A Willing Murder Read online

  “I bet she didn’t have any makeup on,” Kate said.

  “I agree.” Sara cracked eggs into a bowl. “Please tell me she didn’t wear her newscaster face to school.”

  Jack shrugged. “Don’t know, but she always looked perfect.”

  Again Sara and Kate just stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

  Jack put down his coffee. “Cheryl never looked like the other girls. She didn’t wear the same clothes as they did. And don’t ask me what she wore. You’ll have to get someone else to explain that. My point is that on that Saturday, Cheryl was cleaning her house.”

  “Where was her mother?” Sara asked.

  “I have no idea. I never saw her.”

  “Not once in the whole summer?” Kate asked.

  “She was there, I guess. A couple of times Cheryl said we had to be very quiet because her mother was sleeping. But Cheryl always ran me off when it was time to wake her mother.”

  “Sleeping during the day because of her night, uh, job,” Kate said.

  “I guess so.” Jack quit smiling. “So back to my original question—who tore the house apart? Who took the toaster that Cheryl had just bought? The pillows off the couch?” He took a drink. “All her clothes were gone. They even took her red makeup case and that was precious to her.”

  Sara’s head came up. “What did it look like?”

  “A little suitcase.” He motioned with the size.

  “Ah, that would be an old-fashioned train case,” Sara said.

  “Cheryl loved that case. It had all her makeup in it. She bought it at a garage sale and she called it by some man’s name.”

  “Mark Cross,” Sara guessed.

  Jack grinned. “That’s it. She’d say, ‘Go get Mark’ and I’d take the case to her and she’d fix her face.”

  Sara and Kate looked at each other.

  Kate spoke first. “Why would a mother make her teenage daughter dress up like a...a...all the time? Was she preparing her to follow in her, uh, footsteps?”

  Sara put eggs in the skillet. “You ever see that early Brooke Shields movie, Pretty Baby? She was a beautiful child and she was literally offered up on a platter to the highest bidder. For her virginity.”

  “Maybe that’s why Cheryl never went on dates with guys her own age,” Kate said. “She was being ‘saved.’”

  Sara grimaced. “Her mother would have had to keep strict control. With testosterone-laden boys all around and Cheryl’s teenage hormones, she wouldn’t last long.”

  Kate nodded. “She’d have to—”

  “Stop it!” Jack said in anger. “You two sound like Salem witch hunters. You’re ready to burn mother and daughter at the stake.” He glared at Kate. “Now who’s blaming the victim?” He didn’t wait for an answer because the doorbell rang and he hurried to answer it.

  Sara put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of Kate and lowered her voice. “We’re going to have to be careful with what we say around Jack. First loves can do no wrong.”

  “Cheryl’s mother was supplementing her income with prostitution. That had to have an effect on her daughter. And Verna slept all day. Drugs maybe? Or alcohol?”

  “Possibly. But maybe it was just exhaustion.”

  “Lucky her,” Kate mumbled and Sara laughed. “I was thinking that whoever killed them probably left town. How would we find them?”

  “That won’t be a problem. If our investigation leads to someone who now lives in Montenegro or wherever, then we’ll go there.” She looked at Kate. “Then you and I will go shopping in Venice.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, wide-eyed. They heard a man talking to Jack. “Who’s that?”

  “Gil.”

  “The foreman?”

  “Yes.” Sara smiled. “Good memory! I can never remember names. I’m good with faces, but names elude me.”

  “When you have as many relatives as I do, you have to memorize lots of names.”

  Sara frowned. “Are your uncles still as obnoxious as they used to be?”

  “They get worse every year.” She paused. “They want Mom and me to move in with them.”

  “And let me guess. Your mother’s income—and yours—would go into the community pot.”

  “Exactly,” Kate said.

  “I think I’m seeing why Ava let you come here.”

  “It was my decision,” Kate said defensively.

  “Anyway, Jack texted Gil last night. He thought Gil might have been in the same class as Cheryl and he was. Gil said he’d come over as soon as he got the men started on the job. He—”

  She broke off when Jack entered with another man and introduced him.

  Gilbert Underhill was shorter than Jack and as pale as Jack was dark. Gil was young but he had little hair, and for all that his T-shirt showed muscle, he had a round, almost cuddly look to him. Kate liked him immediately.

  Jack looked at Gil and Kate smiling at each other. “She’s taken. Alastair Stewart has stolen her eternal love. She has room for no other man.”

  “Not true. I’m free for whatever life holds.” Kate nodded at the book in Gil’s hand. “Is that a yearbook?”

  “It is.”

  She motioned to the stool beside her, the one Jack had vacated.

  With an eye roll at his seat being usurped, Jack poured Gil a coffee and got the sugar bowl. It looked like something he’d done before. He took the stool on the end and Sara sat beside Kate.

  Jack flipped through the yearbook to Cheryl’s class. “There she is!”

  Kate and Sara peered in disbelief at the girl he had his finger on. She was quite plain-faced, with frizzy hair and a look of “Woe is Me, the World is an Awful Place.”

  “That’s Cheryl?” Kate asked.

  “No, of course not.” Jack turned the pages. “Here’s Cheryl.”

  All the other photos looked like regular kids with bad hair, but Cheryl Morris was perfect. Hair, makeup, smile, pose. Flawless. And old. She looked to be in her twenties.

  “Wow,” Kate said. “I wish I looked that good now.”

  “I like red hair.” Gil didn’t look up from the book.

  “Do you? You don’t think it’s too loud? It’s my natural color but I was thinking of putting some blond streaks in it. What do you think?”

  “I like it just the way it is.” Gil turned to look at her. They were very close.

  “Do you have to flirt with every male?” Jack snapped. “Stewart, Flynn and now Gil?”

  Before Kate could reply, Sara spoke loudly. “So who’s the first girl you pointed out?”

  Jack looked back at the book. “Last night I remembered that one day when I was there Cheryl was washing some girl’s hair. I told Gil and he found her.”

  “Ah,” Sara and Kate said in unison.

  “Not like that!” Jack’s teeth were clenched. “Gil, help me out here. These two think only bad of Cheryl.”

  “That’s not true,” Sara said. “Her mother, yes, but not Cheryl.”

  Jack threw up his hands. “What is with you women? You’d be more forgiving if you found out Verna was an ax murderer. But—”

  “I do tend to admire Lizzie Borden,” Kate said.

  Jack shot her a look and continued. “But screwing men for money and you act like she’s the devil incarnate.”

  “She’s stealing our strength,” Sara said. “She’s giving men what they want so other women can’t use it to threaten them to take out the garbage. Loose women undermine the only real power women have over men.”

  Jack started to protest, but then he saw the twinkle in Sara’s eyes. “So this is about garbage?”

  Sara looked at Kate, then back. “More or less.”

  When Jack laughed, Sara grinned at Kate. Gil turned back to the book and the plain girl. “Elaine Langley. She married Jim Pendal. They moved away and I h