Vindicated (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 6) Read online

  “Well, Doctor Burke said that after the cookout, Colin showed up at the ER and made a scene.”

  Megan let out a breath that revealed she had just conjured up a bad memory. “I had almost forgotten about that.”

  “Well, according to Doctor Burke, that confrontation led to a break up—between Doctor Burke and Stella, I mean. The private investigator I’m working with would like to speak to Colin about this, but before he does, he wants to hear from some of the other people at the cookout…you know, determine if they saw or heard anything that might suggest if Colin was capable of that level of violence.” Jenny grabbed a pen and paper. “Can you tell me who else was there that day?”

  “Sure. There weren’t that many people there, though.”

  “Even better,” Jenny remarked with a smile.

  “Well, my ex-husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, was there. His name is Charlie Patterson.” She went on to give Jenny his contact information. “His then-roommate was also there with his girlfriend. They’re actually married now, so you can find them both together.”

  “And what are their names?”

  Megan let out a laugh. “I’ll spell it. They’re Ed and Renee P-R-Y-Z-B-Y-C-K.”

  “Good grief. How do you say that?”

  “Prez-be-yeck,” Megan said; Jenny wrote down the phonetic spelling of their names as well as their phone numbers. “And that’s it,” Megan concluded. “That’s everyone who was at the cookout.”

  “Well, this has been very informative,” Jenny said with gratitude. “Thanks for your help.”

  “No problem,” Megan said sincerely. “Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”

  “You’ll be the first to know.” Jenny hung up the phone and showed the short list of the cookout’s attendees to Zack. “Here it is,” she said. “These are the only people who saw Colin and Doctor Burke together that day.”

  Zack studied the names, looking horribly confused. “What the hell kind of name is that?” He pointed to the Pryzbycks. “There aren’t any vowels.”

  “Y can be a vowel,” Jenny told him with a smile.

  “Yeah, but only sometimes.”

  Jenny couldn’t help but laugh; Zack’s simplicity was definitely charming at times. She looked at him for a moment, studying his face, unable to deny the sudden and intense attraction she felt for him. She fleetingly wondered if having sex in Zack’s parents’ house would have been an acceptable thing to do.

  “It’s getting late,” Zack said, glancing at his phone, snapping Jenny out of her little trance. “Do you think we should try to contact them in the morning?”

  She shook her head quickly to rid herself of the thoughts she was having. “Probably,” she replied, although she wasn’t entirely sure what she had just agreed to do.

  “My head is spinning,” Zack confessed, “and I have to admit, I’m a little sore from renovating today. I’m not used to all this manual labor. I think I’m getting soft.”

  “You want to call it a night?”

  “I want to have a beer and some chips—and then call it a night.”

  They scooted their chairs away from the table, and after a quick stop in the kitchen, joined Zack’s parents in the living room.

  “Well,” Zack’s father said from his recliner, “look who we have here.”

  Zack furrowed his brow as he sat on the couch, bowl of chips in hand. “What does that mean?”

  “It just seems like it’s about time you joined us, that’s all.”

  Jenny could feel the tension starting to rise; she looked at Ellen, whose apprehensive expression provided confirmation.

  “Dad,” Zack protested, “I’ve been working.”

  “Since when do you spend twelve hours a day working?”

  “Oh my God,” Zack said with frustration. “My whole life you have always gotten on my case for not ever taking work seriously, and now that I have a job that I care about, you get on my case for working too much? I swear I can’t friggin win.”

  Ellen interrupted with a loud exhale. “Can’t we just drop this?”

  “It would just be nice if you spent a little time with your mother, that’s all,” Andy said. “You haven’t come to visit in a long time, and it seems to me that you’ve been ignoring her since you arrived.”

  Holding up her hand, Ellen said, “All I want is for the two of you to get along.”

  “Fat chance of that,” Zack said bitterly.

