The Last Thing She Said Read online

  “We need an ambulance!”

  She rushed out to the paddock to find Matthew sprawled on the ground with blood seeping from his back. She knelt next to him and touched his shoulder.

  To her relief, he groaned. He was still alive.

  “Don’t try to move.” Doris grabbed a towel and pressed it into the wound on his back. “Help is on the way.” As the words spilled from her mouth, she heard a second shot followed by a yelp.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After their breakfast buffet in Pittsburgh, Francine and Jacqui drove east for two and a half hours to a bistro that catered to the Pennsylvania State University crowd for lunch. Francine was able to pick Lacey Wooodhouse’s cousin, Tamara Dawson, out of the busy restaurant based on her blog’s profile picture.

  As with some cold cases, especially those that were decades old, Francine and Jacqui found it eerie to discover how time had marched on since the snapshot moment when everything had changed for those in and around the lives of their victims’ cases.

  Tamara Dawson was only a ten-year-old child when her beloved cousin had been ripped from her life. While Lacey Woodhouse would forever be remembered as a twenty-one-year-old college student, her little cousin would grow up to become a grandmother and psychologist specializing in criminal behavior.

  After a short conversation about the drive and ordering a light meal, Francine dove into the reason for their trip. “Your aunt went to her grave believing that Rick Hudson killed Lacey. Do you still believe that?”

  Tamara shook her head. “As I studied criminal behavior—especially obsessive-compulsive behavior of stalkers—I came around to believe Rick was innocent. One, no one could break his alibi. It was airtight.”

  “If his friends were lying, one of them would have broken by now,” Jacqui said with a nod of her head.

  “Exactly,” Tamara said. “And two, Rick has never exhibited any of the behaviors of a stalker. Believe me, I’ve kept tabs on him. Rick admitted to the detectives that he made some phone calls and followed her briefly—until he got a new girlfriend. Then he moved on. Since then, no threats. Not a hint of violence in his relationships with women. He’s been in a steady, one-woman relationship since he got married like forty years ago.” She shrugged her shoulders. “As far as I know.”

  “But Lacey was being threatened,” Jacqui said. “If Rick was not stalking her, then who was?”

  “What about Sal Loughlin?” Francine eyed Tamara for her reaction.

  Tamara sucked in a deep breath. “I can’t find evidence of him stalking women either. He’s never married. To my knowledge, he’s never even been in a serious relationship. Everyone said he was crazy about Lacey.”

  “But was he in a relationship with her?” Jacqui asked.

  “He said—”

  “He said.” Francine arched an eyebrow in her direction.

  “The last thing Lacey told Mercedes that night was that she had it backwards,” Jacqui said. “According to our information, Lacey said it when Mercedes had made the assumption that she had quit her job at Sal’s bookstore because she wanted to protect him from Rick. If she had it backwards, then she wasn’t protecting Sal from Rick.”

  “Who else would she have been protecting?” Tamara asked.

  “That’s what we need to figure out,” Francine said. “Sal lied when he’d said Rick was waiting for him when he closed the shop that night. Makes you wonder what else Sal lied about?”

  “Like maybe his relationship with Lacey,” Jacqui said. “Based on your investigation, did anyone besides Sal confirm that he was in a romantic relationship with her?”

  Tamara answered in a slow methodical manner. “He said they didn’t want anyone to know because they were afraid of how Rick would react.” She shook her head. “Sal Loughlin has been around for decades. He’s one of the most respected businessmen in the area. Gives millions to charity.”

  “Are you saying you’ve never run across a charitable sociopath in your studies?” Francine asked.

  “He’s not a predator,” Tamara said.

  “Lacey wasn’t sexually assaulted,” Jacqui said. “That means her murder was not sexually motivated.”

  “There had to be another motive for her murder,” Francine said.

  “Do you really think Sal Loughlin did it?” Tamara asked.

  “Someone beat the crap out of him that night. That someone wasn’t Rick Hudson. We know of at least one other person who had been in a fight.” Francine looked at Tamara with an arched eyebrow.

