Usually, finding out the victim knew their killer is good news because it gives me a list of suspects. But the fact that their relationship was a secret just made this case all that much more difficult.
“It could be anyone, literally anyone in her life. Her uncle’s friends even,” I say.
“Her uncle isn’t much older than Amelia was, so that’s true,” Mitchell says. “And if she was dating one of her uncle’s friends, I don’t think he’d be too happy about it, which means they’d keep it a secret.”
“Good thinking, Mitchell,” Dad says. “Why don’t you and Piper pay Jacob Crane another visit. Get a list of his friends to look into. I’ll call Olivia. Maybe Amelia did confide in someone, or even if she didn’t, it’s possible Olivia had her suspicions considering she and Amelia were close.”
“Thanks, Dad. Keep us posted, and we’ll do the same,” I say, ending the call.
Mitchell clicks his seat belt. “What are the odds Jacob Crane is home at this hour on a Friday?”
“Not good since his wife told us he works until six.” I search on my phone, trying to locate Jacob Crane’s psychology practice. “Got it. His office is on Third Street.” I set the GPS, and Mitchell gets us there in fifteen minutes.
The office building looks like an old church. The front door is a huge, wooden archway. Mitchell opens it, and we step inside. It’s dark. Like really dark. The only lighting is coming from sconces on the walls.
“I feel like we just stepped back in time,” Mitchell whispers to me as we approach a brunette woman in her early twenties at a receptionist desk.
“Hello,” I say. “We’re looking for Jacob Crane. Is he in?”
“Dr. Crane just finished with a client. Let me see if he’s accepting visitors.” She picks up her desk phone. “Your names?”
“Piper Ashwell and Detective Brennan. We spoke to Dr. Crane just the other day,” I add in case he’s already forgotten our names.
“Dr. Crane, there’s a Pepper Ashwell and Detective Brenaman here to see you.”
Mitchell and I exchange a look at how she butchered both our names. Truth be told, it’s probably good she got our names incorrect since I accused Jacob and his wife of trying to kill Amelia the last time we saw them.
“Yes, sir. I’ll send them back.” She hangs up and smiles at us. “You’re in luck. Dr. Crane has an opening and can see you.” She points a finger over her shoulder. “You’ll want to head to the stairwell and go up to the second floor. Dr. Crane’s office is the second door on the right.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“After you, Pepper,” Mitchell says with a smile.
“You’re too kind, Brenaman,” I reply.
The receptionist was wrong about the location of Jacob’s office. The second door on the right is a supply closet. I roll my eyes as I knock on the second door on the left instead. To my surprise, Rebecca Crane answers the door.
“Can I help you?” she asks, giving us a very annoyed look. “I’m in the middle of a session with a client.”
“I thought you worked from home,” I say.
“Usually I do, but I do have some clients who see me in person every so often to help them get over their issues with leaving the house.” She pulls the door shut behind her, most likely in an attempt to keep the identity of her client a secret. “But I’m not sure why I’m telling either of you anything after the heinous accusations you made in my own home.”
Since I no longer believe they actually did harm Amelia, though only because Amelia moved out before they could put their sick plan into motion, I decide to play nice. We need information after all. “New information in the case has cleared you and your husband.”
“Well, I should think so. I’m not sure how you came up with that crazy idea in the first place.”
The only crazy thing here is her. “We do need to speak with your husband, though,” I say. “The receptionist gave us the wrong directions to his office.”
Rebecca rolls her eyes. “That woman is a moron. I swear. I told Jacob we shouldn’t have hired her. Anyone else would have been better. A monkey would have been better.”
“I’d go to a psychologist who had a monkey for a receptionist,” Mitchell says beside me.
I jab my elbow into his stomach. “Dr. Crane, could you please tell us where we can find your husband? We don’t want to keep you from your client any longer.”
“Third floor, third door on the left,” she says before ducking back inside her office.
“She’s so pleasant,” I say as we head upstairs.
“Yeah, she’s pleasant, the receptionist is a genius, and this building isn’t creepy in the least. I could stay here all day.” Mitchell follows me to the third door on the left. “It’s a wonder the actual clients don’t get lost and wind up in the offices of the wrong psychologists.”
