Trespass (20 page)

Chapter 45

T
J followed Gemma’s pursuer at a discreet distance, east on the interstate into Milwaukee. He pulled into the parking area of Gemma’s hotel and took a turn around the back before he pulled up at the far end where he could observe Gemma enter the building. TJ parked a few cars away and wrote down the license number.

When she approached his car, the guy had a cell phone to his ear, oblivious that he had been followed. With one hand in a pocket cradling her gun, TJ knocked on the window. She figured him for an amateur, but it never hurt to be cautious. Fumbling his phone at the sound of her knock, he turned and looked at her as if she had descended from Mars. She yanked the car door open. Another mark of an amateur; he didn’t even keep his frickin’ doors locked.

She stuck her PI credentials in his face. “Explain why you’re shadowing Ms. Rosenthal, asshole. The answer better be good or I call the cops.”

“I… I’m protecting her,” he stammered.

“Show me some ID.”

TJ watched as he struggled to dig out his wallet, finally producing a freshly-minted PI license. It looked legit. Benjamin Anthony Bittner’s youthful face beaded with nervous drops of sweat as she handed it back. The newbie had just turned twenty-three.

“Who you workin’ for?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” he whined.

“Then I make a call,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Explain it to me or the cops, your choice.” She knew the cops wouldn’t give a damn, but he appeared too green to realize it. “Tell you what. I guess the name and you can try not to look surprised—Taylor Harcourt.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he mumbled. TJ shook her head as he drove out of the parking lot. His expression had answered her question. Now to talk to Gemma to find out what the hell was going on with her and Harcourt.

I opened the door to TJ after I heard a knock and peered through the peephole. Since I left her less than a half hour ago, I had no idea why she had come up to my suite. I invited her in, and before I had time to ask, Clyde squawked, “Want coffee? Want coffee?”

TJ laughed, the tension on her face easing. “Crazy bird.”

“I do have coffee,” I offered.

“Sure. We gotta talk.”

After I handed her a mug of coffee, she sat in one of the matching chairs across from the sofa. “It’s time you tell me about Harcourt. You two havin’ an affair or somethin’?”

Other than Norman, Lisa had been the only person I’d ever told about Taylor. I’ve never been a person to have girlfriends; I was always too busy shaping my career to bother. The other women at the agency weren’t my peers, so I had to maintain my role in the hierarchy and remain professional. Chumminess didn’t fit well in the advertising business. At least it never had for me. I often envied women who had friends they could unload to.

“There’s no affair,” I began, “not now, anyway.”

“I know the guy’s married. Why’s he hangin’ around?”

I was paying TJ to investigate for me. It made sense to let her know about my past, about my ties to Taylor and why he had become a presence in my life again. “I think I’m going to need some brandy in this coffee. Would you like some?”

After I gave her the
Reader’s Digest
version of my past and present with Taylor Harcourt, our cups of brandied coffee were nearly depleted. I offered her another, but she declined.

“Why are you asking me about Taylor now?”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “He’s havin’ you followed by some two-bit PI just outta high school. I noticed when you left Lisa’s office, so I followed him here. Says he’s hired to protect you.”

I felt like an anvil landed on my shoulders. Taylor had already broken his promise to stay away by being at the hospital last night. Now he’d done it again by having me followed. But I probably shouldn’t have been shocked that his concern for me had led to this.

“Hope you ain’t thinkin’ how romantic it is that he wants to protect you,” TJ said. “I know how guys like this operate. He’s obsessed, not concerned.”

Trickles of fear ran up and down my arms and legs like tiny spiders. My own obsession had prevented me from recognizing Taylor’s, even when Lisa had dropped a few comments hinting at just that. Nausea boiled up from my abdomen and I rushed to the bathroom.

When I returned, TJ said, “Sorry. Must be hard to think about him that way.”

“I thought seeing him again gave me the freedom to move away from the past and get on with my life. Now I don’t know what to think.”

She stood and moved to the door. “You know what you gotta do. You hafta tell him it’s over and mean it, but don’t do it in person. If you aren’t up for it and want me to do it, let me know. It’s your dime.”

