Following the trail, p.7
Following the Trail, page 7
Lacey ignored his flirty smile. “Hi, Mike. I’m Lacey Jefferson. Do you know my sister, Fawn?”
“Of course. She’s a regular. Or was. I haven’t seen her in forever.”
“When was the last time she was here?”
“Let me just check the computer.” He shook the mouse, clicked a few keys, then looked up. “She was here a little over three months ago.”
Lacey shot a look at Creed. “There’s that three-month time frame once more.”
“Something wrong?” Mike asked.
“She’s dead,” Creed said. “Someone...murdered her.”
“Murdered her?” Mike’s eyes had gone wide and his jaw swung open. He finally snapped it shut. “But...how? Why?”
Keeping her emotions under control, she gave him the short version. “Now we’re working on figuring out the why. And the who. Can you tell us anyone she might have had an issue with?”
“Not an issue bad enough to kill her over.” He frowned and shook his head. “No, no one comes to mind. Everyone loved Fawn.” He rubbed a hand down his face, then paused. “She has a locker here. Do you want to take a look?”
Lacey raised a brow. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“I don’t know the combination to her lock.”
“I’ve got bolt cutters in the SUV,” Creed said. “Hang tight while I grab them.” He left and returned in under a minute. “Where’s the locker?”
Mike nodded toward the hallway. “Down there. Women’s on the right, men’s on the left.” He consulted the computer once more. “She paid via a monthly draft for locker number six.” He drew in a breath. “Hey, wait a minute. I just thought of someone you might want to talk to.”
Creed raised a brow. “Who?”
“Gracie Martin. She’s a trainer here. She and Fawn often worked out together. Gracie also works in the membership office. Maybe Fawn talked to her?”
“Is Gracie here now?”
“Yeah. She’s in the office. Two doors before you get to the women’s locker room.”
Lacey hesitated, then held out a hand for the bolt cutters. “I’ll take the locker. You take Gracie Martin. Is that all right?”
“Sure.” Creed handed her the cutters. “That’ll keep us from having to clear out the ladies’ locker room so I can be in there.”
“Take notes,” Lacey told him. “I’m going to want a word-for-word replay. Please?”
“You got it.” He followed her down the hall and stopped at the membership office door. Lacey waited until he stepped inside and introduced himself to the young woman at the desk before she pushed into the locker room. Straight ahead were the toilets. To the right were several rows of lockers. Behind the lockers were the showers and the sauna. The place smelled of hair spray, shampoo and sweat.
One of the showers was running, and another woman Lacey had never seen before stood in front of the mirror, drying her hair.
Lacey bypassed her, searched for locker number six and cut the bolt off just as the hair-drying woman finished up. She turned to watch, her eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” Lacey said. “I’m a cop.” She pulled her jacket away from the badge she’d clipped on her belt.
“Oh. Okay. For a minute there—”
“Yeah. It’s all good.”
The woman tossed her brush into her bag, snagged it and headed for the door.
Lacey opened the locker door. Her sister’s scent—a mixture of her strawberry shampoo and her light perfume—wafted out to bring the tears to the surface once more. A picture of the two of them was taped to the inside of the door. They stood at the edge of the lake, arms across each other’s shoulders, beaming at the camera.
Lacey remembered that day like it was yesterday. Her father had been in good spirits and whisked them away to the lake for a fun afternoon of tubing and swimming. She had no idea where her mother had been, but the good memory of her father was there before she could cut it off.
“Aw, Fawn, that’s so you.” A picture to remind her of the good times so she wouldn’t dwell on the bad. “I wish I was more like you, sis.”
The door to the room opened and the woman from the shower exited, but Lacey barely registered that as she forced herself from memory lane to pull the gym bag—the only other item in the locker—from the opening.
She carried it to the bench and unzipped it to reveal the contents. A clean change of clothing consisting of a long-sleeved T-shirt, leggings, socks and a pair of tennis shoes. She also found shampoo, a towel, hair dryer—and a set of keys. Lacey frowned. That was odd. Why the keys? Seemed like Fawn would have kept them with her. Unless they were a spare set that she wanted to keep in a safe place?
The squeak of a shoe on the tile near the showers caught her attention, and she looked up just as the lights went out.
Lacey stilled, her hand tightening around the material of the bag. “Hello? Someone’s in here.” Silence. “Can you turn the lights back on, please?”
Nothing.
Then her ears picked up the sound of soft breathing. She curled her fingers around the keys and threaded them through her knuckles. The only light in the area came from the hair dryers mounted on the wall. The built-in “night-light” cut through the shadows in that area while Lacey was in pitch-black darkness.
She grabbed Fawn’s bag and headed away from the door she’d entered and aimed herself for the emergency exit. The door that would sound an alarm as soon as she pushed through it.
Just as she reached for the handle, something slammed into her back. The bag dropped from her hand and she let out a sharp cry. Pain raced into her shoulders, and she found herself shoved against the wall, cheek pressed tightly against the unforgiving surface. She couldn’t even move the hand that held the keys. “Stop!”
