Love Kills (15 page)

His name was John Lacey. His light brown, slightly shaggy hair framed a boyish face, though he was in his mid-twenties. His was a face that would look boyish even at age seventy.

His words were soft, his manner gentle. He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt that said
BELIEVE
.

I met him at a coffee shop in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

His name had surfaced in a newspaper search I did on Suzanne Chapelle. Almost a year before she married Marsh Holt, Suzanne Chapelle and John Lacey had been forever linked in print—their engagement announcement in the
Baton Rouge Advocate.

Lacey was also a would-be writer, advertising copy by day, moonlighting on the Great American Novel at night.

I said I was a reporter who wanted to talk to him about Suzanne.

He loved the girl, he said, and absentmindedly lit a cigarette. I frowned. Normally I don't object, but now I had good reason.

“Smoking is bad for your health.”

“Life is bad for your health,” he said, his sad face somber.

Then it suddenly occurred to him why I had objected, and he quickly stubbed out the smoke, amid a flurry of apologies.

His hands trembled slightly when he spoke Suzanne's name. They met as barefoot preschoolers in the same neighborhood. They had loved each other since they were ten years old and in the same English class. The teacher encouraged Suzanne to read her poetry aloud. Soon, he too began to write poetry, despite teasing from the other boys. He and she came from poor families and they ate together in the free lunch program.

“We'd meet at lunch and after school to read each other's stuff, make up stories, and talk,” he said, as I nibbled on a slice of coffee cake.

Suzanne's father died when she was twelve. Her mother remarried twice: badly. For most of their teens, Suzanne Chapelle and John Lacey had only each other.

He went off to New York to seek his future but returned in less than a year. They missed each other too much. They became engaged. Then she won the contest and her story was published. A lengthy letter from an admiring reader arrived soon after. The writer was new to Baton Rouge, had read and was moved by her story, and hoped to discuss it further over coffee or a drink.

“Her first fan letter,” said Lacey, whose sentences tended to trail off into silence when speaking of Suzanne. She was flattered that a stranger admired her work. Lacey wondered if the man had seen her picture in the newspaper or magazine and whether she was what he really admired.

“I sensed it,” he said. “On that first day, before they ever met. It was like hearing the distant thunder of a storm coming your way, leaving you nowhere to run. The literary references he used, and the way he understood her story, impressed her so much that she called to thank him. That's all she intended to do. Call, chat, thank him, and politely decline the invitation. But whatever he said during that call made her want to meet him.

“‘Just a cup of coffee,' she said. Nothing to worry about.

“I knew. I watched what was happening like a slow-motion disaster. I had to trust her. We'd always trusted each other. So I dropped her off that evening. She was wearing her engagement ring, pitiful little pebble such as it was…. I drove away, but I had a bad feeling. So I went back, parked, walked up, and looked in the front window, like an orphan with his nose pressed against the glass. I didn't mean to spy on her. I saw him. Saw how she looked at him. And I knew.”

The fan's name was Marsh Holt.

“For a while I hoped he was just a BF destroyer.”

“Excuse me?”

“A BF destroyer—you know, a pickup artist who likes the challenge of seducing women who have boyfriends. If that's what he was, he'd move on and I could forgive her. I would've forgiven her anything.

“But Suzanne was a keeper. He was older, handsome, more sophisticated, and affluent. I was just an average Joe who loved her.” He licked his pale lips. “I had trouble breathing, literally, for months after she confessed she'd fallen in love with him. She wanted us to stay best friends, but there was no way…. I wanted her to be happy, to have the world and everything she wanted. But I couldn't watch.

“I have years of golden memories, gifts from the gods who ultimately take away.”

“Well put. I take it you still write poetry.”

His sad smile turned sheepish. “None that I ever share. Suzanne had all the talent in that department. When I heard she died…If he hadn't come into our lives…” He trailed off, lost in thought. Then his expression changed from melancholy to curious.

“Why is a reporter from Florida interested in Suzanne Chapelle? She didn't publish enough to have this kind of posthumous attention from the press.”

“Actually, it's not her writing that interests me,” I said. “It's him. Marshall Weatherholt. Marsh Holt. The serial bridegroom.”

“Is he…?” His soft gray eyes stricken, he stared at my new maternity top. “He didn't—You're not…?”

“For God's sake, no. I'm a police reporter. I think Marsh Holt murdered Suzanne, that he's a serial killer. I'm working on a story about him, trying to piece it all together.” I told him about the other brides.

He sat in stunned silence, generating grief as though it were radio static, interference that at times prevented him from clearly comprehending my words. He'd blink, furrow his brow, repeat something I said.

“I hated him because he didn't protect her, because he let that terrible accident happen,” he said slowly, covering his eyes with his hand. “But at the funeral, when I saw how he suffered, I felt guilty and ashamed. But if you're right”—he raised disbelieving eyes to mine—“he intended to kill her from the start, like the others.”

I nodded, afraid that John Lacey might begin to weep aloud in that crowded and noisy coffee shop. So we left, or at least tried to.

I had slipped my shoes off under the table, and now they didn't fit. It was as though a practical joker with a foot fetish had swiped my shoes and replaced them with much smaller look-alikes.

“Sorry.” I struggled, trying to cram my foot back into my size-five white Reebok, as Lacey stood waiting. “What new hell is this?” I stared in dismay at my swollen feet and puffy ankles. “Must be the airline flights, or a combination of flying and…” I dragged my teeth across my lower lip.

Finally I used brute force to jam my feet back into the shoes and hobbled painfully into the street.

