Be Afraid Page 17

  Jenna answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “This is Rick Morgan. I’m here at the news station.” He tightened his jaw, released it. “The reporter I mentioned does want to interview you.”

  A beat of silence and in the background he heard the whisper of wind. She was no doubt sitting on the back deck. Open spaces. “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Where?” He imagined an easel positioned in front of her. Was she working on that bride picture?

  “Let me ask?” He cradled the phone against his chest. “Where do you want to meet?”

  Susan’s eyes sparkled with victory. “How about her studio? Far more interesting than here or the police station.”

  Nodding, Rick raised the phone to his ear. “Your place.”

  More silence, as if she weighed and measured more pros and cons. She had chosen a cabin in the woods that had been the scene of a murder. These were the choices of someone who didn’t want to be noticed or visited. More whys swirled around Jenna.

  “Fine,” Jenna said. “Nine o’clock?”

  “I’m sure she’ll make that work.”

  “No exterior shots of my house. Just the studio.”

  Still thinking like a cop. “Understood. Her name is Susan Martinez.”

  “Right.” She hung up without a good-bye.

  Martinez’s shining eyes had the look of a woman who liked to win. “So we’re set?”

  He relayed Jenna’s request, her address, and the time. “I want to be there. This is a Nashville homicide case.”

  “Sure. We might even be able to use you in the story.” She sat back. “You said her name is?”

  “Jenna Thompson”

  She hesitated. “She’s from . . . ?”

  “Baltimore.”

  “Why’d she leave Baltimore?”

  “She didn’t. She’s on sabbatical.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Anything else you can tell me about her?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “Nothing.”

  “Okay.” Nodding, she rubbed her hands together. “Looks like I have some homework to do tonight.”

  As the wind blew in through her open car window, Jenna ended the call with Rick and stared out at the small, worn house in East Nashville. The yard had turned to dust and the house’s siding, once white, had muddied to a dirty gray. Two old tires lay under a half-dead tree with browning foliage that offered little shade. A broken bicycle leaned against the house.

  Jenna got out of her car and moved with purpose toward the front door. Inside, she heard the blare of a television. She rang the bell but it didn’t work. She banged on the door once and, when she heard no sound, banged again. Finally, the faint sound of shuffling footsteps drifted out from under the front door. After several chains scraped free of locks, the door opened a crack. An older woman stared up at her, hair graying but eyes sharp as if she were always on the lookout for trouble.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Dupree?”

  The dark eyes thinned to near slits. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Jenna Thompson.”

  “I don’t know you. What’re you selling?”

  Jenna tightened her hold on her purse strap. “My parents called me Jennifer. My older sister was Sara.”

  Mrs. Dupree shook her head. “This some kind of joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.”

  “You remember me?”

  She clutched the fabric at the base of her throat as if she suddenly felt a flush of heat. “I remember all the trouble that my boy caused that family. And all the trouble the cops and reporters caused me.”

  Trouble. Okay, if that’s what she wanted to call it. “I was hoping I could talk to you about your son.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to understand.”

  “I’m not talking.” She moved to close the door.

  Jenna blocked it. “Ma’am, I don’t want to cause you trouble. But I’ve come a long way. I’d like to understand Ronnie better.”

  “Why?”

  For several beats her thoughts slowed and she heard only the birds chirping and the wind rustling. “I don’t know.”

  A sigh shuddered through the old woman. “You have any idea what a nightmare my life was after all that?”

  Old bitterness melted away her good intentions. “Have any idea what my life was like?”

  Mrs. Dupree raised a defiant chin. “I didn’t know what he was planning to do. He never told me.”

  “He gave you no hint of his plans for my family?”

  “No. I told that to the cops over and over. I didn’t know.”

  Didn’t know or didn’t want to know. She knew from her research that he’d lived in this house. Surely a house so small couldn’t hide secrets well. “Did he ever mention my sister, Sara?”

  The dark eyes sharpened. “I ain’t giving my information for free.”

  “You want money?”

  She folded thin, withered arms over her chest. “I ain’t got much.”

  Jenna dug in her pocket and pulled out five rumpled twenties. “One hundred bucks. That’s all I have.”

  The woman took the money, counted it, and stuck it in the pocket of a housecoat. “He talked about your sister a lot. He said he loved her. Said they were going to get married.” She smoothed a well-lined hand over gray hair. “You look a lot like her.”

  “I’ve heard that.” She glanced past the woman to the den styled with a recliner, a box television, and a coffee table piled high with magazines and papers. “How did Ronnie meet my sister?”

  “You mean how did white trash end up at such a nice high school?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It is. But I ain’t going to deny who I am or what my boy was. Ronnie could play football. Wasn’t so smart but he could tackle better than anyone. He played on that fancy football team in exchange for the education. Then, he got his leg broke and couldn’t play anymore. The school gave him a janitor’s job, which he took ’cause that’s all there was to get. He’d been working at the school a few years when your sister came along.”

  Sara had been a cheerleader, Ronnie a maintenance man, and they’d have crossed paths. Memories of her sister and father fighting reached out from the shadows. I’ll date him if I want to! Doors slamming. Her mother crying. Was it Ronnie who Sara had been fighting to date?

