Killer Image (An Allison Campbell Mystery) (23 page)

Mia stood. “I’ll go see Brenda. I’ll try to get out there today.”

Allison followed back toward the kitchen. Mia stopped short in front of a room off the small hall, near the living room.

“Your office?” Allison asked.

“My bedroom. Want to see it?”

“Sure.”

Mia led her into a small room. Bed neatly made and covered with a handmade patchwork quilt and coordinating pillows. Full-length, wrought-iron mirror. Two Shaker-style dressers. A matching bedside table. The room was painted celadon. Cheerful green, blue, and butter-colored curtains hung from the windows. Like the rest of the house, the room looked understated, warm, and immaculately clean.

“Beautiful,” Allison said, and meant it.

“Thanks,” Mia said, already back in the hallway.

Allison started to follow, but something on the bedside table caught her eye. It was a man’s watch, tucked up against a box of tissues and a worn copy of
The Red Tent
. So Mia’s not
completely
alone, Allison thought, and smiled.
You go, girl.

Twenty—Six

Although it was Mia’s intention to visit Brenda Feldman later that same day, it was a full two days before she could bring herself to drive there. She opted not to call first, afraid she’d be refused. She wouldn’t have blamed her. Mia may have acted nonchalant about Allison’s request, but in actuality, she felt uneasy. Brenda Feldman was part of her past. Mia doubted Brenda wanted to be reminded of her own failures any more than Mia did.

Mia stood in front of Brenda’s door and waited. She’d knock, eventually. For now, she was taking in the property, all Brenda got out of twelve years of marriage to the late Arnie Feldman. It was a small ranch house on the outskirts of Paoli, in a neighborhood of split levels, ranches, and bi-levels. A short, steep driveway ran alongside the house and ended next to a small patio adorned with cheap plastic furniture. An overflowing ashtray lay atop the table.

A dog barked somewhere nearby. Mia could smell mesquite—an early spring barbeque. Neighborhood sounds, neighborhood smells. This reminded her of her old house, her old neighborhood, and for a second she felt a pang of longing she thought she’d quashed long ago. She knocked, suddenly impatient to be done with this. No answer. She knocked again.

A car sat in the driveway, an older model Honda Accord, and Mia assumed it belonged to Brenda. She raised her hand to knock again when the door swung open and Mia found herself face-to-face with a young man, maybe fifteen or sixteen. He was tall and husky, with wiry brown curls, vibrant blue eyes, and lips that seemed too full for his face. When he opened his mouth to speak, metal glistened. Not the invisible braces most kids wore these days. Ethan had some serious orthodontia.

“My mom’s not here.”

“Her car is here.”

“She went for a walk.” He started to close the door, an insolent expression on his face.

Mia put her hand against the door. “Please tell your mother that Mia Campbell is here to see her.”

“She’s not here—”

“Save it.” Mia smiled. “Look, I know she’s here. I know who you are, and she’ll know who I am, so let’s cut the bull, Ethan. Get your mother.”

The boy’s eyebrows arched in surprise. He nodded and backed into a carpeted living room. “Hold on,” he said.

Mia waited. It wasn’t long before Ethan was back. This time, he let her in. “She’s in a mood. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Mia followed Ethan through the living room and into a small kitchen beyond. He opened a door, and together they descended steps into a finished basement. On one end stood a small, wooden bar and two worn barstools; on the other, a sectional sofa and a huge flat-screen television. Brenda Feldman sat on the sofa wearing a pink velour pantsuit. Her dyed-platinum hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Gobs of makeup did little to soften sharp features or enlarge tiny, beady eyes. She dangled one cigarette from her fingertips. Another sat unlit next to an ashtray by her side. Smoke wafted across the dim interior in a haze of gray.

“Well, well,” Brenda said, her tone vitriolic. “If it isn’t Mia Campbell, the queen of etiquette. What brings you here without notice? Isn’t that a breach of the Miss Manners by-laws?”

Mia tensed. She could see Brenda taking her in. Mia had purposefully dressed down for the occasion: jeans, a black t-shirt, sneakers. Her own hair was pulled into a loose bun, her face was bare. She wanted to stand before Brenda humbled and honest, a change from their last meeting, nearly twelve years ago, six months after Arnie admitted to his first affair. Brenda would be nearly fifty now. And from the look of her, the years in between had not been kind.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” she said. “But we should talk. We have some mutual interests to attend to, Brenda. And I’m coming here one mother to another. I hope you’ll hear me out.”

