Page 93

CHAPTER 91

CINDY SAT ACROSS from Joann Kinney at her dining table, a platter of walnut-raisin muffins between them and fresh coffee in their mugs.

Cindy said, “I’m writing about a number of murders by an unknown person who is being called the ‘I said. You dead’ killer. This could be a book or a newspaper series. I am hoping that I can identify him and turn the information over to the police.”

“I’d be happy to help,” Joann said. “I think you called me because you think I know who this killer might be.”

“But can’t prove it, right?”

“Totally right,” Joann said. “I think I’ve been waiting for you to call me since my daughter was killed by her monster of a husband.”

“Maybe I can help you now. Do you have any evidence against the monster, Joann?”

“I don’t know for sure. But I loved Angela so much. She would never, never …” And then she pushed her glasses up into her hair, snatched a paper napkin from the table, and pressed it to her eyes.

Cindy reached over and took Joann’s hand.

Joann squeezed Cindy’s hand in return and apologized, excused herself, got up from the table, and walked down a narrow hallway.

Cindy looked around the plain white-painted room. There was a wall of bookshelves, a brown velvet-covered sofa and a matching reclining chair, a coffee table with two or three photo albums and a shallow bowl holding wrapped candies. At the far end of the room were sliding doors opening onto a balcony with a view of trees and blue sky. Centered over the sofa was a lovely portrait of a young woman in her thirties. She had a soft gaze and a shy smile. She looked like a good person. A sweet girl.

Although Angela Palmer had died a year and a half ago, Cindy knew that her call today had cracked her mother’s grief wide open.

Joann had told Cindy that she and her husband, Victor, Angela’s father, had lived in this condo for only a few years. Then shortly after Angela died, her husband had a fatal heart attack. So she now lived here alone.

Joann came back into the living room and sat down at the table. She pulled her thick auburn hair back into a ponytail and reset her eyeglasses. Cindy thought that Joann’s eyes looked permanently reddened from crying.

“So, where were we?” Joann said, giving Cindy a wistful smile.

“Um. You were saying that Angela would ‘never’ but didn’t finish …”

Joann leaned back in her chair, let out a short scream for effect, and then straightened up and said, “As I was saying, Ange would never have married that rage-a-holic if she had known about his temper and his absence of actual feelings.”

“For example?”

“Too many to list,” Joann said, “but they’d fight. He’d say ugly things to her, insults, threats, curses, and he’d never apologize. Never. And Angela would blame herself. But what Brett Palmer had was charm. He could be funny. Socially, he wasn’t aggressive. Privately, with my daughter, he was unfeeling and cruel. From what Angela told me, the man was a sociopath.”

Cindy pictured the mild-looking man she and Lindsay had met with. Was he a sociopath? She’d known a few. They were excellent at masking. She looked toward the painting on the wall over the sofa and asked, “Is that painting of Angela?”

Joann nodded yes and passed her phone over to Cindy with the screensaver face up. It was a photo of Angela and Joann at the beach, their arms around each other, both smiling, relaxed, happy.

“When my husband took this picture, Ange was five days away from getting married,” Joann said. “I took this one of Ange with Vic.”

Cindy looked at the photos of happy times before the unthinkable tragedy. She asked, “None of the three of you had any sense then that Brett was dangerous?”

“Not then,” Joann said. “Like I said, he had a nice way about him. Vic and I thought Angela had made this decision too soon, but she was in love.” Joann took back her phone and smiled sadly at the photo. “And maybe Brett didn’t kill Angela. There was no physical evidence that he did. No witnesses. No drunken confession.”

“Joann, did you see writing on the bottoms of Angela’s shoes?”

“Yes. ‘I said. You dead.’ Why would Angela write something like that on her own shoes? Makes no sense. It’s not written from the point of view of a suicide, is it?

“But I wonder if we would have even suspected Brett if it wasn’t for what happened to his first wife, Roxanne. You heard how she drowned in the bathtub? Yet there was no evidence of ‘foul play.’ No drugs in her system, no suicide note, no sign of a struggle. The police thought Roxanne may have drowned herself on purpose. Or did Brett kill her? In my opinion, yes, he did. I’ve talked to Roxanne’s mother a couple times. Donna Sands. It was hard to be with her. Even though her daughter died longer ago, this pain doesn’t really go away. We were both so raw.”

“Did Donna think Brett killed her daughter Roxanne?”

“Donna never accused Brett. But I think she holds Brett responsible. She definitely thinks he seduced her daughter, emotionally abused her, then divorced her—and that Roxanne then killed herself out of shame, depression, and heartbreak. Donna doesn’t say so, but I’m sure she thinks my daughter killed herself, too. But I’m sure that she didn’t. I never ever thought that Angela killed herself, Cindy. She would never write something as dumb as ‘I said. You dead’ on her shoes. Not suicide. Not Angela.

“Brett Palmer killed my daughter. And I also blame Brett for breaking her dad’s heart and killing Victor, too.”