Salvation in Death (15 page)
Read Salvation in Death Online
Authors: J. D. Robb
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths
He trailed off as wailing and sobs echoed off the walls.
“Didn’t help much,” he added.
“Great.” Eve stepped to the door where the wails and sobs battered the metal. She rolled her shoulders, opened it.
She might have staggered, not just from the sounds, but from all the
pink
. It was like a truckload of cotton candy exploded, and it immediately gave her a phantom toothache.
The woman herself wore a pink dress with an enormous skirt that poofed up as she sprawled on a chaise like a candy mountain. Her hair, a bright, eye-dazzling gold, tumbled in disarray around a face where several pounds of enhancers had melted and washed down in black, red, pink, and blue streaks.
For a moment, Eve thought Jolene had torn some of her hair out in her mad grief, then realized the hunks of it scattered on the floor and chaise were extensions and enhancers.
The cop on the door gave Eve a look that managed to be weary, cynical, relieved, and amused all at once. “Sir? Officer McKlinton. I’ve been standing with Mrs. Jenkins.”
Please
was the underlying message.
Please set me free.
“Take a break, Officer. I’ll speak with Mrs. Jenkins now.”
“Yes, sir.” McKlinton moved to the door, and mumbled, “Good luck,” under her breath.
“Mrs. Jenkins,” Eve began, and in response Jolene shrieked and threw her arm over her eyes. And not for the first time, Eve decided, as the arm was covered with smears of the facial enhancers like a kind of weird wound.
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” Eve said over the shrieks and sobs. “I know this is a difficult time, and I’m very sorry for your loss, but—”
“Where is my Jimmy Jay! Where is my
husband
? Where are my babies? Where are our girls?”
“I need you to stop.” Eve walked over, leaned down, took Jolene by the quaking shoulders. “I need you to
stop
this, or I’m walking out. If you want me to help you, help your family, then you’ll stop. Now.”
“How can you help? My husband is
dead
. Only God can help now.” Her voice, thick with tears and the South, shrill with hysteria, sawed through the top of Eve’s head. “Oh why, why did God take him from me? I don’t have enough faith to understand. I don’t have the strength to go on!”
“Fine. Sit here and wallow then.”
She turned away, and got halfway across the room when Jolene called out, “Wait! Wait! Don’t leave me alone. My husband, my partner in life and in the light eternal, has been taken from me. Have pity.”
“I’ve got plenty of pity, but I also have a job to do. Do you want me to find out how, why, and who took him from you?”
Jolene covered her face with her hands, smearing enhancements like fingerpaint. “I want you to make it not happen.”
“I can’t. Do you want to help me find out who did this?”
“Only God can take a life, or give one.”
“Tell that to all the people, just in this city, who are murdered by another human being every week. You believe what you want, Mrs. Jenkins, but it wasn’t God who put poison in that bottle of water.”
“Poison. Poison.” Jolene slapped a hand to her heart, held the other up.
“We need the medical examiner to confirm, but yes, I believe your husband was poisoned. Do you want me to find out who did that, or just pray about it?”
“Don’t be sacrilegious, not at such a time.” Shuddering, shuddering, Jolene squeezed her eyes shut. “I want you to find out. If someone hurt my Jimmy, I want to know. Are you a Christian, miss?”
“Lieutenant. I’m a cop, and that’s what matters here. Now tell me what happened, what you saw.”
Between hiccups and quavers, Jolene relayed what was essentially Attkins’s statement of events. “I ran onstage. I thought: ‘Oh sweet Jesus, help my Jimmy,’ and I saw, when I looked down, I saw . . . His eyes—he didn’t see me, they were staring, but he didn’t see me, and there was blood on his throat. They said I fainted, but I don’t remember. I remember being sick or dizzy, and someone was trying to pick me up, and I guess I went a little crazy. They—it was one of the police and, Billy, I think, who brought me in here, and someone came and gave me something to calm me down. But it didn’t help. What would?”
“Did your husband have any enemies?”
“Any powerful man does. And a man like Jimmy Jay, one who speaks the word of God—not everyone wants to hear it. He has a bodyguard, he has Clyde.”
“Any particular enemies?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“A man in his position accumulates considerable wealth.”
“He built the church, and ministers to it. He gives back more, so much more than he ever gathered for himself. Yes,” she said, stiffly now, “we have a comfortable life.”
“What happens to the church and its assets now?”