Brenda was silent for a moment. The television was blaring the Home Shopping Network and an enormous woman in a red jumpsuit was going on about the versatility of the gold chain in her hand. Ethan was still there, standing next to Mia, his eyes on his mother. Finally, Brenda said, “Sit.”

Mia looked at Ethan. Brenda, understanding, pointed at the steps. “Go on, honey,” she said.

Ethan lingered for a moment, then left. Mia heard the upstairs door slam shut.

Mia sat on the couch and twisted to face Brenda. Brenda was pulling another cigarette from her pack. She laid it next to the ashtray. The cigarette version of a lady-in-waiting.

“Is this about Ethan?”

“In a way,” Mia said.

“What else would it be about? That’s all the talk right now. Arnie’s murder. How my son has been questioned in the death of his own father. A sin, all of it.”

“It must be hard.”

“Hard? Damn right. It’s been hell. Absolute hell.” Brenda stubbed out the cigarette, though she’d taken only one puff, and picked up the next one. “I hated that bastard. God, how I hated him. I’d like to say I’m sorry to see him dead, dying the way he did and all. But I’m not.” She inhaled, coughed and put the lighter down on her lap. “But as in all things where Arnie was concerned, he had to make a helluva mess with his death, too. He lived to make me miserable. Why stop now?”

Mia stayed silent. What could she possibly say? When Brenda had come to her, she’d just found out that the father of her three-year-old was cheating. All Mia could offer her was a fresh color palette and a new hairstyle. Brenda had put up with two sessions and then quit, telling Mia she catered to the rich and clueless. She hadn’t been wrong. That was the thing.

“So what can we do for each other, Mia?” Brenda pointed with a new, unlit cigarette. “You look different, I gotta say. Not so polished anymore. You let your hair go gray. I never figured you for a blue-hair.”

Mia smiled.
Fair enough
. “I think we have a mutual interest in finding out who Arnie’s real killer is, Brenda.”

“It wasn’t Ethan.”

“I know that.”

“Ain’t no way a teenager did that. No damn way.”

“Agreed.”

“I told the cop that. He questioned me, too, you know.” Brenda laughed, and the sound rang out across the low-ceilinged room, mean and bitter. “Seriously. I’d have killed that bastard years ago if I was gonna do it.”

“I hated him, too.”

Brenda met Mia’s gaze. “Because of your divorce? I read about your daughter, you know. About the accident.” She took a puff and blew it out slowly in gray concentric circles. “I was sorry.”

Mia recoiled inwardly. “Thank you. I hated Arnie because of how he handled my divorce. Because he couldn’t see me as a person, dying inside, and instead he used my pain to his advantage.”

Brenda nodded. “Sounds like Arnie.” She rose, walked to the bar, and, over her shoulder, said, “Want a drink? Scotch. Vodka. Merlot?”

“Merlot. Just a bit.”

Brenda raised the bottle to the room’s murky light and looked inside. “A bit’s all I got.” She poured Merlot into a tumbler, then a few fingers of Scotch for herself, straight up. The former she handed to Mia. She carried herself as though in pain, her slender form hunched and twisted.

Brenda must have caught her looking because she said, “Car accident. About three years ago. The old back is cranky as an Atkins dieter at a vegan buffet.” She sat back down with a thud, pulled out another cigarette, and lit it. Then she pointed to the flat-screen television. “Paid for that, though.” She smirked. “So what do you want to know?”

“Who else might have had it in for Arnie?”

Brenda threw her head back and let out a howl of laughter. “Who? Who
didn’t
want to kill Arnie? His clients worshipped him. The rest of the world hated him. Name me a Main-Liner and I’ll say if they were for or against Arnie. Seriously, Mia. That’s what I keep telling the police. But they don’t listen.”

Mia thought about that. Motive, she knew, was prime when it came to murder investigations. Establish a motive. “Why would Ethan want Arnie dead?”

“He didn’t do it, I told you,” Brenda said sharply.

“I know. But why do the police seem to think he’d even
want
his dad dead?”

Brenda waved her cigarette. “They fought all the time. Over grades, school, that girl he was seeing. They’re looking at her, too. Maggie McBride. The congressman’s daughter. I heard they’ve questioned her.”

Mia choked down a mouthful of the cheap Merlot. “I know who the McBride girl is.”