I watched the door close behind her, pained that my feelings for Taylor were beginning to evolve from excited to disturbed. On the positive side, finding out about being followed reinforced my determination to leave it behind. I turned out the lights and lay down on the bed. Only sleep could distract me now.

TJ stopped at home before she drove to Richard’s apartment. She needed a new perspective on the case. It was interesting that Tasha, like TJ, thought there could be a mastermind in the background controlling everything that happened. She went into the conference room and made a new column.

Ringleader?

Anna Krause – motive, sister killed, possibly husband involved

Martin Krause – motive, his father killed

Kane Diermeyer – motive, his mother killed

Those three seemed like the most likely candidates.

Kane Diermeyer? Harder to see that one. As a music teacher, though, he would be able to use his position to worm his way into the minds of his students. Drucilla, for one, and he would have access to Lucian through her. And they were related, which would make them close but wouldn’t explain the sex acts in the home invasions.

Anna, their mother, would have control of the sibs, but it was hard to think of a mother leading her children to such horrific acts. TJ paused, realizing she had begun thinking of the Krauses as the perps.

Martin Krause’s job gave him access to young adults, and his position in the church gave him both the credibility and the opportunity to influence them. The sex angle gave Martin an edge in her suspicions.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a call from Detective Wade letting her know that the case files on the suicides and on Frank Krause’s accident hadn’t shed any light on today’s murders.

TJ thought that if Sondra Jackson had been one of the original swingers and her death was a revenge killing, then what about the others who were in the swinger’s group at the time? If Sondra had been the instigator who had convinced the Diermeyers and the Krauses to join, that would explain her death, but what about the rest of them? And where did Teschler and the Chapman girl fit in? And if revenge was the motive, there could be a lot more people on the killer’s list.

TJ drove to Richard’s apartment; she needed to see JR and spend some time with Richard. Before she arrived, she touched base with Richard only to find out he had been called in to work again. That left JR still with Janeen. She turned the car around.

Chapter 46

T
J made it to Janeen’s in time to feed the kids and gave her sister some time off to have dinner with her latest beau. She fixed hot dogs with macaroni and cheese for the kids, always a hit. Later, when they were ready for bed, she read to them. When they finally quit begging for more, she headed for the couch, intending to take a nap. She wasn’t worried about falling asleep while on babysitting duty; since she had become a mother, the least little squeak from JR awakened her.

Janeen returned before TJ fell asleep. She explained that Al, who worked as a pharmacy tech in a nearby hospital, had to be on the job early the next morning so they had called it a night. After a long round of girl talk, Janeen left the room headed for bed.

TJ needed sleep, but the case nudged at her brain whenever she put her head down. An old crime movie held her interest for about ten minutes, just long enough for her to realize what she had to do—keep working the case.

She let Janeen know she was leaving and borrowed her sister’s car, a gray Honda that looked like every other car on the road. The Mini was an attention getter, and tonight TJ needed to blend in with the landscape.

TJ drove slowly past the Krause place, but she couldn’t tell who was home. She parked a few doors down and walked carefully through the backyards, past Gemma’s house to the Krauses’ side entrance. Peering in one of the windows from as close as she dared, she could see Lucian watching TV and his sister doing something in the kitchen. Drucilla’s was the only car in the garage, so Anna Krause was probably at work. TJ crept back to the Honda and began waiting. It was ten p.m.

At ten thirty, Drucilla’s car backed out of the driveway. Unfortunately from where TJ sat, it wasn’t possible to see the driver. It could be either Lucian or Drucilla, even both of them, but there were still lights on in the house. Lucian didn’t have his own car, but she had seen him driving Anna’s old Buick. TJ followed the car at a safe distance.

The car turned north onto I-94, which made tracking easy. TJ followed as it exited the interstate about twenty miles north of Milwaukee and turned west through the small town of Allenton.

She couldn’t imagine where either of the Krauses would be headed so late. There weren’t many businesses in the area and most of the houses were part of large farms. They left the highway and turned onto a narrow county road for a few miles before the car made a right onto a gravel lane. TJ, following at a safe distance, had to decide what to do. On the gravel it would be obvious she was following, and right now they had no idea she was in pursuit.

