Evidence of Murder

reason. “But they’d only been married a few weeks.”

“I can show you.” He dove for the table in front of her, rummaged around in the slippery piles of comics, and came up with a pink vinyl photo album. He plopped it on Theresa’s knees, startling her into spilling the coffee on her jeans.

She set the mug down after Drew cleared a spot among the comic books for the wet bottom. The photo album had a Hello Kitty emblem in one corner but no other markings. It had one subject: Jillian Perry.

Photos of Jillian on the houseboat, at the beach (in a maternity bathing suit), the grocery store, a few with endless racks of comic books behind her, obviously Drew’s shop. At the hospital, a scrunched-up, red-faced Cara in her arms. Aside from the baby, no one else. In a few shots, other people stood near Jillian but Drew had cropped them out, cutting people off to just a sliver of human. Only Jillian remained.

“See?” Drew seated himself next to her on the couch, too close, reaching over to turn the pages faster to point out photos in which Jillian appeared as especially lovely. “See how happy she was? She glowed when Cara was born. Just glowed. Here’s her old apartment, before she moved in with Evan. She made the curtains in that nursery by hand. They matched Cara’s eyes, see?”

“Uh-huh.” She really wished he’d move over.

He flipped another page. “Now this is after the wedding.”

He missed a photo op like Jillian in a veil? “Did you go?”

“To the wedding? Yeah.”

“But you didn’t take any pictures?”

The muscles in his cheek tightened to cords. “Nah. Look at her face. This is a week after the wedding.” He pointed out a photo of Jillian on the deck of the boat, a comely Eskimo in a pink parka, the baby a bundle of swaddling against her chest. Jillian smiled, but only smiled. No glow, and even a tiny line of worry above her eyebrows.

“Perhaps she was uncomfortable. It had to be freezing out.”

“And here.” Jillian by her car, obviously the same day, inserting her key into the door lock, only the barest of smiles and a discomfited one at that.

Jillian in her apartment, scrubbing a pan in the sink. Jillian holding Cara, with a smile, yes, but a tired one, apprehensive around the corners. The carefree grin of the earlier photographs had been erased. If Jillian hadn’t been afraid of something, she’d at least been very, very concerned.

Still, Theresa thought it might not be wise to encourage Drew to blame Evan. That might invite further disaster. “Having an infant is exhausting, Drew. I can attest to that.”

“She could have given perky lessons to Disney employees two months after Cara’s birth. All of a sudden, at five months, she’s tired? The only thing that changed was Evan.”

“And her apartment. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping well in a new place. Maybe Cara wasn’t. That’s the way it is with babies, Drew, one month isn’t necessarily like the next. And marriage is a big change.”

He sat close enough for her to notice the ink stains on his fingertips, and that perhaps he should launder his clothing more often. “She went from smiling to not in just a few days. Maybe I haven’t walked down the aisle myself, but I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

She studied the photographs, the creepily plentiful photographs. The change in Jillian’s mood did seem apparent…but there could be many reasons for that. Perhaps Jillian didn’t like living on the old factory grounds, or couldn’t sleep with the noise of the train tracks nearby. Perhaps Cara had developed a health problem, even something mild, that Jillian worried about but did not discuss with the childless Drew. And the first few months, the first year, of marriage were the hardest. She might have had a habit of calling her old friend after a good blowout with her husband. And perhaps Drew had kept only pictures that proved his theory, that Jillian had married the wrong man.

Or perhaps Jillian thought marriage would finally dampen Drew’s obsession with her, and that had not happened. After all, Evan did not appear in the photographs to prompt that touch of fear in Jillian’s eyes. Only Drew had been present.

“You’ve known Jillian for four years, you said?”

“Yeah, four years and a couple of months.”

“Did you only recently get a camera? This album begins, what, five months ago?”

He spoke without hesitation. “This is the current one. I have others, um, at least seven. Would you like to see them?”

Eight photo albums of nothing but Jillian Perry. How had she walked that precipice of her own with this man for four years? Maintained a friendship without anger or despair? Kept him from falling into the abyss? Even marrying hadn’t helped. No wonder she had trouble smiling for the camera.

All at once Theresa’s skin crawled. She had done enough investigating for one day. The album slid from her lap as she stood; Drew Fleming caught it, cushioned it from harm. “Sorry, no, I have to get going.”

He grabbed her arm just above the wrist. “But I have some really good ones.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“You have to understand, Theresa.” His fingers tightened. “I’m trying to show you what happened to Jillian. I knew her better than anybody else.”

Her thighs gave a twinge as she struggled to rise, her arm beginning to feel pinched. Afraid she didn’t want to know the answer, she asked, “What happened to Jillian?”

His eyes were shiny, the blue glacier hard. “Evan did.”

She breathed out in relief. For a moment she had expected a confession. Then she slid her arm from his fingers, stammered something about her daughter needing help on a school project, and thanked him for telling her about Jillian. She crossed the floor in four steps and pulled at the sliding door, her fingertips slipping from the shallow handle.

“No problem.” He slid the door open for her and she escaped the cabin. Frigid air slapped her cheeks, woke her up. The deck swayed under her feet.

Still think he’s harmless? Theresa asked herself.

Now Drew looked up at the gray haze that represented the sky. “You’ll let me know what the doctors say, right?”

“I’ll ask them to call you.” This didn’t guarantee that they would-normally medical information would be released only to the next of kin-but there was nothing she could do about that. From the rear deck she could see the copse of woods where the body had been found, and again felt that frisson of worry. Jillian Perry had practically died on her stalker’s stoop. “You said you thought that Jillian might have been coming to visit you?”

Drew had already followed her line of sight. “Yeah. I mean, it’s right there. I could have seen her from here.”

“Were you home all day on Monday?” A nice way of asking if he had an alibi for the time of the alleged crime.

“No, I was at the shop. I’m open nine to seven.”

“Did Jillian often walk here to visit you?”

He thought about this, holding his body tighter in his too-thin coat. “No, she always drove.”

“Always?”

“Yeah. Jillian wasn’t into exercise, believe it or not, despite her figure. She always told me, ‘I’ll jog only if someone’s chasing me with a gun.’” The laugh faded from his lips as quickly as it had appeared; obviously he thought someone had chased Jillian, right into an icy death.

She climbed onto the back of the boat. “Does this…craft…have a name? I don’t see one.”

“It’s on the front.”

She waited.

“What else? It’s Jillian.” He shrugged as he said it, with a wry smile that seemed so reasonable, so normal, that her anxiety dissipated like a wisp of hot air on an icy day. Drew Fleming was not the only man who had ever carried a torch for an unattainable woman. And if Drew Fleming had killed Jillian, why wouldn’t he sit back and let her be written off as a suicide? Why show up at the lab insisting on murder? Obsession could turn every bit as murderous as greed, but not as often. Greed remained the far more common motive.

“Thanks for talking to me,” he added. “I’m just glad that someone else cares about her besides me and Cara.”