The Root of Murder Read online

  During her career, Cameron recognized her faults. One was becoming so focused on solving a case that she easily lost patience with potential witnesses who might not be fast enough to help her reach its conclusion.

  Such was the case with Martha Collins. She was naturally distraught to see her son taken away by ambulance. With Aaron incapacitated, his mother appeared to be their last hope in figuring out what had been going on inside Elizabeth’s head.

  Quickly sending the children to bed with assurances that their father was going to be okay and their mother would be home soon, Martha poured a glass of wine to calm her nerves and sat with Joshua, Cameron, and Sheriff Sawyer in the living room that was so small that Sheriff Sawyer was forced to remain standing by the door.

  “Elizabeth should be home by now.” Martha checked the time on a clock on the end table. “I guess she and Madison decided to go out to unwind.” She took a sip of her drink. “That’s what they do in show business, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Joshua said. “I guess since Elizabeth has been working with Madison, she’s been a big influence on her.”

  “It started with the hair.” Martha rolled her eyes.

  “What about the hair?” Cameron asked.

  “Elizabeth had what you’d call a dishwater blond, dark blond, hair.” Martha screwed up her face. “I admit, it wasn’t a nice color—but it was natural. But then, as soon as she started working with Madison, she decided to start bleaching it. Then, she started wearing those skimpy dance clothes.” She rolled her eyes. “All the time! Even when she’s not at the dance studio, she’s prancing around here in those tights and leotards.” She covered her mouth with a giggle. “I think she looks like a hooker. But don’t tell Aaron that.”

  “Are you saying all this happened right after she started working at the dance studio?” Sheriff Sawyer asked.

  Martha nodded her head. “It hasn’t been easy—with her suddenly working every day. Aaron has no patience for the kids, so I end up with them all the time.” She offered a small grin. “But she’s happy, and Elizabeth has been so unhappy for so long.” With a quick glance in the direction of the children’s bedroom, she said in a harsh whisper, “We were quite worried about her.”

  “Why were you worried?” Joshua asked.

  “She was …” Martha seemed to reconsider divulging that piece of information.

  “What?” Cameron snapped. “Elizabeth was what?”

  Startled, Martha jumped back.

  Joshua lifted his hand in a signal for Cameron to stand down. It was a slight gesture that only she noticed. “Martha, it’s important that we find Elizabeth. She may be in trouble.”

  “Have you called Madison?” Martha sighed. “Elizabeth was so depressed that we were afraid she might hurt herself and even the children. And then, it was the end of summer. She came home from shopping out at Beaver Valley Mall and her face just glowed—all because she had run into Madison Whitaker, her best friend from school. Madison had danced on Broadway and knew all of these famous people, but she gave it all up to come back home. She asked Elizabeth to help her open up her dance studio. I hadn’t seen Elizabeth that happy in years.”

  Joshua got up and gestured for Cameron to follow him out onto the front stoop. “Have you checked the dance studio in Beaver Falls?”

  “That’s where Elizabeth is happy.” Cameron took out her phone to call for a uniformed officer to check the dance studio. “It’s the thing that connects her and Madison.”

  Joshua stepped back inside where Sheriff Sawyer had continued the conversation.

  “Oh yeah, Elizabeth got so messed up last Friday when she went out with Madison,” Martha was saying. “I heard her car come flying in after ten o’clock. The headlights woke me up when she pulled into the driveway. She went running up the stairs—clap, clap, clap, clap, clap! I was just about to go back to sleep when I heard their door slam and stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp! Aaron went peeling out in the SUV.”

  “Where did he go?” Joshua asked.

  Martha shrugged her shoulder and took a sip of her wine. “He and Elizabeth had a fight because she came home so drunk. I assume he went to a friend’s house because Elizabeth locked him out of the bedroom. She’s done that before. Rather than argue, Aaron will go to a friend’s place and they’ll play games until she cools off.”

  “What time did Aaron come back home that night?” Cameron asked.