  “Lacey,” Tamara said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “And what about Mary Ann White?” Francine asked. “She’d worked for Sal Loughlin. He fired her. She called the police to tell them she knew who’d killed Lacey. Two days later, someone ran her down.”

  “I know,” Tamara said. “So many people around here swear there’s a connection between the two murders. It can’t be Sal.”

  “Why not?” Jacqui said.

  “Sal isn’t a pervert. He’s not a serial killer. He’s a total straight arrow.” Tamara shrugged her shoulders. “What motive would he have to kill Lacey and Mary Ann?”

  “The best thing to do at this point is to see if there’s any way to eliminate him,” Jacqui said. “That way, we don’t waste a lot of time barking up the wrong tree. Have the police re-examined the physical evidence they’d collected from Lacey’s murder? If she gave Sal those bruises and scratches, she had to have his DNA under her fingernails.”

  “They tried.” Tamara’s face filled with emotion. “That was close to fifty years ago. The skin and physical evidence they collected from under Lacey’s fingernails was too degraded. They can’t get any DNA from it.”

  “What about crime scene pictures?” Jacqui asked.

  Tamara picked up her briefcase from where she had it propped against her chair. “I’ve got plenty of those. Both of Lacey’s wounds and Sal’s.” She flashed them a half-hearted grin. “I’ve got a lot of friends both in and outside the police force working on this.”

  “We have friends, too,” Francine said with a wink.

  “It’s too bad Patricia Baker’s sister isn’t going to be able to help us.” In the passenger seat of the truck, Helen scrolled through the case file while Chris sped east across the interstate to return home.

  “Even if Caroline Andrews didn’t have Alzheimer’s, we don’t know what their relationship was,” Chris said. “She may have stolen Patricia’s boyfriend like Francine’s sister had done.”

  “True.” Helen zoomed in on a page in the Livingston case file. “Did you read this witness statement from room service at the Bavarian? They’d delivered a bottle of Dom Perignon, two champagne flutes, and a tray of raw oysters to George Livingston’s suite at three o’clock that afternoon.” She scrolled through the pages to another section of the file.

  “That was after his two o’clock appearance,” Chris said. “Sounds like he was planning an afternoon of fun and games before the banquet. That would go along with Lucille’s statement that Patricia Baker wouldn’t let him in the room because they were having an affair. He may have been indisposed.”

  “The Bavarian claims the last time anyone from the hotel had been to the room was to deliver the champagne. No house cleaning service. The glasses were never returned to the kitchen. Yet, the forensics report says there was no evidence of any of that left at the scene. It all disappeared.”

  “Someone cleaned up before the feds closed off the room,” Chris said. “I think we’ve identified the crime scene.”

  “That goes with our theory that George Livingston was snatched before he left for dinner,” she said. “Forensics determined that he was wearing blue jeans and found remnants of a silk bathrobe.”

  Chris gestured at her tablet. “Did the CSIs find any shoes in the vicinity of where they’d found his body?”

  “Shoe
s?”

  “You know. Those things you put on your feet.”

  “I know what shoes are,” she said as she scrolled through the report. “No evidence of shoes on his feet or in the area of his remains.”

  “Jeans. Bathrobe. Bare feet.” Chris grinned. “George Livingston was getting dressed in his suite when he was murdered.”

  “The champagne, glasses, and oysters point to a date.”

  “And murder points to a date that went seriously wrong,” Chris said. “Patricia Baker was definitely in on it. She was the last one seen with the victim and she’d manipulated the banquet manager into identifying the man getting into the Camaro as George Livingston.”

  “Obviously, the man getting into the car was an accomplice. So was the man behind the wheel.” She held up three fingers. “That’s three people who were in on it.”