  “Did they ever date?”

  “He said they did. Ronnie stole one of my rings and sold it so he could pay for the tux and the rental car so he could take her to prom. He came home that night and was angry. Said Sara had ditched him for another boy.”

  That would have been in the spring. By late August her family was dead. “Do you know where he got the gun?”

  “No. We never had guns in this house.”

  “Did he have friends who might have given it to him?”

  “Ronnie didn’t have any friends. Billy was his best and only friend.”

  She reached for a pad of paper and pencil in her purse. “Billy got a last name?”

  “I never knew it.” A loud cheer of applause rose up from the television and Mrs. Dupree turned. “I’m missing my show.”

  “I just have a few more questions.”

  “Well, I ain’t got no more answers. I told you what I know. That’s all I’m saying.” She stepped back and closed the front door hard. Chains scraped back in place over the door.

  Threading her fingers through her hair Jenna turned and walked back to her car. From her passenger seat she picked up her sketchpad.

  The eyes glowed from the shadows of her memory and she began to draw again. She drew quickly, without thinking and this time, when she finished, she had eyes, a long, angled face, and thin, unsmiling lips on the page.

  “Who are you?”

  She’d done a search of Ronnie Dupree. Ronald James Dupree. As his mother had said he’d played ball. She’d found his photo in an ol
d newspaper article on microfilm. Big, beefy, and smiling, he’d not fit the profile of an organized killer.

  Had Sara broken off their relationship? Had her father been behind the breakup? That’s what the cops had theorized. That Ronnie had killed the parents and Sara in revenge. Taking her had been the piece of the puzzle no one had understood.

  Her aunt had changed her name from Jennifer to Jenna on the drive from Nashville to Baltimore. Jenna had a bright future, she’d said. What she hadn’t said was that Jennifer Thompson, taken by Ronnie, stripped of her family and life, and locked in a closet for nine days, had been broken. And so her aunt had created a new persona out of the pieces.

  She looked back at the Duprees’ old house. The curtains in a downstairs window fluttered.

  “It didn’t happen to Jenna. It happened to Jennifer.”

  The Thompson family murder had been extensively covered in the news and her abduction had overtaken all news for more than two weeks. Out of the shadows vague memories of reporters emerged. Her aunt had been pushing her wheelchair to their car. Camera lights had flashed and popped. She’d ducked her head, not into the pink blanket, but into a new, pristine white one a nurse at the hospital had given her.

  Jenna studied the incomplete face on her pad. She raised her pencil to finish it but no images came to mind. She fell back to the techniques she utilized with victims. Don’t worry about what he looked like. What did you smell? How warm was the room? Was there music playing?

  She allowed her mind to drift and suddenly the subtle scent of aftershave or perfume filled her senses. The scent grew stronger and stronger and in a blink the image of a pacing figure appeared. She’d been looking through the cracks of the closet door. The scent had been strong. And there had been the click, click of heels on a wooden floor. Ronnie hadn’t worn aftershave. Of that she was certain. But the other figure, Shadow Eyes, had worn a heavy dose of it.

  Jenna opened her eyes and erased the outline of the face. She redrew it only this time it was shorter, wider. This person had a wide forehead and a sharp-angled chin.

  Her heart raced as her mind reached into the shadows to pull out another memory.

  A car roared past her and she jumped, nearly dropping her sketchpad. Panicked, she glanced at the clock and realized it was late. Her bride would be at the house tomorrow to pick up her portrait. She had work to do.

  Running her hands through her hair she practiced a bright smile. Brides didn’t want a sour artist. Brides wanted happy. And Jenna needed the work. Rent would be due on the Baltimore apartment in a couple of days and it would be nice not to dip into her meager savings to pay for it. Unpaid leave might have given her time, but it dug into her finances.

  Like it or not, she was staying in Nashville for a few more weeks.

  The wineglass dangled from Susan Martinez’s manicured fingertips as she stared at the messages on her phone. She scrolled through the list, frowning when she didn’t see the name she’d been searching.

  She took a deep, healthy sip that fell just short of a gulp. The cabernet was smooth and rolled down her throat, almost immediately softening the tension. This was her third glass and, with luck, would finally dull the sharp edges of irritation. She reached for the bottle of prescription pills on the counter, studied the label, and then opted not to take her nightly dose. The pills made her groggy and she wanted to be sharp.

  Susan padded across the polished floors of her town house. She’d slipped off her high heels but still wore the tailored skirt and white silk blouse she’d worn on the six o’clock news.

  Down the center hallway, she passed a collection of awards, certificates, and photos that she’d hung on the wall. They chronicled a career she’d sacrificed a personal life for. No husband, no children, only work for Susan. Go. Go. Go. And now, her career was careening toward the end and about to combust.

  In the last thirty years, there were few times she regretted her choices. She was a big girl after all, with the ability to change course at any time. But the truth was, she loved her work, loved knowing the ins and outs of Music City.

