Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery) (22 page)

“Aw, come on, DonnaJo,” I said. “I’ll buy you a glass of wine after work.”

“Not today, doll,” she said. “Boss’s orders. There are reporters camped out in every corner of this building, and Corry threatened to put me on parking detail if I breathed a word to anyone. Everybody from the Mayor to Ted Grayson has been in his office since yesterday afternoon, and I think he’s worried about his own ass. Folks are afraid this mess is going to be the end of the university, and the school is important to the city.”

Yeah, and the local politicians are in the dean’s little black book.

“Plus, that big murder case he took on himself is about to walk, because the ATF picked someone else up last night,” she said. “Come to the hearing; I’ve got some good stuff.”

“I’ll see you in a bit.”

I typed a couple of things into my notes before I turned my computer off and headed for the elevators. The doors had just started to close when a small hand with a perfect scarlet manicure shot around the edge of the frame.

“Going somewhere, Nichelle?” Shelby stepped into the elevator, her big eyes bigger than usual and a smirk firmly in place on her lips. She pushed the basement button.

“I have a hearing to cover this morning.” I smiled and swallowed the “you backstabbing bitch” part of that comment. “It’s not Monday yet.”

“You should say goodbye to your friends down there.” She grinned as the doors closed, but it was the kind of grin I’d expect from a cartoon cat with yellow feathers poking through its teeth as the little old lady searches for her pet canary.

“Don’t get too comfortable, Shelby,” I said, stepping out of the elevator. “I’m not going anywhere for long.”

“We’ll see, Nichelle. Enjoy your last day at the courthouse.”

The doors closed and I turned and strode to my car. Shelby could gloat all she wanted. I wasn’t much for giving up.

I sped toward the courthouse and managed to wedge my car between two of the TV trucks out front by blocking one’s door, turning sideways and flattening myself against the car to get out. I hurried through security and into courtroom number six, where DonnaJo was opening her briefcase at the prosecution table. I chose a seat caddy-cornered from her so I could see her face, and watched the gallery fill with other reporters and curious lawyers. By the time the judge came in, it was standing room only.

The dean sat, still in the clothes she’d worn to work the day before, her mascara running and her head down to shield her face from the cameras, silent for the duration of the hearing except when she was ordered to stand and offer a plea.

“Not guilty.” It was barely above a whisper.

DonnaJo produced bank statements and a witness list that even made the judge raise an eyebrow at the defendant. I held my breath waiting for Grayson’s name, but didn’t hear it. Two city councilman and a couple of high-profile state officials, though. And more names would come.

The judge banged his gavel after an hour, holding the dean over for the grand jury with no bond. Wow. A no-bond was rare, even in murder cases. This lady was in deep shit.

On my way out, I saw Kyle standing outside the front door shouting into his iPhone. I paused, looking toward the TV reporters who were scrambling to get the dean’s hearing ready for the noon broadcasts, which were already half over. I turned back to Kyle, wondering what he was mad about.

“On what planet does it take six days to get a fucking rush ballistics analysis?” He spat. “I dropped that weapon off at six a.m. I don’t give two shits if you’re doing work for the President himself, I want my report by tomorrow morning.”

He clicked off the call and shook his head, then looked up at me.

“Ever feel like you’re surrounded by lazy assholes?”

“I’ve been there. You found Eckersly’s rifle?”

“Right where you said it was. His mother is a spitfire, isn’t she? She squawked about it being a family heirloom and threatened to sue if we so much as breathed on the damned thing. It’s a beauty,” he said. “But seriously. All the hell I’m asking them to do is fire it into a bucket of sand and compare the casing with the one they pulled out of Amesworth. How long does that fucking take? If I could do it myself, I would. But the difference in the striations from two such similar guns might be pretty subtle, and I could miss it. I don’t want to make another mistake.”

“I do know that feeling,” I said. “And well. Speaking of, I’d better get back to work.”

“Want to grab a drink later?” he asked.

“I’ve been up for essentially twenty-seven hours right now,” I said. “But I’ll call you tomorrow, if you want.”

I wasn’t sure I would, but seeing the way his blue eyes lit when I offered, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t, either.

“See you. Thanks for talking me through it last night.”

“Thanks for giving me the exclusive. I’m off my editor’s shit list. Now I just have to impress the publisher.”

“I have utter faith in you.” He grinned.

“Have fun with your interrogation.”

“Always.” He winked and disappeared into the courthouse.

20.

Transformation

Charlie had Eckersly’s arrest at noon and six, but Kyle didn’t talk to her, which had to be frustrating the hell out of her. The ATF’s public information people were every bit as forthcoming as the FBI’s—which is to say they weren’t forthcoming at all. But the dean’s hearing and the aftermath of the bust at the university was the big story of the day, and by the time I finished my piece on the hearing, got it to Bob, and made the corrections he wanted, nearly everyone else had gone home.

I was exhausted, and had pushed through the afternoon with a lot of help from the coffeemaker. But there were a couple of police reports I wanted to read before I went home.

