Laugh or Death (Lexi Graves Mysteries Book 6) (18 page)

~

Maddox's office was a lot nicer than his thirty-year-old allocated desk at MPD. This office was bright and spacious with equipment and furniture that all looked like it had been purchased within the last few years. Indoor plants thrived in large tubs. I had a sneaking suspicion the entire smartly-dressed staff shopped for their suits together, but didn't mention it. I just carried on, looking fabulous, as I took the chair Maddox offered me in the small conference room.

"How's it going?" he asked, landing a coffee in front of me.

"In general, okay," I told him, noticing he served the coffee just the way I liked it... just like Leo did when he handed me a cup. How did Leo know what my favorite coffee was? I wondered. "If we're talking cases, I'm definitely thinking less missing person and more identity theft now."

"How come?"

I explained my recent discovery of Nancy being dead and Maddox raised his eyebrows.

"Interesting."

"Yeah, or weird."

"What did your client say?"

"I haven't told him yet. Solomon and I are heading up to Greenacre later to check out a few leads. Once we have some answers, I guess it's time to break the bad news."

"Poor guy."

"You're telling me. Imagine finding out you know nothing about the most important person in your life."

"I can't imagine."

"I just hope she didn't rip him off. I don't want to explain that he needs to check everything he owns, then remind him to settle his account."

"You know, until you know what is going on with your case, this missing woman is still missing."

"Yeah, I guess
; but who the hell is she?"

"Take a look at these and tell me what you think." Maddox opened his file and pulled out a sheaf of photos.

"What am I looking at?" I asked, picking up the first photo. She was an attractive white woman with long, blonde hair.

"This is my murdered and recovered section."

I dropped the photo. "Thanks for the warning."

"It's not like I handed you a severed finger!"

My jaw dropped. "Is that what happened to her?"

"No. She was strangled ten years ago. We... I... think she's the first of a series of murders."

"Oh, okay." I picked the photo up again, then worked my way through the next seven. Six were white women and two were black. All but one were in their mid to late twenties and the eighth was thirty-two. They all had jobs. Teachers, a dentist, a cook, a nurse, a cosmetics rep and a librarian. "Three teachers? Is that an angle?" I asked.

"We looked into that
, but it seems to be a random occurrence. The only common factors we can find were that none of the victims had a partner at the time of their deaths and none had children."

"Huh. I thought we were looking at missing persons?"

"They all went missing right before they died, and their bodies turned up within a few hours to a few days of being reported missing. There was no real effort to hide the bodies. The MOs were all strangulation and there's no evidence of sexual trauma or other severe physical assaults. It took several years for these women to come under the umbrella of one case. They were all found in different jurisdictions although the areas were close enough to now believe there was a connection."

"Did your killer do that deliberately? Dump the wom
en in different jurisdictions?"

"Yes, we think so. It's not these women I thought you'd be interested in though. It's this stack." Maddox produced another set of photos and slid them over to me. "All these women are still missing."

"All of them? There must be fifteen here."

"Fourteen. It's my belief that these women's disappearances are connected to the dead women."

"How so?"

"
Mostly because of the timeline and locales. I'll admit, it's a little sketchy and maybe not all of the women are connected by this one killer, but I believe some of them definitely are. What worries me is we haven't found their bodies yet."

"You think they could still be alive?"

Maddox shook his head. "No. I think the killer got smarter and started covering his tracks."

"Are any from Montgomery?"

"No, but this office covers all these locations. The closest victim was from a hundred miles away in Greenacre. She's the last one to go missing, so she's at the bottom of the pile."

"Nice."

"No, I didn't mean it like that. I just have them stacked in order from oldest case to newest. Take a look."

"Thanks." I sipped my coffee as I worked my way slowly through the stack of photos. Like the murdered list, the missing women were all around the same age,
with mediocre jobs, and all were without partners or children. Most of them led active, fulfilled lives according to the reports; and no one could find any reason that they would go missing, other than foul play. I was sure there were bigger files on each of these women, but I wasn't here for that. I came to get the basics so we could put our heads together and hopefully, trigger a few brain sparks. "If each woman is connected by the perpetrator, how is he getting around?" I asked.

