct impression that this brother, third in the birth order and the second-born legitimate son, didn't play by the old man's rules. The rogue or black sheep. Except he hadn't strayed too far away from the old man's company. “What about Mom?”
“Let's keep her out of this for now.” Gerald thought for a second, then said, “Let me handle her my way.”
“Good idea,” Clarissa said sarcastically. “It's always worked
so
well before. If Lance ever did to me what you've done to Mom, I wouldn't be satisfied by publicly humiliating him on
Jerry Springer
or
Montel
or some other let-all-your-dirty-laundry-hang-out TV show. I'd have to eviscerate him. Maybe with a butter knife.”
“Compassion has never been your strong suit,” her father said dryly.
Clarissa lifted a shoulder. “It's just how I feel, and since someone stole my gun this week, I guess I'll have to stick with disemboweling. Would a spoon be better?”
“Stop it,” her father warned.
“I'm just saying I don't let anyone walk all over me, and neither do you. If Mom would have cheated on you or had a gaggle of bastards, you would never have stood for it.”
“Your mother would never!”
“You're right. She wouldn't.
She's
at least got a modicum of class.” To Kacey, Clarissa added, “Congratulations. It takes a lot to stir up this particular hornet's nest, and it looks like you've done that and more.” She marched out of the room as fiercely as a mother bear whose cubs had just been threatened.
Gerald gave a last cursory glance at the photographs of the dead women. “Clarissa's right, you know. I'm afraid you've started something you're going to regret.”
Kacey wasn't going to let anyone deter her, not when she'd come this far. “I'm not afraid at all.” But that was a lie, and they both knew it.
CHAPTER 29
G
erald Johnson and Clarissa seemed to half forget Kacey was there as they began planning the family meeting. “Excuse me,” Kacey said, sweeping up her coat.
“The boardroom is straight down the north hall. We're convening
now,
” Clarissa warned her.
“I'm not leaving,” Kacey said.
Yet.
“I just need to make a phone call.”
They both gave her a hard look as she left the room. And she thought she was paranoid. Maybe she came by it naturally!
She walked in the direction of the boardroom, tried the doors, realized they were locked, so she punched in the number for the sheriff's department, which she'd added onto her cell phone list.
“Detective Alvarez, please,” she said when the call was answered by the front desk. “I'm Dr. Lambert, returning an earlier call.”
She was put through immediately, and Detective Alvarez answered, “Alvarez.”
“This is Kacey Lambert. I know you've talked to Trace O'Halleran, who found the microphones.”
“Yes. We would like to come and see for ourselves. This afternoon?”
“Late afternoon?” Kacey asked. “I'm at an out-of-town appointment that may take a little more time. But I would really like to have those microphones out.”
“Call us when you're on your way home.”
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.
Next, she phoned Trace, who answered as if he'd had his ear to the phone.
“Kacey,” he said, and just the way he said her name flooded her with good feelings.
“Hey, there. I'm meeting the police at my house later today, and they're going to take out the microphones, I guess. Look at them, anyway. I want them out.”
“Good. Are you at work?”
“I'm not at the clinic. I'm at an appointment,” she said, not wanting to go into the whole thing with him just yet. She didn't know how she felt about anything to do with the Johnsons. “I told the police I'd call them when I was on my way home.”
“Call me, too.”
“You got it.”
“Kacey . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful,” he said, clearly reading more between the lines than she'd thought she'd revealed.
“I'll see you this evening,” she said, then put back her phone in its slot inside her purse and watched with a certain amount of trepidation as Gerald and Clarissa came out of his office and strode down the hall toward her.
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“Go check on your kids,” Alvarez told Pescoli. “There's nothing happening here till we meet at Dr. Lambert's.”
“I'm going home to shoo Chris out of the house, if he's there, but I'll be right back.”