“I . . . I—” She pressed a hand to her lips. “He took steps to be sure the church would continue after his passing. That if he met God first, I would be taken care of, and our children, our grandchildren. I don’t know all the particulars. I try not to think about it.”
“Who set the water out for him tonight?”
“One of the girls, I suppose.” Her ravaged eyes closed. Eve calculated the tranq had finally cut through the hysteria. “Or Billy. Maybe Clyde.”
“Were you aware your husband routinely had vodka added to his water?”
Her ravaged eyes popped open. Then she huffed out a matronly breath and shook her head. “Oh, Jimmy Jay! He knew I disapproved. An occasional glass of wine, that’s all right. But did our Lord and Savior have vodka at the Last Supper? Did He change water into vodka at Cana?”
“I’m guessing no.”
Jolene smiled a little. “He had a taste for it, my Jimmy. Didn’t overdo. I wouldn’t have stood for it. But I didn’t know he was still having the girls tip a little into his stage water. It’s a small indulgence, isn’t it? A small thing.” Fresh tears spilled as she plucked at the voluminous poofs of her skirt. “I wish I hadn’t scolded him about it now.”
“How about his other indulgences?”
“His daughters, his grandbabies. He spoiled them to bits and pieces. And me.” She sighed, her voice slurring now with the drug. “He spoiled me, too, and I let him. Children. He had a soft spot for children. That’s why he built the school back down home. He believed in feeding a child’s mind, body, soul, and their imagination. Officer—I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten.”
“Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Lieutenant Dallas. My husband was a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man. Maybe even great. He was a loving husband and father, and a devoted shepherd to his flock. He served the Lord, every day. Please, I want my children now. I want my daughters. Can’t I have my daughters now?”
“I’ll check on that.”
With the oldest daughter’s statement on record, Eve cleared putting the two women together. And she moved on to the manager.
Billy Crocker sat in a smaller dressing room on what Eve thought of as Jimmy Jay’s side of the stage. His eyes were raw and red, his face gray.
“He’s really dead.”
“Yes, he is.” Eve chose to start at a different point. “When’s the last time you spoke with Mr. Jenkins?”
“Just a few minutes before he went on. I gave him his cue. I went to his dressing room to give him the five-minute cue.”
“What else did you talk about?”
“I told him what the gate was, that we were sold out. He liked hearing it, pepped him up, knowing there were so many souls to be saved. That’s what he said.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes. He always took the last thirty minutes—twenty if we were pressed—alone.”
“How long did you work for him?”
Billy took a choked breath. “Twenty-three years.”
“What was your relationship?”
“I’m his manager—was his manager—and his friend. He was my spiritual adviser. We were family.” With his lips trembling, Billy wiped at his eyes. “Jimmy Jay made everyone feel like family.”
“Why is his wife stationed at the other side of the stage?”
“Just a practicality. They come in on opposite sides, meet at the center. It’s tradition. Jolene, oh good Jesus, poor Jolene.”
“What was their relationship like?”
“Devoted. Absolutely devoted. They adore each other.”
“No straying into other pastures—on either side.”
He looked down at his hands. “That’s an unkind thing to say.”
“Am I going to dig a little, Billy, and find out you and Jolene have been breaking any commandments?”
His head snapped up. “You will not. Jolene would never betray Jimmy Jay in that way. In any way. She’s a lady, and a good Christian woman.”
“Who spiked Jenkins’s stage water with vodka?”
Billy sighed. “Josie took care of it tonight. There’s no need to bring that out, and embarrass Jolene. It was a small thing.”
“The church is big business. A lot of money. Who gets what?”
“It’s very complicated, Lieutenant.”
“Simplify it.”
“Church assets remain church assets. Some of those assets are used by the Jenkins family. The plane used for transportation in the work of the church, for instance. His daughters’ homes, which are also used for church business. Several vehicles and other assets. Jimmy Jay and Jolene have—over more than thirty-five years of time and effort—accumulated considerable wealth in their own right. I know, as I was consulted, that Jimmy Jay arranged, should . . . should he go to God, that Jolene and his family are provided for. And that the church itself can and will continue. It was his life’s work.”
“Did he leave anything to you, Billy?”
“Yes. I’ll inherit some of his personal effects, one million dollars, and the responsibility of managing the church in the manner he wished.”
“Who’d he cheat on Jolene with?”
“I won’t dignify that with an answer.”