I knock on the door, but not before I hear Jacob talking on the phone. I have no doubt Rebecca called to tell him I no longer think they had anything to do with Amelia’s death.
Jacob Crane answers. “Detectives, come in.” He steps aside so we can enter. Unlike the rest of this building, Jacob’s office has good lighting, though it’s due to the large window taking up most of the side wall. “I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you both again so soon. Did you discover anything else concerning my niece’s murder?” He sits down at his desk instead of the armchair, which makes me happy because I wasn’t about to sit on that couch like I was one of his patients. I could only imagine the field day a psychologist would have analyzing me. Or Mitchell for that matter.
Mitchell looks just as relieved as I am to be in a regular chair. “Dr. Crane, we recently were made aware of the fact that Amelia was engaged in a secret relationship.”
Jacob shakes his head. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
Hence, it was a secret. I stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Yes, well we also believe it was a secret for a reason. Like perhaps it was one of your friends who knew you’d be upset if you discovered he was dating your niece.”
He sits forward and leans his elbows on the desk. “One of my friends?” He laughs and jerks back in his chair. “That’s preposterous. My friends knew better. Sure, Amelia wasn’t much younger than we were at the time, but she was off-limits. I would have—” He stops short and clears his throat.
“You would have what?” Mitchell asks.
Jacob adjusts his red and white striped tie. “I would have put an end to the relationship immediately.”
“Do you think there’s any possibility that your niece moved out because she didn’t want you to discover the relationship?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No. No way. None of my friends would do that to me.”
“We understand you feel that way, but we’d still like a list of friends you had at the time Amelia moved out of your house,” Mitchell says.
“Only the ones who lived within two hours of here,” I add. I don’t need a list of his social media contacts all over the planet.
“I assure you there was nothing going on between Amelia and any of my friends.”
“And you’re probably correct,” I say, although I’m not convinced of it at all. I’m just sensing the doctor is about to lose his mind—ironically enough. “I can easily put an end to this assumption if you’ll just write me a list of names.”
“I’m not following,” he says.
“I have a special knack for looking at lists and seeing more to a person’s name.” I don’t want to flat out tell him I’m psychic because then he’ll know exactly how I discovered his sick plan to drug Amelia and steal her inheritance. I’m still angry that he and Rebecca wound up with the money in the end anyway.
“I’m not a fan of your methods at all. You make accusations with absolutely nothing to back them up.”
He’s right about one thing. I shouldn’t have blurted out what I read off the photo in his house. I should have told Dad and Mitchell and devised a plan to catch Rebecca and Jacob somehow.
“You do want to find the person responsible for killing your niece, don’t you?” I ask. “Because I can assure you that while Levi O’Neil played his role in Amelia’s murder, he’s not the one who actually strangled her.”
“She was strangled?” he asks, and for the first time, I see some hint of emotion for his niece.
Mitchell nods. “You were notified when her body was recovered.”
“Yes, but the officer I spoke to didn’t tell me how she died.”
And I can imagine the state of Amelia’s body when it was recovered. I doubt Jacob even when down to the morgue to ID her.
He pinches the bridge of his nose and starts to cry.
Mitchell and I exchange a look. This isn’t the same man we met before. I make a snap decision and reach for his hand, pretending to console him in his moment of weakness.
“I can’t go down there. It was one thing to tell her she was sick and give her sugar pills. But to see her dead body…” Jacob breaks down.
Rebecca moves toward the desk. “I’ll tell them you’re too distraught. They can ID her from her DNA.”
I let go of Jacob’s hand. “Dr. Crane, I know you didn’t want Amelia to die, and I apologize for suggesting you were behind this. But you should know that I’m a psychic P.I., and I read the energy off that photograph in your house. I saw the plan you concocted to have one of your colleagues falsely diagnose Amelia so you could get control of her money. And just now, I saw that you did mourn your niece’s death. You might not have been the model uncle, but you certainly didn’t want her dead.”
“You’re psychic?” he asks, widening his eyes at me.
“Yes. So, you can see why I reacted the way I did at your home.”
