Dying for a Clue Read online

  Her mouth dropped open. Technically, she supposed, she could view that comment as an offer of employment.

  Schaeffer shook his head at her, stood up, and kicked the chair out of the way. "You look like a nice young woman. Find yourself another line of work."

  She nodded, in total agreement.

  Schaeffer took her elbow. "Come on," he said, pulling her out of her chair.

  "Where?" she sputtered.

  "I need your statement."

  "But—"

  "Now." He towed her toward the door.

  "But—" she repeated, twisting back to see the smirk on Johnny Z's face. Schaeffer had her almost out the door before she managed to shout out, "I quit!"

  Chapter 3

  Beeeep!

  Jen, it’s Teri. Where the heck are you? And what were you doing in some alley in the middle of the night? Can’t you be left alone for one minute? I caught your little appearance on the eleven o’clock news. That was you, wasn’t it, pushing your way through those reporters? Don’t make me come find you. Call me!

  Beeeep!

  Sweetie, it’s Leigh Ann. What have you got yourself into this time? And what happened to your hair? Did you meet that new cutie they’ve got doing the location shoots for Channel 14? He is sooooo hot! Makes me want to...Anyway, call me!

  Beeeep!

  Jennifer, you there, hon? Are you trying to scare me into labor? Not that that would be a bad thing. I’m more than ready for this baby to be born. Hope you’re all right. It’s April, but then you knew that.

  Beeeep!

  Jennifer, call me when you get in. It’s Monique.

  Well, they’d all just have to wait. It was way too late to call anyone, and would have been even if she’d noticed the blinking light on her answering machine when she’d first dragged in after her visit with Lieutenant Schaeffer. They’d all seen her on TV, so her writing buddies at least knew she was alive. She’d explain later, as much later as she could get away with. Besides, what she needed right now was to relax.

  Jennifer rewrapped the towel that kept threatening to fall off her wet hair, snuggled down in her terry-cloth robe as she sank onto her couch, and warmed her hands with the mug of hot chocolate she'd brought from the kitchen. It smelled yummy, and it didn’t ask questions. Or talk back. She took a long, creamy sip.

  She propped her bare feet on the coffee table and rubbed Muffy's ears. At least the dog was behaving again. When she'd gotten home, Muffy had been all over her as if she were a doggy smorgasbord. Guess her dog liked Chinese.

  But now that Jennifer was clean, finally clear of every last dab of Dumpster goo and sufficiently groomed, Muffy had returned to her normal, greyhound self: a sponge for attention.

  She sighed. She'd done it again, plunged headlong into one heck of a mess, and all for the sake of her writing. She allowed herself a small grin. After all, she had survived through her own resourcefulness. And she'd endured a real-life shootout. Her first. Hopefully, her only.

  She patted her tummy. Some day she'd tell Jaimie, her yet-to-be-conceived child, all about it. How his or her mother had bravely withstood a barrage of gunfire. How she had watched a fellow private eye take a bullet, and then how she had sought refuge... Jennifer screwed up her face. Maybe it would be better not to tell all of this particular story.

  At least she’d made it out in one piece, unscathed, which meant that Jaimie might actually have a chance of someday being conceived and born—born to his or her mystery-writer mother.

  She blew on the hot chocolate and enjoyed a healthy gulp. She was safe, Johnny would recover, Schaeffer was satisfied she would be of no more help to him, and she could get on with her life—her real life as a writer, which, if a bit uneventful, was looking pretty attractive about now.

  A soft knock fell on the front door of her apartment. She jumped, splashing some of the hot chocolate onto her thumb, which she promptly stuck in her mouth. She checked her watch. It was after one A.M. Who the heck would be knocking on her door at this hour?

  Muffy woofed and looked up at her expectantly. She put a calming hand on the dog's neck, but the next thud sent her barking and scurrying for the door. Reluctantly, Jennifer followed.

