TWENTY-SEVEN

  

Vaughn left the Buddhist Center feeling agitated. Why, he couldn’t say. He only knew that something in Amelie’s words set off a mental alarm. It wasn’t so much what she’d said but how she’d said it. So distant, cool. As though Ted Diamond, his wife Lily and everything that had happened in her younger years belonged to someone else, and by becoming Tenzin Jinpa she had somehow escaped her past.

If only it were that easy.

Vaughn considered where to go next. His first thought was Mia, but then he remembered that she was no longer available to him and his sense of agitation deepened. He called Allison but his call went straight to voicemail. He decided to head to the boxing gym for a spell. Clear his mind, work up a sweat and think about what to do next. He started the BMW and was backing out of the spot when he thought of something else Amelie had said in reference to the problems in China: Neither forgiving nor forgetting are part of his character.

Could Scott have ticked him off? Had Scott been a part of the China fiasco? Unlikely—he wasn’t even working there at the time. But perhaps they’d run into each other in the past. Vaughn realized he’d never asked Amelie if she knew Scott, or if it was possible her father had known the man. He started to call the center but remembered that Amelie—Tenzin Jinpa—was in afternoon meditation. Instead, he called Jamie. Angela answered right away.

“Have Jamie do me a favor,” he said without preamble.

“What do you need, Vaughn?”

He asked her to ask Jamie to look for a connection between Scott Fairweather and the Diamond family. “Anything,” he said. “Business or personal.”

Angela agreed. After a painful silence, she said, “Are you feeling better?”

“Just make sure Jamie knows it’s important.”

“Of course.” Angela sounded wounded.

Vaughn didn’t want to end the call that way. He said, “About this morning. The beer. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have…well, thank you.”

“You were hurting,” Angela said. “Sometimes you have to accept your own weaknesses in order to move on.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so ready to move on.”

After they hung up, Vaughn felt even worse than he had before. Like Ted Diamond, neither forgiving nor forgetting seemed to be in his wheelhouse. And apparently acceptance wasn’t much of a strength, either.

  

Detective Berry agreed to meet Allison at the Starbucks on Sixteenth and Market in downtown Philadelphia. She spotted his red hair from outside the café. When she entered, he looked up from his high-top table in the corner. He didn’t smile.

Allison took her time ordering a coffee. As she placed cream and sugar in her drink, she counted to ten and back again in an unsuccessful effort to quiet the dragonflies zooming around in her belly. She really didn’t want to have this conversation, especially before talking to Jason, but he wasn’t answering and she couldn’t get the thought of those boys out of her mind.

Allison took a deep breath, grabbed a napkin, and did exactly what she told her clients to do in these situations: she projected the confidence she wished she felt instead of the nervousness she was actually feeling.

“Detective,” she said, pointing to his tea. “I would have offered you something but I noticed you already had something to drink.”

“Thanks for the thought.” He glanced at his watch, making no attempt to hide his impatience. “You wanted to see me about the Fairweather murder? You said it was urgent, so here I am.”

“Yes, you are. Thank you.” Allison pulled the folder out of briefcase. She had separated the nudes from the tamer photos and email and left them back in her car. There was no way she would pull them out here, and if he thought they were important, she preferred to give them to him in the privacy of her car.

She slid the folder to him across the table. He opened it, his eyes going from the semi-nude picture of Allison to the email and the envelope.

“I assume someone sent these to you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Blackmail?”

“That’s just it, Detective. I don’t think so. There have been no other attempts to contact me. I have several more, photos I didn’t want to bring into Starbucks because of their X-rating. Plus, similar photos were sent to family members and a colleague.”

“All of you?”

“Of me…and Scott.”

Berry frowned. He picked up the email and re-read it, then stared at the photograph.

“You’ve handled all of these?”

Allison nodded. She looked away, toward the window, the faint hammering of a headache chipping away at her skull. “I didn’t share these with you before because they seemed unrelated. But now that others have received them, too, and especially now that you’ve made arrests, I thought I should share.” She frowned. “You can understand my reticence.”

Berry sat back in his seat. He took off his reading glasses and, one end in the corner of his mouth, began to chew on the plastic. His silence was maddening. He was waiting for her to say more and she wasn’t about to give him a thing.

Eventually, he said, “I could charge you with obstructing justice.”

“For what, Detective? Nothing tied these photos to Scott’s murder.”

“Anything could be relevant. You’re smart enough to know that.” He put the glasses back on and again picked up the email. “And obviously you know that or you wouldn’t be here today.”

“It was the boys. They’re just kids. I thought ‘what if.’” Allison met his stare. “Truthfully, I can’t see how these photos are connected. But I have come to learn that Scott had quite the active sex life and obviously someone,” she pointed to the folder, “is not so happy about that. These pictures may point to a motive. Something other than drugs.”