  Martha rolled her eyes. “I heard the SUV pull in. It was way after midnight. Maybe one o’clock?”

  Joshua and Cameron exchanged glances.

  “Do you mind if we take a look at your son’s SUV?” Cameron asked.

  “It’s in the garage,” Martha said with a wave of her hand.

  The Collins’ SUV was a ten-year-old model. When Cameron opened the back, she groaned upon finding that it had been recently cleaned.

  “Do you really think Aaron is savvy enough to have gotten rid of every bit of evidence,” Hunter said in Cameron’s ear.

  She turned to him to find that the deputy was holding a forensics kit in his hand. “Is that yours?”

  Hunter knelt and opened the plastic case. “It was a gift.”

  “All Josh ever gave me was a pair of handcuffs,” she said with a wicked grin.

  Hunter opened his mouth to reply but thought better of it upon seeing the arch of his father-in-law’s eyebrow. Rising to his feet, he held a bottle of luminol in one hand and a cotton swab with a long stick in the other. “Let’s see if Aaron got all of the nooks and crannies.”

  While Joshua, Sheriff Sawyer, and Hunter explored the dark crevices of Aaron’s SUV, Cameron’s phone vibrated to signal a phone call. She saw that it was the Pennsylvania State Police dispatch. “Tell me that they found Madison at the dance studio.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” the dispatch officer replied. “All dark. The uniform shone the light through the windows and went all around. No sign of anyone inside and no sign of a break in.”

  “Rats!”

  “Also, children’s services gave me a phone number to pass on to you for a Naomi Fletcher. She was Elizabeth’s foster mother. They’ve spoken to her and she would be willing to talk to you about Elizabeth. They said she might be helpful.”

  The men let out a whoop behind Cameron. She turned around to see Hunter holding the cotton swab up over his head while doing a dance.

  “We got human blood,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “Lots of it in the cracks.”

  “We’ve got the vehicle used to transport Davis to the dump site,” Joshua said.

  “Now all we need is the killer,” Cameron said.

  Chapter Thirty

  Crime doesn’t care how late it is. When a life is on the line, there will be a knock on the door no matter what the hour.

  Such was the case for Naomi Fletcher of Hookstown, Pennsylvania. Instead of calling her, Cameron and Joshua drove to her small Cape Cod home on Old Mill Creek Road and rang the doorbell. It was close to midnight, but there was a light on in the living room and they could hear a movie playing on the television.

  A teenaged boy dressed in a bathrobe over sweatpants answered the door. Upon seeing Cameron’s detective’s shield, his mouth dropped open. “Naomi!” he called up the stairs from over his shoulder. “The cops are here!” He turned back to Cameron and Joshua. “Are you here about Rickie?”

  “Who’s Rickie?” Cameron asked.

  “No one.”

  A woman with long gray hair grabbed the open door. “Samson, why didn’t you invite them inside?” she asked the teenager while ushering them into the living room. “Turn off the television and pick up your stuff so they have some place to sit down.”

  Samson picked up a pizza box, clothing, and other pieces of clutter while Naomi rattled on. “I didn’t expect you to come out so quickly. I guess I should have since the detective who called said it was importa
nt.” Suddenly realizing that she was also in her bathrobe, she tied the belt to conceal her flannel nightgown and smoothed her hair. “I guess Elizabeth got herself into trouble.”

  She told Samson, who had finished picking up his things, to allow them to talk alone. “You should go to bed anyway. It’s late.”

  He hugged Naomi and offered the guests a pleasant smile before going up the stairs.

  “Samson is a good kid,” Naomi said in a soft voice while offering them a seat. “Smart as a whip. Unfortunately, his father is a deadbeat and his mother fell into some really hard times. They lost their house and ended up homeless. She’s in a shelter.”

  “That’s too bad,” Joshua said.

