all the lies (BREAKDOWN Book 3) Read online

  all the lies

  Peggy Webb

  A Novel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Peggy Webb

  Cover Design by Vicki Hinze

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Westmoreland House, Mooreville, Mississippi

  First Edition October 2018

  Chapter One

  Thursday, October 11

  Only twenty days ‘til Halloween. Julia knew. She’d counted. Every October for the last five years.

  As if she needed any reminders, ghoulish carved pumpkins decorated doorsteps, faux bats hung from trees, and ghosts lurked in every dark corner of her neighborhood – the one she’d deliberately chosen when she moved here. Nothing bad could ever happen in a neighborhood on a street named Harmony. On a quiet street where kids tossed balls at twilight and mothers stood in doorways calling them to supper, where the blue-ribbon school was just a few blocks away and the police station was within easy walking distance.

  For that matter, nearly everything Julia needed was within walking distance. Until now. Until Dana Perkins had pulled her out of a safe rut and asked her to dredge up investigative skills from a life she’d left behind. One of Dana’s students at Shutter Lake School was missing, and she would not rest until the girl was found.

  Less than an hour ago Dana had pressed her again about the girl as they stood in front of City Hall where Julia’s instincts told her Chief of Police Griff McCabe was lying about closing in on a killer. Everybody in Shutter Lake was up in arms about the town’s first murder. How could Julia refuse? Her adopted paradise was in an uproar and so was her friend. It wouldn’t kill her to drag out her investigative reporting chops and try to find the girl, would it?

  Julia shifted her bag to a more comfortable position on her shoulder as she strode toward her cottage, a modest craftsman where culinary herbs grew on the kitchen windowsill and light poured through the windows in every room. Lots of light. Julia couldn’t stand the darkness. Nor the pumpkins. Those grotesque masks. She wanted to walk up and slap every one of them.

  She glanced around as if someone might have read her thoughts. Satisfied that her secret was safe, she climbed the steps and fitted her key into the lock on her front door. It was painted bright yellow, the color of hope, and beyond was Julia’s orderly cocoon.

  The ornate Victorian wall-hung mirror in the hallway showed a tall, slender woman on the wrong side of forty with long blond hair windblown and blue eyes untroubled. Julia Ford, lifestyle columnist for the Firefly, a weekly newspaper few outside of Shutter Lake had ever heard of, a paper she’d have dismissed as insignificant before she came here.

  She nodded at her reflection, satisfied. Her mask was still in place, but that didn’t mean Dana hadn’t seen right through her. She was the school principal, a psychologist, for Pete’s sake. She could spot a lie a mile away, even if it was just a little white one. Why had Julie ever told Dana, of all people, she’d ask for help from her former friend in the FBI, former being the operative word?

  For reasons too numerous to even think about, Julia would never ask Patrick Richards for help of any kind, professional or otherwise. She could find that girl all by herself, thank you very much.

  She kicked off her shoes then padded barefoot across dark oak hardwood floors to her kitchen and the Eastlake sideboard she’d found at a hole-in-the wall store in nearby Grass Valley. Good Stuff, the owner called the store, an apt name for a converted warehouse filled with antiques that would cost twice as much in New Orleans or New York.

  Julia filled a mug with hot water from her Keurig then made her favorite drink, green tea chai from a mix she ordered online. No offense to Nolan Ikard down at The Grind. Or to Dana, who was practically addicted to his Macchiato Espressos.

  Fading light coming through the stained glass in Julia’s kitchen window turned her walls a rainbow of soft pink and gold. She loved that about California - the mild weather and the perpetual sunlight that gave Shutter Lake a golden glow.

  Until the glow got tainted by murder. And now a disappearance. A runaway? A kidnapping?

  She carried her drink into the sunroom she used as an office – deep wicker chairs with daisy print cushions, glass-topped tables scattered about and littered with magazines on antiques and gardening and music, a small French country desk with a comfortable swivel chair tucked into the corner. Julia flung open the curtain, set her drink on the trivet she kept on her desk and powered up her computer.

  “Let’s see where you’re hiding, Josie Rodriguez.”

  A photo in the society pages of an earlier issue of the Firefly showed an exotic dark-eyed teenager, now seventeen according to Dana. Her uncommon beauty was set off by a lace gown and pearls, compliments, no doubt, of the Windermeres who flanked her. The caption underneath read Benefactors of Shutter Lake Symphony Orchestra with Exchange Student.

  Josie was named only once in the full page article about Katherine and Quentin Windermere, her host family who not only funded the city’s symphony but also its community theater and ballet. The arts community had other benefactors, of course. The town was filled with wealthy families who had distinguished themselves in the fields of science and medicine, mathematics and technology. But none gave so generously as the Windermeres, nor made a point to attend every concert, ballet and play performed in Windermere Center for the Arts. The imposing Grecian-inspired structure had been built entirely with their money in the heart of downtown Shutter Lake.

