CHAPTER 62
Jenny reached over and rested her hand on Dwayne’s leg.
He kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, but she could see a hint of a smile playing on the corner of his mouth. After work, he’d picked her up and taken her to an early dinner at Moxie on H Street in Midtown. They had lingered overly long. It was almost eight.
A police cruiser passed by. Jenny’s chest tightened. A week had gone by since her visit with Aubrey Singleton. The local news stations hadn’t said much at all about Aubrey’s death, which Jenny found odd since she was one of the few people who was obviously murdered. Being struck in the head with a hammer was no accident.
After Dwayne had come so close to catching her in bloodied clothes, Jenny had come up with a new plan. Although her plan had required her to break into one more building, the deed was done. Despite there being one name left on the list—two if she counted Lizzy Gardner—every moment spent with Dwayne made her realize she’d made the right choice. Her job was finished. The kill list had been burned and the computer destroyed. Every incriminating item had been removed from her home.
Other than the two lucky Ambassador Club members who had moved, Chelsea Webster would be the only one on her kill list to survive. Chelsea had always seemed like such a miserable, tortured soul. She was a mean one. Rumor had it that her family disowned her after she beat her grandmother. What sort of person beat up her own grandmother?
Jenny sighed. She would have to make do with the hope that Chelsea’s depression and misery only deepened as the years wore on.
Dwayne pulled his car into the driveway and killed the engine.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “You’ve seemed distant lately.”
She looked at him and said, “I’m just happy.”
He leaned over the center console and gave her a kiss. His lips felt divine. Then he climbed out of the car and came around to open the door for her.
She loved that he took the time to open doors for her. She would never tire of being pampered by Dwayne. He was a gentleman, and they adored each other.
Before they got as far as the mailbox, three police cars were speeding down the road toward them. Tires screeched as the vehicles pulled up to the curb.
“Jenny Pickett,” one of the officers called out.
Jenny looked at him and said, “I’m Jenny Pickett.”
He pulled his gun from his holster. “Stay where you are, and put your hands in the air where we can see them.”
“What’s this all about?” Dwayne demanded.
“Sir, you need to step to the side. Now.”
“What’s going on?” he asked Jenny.
“I don’t know. You didn’t call them, did you?”
“Of course not. Why would I? What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” she said.
Not too far up the road, she saw two more cars pull to the curb. Lizzy Gardner climbed out of one of the vehicles and led a pack of uniformed officers her way. The street had been blocked off. Strobe lights swirled everywhere she looked.
An officer came forward, handcuffed Jenny, and put her in the back of his vehicle.
Lizzy looked at the officer, and he dipped his chin, allowing her one moment with Jenny before he shut the door.
“It took some work,” Lizzy told her, leaning in so no one else could hear, “but it looks like you weren’t as clever as you told me you were.”
“Are we being taped?”
“No.”
“All but one is dead, but I’m afraid you have the wrong person. They won’t be locking me up anytime soon.”
“What do you mean ‘all but one is dead’? Chelsea Webster was found in a motel room with a bullet in her head.”
Jenny rocked back in the seat. “You cannot be serious.” She couldn’t have planned it better if she’d tried. “Did she leave a suicide note?”
Lizzy gave her a dubious look. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t kill her?”
“I absolutely did not kill Chelsea Webster. Like I said before, you have the wrong person.”
Lizzy stepped away and shut the door.
From behind tinted glass, Lizzy watched as the investigators took turns interrogating Jenny Pickett. It was late, and she found herself wishing Detective Chase was the person doing the interrogating. The investigator asking all the questions didn’t have half of Chase’s intimidation factor working for him.
The investigator pointed to a video showing a blurry image of a redhead walking away from an apartment complex. “It all started here, didn’t it? You knew Terri Kramer.”
“I already told you. Terri Kramer and I were college friends. I was devastated when I heard about what happened to her.”
He read off a list of names, members of the Ambassador Club. “Do any of those names mean anything to you?”
She shook her head. “I recognize a few from high school. Is this why I’m here? Did something happen to them?”
His mouth tightened. “We’ll sit here through the night if we have to, Ms. Pickett.”
“You have no grounds on which to keep me here. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Chelsea Webster, your last kill, named you personally in the note we found next to her body.”
“That’s ridiculous. That woman made my high school life a living hell, but I never once considered doing her harm. You have the wrong person. This has gone on long enough. I would like to call my lawyer.”
Lizzy heard a small commotion behind her as the detective she was sitting with was called out of the room. When he returned, he said, “Looks like she gets to go home.”
“How? Why?”
“They searched Pickett’s home and came up empty. There’s nothing there. She doesn’t even keep insecticides or rat poison in her garage. And that’s not all. We got a call from a guy named Adam Lamont, Chelsea Webster’s boyfriend. Apparently he was on the phone with her when she blew her head off. He said nobody else was in the motel room with her. Nobody made her do it.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Lizzy said. “What about all those other people?”
“Chelsea’s boyfriend found a bag in their bedroom closet. It was filled with shoes, wigs, bloody clothes—enough evidence to put the woman away for a very long time. Apparently she couldn’t live with the guilt. So first she killed the rest of the Ambassador Club members, and then she took care of herself.”
Lizzy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Jenny Pickett had thought of everything.
He headed inside the interrogation room.
She watched him unlock the cuffs from Jenny’s wrists and tell her she was free to go. By the time Jenny Pickett was allowed to leave the interrogation room, Lizzy was standing by the door waiting for her.
Their gazes locked.
The self-satisfied look on Jenny’s face would’ve been bad enough. But as she walked down the hall, she looked back over her shoulder and said to Lizzy, “There is justice in the world, isn’t there?”