Tell Me You're Sorry (40 page)

“Thanks, I need it,” she said, clicking off.

Stephanie started up the car, but then sat there at the wheel for a moment. She thought about Ryan's theory, and figured he was right about something.

Whatever happened back in the summer of 1986, however horrible, a child must have been involved.

 

 

“I hope to get out a little early this afternoon—in case you need any help finding a hotel. And I'll be happy to loan you some money if you need it. I don't want you settling for some fleabag place. You should stay somewhere comfortable—and safe.”

With big, sad eyes, she stared up at him.

She and Mark stood by his front door. He wore a tan suit with a white shirt and no tie. He was headed to the TV station for some meetings.

“Am I in the way here?” she asked meekly.

“Not at all, just the opposite,” he said. “But until I figure out whether or not this threat is real, I need to keep you out of harm's way.”

“What about your kids? Aren't you worried about them?”

“Terrified,” he said. “That's why I'm sending them to stay with my in-laws for a couple of weeks—until this blows over. I just need to figure out what to do about Alison's summer school.”

Her cell phone rang, and she dug it out of the pocket of her slacks. But then it stopped after one ring. She pushed the phone back in her pocket, and then moved in closer to him. Her arms slid up to his shoulders. “Well, I guess this is my last chance to see you off to work, and kiss you good-bye like a real wife.”

Getting up on her tiptoes, she kissed him on the mouth. Her lips opened.

Mark took a step back, and gingerly pried her arms off his shoulders. “Thanks. That was—sweet. I'll see you in a couple of hours.”

He opened the front door and retreated outside.

She lingered in the open doorway, and watched him climb into his vintage Mustang, parked in the bay beside the garage. She waved at him as he pulled away from the house. He didn't wave back.

She wondered how much that car was worth.

Ducking inside, she closed the door and hurried down the stairs to the guest room. She tugged at the nightstand, moving it away from the wall. Then she reached in back of it. She peeled off the tape that held her cell phone to the back of the stand. She clicked on the phone and speed-dialed a number.

She counted two ringtones. Then he answered: “Nikki?”

“I got the signal on Jenny's line,” she said. “What is it, Daddy?”

“The Farrell kid, he just had me on some computer conference call. He showed me a picture of you—”

“What picture?” she asked.

“Well, you look like that Jenny girl, and you're in somebody's kitchen.”

She remembered Alison taking the photos yesterday morning—and then
pretending
she'd deleted them. “That little bitch,” she growled. “The Metcalf girl took that shot. If Ryan Farrell has that picture, it means he's working with her. Damn it, he must be in Seattle—”

“I tried to find out where he was,” her father interrupted. “Maybe he and the girl are carrying on long distance. Farrell's friend, who set up the computer for the conference, he said Farrell was in Wisconsin.”

“Wait a minute. Who's this friend?”

“Oh, some smart-mouthed Oriental kid,” he answered. “I don't think he knows anything. I took down the license plate number on his car in case we need to take care of him later.”

“So about the picture,” she said, sitting down on the guest bed. “What did you tell them?”

“I acted like I didn't recognize you, of course. Still, we don't have much time. You need to finish this tonight.”

“Laird's on the road right now,” she said. “He should have my replacement here by two or three in the morning.”

“Contain this as soon as possible. Get them all together, tie them up. Do whatever you have to, but find out from the girl where the Farrell kid is. You never should have let him slip away in April when you got rid of the rest of the family.”

“Daddy, I explained that to you,” she sighed. “Once I'd taken the money, I couldn't afford to wait—”

“Never mind that, just—just—just get them all together in the house there as soon as you can. Finish this tonight. I'm counting on you, Nikki. After this, it'll all be over. We can get on with our lives.”

“What life?” she wanted to ask. She didn't have a life of her own. She'd spent most of the last two years pretending to be other women. But she didn't say anything to her father about that now. Instead, she said she'd call him back later. Then she hung up.