  Julia knew this first hand. She was a great lover of music, a passable singer and a better than average pianist. She never missed an arts event in Shutter Lake and had interviewed the Windermeres many times in the last few years.

  She grabbed pen and pad and started writing. Symphony, Katherine W.

  Her cell phone blared out “Crazy.” Her mother’s signature ring. Not surprising coming from a Tennessee-born woman who grew up in the town Patsy Cline helped make famous. When Julia was ten her mother had packed them off to Chicago where Rachel proceeded to become the belle of the Windy City.

  “Mom? What…”

  “It’s all over the news about that poor girl’s murder. I think you ought to come home where you’ll be safe.”

  Julia’s mother never said hello when she called. She just barreled into whatever subject she had on her mind, completely abandoning the Southern manners she trotted out with regularity in public. Rachel Maddox Ford Chin was nothing if not the Grand Dame of Chicago society.

  Julia pictured her mother, an older and shorter but more elegant version of herself, standing in her expensive penthouse apartment - a modern conglomeration of glass and steel - and gazing at a sweeping view of the Windy City’s skyline. Her blond hair would be swept into a French twist and she’d probably be dressed in slacks and one of her ubiquitous silk blouses, tucked in to show off her still-trim waistline. She would definitely be biting off her pink lipstick while she twisted the ever-present rope of pearls around her neck.

  “Mom, if I were any safer, I’d be dead. This is the first murder in Shutter Lake’s history, and even if I wanted to write about crime, there’s none to report.”

  Until now.

  “I’m glad you’re writing about Beethoven and beef stew instead of cat burglars and serial killers. An
d so is Joe. He thinks you ought to come home, too. I’d just die if anything happened to you out there in the wilds.”

  “I’m not in the wilds, and nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  Even as Julia said it, a wave of homesickness washed over her. Eating hot dogs in Wrigley Field, made as only Chicago can. Browsing museums with her mom. Sailing on Lake Michigan with Joe and that bossy Lhasa Apso he named Sweetie Pie, which said everything you needed to know about the man who’d been the only real father Julia ever knew.

  “That does not make me feel one bit better, Julia. That poor dead girl probably thought she was safe, too.”

  “Her name is Sylvia. Sylvia Cole.”

  Was. Past tense.

  It hit Julia hard that the very thing she’d run from had finally caught up with her – crime, the more sensational the better for the media. She’d covered that beat for years for the Chicago World, the Tribune’s and the Sun-Times’ biggest rival. Too many years to think about. Too many memories.

  Julia pushed them aside and took a long, fortifying drink of her green tea chai. It had gone cold, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t as picky about her drinks as Dana.

  “You see?” Her mother let out a sigh that bordered on drama-queen level. “That’s just what I’m talking about. That pitiful departed soul was somebody’s little girl, just like you’re mine. My only little girl.”

  “According to all the black balloons I avoided like the plague on my last birthday, your little girl is over the hill, Mom.” Her mother chuckled, as Julia had intended. “Is Joe there?”

  “Not yet, but he’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Let me run and get some tea then we’ll chat ‘til he gets here.”

  Julia almost let out a dramatic sigh of her own. “I can’t. I’ve got things to do.”

  “What can be more important than talking to your mother? Maybe Joe can talk some sense into you.”

  Julia would love to talk to him, if nothing else just to let the lilting sound of his voice conjure up happy memories of a childhood spent tagging along behind him, asking a million questions. He always answered with the patience of Buddha. Her stepfather would press his case for her return, but in a way that was soft-spoken and polite.

  A way that reminded her of Chief of Police Griff McCabe. And the entire falling-down house of cards that had once been the nation’s perfect city.

  “I really have to go, Mom.”

  Before Rachel could marshal any more arguments, Julia said goodbye and ended the connection. Her computer had gone into rest mode and she brought it back to life.

  “Let’s see what else you’ve been up to, Josie.”

  School events and academic awards in math, science and music. She’d been a star student with an incredibly bright future, which made her disappearance all the more puzzling. The selection process for exchange students was rigorous at the prestigious Shutter Lake School. After winning one of the coveted spots why would a girl making such stellar grades give it up? Especially when school was in session?

  Julia continued to scan the articles. Josie had been photographed in more public appearances with the Windemeres. She had the kind of face loved by a camera lens. And she made the philanthropic white-haired couple, a handsome pair, look even better. No wonder the press always aimed a camera at her.

  “Pictures never tell the true story.” Had the Windermere’s been using their exchange students to make them look good? Was their well-documented philanthropy an attempt to hide a dark purpose?

  She printed off a good headshot of Josie and made a note to call Katherine Windermere for an interview. Symphony season was in high gear, with a fundraiser planned on the park for Saturday. She had the perfect angle to question the woman.

  The Windermeres had been on Julia’s radar for some time now, well before Sylvia’s death. The parade of foreign exchange students going in and out of their home had put her instincts on high alert. With Josie’s disappearance, she could no longer ignore her intuition. She knew how to segue from music to a missing teenager, and she had a knack for getting people to reveal more than they intended.