  It must be Sam. One of his fellow reporters could have called him about what went down in the alley, or maybe he caught the news and was there to check on her. He’d probably be a tiny bit irritated that she hadn’t called him herself. She had every intention of doing so, but in the morning—after she’d figured out a way to tell him about Johnny Z that wouldn’t launch a barrage of reproaches. Sam couldn’t possibly come up with any she hadn’t already told herself. Still, it was sweet of him to come by.

  She adjusted the towel on her head and looked through the peephole.

  But it wasn’t Sam standing in the dim light. The figure was dark in the shadow, small and definitely female. The woman knocked again and whispered loudly, "Marsh, let me in! Johnny Zeeman sent me."

  Terrific. Johnny wasn't exactly at the top of her most popular list at the moment, and she certainly had no desire to meet any of his friends.

  "Marsh," the woman called again, banging loudly with her forearm and without even enough courtesy to add a Ms. to the front of her name. "You have to—"

  Jennifer jerked open the door and pulled the woman inside. She didn’t need another visit with the police. Mrs. Thorne down the hall had 911 on her speed dial.

  She clutched the terry-cloth robe tightly across her chest and demanded, "What?"

  The woman looked startled, her big, dark brown eyes, outlined in heavy black, as wide as if Jennifer had started the ruckus herself.

  Jennifer looked her up and down. She was nicely rounded, dressed in tight black pants with a black turtleneck covered by a brown leather jacket. The woman stood at least three inches shorter than her own five-foot six. With her dark, chin-length hair raked back with a head band and shining an unnatural red, she had to be a teenager. No one else dyed their hair that color. She even had a kind of dewy-eyed look amid all that eyeliner.

  But whatever her age, she could certainly use a lesson in manners. One didn’t go knocking on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night.

  Muffy whimpered and wedged herself between the two women.

  "They killed her,” the girl gasped out. “I saw it on the news. God, they actually killed her.” She swayed and, for a moment, Jennifer was afraid she was going to collapse. Jennifer grabbed her elbow, but the girl jerked back out of her grasp.

  "I called all the hospitals until I finally found Johnny." The girl’s face seemed an unnatural white, either from the contrast with the hair or from fear. It was impossible to tell which. "He told me to come to you. That you'd take care of it."

  At the moment, all Jennifer wanted to take care of was Johnny Z. She certainly didn’t have time for babysitting, and whatever this gal needed or wanted, she was definitely in the wrong place.

  The girl licked her dark red lips and asked, “Did you get it?” She tucked back her hair, revealing tiny hoops and studs that outlined the entire edge of her ear.

  “Who are you?” Jennifer demanded.

  The girl started to speak and then stopped, as though catching herself. “They call me Diane Robbins.”

  Jennifer blinked hard. This girl must be Johnny's client, the one that supposedly took that first bullet in the alley. It was hardly a natural mistake. She'd described the victim as petite with big eyes, both of which fit. She hadn’t mentioned middle-aged, blonde, and conservatively groomed. She’d had trouble getting past those eyes.

  “Did you get it?” the girl repeated, more agitated this time.

  “Get what?” Jennifer asked.

  “The envelope.”

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't work for Johnny Zeeman, despite what he told you. No one gave me anything.”

  This conversation was getting more convoluted by the minute. Unfortunately, only one of them seemed to know what they were talking about, and that someone wasn’t
herr. She had nothing to offer this girl, except a little advice. “You need to talk with someone who can actually help you—like the police.”

  Jennifer put her hand on the doorknob, but the girl brushed past her, plopped onto the couch, and stuck her booted feet up on the coffee table. Loudly, Jennifer cleared her throat and stood her ground.

  The girl crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what I want to know. You were with her when she died—Johnny told me so. If she didn’t give you the information, you can at least tell me what she said.”

  “You mean the woman at the clinic? She was already dead when I got to her.”

  “Oh, no. You’re not getting away with that. She promised to give Johnny the material. She must have said something, and I want to know what it was.”