She set her cell phone down on the nightstand. She didn't bother hiding it. There was no need to anymore. The next person to come into this house wouldn't leave it again—until they were carried out in a body bag.

Nicole Jayne got to her feet and started up the stairs. She thought of that conniving little prom queen, Alison, and remembered back to when she was her age. Her sister had been dead—officially “missing”—for five years. Nikki was struggling at school. She spent her weekends and the previous two summers working as a ladies' room attendant at the country club. It was a disgusting, thankless job. All day long, she smelled shit, perfume, and Aqua Net. She loathed everyone there. Even the nice women seemed condescending and superior. And all of them were tightwads. Meanwhile, at home, she lived under her father's strict rules—even more inhibiting after her older sister had strayed. She was terrified of him—and for good reason.

As soon as she had enough money, Nikki got the hell out of there. She ended up in Las Vegas, working in the casinos. She got to know the ropes, and pretty soon, she was working some of the high rollers. Nikki became a first-class hooker and grifter. She teamed up with a small-timer named Laird Bikel. Together, they made a small jackpot on con jobs, some very clever scams, too. A few of their marks died in fatal “accidents” that she and Laird arranged. The first one had been tough going for her, but it got easier with each new mark. It never seemed to bother Laird.

Nikki might have gone on like that and saved up a nice little early retirement bundle for herself. But five years ago, she read about a young woman who was raped by three teenagers in Los Angeles's Griffith Park. It was a big story, because each of the teens responsible was from a “good family.” Their victim, who took a beating for resisting them, was just some nobody. Apparently, a deal was worked out. The charges were reduced and the privileged preppies got off with light sentences that amounted to a slap on the wrist.

Nikki couldn't help thinking about that poor girl. They didn't show her photo in the newspaper, but Nikki pictured her sister. Everything she'd been suppressing for years about Selena and those four boys from Lake Ridge Country Club suddenly surfaced. She became more and more obsessed about it. Nikki did extensive research and learned that each of her sister's seducers was now a successful, happy family man. Meanwhile, her sister was dead, and her own life was a mess.

Among the four young men, the one who fascinated and repelled her most was Dick Ingalls. He seemed to be their leader. Selena had had a terrible crush on him. Nikki's father would have called it “divine intervention” that Dick Ingalls's pretty wife died of a stroke.

Suddenly, Dick was a widower.

Nikki was still reading his wife's obituary when she started to formulate her plan to seduce Dick Ingalls, marry him, and then destroy his entire life. She found a willing accomplice in Laird. It was just the kind of elaborate con he enjoyed.

After the Ingallses' Lake Geneva summer home had gone up in flames, she and her partner walked away with about eighty thousand dollars in cash, silver, and jewelry. Dick hadn't any idea his new wife was dipping into his accounts and bleeding him dry. She and Laird had also collected over twenty thousand dollars from that Karla woman they'd abducted in Des Moines, Iowa. Nikki had been all set to assume Karla's identity and start working on Dick Ingalls. But that whole plan had to be scrapped, because the girl killed herself in the bunker. Ultimately it was Vanessa Black whose name went on the marriage license—and the death certificate. They'd made only about ten grand off her.

In the year after Ingalls's death, Nikki wavered between feeling triumphant about what she'd done and feeling vaguely dissatisfied. She started sending the three others unsigned Father's Day cards every year. She wanted them to think about all the women they'd been with, all the children they might have spawned. She wanted them to think about Selena, and her unborn baby.

She signed the cards she sent to her father—every year. That was her only communication with him in the last decade.

Then Nikki started to realize why she still didn't feel completely satisfied. Her father had no idea what she'd done. She didn't want to keep it a secret from him anymore.

So on Easter Sunday, 2012, she paid him a visit in his little garage apartment behind the rectory of that church in Glenview. She sat down with him at his kitchen table, and told him how she'd murdered Dick Ingalls and his family.

