SEVENTEEN
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when Jessie got back home. Aunt Paulette was waiting for her. Thankfully, Abby had never woken up.
Jessie flopped down in Mom’s old chair and started to cry. It seemed impossible to imagine. . . . Just this morning, Inga had been bustling around the house, helping Jessie get set for the party. And now she was gone. Everywhere Jessie looked she was reminded of her friend. The tiles were still piled in neat rows waiting for Inga to finish installing them in the bathroom. The paint cans she was using to spruce up the kitchen were still under the cabinet. Her tool belt dangled from a hook in the pantry.
And now she was dead.
Murdered.
Outside, a few policemen were still combing the yard. Orange tape had been stretched from pole to pole surrounding the property, marking off the area as a crime scene. News crews had descended, and a couple of intrepid reporters had tried thrusting microphones at Jessie when a police cruiser dropped her and Monica and Todd off. But they’d all stayed mum, rushing past the reporters and barricading themselves in their houses. In the morning, Jessie knew, MURDER IN SAYER’S BROOK would be bannered across the local paper, and the local television and radio shows would lead off their newscasts with the story of Inga’s death. The whole neighborhood, the whole town, would learn that a murder had taken place on Hickory Dell.
And once more, in the center of the storm, would be Jessie Clarkson.
“Oh, Aunt Paulette, why? Why Inga?”
Jessie cried harder, as her aunt, kneeling in front of her, wrapped her arms around her. She had no answer. If she saw anything in her psychic visions, she offered none of it to Jessie. For the moment, she just held her.
The police station had been a nightmare. They’d all been interviewed separately. Two officers, a man and a woman, had taken Jessie into a room and had her repeat her story three times. They looked at her with stone-cold eyes, as if they suspected her of killing Inga. The female cop was worse. She was a small, beady-eyed woman, who admitted at one point that she remembered Jessie from the whole mess with Emil. The implication, Jessie felt, was that the cops still believed she’d had something to do with Emil’s drug and porn ring, and that she may have known more about the murder of Screech Solek than she’d ever let on. And so now they suspected she knew more about Inga’s death than she was saying, too.
But the cops’ suspicion of Jessie had been understated compared to the grilling they gave John Manning. When Jessie emerged from her hour behind closed doors, she could hear the heated, raised voices from the room down the hall. Other cops were forcing Manning to repeat his story, over and over, clearly trying to find an inconsistency. Although an investigation had found no evidence to link Manning to his wife’s death, it was clear that police still believed him to have been involved. As Jessie sat on a hard plastic chair beside Todd and Monica, none of them saying a word, Manning’s voice, loud and hostile, echoed down the corridor.
“I’ll tell you this for the last time, and then, if you detain me here any longer, I will demand my lawyer be present,” Manning had boomed. “I want to help in any way that I can to find the person who killed that poor girl, but I will not sit here any longer and have you insinuate that I—”
“No one’s insinuating anything, Mr. Manning,” came the quieter voice of a police detective. “We would just like you to tell us one more time about what happened tonight when the girl visited you.”
“As I’ve told you now three times,” Manning growled, “she came over, we sat in my parlor, I gave her some books, we flirted, we laughed, we made vague plans to get together again, and then she left.”
“With the books?”
“Yes, with the books.”
“But no books were found anywhere near the body. Or anywhere, so far, on the property.”
“I am aware of that,” Manning said. “You’ve told me that repeatedly.”
Finally, they let him go. He stormed out of the room and looked straight past Jessie and the others. Jessie noticed the way Todd’s eyes had followed him, ac-cusatively.
They were all driven back to Hickory Dell, Manning and Caleb in a separate cruiser from Jessie, Monica, and Todd. They were told that their properties would remain crime scenes for the time being, and that investigators would be in and out of their homes for the next several days. They’d get search warrants if necessary, but everyone involved—except for Manning—agreed that the police would have all the access they needed.
“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Jessie said now, a fresh cascade of tears falling down her cheeks. “She’s been my rock, my best friend, for so long.”
Aunt Paulette held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “My poor baby,” the older woman said, near tears herself.
“How fast life can change. This morning all I worried about was whether the neighbors would accept me returning here. Now I all can think about is who killed Inga, and why, and if whoever did it is still around, and if we’re safe.”
“While you were gone, honey, several policemen came through and checked the house from top to bottom,” Aunt Paulette said. “They even went into Abby’s room, and the little angel slept peacefully right through it. They found nothing to be concerned about. And now there are cops all over the place outside. We’re safe here.” She smiled. “I sense no danger myself.”
Jessie shivered. “Have the police notified the neighbors?”
“They told me as soon as the sun starts to come up, they will begin knocking on doors. Gert Gorin was over here, however. No surprise. So I’m sure she’ll be letting everyone know what happened herself.”
So much for starting over with the neighbors.
“Oh Aunt Paulette,” Jessie cried, running her hands through her hair in a sudden burst of fear and despair. “It makes me feel . . . oh God . . . it makes me feel like Emil has come back.”
“Oh, baby, you know that’s not possible. Emil was shot to death in Mexico in that big drug bust. Police identified his body.”
“I know,” Jessie said. “But the way Inga died . . . her throat slit. It was the way Emil killed that man. It just feels so . . . so . . . terribly familiar.”
“Baby.” Aunt Paulette wrapped her arms around Jessie again. “You’ve got to stop thinking that way. It’s a horrible, horrible coincidence.” She stroked Jessie’s blond hair. “There was a policeman here while you were gone, a very nice man,” Aunt Paulette told her. “He said it looked like it was a random act. Somebody who was prowling around, maybe looking to rob a house, and who came upon Inga in the woods. Maybe he tried to assault her, and she fought him off. So he killed her. And now, this policeman believed, the killer is miles and miles away. He was sure to hightail it out of here, because he didn’t want to get caught.”
“Still,” Jessie said, “it doesn’t make any sense. We are far, far away from any crime areas. . . .” She shuddered. “Five years in New York City and never once did I encounter any major crime.”
“It can happen anywhere,” her aunt told her. “I think we should have security systems installed. Monica and Todd have one. We should get them for our houses as well.”
“Yes,” Jessie said. Her eyes drifted over toward the staircase. “And Abby never stirred?”
“Not once. I stood beside her bed as the detectives searched her room. She slept like an angel.”
“Oh, God, Aunt Paulette, what am I going to tell Abby? She adored Inga.”
“We’ll know better what to say in the morning, baby.” The older woman took Jessie by the hands and encouraged her to stand. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you need to get some sleep.”
Jessie stood. She felt more tired than she had ever felt before in her entire life, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Still, she allowed Aunt Paulette to accompany her upstairs, where Jessie made a deliberate effort to avoid looking at Inga’s room. The door was closed, for which she was thankful. She couldn’t have managed looking at Inga’s things tonight. With Aunt Paulette following behind, Jessie tiptoed into Abby’s room, where the little girl slept soundly. The thin sheet covering her rose and fell with each gentle breath she took. Jessie bent down and kissed her daughter on the forehead.
Dear God, she thought, as the tears started again. How am I ever going to tell her?