  “Samson missed four months of school because they were living in a car,” Naomi said. “Then it got too cold and Samson’s mother got pneumonia. He thought she was going to die. He took her into the hospital, and he ended up in the system. As soon as I got him back into school, he got caught up like that.” She snapped her fingers with a proud grin. “With luck, we’ll find a place for them to live and get her a job, and they can be on their way again.”

  “There’s always hope,” Joshua said.

  Anxious to move onto their reason for being there, Cameron said, “Tell us about Elizabeth Gallagher.”

  “She was a strange one,” Naomi said with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know anything about her parents. No one could locate them. That’s why no one could ever adopt her. Children’s services couldn’t find anyone to relinquish parental rights. Her parents were either missing or they’d abandoned the kids.”

  “Kids?” Cameron asked. “Elizabeth had siblings?”

  “She had an older sister,” Naomi said. “I’d never met her. They told me that she had run away from the foster home she had been placed in a long time ago. Elizabeth had been in several other home before I got her. She had a problem with stealing, which unfortunately many foster parents didn’t want to deal with.” She cocked her head at them. “What is this about?”

  “We believe Elizabeth abducted Madison Whitaker,” Joshua said. “They took lessons together at Miss Charlotte’s Dance Studio.”

  “I remember Madison,” Naomi said. “She was always very kind to Elizabeth. Madison was beautiful and very talented. Everyone at the dance studio adored her, but she wasn’t snobbish about it. When she would talk to Elizabeth—that would make her day. Madison would just say hello, but it would mean so much more to her. She idolized her.” She cringed. “Elizabeth would read things into their friendship that wasn’t there.”

  “What kinds of things?” Cameron asked.

  “Elizabeth thought she was going to New York with Madison.” Naomi let out a sigh filled with sadness. “I had to explain to her that she wasn’t going. She insisted that Madison had said they were. Then one day, Madison was gone. Elizabeth was broken hearted. Next thing I knew, she was pregnant and marrying Aaron.” She lowered her voice. “I always suspected she got pregnant on purpose because she was afraid of being alone. I tried to talk to her about it, but she got mad and ran off with Aaron and I haven’t talked to her since.”

  “Then I guess you don’t know anything about her relationship with Lindsay Davis,” Joshua asked. “Her married name was Ellison.”

  “Heather Davis’s little sister,” Naomi said with a nod of her head. “I heard they got really close after they both had babies and ended up being neighbors. One of my former foster kids ended up living not far from them. Sometimes, she’d end up at the playground with her kids while Lindsay and Elizabeth were there. They’d talk.” She frowned. “Elizabeth was so jealous of Heather’s relationship with Lindsay that she couldn’t see straight. It was like she couldn’t understand that there was a connection between real siblings that friendship can’t trump.”

  “Then if Lindsay and Heather were fighting, Elizabeth would have a reason to feed that fight to break them up,” Joshua said.

  “Jealousy.”

  “She was looking for someone to fill the void left by her sister running away,” Cameron said.

  “Whose idea was it to sign Elizabeth up for dancing lessons?” Joshua asked.

  “Hers,” Naomi said. “I try to find out what my kids enjoy and get them into something. Being involved, finding out what they’re good at. Through that, they meet others who share the same interest and make friends. That all contributes to making them feel like they belong. The first time we drove pass Miss Charlotte’s Dance Studio, Elizabeth was instantly drawn to it.” She sighed. “I think the only time she was happy was when she was in that studio. It was like she’d be in another world when she was dancing.”

  Cameron uttered a gasp. “We looked at the wrong dance studio!”

  Joshua grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Miss Charlotte’s.”

  “Where’s Miss Charlotte’s Dance Studio?” Cameron asked Naomi.

  “It’s a half a mile down the road,” Joshua said. “I know right where it’s at.”

  “Miss Charlotte sold it when she retired.” Naomi followed them out the door. “A hairdresser bought it, but she went out of business and the bank foreclosed on it.” She called to them from the porch, “It’s abandoned now.”

  Cameron was on her phone calling for the dispatcher to send uniformed officers to assist in searching the deserted studio.