Her father broke down in tears. Then he hugged her, and whispered in her ear: “Good job, baby. Now, let's get those other three bastards.”

Maybe she knew it was her mission all along. Maybe that was why she kept renewing the lease every year on that old house with the underground bunker in Cedar Rapids. The house was roughly halfway between Karla's home in Des Moines and Dick Ingalls's house in Glencoe, Illinois. Now the place was centrally located for their work in Chicago and on both coasts.

One problem: she couldn't wait around for the other three to become widowers. So they sped things up. Making it appear as if the wives had killed themselves had been her father's idea. “Let these rich, snot-nose sons of bitches know how it feels to walk in and find someone they love has died by their own hand,” he said.

To Nikki, it seemed very karmic, like things coming full circle.

She made her contact with the new widowers while they were still vulnerable and confused. She built them up again and gave them confidence. They trusted her—the same way her sister had trusted each of them that summer night in 1986.

It was too bad she wouldn't have time to drain Mark Metcalf 's bank account and run up his credit cards. A part of her really wanted to stretch this one out.

On the upper level of the Metcalf house, she stepped into the master bedroom and headed for the closet. From the shoebox on the shelf, she took out the Glock 19 and the bullets. She'd found them there yesterday afternoon, when she was alone in the house. It wasn't very original of Mark to leave the gun there. Scott Hamner had kept his gun in the bedroom closet, too—under a pile of sweaters.

Nikki sat down on the bed she would never share with her sister's seducer. In a way, it made her feel like a bit of a failure this time.

Humming a sad little tune to herself, she started to load the gun.

 

 

 

“The last time I actually talked with Jenny, she was ‘cautiously optimistic' about a blind date through this online service she'd signed on with,” Carroll Jordan said. “She was supposed to meet the guy at the Public Market in Emeryville. That was the first week in June, a Tuesday night.”

Stephanie sat in the kitchen of Carroll's townhouse apartment in the Upper Haight neighborhood. Carroll's towhead baby daughter was in a high chair, with Gerber's mashed carrots all over her cute face. Spooning it out to her, Carroll had a little dollop of the stuff in her close-cropped red hair. But Stephanie didn't say anything. Her host was barefoot, and wore a black sleeveless blouse and white shorts. A box fan on the kitchen floor provided a cool breeze.

“And after that, it was just e-mails?” Stephanie asked.

“That's right,” Carroll said. “It was like she was mad at me or something. Suddenly, she got distant and impersonal. I've left several voice mails. But not once has she called back.” She waved the spoon in front of her daughter's face. “C'mon, Suzy, a few more bites for Mommy.” She sighed. “It's so unlike Jenny. You know what else is unlike her? In the e-mails she's sent, she hasn't once mentioned how her cat is doing.”

“That's right,” Stephanie asked. “She has a cat, doesn't she?”

“Oh, she's obsessed with him,” Carroll said, nodding. “Simon—that's her cat—he got lost for a day last year, and Jenny went crazy. When she finally got him back, she spent a small fortune on this state-of-the-art tracking collar. She even gave me a tracker device—for emergency backup. Ha, you know what you should do? You should take the tracking device to Seattle, and hunt Jenny down along with her new boyfriend—because where Jenny goes, the cat goes. And when you find her, give her a swift kick in the pants for me for acting like such a flake lately.”

Stephanie bit her lip. “Do you still have the tracking device? Do you think I could borrow it?”

Carroll squinted at her and then laughed. “Are you serious? It's only good for detecting things a mile or two away.”

“That may be all I need,” Stephanie said.

Lowering the baby spoon in her hand, Carroll warily stared at her. “What is all this?”

Stephanie sighed. “Jenny didn't design my Web site. And I'm not looking to take her to lunch and give her a bonus check. But I want very much to help her. It's a long story, Carroll, but what it boils down to is that I think your friend is in terrible danger right now. Those e-mails you got, they weren't from her.”