Drown Her Sorrows (Bree Taggert) Page 20

  “I don’t remember exactly.” Noah’s jiggly leg was bouncing like crazy, and the sweat stains under his arms grew larger.

  “OK,” Bree said. “How about approximately?”

  “I don’t remember.” Panic clouded Noah’s eyes.

  “What about Holly Thorpe’s death?” Bree asked.

  Noah’s eyes went as wide as hubcaps. His mouth dropped open.

  “You know who she was, right?” Bree asked.

  “Of course I know,” Noah snapped. “She worked for my dad.”

  “How did you kill her?” Bree held her pen over her notepad, as if patiently waiting.

  Noah’s mouth slammed shut. Matt could see his brain working. The kid clearly hadn’t thought through his confession.

  Matt leaned in. “Did you stalk Holly before you killed her?”

  Another flash of fear lit Noah’s eyes, then he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer.”

  Now the kid gets a clue? Matt sighed.

  “Do you want to recant your confession?” Bree asked.

  Noah stared straight ahead, his posture rigid, his jaw locked.

  Bree finished writing a few notes, then picked up her notepad and pen and stood. “I’ll have a deputy book you, and then you can make your call.”

  The blood drained from Noah’s face.

  Bree took her handcuffs off her duty belt. “Mr. Flynn, would you cuff him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Matt took the cuffs. “Stand up. Turn around and extend your arms out at your sides.”

  Noah’s body shook as he complied. Matt snapped the cuffs on one wrist, then the other. “Let’s go.”

  Matt marched him out into the squad room and handed him off to a deputy. “Book Noah Beckett on the first-degree murder of his father, Paul Beckett.” He gave the kid a hard look.

  Noah moved like he was in a daze.

  Todd walked in from the back hallway and stopped short. His brows rose.

  Bree waved Todd and Matt into her office.

  “Close the door,” she said, sitting behind the desk.

  “What happened?” Todd turned both palms toward the ceiling.

  “He confessed.” Bree set her notepad in front of her.

  “To killing his own father?” Todd’s eyes widened.

  “Yep. People kill their loved ones all the time.” Bree knew better than anyone that blood was not thicker. You couldn’t count on someone just because you shared DNA.

  “Yeah, I guess they do.” Todd winced and examined his ugly black shoes as if he felt bad for forgetting about Bree’s parents’ deaths.

  Matt paced, irritation rushing through him. “The kid is lying his ass off.”

  “Yep.” Bree tugged on her sling. Small pain lines formed around her eyes.

  Todd eased into a guest chair. “How do you know?”

  “He barely knew the basics of Paul’s death, and he didn’t know shit about Holly. Whoever killed her did their homework to attempt to make her death look like a suicide.” Though it was a poor attempt, in Matt’s opinion. “Holly’s killer knew where her father had died.”

  Bree nodded. “That’s public information, but he or she had to go looking for it.”

  “Why would Noah confess if he didn’t do it?” Todd asked.

  Matt stopped behind the empty guest chair and leaned on it with both hands. “To protect his mother.”

  The corners of Bree’s mouth turned up just a hair, like a cat with a chipmunk in its sights. “It was a drastic—even desperate—move.”

  Matt met her eyes.

  The predatory gleam no longer reminded him of a house cat, but a mountain lion. “There’s only one reason Noah would be willing to take such an extreme step.”

  “Why is that?” Todd sounded exasperated.

  Matt broke away from Bree’s gaze to face Todd. “Because he’s certain his mother is guilty.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bree rolled her head on her neck. Pain radiated like heat from her wound. She reached into her desk for a bottle of ibuprofen. She swallowed two with some water from a bottle, though it felt like using a flyswatter on a bear. She’d save the stronger meds for overnight.

  “Can we hold him if we know he’s innocent?” Todd asked.