“Go back where you came from or you’re going to find yourself as dead as your sister. This is the last warning you’ll get.”
“Did you shoot at me?” She gasped the question.
“Yeah, and next time I won’t miss.” He flung her to the ground and pushed out the door.
* * *
When the alarm sounded, Creed stood. So did Gracie, the woman who’d promised she had no idea who might have it in for Fawn. “Where’s that coming from?” he asked.
“The women’s locker room. Someone went out the emergency exit.”
“Lacey!” He bolted out of the office and hit the door to the locker room, only to pull up short when he realized the lights were off. “Lacey!”
His shout echoed through the empty area and he beelined toward the exit. He reached the door and raced through it into the back alley. The fading roar of a motorcycle reached him and the alarm abruptly cut off.
“Lacey!”
“I’m here.” She rounded the corner at the back of the building, weapon in hand.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but he got away.”
“Who got away?”
“The guy who attacked me in the locker room.”
Creed’s heart dropped. “Attacked you? I need details, please.”
“The lights went out. I heard him near the bathroom and bolted for the emergency exit. He caught me and slammed me into the wall.” She touched her cheek and he noted the red area.
“Then what?”
“He ran out of the emergency door. I chased him and he jumped on a motorcycle and took off.” She pointed to the camera mounted above the door. “We need the footage from that camera.”
He nodded. “I’ll request it.”
He also put a BOLO out on the motorcycle, then turned back to her. “Did you have time to look in Fawn’s locker?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s going to tell us much.” She paused. “Although, there was a bag with a set of keys in it.” She lifted her hand as though surprised to see she still clutched the keys. “I dropped the bag.”
“Let’s get it and see if you missed anything.” Her color was returning and her breathing had evened out. “Feeling better?”
“A lot. He said for me to go back where I came from and that this was the last warning I’d get.” She met his gaze. “I asked him if he was the shooter. He said he was and next time he wouldn’t miss.”
“Whoa.”
“I know.”
“And you didn’t get a look at him at all?”
“No.” She paused and gave him the once-over. “But he’s probably an inch or two taller than you. He was solid. He pressed me up against the wall—” a shudder rippled through her and Creed wanted to get his hands on the guy “—and he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him,” she said. “He was strong. Very strong.” She rubbed her sore arm. “He threw me around like I was a rag doll, and I’m not exactly tiny.”
No, she was five feet seven inches and probably in the range of a hundred and forty or fifty pounds. Not exactly rag-doll status.
“But,” she said, “I guess that answers one question.”
“What?”
“Sounds like Fawn wasn’t the victim of some random intruder who killed her and moved on. There’s something else going on here.”
“I agree.” Creed rubbed a hand down his cheek. “All right, we need to regroup.” He thought for a moment. “We’re doing the right thing in talking to people here in town, but you need to keep searching the house.”
“I know.”
He nodded to the keys in her hand. “And I want to know what those go to.”
“There are only four. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what they fit.” She held them up. “This one looks like an extra house key.” She moved to the next one. “This looks like a key to her mailbox, maybe? I noticed she had a new one with a lock, and this key looks fairly new.” She held up the third key. “No idea what this one could be, but this last one is similar to the one that might be a mailbox key.”
“Does she have a home office? A desk drawer or a file cabinet?”
“Yes, I saw a desk in her guest room. I’ll check and see if there’s a lock when I go back. I’ll also be looking for any current bank records or credit card statements.” She touched her cheek and worked her jaw.
“You need to get checked out at the hospital?”
“Nope. I’m fine. Just sore. Did Gracie tell you anything?”
“Not much. She did say Fawn seemed to have something on her mind. When Gracie asked her about it, she said she had a big decision to make and wasn’t sure what to do about it.”
“But no details?”
“No. Gracie said she asked, but Fawn brushed her off.”
“A big decision,” Lacey said slowly. “I have no idea what that could be.”
“We’ll find out.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “Yes, we will. In the meantime, I know one thing for sure.”
He raised a brow. “What’s that?”
“From now on, wherever I go, Scarlett does, too.”
“I think that’s probably wise.”
EIGHT
Lacey’s phone rang and she snatched it to look at the screen. “It’s Katherine.”
“Go ahead and take the call while I take care of getting the footage,” Creed said.
She nodded and swiped the screen while she followed him back into the gym. “Hello?”
“Hi, Lacey. I’m sorry to bother you, but I heard about Fawn and I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Katherine. I appreciate it.”
“I remembered something and I wasn’t sure whether I should repeat it or not, but in light of Fawn’s death, I’m going to do something I try never to do.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a rumor floating around the hospital about Fawn being involved with another doctor.”
“Involved? Define involved.”
“I’m not sure exactly how involved, but the rumor implied they were seeing each other. Like dating.”