I went back to the break room in search of more caffeine, reading a printout of a new burglary report as I waited for a fresh pot to brew. I filled my mug and reached for the upper cabinet to get my syrup bottle, momentarily forgetting it wasn’t there. People suck sometimes. I made a mental note to fill an empty one with soap and leave it for the bandit at some point.

I added three packets of Splenda to my cup and grabbed the robbery report, which looked much more in line with the cat burglar than Grayson’s house had.

Turning to go back to my desk, I wondered what the chances were that Aaron was still at work.

I tried his office and his cell and left messages in both places, setting the printout on top of my inbox and turning to my laptop. Eckersly had the right tires on his pickup, and he might have motive. Billings, a tobacco executive, was running contraband cigarettes he was making from tobacco he was getting from Eckersly. And the two of them were bribing Senator Grayson, who was into call girls and kink.

Something still didn’t fit. Grayson was the odd piece, my inner Lois said, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

“Did Grayson want out?” I wondered aloud.

I typed his name into my Google bar.

Same stories, same homepages, and social accounts I’d seen before.

I clicked to the images. There was a new shot from a campaign rally two days before. Grayson’s son had grown up since the last campaign, though he was mostly hidden behind the woman holding the senator’s hand. But she wasn’t the same woman from the family photo I’d seen before. That woman was a brunette who needed to lose about sixty pounds and looked uncomfortable in her own skin. This woman was a petite blonde with a winning smile.

I clicked to the image source and scrolled to the caption. Senator Ted Grayson, his wife, Katherine, and son, Jack, at a campaign rally in Williamsburg.

I typed Katherine Grayson into the search bar and clicked the images.

The very first one was a side by side, part of a story in
Washington Monthly
about Mrs. Grayson’s transformation. According to the article, she’d grown up very poor, gone to Princeton on a scholarship, married well, but gained weight with her pregnancy and lost her self-esteem for a number of years. Then she lost sixty-five pounds, colored her hair, and adopted a new life philosophy of envisioning everything she wanted, all thanks to a yoga retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Would she murder someone to get her vision?” I wondered aloud, staring at her perfect, Estee Lauder rose smile.

“Sex. And money.” I closed my eyes for a second, then stared at the photos for another long minute. Katherine Grayson had a very nice life. And her husband’s extracurricular activities could erase it. Her status and income depended on his. Damn damn damn.

I snatched up the phone and called Kyle.

Voicemail.

I clicked open an email and typed out a message.

“Bad news. I think we got it wrong again. Have those hairs from Amesworth’s jacket checked for bleach. Call me when you get this.”

I stared at the photos for another minute, a familiar nagging in the back of my brain telling me I knew her from somewhere.

“She’s a senator’s wife,” I said aloud, stifling a yawn as I closed my laptop and shoved it into my bag. “It’s not like her picture hasn’t ever been in the news.”

I turned Grayson, his wife, and Allison over and around in my mind on the short drive home. There was something there, but I was too tired to see it. Maybe a good night’s sleep would shake whatever it was loose.

I unlocked the kitchen door and stepped into the house.

Something exploded on the far side of the room, flashing orange in the dark. A millisecond later, my shoulder caught fire. I staggered backward, the small of my back hitting the sharp edge of the countertop. I didn’t really feel it, though. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but my shoulder, which felt warm and sticky when I grabbed it. I slid down the front of the cabinet to sit on the floor, the coppery tang of blood in my nostrils making me nauseous.

I was pretty sure I’d just been shot.

Joey’s warning floated through my head, followed closely by all the articles I’d read about the Mafia and every warning I’d blown off in the past couple of weeks. Was I about to become a Mafia statistic? Or was Mrs. Grayson still trigger happy?

Footfalls on the tile floor brought my attacker closer, and my whole body flinched when someone kicked my foot. Between the darkness and the blinding pain, I couldn’t see.

“Who—who are you?” I stammered.

“I’m nobody.” Male. Young. He stepped into the light spilling through the open kitchen door. “But my father is somebody. And he’s going to stay that way.”

“Jack.” My mouth fell open. He was even wearing the same t-shirt he’d been wearing at the body dump site. Which was where I’d seen Katherine Grayson’s blonde bob. She just hadn’t been smiling that night. “Jack Grayson. Oh, kid, what have you done?”

“What I had to,” he said. “My parents can’t go down for this.”

The pain in my shoulder and sheer exhaustion were taking their toll, because he wasn’t making any sense. The parents couldn’t go to jail, but the kid was going to kill me. What is this,
Clue
? “I’m not following you. Did everybody do it?”

“Technically, my mom killed that asshole Amesworth.” Jack leaned a hip against the table, keeping the gun trained on me.

“How do you technically kill someone?”

“She begged him to stop bringing my dad money. She was terrified Calhoun’s staff would get wind of it, and it would cost my dad the election. Amesworth laughed and told her he didn’t have any say so over who Billings was bribing or for how long, and then told her if she was better in the sack her husband wouldn’t need money for whores. She hauled off and slapped him. He got rough with her. I was coming in from a late class, and I heard the whole thing. I grabbed the closest heavy thing and swung as hard as I could. What else could I do?”

