Copycat Killing

11

I rubbed my left shoulder, which had suddenly tightened into knots. “I’m so sorry, Roma,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All these years I thought he’d just…left. Now I find out…I don’t know.”

“I know that Eddie’s on the road,” I said. “Why don’t you come over? Maggie’s here and there’s some of Rebecca’s apple crumble.”

She hesitated for a moment. “Okay.”

“We’ll see you in a few minutes,” I said and hung up.

I went back to the kitchen. Maggie had cleared the table, stacked the dishes at one side of the sink and was drinking her tea and talking quietly to Owen.

I dropped into the chair across from her. She studied my face. “Whoever that was, it wasn’t good news.”

“That was Roma,” I said. “I have no idea how Marcus did it all so quickly, but those are her father’s remains.”

Maggie winced and shook her head. “I was really hoping it would be someone else.”

“She’s on her way over,” I said, getting up to put more water in the kettle. I leaned around Maggie’s chair to look at Owen, pointing a warning finger at the cat. “No glaring. No hissing,” I said sternly. “This has been a horrible day for Roma. Remember what Flower’s mother said.” He looked at me, almost thoughtfully it seemed, then he headed for the living room.

“Flower’s mother?” Maggie asked, clearly confused.

“The little skunk from the movie, Bambi,” I said. “His name was Flower.”

“So what did his mother say?”

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

“I like it,” Maggie said. “But somehow I doubt Owen has seen Bambi.”

The kettle had boiled and the cinnamon rolls and the last of the apple crumble were on the table when Roma knocked at the back door. I hugged her and then she took a step back to examine my forehead. “That looks ugly,” she said, “and yes I know, you’re fine.” She looked over to the kitchen door. “I heard about Jaeger Merrill. How’s Maggie doing?”

I nodded. “She’s okay.”

Roma followed me into the kitchen and Maggie folded her into a hug. “I’m sorry about your father,” she said.

“Hey, I’m sorry you had to find Jaeger Merrill’s body,” Roma countered. She looked from Maggie to me. “Can you believe the past couple of days? Two bodies and you almost ended up in the hospital.”

“I’ve had better days,” Maggie said. “At least it didn’t rain.” Roma and I exchanged tiny smiles, which Maggie caught. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said as I hung up Roma’s jacket. “It’s just you’re the most positive person I know.”

“Do you think that’s bad?” Maggie asked as she made tea for Roma.

“No, I don’t,” Roma said, sitting down with a sigh. “I think it’s good.”

“Have you talked to Eddie?” I asked, pulling out my chair.

Roma nodded. “I have. Twice. I wish he wasn’t on the road.”

“So what happens now? What did Marcus say?” I asked.

“Dr. Abbott and her team are going to keep looking for the rest of…the remains. They’ll have to do an autopsy.” She picked up her cup and then set it down again without drinking. “However Tom died, it wasn’t natural causes. Otherwise he wouldn’t have ended up at Wisteria Hill.”

Maggie reached over and laid her hand on Roma’s arm. “I’m sorry that you had to see those bones and then find out they were your father.”

“It was more odd than sad,” Roma said. “You know, I barely have any memories of the man. I can remember, of all things, playing hide and seek with him. I was two or three, maybe. He put a blanket or something over my head and told me to be very quiet and I pretended I wasn’t there.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “And I can remember sitting on his lap, pretending I was driving. I can still see the car. It had turquoise and white bucket seats.”

“Those are good memories,” Maggie said. “You don’t have to give them up because of what happened.”

“I know,” Roma said. “For me, my father is my stepfather, Neil. I know I have a connection to those…bones, but what I really want is the truth. I want to know what happened.” She sighed. “I have some hard questions for my mother. I think maybe the answers are going to be just as hard to hear.”

“If you need anything, all you have to do is ask,” I said, and Maggie nodded in agreement.

Roma gave us a small smile. “Thanks.”

Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement by the living room doorway. It was Owen, carrying something in his mouth with Hercules as his wingman. So much for my speech about behaving while Roma was here. I glared at them, but as usual they ignored me.

Owen came purposefully into the room and dropped the head of a Fred the Funky chicken near Roma’s feet, then took a couple of steps backward. Hercules pushed it closer with a paw. He looked at Roma and meowed softly.

