After She's Gone (38 page)

“Wouldn’t they have said something by now?” Jenna said.

Cassie shook her head. “Not if they’re hiding something.”

Sighing, Jenna said, “I suppose anything’s possible. Listen, I didn’t mean to ruin the night. But I thought you’d want to know. About your half-sister.”

“I did. Or do.” A million questions about this mystery sibling skated through her head. Who was she? Where was she? Did she know about Jenna? What kind of family had adopted her? Were there other brothers and sisters? What had been her life?

Most importantly, what, if anything, did she have to do with the murders and Allie’s disappearance?

 

W
ith Double T riding shotgun, Nash gunned her little car up the steep incline. Around narrow, hairpin corners that cut through the thick forest of the Cascade foothills. She drove as if the devil himself were on her tail, her fingers clamped around the steering wheel, her eyes focused on the twin beams of her headlights that knifed through the darkness and steady rain.

Even Double T, usually cool, was clutching the handhold and saying, “Sheeeit, Nash, this ain’t the Indy 500!”

She didn’t care. The sense of losing time, of sand slipping through the hourglass of this investigation caused her stomach to curl into a mother of a fist and her foot to tromp on the gas pedal. She couldn’t drive fast enough to the cabin where she’d hoped to find Belva Nelson.

Through a search of city, county, and state records, Jenkins had located the property listed under Belva Nelson’s father’s name, which Nash had double checked with Nelson’s niece, Sonja Watkins. At first Watkins had played dumb, but Nash had put the legal screws to her and when confronted with the fact that Watkins and her ex-con husband could be jailed for hampering an investigation, the woman folded. Reluctantly Watkins had admitted that her aunt had been holed up in the rustic property ever since learning of Holly Dennison’s death. Beyond confirming the address, and the number of Belva Nelson’s disposable cell, Watkins had offered up as little information as possible before clamming up.

There was more to the story, Nash was certain, but Sonja Watkins wasn’t talking.

Nash negotiated another sharp curve. God, this mountain road twisted like a sidewinder.

Why had the nurse, who had held her silence for over thirty years, suddenly felt threatened and the need to sneak into the hospital in some weird, retro uniform no less? What was that all about? Why not just have a regular face-to-face, or call? What was with all the high drama? It was as if the nurse had been playing some part in a kitschy Jenna Hughes film.

How did she know that Allie Kramer was alive and okay?

Sonja Watkins wasn’t saying. If Belva Nelson’s niece had known any more, which Nash wholeheartedly believed, Ms. Watkins was keeping it to herself. Watkins had even mentioned she might not talk to the police any further except with an attorney present.

Which probably meant she was guilty of some bigger crime.

Nash intended to find out just what that was, after she talked to the retired nurse, the very nurse who, Nash had learned, had been in attendance at St. Mary’s Hospital when Jenna Hughes had delivered her first baby.

“Hey! Take it easy. She’s not goin’ anywhere,” Double T warned as her little Ford slid a bit and the forest grew more dense.

“You don’t know that. She might already be running like a damned rabbit!”

“She picked a great place for it. This is like the ends of the earth.”

Nash almost smiled. Almost. Instead she adjusted the defroster as the windows were starting to cloud. Outside, it was dark as pitch, a wind blowing harshly, tree branches swaying in a wild macabre dance as they were caught in the glare of the Focus’s headlights. Not another car was on the skinny ribbon of asphalt that threatened to turn to gravel around each new bend.

“Jesus,” Double T said. “When she decided to hide, she wasn’t kidding around.”

“She was scared.”

“Don’t blame her. But up here in the middle of nowhere? This is better than the city?” Snorting in disgust, he clung to the handhold. “Don’t think so.”

“We’re almost there.”

“Good.”

What did the nurse know about Allie Kramer’s disappearance? About the homicides?

Whoever was behind the murders hadn’t killed people randomly, then placed weird masks over their faces. No way. The killer had picked people associated with the film. Nash didn’t believe the choice of Holly Dennison and Brandi Potts as victims had been coincidental. Did Belva Nelson know why?

Nash frowned. The pieces of the puzzle were finally starting to fit together, but there were still huge holes that Nash didn’t understand.

She hoped Belva Nelson could fill in the gaps.

