Kill You Last (9 page)

I WENT TO bed that night feeling better. No matter what people said about the validity of lie-detector tests, Dad had still passed. That had to count for something. And I’d learned more about Gabriel, too. He might have been beautiful to look at, but Roman was right—deep down, it appeared that he was pretty shallow. And finally, I felt better thanks to Whit, who was reassuring in his own way, reminding me that there were still people in the world who weren’t just out to further their own career regardless of who they hurt.

I slept well and woke in the morning wondering if I should follow Whit’s advice and spend the day trying to help my family. Maybe some good could still come out of all of this. Surely, Dad had learned a lesson. If I could get him to tell Mom that he was truly sorry for what he’d done and was ready to change his ways, perhaps I could persuade them to at least attempt to patch up their marriage.

And it was Sunday, the perfect day to do it. I stretched and reached over to my night table to check my BlackBerry.

And instantly wished I hadn’t.

There was an e-mail … from [email protected]:
Have fun last nite? What a hunk. But w8 till U C the news this morning. Have a gr8 day!

Shivers burrowed through me. First: whoever was sending me these e-mails had been at the party last night. Second: it may have been Sunday, but there would be no rest from bad news.

Still in my pajamas, I hurried downstairs and turned on the TV. Neither Mom nor Dad was in the kitchen. The channels were all doing the weather or commercials, so I made coffee and waited. Finally, one of the channels went to a reporter wearing a yellow rain slicker and standing in a wooded area blocked by police cars and crime scene tape: “Police here in Scranton, Pennsylvania, are reporting this morning the discovery of a badly decomposed body in a riverbank cave just outside the boundaries of a state park. Scranton chief of police Edward Naughton cautioned that it may take some time to get a positive ID, but he did acknowledge that the body appears to fit the description of Rebecca Parlin, an aspiring young model who disappeared from the area about a month ago.”

I slumped into a chair as the last glimmer of hope that the missing girls were still alive dissolved into the kitchen air. Maybe it had been a foolish hope to begin with, but until now it had felt like a possibility, no matter how slight. And that made it feel silly to cling to the other improbables—that maybe the other two girls were still alive, that maybe the disappearances had nothing to do with Dad or the people at his studio anyway.

Mom came into the kitchen in her robe, glanced at the TV as if she already knew what was on it, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“He left early.”

“Why?”

“Because of all those people outside.”

Oh, right, of course.
Now that an actual body had been found, there was probably more media than ever. Having gone straight to the kitchen, I hadn’t yet looked out front that morning.

“Can’t we do something?” I asked. “What if we hire a private detective to help prove Dad is innocent?”

Mom gazed at me with sad eyes. “Why do you think a private detective could find something that all these other detectives can’t find?”

“Because they’re all too focused on Dad,” I said. “A private detective could take a different approach. Like focus on something or someone else.”

“Oh, darling, I’m sure they’re already doing that,” Mom said, then paused and studied me as if she’d just thought of something. “It’s best if we stay out of it. If your father is innocent, I’m sure they’ll—”

“
If
he’s innocent?” I repeated, cutting her short. “Mom, how can you say that?
Of course
he’s innocent.”

Mom’s eyes widened as if she were as surprised by what she’d said as I was. “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling, that’s not what I meant.”

“You sure?” I asked.

She smiled reassuringly. “Yes.”

A little later, back upstairs, I talked to Roman about the dead girl in Scranton. “This is going to turn the heat way up on my dad.”

“Not necessarily,” she said.

“How can you say that? He’s the prime suspect. As far as I can tell, he’s the
only
suspect. And like you said, lie-detector tests don’t really count. The only way anyone’s going to believe he’s innocent is if I prove he is.”

“If
you
prove it?” Roman replied, alarmed. “Wait a minute, Shels, they’ve found a body with her hands and feet tied up. There’s a real murderer out there somewhere. This isn’t Nancy Drew anymore. You
have
to stay out of this.”

“But there’s definitely something strange about Gabriel,” I argued. “I mean, when it comes to those missing girls, he’s got zero empathy. All this means to him is that he’s not making any money. It’s almost like he’s a sociopath.”

“Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Sloan,” Roman said, making no effort to hide the sarcasm. “But if Gabriel’s involved in this, I don’t have to tell you why going anywhere near him is the totally worst idea ever. You tried it once; it didn’t work. That’s got to be the end of it.”

She was right, but she was also wrong.

And then I had an idea and realized I had to end the conversation. I let out a big sigh and said, “I guess you’re right.”

“I am?” Roman sounded surprised.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not just saying that to blow me off?” she asked suspiciously.

“No, it’s just so frustrating,” I said, pretending I wasn’t completely eager to get off the phone. “You know how it feels when you want to do something and there’s nothing you can do.”

Roman assured me that things would work out sooner or later, then asked what my plans were for the rest of the day.

“Catch up on schoolwork,” I lied. “It’s really been hard to focus, and I’m way behind.”

As soon as I got off with Roman, I called Whit.

“Hey.” He sounded surprised to hear from me.

“I have an idea,” I said. “An angle we should pursue.”

“We?”

“Look, if you really want to get to the truth, you’re going to need me. I know these people. I—”

“Stop,” he said. “Not on the phone. I’m not saying it’s tapped or anything. I just don’t like taking chances.”

“But we’re not talking about anything people don’t already know about.”

There was a pause, then Whit said, “Maybe
you’re
not.”

Was I imagining it, or was there something about the way he said that that meant he did know something he didn’t want anyone else to know about?

“When can you meet?” I asked.