  “Yes. For a while, anyway.” She fished a package of half-crumbled crackers from her desk drawer. “There’s evidence that could support his guilt. Noah didn’t give us an alibi for his father’s death or Holly’s, and he does play tennis.” She opened the crackers and ate one. “Also, he has an estranged relationship with his father. Plus, Noah doesn’t want to recant his confession. Why lawyer up after he already confessed unless he didn’t want us to know his confession was bullshit? He wants us to think he did it. But we need to verify our theory.” Bree inclined her head at Todd. “Noah lives with his girlfriend. Go talk to her. See if she knows where Noah was when Holly and Paul were killed.”

  “Now?” Todd asked.

  “As soon as we’re done in here, yes. We need to get to her before word of his arrest gets out. Just tell her Noah is a suspect in his father’s murder. See if she voluntarily provides him with an alibi.”

  “Before he tells her not to,” Matt added.

  Bree nodded. “Exactly.” She dumped cracker crumbs into her palm.

  “Angela is still our number one suspect,” Matt said.

  Bree nodded. “She doesn’t have an alibi for either murder, and she was angry at Paul. Green clay was found in Holly’s trunk and in Paul’s garage. Angela plays tennis. We definitely need to question her again. Now that we’ve arrested her son, I’m hoping we’ll get a stronger response from her.” Bree chewed another cracker and set the package aside. She was not hungry. She’d only eaten to keep the ibuprofen from making her nauseated. Her arm wound felt dry and hot. “Have a deputy verify a midnight phone call between Holly and Paul that Angela claimed to have overheard a couple of months ago. I doubt she’d lie about something so easy to confirm, but you never know.”

  “What about Owen Thorpe?” Todd asked. “He had equal motive to kill Holly and Paul.”

  “He has an alibi for Holly’s death. We haven’t questioned him about Paul’s murder yet. We’ll do that today.” Bree frowned at Todd. “I didn’t have a chance to ask you earlier. How did it go at the Grey Fox last night?”

  Todd shrugged. “Deputy Collins and I spent two hours there. We found several people who remember Owen from Friday night. None of them saw him leave. All said he was very intoxicated and not fully functional. I wrote up a report and filed it in the case book.”

  “So, we have not been able to crack Owen’s alibi for Holly’s murder.” Bree ate the cracker crumbs and washed them down with water. “Todd, go see Chloe Miller. I’m going to call in Owen Thorpe and Shannon Phelps for follow-up interviews. Owen owes us a signed statement, and we can ask him about Paul’s murder while he’s here. I also want to know what Shannon thinks about a possible affair between Holly and Paul.”

  “Whoever killed Paul used the same method to break into Shannon’s house. But why did Holly’s killer leave that doll floating in the sink? Why frighten Shannon?”

  Bree readjusted her sling. The pain in her arm was giving her an ache in the base of her skull. Her brain felt just as dull. “Is it possible that Shannon knows something? Even if she doesn’t realize it?”

  “Like something that might help us identify the killer?” Todd asked on his way to the door.

  “Maybe.” Bree honestly didn’t know. That was the piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit.

  Todd reached for the doorknob. “What do you want me to do with the kid after he’s booked?”

  “For now, just have him put in the holding cell here. I want him handy for questioning.” Bree also didn’t like the idea of an innocent nineteen-year-old in the county jail with real criminals. Noah was being stupid, but she understood his motive. He thought he was protecting his mom.

  After Todd left, Matt asked, “What do
you want me to do?”

  “Go talk to your friends at Sharp Investigations. I’d come, but I promised Kayla I’d stay in the office today.” Bree wouldn’t break that promise, but she was regretting making it. “I need to write another press release. I don’t want to issue a statement to the media until you have that information from the PI. When Angela finds out we’ve arrested Noah, she’s going to stop cooperating. She could change her mind about sharing the PI’s reports with us.”

  Bree fully expected Angela to go into a full panic at the thought of her son in prison. But would it be enough for her to confess?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Matt drove to Scarlet Falls and parked in front of Sharp Investigations, a converted house a few blocks off the main street. Two plaques outside the front door read SHARP INVESTIGATIONS and MORGAN DANE, ATTORNEY. The front door was unlocked. Matt went into the foyer and called out, “Hello?”

