Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts (2 page)

“Deep Throat knows the truth.”

“If Deep Throat knows the truth, why won’t he go public with it?”

Tears returned to her eyes. “I don’t know. He sent me a letter—It’s in there. He knows Billy was framed and murdered. I tried to bring out the truth, but…I failed. I failed my only son.” Her fingers were once again digging into Joshua’s arm. “Promise me that you’ll do what I failed to do.”

“I will. I promise.”

“You’ve lost your mind.” Tad chastised his cousin when they were alone in the corridor and out of Gina Robb’s earshot. “You gave that woman your word that you’d clear Billy’s name. She’s dying. Do you know what it means to make a promise to a dying woman? What if you can’t clear Billy’s name? What if he did it? Do you
want
to spend an eternity in hell?”

Joshua said, “I wouldn’t have promised her on her deathbed that I’d clear his name if I didn’t think that I could.”

Tad shook a finger in his younger cousin’s face. “You would never have even begun to give your word about something like this five years ago. Ever since your kids have started moving out and you can’t have the end all control over what happens to them—” He paused to catch his breath. “You put yourself in her place. You imagined Billy being one of your kids—”

Joshua wished he could deny that Tad was right. Sometimes it was spooky the way he could read his mind.

“Do you even know what Billy Robb was accused of doing?” Tad asked. “Do you know who they said he killed?”

“Who?”

“Rachel Burke.”

“Who’s that?” Joshua searched his memory. Tad’s tone made it sound as if he should know who she was, but the name didn’t ring a bell.

“Miss Pennsylvania 1996. Gorgeous redhead,” Tad said. “She was found stabbed to death in her beauty salon in 2001—the week before September 11. That’s probably why you don’t know about it. You were stationed in Hawaii then.”

“Yeah,” Joshua said. “I had other things occupying my mind.”

“Well, she was the All-American beauty and successful business woman. She was working late in her salon after closing and they said Billy Robb, who had been nothing but trouble since he was born, killed her because she had fired him for being a screw up. They found the murder weapon, a pair of scissors from her shop in his apartment, right next to the chair where he had blown his brains out. Billy had a long record of theft, drugs, and assault.” He gestured at the dying woman down the hall. “How do you think you can possibly prove that he didn’t do it with all that? She’s only got days to live and you promised to clear Billy Robb’s name.”

“I never thought it would be easy,” Joshua said. “No murder case is.”

“Do you want to fool around?” Clad in his blue bathrobe, Cameron came up behind Joshua and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed him between the shoulder blades and rested her head against his back.

“Didn’t we do that last night?” he asked with a laugh. While waiting for his bagel to pop from the toaster, he turned around to take her into his arms. She reached up to bring his lips down to hers.

Perched next to the kitchen counter, Admiral watched with worry that Cameron would make his master forget about the bagel, of which he was expecting the last bite.

“I do plan on going back to bed.” He opened her robe to see that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “I certainly won’t object to having company.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” After closing up the robe and tying the belt, she took the container of cream cheese out of the fridge and got a knife to spread on the bagel.

At the sound of the fridge door opening, Irving jumped up in the window sill to get a better view of what they were doing at the counter.

“What happened at the nursing home?” Cameron asked while spreading the cream cheese over the two halves of the bagel. She handed one half to Joshua while taking the other for herself.

Admiral belched as if to remind them of his presence. Forgetting to reserve the last bite for him would be a big mistake.

Sensing that there was something going on that he was missing, Irving jumped down from his perch and scurried across the floor to take a spot in between Irving’s front legs. He got there in the nick of time. Cameron tossed one bite to Admiral, which he caught in mid-air, and a second bite down to the floor for Irving to scoop up and take away to devour in private. While she was feeding the animals, Joshua was pouring two mugs of coffee and carrying them over to the table.

She joined him. “Was it a murder confession?”

“Nope.”

“Tell me.” She reached over to stroke the back of his hand.

Admiring her tousled short hair that reminded him of the color of cinnamon, he shot her a grin. “Do you remember Billy Robb, suspected of killing Rachel Burke, a former beauty queen, in Robinson Township back in the 2001, the week before September 11. Robb was from Chester.”

“I remember Billy Robb,” she said. “I wasn’t on the case, but certainly heard about it. Rachel Burke had become a name. Local celebrity. Was in the Miss America Pageant. There was a big uproar with the politicians to close the case and close it fast.”

“And we all know how that works,” he grumbled. “Under pressure to close a case fast and satisfy the public, not to mention the bosses and media, the police would never rush to pin the blame on the first most likely suspect without closely examining the evidence.”

“Billy Robb was no stranger to the police,” she argued. “He had a history of breaking into stores at night, drugs, and violence. Not only that, but he knew Rachel Burke. She was nice enough to have given him a maintenance job at the salon when no one else would, because she believed in second chances. Thing is, he stopped showing up for work so she had to fire him.” She pointed a finger at him as the thought came to her mind. “If you promised to look into the Burke case to prove Robb innocent, you’re going to end up getting haunted by that old woman because the evidence said he did it.”

“Donny is coming home from Washington in two weeks. That gives us two weeks to prove Robb didn’t do it.” He reached for the canvas bag on the chair next to him and emptied the contents across the top of the table.

Without invitation, Cameron dug in with the enthusiasm of a child finding a bag of candy.

The packet was organized. It had copies of public records and news clippings about the murder of Rachel Burke in her beauty salon in Pittsburgh, and the suicide of Billy Robb in his apartment.

