Almost Dead (25 page)

CHAPTER 60

Lizzy had never been to a pig farm before. From what she’d read online, the Pickett Pig Farm had five hundred sows that each produced about twenty-five piglets every year. The Pickett farm handled the breeding and marketing and allowed their piglets to grow organically. They did not use hormones or antibiotics. The pigs were free to live outdoors and roam around.

As she drove up the long, graveled lane toward the farmhouse sitting in the middle of the lot, she thought the place looked lonely and neglected against its backdrop of gray skies.

Lizzy cut the engine in front of the house and climbed out of her car. The stairs leading up to the porch had seen better days. Her sneakers squeaked against the wood wraparound porch as she made her way to the front entry.

It had rained earlier in the morning. Instead of getting a whiff of fresh hay or even manure, something damp and moldy wafted her way.

She knocked.

When no one answered, she walked a third of the way around the porch before she heard a woman call out, “Can I help you?”

Lizzy hurried back to the door. “Hello. I’m Lizzy Gardner. I was hoping you might have a few minutes to spare.”

The woman wiped her hands on an old tattered apron strung around her tiny waist. “We haven’t been to church in a while, but you can tell the pastor we’ll be back as soon as Jim is feeling up to it.”

“I’m not with the church. I’m an investigator.”

The woman was petite and birdlike. Beneath the apron she wore faded jeans, a moss-green T-shirt, and a pair of brown tie-up boots with worn soles that looked as though they’d walked five hundred miles and then some. Her gray hair was pulled back away from her face. “What would an investigator want with us?”

“It’s about your daughter, Jenny Pickett.”

The woman licked her thin, dry lips.

“When Jenny was in high school, do you remember if she ever mentioned the Ambassador Club?”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “Never heard of it before now. Jenny was and is very bright. As far as I know, she never joined any clubs, though.”

“Have you heard anything about what’s going on with some of the graduating class of 2002?”

“You mean at Parkview? Jenny’s school?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t get the newspaper or own a television set. Never have. My husband often quotes somebody or other: ‘Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.’ ” Ophelia Pickett held the door wide. “Why don’t you come in and tell me all about it.”

Lizzy stepped inside.

“I just made some stew if you’re hungry.”

“I already ate,” Lizzy said, “but thanks for offering.” The floorboards creaked beneath her feet as she followed the woman across the main living room.

Not one light was on, and the windows were covered with a hodgepodge of fabric that looked like a patchwork quilt, but not the kind you might find at a craft show. These curtains looked as if they had suffered the same trauma as Mrs. Pickett’s boots.

Every available surface in the house had a doily on it, most of them faded to a dingy yellow. Dust mites and spiderwebs had made a home in every high corner of the ceiling. The kitchen was a medley of furniture—a picture of both hominess and thrifty chic.

The woman grabbed a dirty rag and wiped it across the vinyl seat she had pulled out for Lizzy. “Go ahead—get comfortable while I finish up this stew.”

Lizzy did as she said.

“Now tell me,” Ophelia said as she struggled to get a thick wooden spoon through whatever was in the tin pot on the stove, “what is the name of the club you asked about?”

“The Ambassador Club.”

“And what is it exactly that’s happening to the class of 2002?”

“Members of the club seem to be running into a bit of bad luck. Most seem to be accidents, but not all.”

“Are you saying that they’re being murdered?”

“We’re not sure. We still have a lot of questions.”

“Well, I’m glad my Jenny wasn’t a part of any clubs,” the woman said without looking away from her stew.

Lizzy watched the woman work, couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with this scene, but this was no Norman Rockwell painting she was looking at.

“I do hope the police have rounded up a few suspects.”

“Not even close at this point.”

“And why would any of this matter to me or my wife?” an old man asked from the door, his walking stick pointed at Lizzy. He had a square face with a large, bulbous nose in the middle of it. His hair, what little was left, stuck out like a porcupine’s quills. Without his stick to hold him up, he was bent so far over she thought he might topple.

Lizzy stood and offered her hand, ready to introduce herself, but Mrs. Pickett told her to sit down and pay him no mind.

“What is Mindy doing in our house?” the old man demanded of his wife.

“It’s not Mindy, dear. This is Lizzy Gardner. She’s an investigator.”

He grunted and walked off.

“Mindy who?” Lizzy asked, knowing the name sounded familiar.