Alvarez waved her off. They were in a waiting game. Waiting for the lab results. Waiting for someone to call back. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
She sat down at her desk, and her gaze flew over the notes she'd made, bits and pieces of information burned on her brain that needed some kind of connection. The missing link that would make sense of it all. Flipping through the pages of thoughts, ideas, and doodles, and then the files filled with reports, she decided there was nothing to do but what she'd already done: make phone calls. Push. Hope somebody somewhere was willing to exchange information.
She saw the number for Elle Alexander's parents in Boise. She'd called it twice already and left messages, but no one had phoned back. They were grieving. She understood. Maybe they felt the authorities speaking with Elle's husband, Tom, should have sufficed. Lots of people abhorred police intruding in their affairs, even when it was a necessary evil.
Placing the call, she readied herself for what she was going to say. After a number of rings, she knew she was facing voice mail again; then there was a click, and a woman's voice said cautiously, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Morris?” Alvarez said, glancing down at her notes. Elle's parents were Brenda and Keane Morris, both retired. He was a pilot, and she was a grade school teacher.
“I can tell you're calling from Montana. Caller ID says you're with the Pinewood County Sheriff's Department. You've called before. This is about Elle, isn't it?”
“Yes, ma'am. We are investigating your daughter's death.”
“You don't think it was just a terrible accident?” Her voice grew very small.
“We don't know. We just want to be sure.”
She started crying softly, and Alvarez's heart went out to her. This was the hardest part of the job.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Go ahead,” she said, inhaling shakily.
“We interviewed your son-in-law, Tom Alexander. Elle was on the phone to him when the accident occurred.”
“Tom loves Elle. He's heartbroken. We all are.”
“Tom said your daughter thought another vehicle was driving dangerously. Did he tell you that?” Alvarez asked.
“He said Elle thought the driver was trying to kill her. I don't know. Sometimes, when you're driving, you kind of think those things, you know?”
“Yes.”
“He rear-ended her. Tom said she said that. And his lights were really bright. But then, Tom said she must have dropped the phone.... He called nine-one-one. She told him to.”
“Did your daughter have any enemies that you might know of?”
“Oh, no. Not Elle. Everyone loved Elle. Her best friend from high school, Jayne Drummond, still lives around here, and she stopped by and we talked about how much everyone loved her.” Elle's mother's voice was growing thick with tears again. “You can talk to her, if you'd like.”
“You have a son, too.”
“Bruce. He's married. Lives in Florida. I can give you his number, too.”
“Thank you.”
Alvarez wrote down the phone numbers for Jayne Drummond and Bruce Morris as Brenda read them to her. The next questions she wanted to ask were going to sound strange, and she wasn't quite sure how to approach her with them. “Mrs. Morris, we're investigating a death in Grizzly Falls of another young woman. She either fell or was pushed over a railing.”
“I'm very sorry for her family,” Brenda said sincerely.
“We would like to help them get closure, as well,” Alvarez said, pushing on. “The woman, Jocelyn Wallis, bore a remarkable resemblance to your daughter. Enough that someone asked if they were related.” A little white lie, but close enough to the truth that Alvarez felt no compunction in using it. “Although I suspect this is just the kind of odd coincidence that crops up from time to time, I wanted to ask about the possibility that they were related somehow. Maybe knew each other?”
It was a total stretch, and Alvarez could hear the embarrassed tone of her own voice. Still, those pictures Trace O'Halleran had discussed with them had offered up more questions than answers. If she could connect any two of the look-alikes, maybe the rest would follow.
“No . . .”
“Elle was born in Boise?”
“Yes.”
“Does she have any connection to Helena?”
A sharp intake of breath. “No . . .”
Alvarez's pulse jumped. Something here. “I'm sorry, but it sounds like you are thinking of something?”
“It's not ... I don't . . . I don't understand how it could.”
“Could you tell me what you mean?”
“Oh, dear. My husband ... oh, dear.” She sighed. “We learned that my husband could not father any children of his own, so we went to a clinic in Helena. It's no longer there. But it was then, and we went there ... to find a donor.”