“I’d never hurt her. I needed the money at the time. My practice had no clients. We were going to lose everything, and Amelia had so much money she didn’t know what to do with. She moved out before I did anything. I kept stalling. Rebecca asked me about it. Asked when I was sending Amelia to see Steven.”
“Steven who?” Mitchell asks.
“Steven Moore. He worked here for the first two years the practice was open.”
“He’s not here anymore?” I ask.
Jacob shakes his head. “He left before Amelia died.”
Before Jacob and Rebecca got all of Amelia’s money.
Mitchell jots down the name. “What about that list of your friends?” Mitchell asks. “Piper here can simply look at the list and know if someone was involved in your niece’s murder.”
Jacob looks a little disbelieving at that, but he picks up his pen and writes a list of names on his legal pad. Then he tears off the top sheet and slides it across the desk to me. “These were my closest friends at the time. The ones I hung out with, at least.”
“Did they come by your house as well?” Mitchell asks, and I know he’s trying to figure out if these men would have had a way to meet Amelia before she moved out.
“We had a weekly poker game,” Jacob says. “Amelia mostly avoided us, but they all knew her if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did any of them show interest in her?” Mitchell asks.
I allow myself to look at the list of names. “Jax Dawson,” I say.
“Yeah,” Jacob says. “He made a comment about Amelia’s shorts being so short. I put an end to it immediately, though. I told them all that she was off-limits. No one ever said another thing. Jax used to work here as well. He was smart enough not to jeopardize his career by making any more comments about my niece.”
Mitchell is eyeing me, trying to figure out if I’m getting anything more from Jax’s name. I’m not. I never know why names jump out at me. It could be that Mitchell asked the right question and my senses answered. Or there could be more to it. I give him a slight nod, letting him know we should look into Jax Dawson.
One of my other visions of Rebecca and Jacob comes to mind. The one where Rebecca called Jacob and told him we were stopping by the house to ask them a few questions. Jacob said he didn’t want to rehash the case because it had been hard enough the first time. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Crane. And we’re sorry to make you go through this again. I’m sure Amelia’s death was difficult for you.”
“Thank you,” he says.
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Mitchell tells him.
I take the list of names, and we leave Jacob to his emotions.
“Do you believe him?” Mitchell asks once we’re in the stairwell.
“I do. I think he thought his plan to fake her diagnosis was harmless because he wouldn’t actually be drugging her. He needed money to get his business off the ground, but he never wanted Amelia to die. And when she did and he got her money, I think he felt so guilty about ever concocting that plan.”
“What about Rebecca?” Mitchell asks. “She seems so unfeeling. Cold.”
She does. “I didn’t pick up on any remorse from her, just relief when I told her we didn’t suspect her or Jacob anymore.”
“So where to next? Do we check out Jax Dawson?” Mitchell asks.
“You got it.”
We say goodbye to the receptionist, who looks at us like she’s never seen us before in her life.
“If Jacob and Rebecca had followed through with their plan to drug Rebecca, I’d suspect they were also slipping their receptionist some pills,” Mitchell says as we step outside.
“More like she’s sneaking pills from empty offices,” I say.
“Fact?” Mitchell asks me.
“I’m guessing, but I get the feeling I’m right.”
“I might need to follow up on that later,” Mitchell says.
“Knock your socks off, Detective, but first, let’s go talk to Jax Dawson.”
Mitchell finds the address for Jax’s current place of employment, which is actually at the hospital. I call Dad on the way and fill him in.
“Well, that’s more interesting than you realize,” Dad says through the speaker phone when I tell him where we’re heading.
“Why is that?” I ask, giving Mitchell a sideways glance.
“Because the only tip Olivia had for me when I asked if Amelia ever mentioned any of her uncle’s friends hitting on her was that one in particular liked to make inappropriate comments.”
“Jax Dawson,” Mitchell says. “So much for Jacob thinking he’d put an end to it.”
“So they could have been secretly dating,” I say.
“I don’t think so,” Dad says.
“Which one of us is the psychic here?” I joke.
“You, pumpkin, but you’re missing a key piece of information.”
“What’s that?” Mitchell asks.
“According to Olivia, Amelia was convinced Jax Dawson was having an affair with Rebecca Crane.”