  Julia continued her cyber search and her note taking in the methodical, from-the-ground-up manner that had served her well in her days of investigative journalism. With a jolt she realized she’d missed this. Periodically her former editor emailed or called to lure her back. He wanted her full-time again in Chicago. Lately, he’d said he would settle for freelance in Shutter Lake.

  Big stories, though. Not her current life-style pablum. His words, not hers.

  It wasn’t until her stomach rumbled that she realized she’d missed supper, whatever that was. Probably soup from a can.

  She also noticed that her curtains were still wide open to a sky turned deep velvet. Forbidding. The only light in the room came from her computer screen and the nightlight plugged in behind a glass-top table.

  Julia sprang up so fast she almost toppled her chair, a nearly impossible feat considering it was on a swivel base. Her heart raced as she flew around her house closing curtains against the darkness, checking locks on windows and doors against anything evil that lurked in the shadows…and most of all, making certain all her nightlights were burning.

  Julia felt the almost-forgotten beginnings of a panic attack coming on.

  She said a word she used to see on the walls of bathrooms before she moved to a town that kept everything pristine, including public toilets. Then she felt a foolish stab of guilt, as if she’d betrayed her mother. How many times had Rachel, the consummate Southern belle, reminded her that a woman who made her living stringing words together ought to have a vocabulary that would express her dismay without resorting to the mouth of a common gutter snipe.

  She said it again on general principles, but also because the sound of her own voice stilled her panic. She was in the here and now, not back in the nightmare that had sent her running so hard and fast it took the edge of a continent and the Pacific Ocean to stop her. Though, practically speaking, she wasn’t close enough to see the ocean without a considerable drive.

  “Not today, you don’t.” She rubbed her forehead then took a deep breath, consciously relaxed her clenched jaw and waited.

  Nothing. Good.

  She made a rude gesture though nobody could possibly see, not with those blackout curtains on every window. Then she marched into her kitchen and opened a can of tomato soup. Plain. No frills. She loved cooking and she particularly loved experimenting, but tonight she was in no mood to add butter and real cream. Or maybe cream cheese with a touch of dill.

  Julia ate her soup standing up, still tense, ever vigilant, turning her head toward every sound. The high-pitched voices of the nine-year-old twin boys next door, arguing with their mother about coming inside to eat. The metallic clang of a metal garbage can across her back fence. The sound of an engine, slowing as it entered the neighborhood and then stopped.

  So close. Next door?

  Her adrenaline surged as she crept toward the front of her house. The sound outside her door tipped her closer toward the edge of panic. Footsteps, definitely. Her friends never showed up without calling first. They knew better.

  Had her past finally caught up with her? Was another dark horror waiting just beyond her door, taunting her that this time there would be no escape?

  The doorbell cut through her panic. Every instinct told her to just let it ring. But what if one of her friends had an emergency?

  It chimed again, and Julia headed toward her front door without even bothering to put on her shoes. Whoever was on her front porch unannounced at suppertime would have to take what they could get. Her house, her rules.

  She flipped on the porch lights then glanced through the peephole - and there he stood, not a hair on his head changed from the last time she’d seen him, standing in a hotel room, begging her not to go. Five years ago. Memory probably exaggerated the begging part, but Rick had been insistent that she stay. And very persuasive.

  She took a step back
as if she might get scorched by the laser-look from blue eyes that, like her own, had seen too much.

  He gave up on the bell and started pounding on the door. “Let me in, Julia. I know you’re in there.”

  “How do you know?” Her reclaimed view of the peephole showed his face to be neutral, a mask that told her nothing about the enemy.

  “Your mother.”

  Of course. Rachel would also have told him where to find her. She’d always adored Rick and would forgive him anything, much the way you would a favorite puppy that peed on the rug. Not that it would have taken any effort for him to locate her without help. After all, he was Special Agent Patrick Richards, FBI.

  “I have nothing to say to you, Rick.”

  “This is not personal.” He ran his hand through his hair, an old habit that separated the sprinkling of coarse gray strands and made them stand out against the black. “At least, it’s not personal between us.”

  Rick had never lied to her. Except that one time.

  “Come on, Julia. I need your help.”

  “You have two minutes.”

  She slid the chain back, unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door. A late-model burgundy Ford Explorer was parked in her driveway. He’d traded cars, then. One of the many little things she no longer knew about him.

  As he strode through her hall and into her living room, a hint of Irish Spring soap drifted her way. That, she knew. And remembered all too well.

  Rick catalogued every detail before he stopped in front of her stone fireplace.

  “Nice.” He leaned his arm against the mantle and gave her an easy smile as he nodded toward her spinet piano. “I see you left your baby grand in Chicago.”

  “I left lots of things in Chicago.”

  His expression remained neutral and his smile held. She’d forgotten how good Rick was at keeping his emotions hidden.

  “Can I sit down, Julia? Or do you want me to stand here and tower over you?”