“Is that for me?” Roma asked, her voice suddenly raspy. Hercules gave the yellow chicken head another nudge.

I had a lump in my throat. Was it possible that somehow they understood that Roma was upset?

She looked across the table at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were trying to cheer me up,” she said, her voice still low and hoarse.

“Animals can be very sensitive to emotions,” Maggie said. “Maybe they do sense something.”

Roma turned back to the cats and leaned forward. “Thank you,” she said.

I leaned around Roma’s chair and gave Owen and Hercules a nod of approval. They started around the table for the living room. Maggie gave them both thumbs-up as they passed her chair.

Roma picked up her spoon and cleared her throat. “There isn’t anything more I can do about my—about Tom right now. So could we talk about something else? Please? Tell me, is it true that Jaeger Merrill wasn’t in fact Jaeger Merrill?”

Gossip got around Mayville Heights faster than a speeding bullet or fiber-optic Internet service.

“It’s true,” Maggie said. “His real name was Christian Ellis.”

Roma took a sip of her coffee. “So how did Christian Ellis turn into Jaeger Merrill and end up here in Mayville Heights?”

“I don’t know why he changed his name, but he might have ended up here because his lawyer back then was Peter Lundgren,” I said.

“Peter?” Roma said.

Maggie looked surprised as well. “Ruby didn’t tell me that part.”

I took a drink from my cup. “There’s a photo of the two of them in that book Ruby has. I saw it. And I was curious, so I did a little digging into Christian Ellis’s background this afternoon. I found another photo of him and Peter online.” I didn’t add that I knew Maggie wasn’t going to be able to let the whole secret identity thing go and I’d hoped I’d find some answers so she wouldn’t make herself crazy over it.

“It doesn’t sound like Peter,” Roma said. “He’s always been the defender of the downtrodden type. His practice has been running on next to nothing for years. I think he would have gone under by now except some distant relative died about eighteen months ago and left everything he had to Peter. There wasn’t a lot of money but there was a lot of very valuable land.”

“Ruby said Peter was just starting out when he was Christian Ellis’s lawyer,” I said.

“You know I think I saw him out at Wisteria Hill last week,” Roma said, tipping her bowl so she could scrape all the cinnamon-flecked apple from the bottom. “I think he was drawing the old house.”

“Peter was out sketching at Wisteria Hill?” Maggie said. Sometimes the obvious escaped her.

“No,” Roma said, shaking her head. “Jaeger or Ellis or whatever his name was.”

Maggie frowned, tenting the fingers of one hand over the top of her teacup. “Are you sure? Jaeger was a mask-maker and before that he did paintings with religious imagery—which is probably how he got into forging religious icons. Why was he out sketching an old house?”

“It might not have been him,” Roma said. “I just caught a quick glimpse of the person over by the far side of the house. Whoever it was had a hood up. It was starting to rain.”

Maggie was staring off into space. “Maggie, where are you?” I said, waving my hand in front of her face.

She shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t stop thinking about Jaeger. Now that we know who he really was, I’m wondering why he picked here to start over in the first place. We have a great artists’ community, but he didn’t exactly fit in. Most of us aren’t looking for fame and fortune. We just want to make art and pay our bills.”

“Maybe he just wanted to lay low,” I said.

“Except he wasn’t,” Maggie said. “He just couldn’t seem to live a quiet life, even after he’d gone to so much trouble to create a whole new identity for himself. And now he’s dead.”

“‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good,’” I said quietly.

They both turned to stare at me.

I shrugged. “Hamlet.”

Roma played with her tea, and then she leaned back in her chair and studied Maggie across the table. “You think he was running another scam, don’t you?” she said.

In my mind I could see Jaeger, floating faceup in the water, with that ugly gash on the side of his head.

Maggie shifted in her seat. “Now that I know about his past, I do. And I can’t help thinking that he might have been using—or trying to use the co-op in some way.” Her long fingers played with her fork. “We’re starting to do a decent business online. Some of the artists like to pack their own work for shipping. Jaeger was one of them.”

“So you think what?” Roma asked. “That he was forging artwork again and using the store to ship it to somewhere?”

Maggie shrugged. “I know it sounds crazy, but yes, maybe. I don’t believe Jaeger created a completely new person just because he was embarrassed about his past. He was up to something. I just don’t know what.”