It may even be a sign of a bias I didn’t know I had: This is a poor, mostly black neighborhood, so attempted murders are not such earthshaking events. If it happened in wealthy suburbia, they would be forming commissions to investigate it.
“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sound any more convinced than I am.
“And with all the expensive jewelry you’re buying her, it makes her more of a target,” I say, grasping at more straws.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Add everything up, I ain’t spent a thousand bucks. Sondra thinks I’m cheap.”
“Come on, Willie, it’s none of my business, but that locket alone is worth ten thousand. It didn’t fall off a truck, did it?”
His look is one of pure amazement. “Ten thousand? Are you kiddin’ me? For that thing around her neck?”
“What did you pay?”
“I didn’t. It was her friend’s . . . Rosalie. It was in her stuff. Sondra wears it all the time . . . it’s kind of a good-luck charm.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “Rosalie, the . . . girl that was working with Sondra, she had an alexandrite locket?”
Willie calls out to Sondra, sitting across the room, and asks her to come over, which she does. She’s wearing the locket, and Willie points to it. “That was Rosalie’s, right?”
Sondra reacts defensively, her hand covering the locket. “Yes . . . it was hers . . . I didn’t know anyone to give it to.” Some defiance creeps into her voice. “I think she would have wanted me to have it.”
“Can I see it?” I ask.
She takes it off and hands it to me. I’m not an expert, but I have no doubt that it’s real. “Rosalie had this in her apartment?” The apartment was ransacked after the murder; it would take a stupid criminal to leave this behind.
“No, we shared a safe-deposit box. All the girls had them. The guys that would come around . . . let’s just say we didn’t trust them that much.”
I nod, and hold up the locket. “Did she have anything else like this?” I ask.
“No, not really. Just some old clothes . . .” She points to the locket. “Is it worth anything?”
“Ten grand,” says Willie, and Sondra makes a sound somewhere between a gasp and a shriek.
“Oh, my God . . . ten thousand dollars,” she says, then points to the locket. “It opens. There’s a picture inside.”
She shows me how to open it, and there is in fact a picture of a quite attractive woman, maybe fifty years old. The woman is well dressed and seems to be wearing the same locket, or one just like it. In the background is a stately Victorian house; it does not take a genius to figure out that this is a wealthy woman. “Do you know who this is?” I ask.
Sondra shrugs. “She sort of looks like Rosalie, so I just figured it was her mother or grandmother.”
“Can I borrow this for a few days?” I ask.
“Sure. No problem.”
On the way home I relate the story to Laurie, who doesn’t see it as so remarkable. “Most of these kids don’t start out on the street, Andy. Some of them come from upscale families, and if they run away, they could take a piece of those families with them.”
“But Randy Clemens said it was all about ‘the rich one’ and that the others were ‘window dressing.’ We all just assumed it was Linda Padilla. What if it was Rosalie? What if she was the real target, and Linda Padilla and the others were killed to cover up that fact?”
“So we need to find out who Rosalie was,” she says. “Without prints, that’s going to be tough. Dental records don’t help unless you know who it might be, so you can get them and compare. They-”
I interrupt her, slapping the steering wheel in my excitement. “Maybe that’s why he cut off her hands! Laurie, this guy was out there committing these psycho murders, but he didn’t fit the profile of a psycho. There was no passion, no sexual molestation. He was cold and calculating, but cutting off the hands didn’t fit in with that. Now it does! Maybe he was cutting off the hands so we wouldn’t be able to identify Rosalie.”
Laurie asks me if I have any idea at all who Rosalie might be, and though I do, I’m still so unsure that I don’t want to voice it yet. Instead, I pick up the phone and call Kevin, Vince, and Sam Willis and give them each an assignment. I ask them to come to my house at four P.M. tomorrow with whatever they find out.
In the morning, I’m going to call Cindy Spodek and ask her a key question. Other than that, I’m going to just wait until four P.M. and try to relax. Because if I’m right, that’s when the shit is going to start hitting the fan.
• • • • •
I BELIEVE THAT ROSALIE was Eliot Kendall’s missing sister. Eliot had said his sister had never been found, but I think he was lying and that he had learned where she was. I also believe he hired Lassiter to kill her, and to kill the others as a way of deflecting attention.
I have to wait until four P.M. to find out if I’m right. It’s like waiting for a jury verdict. People are going to march in and tell me whether or not Eliot Kendall is guilty of murder. They won’t be doing it as part of a decision they’ve reached, but rather with the information they’ve spent the day gathering. But I feel just as powerless as when I’m waiting for a jury verdict: The final result is in the hands of others.
By three-thirty Kevin, Sam, and Vince have arrived. Only Vince hasn’t brought the answers with him; they are being dug out of the Cleveland newspaper archives and being faxed directly to me. Laurie puts out food and drinks, and we begin.
Sam has done his usual amazing job of digging information out of that bewildering world inhabited by computers and the geeks that run them. He has come up with a copy of the recently deceased Byron Kendall’s will, which is part of the public record because it involved a significant transfer of ownership of Kendall Industries, a publicly traded company. Byron, whose wife, Cynthia, died eight years ago, split his entire fortune evenly between his two children, Eliot and Tina. It notes that Tina has been missing for seven years and that if she is not found within three more years, she is to be considered deceased for the purpose of the document. In that case, Eliot would become the sole heir. As best as Sam can tell from his computer snooping, the total value of the estate is six hundred million dollars.
Kevin’s job was a lot easier: simply to get a list of all visitors that Daniel saw at the prison, as well as the dates he saw each of them. He shows that to us, and it’s consistent with our theory, but now we have to wait for Vince’s information to be faxed.
We sit by the fax machine, watching it and waiting for it to ring. This is not the most fun I’ve ever had, and by six-thirty I want to slam the silent machine against the wall. Finally, it rings, and the material from the
Some of the stories included photographs, and one of them shows the entire Kendall family, two years before Tina’s disappearance and one year before Cynthia’s death. In the picture are Tina, Eliot, Byron, and Cynthia. It is impossible to tell if the young Tina is the same girl as the one found slain behind the Dumpster. But there is no doubt that Cynthia Kendall is the woman whose picture is in the locket.
The group now turns to me to hear my theory on what has taken place. I caution them that there is much I don’t know, but I lay it all out to see if they can poke holes in it.
“Vince, I’m sorry, but I believe that Daniel hired Lassiter to have his wife killed.” Vince winces slightly when he hears this, but he doesn’t answer, so I continue. “And when Lassiter didn’t successfully frame someone else for the murder, Daniel withheld some of the payment. If you’ll remember, Marcus reported that someone else was originally charged with the crime, but the case fell apart. I think this was because Lassiter was sloppy.
“Meanwhile, Eliot’s father was dying, and Eliot wasn’t about to risk sharing the six hundred million with a sister that ran away. He tracked her down and then decided to kill her.
“Cindy Spodek of the FBI told me today that Kendall Industries has long been suspected of having mob ties and that it’s assumed they’ve laundered money. Eliot must have used these connections to hire Lassiter to murder
