Mistaken Identity (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Read online

  Beyond the kitchen was a family room – another space exuding the personality of Jeanine. Built-in shelves were packed with books, mementoes and family photos – from the old black and whites of the past to contemporary color shots of Parker, Jeanine and Freddy at the beach, in the mountains and posing in front of an array of recognizable international landmarks. In every picture, the focal point was the never-ending, vibrant smile on Jeanine’s face.

  Lucinda studied every one of them, searching for any signs of the darkness that Victoria Whitehead had claimed was lurking behind Parker’s eyes; seeking any clues to explain the horror that had visited them in their bedroom. All she saw was a happy family – and nothing more.

  She moved on to the office. The techs had plundered this room more than any other outside of the master bedroom suite. At two computer workstations, all that remained were wires. The file drawers were empty, stray notes scattered across the floor, the chairs pulled away from the desks. Lucinda moved on, taking the stairs to the second floor. She stood by the stripped bed next to the spot where Jeanine’s body lay. She sighed as she thought of how much Freddy would miss this woman with her radiant smile.

  In the bathroom, she stared at the holes where bullets were once lodged, trying to make sense of the chain of events that led to the gory sight in the bathtub. She tried to visualize the room without gouges in the walls, bloodstains on the floor and the smell of death in the air.

  Lucinda left the immediate crime scene and explored the rest of the second floor. The two guest bedrooms, slightly unkempt from the search, merited only a glance. She spent more time in Freddy’s room. It was a second master with an en suite bathroom and a large walk-in closet. He had two workspaces; one for his computer – now in the forensics lab – and another for a microscope, chemistry set, bug collecting kit and other paraphernalia of a budding young lab rat.

  There was a faint odor in the room that Lucinda could not place. At first, she thought it must be coming from the chemistry set but when she approached the desk, the smell grew fainter. Moving toward the boy’s bed, it intensified. It wasn’t the odd smell that wafts from a hamper full of an adolescent male’s dirty clothes – it was a familiar scent.

  When she pulled the bedspread back, the odor blossomed making it easier to identify – garlic. But why would his bed smell like garlic? She lifted the pillows and found the source – six cloves of garlic lay on the sheet next to a silver cross and a primitive voodoo doll bristling with pins. She stared at this hidden treasure in stunned silence trying to understand the why of it. Then she whipped out her cellphone and snapped a picture and slid all items inside an evidence bag.

  Lucinda had even more questions now but, so far, no answers.

  Twelve

  The last thing Freddy wanted to do was think but it seemed as if that was all he could do, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it. The only things that were any use in stopping the runaway train of his internal commentary were video games. He played until his thumbs felt tender and raw.

  That discomfort was bearable but the more his thumbs hurt, the worse his performance. The resulting frustration destroyed his ability to concentrate and, thus, block out unwanted thoughts.

  He tried to read but the words swam before his eyes and he couldn’t grasp their meaning or sequence. His brain teaser book eluded him, too. Numbers and patterns shifted before he could focus in on them and draw conclusions. Then, he remembered that his mom always said, “When something’s bothering you, Freddy, it helps to talk to somebody about it.”

  That memory nearly made him cry out in pain. Instead, he swallowed hard, took his mother’s advice and sought out his grandmother. She was all smiles and tried to make him laugh. When he pressed for serious conversation, she said, “Grief is a personal matter, Frederick. We do not inflict it upon others. It is not seemly. We grieve in private.”

  She inhaled sharply then got all jokey again, making Freddy feel as if she didn’t care that his mother was dead. He knew that wasn’t true, though. He’d heard the stifled sobs and sniffles coming from the other side of her closed bedroom door.

  He didn’t know how he could contain the pain of losing his mother. He wanted to run into the street and scream his anguish to the world – to beat on neighbors’ doors and drag them outside to weep and wail at his side. Instead he stuffed it down, causing his stomach to ache and making his chest tighten until he felt it would explode.