Something there, Eve decided. “If you’re taking that stand to protect him, you may also be protecting his killer.”
“Jimmy Jay is beyond my protection. He’s in God’s hands.”
“Eventually, his killer will be in mine.” She rose. “Where are you staying in
“At the Mark. The family was given use of the home of one of our flock. They’re at a town house on Park Avenue. The rest of us are at the Mark.”
“You’re free to go there, but don’t leave the city.”
“None of us will leave until we take Jimmy Jay’s earthly remains back home.”
Eve tracked down Peabody, pulled her out of yet another dressing room. “This place is a damn maze. Status.”
“I’ve finished the first two daughters, and I’m on number three. My take is they’re in shock, and they want their mother, which is where the first two are now. They’re worried about their kids, who are with the nanny who travels with them. The youngest one’s in there and about five months pregnant.”
“Crap.”
“She’s holding up, holding on.”
“Which one’s Josie?”
“Inside. Jackie, Jaime, and Josie.” Peabody’s face creased with a frown. “What’s with all the J’s?”
“Who knows. I need to ask this J a couple of questions.”
“Okay. Listen, I told McNab to take the husbands since he’d finished with Security.”
“That’s fine. Maybe we’ll get out of here before morning.” Eve stepped in.
The woman inside wore white. Her hair was a softer shade of blond than her mother’s and worn loose around her shoulders. If she’d indulged in facial enhancers like her mother, she’d cleaned them off. Her face was pale and bare, her eyes red-rimmed with tears shining out of the blue.
After the sugary pink of Jolene’s dressing room, the reds and golds of this one came as a relief. Under a lighted mirror stood a tidy grove of stage enhancers, grooming tools, framed photographs.
In one the recently deceased held a chubby baby.
“Josie.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m trying to tell myself he’s with God. But I want him to be with me.” As she spoke, she rubbed circles over the lump of her belly. “I was just thinking how busy we all were today, getting ready for tonight, and how little time I had with him. How I was doing something or other this afternoon, and I thought: ‘Oh, I have to talk to Daddy, and tell him how Jilly—my little girl—how she printed her name today, and got all the letters right.’ But I didn’t get the chance. Now I won’t.”
“Josie, did you put the water bottles onstage?”
“Yes. Seven of them. Three for each half, and one extra. He usually only went through the six, but we always put out seven, in case. On the table behind the drop.”
“The drop?”
“Curtain. See, the singers open, upstage, then when Mama and Daddy come in, they lift the curtain. The table’s there, behind it.”
“When did you put them out?”
“Ah, about fifteen minutes before his cue, I think. Not much before that.”
“When did you put the vodka in?”
She flushed, pink as her mother’s dress. “Maybe an hour or so before. Please don’t tell Mama.”
“She knows. She understands.”
“You got the bottle in his dressing room?”
“That’s right.”
She wiped at fresh tears with her fingers. “He wasn’t in—sometimes he is, and we’d talk a little while I fixed his bottles. If I was doing it. And we’d joke. He liked a good joke. Then I’d take them back to my dressing room. My sisters and I sing, too. We’d perform in the second half with Mama, and at the end, with the Eternal Lights, Mama, and Daddy.”
“Did you see anyone around your father’s dressing room?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There are so many of us. I saw some of the crew going here and there, and the wardrobe mistress—Kammi—she came in with Daddy’s suit as I was leaving, and some of the tech crew were here and there. I wasn’t paying attention, Miss Dallas. I was thinking how I wanted to get back to the dressing room with my sisters, and stretch out for a few minutes.” Her hands moved over her belly again. “I get tired easy these days.”
“Okay, let’s try this. Did you see anything or anyone out of place?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Eve pushed to her feet. “Detective Peabody’s going to finish up, then she’ll take you to your mother.” Eve started to the door, stopped, turned back. “You said how busy you all were today. Did your father spend the day here, rehearsing?”
“Oh, no. We all had breakfast this morning, at the home where we’re staying. And morning prayer. Then the kids have school. My sister Jackie and Merna—that’s who helps out with the kids—taught today. Mama came down first, to meet with Kammi, and with Foster, who does our hair. Mama is very hands-on with the wardrobe, the hair, and makeup. Daddy went out for his walk and meditation.”
“When?”
“Oh . . . around
, I guess. No, closer to eleven.”
“With his bodyguard?”