“Sure you're all right?” Lacey looked concerned.

“Absolutely,” I said, trying not to wince.

I bought a pair of soft rubber flip-flops at a chain drugstore across the street. They were pink, intended for wear in the shower or on the beach. They'd do fine until the swelling subsided.

“You should elevate your feet,” he advised. “I have five half brothers and sisters. My mom always swore that her feet grew with every pregnancy. ‘You start as a size six,' she'd say, ‘and wind up a ten.'”

“No way,” I protested. “I have shoes, high heels, that I love. I'll be damned if I'm gonna outgrow them at this age.”

I frowned at my pink flip-flops, wondering what my mother would think.

When I said I needed to make some calls and take notes, Lacey suggested his nearby apartment would be more comfortable than my motel room.

His small second-floor apartment was a typically cluttered bachelor pad, except for the room where he labored on his novel. Scrupulously organized reference books lined the shelves, and the walls were adorned with photos of Suzanne.

I was hungry again, so Lacey fixed me a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich in his tiny galley kitchen while I called the Coast Guard in Miami. Skelly O'Rourke was tied up at a press conference. Twenty-one Cuban refugees had successfully made it to U.S. soil, or so they thought. They had clambered from their small boats onto an old bridge in the Florida Keys, home free, they believed, under U.S. policy. However, the unused deteriorated span was no longer physically attached to land. On that basis, they had been scooped up and sent back to the island they thought they'd escaped, inflaming Miami's Cuban community and setting off a firestorm of controversy.

O'Rourke would be tied up indefinitely afterward, conducting satellite radio and television interviews. No one else in the public information office even remembered Vanessa Holt. The dead bride was old news.

I called Ron Fullerton in Chicago. He had not heard from Marsh Holt and had no theories as to his whereabouts.

A spokesman at the U.S. Consulate in Guatemala City told me that local police had long since closed the investigation into Rachel Weatherholt's snakebite death.

There would have to be sufficient proof, clear evidence of foul play, I was told, before anyone would consider reopening the case. Perhaps, he suggested, such evidence might be found if the body was exhumed.

I wondered. Rachel had been dead for three years, and Holt was so clever that finding injuries inconsistent with his snakebite story seemed unlikely. But it was worth a shot.

I called the New York City mortuary listed in her obit to ask where Rachel had been interred. She hadn't. Perhaps there
had
been evidence of foul play. Marshall Weatherholt had had his bride's body cremated. When her parents objected, he insisted that Rachel had once told him that was what she wanted. An oddly morbid conversation between giddy whirlwind lovers
rocketing
toward wedlock, but nobody questioned it. After all, he
was
the grieving husband.

As I continued to work the phone, John Lacey fixed me some soup, tomato with cheesy croutons.

He was right. His study, with its desktop computer, big leather chair, and comfy overstuffed ottoman on which to prop my swollen feet, was far more comfortable than any motel. And the food was better, hotter, and kept coming.

Lacey confirmed that there had been insurance. How much, he didn't know, but Suzanne had mentioned it during those painful days before the wedding.

He had been invited, in fact she had pleaded with him to attend. But he could not bring himself to watch. “How could I?” he said.

Instead, he sat across the street, alone in his car, and saw the happy couple leave the church in a rain of rice and confetti. That was the last time he saw Suzanne.

I selected some of his photos to borrow for my story and even a few of her short poems.

 

I called the Colorado ski resort where Colleen was killed.

Few employees remembered the tragedy, but a veteran ski lift operator who did remember told me he'd heard something inconsistent with the newspaper accounts. Nothing disturbing enough to notify authorities or challenge the newspaper, but it had never left his mind.

“The husband said his wife insisted on making one last run despite the poor conditions, according to the paper. He said he reluctantly agreed, against his better judgment, and that's when she was killed. Later, I talked to another couple. They'd wanted to make one last run too. The four of them were waiting for the lift. But weather conditions deteriorated so fast that the other couple changed their minds. When they left, they said, the newlyweds were quarreling because she was afraid and didn't want to go back up the mountain, but he insisted.

“Maybe the guy lied and put the blame on his wife out of guilt. If he hadn't taken her up there, she wouldn't have died. You never know how people will react in a crisis.”

“Did the couple you spoke with talk to the sheriff's department?”

“Nah. They were leaving first thing in the morning and didn't want to get involved.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Not off the top of my head, but they're regulars. We see 'em every year.”

Not concrete proof, I thought, but if witness accounts showed Holt lied to the police, that might get their attention. Either way, it was a damning detail I'd love to use in my story.

I begged him to try to recall their names and to call me at once if he did.

Lacey sat nearby, on the sofa in his little study, listening to me work, peppering me with questions between calls.

I talked to Vanessa's parents in Boston. Without burdening them with too much information, I asked if the son they never had had filed a change-of-address form at the post office before he blew town. Or if a neighbor or apartment manager might be forwarding his mail.

They promised to find out and get back to me.

I didn't want to brief Fred or the city desk until I had a strong lead to follow. With my progress at a standstill, they'd want me back in Miami and I wasn't ready to go. Not yet. Fred would be unlikely to authorize any more travel once I was home.

This was my only shot and I had to make the most of it.

“We have to find him,” Lacey blurted, when I was between calls.

“What do you mean
we
?”

“You can't do it alone, not in your condition. I can help. Suzanne and I knew from her work with abused children that justice is rare. Most often, the system fails. We have to try to make it work for her,” he said passionately. “She deserves it.”