  Admittedly, Jenny felt uncomfortable; she wondered how Zack’s mother had tolerated this behavior for the past few decades. It must have been unbearable to live with both of them before Zack moved into his own place.

  An awkward silence ensued, interrupted only by sound of the sitcom on the television. Jenny felt painfully aware of her surroundings as she tried unsuccessfully to focus on the show; she was too afraid that another squabble was going to erupt at any moment. When Zack finished his snack and asked if she was ready for bed, she gladly bid his family goodnight and disappeared into the guest room.

  Zack’s obvious irritation only resurrected the attraction Jenny had felt for him earlier. He removed his shirt angrily, tossing it with vigor onto the floor and adding “My God, that man pisses me off so much.”

  Jenny bit her lip; Zack seemed painfully unaware of what was going through her head. She slipped out of her clothes and slid under the covers. “Come here,” she said, lifting the sheet, inviting him to join her. “You look like you could use a little tension relief.”

  Zack sighed heavily as he climbed into bed. “I swear, I just can’t do anything right in his eyes.”

  Jenny nestled into his shoulder and kissed his cheek a few times. “Okay, why don’t you stop thinking about your father?”

  Suddenly Zack seemed to become aware of what Jenny had in mind. “Hey, ho.” He said with a smile. “What’s going on here?”

  She continued to shower him with kisses. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

  “No, it’s just unexpected, that’s all.”

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No,” he said as he began to caress her back, “I most definitely do not want you to stop.”

  She pulled away and looked him in the eye with a smile. “Then stop talking.”

  Feeling satisfied, Jenny rolled over onto her back, sensing Zack glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. You just looked good to me.” She flashed him a toothy smile.

  “I guess I should fight with my dad more often.”

  “No,” she replied, “you should definitely not fight with your father more often. I had sex with you in spite of your argument, not because of it.”

  “You’ve got to admit, he makes it tough to be in the same room as him,” Zack said. “He started harping on me the second I walked in there.”

  Jenny leaned up onto one elbow. “Do you know what I think might be going on here? I think your father’s feelings might be hurt.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jenny traced her finger in a circle on Zack’s chest. “Well, that construction business of his means everything to him. It’s like the family legacy—the one thing that Larrabee fathers pass down to their sons. It’s been going on for generations… but you didn’t want it. In fact, you hated it. You’ve said yourself that you were a lousy employee when you worked for him…maybe he just thought you were a lousy employee in general, but now he’s seeing how dedicated you can be when you actually care about your job. Maybe he’s wondering why you couldn’t have cared this much about the family business that means so much to him.”

  “I hated the family business.”

  “I know,” Jenny said compassionately, “and maybe he takes that personally.”

  “I think it’s more a matter of him being disappointed in me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jenny reasoned as she collapsed onto her back and look
ed at the ceiling. “Have you ever given someone a gift that you thought was fabulous…only for the recipient to be a lot less excited about it than you were? That can be very upsetting.”

  “But he’s acting like a jackass.”

  “Agreed,” Jenny said. “I’m certainly not defending his actions…I’m just suggesting that his behavior may be less rooted in hate than you suspect it is. He might just be reacting negatively to your rejection of the family business…and if that’s the case, he’d probably say this rift between the two of you is your fault.”

  “I’m sure he does think it’s my fault,” Zack grumbled. “To him, everything is my fault.”

  With a sigh Jenny determined she was entering into an argument she would never win. She hopped out of bed to brush her teeth and put on her pajamas, only to find Zack already asleep when she returned. She was so jealous of his ability to drift off that quickly; she always found her brain went into overdrive whenever she tried to sleep. Hoping this night would prove to be different, she climbed into bed.

  Unfortunately, this evening ended up being just like all the others. Her mind began to race as she considered all of the pieces of the puzzle that just weren’t fitting together. While the bloody palm print and the explosive scene at the emergency room seemed to implicate Colin, Doctor Burke certainly had more to lose if Stella had decided to betray him. Which of those men would have been angry enough to actually stab Stella eight times?

