Most Wanted Read online

  “Please, we have to go,” Christine said, shaken. She didn’t want to hear the woman speak ill, much less slut-shame, and Lauren hustled away to the car.

  “She lived back there!” The woman shook the broomstick toward the backyards. “You see that second floor, the duplex with the yellow door, where the stairs go? That’s where she lived!”

  Christine looked back toward the yellow door, only because she hadn’t realized that Gail Robinbrecht had lived in a duplex. None of the newspaper articles had said that, and Christine spotted the bright yellow door, which had a stairwell that zigzagged down the back of the row house, standing out against the brick because it was of unpainted lumber.

  “That’s right! Take a good look!” the woman shouted at her. “I live right across from her door. My kitchen’s across from hers. You know how many different men I saw come up and down the stairs late at night? Plenty!”

  Christine’s eyes flared, but she couldn’t stop listening. She scanned the back walls of the other houses, and she could see that wooden stairwells had been added to many of them, so they all must have been duplexes with the entrances around the back.

  “One man after the other, all different, they were booty calls! That’s what they’re called! Booty calls!” The woman shook her head, her lips making a bitter line. “What did she expect was gonna happen? You gonna bring home strange men? You’re gonna let them in? That’s Gail the saint!”

  Christine listened, appalled, but she started to think about the implications for Zachary. He could’ve been one of several men that Gail hooked up with, maybe even one of many. Maybe he had been telling the truth, that he’d found her dead already.

  “The neighbors on the front of the street, they don’t see what I see! You know what I think? She was a slut and a hypocrite! You play with fire? Sooner or later you’re gonna get burned! That’s what I—”

  “Miss,” Christine interrupted, “what’s your name?”

  “Linda Kent. Mrs. Kent! I’m a widow!”

  “My name is Christine Nilsson, and I’m wondering if you saw anything suspicious or unusual on the night she was murdered. Did you see any man, or men, on her back steps?”

  “See something, say something! See something, say something! I already called the police! They said they’d call me back and get my statement.” The woman brandished the broom, her eyes wild. “Now get lost! Get back to Connecticut!!”

  Christine turned away, then hustled for the car.

  The woman could have been drunk, or crazy.

  Or she could’ve been correct.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Christine called Griff as soon as she got in the car, driving away from Warwick Street. She hit the SPEAKER button so Lauren could hear, then stuck her smartphone on the Drop-Stop sticker she kept on her dashboard, so she could talk hands-free.

  Griff picked up after two rings. “What?”

  “I was just at 305 Warwick Street, Gail Robinbrecht’s house. I found out that she lived in a duplex, and a neighbor around the back said that she used to have a lot of men going up the stairs at night.”

  “You went to the crime scene?” Griff asked, surprised.

  “Well, I went to her house. I couldn’t get inside, it was taped.” Christine cruised through the leafy residential area of West Chester. “But I thought you could follow up on that for the defense. It suggests that there may have been other suspects, other than Zachary. I mean Jeffcoat. He could have been telling the truth.”

  Lauren looked over, rolling her eyes, since she hadn’t been inclined to credit Kent’s ravings.

  “His defense is my job, not yours. Assuming he retains me.”

  “I know, but I thought I could help, and I’m sure he’s going to retain you.” Christine caught sight of the business district up ahead and hit the gas. “The woman’s name is Linda Kent and she lives on Daley Street. She tried to tell the police what she saw, if anything, but they didn’t get back—”

  “I have to go. Call me after you meet with Jeffcoat. Tell me if he wants to retain me.” Griff paused. “Remember, no talking to him about the case. Don’t tell him what you just told me.”

  “Why not?” Christine turned right, onto the main road, and traffic was moving along steadily out-of-town. People strolled on the sidewalks, window-shopping or waiting in line for restaurants, and folk music wafted from the open door of a bar, under a banner that read, HAVE A GR8T SUMMER, WCU STUDENTS!