  A tremor started in her chin, and tears were beginning to make her eyeliner pool. Maybe this girl wasn’t quite as cocksure as she’d wanted her to believe.

  “She had a bullet hole in her throat,” Jennifer said, as gently as she could manage. “Even if she’d been alive, which she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to talk. Whatever business you have with Johnny Z, you’ll have to take up with him, Miss Robbins.”

  “Don’t call me that!” the girl stood and flew at her, her face suddenly contorted with rage.

  Jennifer held her ground. “Didn’t you just tell me your name was Diane Robbins?”

  The girl balled her hands into fists and, for a moment, Jennifer was convinced she was going to have to defend herself.

  “Don’t you see? That’s the whole point.” The girl’s voice broke and her body sagged, all of the fight gone out of her. “I don’t know who I am.”

  Chapter 4

  “Let me get this straight,” Jennifer said after she managed to get Diane back to the safety of the sofa. “You’re not actually Diane Robbins?”

  “No, I’m not,” the girl declared defiantly, as if Jennifer had intended to argue with her about it.

  “And you don’t know who you are?”

  The girl nodded vigorously.

  “Think you could help me out here a little?” Jennifer asked. If the girl was suffering from amnesia, that would be one thing, but she seemed neither confused nor disoriented. And she certainly couldn’t have managed that eye makeup if she’d been either. No, she was angry.

  “If this story has a beginning,” Jennifer said, “I would appreciate hearing it.”

  “Didn’t Johnny tell you?”

  Jennifer shook her head, and the towel fell off. She dumped it on the floor, and Muffy immediately nested in it. Her hair would just have to dry naturally. She’d fight with it in the morning. And she was way too tired to wrestle with Muffy over the towel tonight.

  “Johnny doesn’t talk much,” Jennifer explained. “At least not to me. He told me nothing about you. All I know is that he was supposed to pick up something from the woman at the clinic. What was it?”

  Diane shook her head and stuck out her chin. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Jennifer sighed. Diane wasn’t any easier to talk to than Johnny. “Who made the contact with the woman at the clinic?” Maybe she’d do better answering direct questions.

  “I found her, but Johnny set up the meeting. Valerie and me were exploring Macon, and we kind of got lost on the south side of town. We finally stopped at a little shopping area, looking for a phone to call somebody to see if we could get directions back to campus.”

  “What campus?”

  “Lanier. She and me are freshmen there.”

  Jennifer nodded, hoping she wasn’t an English major. “So you were looking for a phone...”

  “Yeah, and we found one in front of this Chinese restaurant. Valerie was calling, only nobody was in their rooms, so I wandered down the way to see what was in the center. And that’s when I saw it. I almost died.”

  “Saw what?”

  “The clinic.” She said it as though she thought Jennifer was stupid.

  “But why did that upset you?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. Her voice choked up again, and she blanched an alarming shade of pale. She seemed so young, so vulnerable under all that makeup. Jennifer reached out a hand to her, but she shrugged it off and sat up straight.

  “It looked familiar to me, you know? But it was a bad kind of familiar, a kind of sick-to-my-stomach familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever been so freaked out in my life.” Even now her hands shook, just talking about it.

  “I guess Valerie thought I was going to pass out. My legs started to give way. She left me and ran inside to get some help. A nurse came out, the one that died. She came over to me and reached down to pull me up and that’s when I saw them. She had the weirdest eyes, one blue, one brown. And I guess that’s when I fainted.”

  Terrific. She hoped all this was making more sense to Diane than it was to her. “So you see this nurse and you faint.”

  “Dead away.”

  “And then?”

  “I couldn’t have been out more than a minute or two. I woke up inside the clinic, in one of those awful, sterile examining rooms, like something out of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest where they fried that guy’s brain. That same nurse was holding some foul-smelling stuff under my nose. I grabbed her arm and said, `I know you.’ She just stared at me. Another woman came in and said the doctor would be in in a minute. All I knew was I had to get the hell out of there. No way I was waiting for some doctor, not in that place.”