“Mindy, Cindy, Windy,” Mrs. Pickett said. “Don’t pay any attention to him. His mind gets a bit muddled at times, but he’s a good man with a good heart.”

“I don’t mean to cause any problems.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” She used a ladle to fill a bowl and then slid it in front of Lizzy, along with a spoon and a cloth napkin that looked as though it had never been washed. “Eat up,” she said.

Lizzy made the mistake of looking into the bowl. It was not a pretty sight—lumpy with something sticking out of it, something that looked a lot like a claw or maybe a beak. She almost gagged. “I’m really not hungry. Do you think I could use a bathroom?”

“Sure,” the woman said, frowning as she took the bowl to the stove and poured its contents back into the pot. “Follow me.”

They walked down the hallway and through a bedroom to get to the bathroom. “This is the only one that’s working.”

“Thank you.”

Lizzy stepped inside and quickly locked the door behind her. She didn’t hear the woman walk away, but she couldn’t worry about that. She opened the toilet seat and threw up everything she’d eaten that day. After two flushes, she splashed her face with water from the sink and washed her hands.

She took another minute to collect herself before she headed out. The room she had to walk through to get back to the kitchen was one of the strangest-looking bedrooms she’d ever seen. The mirror on the wall was cracked and framed with bird feathers and rocks. The dresser was covered with old playing cards and lined with glass jars, the kind with screw-on lids. Inside the biggest jar was a china doll. Something wriggled its way out of the doll’s porcelain eye.

“Are you OK?”

Lizzy jumped.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” Mrs. Pickett stood in the doorway fiddling with her dirty rag, but she didn’t seem to be using it for anything. “I meant to ask you what the Ambassador Club did. I know kids join all sorts of clubs these days, but the Ambassador Club is an odd name. What did they do?”

“They were mean kids,” Lizzy said.

“So they picked on other kids?”

Lizzy nodded. “Do you know if anyone ever picked on Jenny when she was in high school?”

“Nobody ever picked on Jenny. She wasn’t the most popular girl in school, but she had friends. She was always ahead of her class. I never ever had to worry about Jenny.”

“So, she did have friends?”

“Well, she didn’t bring any of them over, but that was mostly because we’re so far out here in the boonies.”

Lizzy looked back at the doll in the jar and shivered.

“Jenny loved books. She liked to read. One year, she read four hundred books.”

“That’s impressive. So she never came home crying or upset?”

“No. Never. She was always happy.”

Behind her, her hatchet-faced husband appeared. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people,” he intoned, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

“That’s enough, Jim.” She looked at Lizzy. “He likes to memorize verses from the Bible.”

“Why is Mindy here?” he asked again.

Mrs. Pickett ignored her husband. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Lizzy assured her as she followed Mr. and Mrs. Pickett back to the kitchen.

Ophelia sat her husband in the same chair where Lizzy had sat earlier. “You sit right there and I’ll get you a cookie.” She smiled at Lizzy. “Our daughter comes home for dinner quite often and always brings us homemade cookies.”

Lizzy watched her go to the freezer and pull out a Tupperware container filled with cookies identical to the ones Lizzy had sent to the lab for testing. “I know I said I wasn’t hungry,” Lizzy told her, “but those do look delicious. Mind if I take one for the ride home?”

Ophelia Pickett placed a cookie in a napkin and handed it to her.

Lizzy walked over to where she’d left her purse on the table. She had to lean low over the table to reach it. Mr. Pickett grabbed the purse strap and wouldn’t let her have it. “You shouldn’t be here, Mindy,” Mr. Pickett said. “We don’t like bullies.”

CHAPTER 61

Jenny had one more thing to do. She had gathered the wigs, gloves, shoes, anything that might incriminate her if it were ever found in her house, including the bloody sweater and the hammer, and put it all inside a garbage bag.

Then she put everything in the trunk of her car and went for a drive.

So much had changed in such a short period of time.

She felt like a newly blossoming bud. A beautiful flower. A butterfly that had just metamorphosed. Corny but true.

Ten minutes later, she parked as close as she could get to the apartment complex in Orangevale and realized this might not be as easy as breaking into a house. As far as apartment buildings go, there appeared to be a good amount of people coming and going. It didn’t help matters that for the first time, she wore no disguise.

She felt vulnerable, and she didn’t like it.