  “I told you already. What are you, stupid? Conversations between you and Jeffcoat are not privileged. They’re discoverable and admissible.”

  “Okay, okay, I got it.” Christine glanced at Lauren, who was trying not to laugh.

  “God in heaven! You’re stubborn!”

  “No, I’m not, I’m just curious.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.” Griff hung up, and so did Christine, pressing END on the mounted phone.

  Lauren looked over, chuckling. “You’re driving him crazy.”

  “Because I’m curious? Curiosity is a good thing.”

  “Not for cats. You heard him.”

  “Right.” Christine fed the car some gas as traffic broke up, steering out of the town for open road.

  An hour later, Christine and Lauren arrived at the hotel, checked in, took turns showering, and flopped in matching bathrobes on the bed, then ordered Greek salads with no onions from room service and a first-run Melissa McCarthy comedy from the Spectravision. The two women enjoyed the movie, tacitly agreeing not to talk about the day, but Christine felt anxiety gnawing at the edges of her consciousness. She tried not to think about Zachary, Gail Robinbrecht, or the other murdered nurses, but they were in the back of her mind. She also knew that she’d have to talk to Marcus to say good night and she dreaded lying to him.

  Night fell outside the large smoked-glass windows, and, by the time the movie ended, Christine knew she couldn’t put off the phone call any longer. She found the remote, aimed it at the TV, and muted the credits as Lauren looked over, her dark eyes tired and her curly topknot slipping to the side. She had spent most of the movie answering texts from her mother, husband, and sons, who were getting ready for a travel baseball game and couldn’t find clean socks, the new cleats, or the dog’s Prozac.

  “You going to call Marcus?” Lauren asked with a sigh.

  “It can’t be avoided, can it?”

  “My advice, keep it short. You’re a bad liar.”

  “Good advice.” Christine picked up her phone, and Lauren rose slowly, with a soft grunt.

  “I’ll leave you alone. I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “You don’t have to, you can stay.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lauren looked back with a smile. “I get to sit on the bowl in peace? I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

  “Have fun,” Christine called after Lauren, who trundled off to the bathroom, then she speed-dialed Marcus’s number, and he picked up after the second ring.

  “Hey, babe, how you doing?” Marcus asked, still in cool mode.

  “Okay, but tired,” Christine answered, which wasn’t a lie. “I just wanted to call you quick before I went to bed. I can barely stay awake.”

  “I won’t keep you,” Marcus said quickly, and Christine felt a twinge, getting the impression that he didn’t want to talk to her.

  “How’s it going on the site?”

  “The usual crap. We’ll be able to straighten it out, but it puts us behind schedule, and you know how that goes. It’s expensive. How’s the weather? You getting any beach time?”

  “Not really, I’m helping out in the house. We have to get all the sheets out and the towels, and sweep up.” Christine scrolled quickly to her Weather Channel app, plugged in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and saw that it was partly cloudy there. “It’s not that nice a beach day anyway.”

  “Too bad. It’s been raining all day, down here. I think I actually ruined my suitpants.”

  “That sucks,” Christine said, her mood spiraling downward.
She couldn’t believe they were reduced to talking about the weather in their respective locations, one of which was fraudulent.

  “You feeling any better about the Homestead lawsuit?” Marcus’s tone softened, which only made Christine feel guilty, so she faked a yawn to bail on the conversation.

  “Yes, I am, but let’s not get into it tonight, okay? I’m so tired, and I’m tired of thinking about it. I just want to get to bed.”

  “Okay, I get it.” Marcus’s tone stiffened again, now that he had been rebuffed. “Sleep tight, and take care of yourself.”

  “Love you,” Christine said, then she realized that he hadn’t said it first.

  “Love you, too.”

  Christine hung up first, then tossed the phone aside. A wave of sadness overwhelmed her, so she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Marcus, Zachary, or anything bad, any longer. She placed the palm of her right hand over her belly and focused on her baby. Because that was everything good, growing every day, bigger and stronger, right inside her very body.