In the meantime Nash had instructed Jenkins to cross-check any information on the birth of Jenna Nash’s secret child with everyone associated with
Dead Heat,
on the off-chance that Jenna’s first-born was somehow associated with the movie. It seemed far-fetched, as the connection to Jenna Hughes alone would explain the masks, at least to a deranged mind. So why bother using people connected to the movie as victims? And, in Potts’s case, an obscure connection. Not many people knew that Brandi Potts was an extra on the film. Only those close to the production of
Dead Heat
, those in the inner circle, would even know Potts existed.

A rush of adrenaline shot through Nash. Someone connected with the movie had to have had a personal vendetta against Allie Kramer. Cassie Kramer? Brandon McNary? Some other person who had become Allie’s enemy? Or the missing star of
Dead Heat
herself? Just how diabolical was Allie Kramer? Her beauty was only surpassed by her intelligence, which, according to IQ tests, was off the charts.

So many questions.

So few answers.

Yet.

But she had others working on the information. Detective Natalie Jenkins was determined to find out the identity of the family that had adopted Jenna Hughes’s firstborn, and privacy codes or agreements be damned.
Someone
knew who had adopted the girl.

“Hey!” Double T said, interrupting her thoughts and pointing to an overgrown lane where the trees opened a bit. “I think we’re here.”

She might have sped right past except for the county deputy’s car about fifty feet into the private road. With lights flashing, the cruiser blocked further access to the property. Nash pulled in behind the cruiser. She and Double T climbed out of her Ford and with heads bent against the rain, made their way through the muck and mud to the cruiser, where a deputy in rain gear stood guard. Rain was sliding from his weatherproof jacket and dripping from the bill of his cap. He was young, around twenty-five, and pale as death in the darkness, his mouth a thin line, his beady blue eyes nearly luminescent.

Quick introductions ensued as he inspected their badges, shining the beam of his flashlight over the IDs.

As he nodded curtly, Nash glanced into the back of the county vehicle. It was empty. “Where’s Mrs. Nelson?”

“Don’t know.”

“Not inside?” Nash asked, her heart dropping like a stone.

“No. No one’s here, but you’d better go in and take a look. My partner’s there and we’re waiting for the crime lab guys to show up.”

“Because?”

“Looks like a homicide.”

“But Mrs. Nelson is not inside?” Nash didn’t wait for an answer, just headed to the ramshackle cabin in front of which a Hyundai Santa Fe was parked. The SUV’s license was secured with a plate holder decorated with a cowboy upon a bucking rodeo horse and a couple of faded bumper stickers, one advising the reader to turn off his TV, the other professing love for the state of Oregon.

“This doesn’t look good,” Double T said, turning his collar against a rush of cold air that rustled the boughs of the trees surrounding the small clearing.

“You got that right.” They climbed up two rickety steps and stepped through an open doorway.

“Hold it right there,” a harsh female voice ordered and they both stopped to view the interior of the cabin, illuminated only by a flashlight held in the hand of a female deputy.

“Detective Rhonda Nash,” Nash said, once again flipping open her wallet to display her badge while Double T introduced himself as he flashed his own ID.

The room, in the harsh white light from the flashlight, was a mess, turned-over furniture, a broken lamp, glass underfoot, and a huge dark stain that had spread from a river rock fireplace across the dusty floors.

“Looks like someone bled out here,” the deputy said, running the beam of her flashlight over the wide stain. “I found no body inside. Could be on the grounds, or buried. We’ve got dogs on their way. Can’t tell whose blood it is, but it’s fresh, some not even dried.” She hitched a finger behind her toward the back wall. “Found a shell casing back there. Figured that’s where the shooter was when he fired.”

Nash let her gaze rove over the small interior and she felt an angry disappointment. Belva Nelson had been the key to her investigation, the turning point. Nash had felt it, that sizzle of anticipation upon reaching the turning point in a case. Now, the retired nurse was missing, most probably dead, the lead withered away.

Using her own flashlight, she swept the interior and decided that someone, most possibly Belva Nelson, had died here last night. She spied an open purse on the floor beneath a table, the stain of blood beneath it. Within the leather bag Nash found a wallet. ID and credit cards issued to Belva Nelson were inside.