  “So you left.”

  “I grabbed Valerie and we ran. But I’d seen her name tag. B. Hoffman. We took off driving until we found the interstate. When I got back to the dorm, I called every private investigator in the phone book. The only one that would help me without money up front was Johnny Zeeman.”

  Seemed like Johnny was everybody’s last resort. “So what did you tell him?”

  “What I told you—that and the fact that I know I’ve been there before, a long, long time ago, and that it made me really, really scared. I want to know why.”

  “But what does all this have to do with your not being Diane Robbins?”

  “I called my mom and told her about finding the clinic and that I’d contacted Johnny. She made this kind of gurgling sound over the phone. And then she said something like, `How could you possibly remember?’ And when she said that, I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That she wasn’t my mother, not my real mother.”

  Whoa. The girl had just lost her again. “Not your mother?” Jennifer repeated. “How—”

  ”I don’t know. I just knew. She insisted that I come home. I told her no way. She started crying. She kept saying, `It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I should never have let you go to Lanier.’ Then she said, `They threatened that if we asked any questions, they’d have to take you back.’ She did tell me my name had been Cat, but she didn’t seem to know any more than that, didn’t want to know.”

  “Are you saying you were adopted?”

  Diane looked at her again with that same you’re-too-dense-to-live expression. “Duh.”

  “Did your mother give you a last name?”

  “No. I wanted to know why she hadn’t told me, but she kept saying she couldn’t. She warned me to stay away from the clinic, not to talk to anyone and not to say another word to Johnny.”

  “But who set up the meeting with Hoffman?”

  “Johnny. I don’t know what he said to her, but she agreed to help. She promised to pass him some kind of information—”

  ”Only something went wrong.”

  “God, they killed her, like in some spy novel.” She grabbed Jennifer by the shoulders, her nails digging into her skin, and stared into her face. “They killed her because of me.”

  “We don’t know that,” Jennifer soothed, prying Diane’s nails off her shoulders. “Besides, the only people responsible for her death are the ones who shot her.” Technically, at least.

  None of this made sense. Even if Dian
e Robbins had been adopted, what did adoption have to do with murder, especially now, so many years later? Or with a fertility clinic?

  Jennifer’s heart went out to this girl, who was now slumped back against the couch looking like some street waif. She wanted to touch her, but she didn’t dare. Diane had obviously spent a lot of years constructing barriers around herself, and one sob fest wasn’t about to bring them down.

  She wished there was something she could do to ease the girl’s misery, but the plain truth was that Diane or Cat or whoever the heck she was should be talking with the police, not to Johnny Z, and certainly not to some would-be mystery writer.

  “I want you to promise me you’ll go straight from here to the Macon Police Department,” Jennifer insisted.

  The fire was back in Diane’s face. “And tell them what? That I’m so screwed up that seeing the front of a doctor’s office makes me crazy? No way. I hired your agency. Now do something! And I won’t drag my mother into this. If anything were to happen to her or Dad...You’ve got to promise me, nothing will happen to my parents.”

  It was tempting to promise, to insist that everything was going to be fine, that it had to be some big misunderstanding. But in her heart, Jennifer was afraid Diane, as tough and self-assured as she seemed on the outside, was in the middle of something big enough to include murder. Something that would take a lot more than words to fix.

  Chapter 5

  “I won’t get involved. I won’t get involved. I won’t get involved,” Jennifer repeated like a mantra, punching her pillow with her fist and throwing herself hard against the bed, as if that was all it took to rid her mind of Diane Robbins.

  It had taken her close to an hour and two cups of hot chocolate to get Diane’s hands to stop shaking enough so she could drive herself home. There was nothing she could do to help, no matter how much she might want to. Nothing. She wasn’t even a real P.I., just a tagalong, and not a very good one at that. She had done the best thing—the only thing—she could by turning the girl out.