“Well, she’s another one. Doesn’t follow the rules, mixed up in some satanic crap. I tell Ethan, dump her. You don’t need that in your life. But he doesn’t listen. Men never do.”

Mia said, “Tension over grades and girls hardly sounds like motive.”

“That’s what I say. But the police, they say something different. They say they have evidence that links Maggie and Ethan to the crime scene. Satanic stuff. And they have no alibi. Ethan is no Satanist. A Jew, yes. He speaks Hebrew. A Satanist, no.”

“How about Maggie?”

Brenda took a quick sip of Scotch and a drag on the cigarette. She blew out smoke, sat back and shrugged. “Ethan says she’s a Wiccan. He says witches aren’t Satan worshippers. I don’t know. I’m a fallen Catholic from Northeast Philly turned Jew. I converted for Arnie.” She laughed again. “What the hell do I know about religion? Squat, that’s what.”

Mia figured the Ethan-Maggie angle was a dead end in this conversation. The police would only disclose so much to the family and, anyway, she was looking for other leads, something beyond the obvious.

“Did Ethan have friends besides Maggie who may have had a grudge against Arnie?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How about Sally Ann?”

Squinted eyes, deep frown. “My sister’s dead to me.”

“Think, Brenda. Were there any other clients who may have had enough of a beef to do him in? Someone close enough to the family to know about Ethan and Maggie, to know about the witchcraft?”

Brenda stared at her drink for a long time. “I only know from Ethan, mind you. Arnie and I didn’t speak. But Ethan, he said his father was always on the phone with this Kenburg guy. And they talked about child abuse. A lot. In a heated sort of way. It creeped Ethan out.” She put her drink down and sat forward. “You think this guy could have offed Arnie?”

Mia stood. This was something at least. “I don’t know, Brenda. But I’m going to try and find out. Did this man know about Ethan...and Maggie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know his full name?”

Brenda shook her head. “I’m lucky I remember his last.” She yelled for Ethan. When he didn’t answer, she screamed for him again. After a minute, Mia heard the door open and Ethan’s pounding footsteps on the stairs.

“What?”

“You know how your dad used to talk to that child molester?”

Ethan said, “Yeah, so?”

“So what was his first name?”

“Jack.”

Brenda turned toward Mia. “Hear that? Jack Kenburg.”

Ethan said impatiently, “Not Kenburg. Bremburg, Ma. Jack Bremburg. He’s the head of Star Oil. Dad was always complaining about him. Drove Sasha crazy.” He turned his attention to Mia. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

Before Mia could respond, Brenda said, “We know you didn’t do it.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t matter what you think, Ma. It’s the police that matter.”

Brenda stood and pointed her cigarette at her son. “Yeah, well, if they had enough evidence to get you, your ass would be in jail right now. So thank your lucky stars they don’t, and stop being such a smart ass.”

Mia walked toward the steps. She had a name. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “It was good seeing you, Brenda,” she said, hoping to avoid witnessing an all-out brawl between mother and son.

Brenda stopped arguing with Ethan long enough to say, “No it wasn’t, Mia. But then, you always did like to pretty the truth.”

Twenty—Seven

Desiree Moore, the mother of the girl who received Maggie’s threatening letters, agreed to meet Allison at the Ardmore Art Center, right after her one o’clock pottery class but before she had to trek across town for yoga. For Allison’s part, that meant canceling a session with a wealthy, albeit neurotic, philanthropist and rescheduling her Reentering the Workforce group, but that was okay. She could feel Vaughn’s edginess at taking time away from the clients, but she saw these as special circumstances. She’d do what she needed to do.

She pulled into the art center’s parking lot at 12:45 and leafed through the Internet articles Vaughn had printed out for her. There wasn’t much, and what there was focused mainly on Kyle, Desiree’s estranged husband. Allison was grasping at straws, she knew, looking for something that would help her build a connection to this woman in the hopes she could explain what had happened with Maggie. She needed to know whether Maggie was capable of something more sinister than a few threatening letters and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Desiree Moore could help her reach that understanding.

The first print-off was a short article from
Entrepreneur Magazine
, about businessmen with innovative ideas. Kyle Moore was the first featured interviewee, for his work at TECHNO, Inc. His picture was at the top, next to the byline. A tall, skinny man, he had a thick mop of flaming red hair. A large mole marked his left cheek. He wore oversized horn-rimmed glasses, which gave him an absent-minded, professorial air. There was nothing extraordinary in the substance of the article except for the date and a sentence Vaughn had highlighted for her. When asked about his success, Kyle credited his wife as both his support and inspiration. The article was dated November of the previous year. According to another piece dated two months later, Moore had separated from his wife. Next to these two highlighted facts, Vaughn had written “what’s up with this” in his slanted print.