  “We’re only a couple of minutes away.” Joshua was checking his semi-automatic in the holster on his belt and his backup weapon, a twenty-two caliber Ruger, which he carried in his jacket pocket. “It’s down by Laughlin’s Corner.”

  “We drove right past it on the way to Naomi’s,” Cameron said. “I didn’t see any lights on, but then, I wasn’t looking for any.” She turned the cruiser out onto the street.

  “The place was foreclosed on. There’s no electricity.”

  “Oh, I pray she’s all right,” she muttered. “Elizabeth’s had her for six hours now.”

  As they approached the traffic light marking Laughlin’s Corner, Cameron slowed the cruiser down. The darkness was pierced by the traffic light and the convenience store on the corner. Beyond the store, further off the road, Cameron could barely make out the darkened shape of a small building. “I never even noticed that there before.”

  “That’s because you never took dance.” Joshua pointed at a dark shape at the far end of the parking lot. “Someone’s parked at the back door.”

  It was the same car that had tried to run Cameron down. Parked behind the convenience store, it was not visible from the road.

  Cameron cut the lights on her cruiser and drove around the building. Together, they looked for any sign of light or activity inside.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  “They’re here.”

  Cameron rolled the cruiser to a stop next to a tree and picnic table—as far from the building as possible, but close enough to see what was going on. She called into emergency dispatch to report finding Elizabeth’s car.

  “ETA five minutes,” dispatch reported.

  “Where are they coming from? Pittsburgh?” she asked as Joshua slipped out of the cruiser and hurried toward the rear door of the building. “Get back here.”

  After being assured by the dispatcher that backup was on its way, Cameron scurried across the lot to where Joshua was braced against the outer wall next to the door.

  “What are you—”

  Joshua put his finger to his lips and gestured for her to listen.

  Cameron pressed her ear to the door. The rhythmic beat of the music made the door seem to vibrate. They could practically feel the pulse of the tune against their backs through the wall.

  “I guess Elizabeth failed Evading the Police 101,” Cameron whispered while unholstering her weapon. She discovered that the hook and eye plate and padlock that the bank had screwed onto the door and door frame to secure the building had been removed and tossed
to the ground.

  Joshua took out his gun and held it behind his back. “This door opens to the storeroom. Six feet across the storeroom is the doorway to the studio on the other side. The hair salon may have kept the mirrored walls.”

  “Which means she’ll be able to see us coming,” Cameron said.

  “Exactly. There’s also a basement. That’s where Miss Charlotte used to keep her costumes. Doubt if they’re there now. The stairs are a few feet to your right once you go in.” Joshua placed his hand on the doorknob. Slowly, he turned it. The knob twisted, clicked, and swung open.

  Aiming her gun to the floor, Cameron slipped in and braced her body against the wall. She took her pen light from her jacket pocket and held it low to get a sense of her surroundings. She discovered that only a foot from her was the open doorway to the basement stairs.

  While the music was loud enough to hurt her eardrums, Cameron was grateful for it to cover up any noise they made.

  Keeping low, Joshua slipped across the storeroom to the closed door leading into the studio and pressed flat against the wall. Cameron went over to take a position on the other side of the doorframe. Moving slowly, she reached for the doorknob and opened the door ever so slightly.

  The music seemed to burst through the opening to box their ears. They could hear quick movement to the beat inside the studio.

  Joshua pressed an eye against the opening and peered into the darkened room. With hand gestures, he told Cameron that Madison was in the corner on the other side of the studio.

  “What’s Elizabeth doing?” Cameron whispered.

  With wide eyes, Joshua wiggled his fingers to indicate that she was dancing.

  “Dancing?” It came out as a squawk.

  The song coming to an end, Elizabeth’s voice seemed to bounce off the rafters. “What did you think of that, Maddie? Tell me that you’re having fun, Maddie!”

  Receiving no answer, Elizabeth’s question turned into a demand. “Tell me, Madison!”