But she had to do what she had to do. She climbed out of her car, gathered the bag from the trunk, and headed for the main door.

Confidence, Jenny, confidence.
She straightened her spine as she stepped inside the building. The place was decent enough, well kept. The actual apartment she needed to visit was on the fourth floor. She took the steps, passed a young couple carrying bikes over their heads on the stairwell. They smiled. She said, “Hi.”

No big deal.

Once she was on the second floor, the only floor without a camera, she hit the alarms and then waited for the chaos to begin.

It didn’t take long. She made her way up two more floors, weaving her way through fleeing residents, concerned expressions on their faces as they left their belongings behind them. One man, the man she’d hoped to see, was helping a woman who was having a difficult time getting three small children down the stairwell.

On the fourth floor, her gloved hand on the doorknob, she smiled when the door opened.

Two minutes later, she was rushing down the stairs with the rest of them, even helped an elderly woman when she tripped in her haste and almost fell.

As Jenny opened her car door and climbed behind the wheel, she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard the voices in her head.

She smiled.

The smell of freedom wafted through the open window. Starting today, she would begin her new life, a life filled with friends and family and endless possibilities.

The past was in the past. She was letting it all go.

She was ready.

Lizzy was in the car when the phone rang. It was the rookie reporter, Derek Murphy.

“Hey, Murphy. I’ve been meaning to call you and thank you for writing the story and getting the mucky-mucks over there to run it.”

“You’re welcome. But that’s not why I called. Guess who they’re bringing in for questioning in the next thirty minutes.”

She perked up. “Who?”

“I heard this through the grapevine, but I figured with your connections you might be able to finagle a way inside and get the scoop.”

“What’s going on? Who’s being questioned?”

“Jenny Pickett.”

A shot of adrenaline coursed through Lizzy’s body. “When did this happen? The investigator I talked to told me that my cookie connection theory was flimsy as best.”

“It wasn’t the cookies. They found Dean Newman. Seatbelted in his car at the bottom of the canal near Carmichael. Where are you? It’s all over the news.”

“I’m in the car on my way home.”

“Well, it shouldn’t surprise you that Dean Newman’s death looks like suicide, but he had an envelope addressed to Jenny Pickett tucked inside his pocket.”

“Had the letter been opened?”

“I don’t think so . . . not sure. But the GPS on his phone and in his car pointed to 55 Glen Tree Drive in Citrus Heights. Guess who lives there?”

“Jenny Pickett?”

“Yep, and I guess between the letter and the fact that Newman had been to her street, it was enough to bring her in.”

“Thanks for the call. I’m all over this.”

Lizzy pulled to the side of the road and keyed in the Citrus Heights address. It was 7:34 p.m. It would take her twenty minutes to get there. She made an illegal U-turn and headed for the freeway. If luck was on her side, she could get to Jenny’s house before they hauled her to the station. She would love to look Jenny Pickett in the eyes when they handcuffed her, let her know that sometimes justice really did prevail.

CHAPTER 62

Jenny reached over and rested her hand on Dwayne’s leg.

He kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, but she could see a hint of a smile playing on the corner of his mouth. After work, he’d picked her up and taken her to an early dinner at Moxie on H Street in Midtown. They had lingered overly long. It was almost eight.

A police cruiser passed by. Jenny’s chest tightened. A week had gone by since her visit with Aubrey Singleton. The local news stations hadn’t said much at all about Aubrey’s death, which Jenny found odd since she was one of the few people who was obviously murdered. Being struck in the head with a hammer was no accident.

After Dwayne had come so close to catching her in bloodied clothes, Jenny had come up with a new plan. Although her plan had required her to break into one more building, the deed was done. Despite there being one name left on the list—two if she counted Lizzy Gardner—every moment spent with Dwayne made her realize she’d made the right choice. Her job was finished. The kill list had been burned and the computer destroyed. Every incriminating item had been removed from her home.

Other than the two lucky Ambassador Club members who had moved, Chelsea Webster would be the only one on her kill list to survive. Chelsea had always seemed like such a miserable, tortured soul. She was a mean one. Rumor had it that her family disowned her after she beat her grandmother. What sort of person beat up her own grandmother?

Jenny sighed. She would have to make do with the hope that Chelsea’s depression and misery only deepened as the years wore on.

Dwayne pulled his car into the driveway and killed the engine.