“It’ll have to be soon. I have to get together with a friend later.”

We agreed to meet at a McDonald’s halfway between Sarah Lawrence and Soundview. As I threw on some clothes, I found myself wondering who Whit’s friend was. Not that I really cared. It was just curiosity. Like, what kind of friends did he have?

Downstairs, Mom was still in the kitchen, having coffee.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Starbucks with Roman,” I said without stopping.

At McDonald’s I told Whit about Gabriel and his strange attitude toward the missing girls. Whit listened quietly, but I sensed he had something else on his mind.

“That’s interesting,” he said when I’d finished.

“You only half listened,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows, as if surprised that I’d noticed, then leaned forward and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “Can you swear to keep a secret?”

“Absolutely.”

He spoke barely above a whisper. “The woman who works for your father and calls herself Janet Fontana is not Janet Fontana.”

I stared at him, not sure I understood.

“Janet Fontana was a bookkeeper for a plumbing supply company in Salem, Oregon. She died in a car accident about two years ago, just a month or two after her twin sister, Jane, was released from a California prison where she’d served eighteen months for an Internet scam involving credit card fraud. It appears that when Janet’s death certificate was issued, Jane doctored it to remove the t so it looked like Jane, not Janet, died.”

“You’re saying that Jane took over her sister Janet’s identity?” I guessed.

“Exactly. The two sisters looked similar enough, and Jane could easily use Janet’s driver’s license. She moved across the country to Soundview and used her sister’s IDs and the money in her Salem bank account to open a new account here, get credit cards, rent an apartment, the whole works.”

It took a moment to absorb the news. Then I said, “What about the police?”

“Unlike her sister, Janet Fontana was a law-abiding citizen. I assume the police here asked the police in Salem to run a records check and it came up clean. No criminal record. Nothing that would cause the police to want to investigate any further.”

“So when Jane applied for the job as Dad’s office manager, she used her sister Janet’s résumé,” I concluded.

“Uh-huh.” Whit nodded.

That explained how someone so disorganized could be hired to be an office manager.

“How … did you find this out?” I asked.

“The Internet,” Whit said. “I was digging around and came up with an obit from the Salem
Statesman Journal
for Janet Fontana. I made a few phone calls, and when someone told me that Janet had a twin sister named Jane, who’d come to town for a few days after Janet died, I began to put the story together. Pretty simple, actually. It just took a lot of time and searching.”

He paused and waited for me to digest the news. Then he said, “By the way, you might be interested to know that Mr. Kissy Face was once arrested for shooting a BB gun at a neighbor’s window.”

“You also found that on the Internet?” I guessed.

Whit nodded.

“So what else do you know about Janet? I mean, Jane?”

“She has a pretty long California police record. It started with small-time stuff like shoplifting and petty theft, but then she graduated to more serious crimes.… Internet scams. Felonies. That’s why she did jail time.”

In my mind I pictured Janet/Jane, and how scattered and moody and temperamental she could sometimes be.

“Did your dad ever say anything?” Whit asked.

“Never. Why would he hire someone like that if he knew?”

Whit tapped a finger against his head as if to say, “Think about it.”

To help him with the modeling scam
…

“Oh God,” I moaned miserably.

“But that’s
only
if he
knew
who she really was,” Whit stressed. “Any idea how long she’s been working for him?”

“A couple of years at least.”

Whit unfolded a piece of paper with a column of print on it. I watched his eyes scan down, then stop. His forehead furrowed. “Could you be a little more precise?”

Strangely, I could. “Two years … three months … four days.”

Whit cocked his head curiously.

“It was the week I turned sixteen. I wanted him to take me to get my driver’s permit, but he couldn’t leave the studio early because he had to break in the new office manager. I wanted to kill her.… I mean, in a manner of speaking.”

“Why couldn’t your mom take you?”

“She was helping him at the studio. He’d just moved it from the city. There was tons to do.”

“Just curious, why’d your dad decide to move his studio up here from New York?” Whit asked.

That was a good question, and I wasn’t sure I knew the answer. It had happened very quickly, and I’d always assumed that he felt he could do just as well in Soundview, but without the commute. But when he’d been in the city, there’d been lots of work and he’d never had to resort to shooting menus.

“I don’t really know,” I said.

Whit scowled and looked at the paper. The lines in his forehead deepened. “You sure about that date?”

“Totally. I was so PO’d about not being able to get my learner’s permit until the weekend.”

“So Janet had only been living here in Soundview a few weeks when she got hired,” Whit said.

“I’m sure Dad didn’t know who she really was,” I said. The alternative was far too upsetting to consider. If Dad knew who she really was, then once again he’d lied to me. He’d said he’d fallen into the scam gradually and by accident. But if he’d
knowingly
hired Janet, that implied he’d known exactly what he was doing from the start.

Then I thought of something else. “But why would that make Janet a suspect? Isn’t it a stretch to go from Internet scams to murder? And what would her motive be for killing the girls?”

“Think about it. She was living here under a false identity. She knew that if the girls complained to the police about the scam, she might get caught. And with her record, if she got caught for identity theft, she’d be going straight back to prison.”

I thought back to the day the police first came to Dad’s studio and how agitated Jane/Janet had been.

“But there were so many girls who fell for the scam,” I said. “How does killing just three keep her out of prison?”

“Maybe they were the only ones who threatened to go to the police after they realized they’d been scammed. I mean, you’ve probably got some girls who didn’t even realize it was a scam, and some girls who figured it out and just shrugged their shoulders and moved on. But there had to be a few who got mad and demanded their money back, or threatened to turn your dad in.”