Page 68

CHAPTER 66

CINDY PRINTED OUT a hard copy of the article about Angela Kinney Palmer from the Portland News and saved the digital version to her working file. Why hadn’t there been any follow-up on this article? Was it because Angela Palmer’s ex-husband, Brett Palmer, or some other unnamed federal agent, had shut it down?

She wasn’t ready to quit tonight. The drive, tenacity, and obsessive personality that had fueled her career as a reporter was pushing her forward now.

She looked up “Palmer” and “Kinney” in the Portland white pages and found dense columns of each. She narrowed her search to an “A. Kinney” living near the church where Angela’s funeral had been held. She made notes. But she was still working blind. If the retiree from the Portland crime lab couldn’t or wouldn’t help her, she’d call Portland’s ME and plead.

It was now past midnight. Cindy packed up her laptop and her police scanner and called Richie.

“Sorry, Rich, I’m stuck on this story. I’m closing up now. I should be home in half an hour.”

“I’m downstairs listening to music,” he said. “I parked in my usual spot. If you don’t see me, I’ll flash my lights and honk.”

Cindy easily found Richie’s twenty-year-old Bronco without his having to go to Code 3. She climbed into the passenger seat and gave her husband a good kiss. When they were on Fell Street and the straightaway toward home, she told Rich about Angela Kinney Palmer.

“She may have been a victim of ‘I said. You dead,’” Cindy said.

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, my cop friend in Verne got a lead about a federal agent who may have killed not just his second wife but his first wife, too. There’s no evidence that either death was a murder.

“But someone, the killer, made it look like his second wife had hanged herself, and wrote his slogan on the bottom of her shoes.”

“Come onnn. ‘I said. You dead’? And this was even considered a suicide?”

“Serials often like to get credit. Wouldn’t you say?”

Rich stopped his car at the light on Masonic Avenue. He asked, “You think she wrote it, then hanged herself hoping to frame her husband?”

“I know that sounds far-fetched, but yeah, it’s possible. I need help with this, Richie. Who do you know in or near Portland?”

Rich looked at his wife with a straight face, and then he couldn’t contain his laughter.

“Geez. Even my husband—”’

“Listen, love of my life, beat of my heart—”

“All right, all right … That’s enough.”

“Cindy. Even if I knew someone, I can’t help.”

“Because the case is unsolved,” Cindy said, “or it’s out of state, or blah, blah, blah. So, never mind. But to me, it looks like Angela Palmer’s ex-husband killed her, and if he didn’t do it, some maniac did and that maniac is still at large—and he’s laughing.”