"Good question. We thought he could have a mobile job, like a trucker or a
sales rep, but the large gaps between disappearances and murders suggest that's not the case. We'd have a wider cluster if it were. Also, even though our twenty-two victims were based in different jurisdictions, it wouldn't be hard for someone to drive to each one and maybe even return that same day. Montgomery is the biggest town closest to their towns."

"You think we have a serial killer in Montgomery?"

"I can't say no to that."

"That's worrying."

"If it makes you feel better, there are countless active serial killers in the US."

I pulled a face. "Yes, thank you," I replied sarcastically, "I feel so much better. Gee. Countless serial killers. Yay!"

Maddox laughed. "And millions of really good people. Don't forget that."

I turned over to the next photo and kept on reading, gradually feeling more depressed the further I got through the list. How someone could snuff the light out of these women's lives
was beyond my imagination. They all appeared nice, normal women, and even if they weren't, no one deserved to be classified as “missing.” I pictured them with friends and family, doing boring, average things with no idea that soon, their dreams would go unfulfilled. It was horrible and sad to know how easily it was for everything to end unexpectedly.

When Maddox stepped out of the room to fetch me another cup of coffee, I sent a text to Lily.
Let's do something amazing
, I typed,
just because we can.

I got a reply seconds later.
“
Okay, but I got to catch a bad guy first.”

"Me too," I said to myself
.

T
ucking the phone away and turning over to the last photo, my breath caught as Maddox's words came back to me: “the closest victim was from a hundred miles away in Greenacre.”

"Are you okay?" Maddox asked, placing the fresh cup next to me and picking up the empty one
. Tossing it into the trashcan in the corner of the room, he said, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I picked up the photo of the Greenacre woman, holding it up to him. "This is fake Nancy," I said. "And she's definitely not dead."

Chapter Fifteen

Solomon was driving, Maddox called shotgun, and I was in the backseat. For the last half hour
, none of us spoke. Lily, however, really committed herself to our text conversation.

“
Are either of them shirtless?”
she texted, continuing her hopeful theme that there would be some kind of shirtless dance-off for my honor. The idea didn't thrill me, but I had to admit, I probably wouldn't ask them to stop for several minutes.

Nope,
I replied.
Still not talking.

“
Is the atmosphere charged with sexual innuendo?”
she asked next.

No,
I typed,
but Michael Bublé is playing on the radio. How's the surveillance?

“
Employee is still holed up in the house with his buddy. Meanwhile, I'm out of snacks. I hate them. I love snacks.”

Let me know what happens.

“Who cares what happens here? Let me know what happens with you.”
She waited five minutes, then texted again,
“Anything happening?”

I slid my phone into my purse and resumed looking at the densely forested landscape rolling past. I wasn't entirely sure
who suggested we should all travel together to Greenacre, but it was voiced and decided upon somewhere between my discovery of fake Nancy's photo in Maddox's missing persons file and Solomon’s subsequent arrival to the FBI offices.

Fake Nancy now had a name
, and our case had taken a very unnerving turn.

I picked up the file Maddox allowed me to take and turned to the photo again, re-reading information that I already committed to memory. Fake Nancy's real name was Peta Hanson and she was a thirty-three
-year-old artist and part-time art teacher. She was reported missing six months ago by her family when she failed to return from teaching her night class at the local community college.

Prior to her disappearance
, she made a complaint to the police about several hang-ups, flowers and gifts arriving without any cards. These appeared to have been brushed off as simply a shy secret admirer, and only after Peta insisted that someone was in her car and then in her home, did the police consider it serious enough to pay her a home visit. Without evidence of anything sinister, no investigation ensued and Peta was, again, brushed off. However, when her disappearance was reported, the police took a much more serious interest in her, but by then, it was too late. All this was gleaned from the statement given by her mother.

"How did Peta's file get to you?" I asked Maddox, breaking the silence at last.

He turned in his seat. "Some eager new detective read a news report two weeks ago. It mentioned a similar disappearance in a neighboring town that was being linked to other missing women's cases. She did a little digging, discovered I was running point, and emailed it to me."

"That was smart."

"I agree. Due to the widespread nature of the victims, I'm relying on detectives like this one to make a connection. There could have been more cases we missed because no one thought they were related yet."

"You're talking twenty-two women in a ten
-year period. If it's the same person, they've been active quite a long time."

"And getting smarter," Maddox reminded me. "We haven't found all the bodies."

