Chapter Six

My flight landed at Newark Airport at first light, approximately four-fifty a.m. I was met at the gate by Detective Sergeant Deborah McGinness of the New Jersey State Police. She ushered me to an unmarked Chevrolet Caprice, which leapt away from the curb with the portable light bar the driver had planted on the roof flashing red.

The Sergeant, a middle-aged, short-haired, thin-lipped redhead, was constrained and reticent. We made the twenty-five-minute ride to Montclair in relative silence.

When we pulled up in front of Edith and Ed Collins’ house on Conway Court, Sergeant McGinness and I stepped quickly to the front door and rang the bell.

After several moments, it was opened by a fifty-something gray-haired man in a bathrobe and slippers.

“What’s all this?” he said as we stepped past him into a ranch-style residence that appeared to have been wrongly deposited amid a row of modest, suburban, tract houses.

The main entrance opened into the living room, a large family space whose main component was a monster-sized TV. To its left was a formal dining room, behind which was an eat-in kitchen that smelled of burnt toast and coffee that reminded me I hadn’t yet had breakfast. A narrow hallway led to the bedrooms.

Sergeant McGinness produced the extradition papers. I handed him the arrest warrant. “Where is she?” I asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the man said.

“Please tell me where I can find Kimber.”

“She’s in her room, of course.”

“Point me to it.”

The man hesitated.

“Now,” I insisted.

He turned and headed up the hallway toward the bedrooms. I followed. He knocked on one of the four doors and then opened it a crack. I pushed past him.

Kimber Collins Carson was sitting up in bed, having obviously been awakened by the commotion. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“You’re under arrest,” I told her.

Sergeant McGinness joined us. She read Kimber her rights, then instructed her to get dressed.

Mr. Collins and I stepped outside to wait. He glared at me. “She didn’t do anything. She certainly didn’t kill him.”

“I’m sure she didn’t, but she left California illegally, and by so doing, captured the District Attorney’s attention. I’m under orders to take her back.”

“But she just got here.”

I shrugged.

Sergeant McGinness opened the door and led Kimber out of the bedroom. She was dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie, her hands cuffed behind her.

She stopped walking and looked at her father. “Tell Mom I’m sorry,” she said.

When her father stepped toward her, her look stopped him in his tracks.

“I’m fine,” she said.

I read alarm and concern in Ed Collins’ tired eyes, which also reflected his anguish.

Sergeant McGinness hustled Kimber out of the house and into the Caprice. After offering my regrets to Mr. Collins, who nodded sadly, I hurriedly followed them.

We arrived back at the airport at six-thirty and were escorted by Sergeant McGinness onto the seven o’clock United flight to Los Angeles.

I thanked the Sergeant for her efforts. The doors closed and we were in the air heading home by seven-fifteen.

“Why?” Kimber Carson asked once we were airborne.

“For one thing, you left without our knowledge. Which rankled the District Attorney. A goodly number of familial homicides are committed by a spouse. You evaded a preliminary interview with one of my Deputies. You refused to accept her phone calls. You fled the state. And in doing so, made yourself the prime suspect.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I sincerely hope that’s the case, but you’ll have to remain in custody until the State decides what to do with you.”

She sat silently for a while, lost in thought.

I took notice of her for the first time. She was unconventionally attractive. Her boyishly styled, blond-streaked hair closely framed her slender face and called attention to her wide hazel eyes. She was gamine-like, possessing a slender beauty and a charismatic sensuality.

She noticed me staring. “Will you take the handcuffs off?”

“Will you create a disturbance?”

“I’m not a killer. I’m sorry I caused everyone so much trouble.”

I removed the cuffs and she vigorously rubbed her wrists.

I watched her. “I’ll need to put them back on you when we get to L.A.”

We sat in silence for a while, she looking out the window, me perusing the in-flight magazine in search of a breakfast menu.

I wondered what it was like for her to have lived through the brutal killing of her husband and within a matter of days, to have become the prime suspect. Having worked homicide in L.A., I knew full well that anyone was capable of murder. Although she didn’t strike me as a killer, it was possible the husband had done something awful enough to have rung her chimes.

“I was planning to divorce him.”

I looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

“I was going to leave him. He wasn’t the man I believed him to be when I married him.”

“Because?”

“I mean he wasn’t a wife beater or anything like that. But he had issues with being faithful.”

“What kind of issues?”

“He was constantly around young people. Young girls mostly.”

“And?”

“I think he was having sex with some of them.”

“You think?”

A wrinkle of consternation crossed her face. “It’s nothing I could prove. But he kept odd hours. Always involved with extracurricular activities of one kind or another. Sometimes he came home late. He went out at night. He lost interest in me.”

“Interest how?”

“When we first got together, he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Once we got to California, he rarely came near me.”

“And you think it was because he was fooling around with his students?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

“Nothing I can prove.”

“But something you suspect.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I think he may have been involved in some kind of sex ring.”

“At the school?”

“Connected with the school.”

“Involving students.”

“That would be my guess.”

“But you can’t prove it.”

“No.”

She captured me in her steady gaze, her hazel eyes appraising me unwaveringly. I turned away and thought that, innocent or guilty, this was a woman scorned, one who might very well have been motivated to seek revenge.

“Will you help me?” she asked.

“Help you how?”

“I don’t want to go to jail. I may be guilty of running away, but I didn’t murder him.”

“It’s up to the District Attorney as to what charges will be filed.”

“Murder?”

“More likely suspicion of.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Fleeing the scene will influence the D.A.’s thinking.”

“It wasn’t deliberate. It’s not like I left the country or vanished. I went home. You know, Mom and Dad? TLC? Who knew that wasn’t allowed?”

The hint of a smile briefly appeared on her lips which I tracked until it vanished. Then I said, “This can’t be easy for you.”

“Ditto,” she responded.