  But there were a handful of moments, like now, that challenged some of the choices she’d made. They were few and far between, but they did crop up once in a while.

  Draining the last of the wine in her glass, she moved into her office. Like the rest of her house, it was neat and organized. Everything in its place.

  She walked toward a bookcase, filled with awards, pictures, and some books. At the end was a simple black box. She’d kept the box in the same place since she’d moved here fifteen years ago. Most of that time it sat untouched, but there were a handful of times that the past summoned and she’d removed the box from its resting place.

  Susan stood on tiptoe, grabbed the small, black cardboard box, and carried it into her kitchen. Marble countertops and stainless-steel appliances glistened under three vintage pendant lights that cast a warm glow on hard surfaces.

  She smoothed her hands over the top of the box and then carefully wiped the dust off with her palm. A finger tapped on the top as she summoned the courage to look into a past she’d worked hard to forget. Finally, blowing out another breath she opened the lid.

  Inside was a small, black-velvet jewelry box resting on a collection of pictures. She opened the box and studied the small, gold heart charm. Carefully she laced the chain between her fingertips and held the charm up to the light. On the back were two letters. JT.

  Susan clasped the heart in her hand and then carefully replaced the charm necklace back in the box and closed it.

  Her attention shifted to the pictures. The pictures weren’t professional. They’d been snapped with her thirty-five millimeter camera that she’d bought in college. It wasn’t hard to date the images. One glance at the large, curly hairstyles, high-waist jeans, and open vests telegraphed the early nineties.

  “No accounting for taste,” she murmured.

  Carefully, she flipped through the stack of pictures that had never warranted a place in a real album. There were pictures of Susan and her brother at the football game. It had been a high school game and she’d gone not for the sports or the job but to see a man.

  Susan had gone through this stack enough to know which picture followed the next and knew in three more images she’d see a picture of him. However, she didn’t quicken her pace as she studied one picture and moved it carefully to the bottom of the stack. What was the rush?

  Another picture of her brother, sullen and unsmiling. Never smiling. Still to this day, he didn’t smile unless it suited him or promised profit.

  Another picture of her. Slightly out of focus because her brother had taken the image. She’d had to coax and prod him to take it. “Jerk.”

  Another picture . . . this one was just of the man she’d loved. This image was crystal clear because she’d planned to frame it and keep it at her bedside. She’d had such plans for them. And then, it had all gone sideways. He’d been shot and killed and she’d been unable to look at his picture for nearly a year. And when she’d been able to look at his face without crying, she couldn’t bring herself to frame the picture.

  Susan traced the outline of her lover’s smiling face. The pain of his death no longer stabbed. It had softened to regrets and a few whispered what ifs . . .

  The next image coaxed a smile and more regrets than she’d anticipated. This image was of a young girl, just days after her fifth birthday. She had a wide grin that showed a full mouth of even, white baby teeth.

  She’d loved that little girl. Loved seeing her, loved hearing about her days at kindergarten, loved buying her ice cream.

  If there were any regret in her life, it was that she had not been able to love this child or shower her with the mothering she deserved. Even after all this time, tears filled her eyes, stinging as she struggled not to let them spill.

  She retraced the pictures in their original order and carefully tucked them back in the box. As she replaced the box, she locked away her memories and regrets.<
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  Shifting focus from what she couldn’t control, she focused on what she could control. Her job. Her work. She clicked on a light, moved directly toward her desk, and flipped on her computer.

  If Susan was good at anything, it was unearthing the hardest-to-find facts. She opened a file and studied the sketch of the child Rick Morgan had given her today.

  She stared at the initials, JT. Jenna Thompson. Detective Morgan had made mention that she’d come from Baltimore. Thompson. She searched Officer Jenna Thompson and found a few references to some of her forensic art.

  Susan sat back in her home-office desk chair, her reflection catching in the computer screen. She touched feathers of deepening crow’s-feet around her eyes. Some would call her distinguished. Some might value her experience. But in the age-obsessed world of television she was in the process of doing the unthinkable. She was aging.

  She took another sip of wine and scrolled through any reference containing Jenna Thompson. Other than scattered images of her work and a few passing mentions there was little on the officer.

  Thompson.

  Who did she know in Baltimore, Maryland? Almost all of her contacts were in Tennessee. And then she remembered the new reporter from the Washington, D.C., area. Carolyn March. The reporter was young and looking to move up the chain at the station. She’d hopped around a couple of television markets and, no doubt Nashville would be just one stop of many. Blond, ambitious, there was much to admire about the young reporter who, for some reason, irritated the hell out of Susan.

  She dialed Carolyn’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “Carolyn, this is Susan Martinez in Nashville. We met last year at the conference in Las Vegas.” She smiled, hoping it reverberated in her voice.

  “Hey, Susan. How are you?”

  Susan picked up a pen and began to draw boxes on a scratch pad. “I have an East Coast question for you.”

  “Sure.” Carolyn didn’t sound as bubbly and helpful as she was when the station brass lurked around at the conference, but she also wasn’t rude. Susan might not have many years left in front of the camera but she still had enough pull to do damage to an ambitious reporter.