“Are you OK?” he asked. “You’ve seemed distant lately.”

She looked at him and said, “I’m just happy.”

He leaned over the center console and gave her a kiss. His lips felt divine. Then he climbed out of the car and came around to open the door for her.

She loved that he took the time to open doors for her. She would never tire of being pampered by Dwayne. He was a gentleman, and they adored each other.

Before they got as far as the mailbox, three police cars were speeding down the road toward them. Tires screeched as the vehicles pulled up to the curb.

“Jenny Pickett,” one of the officers called out.

Jenny looked at him and said, “I’m Jenny Pickett.”

He pulled his gun from his holster. “Stay where you are, and put your hands in the air where we can see them.”

“What’s this all about?” Dwayne demanded.

“Sir, you need to step to the side. Now.”

“What’s going on?” he asked Jenny.

“I don’t know. You didn’t call them, did you?”

“Of course not. Why would I? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Not too far up the road, she saw two more cars pull to the curb. Lizzy Gardner climbed out of one of the vehicles and led a pack of uniformed officers her way. The street had been blocked off. Strobe lights swirled everywhere she looked.

An officer came forward, handcuffed Jenny, and put her in the back of his vehicle.

Lizzy looked at the officer, and he dipped his chin, allowing her one moment with Jenny before he shut the door.

“It took some work,” Lizzy told her, leaning in so no one else could hear, “but it looks like you weren’t as clever as you told me you were.”

“Are we being taped?”

“No.”

“All but one is dead, but I’m afraid you have the wrong person. They won’t be locking me up anytime soon.”

“What do you mean ‘all but one is dead’? Chelsea Webster was found in a motel room with a bullet in her head.”

Jenny rocked back in the seat. “You cannot be serious.” She couldn’t have planned it better if she’d tried. “Did she leave a suicide note?”

Lizzy gave her a dubious look. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t kill her?”

“I absolutely did not kill Chelsea Webster. Like I said before, you have the wrong person.”

Lizzy stepped away and shut the door.

From behind tinted glass, Lizzy watched as the investigators took turns interrogating Jenny Pickett. It was late, and she found herself wishing Detective Chase was the person doing the interrogating. The investigator asking all the questions didn’t have half of Chase’s intimidation factor working for him.

The investigator pointed to a video showing a blurry image of a redhead walking away from an apartment complex. “It all started here, didn’t it? You knew Terri Kramer.”

“I already told you. Terri Kramer and I were college friends. I was devastated when I heard about what happened to her.”

He read off a list of names, members of the Ambassador Club. “Do any of those names mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. “I recognize a few from high school. Is this why I’m here? Did something happen to them?”

His mouth tightened. “We’ll sit here through the night if we have to, Ms. Pickett.”

“You have no grounds on which to keep me here. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Chelsea Webster, your last kill, named you personally in the note we found next to her body.”

“That’s ridiculous. That woman made my high school life a living hell, but I never once considered doing her harm. You have the wrong person. This has gone on long enough. I would like to call my lawyer.”

Lizzy heard a small commotion behind her as the detective she was sitting with was called out of the room. When he returned, he said, “Looks like she gets to go home.”

“How? Why?”

“They searched Pickett’s home and came up empty. There’s nothing there. She doesn’t even keep insecticides or rat poison in her garage. And that’s not all. We got a call from a guy named Adam Lamont, Chelsea Webster’s boyfriend. Apparently he was on the phone with her when she blew her head off. He said nobody else was in the motel room with her. Nobody made her do it.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Lizzy said. “What about all those other people?”

“Chelsea’s boyfriend found a bag in their bedroom closet. It was filled with shoes, wigs, bloody clothes—enough evidence to put the woman away for a very long time. Apparently she couldn’t live with the guilt. So first she killed the rest of the Ambassador Club members, and then she took care of herself.”

Lizzy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Jenny Pickett had thought of everything.

He headed inside the interrogation room.

She watched him unlock the cuffs from Jenny’s wrists and tell her she was free to go. By the time Jenny Pickett was allowed to leave the interrogation room, Lizzy was standing by the door waiting for her.

Their gazes locked.

The self-satisfied look on Jenny’s face would’ve been bad enough. But as she walked down the hall, she looked back over her shoulder and said to Lizzy, “There
is
justice in the world, isn’t there?”