  “Baker’s ex-husband Gavin Fallon was seen at Hill House and at least two witnesses saw Mercedes give him her room keys to get her calendar,” Chris said. “Most likely, the 60 Minutes interview was a ruse to steal her car keys. Can you find anything in that case file about Lucille giving investigators a copy of her tape proving that George was having an affair with Patricia Baker?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I looked as soon as we had finished interviewing her.”

  “Are you looking in the file that Crane gave me, or the one Ray stole from the bureau?” Chris asked.

  “Ray didn’t steal it,” Helen said with a shake of her head. “We’re taxpayers. That means technically it’s our case file.”

  Chris rolled his eyes.

  “To answer your question, it’s the file Ray got directly from the bureau, and there’s not one word about any audio recording. We need to consider the possibility that Lucille is lying about having a recording of George and Patricia fooling around and giving a copy of that to Crane.”

  “What makes you think Lucille Del Vecchio would be capable of lying?” Chris said with heavy sarcasm.

  “Smartass,” Helen muttered. “Okay, let’s say she’s telling the truth. Would that make Patricia Baker a suspect or a victim?”

  “It’s fifty-fifty either way,” Chris said. “If she was as close to George as Lucille is claiming, then she may have figured out who was really behind his disappearance.”

  “Crane claims a serial rapist confessed to killing her. Her disappearance has nothing to do with George’s murder.” She frowned. “But I’m bugged that there is nothing in this case file about those two having an affair.”

  “Crane admitted that Fallon brought him in early for damage control,” Chris said. “He claims he wasn’t part of their inner circle, but they wouldn’t have brought him in if he wasn’t. It’s entirely possible that once Crane eliminated Patricia Baker and Gavin Fallon as suspects, he covered up George’s affair to protect the family reputation.”

  “It’s all part of being in the old boys club.”

  “Crane’s company has had a lot of high-profile clients. I’m sure a large part of his success was due to his discretion.”

  Still checking information in the case file, Helen said, “Neither Patricia nor Gavin could have had anything to do with the ransom drop.” She pointed to a page in the case file. “Both of them were under surveillance. Crane ordered that they be watched from the get-go after Lucille Del Vecchio fingered them during questioning. They never left the Bavarian Inn.”

  “That leaves the third man to collect the ransom,” Chris said. “The man in the trench coat and the ballcap who pretended to be George Livingston. The most likely suspect would be Kyle Billingsley, Mercedes’s black sheep brother. He had the most to gain. He knew about Mercedes’s plan to go missing—though he claims he didn’t know the specifics. Mac had a good point. This was the 1980s. It would have been easy for Kyle to have flown out the day before and hire an actor to take a flight under his name after the ransom demand.”

  “He could have figured out that Mercedes was going to disappear that weekend,” Helen said. “Billy was a professor at Shepherd. Mercedes decided at the last minute to go to the conference. Kyle got his school friends into position at the Bavarian and Hill House. They just waited for the right moment to strike.” She smiled at him. “I think we’ve got it.”

  To her surprise, Chris was not smiling.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re right. On paper, it all fits.”

  “But?”

  “My gut is telling me that Kyle Billingsley isn’t smart enough to have pulled it off and gotten away with it.” With his eyes on the road ahead, he shook a finger at her. “There is one other person we need to consider for the third man.”

  “Besides Billingsley?”

  “Besides Billingsley,” Chris said. “There’s one other person devious enough.”

  Helen groaned when she couldn’t think of who he had in mind.

  “Lucille Del Vecchio,” he said. “Did you get a look at her? She’s six feet tall and her shoulders are almost as broad as mine. Forty years ago, with the right clothes, she could have passed for a man.”

  “But she’s the one pointing the finger at Patricia Baker.”

  “Who’s dead and can’t defend herself.”

  “Are you suggesting that Lucille Del Vecchio, Baker, and Fallon were working together? Why?”

  “Sex, revenge, and greed,” Chris said. “Fact. Del Vecchio was not above taking and giving bribes. Baker was having an affair with a married man.”

  “We can’t trust Del Vecchio to be telling us the truth about what she knows,” Helen said.