“A sperm donor,” Alvarez clarified carefully.
“Yes. Yes. Both of my children were fathered by the same donor.”
“Elle and Bruce.”
“We never told anyone. Bruce still doesn't know, and Elle didn't know. I know I should tell my son, but it never seemed like the right time and now Elle's gone. . . .”
“This clinic. What was it called?”
“I don't know. We always referred to it as the clinic. I can't see that this matters.”
“It probably doesn't. I just want to be sure. Can you tell me anything more about it?”
She exhaled and then inhaled and exhaled once more before saying, “This is ... I don't know. Information you don't need, I suppose, but all I know is the donor's number, seven-twenty-seven. My husband and I always remembered because he was a pilot and that was the type of jet he flew when he worked for the airlines. We always thought it was lucky.”
“How did you pick the donor?”
“He was a medical student with dark hair and blue eyes. He was the same height as Keane, and he was athletic. We wanted our children to resemble us both.” Her tone said: “Is that so much to ask?”
“I understand.”
“This other woman ... the one who fell?”
Alvarez didn't want to start answering questions since she didn't know where they would lead. Needing to cut her off quickly, she said, “I don't have all the background on Miss Wallis, but I know she was a teacher in Grizzly Falls and very well liked.”
“Like Elle.” She sighed. “I was a teacher, too. It's all so hard, isn't it?”
“Yes, ma'am. It is.” Alvarez meant it, and the older woman heard her unspoken sympathy.
“If Elle was killed . . . if that's true, you'll find them and let me know?”
“Yes. I will,” Alvarez promised.
“Thank you,” she said.
Alvarez sat perfectly still for several moments after Brenda Morris hung up.
A sperm donor.
Could it be?
Were these women truly related? It was the theory that had been circling around that no one wanted to really believe. Could Elle Alexander and Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis and Leanna O'Halleran and maybe Kacey Lambert, and God knew how many others, actually be
related
? Have the same father?
That
was the connection?
As fast as she could, she grabbed up her cell phone and punched the button for Pescoli, who answered on the fifth ring, sounding pissed.
“Yeah?”
“I've got something.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I've really got something,” Alvarez told her. “Can you get back to the station?”
“I have a lot of screaming left to do here,” she said abruptly. “A lot of screaming,” she yelled loudly to someone or someones on her end.
“Make it quick screaming,” Alvarez told her, then clicked off, her mind already spinning ahead.
Could all these womenâthese victimsâhave been conceived at the same fertility clinic? Could their mothers have all used the same sperm donor? Donor 727?
But what did that mean? Even if it was true, what did that mean? Why were they dying? Why were they
being killed
?
If...
If
they were being killed.
But that's what you're thinking, isn't it? There's something here. You know there's something here. Whether Pescoli believes you or not.
She grabbed up her phone and called the lab, annoyed when she was given the runaround. Hanging up with them, she called Ashley Tang direct and said, “I need some DNA results yesterday. Isn't there someone at the lab you can lean on?”
The forensic investigator answered, “They're getting to it. You know how it is.”
“I don't care how it is! I need answers.”
“Well, I've got one for you. Not DNA, but an explanation of sorts.”
“Hit me.”
“The poison found in Jocelyn Wallis's system? We believe it was administered in the coffee grounds.”
“Put there on purpose? It wasn't something picked up by mistake, somehow.”
“Most likely it was deliberate.”
“Was it meant to kill her?”
“Doesn't look like it. The dosage was too small at this point, but then, there might be a lot more left in the coffee. We haven't tested it yet.”
Alvarez jumped ahead to Kacey Lambert. The microphones. Maybe Jocelyn had been bugged, too? But the killer removed them before her place was examined?
“I'm going to check some other coffee, too,” Alvarez said. “Thanks. I'll get it to you.”
This time when she hung up, she could feel her pulse racing and her breathing was rapid. Was Dr. Lambert in a killer's sights?