  Lance Kruger appeared in a doorway holding a little girl upside down in his arms. Lance was a big guy with short blond hair. He shifted the child to his left arm and held out a hand toward Matt. “Good to see you, Matt.” He turned the child to face Matt. “This is my daughter, Sophie.”

  Matt shook his hand and grinned down at the little girl. “It’s nice to meet you, Sophie.”

  The child was giggling too hard to answer.

  “Let me pass this little monster off to Morgan.” Lance headed down the hall. He ducked into another room and returned in a minute without the child. “Come into my office.”

  In the corner of Lance’s office, a chair was covered in picture books. Lance closed the door and took his seat behind his desk.

  Matt sat in a plastic chair facing him. “How is life with a family?”

  A former officer with the Scarlet Falls PD, Lance had recently married defense attorney Morgan Dane. Randolph County law enforcement agencies often cooperated. When Matt had been a sheriff’s deputy, he’d worked with Lance occasionally.

  “Things couldn’t be better.” Lance settled back into his chair. “If you had told me two years ago that I was going to marry a woman with three kids and turn into a happy husband and father, I’d have said you were nuts.” He spread his arms out. “But here I am.”

  “I’m glad to hear things are good with you,” Matt said. “Did Angela Beckett contact you?”

  “Her lawyer did.” Lance turned to his computer. “He asked me to give you the report on her husband’s infidelities.” A printer hummed on a credenza. Lance turned and snagged a few pages. He handed the report across the desk.

  Matt leaned back and skimmed the pages. “Busy man.”

  Lance sighed. “We followed him for three weeks. In that time period, he had encounters with seven women. Six of those, he picked up at bars.”

  Matt lowered the page and pointed toward a paragraph. “Number seven was Holly Thorpe. We heard from another employee that Paul was having an affair with her.”

  Lance frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think he was having sex with Holly.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Lance’s chair squeaked as he shifted forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “Six times, Paul went to a local bar, picked up a woman, and took her to a motel. They stayed inside the room for about two hours. Then they both left. He did not see any of those women again during that time period.”

  “One-night stands.”

  “Yes.” Lance nodded. “When Paul met with Holly, the situation was different. One, she drove to his house, not a hotel. Two, she only stayed about fifteen minutes. Three, this happened twice.”

  “If Paul wasn’t having sex with Holly, why was she at his house?”

  Lance lifted a shoulder. “We don’t know. That wasn’t part of the scope of our investigation. The six other women gave Mrs. Beckett’s attorney more than enough proof of infidelity.”

  “Does Mrs. Beckett know the details about Holly’s meetings with Paul?”

  “I don’t know. We sent our report directly to the attorney. We’ve never met with Mrs. Beckett.”

  Matt stared at the report again. “Do you have pictures of these women?”

  “Yes.” Lance tapped his keyboard. The printer whirred again. “The pictures are labeled with names and dates.” Lance took a manila file from a drawer and slid the pictures into it. He handed it to Matt, who stuffed the original reports inside.

  “Thanks, Lance,” Matt said. “Good to see you.”

  “Same.” Lance followed him out of the room.

  In the foyer, a tall, dark-haired woman in a navy-blue skirt and white blouse juggled a briefcase, a suit jacket, and her child. The little girl had both arms wrapped around her mother’s waist.

  Lance introduced Matt to his wife, Morgan.

  “I’m done for the day,” Lance said. “Hey, Sophie, get your stuff. We’ll go home and ride bikes.”

  The child abandoned her mother without a backward glance. “Yay!”

  “Thank you. I have a meeting at the courthouse in an hour.” Morgan tossed her jacket over one arm. “It was nice to meet you, Matt.”

  Matt left them gathering the child’s toys. For the first time in his life, he wondered what it would be like to have his own family. Where had that come from? He’d always assumed he would have a wife and kids someday—in the unspecific, distant future—but those assumptions had never been concrete.

  But then again, why was he surprised? He came from a close, stable family. He liked kids. He’d always preferred relationships to dating. He was a one-woman kind of man. But for the past few years, he’d been too preoccupied with his career, his injury, and the upheaval after his shooting to think about the future.