  “She’s greedy and, according to witnesses, ruthlessly ambitious,” Chris said. “Livingston took the job she wanted. So she bribed Baker and Fallon to help get rid of her competition. The promise of a share of half a million dollar ransom would have been very hard for them to turn down.”

  “Then Baker and Fallon conveniently disappear or die,” Helen said. “Del Vecchio points the finger at them. They’re not around to implicate her. Plus, she doesn’t have to split the half a million with them.”

  “I have no doubt that Del Vecchio would know how to hide that half a mil where the feds would never be able to detect it.” He reached for the console to place a hands-free call to Ray for an update on Kyle’s finances and ask for a closer check on Lucille Del Vecchio.

  At the same time, Helen’s phone buzzed. She checked the caller ID. It was the state police barracks. She connected the call. “Clarke here.”

  “Clarke, are you on your way back?” The desk sergeant sounded anxious.

  Hearing his friend’s voice, Sterling stood up from his seat in the back and laid his head on the front seat’s backrest.

  “Yes, what’s wrong?”

  “There’s been a shooting at the Matheson farm,” the desk sergeant reported. “The kids are fine. They were at school. A young man named Matthew Paxton is on his way to the hospital now with a gunshot wound to the back. No word yet on his condition.”

  His heart pounding, Chris pulled the truck off the road and rolled to a stop.

  “Sadie’s been shot, too. Chris’s mother is going to the hospital with the young man and Elliott is taking Sadie to the emergency room in Purcellville for surgery. They’ve asked me to let you know.”

  “Do you have any suspects?” Helen asked.

  “Witnesses at the scene suggested a name.” The desk sergeant sounded hesitant to say more.

  “Sergeant Thomas Clarke?” Helen asked.

  “Well, —”

  “Does anyone know where he is?”

  “We have a BOLO out on him.”

  “Where are our kids?” Chris asked.

  “We’ve sent uniformed officers to pick up your girls—including Sierra,” the desk sergeant said. “Doris told us to take them to Reverend Ruth’s house.”

  “Good. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Ke
ep us informed.” Helen felt Chris’s hand squeeze hers as she disconnected the call. “I am so sorry.”

  Chris slowly shook his head. “It’s not your fault.” He leaned across the center console to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Thomas isn’t thinking straight right now.”

  Chris cringed. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?” she asked as the console on Chris’s dashboard lit up to indicate an incoming call from “J. Thornton.”

  “If Thomas was jealous enough to try to take me out, he wouldn’t have been so congenial while trying to convince me to step aside,” he said. “He would have threatened me, but he didn’t. There’s a lot of people besides Thomas who want me dead.” He directed the phone to accept the call.

  Joshua Thornton’s voice spilled from the speaker. “Matheson. Thornton here. Faraday gave me your number. I’ve got some additional information about Caroline Andrews that might be useful for your investigation.”

  “Let’s have it,” Chris said.

  “Well, I talked to my cousin Tad. He’s a doctor at Fox’s. He’s been treating Caroline for years. Now, he couldn’t tell me anything about her condition. Privacy laws. But he was able to tell me that you might be able to get information from her other sister.”

  Chris and Helen exchanged quick glances. “Other sister?” he asked.

  Helen picked up her tablet and began scrolling to look up Patricia Baker’s background information.

  “She visits Caroline every Sunday,” Joshua said. “Tad swears she’d told them that she was Caroline’s sister.”

  “I’m not finding anything in Patricia’s background about her having another sister,” Helen said. “What’s her name?”

  “I’m not sure. Tad says she’s an artist in Pittsburgh.”

  “Could she be a sister-in-law?” Chris asked.

  Joshua hesitated. “Caroline’s late husband had two brothers, and both were married. I’ll check with Tad and get back to you. I was just thinking that if this woman and Caroline were close enough for her to drive in from Pittsburgh every single Sunday without fail, that—even if she didn’t know Patricia—Caroline may have told her something that could be useful to your case.”