Josie bit her lip. “I forgot, that’s one of those things like the vodka. Daddy sometimes gives Clyde an hour or two off, and he sort of lets Clyde think he’ll be staying in, working. But he just wants to get outside and walk and think, on his own.”
“So your father was out on his own, walking and thinking, from around eleven to . . .”
“I’m not sure, because most of us went on before one, to rehearse, and to check with Mama on the wardrobe and so on.”
“Everyone was here at one?”
“Well, I don’t know. Everyone on the girls’ side would’ve been by around one-thirty anyway. I know that sounds silly, but the singers are all girls, and we’re all on stage left, so we call the girls’ side.”
“Anyone missing, or late?”
“I just don’t know. My sisters and I went straight out to rehearse, and I can’t recall anyone not being there when we switched off so the Eternal Lights could rehearse.”
“And your father?”
“I heard him doing sound checks. He had such a big voice. Then we all rehearsed the final song, and the encore. I went to spend some time with Walt and Jilly—my husband and my daughter.”
“Okay. What’s the address where you’re staying?”
Eve noted it down, nodded. “Thank you, Josie.”
“I know God has a plan. And I know whoever did this will answer to God. But I hope you’ll see that whoever did this answers here on Earth before that day.”
“Well, that’s my plan.”
Eve went back out, wound around to Roarke, who sat front row center, happily playing with his pocket PPC. “Status?”
“God is a very big, and very lucrative business. Want a report?”
“Not just yet. You should go home.”
“Why do you always want to spoil my fun?”
She leaned down until they were eye to eye. “His wife loved him. That’s no bullshit. I love you.”
“That’s no bullshit.”
“If I found out you were screwing around on me, could I off you?” He inclined his head. “I believe I’ve already been informed you’d be doing the rhumba—after appropriate lessons—on my cold, dead body.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” It cheered her up. “Just not sure pink Jolene has the stones for that.”
“Jimmy Jay was in violation of the . . . which commandment is it that deals with adultery?”
“How the hell would I know, especially since I wouldn’t wait for you to face your eternal punishment, should you be in said violation, before I rhumba’d my ass off.”
“Such is true love.”
“Bet your excellent ass. I got the vibe he might’ve been screwing around, but maybe I’m just a cynical so-and-so.”
Pleased with her, Roarke tapped a finger over the dent in her chin. “You are, but you’re my cynical so-and-so.”
“Awww. Money’s another good one. What kind of—round figure—lucrative are we talking?”
“If we put church assets, personal assets, assets neatly tipped into his children’s and grandchildren’s names, his wife’s personal assets into the same hat, upward of six billion.”
“That’s pretty fucking round. I’ll get back to you.”
She hunted down Clyde, found him in a small backstage canteen, sitting over what smelled like a miserable cup of coffee. He smiled weakly.
“Coffee here’s as bad as cop coffee ever was.”
“I’ll take your word.” She sat and looked him in the eye. “Did Jimmy Jay have a sidepiece?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “I never saw him, not once in the eight years I’ve been with him, behave inappropriately with another woman.”
“That’s not an answer, Clyde.”
He shifted in his seat, and she knew her vibe rang true.
“I’ve been divorced twice. Drank too much, saw too much, brought it all home too much and lost two wives to the job. Lost my faith, lost myself. I found them again when I heard Jimmy Jay preach. I went to him, and he gave me a job. He gave me a second chance to be a good man.”
“That’s still not an answer. He’s dead. Somebody put something besides a little shot of vodka in his water. So I’m going to ask you one more time, Detective Sergeant: Did he have a sidepiece?”
“I figure it’s likely. I never saw him, like I said. But I had a sidepiece or two in my time, and I know the signs.”
“Did his wife know?”
“If you asked me to swear to it, I might hesitate, but I’d still say no.”
“Why?”
“I’d’ve seen it, felt it. It’s a good bet I’d have heard it. I think she’d have stood by him if she found out, but I think—hell, I
know
—she’d have put the stops to it. She’s a soft-hearted woman, Lieutenant, and she loved him to distraction. But she’s got a spine in there. She wouldn’t put up with it. Fact is, he loved her the same way.
“I know,” he said when she stared through him. “We always say we love the wife when we’re screwing around on her. But he did. The man was crazy about Jolene. He just lit up when she was around. If she’d found out and put it to him, if he’d seen it hurt her, he’d have stopped.”
“He didn’t stop the vodka.”