“So you think someone killed him out of jealousy?”

“I don’t know what to think. The Scott I knew wouldn’t do drugs. He was far too careful to do anything that could hurt him physically.” She paused, thinking. “And then there’s the fact of my name in his calendar. Why? I haven’t seen Scott in years, since after that email was sent. Why would he want to see me?”

“Who took the photos, Ms. Campbell?”

Allison looked away. “I assume Scott did.”

“Is it possible he was going to blackmail you? That the pictures, and the calendar entry, were part of a plan that, luckily for you, got interrupted by his murder?”

“But the pictures arrived after his death.”

“And you’ve not received a single blackmail notice. Scott may have arranged the mailings before he was killed, but with him gone, there was no one to follow through with the plan.”

“I guess it’s possible. I’ve thought of that myself. But what about Eleanor Davies?”

“Eleanor?” Berry looked momentarily confused. “The girlfriend?”

Allison nodded. “She disappeared days after Scott’s death. Why would she run?”

“Why do you say she ran, Ms. Campbell?”

“What would you call it, Detective? A woman stops showing up at work, leaves her home and cat behind?”

Berry resumed chewing on his reading glasses. He seemed to be deciding whether or not to tell her something. “How do you know all this?”

Allison tried to keep her face neutral. “I did some checking. I know some folks at Transitions. Brad Halloway for one. He told me the police know Eleanor is missing.”

Detective Berry smiled. “If you talked to Halloway, then you also know Eleanor has a history with men. She’s had more lovers than the Eagles have had losses. Scott was one of many. Why did she take off?” He shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Doesn’t matter, though. We have our boys.”

Alarmed, Allison said, “But what about her sister’s murder?”

“In Florida?” Another shrug. “What about it? Rich single lady gets offed in her house. That’s a problem for the Fernandina Beach police—not our jurisdiction. We looked into it but didn’t see a connection.”

“What if Ginny’s murder had been a warning to Eleanor?”

Berry shook his head. “Allison, you have an active imagination, I’ll give you that, but a detective you are not. There is no connection between the drug-related murder of Scott Fairweather and the break-in and murder of a rich white lady in Florida. She was a real estate agent. Imagine all the crazies she met on a regular basis.”

Allison fought hard not to roll her eyes.

“With all due respect, Detective, between Ginny’s murder and these photographs, don’t you think there could be something else going on?”

“Shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line. Kids with records, motive and opportunity. That equals a straight line in my book. The kids were selling and Scott was buying. The boys wanted the cash and the merchandise.”

“Were there drugs in Scott’s system?”

Berry wiped his mouth with a brown napkin and then tossed it on the table in front of him. “Look, you know I can’t tell you that, but it doesn’t really matter. He could have been buying them to sell them. And there’s always a first time.”

A jury may think it matters, Allison thought.

“What if someone paid them to kill Scott?”

“Who? These are street kids, not paid hit men.” He shook his head. “Besides, if that had been the case, you can bet they would have squealed. They’re a sorry lot. They would have done anything to shift the blame. Sorry, Allison. When things line up so neatly, we don’t look to make complicated connections.” He stood, handing Allison her folder. “Here you go.”

“Don’t you need these?”

“No. Unless you want to report them. Then I suggest you head to your local precinct.”

“I don’t want to report them.”

“I figured as much.” He gave her a jaded half smile. “If anything else comes up, don’t sit on it this time.”

Detective Berry opened the door for Allison. Outside, he stopped to button his overcoat, and she waited for him to finish before heading to her car.

“You know, Fairweather was a complicated man,” he said while finishing the last of his buttons. “In any investigation, we look at not only the suspects, but the victim, too. Fairweather had created a lot of drama in his life. I would originally have said that he wasn’t the man you used to know.” Berry pointed at the folder. “But based on what you shared, I’m not so sure that’s true.”

“You really think those boys killed Scott?” Allison asked.

Berry took a pack of cigarettes from inside one of the pockets and tapped it against the palm of one hand to retrieve a cigarette. Frowning, he said, “I think Scott’s life spiraled out of control. He made a series of bad choices that landed him in a heap of trouble. People don’t really change as they get older. They just become more of whatever they were to begin with. Scott found out the hard way that bad choices meet with bad consequences.”

Allison, thinking of her sister Amy, could understand his point of view. “That’s a depressing perspective, Detective. I’d like to believe people can change.”

Berry stuck the cigarette in his mouth and offered the pack to Allison. When she declined, he cupped the tip, lit it and drew a long breath. After blowing it out, he said, “In your line of work, I guess you need to believe in the ability to change. In mine,” he shrugged, “we see the evidence every damn day. The shortest distance is a straight line. Simplicity. And the simplest answer is that people do what they’ve always done. A fact that helps us catch criminals again and again.”