  Her breathing grew soft and even, and every muscle in her surrendered, and she drifted into an exhausted slumber before she could even begin to worry.

  About what tomorrow morning would bring.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Christine sat with Lauren in the cramped white booth, waiting for Zachary. The room was stifling, but she had already thrown up, as well as having showered and changed into the pink shirtdress that she had worn to her first appointment with Dr. Davidow. She’d packed it because it was one of her nicer casual dresses, which meant it didn’t have any pen marks or stiff patches of glue from school. Somehow, it seemed fitting for today, when she would learn if Zachary Jeffcoat was Donor 3319.

  “Do you know how you’re going to ask him? How you are going to bring it up?” Lauren asked, her brow knit. She was already sweating from the heat inside the booth, which made her worry lines glisten. She’d showered, but had to put on the same clothes as yesterday, because she hadn’t had time to pack herself, having packed three boys, their sports gear, two dogs, and the dog’s Prozac, for their weekend of travel baseball.

  “I think I’m going to try to engage him, like I would any one of my students.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “You know my theory, I let them read anything they want to, just so they read. I try not to judge. I build up their self-esteem and create a safe and nurturing environment, so we can build a rapport and they can learn.” Christine had been thinking about that last night. “So I’m going to do the same thing with him. Get him talking about something he really loves, and he’ll feel good about himself. Then I’m going to look for a way to bring up the subject.”

  “Sounds good.” Lauren smiled, in an encouraging way. “Do you want to rehearse it?”

  “No, thanks.” Christine knew that rehearsing would bring her jitters to the fore, not only the nervousness she had about asking him but from the fact that this was the last time she would see him. It wasn’t that she wanted to see him again, but she didn’t like the idea that she would never see him again, and her emotions hung somewhere in the middle, in a netherworld between attraction and repulsion. She’d tossed and turned last night, trying to visualize how this final meeting would go. And she couldn’t help but think that he could be innocent, especially after she’d learned from Linda Kent that he wasn’t Gail Robinbrecht’s only hookup.

  “You’re stressing, I can tell.” Lauren’s lower lip puckered. “Why don’t you just come clean? Tell him the truth. Tell him that the reporter thing was a lie to meet him and find out if he was your donor.”

  “No, I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

  “Why? It will be easier than trying to get him to say it. So what if he knows you lied? You’re never going to see him again.”

  Christine didn’t like the sound, never going to see him again. “But the fact that we used a donor is still a secret. You and my parents are the only ones who know. My in-laws don’t even know. I hate the idea of the exposure.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Marcus doesn’t even know that I told my parents. He wanted to wait to tell the rest of the family, maybe until after the baby’s born. You’re the only one who’s allowed to know.”

  “I’m so special.” Lauren smiled.

  “Exactly.” Christine knew Lauren was trying to lighten the mood. “It feels weird to me that he should know before my in-laws do. I want as few people to know as possible.”

  “I get it,” Lauren said, nodding. “Strictly need-to-know, like the CIA. But don’t you get tired of the family secrets? We have them, too. My aunt knows things my mother doesn’t know, my mother knows things that my sister doesn’t know. It’s hard to keep it all straight.”

  “Sometimes it’s necessary.” Christine spotted Zachary’s blond head bobbing behind the guard in the secured part of the hallway and she straightened up in the hard chair. “He’s here.”

  “Remain calm. You can do it.”

  “Fingers crossed.” Christine caught Zachary’s eye, and he smiled. He looked genuinely happy to see her, and she didn’t think it was her imagination.

  “I see him,” Lauren said, and they both watched as the guard unlocked Zachary’s handcuffs and showed him into the secured side of the booth, where he sat down, with a new smile.

  “Good morning, Christine. Hi, Lauren. You two look nice.”

  “Thank you.” Christine placed her legal pad and golf pencil on the counter, as if reestablishing her journalistic bona fides. “I have great news for you. We found you a really good lawyer.”