He was getting chatty in his defensiveness. Okay, tell me all about it, kid. “You fractured his skull,” I said.

“It made a weird noise,” he said. “He fell on my mom. And he bled. A lot. I pulled him onto the floor, and I lost it. I thought he was dead. He didn’t look like he was breathing. I wasn’t trying to kill him. My mom said I’d saved her and maybe saved our family, but we couldn’t just claim it was self-defense. It would be a complete scandal for my dad’s campaign. We did what we had to and rolled him up in a shower curtain and threw him in the back of that hillbilly pickup that my dad borrowed for his hunting trip. We drove to the woods. But when we pulled him out of the truck, he started moaning and moving. There was a rifle in the gun rack, and my mom grabbed it and shot him in the head. She said no one would ever believe us and he’d ruin our whole lives.”

“But you couldn’t stay away,” I said.

“I had nightmares. I went back out there to make sure he was still buried, and something had dug him up. Tina was with me. She flipped out. I had to call the cops and report it.”

The pain in my shoulder had dulled to a throb, but the wet warmth on my blouse was spreading, and I was getting lightheaded. Think, Nichelle.

What was in the cabinet behind me?

“So you haven’t done anything, really,” I said, reaching my good hand behind me and trying to open the cabinet. My weight was keeping it shut, and I couldn’t move without him noticing. “You didn’t kill him, and the cops don’t have any idea you had anything to do with it. So why don’t you go home, before you do something that really will ruin your life. I’ll get some stitches and go to bed, and everyone’s happy.”

He stared for a second, then threw back his head and laughed. It was loud and hollow, telling me I was running out of stalling time. I scooted forward a few inches and flipped the cabinet open as discreetly as possible with the dark as my cover.

“Lady, I’m at William and Mary on scholarship. I’m eighteen and I’m a junior in college. I’m not stupid. How many college kids can hack into the ATF’s email system? I got the message you sent your agent friend earlier. He will not. And my mother isn’t going to prison because my father can’t keep his dick in his pants.”

Shit. That meant Kyle was probably drinking beer with his team, celebrating Eckersly’s arrest while I was here with Captain Sociopath. No one was coming to save me. I felt around in the cabinet, trying not to move my arm enough for him to notice. My fingers closed around the handle of a heavy iron skillet. I’d have to get close enough to whack him with it before he could shoot me. How? I squeezed the handle so hard the iron bit into my palm and leveled a stare at Jack.

“If Kyle doesn’t know, then your secret is safe, right? I’m not telling anyone.”

“You’re a reporter. It’s your job to tell people shit that’s none of their business.”

“Not when I’d like to avoid getting shot again.”

He chuckled.

“You’re nice. I looked you up—pictures of your dog, shoes, and fluffy-bunny quotes was all I found. You were nice to us that night in the woods, too. I was really hoping you wouldn’t figure this out. Your agent friend is way off the mark. I’ve been watching his emails for weeks.”

I remembered Kyle saying something about a bug in the ATF computer system. And Grayson’s kid on a computer scholarship. Nice time to catch up, Nichelle.

“Jack, you don’t want to do this,” I said. “You had nightmares about Amesworth, right? And you didn’t kill him. How do you know that won’t happen again?”

“The whore isn’t haunting me.”

I grimaced. “Oh, kid.”

“It wasn’t as hard as I was afraid it would be,” he said. “I just waited for her to come out of the building and got behind her with a guitar string and pulled. She didn’t even fight, really. A couple of scratches, a kick, and that was it.”

“Why?”

“This was all her fault.”

Nice logic there, smart guy.

“How?”

“She was the reason my dad needed the money, wasn’t she? Then she emailed him last week. Said she figured out where he was getting the money to pay her and she’d go to Calhoun’s campaign with the whole story if he didn’t make her a local campaign manager. But if he does that, everyone thinks he’s screwing the pretty young intern, anyway, right? No way to win.”

“Okay.” I tried to force my brain to find the words that would keep me alive. “So she’s dead. Who else knows? If Billings was going to talk, he’d have done it already, right? He’s been on house arrest and charged with murder for a week. He has other friends that he really doesn’t want to piss off by cutting deals with the ATF. Prison could be the least of that guy’s worries.”

He straightened up.

“You’re a fast talker, Miss Clarke, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you.” He leveled the gun. “I even tried to scare you off. You should have taken the hint.”

“Darcy!” I panicked.

I heard muffled yapping and claws on wood.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Jack said. “You don’t think I’d actually hurt a dog, do you? I’m not a monster.”

“Jack?” I tugged the pan to the edge of the shelf, done talking to the sociopath.

“Yeah?” He cocked his head to one side.

“Look out.”

He turned to look over his shoulder reflexively, and the cookie sheets inside the cabinet crashed when I wrenched the skillet free. Darcy’s scratching popped the broken door unlatched and she raced in, barking. Jack stumbled toward me, waving the gun the other way and firing a shot at the refrigerator.

“Darcy!”