  Until now.

  Putting deep thoughts about his future aside, he stopped at a deli on his way back to the station. Bree and Todd were in the conference room. Matt brought in the deli bag. “Turkey subs.”

  “Thank you.” Bree reached for a paper-wrapped sandwich. “A deputy verified that Paul called Holly around midnight in the first week of March. I called Deb Munchin. She says she was working at the diner Wednesday through the dinner shift. I spoke with her manager, and he confirmed it. So, she has an alibi for Paul’s murder but not Holly’s.”

  Matt summed up his discussion with the PI. “Lance doesn’t think Paul and Holly’s relationship was sexual.”

  “Does he know why she went to his house?” Bree asked.

  “No.” Matt handed Bree the file and explained Lance’s theory.

  She opened it and skimmed the written sections. “This is interesting. Deb saw Holly at Paul’s house last week, on Tuesday.” Bree flipped through the murder book for the notes on their interview with Owen. “That’s the same night Owen said Holly was going to meet with Deb.”

  “Is it?” Matt hadn’t made the connection. “Holly didn’t want Owen to know she went to Paul’s place.”

  Bree tapped on the report. “Clearly, but why? Sharp Investigations’ report says she was only inside the house for fifteen minutes. If the PI doesn’t think Holly and Paul were having sex, why would she need to lie to her husband?” She flipped through the photos. “All of these women are young with long dark hair.” She frowned. “Wasn’t the hair you found in Paul Beckett’s bed long and dark?”

  Matt nodded. “Seems he has a type.”

  “Holly was blonde.” Bree unwrapped her sub. “So is Angela Beckett.”

  “Paul was married to Angela for more than two decades,” Matt said. “Maybe he wanted something different.”

  “Tired of one flavor, looking for another?” Bree wiped her fingers on a napkin.

  Matt lifted a shoulder.

  “Todd, fill Matt in on your interview with Chloe Miller.” Bree took a bite of her sandwich.

  Todd grabbed a sub. “Chloe was very upset to learn Noah was a suspect. She was desperate to prove he couldn’t have done it. She says they were together all week.”

  “All week?” Matt picked up half his sub.

  “What were they doing for a
whole week?” Bree swallowed and reached for her water bottle.

  “Um. She said they’d been apart for months, so they had some catching up to do.” Todd blushed.

  “Oh.” Matt grinned.

  Todd cleared his throat. “Anyway, she swears she was with him 24/7, and they left her apartment only once. She had a bunch of food delivery receipts. I checked with the manager of her apartment complex. They have surveillance cameras in the parking lot. He gave me a copy of the videos for the past week. Noah’s car arrives last Thursday. The only time the vehicle moves is on Sunday for about two hours. Chloe said they went for coffee and stopped at the grocery store. She didn’t have receipts, but she showed me the payments on her credit card app. The surveillance video confirms what time they left and came back, and their cars stay put until today.”

  Bree set down her water bottle. “So, Noah didn’t do it. His girlfriend’s statement and the videos give him alibis for both murders.”

  “Do we release him?” Todd asked.

  “Not yet.” Bree took another bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. After she swallowed, she said, “I know the coincidence would be huge, but is there any possibility that Holly and Paul were killed by two different people? Holly was choked, and Paul was shot.”

  “A very slim one.” Matt’s instincts told him the crimes were related. “The victims knew each other. They were engaged in something that required a late-night phone call a couple of months ago and a more recent visit from Holly to Paul’s house. And there’s the green clay found in Paul’s garage and Holly’s trunk. So, we have a link between the crime scenes as well.”

  Bree’s lips flattened as she considered his points. “Can those correlations be explained in another way? Is it possible that Paul killed Holly, then Angela or someone else killed Paul?”

  “Angela says he didn’t play tennis,” Todd said. “Noah confirmed it.”

  “He has a court on his property. Paul could have picked up traces of clay without playing the game,” Bree argued. “Maybe something blew onto the court and he went to retrieve it. Or one of the landscapers could have walked on the court and tracked clay to another place, where Paul picked it up on his shoes.”