This could play out differently. Maybe Nelson wasn’t the victim. Perhaps she was still alive. There was even a remote chance she had been the killer, but Nash’s gut instinct told her differently.

Damn, damn, damn and double damn!

They were too late. Which wasn’t really a surprise, considering that nothing in this case was ever easy, nothing fell into place. If only they’d had a chance to interview Belva Nelson. It was all so frustrating. “Son of a bitch,” she said through clenched teeth.

“So now what?” Double T asked.

Nash stemmed her disappointment. Collected herself. She couldn’t just wait here for forensics and the dogs. No, not with her feeling that time was running through her fingers. She checked her watch, then instructed the deputy to call her with information and left her card. They walked out of the cabin with not more information than they’d come with.

“You know,” she said to Double T as they headed for her car again, picking their way through mud puddles that reflected the pulsing red and blue light from the cruiser’s light bar. “If we wrap things up here and get back into town, we might not miss the end of the party for
Dead Heat.
You got a tux or extremely hip black suit you can change into?”

“You’re serious?” Double T asked.

“Oh, yeah.” She was nodding, sliding into the driver’s seat, wondering about her own change of clothes. “Serious as hell.”

 

Tonight the splendor of the Hotel Danvers, one of Portland’s most famous and historic hotels, was lost on Cassie. As she and Trent entered through a side door to avoid the reporters camped out at the main entrance she barely noticed the gleaming woodwork, elegant chandeliers, massive staircases, stained-glass windows, or thick carpets. She was too keyed up, still trying to sort things out in her mind.

Jenna’s revelation about another child, Cassie’s half sister, had caught her off-guard, suggesting that the unknown sibling might be a killer was more than disturbing and it had haunted her on the drive into Portland from Jenna and Shane’s ranch. Was it possible? Could it be that she’d even met the woman and not realized they were blood, that they shared the same DNA, the very same mother? The idea gave her goose bumps.

“Come on,” Trent said, a hand in hers when they climbed the stairs to the cavernous second-story ballroom.

Through wide open doors, she surveyed the sunken room. Massive chandeliers, dripping with teardrops of crystal and lit by dozens of lights, were suspended from an intricately carved ceiling. On an exterior wall, windows stretched two stories and offered guests an unlimited view of the city. Across an expansive marble floor, French doors opened to a long balcony, that had been built over the main entrance a floor below. Guests gathered and moved through the center of the room.

“I wish Allie was here to see this.”

“I think she is . . . kind of,” Trent said just as Cassie saw the first of a group of sets, each decorated as individual rooms that had been butted up against the surrounding walls.

Cassie’s heart dropped as she eyed the mini-rooms more closely and she realized each had been designed to be an exact replica of one of the sets for
Dead Heat.
“What?” she whispered, disbelieving because in each of the individual rooms, a life-sized mannequin of Allie dressed to look like Shondie Kent, the heroine of the film, had been staged. “Oh, no.”

From the wide entrance of the sunken ballroom she was able to view each individual scenario:

Shondie in a business suit and glasses, leaning back in a desk chair, one high-heeled foot resting on the desktop.

Shondie without makeup, tears streaming from beneath oversized sunglasses as she walked through a park.

Shondie wrapped in a long negligee, posed provocatively on a bed with mussed covers, a fake mirror positioned over a fireplace. In the mirror’s reflection a man’s naked muscular back and neck were visible—Brandon McNary’s character’s backside.

There were other scenes as well, each with a mannequin of Allie.

The most heart-stopping set was of Shondie running down a dark alley, storefronts visible, as she glanced over her shoulder. She was wearing the very same outfit that Lucinda Rinaldi had been dressed in, an identical white jacket, when the fateful bullet had been fired and she’d been shot.

“Oh, Jesus.” Cassie’s throat turned to dust. Memories in short bursts flashed through her mind. Another place. Other mannequins. All dressed like Jenna Hughes in her starring roles. All macabre likenesses created by a crazed fan who nearly killed Cassie and her mother. She was suddenly chilled to the bone as she recalled that horrid time, ice water running through her veins.

Cassie wanted to run from the room.

“What the hell was Arnette thinking?” Trent’s gaze wandered from one scene to the next, each one showcasing the film’s missing star.