  Maybe if he was haunted by bereavement alone, it would be easier to bear but beneath his sorrow ran a riptide of fear. Back at his house, he wanted to tell the officers to get the talismans from under his pillow. He needed them for protection against his father and the evil forces at his beck and call. He’d been too ashamed of his fear to ask. He had nothing but his mind and his hands to stave off whatever darkness lumbered his way.

  At times of total clarity, his terror lifted and logic took charge. Skepticism rose to the surface bringing with it doubt of the protective powers of garlic, a silver cross and a voodoo doll. Still, he clung to them in the maelstrom of emotions that pulled him away and pushed him toward his father.

  What if my grandmother is wrong? he wondered. He’d seen Jason’s genealogy charts. He’d followed all of his research. He knew all the tales of death and disappearance stretching back hundreds of years. But what if it is all built on a faulty premise? What if that lieutenant is right? What if my dad is dead, too?

  He couldn’t accept it. It was just too much. He’d felt estranged from his father since Grandmother told him about his history but no matter how hard he shoved his father away, Dad kept trying to get close to him again. One evening, after he’d been particularly cold and distant to his father, he’d overheard his mother say, “Parker, just give it some time. Freddy’s going through a stage, that’s all.”

  Although Freddy tried to deny it, throughout this turmoil, he still loved his dad and it pained him not to collapse in the strength and warmth of his arms. His heart wanted to believe his father was a good man – he really wanted that to be true. But if he was, that meant his dad must be dead.

  Freddy believed he was failing the first real intellectual test of his life but was incapable of turning it around. His reason told him one thing, his grandmother another. He had to believe her. He had to believe his father was evil – that was all that kept his dad alive.

  Thirteen

  Lucinda was descending the stairs in the foyer when the doorbell rang. She hadn’t removed the crime scene tape when she arrived at the house – she just ducked under it. Now, someone else had done the same.

  She approached the entryway and looked out the small window in the door. A curly-headed blonde woman looking very much like Gloria from All in the Family stood outside, wringing her hands as her eyes darted in all directions.

  When Lucinda opened the door, the blonde turned her head to face her. Her jaw dropped, her lower lip quivered and she let loose an ear-piercing scream. She stuck her hands in her mouth, spun around and started to run, pulling the yellow tape loose from the column as she fled.

  Lucinda stepped out on to the porch. “Ma’am. Wait. Please, Ma’am. I’m a detective. I’d like to talk to you,” she shouted.

  The woman glanced back over one shoulder with widened eyes and ran even faster. Lucinda watched her cut through the neighbor’s lawn, racing to the next house. I’ve never had a child run from my face in fear, so why is this adult acting like such a ninny? Lucinda heard the loud slam from two houses away. She sighed, locked the front door, refastened the crime tape and walked up the street toward the foolish woman’s home.

  Lucinda rang the doorbell and waited. She heard no sounds from inside the house. She pressed the bell again, clearly hearing the two-note chime echo inside, but still no response. She formed a fist, pounded on the door and heard movement.

  Lucinda paused, listening, then blasted the door with three sharp raps.

  “Stop it!” the woman inside shrieked. “Stop it and go away. Go away or I’ll call the
police.”

  “I am the police,” Lucinda bellowed. “I am putting my badge and identification up to the window. Look at it and open this door.” Lucinda counted to thirty in her head. “Ma’am, did you see that?”

  For a moment, Lucinda heard nothing. Then the door creaked as it eased open a crack, privacy chain in place and a wild eye peering through the gap. “I saw it,” the woman said with a whimper.

  “Please open the door and talk to me,” Lucinda asked.

  “What do you want with me?” the woman whined.

  “I just want to talk to you. You can call the police station and verify that I am who I say I am, if you want. But I really need you to talk to me.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Lucinda sighed. “Ma’am, if you don’t, I’ll have to call for back-up. Then, if you won’t open the door for them, they’ll knock the door down. After that, you get to experience being handcuffed, shoved into the back of a patrol car and stuffed in a cell until I can get there and talk to you. Your choice, ma’am. I’d rather talk to you here, but either way works for me.”