"Two women-a-year implies that he can control his killing urges," said Solomon. "He's taking his time to plan his next kill, possibly stalking his next victim."

"Peta is the last case
on file, and that was six months ago. If he's sticking to his timeline, he's already looking for his next kill, and has probably identified her," I said, looking at my notes of the disappearances. It was a long and unpleasant list.

"The only problem is
: Peta isn't dead, and she's not exactly missing. It looks like she purposefully became a missing person," said Maddox.

"Why would she do that?
Other than the creepy gifts?"

"Something spooked her," said Solomon. "She might have made a connection to other victims."

"Or knew she was the next victim," said Maddox.

"She'd have to be pretty smart to make a connection before the FBI started collating cases
; and something had to tip her off, didn't it?" I asked. "That's if she wasn't the next intended victim."

"That's why we're going to talk to Peta Hanson's family and take a look at her laptop. Maybe she left a clue," Solomon replied.

"What about the detective? The one who called her case in?" I continued.

"I'm going to talk to her while you talk to the family," Maddox told me. Solomon glanced over and nodded
in agreement.

"You know, I'm looking at the locations here, and yes, they're all in different jurisdictions
, but it’s no more than a day's drive that separates the locations from what I can see," I told them. "We already said if the perpetrator lived close by, he could drive to each location and be back home the same day."

"That's partly why we linked them."

"So that means, the killer's home must be somewhere within this circumference," I said, reaching for the map book Solomon stowed in the foot well. I flipped to the correct page, putting a sheet of paper over the top. I made an "x" for every victim's hometown. They didn't follow any particular pattern, which suggested a particular, preferred route; but one thing I did was draw a circle around the outlying ones to contain them all. The dead and missing covered every point of the compass. Staring at the paper, I knew there was more to the locations than that, and finally, it hit me. I stenciled a heavy “X” in the center and passed the sheet forwards. "You know which town is exactly in the center of every one of these cases? Greenacre," I said. My revelation coincided with the first sign for Greenacre, which whizzed past us. "And Peta lived there."

"And Nancy," said Solomon.

"And Nancy," I agreed. "And Peta stole Nancy's identity because she knew Nancy was dead and no one would look for her. They could have known each other. That doesn't explain why Leo thinks Peta is Nancy."

"We can't explain a lot about Leo," Solomon reminded me. "I told you this case stunk."

"What if Peta killed Nancy to steal her identity? What if Peta is the killer? And this is what she does... steals women’s identities and lives on pretending to be her victims?"

"Doesn't explain
why her family reported her missing," said Maddox.

I slumped in my seat. "Guess not."

"Nancy could have been collateral damage. Perhaps Peta was the intended victim and Nancy got in the way."

"Could be," said Maddox, "but that doesn't explain why Peta is pretending to be Nancy."

"Or why Leo thinks Peta is Nancy," I added, stuck on that point.

"Maybe Leo is the serial killer," said Solomon.

"Or maybe he's a victim in all this too," I countered.

"I need to know more about this guy," said Maddox.

I waited for Solomon to give me the nod before I started. "Leo Chandler came to us to find his missing girlfriend, Nancy Grant. He told us she went missing six months before and he suspected amnesia. She wandered away from home after hitting her head in a fall while they were taking a walk in the woods behind his home. He put some missing notices on the net, and got a hit from a person in Montgomery who saw someone who could potentially have been Nancy. That's when he called us in to investigate. He showed us a photo of Peta Hanson, whom he believed was Nancy."

"It's not unusual to having a private agency undertake work like that," said Maddox to which Solomon and I nodded
our agreement.

I continued, "Looking into the sighting wasn't hard. I spoke to the person who called in the sighting of Nancy and spoke to other people where she'd been seen
, and it appeared all real. After some searching, I traced whom I thought was Nancy to Pretty Paws, where she worked and lived in an apartment above. Unfortunately, she took off once she got wind I was looking for her. I planned to go back and get the surveillance footage, but the block burned down in a freak fire."

"A freak fire?" Maddox asked.

"Seems that way. I haven't spoken to the fire department yet. I should get on with that."

"Leave it to me," said Maddox. "That's where the trail went cold?"

"Actually, no. We have footage from a bus that transported Nancy across town where we hacked into..."

"Don't tell me that!"