What
was
up with that? But of course, giving kudos to his wife two months before separation could mean a lot of things: a happy façade for the benefit of the business; a sudden marital issue, like an affair, that occurred in the interim; a one-sided relationship; an attempt to fix a broken marriage.

The real reason didn’t matter. Allison wanted to know what happened between Maggie and Sarah. Knowing that Desiree was going through her own marital pain could only serve to give context to the events between the girls. When you’re already under stress at home, additional stress seems amplified. So perhaps Desiree had overreacted to the letters. At least that was Allison’s hope.

And Allison would only know if she asked.

She unbuckled her seatbelt, tucked the articles back in their envelope, which she placed under the passenger seat, and got out. It was a warm day and the sun laced through the budding maples and oaks that bordered the art center’s parking lot, throwing webbed patterns on asphalt. Allison took a deep breath and made her way toward the blocky building. Desiree had wanted to meet in the vestibule, next to the iron tree sculpture.
You can’t miss it
, she’d said on the phone. On her way inside, Allison’s cell phone beeped. She ignored it. She wanted to be mentally prepared for this discussion, afraid, on some level, that it would prove her wrong about a child yet again.

“Allison Campbell?”

Allison had been waiting by the iron tree sculpture—and, indeed, she couldn’t have missed its vast, ebony, waving branches—for almost ten minutes when the sound of a male voice startled her. She looked up. Standing before her was a twenty-something man wearing paint-stained jeans, an NYU t-shirt, and a broad smile.

He laughed. “You look startled. Sorry. I’m Jeremy.” He held out his hand. Allison saw brownish material, which she assumed was clay, under his fingernails. His hands were slender, his fingers long and shapely. She returned the handshake.

“Desiree asked if you wouldn’t mind talking to her in the studio. She’s finishing a breakthrough piece.”

Breakthrough piece? Allison searched for a hint of sarcasm in his tone, but there was none. His eyes shone green and sincere. “Desiree’s a good student. I’m her instructor. She really
gets
the medium.”

Allison nodded, amused.

Jeremy looked her over. “You may get splattered. I’ll get you a smock.”

Allison followed him through the vestibule, her heels clicking on the tile floor and echoing in the room’s high walls. Paintings and ceramic sculptures lined the path. Off to the right was an entryway into a small art store. Three well-heeled women, talking and laughing, each carrying a different brightly colored Vera Bradley bag, followed three toddlers out of the shop. Somewhere behind them a baby wailed.

“Are these private lessons?” Allison asked.

“For Desiree? Yes. But I also offer group lessons.”

Curious, Allison said, “Are the private lessons expensive?”

Jeremy smiled. “Depends. If you want to know the truth, I think they’re outrageous. But around here,” he gestured toward the three women they’d just passed, “it seems they’re not. I’ll get you a price sheet if you’re interested.”

Allison smiled. “That’s okay.”

Jeremy turned down a narrow hallway and then opened a heavy wooden door into a small studio. The first thing Allison noticed was the smell: pungent and earthy. The room was cold, and Allison wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. Inside the room, to the left of the doorway, were shelves. Stacked on these shelves were a hodgepodge of plain clay dishes, vases, bowls, and other ceramics in various states of completion. In front of the shelves sat a square, wooden table, its surface gouged and scarred. An assortment of pottery tools, strange-looking flat knives and other items, were laid out neatly on the table next to an enormous block of clay wrapped in heavy plastic.

Across the room stood a utility sink and a potter’s wheel. On a bench in front of the wheel, one foot on a pedal, sat Desiree. Her long straight hair had been pulled into a loose bun, and she wore clay-smudged jeans and a fitted white t-shirt. She was focused on a willowy vase perched on the wheel. Desiree ran a wire through its top, using two wood handles to guide the wire so that about an inch of clay was removed in one neat band. Then she used her thumbs to smooth and flatten the edge. Allison watched, fascinated, as the clay moved and writhed against the pressure of her fingers.

“Cool, huh?” Jeremy said.

Allison nodded. After a few minutes, Desiree stopped the wheel and took her hands off the piece. She looked at Jeremy, grinned, and then glanced at Allison. “So sorry,” she said.