  The door shut, the chain rattled and the door opened halfway, the opening blocked by the woman’s outstretched arm. “My choice? Humph. Like you’re leaving me with any choice at all. What do you want?”

  “How about you let me in?”

  The woman flung the door all the way open. “Please come in,” she said, acid etching each word.

  Lucinda stepped inside, noting that the layout of this home appeared identical to that of the Sterlings’ house but the decor was totally different. Everything here was ruffles and bows and lots of pink floral patterns. The living room and dining room definitely had that lived-in look: stacks of newspapers on tabletops, books folded open straining their spines, toys scattered on the floor and smiling kids’ faces in the photos on the mantelpiece. It was a bit chaotic, but Lucinda had to admit she felt a lot more comfortable in this living room than in the one down the street.

  The woman moved a child’s blue windbreaker, a T-shirt and a baseball glove from the worn, flowery sofa and invited her to have a seat. She herself sat in a chair caddy-corner from Lucinda. Her blonde curls looked relaxed but the rest of her was rigid – ramrod posture, arms in a tight fold and lips grimaced in distaste.

  Lucinda watched her in silence, waiting for the woman to speak first. Every time the woman tried to return Lucinda’s stare, her head jerked violently away as if a mad Pavlovian had administered an electric shock. Finally, she turned her head to face Lucinda without actually turning her eyes in her direction. “I thought the police department was trying to improve their image with the public.”

  “Could you tell me your name, please?” Lucinda asked.

  “I mean, really, if they are doing this big public relations effort to make cops our friends, then why do they send you out to scare people?”

  “Your name?”

  “Aren’t you going to answer me?” the woman said, her voice rising an octave and becoming shrill. “Aren’t you going to respond like a normal human being?”

  “Ma’am, as you’ve already pointed out, I am not a normal human being. And I am here to ask questions not answer them. First, what is your name?”

  The woman huffed then said, “Cynthia Littlejohn. Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Ms. Littlejohn, why would you need a lawyer? What have you done wrong – aside from violating a crime scene, which I am more than willing to overlook if you’d just answer my questions?”

  “Violated a crime scene?”

  “Yes, ma’am. When you ignored the tape blocking entrance to the Sterlings’ porch, you violated a crime scene.”

  “I was simply a concerned neighbor. I saw all of the ruckus over there and I wanted to check and make sure Jeanine was all right.”

  “You really thought that someone would be in the house with crime scene tape strung across the steps?”

  “Well, someone was. You were.”

  “But you didn’t expect someone would answer the door, did you?”

  “Well, I …”

  “You weren’t there out of neighborly concern, were you? You were there out of insatiable curiosity.” Lucinda paused in the realization that this was the wrong tactic with the woman. She changed her tone of voice and softened her expression. “If I hadn’t opened the door, I bet you would have gone round the house looking in windows, wouldn’tcha?” Lucinda grinned and, leaning forward, she whispered, “If it was my neighbor’s house, I would have.”

  The corners of Cynthia’s lips twitched. “It is my neighborhood. I do have a right to know what’s going on here.”

  “Of course you do,” Lucinda said, stringing her along. “Have you watched the news, read the paper?”

  “It was on TV and in the paper?”

  “Certainly was.”

  “Oh, my. Hank is out of town on business – I don’t pay attention to news unless he turns it on or tells me about a story in the paper. Boy, I missed out this time. Was my house on the news?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to watch much myself, but what did you think happened?”

  “Well, with all the corporate types getting in trouble these days, you can hardly blink an eyelash when a CEO’s house is searched by police, can you?”

  “You have children, Ms. Littlejohn?”