She turned off her headlights and made the turn behind the Krause’s car. Luckily, she didn’t have to follow very far; the car turned in about a third of a mile later. She parked at the side of the road and watched as the car followed a long driveway that was flanked by mature pines. She drove in behind them after a minute with her lights still out and parked at a point just before the pines ended.

As the car continued on, she saw a farmhouse in its headlight beams and, behind the house, a large barn. The car passed the house and drove around the barn, then entered a narrow, two-furrowed road. TJ left her car and ran for the barn, where she crept to the back corner of the building and watched the car’s progress to a wooded area about two hundred yards behind the barn. The car stopped at the beginning of the woods. TJ had just darted behind a large bush when a figure stepped out of the car carrying a flashlight.

The silhouette revealed the figure was Lucian. At least she thought was Lucian. It could be Drucilla wearing clothing that resembled her brother’s usual attire, baggy jeans and a dark hooded jacket.

TJ followed at a distance, confident she wouldn’t be heard as the ground remained damp from the rain. The night was clear for a change, and the half moon offered enough light for her to maintain an even pace. She zipped up her jacket as the cool air engulfed her. What the hell was out here, and who owned the property? It didn’t appear to be an operational farm. Were the trees a cover for a marijuana crop? Once she had followed the dark figure through a few yards of thick woods, the path entered a large clearing. TJ’s eyes, now accustomed to the dark, took in a macabre spectacle.

A narrow cleared area about two city blocks long and maybe a hundred yards wide was surrounded by tall pines. In the center was a cemetery, its gravestones eerie apparitions in the moonlight. The figure’s movements began to appear feminine. What the hell would Drucilla be doing in a graveyard at this hour? And why was it so carefully hidden?

Drucilla stopped at one of the graves, then knelt and placed a small bouquet in front of the headstone. Her father’s grave? It had to be. But why would Frank Krause be buried out here on this farm? All the headstones appeared to be the same. This had to be the cemetery of the church the Krause’s belonged to, the New Followers of Christ, although TJ had no idea why a cemetery would be secluded out here in the boonies like an illegal pot crop. She intended to find out.

Craig Jackson lost interest in going out clubbing after his talk with Donald Braun. He sat in front of the TV in a brown leather recliner with a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam at his side, drifting in and out of sleep. Whenever he came to, he thought about Sondra, then about Braun, and wondered whether Braun had reported Victoria’s disappearance to the Tosa cops. The woman had always been flaky. She probably went somewhere and forgot to inform her husband. Braun’s theory of someone retaliating against the swingers just didn’t cut it for Craig.

Why would someone wait sixteen years to get revenge? It didn’t compute. He had heard rumors that Lilly Diermeyer, one of the suicides, had kept a diary that never surfaced after her death. If it had suddenly come to light, it might have opened old wounds, and it was possible someone could have realized a slowly festering grudge. The whole thing with Teschler, though, was weird too.

Craig drifted off again, and when he awakened later the room was dark. He thought he had left a light on and wondered if the power gone out again. Just as he leaned forward to get up from his chair, he heard a noise that came from another room. His blood went frigid with fear. He recalled Braun’s visit and told himself it had made him jumpy, but he couldn’t remember if he had turned on the security system after Braun left. As he stood up to check it out, he took a punch in the gut so quickly and with such force that it pushed him back into the chair. He coughed from lack of breath and attempted to pull himself out of the recliner. Before he could stand, another blow landed, higher this time, just below his shoulder.

With the room so dark and his brain muddled with alcohol, Craig couldn’t tell if his attacker had left the room. Disoriented, he tried again to stand. As he rose, he felt a warm liquid dribbling down his pant leg. Had he wet himself? A few seconds passed before he groped at his stomach and realized he hadn’t peed his pants; he was bleeding. Those hadn’t been punches he felt; he had been stabbed. The room spun as he staggered to a drawer in an end table where he kept his gun. Another blow landed before he could retrieve the weapon, this time striking between his shoulder blades.

He should have heeded Braun’s warning.