"Sorry... we happened to find out that Nancy was picked up by Joelle, a friend from Pretty Paws. We staked out Joelle's apartment, but they gave us the slip and now they're lost to the wind."

"Great," Maddox muttered.

"They didn't give me the slip," I pointed out, "but we won't go into that. Anyway, we ran everything in Nancy's background and there was nothing to contradict Leo or suggest anything he told us wasn't true. Just as he said, Nancy ceased to exist six months ago."

"Because she
died," Solomon said bluntly.

I waved Peta's photo in the air. "Yeah, we know that now!"

"You didn't find any evidence to suggest that Peta stole Nancy's identity?" asked Maddox.

"I didn't know Peta existed until today, but yeah
, I was starting to have misgivings about the woman we thought was Nancy. I suspected she was playing Leo, and had some kind of plan to deceive him, then ran when she realized it wasn't going to work."

"I can see why you'd think that."

"So, that's where we were when you called and invited me to look at your missing persons."

"I got more than I bargained for with your assistance," said Maddox, giving a mirthful laugh.

"We'll bill you," said Solomon. "I think our inn is nearby."

"I need to freshen up," I told them, "then I'd really like to visit Peta's parents and see what they can tell us."

Maddox nodded. "We'll divide and conquer. I'll go to the police department and see what I can dig up. I'll call the Montgomery Fire Department too."

"Ask Greenacre PD about Leo Chandler, too," said Solomon. "We ran a full background check on him
, but I'm worried we could have missed something."

"What did your checks show?"

"Steady freelance career. Small mortgage on his cabin. No crazy purchases. Pretty ordinary guy."

"What piqued your concerns?" Maddox asked.

"I don't know. Him. Something about him."

Maddox shifted in his seat again to look back at me. "Same for you?"

"No, I thought he was nice."

"Lexi thinks reuniting lost loves is romantic," said Solomon.

"The entire Disney audience agrees with me," I said.

"They're all under ten," Solomon replied,
veering into a sharp turn that had me sliding across the backseat. He pulled into a parking spot at the end of the short driveway and switched off the engine, looking from Maddox to me. "Let's meet back at the car in a half hour. Does that give you both enough time to freshen up? I want to get going on this." He was out of the car before I had a chance to remind him he didn't have to restyle his hair, refresh his makeup, or choose between the pink pumps I currently had on or a sturdy pair of boots for walking.

"Sounds good," said Maddox a
s he hopped out.

"Am I the only one who cares about looking good?" I asked the interior of the vehicle
when the two best-looking men in my life rounded the car. The trunk popped open. I got out of the car just in time to get the best rear view in the history of the world when Solomon and Maddox both leaned into the trunk to grab their bags. I stopped drooling in time for Solomon to slam the trunk shut and hike my bag over his shoulder.

"Lexi?" he said.

I mumbled something incoherent.

"Did you book
the reservation under your name or mine?" he asked slowly.

I nodded. "Yes."

Solomon shook his head, then indicated for me to follow. Inside, the manager smiled as we approached the desk. "Mr. and Mrs. Graves?" she asked. "Welcome to the Old Owl Inn."

"Ms. Graves," I corrected, "and Mr. Solomon."

"Adam Maddox," said Maddox. "I booked a room this morning."

"Would you like adjoining rooms?" the manager continued, smiling brightly. "Since you're all traveling together
?"

"No," we all said
as one.

She didn't blink as she grabbed two sets of keys. "I have the perfect rooms for you. Follow me."

~

We gave Maddox a ride to the police
station, a small, squat, redbrick building, before departing for the Hanson house. I was relieved that Solomon called ahead to tell them we were coming, but that didn't stop the butterflies somersaulting around my stomach in anticipation of what we might find.

I was quietly hopeful that another break was within sniffing distance, but also highly aware of how lucky
I was to be in the right place, at the right time, to see the photo of Peta Hanson in Maddox's missing women file. I still couldn't fathom how she or Nancy fit into it all. I re-read the case notes of every victim several times. Not a single other woman reappeared after being reported missing, which made me wonder if Peta were connected to the serial killer case at all. It could have been merely a coincidence that she was reported missing within the serial killer's operating zone. Even as I considered it, I had to question the feasibility of that happening. Too many things had already occurred on this case that could not be called coincidences.