  Getting nowhere, Jenny tossed and turned until she eventually managed to fall asleep. She hoped she would have a vision or a telling dream during the night, but she didn’t find that to be the case.

  “Thanks for breakfast, Ellen,” Jenny said as she enjoyed her eggs. “I can’t believe it’s ten o’clock. I haven’t slept this late in ages.”

  “You were tired,” Ellen replied with a smile. “Being pregnant will do that to you.”

  “Honestly, I’m not even sure I can blame the baby for this one,” Jenny said. “I have to admit that ever since I’ve entered my second trimester, I haven’t had many symptoms. It’s a bit ironic that as soon as I started to look pregnant, I stopped feeling pregnant.”

  “Were you sick in the beginning?”

  “I felt sick, but I actually only physically got sick a few times. I mostly just walked around nauseated…and tired. Very, very tired. She certainly zapped my energy for a while.”

  “She?” Ellen said with surprise. “You know you’re having a girl? I didn’t think you were far enough along to tell yet.”

  “I’m not,” Jenny replied as she stifled a laugh. “I just refer to the baby as she because Zack is so adamant that we’re having a boy. Truthfully, I don’t have any inclinations either way as to what gender the baby is. I just insist it’s a girl to harass Zack.”

  Ellen pointed at Jenny. “I like you.”

  “He is convinced that Larrabees only make boys. Is that true?”

  “Largely, yes,” Ellen said. “I did manage to have a daughter, but Donna is one of the few girls born into this family in generations. Fortunately I have plenty of nieces—and now great-nieces—on my side to give me my girl fix, but on my husband’s side it’s all boys. Boys, boys, boys.”

  “That must make for some rough-and-tumble family reunions.”

  Ellen shook her head. “You have no idea. It’s a miracle any of our houses are still standing.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing your family is in the home-construction business,” Jenny remarked with a smile.

  “You’re not kidding.”

  A short moment of quiet ensued, after which Jenny delicately said, “I started to talk to Zack last night…about his relationship with his father. I tried to get him to see things from your husband’s point of view, but I wasn’t very successful.”

  “Imagine that,” Ellen said sarcastically.

  Jenny’s eyes drifted solemnly toward the table. “I do have to admit, I hate how much they fight.”

  “You and me both. Those two drive me crazy.”

  After thinking some more, Jenny posed, “Do you think there’s anything we can do to get them to get along?” She hoped she wasn’t overstepping her bounds when she added, “I would love for this baby to have a good relationship with her grandfather.”

  Ellen let out a little laugh. “Her. That’s funny.” She became more serious, however, when she said, “I would love that, too. I don’t want to have to choose between spending time with my husband and spending time with my grandchild, but obviously things don’t work out very well when you put Zack and Andy in a room together.”

  Resting her chin in her palm, Jenny said, “I wonder what we could do to get them to tolerate each other.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out for twenty-five years. Honestly, I thought if Zack ever got married and had a baby, that would do the trick,” Ellen confessed. “Unfortunately, Zack came home already married to a woman we’ve never met…no offense…but that just adds fuel to Andy’s fire.”

  Jenny was able to finish Ellen’s sentiment. “That Zack can never do anything right.”

  “Exactly.”

  The jingle of Jenny’s ring tone permeated through the room. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get that,” Jenny said. “It might be about the case.”

  Ellen extended her hand toward the direction of the phone. “Go right ahead.”

  Zack was the caller. “Hey,” Jenny said as she answered. “How’s everything in renovation land?”

  “Good, but I may want you to come out here,” he said.

  “Why…is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong,” Zack replied. “I just may have found something that can help prove Nate is innocent.”

  Chapter 9

  Jenny arrived at Rob’s house as quickly as she could. She had to park down the street due to all of the contractors’ vans that clogged the end of the cul-de-sac. Walking eagerly to the door, she rang the bell; seconds later, Zack answered.

