He called Baronick from behind the wheel of Seth’s car. The detective answered by asking about Zoe. Once assured she was out of the woods, he told Pete, “I’ve had Jenna cooling her heels in an interview room. I knew you’d want to be with me for the interrogation.”
“You got that right. I’ll be there in five.”
He found Baronick leaning on the front counter at HQ. “We have to quit meeting like this,” the detective said with his too-bright smile.
Without responding, Pete led the way through the door and down the hall to the interview rooms. A uniformed officer stood outside one of the doors and held it open for them.
Blonde, petite Jenna Haggerty Kidman sat alone, her eyes red and face streaked with tears blackened from mascara. A pile of crumpled tissues covered the table along with the box they came from. Nothing about her screamed “killer.”
She didn’t say a word as Pete and Baronick sat across from her. Nor did she meet their gaze, keeping hers on the table. Baronick read the Miranda warning. She nodded when he asked if she understood.
“Are you sure you don’t want an attorney present?” Pete asked.
“I’m sure.” Her voice sounded like a four-year-old’s.
Baronick folded his hands and leaned forward on the table. “Let’s start at the beginning with Dustin and Elizabeth Landis.”
A fresh pool of tears gathered in Jenna’s eyes. “I was totally in love with Dustin. He was the sweetest, gentlest man I’d ever met. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Marry him. When I found out he was already married, I was devastated. But I still loved him. Still wanted to be with him.”
Pete interrupted. “You told me you weren’t a homewrecker.”
She lifted her tormented gaze to meet his. “I didn’t wanna be. But I truly believed he loved me. I knew in my heart if his wife wasn’t in the picture, he’d come back to me.”
“What did you do to get his wife out of the picture?” Baronick’s voice was soft but carried an edge behind the feigned sympathy.
Jenna dropped her gaze to the tissue, but not before Pete caught a hint of something hard and cold. Steel behind the cotton candy. Her voice, however, retained its little-girl-lost vulnerability. “I’d had some problems with rodents at my apartment and still had some of the rat poison in my cupboard. I figured no one would ever think to check for it after she died. I took some with me and went to see Dustin when his wife wasn’t home. I hoped he’d changed his mind, but he hadn’t. When he went in the other room, I mixed the poison into the sugar bowl. I knew Dustin never touched the stuff. And I only used a little so it wouldn’t be obvious. She was supposed to get sick and die.”
“But she didn’t,” Baronick said.
“Oh, she got sick all right. A mutual friend told me Dustin was worried about her and was taking such good care of her.” Jenna wrinkled her nose. “Not exactly what I had in mind. And, no, she didn’t die. Maybe she would have. Eventually.”
Pete made no attempt to sound sympathetic to her plight. “But you got impatient and decided to speed things up.”
She kept her eyes lowered.
Baronick shifted in his chair. “Who’s the man you hired to shoot Elizabeth Landis while you were out of town?”
“His name was Maurice King,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Pete scrawled the name in his notebook. He’d call Special Agent Graley as soon as they finished here, knowing she’d be thrilled to finally have a lead.
“Tell me about the gun,” Baronick said, “and how we came to find it in the dumpster outside Dustin’s office.”
“I thought once his wife was gone, he’d come back to me. I called him after I got home from my trip to offer condolences and offered to go to his house. He had the nerve to hang up on me. Originally, I was going to toss the gun and the sweats in the Monongahela River, but when Dustin refused my offer to comfort him in his time of loss, I got mad. I dug out the incriminating evidence from where I’d hidden it. I washed the clothing Maurice had worn to get rid of his DNA and stuck everything in a plastic bag I took from Dustin’s garbage. I put it in that dumpster and called in the anonymous tip.”
Pete sat back, running a hand across his mouth. How could he have been so blind? This sweet little girl-next-door had played him. Just like she’d played Frattini and the jury.
“I wanted a life with Dustin.” She went on as if pleading for them to understand. “When I saw there wasn’t going to be one, I had to make him pay. And with him in prison, no one would look any further into the case.”
“Until the judge overturned Dustin’s conviction,” Pete said.
Her eyes glistened. “I’d put that horrible time behind me. I’m married to a wonderful man. I have a beautiful son. And now that whole mess is being dredged up again. Not only was I going to have to testify and explain to my husband about the affair with a married man, but what if this time Dustin got off? The police would start investigating again. I couldn’t risk that happening.”
Pete realized the woman’s tears weren’t born from guilt but from the fear of losing her idyllic life. “You decided to get rid of anyone who believed Dustin was innocent.”
“Clearly rat poison wasn’t as reliable as I’d hoped. Working at Golden Oaks,