“Interesting,” Cameron said upon seeing the police report.

“What’s so interesting?” he asked her.

“I never noticed the name of the lead investigator before.” She shrugged. “But then, this all happened before I got to know him. Ralph Ellicott.”

“What do you know about him? Is he dirty?”

“If you consider a political player to be synonymous with dirty, yes.” Her brows furrowed with suspicion. “Being the lead in the Burke case didn’t hurt his career. He’s now the state police captain in the district.”

Joshua smiled at her. “You’re getting curious.”

While Cameron tried to decipher the contents of the police report, Joshua found the prime motivation for the mother on her search for her son’s justice. It was a letter inside an envelope that he found resting on top of the stack of clippings. The envelope had no return address. The postmark was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and sent almost eighteen months after the murder.

The one page letter started out with an apology for not coming forward sooner.

But I cannot live with myself if I do not let you know the truth. I was close to the investigation into Rachel Burke’s murder and, based on my professional experience, I do not believe your son killed her. Nor do I believe your son killed himself.

Your son, William was framed and murdered and someone is covering up the truth! I’m sorry I can’t tell you who is behind this or why.

I don’t know what, or if, there is anything you can do to bring out the truth, Mrs. Robb, but I felt that I had to let you know that. Maybe in some way it can give you comfort knowing that your son was not a killer.

Cameron dropped what was left of her bagel onto her plate. “Did they say Billy Robb was framed and murdered?”

“Yep.” His finger on the words, Joshua held the letter over in front of her face for her to read. “Right there. F-R-A-M-E-D and M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D. Framed and murdered.”

“I’ll get my gun.” Cameron jumped out of her chair and ran up the stairs.

“You might want to put on some clothes, too.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” Peggy Hewitt said more than once when Joshua explained the reason for calling her out of the blue years after she had retired from the Pennsylvania State Police. “How did you find me?”

Joshua explained about using his role as Hancock County prosecuting attorney to get the state crime lab to lift her fingerprints from the letter and envelope she had sent to Gina Robb. The prints were matched to hers in the AFIS system under government employee database.

“Less than a week after you retired,” he told her, “Gina Robb received an anonymous letter saying her son was framed. You must have found something very intriguing while processing the evidence from Rachel Burke’s murder and Billy Robb’s death for it to eat at you for over a year. What did you find that was so compelling that you had to shoot her a letter as soon as you had your pension?”

The silence he heard across the phone line lasted so long that he thought she had hung up.

“Who did you say you were again?” she asked.

“Joshua Thornton. I’m the prosecuting attorney in Hancock County, West Virginia,” he said. “Gina Robb is dying and her last wish is to have her son’s name cleared. She gave me everything she had collected about his case. If he’s innocent, I’d like to prove it. I can’t do that unless you tell me what evidence you saw that made you write to her.”

Again, there was silence.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

Click.

With a sigh, Joshua hung up the phone.

“She’s not going to help us?” Cameron asked from where she was sitting on the sofa in his study. Irving had made himself at home in her lap.

“Nope.” Again, Joshua went over the information they had collected from the folder and the Internet about the Rachel Burke case. Cameron had also used her position to log remotely into the state police computer records to download their case file.

The death of a former beauty queen turned successful business woman draws a lot of attention. Forensics lab technician Peggy Hewitt had to have seen the physical evidence in the crime labs that proved Billy Robb was innocent.

While Joshua had no authority to compel the Pennsylvania State Police to reopen the case, he did have connections—a wife who happened to be a Pennsylvania State Police homicide detective. Cameron had access to almost everything they needed to look into the case on their own.

Joshua was drinking his second beer while sharing a bowl of popcorn with Cameron when his administrative assistant, Mary, called from the office in New Cumberland. “Hey, Chief, I didn’t want to bother you at home during your vacation, but thought I’d check with you on this before I deleted it.”

Joshua was only half paying attention when she said that she had received an e-mail into the county prosecuting attorney’s info account from an unknown e-mail address.

Mary said, “It’s a hotmail account with the name Deep Throat and it’s addressed to you. It says in big red bold letters, ‘Eyes Only’ and it has a pdf attachment. I was about to delete it, but then, knowing you, there’s no telling what clandestine stuff you’re up to on your vacation. I thought I’d check.”

Sitting up in his recliner, Joshua wondered if Peggy was helping him after all. “Send it to me.”

After decades of working for the state police, she was afraid of having the information traced back to her. So she sent it to my office using a free hotmail account and probably from a wi-fi hotspot.

Like a teenage boy waiting for a call from the prettiest girl in his class, Joshua stared at his laptop until the ding signaled the arrival of an e-mail from his assistant. The e-mail she had forwarded contained one sentence to him.
To Joshua Thornton. Eyes Only. From Deep Throat.
The attachment was labeled
Report
. The scanned document was over a hundred pages, which included the forensics report and pathology report for both Rachel Burke and Billy Robb.

Now it was up to Joshua and Cameron to find what Peggy Hewitt had uncovered that proved Billy Robb and Rachel Burke were the victims of a murder conspiracy.

The sun had gone down on Cameron and Joshua’s third day of vacation when Tad and Jan stopped by on their way out to dinner to discover that the newlyweds had already eaten. The open pizza box covered the desk in his study. Snoring away, Admiral was sacked out on the sofa with Irving stretched out across his back.

In the center of the room, scattered paper covered the floor with what Tad recognized to be a forensics report. Bent over the paper lined Oriental rug, Joshua stared at it. Cameron was studying the police report for the umpteenth time.