  “What’s going on?” she asked immediately as she entered the house and started up the steps.

  “Well,” Zack explained, “we pulled up the carpet and pad in the living room so we could put in the hardwood, and when we did, we saw a stain on the subflooring that I can only assume is blood.”

  Jenny had reached the top of the stairs at that point and was able to see the splotch Zack had been referring to, right where Stella had been in the visions. The pool was larger than she had expected. For a moment, she was immensely disturbed.

  Zack continued, “That stain isn’t surprising, but when we pulled up the carpet in the dining room that leads to the slider, we saw what looks like a trail of little blood droplets on the subflooring.”

  He walked Jenny over to the area in question, pointing downward. She did indeed see small, rust-colored circles in a path leading to the sliding door.

  “And if you look over by the front of the house,” Zack added, “you won’t find any blood drops leading from the crime scene to the door that Nate ran out of.”

  With a furrowed brow, Jenny walked to the front of the house and verified what Zack had just said. The trail of blood clearly led out the back, ultimately to where the handprint had been. Confused, she looked up at Zack. “How do you think this will help clear Nate? We already knew the killer went out the slider.”

  “Well, here’s what I’m thinking. Nate had gotten blood on him when he knelt down next to Stella, but none of that came off of him as he ran to the front door—at least, not enough to soak through the carpet and pad and stain the subflooring. But when the killer left, he left behind a trail of blood. I can’t imagine that he’d gotten enough of Stella’s blood on him to be dripping off of him like that. I can only assume that he had gotten hurt during the attack and this is his blood we’re looking at.”

  Jenny covered her mouth with her hand as she considered the notion. Without saying anything else, she dialed her phone.

  The greeting on the other end of the phone was abrupt. “Wilks.”
r />   “Hi, Detective Wilks, this is Jenny Larrabee.” Secretly, Jenny was pleased she’d remembered her new name. “We’ve made a discovery at the house where Stella Jorgenson was killed, and it may help identify who her killer really was.”

  “Oh yeah? What did you find?”

  Once again, Jenny found herself trying to quickly summarize something that could have taken forever to explain. With a sigh she began, “When we came to investigate this house, my husband noticed the current owner is in a wheelchair…but the house had carpet. My husband used to be in the home construction business, so he offered to replace the carpet with hardwood so the owner could get around more easily. When he pulled up the carpet and pad, he found a trail of blood on the subflooring that led to the back door. However, Nate was convicted based on testimony that he’d gone out the front door. My husband was thinking that it’s too much blood for it to just be Stella’s blood that had gotten on the killer…he thinks maybe the killer had gotten hurt during the attack and left a trail of his own blood.”

  “That often happens,” Detective Wilks replied. “When a perpetrator stabs a victim multiple times, the knife can become slippery. Not only that, but if the blade hits bone, the knife stops moving and the perp’s hand keeps going. That often leads to the perp’s hand sliding down the blade, and he cuts himself as a result.”

  Jenny curled her lip at the thought but continued anyway. “I don’t suppose there is any way you could come over here and investigate, is there?”

  “Me, personally? No,” Wilks said. “But I can send a forensics team out there for you.”

  “Can you?” Jenny asked. “That’d be great.”

  “Just try not to touch any of the stains until they get there,” Wilks added. “I know it’s been a long time, but the less contamination, the better.”

  Jenny grew tired of waiting for the forensics van to show up. A second visit to Willy Sanders’ house had left her standing on the stoop again with no one answering the door. She had also reached a dead end when she’d called local hospitals, asking if they had any records of hands being stitched up the day Stella was killed. Hospital records didn’t go back that far, and even if they did, doctor/patient confidentiality would have prohibited her from learning anything anyway. She put in a call to Kyle to see if he could investigate it more, but that still left her with nothing else to do in the meantime.