  “That’s great!” Zachary’s eyes widened, his relief plain, and he beamed. “How did you do that so fast?”

  “We got busy. He’s from West Chester, and he’s a very experienced criminal lawyer. His name is Francis Griffith but he goes by Griff. He knows about your case and he really wants to take you on. He gave me a business card, but they wouldn’t let me bring it in. So I’m going to have to tell him to contact you, is that okay?”

  “Sure, that’s great. You sound like you know him.”

  “No, but we met with him and really liked him. We talked about your case—”

  “You told him I was innocent, right?” Zachary interrupted, newly urgent. “I don’t want one of those lawyers who thinks it’s fine to represent somebody guilty. I’m not guilty.”

  Christine thought again of what Linda Kent had said and took a quick detour. “Zachary, can I just ask you, how well did you really know Gail Robinbrecht?”

  “Honestly, I told you, I didn’t know her at all.”

  “The first day you met her was the night before she was murdered?” Christine knew she was treading into forbidden territory, after the warning by Griff, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you exchange emails with her or texts before you met her?”

  “No, I met her in the cafeteria, chatted her up, and she said she was free that night, so we made a date. I didn’t even have her phone number.”

  “How did you know where she lived?” Christine could feel Lauren trying to catch her eye, warning her off the questions.

  “She told me the address.”

  “You don’t know if she had a boyfriend or was seeing anybody else?”

  “I have no idea. I know she wasn’t married, that’s all. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Christine answered, avoiding Lauren’s disapproving eye. “Now, anyway, to get back to the lawyer, I told him what you told us and he completely understood. I’ll have him visit, or contact you; he probably knows how to do that.”

  “He probably does. I don’t. I know I can get email, but they didn’t give me my email address yet. They’re saving all the email. They screen it before it goes to me.”

  “Oh, even the lawyer’s? He said that would be privileged.”

  “I don’t know. They told me most of the email is from media people and women who write the Death Row inmates here, whatever.”
Zachary rolled his eyes, like a goofy teenager.

  “The other thing Griff said is that he needs a retainer of $5,000.”

  “Oh no.” Zachary grimaced.

  “I hope that’s not a problem. I told him that you would pay him.”

  “But five grand? I didn’t think it would be that much. I don’t know how I’m going to get the money. I have, like, $2,300 saved. I’d have more than that, but I’m paying off my student loan debt. Could you find someone cheaper?”

  “Not that I know of, it’s the weekend. He said it’s low and I believe him.”

  “Will he take less?” Zachary’s eyebrows lifted, with hope. “He should be able to get money later, like those lawyers on TV. They say they only get paid if you get paid.”

  “That’s not the same kind of case, that’s a civil case,” Christine answered, touched by his naïveté.

  “Can you lend me the money? I would put in my $2,300, and maybe you could put in the rest?”

  “I don’t know.” Christine fumbled, off-balance.

  “I would pay you back. When you finish the book and sell it, then you could just take it out of whatever you’re going to give me. You were going to give something, weren’t you, like a consultant?”

  “I have to think about it.”

  Zachary turned to Lauren. “Could you put in some? I’ll pay you back out of the book sales, I swear to you. Right now, there’s nothing I can do, there’s no way I can make money to pay for my defense.”

  “I don’t think so, Zachary.” Lauren shifted in the chair, and Christine felt guilty for having gotten her into this spot.

  “Zachary, Lauren is only helping me as an assistant, she’s not even getting paid. If it’s going to come from anybody, it should come from me.”

  “So can you?”

  “As I said, I have to think about it. I’ll go home and think about it.”

  “Then you’ll let me know?”

  “Yes, I’ll let you know.” Christine had to move on. “Let’s table the money discussion for now because there’s one more important thing I have to tell you, and it came directly from Griff. He said that this should be our last meeting. He doesn’t want you to be discussing your case with anybody except him.”