  “Yes, I do. A boy and two girls. They’re all away at camp this week. A pity. I know they’d love to meet a real detective,” she said and then looked at Lucinda’s face. “Oh, never mind. Maybe not you. You’d probably give them nightmares. No offense.”

  “Of course not,” Lucinda lied, stifling the urge to pistol whip the airhead. “Did any of your children play with Freddy Sterling?”

  “My boy did – well, he used to. That Freddy’s gotten to be just a little too much of a brainiac for normal kids to hang with. Erin – that’s my boy’s name – kept coming home from playing with Freddy and wanting help to look up words in the dictionary and asking all sorts of questions. I said to him, I said, “Erin, what are you doing with Freddy, playing or going to school?” He said, ‘Mom, it’s different with Freddy. He’s real smart. He doesn’t play like other kids.’ And I asked him, ‘Is that your idea of fun? Being outsmarted by a geek?’ He said he never looked at it that way before. He moped around the house for a couple of days and then took up with the regular friends he’d been ignoring while he spent time with Freddy – which suited me just fine.”

  Oh, I bet it did. “What did you know about the family?”

  “They seemed normal enough – a little smarter than most of us, I suppose, but they didn’t flaunt it. They acted like just folks whenever we had a block party or something like that. That little Freddy seemed like he had to prove he was smarter than everybody all the time. But that grandmother of his – now she’s a real nutcase.”

  “In what way, Ms. Littlejohn?”

  “Oh, you can call me Cynthia,” she said and waited for acknowledgement.

  “Yes, Cynthia, of course. Now, Freddy’s grandmother?”

  “Well, I heard she’s been married a dozen times. And now I hear she’s got this young boyfriend. And she’s always talking about crystals and how they can bring harmony and cure illness and all sorts of stuff. Now, if she just read palms or tea leaves or something, she’d be entertaining. But it’s like she’s on a mission with those stupid crystals.”

  Maybe this woman did have a little bit of sense, after all. “Cynthia, did you notice anything unusual yesterday morning?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything you heard or saw, or anyone that looked out of place?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Can’t say that I did.”

  “Tell me what you did see yesterday morning,” Lucinda urged.

  “Let’s see. I saw Freddy getting picked up in front of the house by this woman whose son goes to that summer class with Freddy …”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “No, but I recognize her car – it’s
a green Lexus, a fairly new one.”

  “Then what did you see, Cynthia?”

  “Nothing really. I didn’t see Parker leave. I didn’t see Jeanine leave. But I don’t always see that. So, what did they do? Skip town with a barrel full of someone else’s money?”

  “No, Cynthia. I don’t think either of them went anywhere.”

  “What do you mean? They’re still in there? Are you holding them under house arrest?”

  “No. They are not still there. Two bodies were removed from the home and taken to the morgue.”

  “The morgue? Two bodies? Which two? Not Freddy, oh please, not Freddy. He is a bit obnoxious. But he’s just a boy. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean …” Tears welled up in Cynthia’s eyes.

  “Freddy’s fine. He’s with his grandmother. Did you see anyone approach their home yesterday morning or the night before? Did you notice anyone? Or any vehicle at the house?”

  “No. No. Can’t say that I did,” Cynthia said, furrowing her brow. “But I did hear something.”

  “What was that? When was that?”

  “I don’t know what time it was exactly. Mid morning sometime. I stepped out into the backyard and thought I heard a chainsaw. I’m pretty sure it was a chainsaw. We hear them a lot around here after bad storms – cleaning up branches and stuff. But this time, it sounded like it was coming from inside of a house. But why would that be? And I listened for a while but it stopped before I could figure out where it came from.”

  “Please, think, Cynthia. When did you hear that? What were you doing before you came outside?”

  “Oh, my, so this might be important. Why would this be important? Oh, my, don’t tell me they were killed with a chainsaw?”

  “Cynthia, please. Concentrate. What time?”

  “Oh dear,” she said biting her lower lip. “Oh, I know. I just finished watching that show. It must’ve been just after ten in the morning.”