“Fawn never mentioned that to me. Who is he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even remember where I heard it from. I don’t like gossip and try not to listen to it. However, I have a friend who admired Fawn from a distance. He wanted me to find out if she was dating anyone while he worked up the nerve to ask her out.”
“Who?”
“His name is Kevin Garrison. Anyway, I spotted Fawn at the hospital about a year ago and asked her if she was interested in being set up on a blind date. She said no because she was seeing someone. But said to ask her again in a couple of months because she wasn’t sure her current relationship was going anywhere.”
“But she was definitely seeing someone.”
“Yes. She said it was complicated and she was still trying to figure things out.”
Complicated. Awesome.
“Did she say what she meant by complicated?”
“No,” Katherine said, “and I didn’t press her for details because we didn’t have that kind of friendship. I did offer to listen if she ever wanted to talk about it, but we never spoke of it again after that conversation.”
“Okay, thank you. I appreciate you calling.”
A hospital page in the background came through the line. “I’ve got to go.”
“I heard. Thank you again.” Katherine hung up and Lacey tucked her phone into the back pocket of her pants.
“What was that all about?” Creed asked.
She told him. “Feel like a visit to the hospital to see if we can figure out who this doctor might be?”
He nodded to her cheek. “If you’ll let someone check you out.”
“I don’t need to be checked out, Creed. I’m fine.”
“This time.”
She sighed. “Right. Well, he achieved his goal. He scared me to death and issued his warning. I guess he’ll be watching to see if I leave town or not.”
“Which you’re not.”
She shot him a tight smile. “You know me so well.” His eyes darkened, and a flash of longing made her want to reach out to him. To say they could figure out their differences and try again. Instead, she curled her fingers into a hard fist. He looked away and cleared his throat and the moment was gone.
“Also,” he said, “you know those three names you found written on the paper from Fawn’s pocket?”
“Yes?”
“I just got a text from Regina. She was running them down for me, and they all work at the same hospital in Charlotte, but they’re heads of different departments.”
She frowned. “Okay. Why would she have their names?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to hazard a guess that Fawn was interviewing for jobs.”
“What? No. Fawn loved her job in the ER here. I can’t imagine her wanting to leave.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I hate to say this, Lacey, but it sounds like Fawn was living a very different life than the one she led you to believe.”
Lacey scoffed, then fell silent. “But why?” she finally asked.
“That, I can’t answer.”
She bit her lip and frowned at him. “You think the job was the big decision she had to make? The one she mentioned to Gracie?”
“I’d say that’s a real possibility.”
Once they were all back in his vehicle, he aimed it toward the hospital. He glanced at her. “Who did you talk to when you called to ask about Fawn?”
“Her supervisor.”
“Anyone else?”
“One of Fawn’s coworkers, Dr. Jill Holloway, but she said she hadn’t seen Fawn since she’d taken her sabbatical. She said she was off the two days Fawn worked before she disappeared.” She frowned. “She was also going to check with someone else who was close to Fawn, but by the time I left home to come here, we hadn’t connected again. She was one of the first people I’d planned to talk to after you and Miranda, but...well...you know how things played out.”
“I do.” He pulled into the parking spot reserved for law enforcement and they climbed out of his cruiser. Lacey released Scarlett from the back, buckled her “uniform” around her identifying her as a working dog, and they pushed through the revolving door.
Lacey and Creed walked to the information desk, where Pauline Coulson, a woman in her midsixties who’d taught Lacey’s fifth-grade Sunday school class, spoke into a headset. “Transferring you now.” When she hung up, she smiled. “Creed, so good to see you.” Her gaze slid to Lacey and her smile into an expression of deep sorrow—and not a hint of condemnation. “Lacey Lee Jefferson? Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry to hear about Fawn.”
“Thank you.” Word had spread. Lacey refused to allow the tears to surface once more. “I’m heartbroken, as you can imagine.”
“Indeed. Everyone who knew Fawn has just been shattered by her death. What can I do for you?”
“We’re here to speak to Dr. Jill Holloway. She worked with Fawn. Is she here today?” He glanced at Lacey. “Guess we should have checked on that before coming out here.”
Mrs. Coulson turned to her computer, and after a few clicks, she looked up. “She is. She’s in the emergency department.” Her frown deepened the creases in her forehead. “Is there anything I can do?”
“When was the last time you talked to Fawn?” Lacey asked.
“Her first day back from her leave. I was hoping she’d enjoyed her sabbatical, but it didn’t look like she had a very good time.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “She was wan and pale. And she seemed sad.”
“So not sick?”
“No, she didn’t seem sick, just not her usual bubbly self.”
“Do you know what she was possibly sad about?”
“I have no idea. She always said hello and we chatted occasionally, but we weren’t close.”
“Okay, thank you.” Lacey noticed the cafeteria to her right and the three lab-coated figures walking into it. “Mrs. Coulson, you have a pretty good view of the cafeteria. Did you notice anyone Fawn ate her meals with? Anyone who stood out to you?” Like a male doctor she could have been involved with? Lacey kept that last thought to herself.
