2 Tennyson
Jace had really outdone himself with the breakfast spread on the plane. There were donuts doused in green and red glaze with sprinkles, palm tree-shaped cookies, flooded with royal icing wrapped in strings of brightly colored Christmas lights, along with croissants, and fresh muffins. Ten was stuffed. He’d already had a croissant and a donut and grabbed two cookies before Ronan got his grubby hands on them. The kids were settled in their seats with movies, coloring books and cookies. All was right with the world.
“I still don’t understand why you have to interview the husband now ,” Jace said, looking a little more than just put out. “Why can’t you, Ronan, and Jude stay down here for a few extra days after we go home and talk to him then, instead of interrupting our vacation. Again. Ten’s with me on this, right?”
The absolute last thing Ten wanted was to be dragged into this minefield of a conversation. “It’s five days until Christmas. I don’t mind if you guys work on this until midnight on Christmas Eve morning. After that, you’re all off the clock. The kids deserve to have you present for two days. Surely detectives of your caliber can wrap this up in the next seventy-two hours.”
Cope snorted, but kept his mouth shut.
“What was that?” Jude called to his husband.
Cope held his hands up in an I’m-innocent gesture. “I didn’t say a word.”
“Uh, huh,” Jude muttered and sank lower into his seat. “From what I’ve read in the report, there were no other suspects in the case, but the husband. The coroner estimated Jillian’s time of death was between midnight and one on Christmas morning. Her parents, Lorna and Jim hosted an annual Christmas Eve party, with the last guest leaving a little after two. Jillian and Patrick had been at the party earlier in the evening and had gone home around ten. No one noticed there was anything amiss between them at the party.”
“What did Jillian do for a living?” Ten asked.
“Please don’t encourage them,” Jace said with a shake of his head.
“She was a legal secretary for a large personal injury lawyer in Saugus.” Ronan flipped through the pages of the report. “According to her boss, Thomas Parks, everyone loved Jillian. She was a hard worker, always willing to put in overtime and brought homemade cookies into the office every Friday. She never took a sick day and was a model employee. At least she was until she married Patrick.”
“Let me guess, that’s when her work started to slip and she was calling out sick every week?”
Ronan shook his head. “No, Ten, that’s when Jillian started walking into doors, stumbling down stairs, and bumping her head against her own steering wheel with the car parked in her driveway.” He’d made air quotes over each of Jillian’s “accidents.”
“Oh, God,” Ten whispered. “He started abusing her after they got married?”
Fitzgibbon nodded. “Jillian’s mother talked about how wonderful Patrick was, always bringing her daughter flowers and taking her out for romantic meals. Everyone loved him, including her parents and the lawyers at Jillian’s firm. When she started showing up with bruises, people believed her when she said she’d hurt herself.”
“Everyone but Kenny, Jillian’s father. He was suspect of Patrick’s behavior from day one. Said that he seemed to be putting on the dog to impress the family, but that literally evaporated at the wedding. Apparently, Patrick was overheard shouting at his new wife for dancing with one of her male cousins at the reception.” Jude shook his head. “What an asshole.”
“Another legal secretary at the law firm started to catch on to what was really going on at home and insisted that she take pictures of Jillian’s bruises, just in case. This was three weeks before Christmas. While she was allowing herself to be photographed, Jillian admitted to the friend that she was working with one of the lawyers at the firm to divorce Patrick.” Jude set down the file and looked around the table. “We all know the most dangerous time for someone leaving an abusive relationship is when the partner uncovers the plan to walk away.”
Ten heard that harsh truth all the time from Ronan when they watched true crime documentaries after the kids were in bed. “I get what you’re all saying, but if there was this much evidence against the husband and there was no one who held a grudge or disliked Jillian, why wasn’t this a slam dunk for the police to arrest Patrick?”
“Patrick was the one who called 911 that Christmas morning. He said an intruder had broken into their house and killed his wife, who was downstairs wrapping Christmas presents, while he was in bed sleeping. There were signs of forced entry when the police arrived and Patrick was covered in his wife’s blood, because the dispatcher talked him through CPR while the cops and ambulance were in route,” Ronan said.
Fitzgibbon picked up the story, “Nothing at the scene indicated that the crime was staged. There was a large boot print on the front door, which didn’t match any of the footwear in the Marsh home. Jillian’s purse and Patrick’s wallet sat on the dining room table and were undisturbed. Cash and credit cards were still inside them. There were also several fingerprint smudges that didn’t match either spouse. They’d had a Christmas open house three days before, so it was expected there would be prints that didn’t belong to either of them.”
“Last, but not least,” Jude began. “None of the weapons in the house was a ballistic match to the gun that killed Jillian. There was no gunshot residue on Patrick’s hands, and no high velocity blood splatter on his clothes which happens with the bloody mist that blows back after a shot hits a human target.”
“It sounds like a mafia hit,” Ten said. He and Ronan had watched The Godfather trilogy recently and the murder seemed like it could have been committed by Michael Corleone himself.
Ronan grinned at his husband. “The Salem Police investigated the idea that the killing could have been a murder for hire, but there was never any evidence of Patrick transferring or taking out large sums of money. In fact, their checkbook balanced perfectly, which never happens in these kinds of cases.”
“No wonder the case stayed at square one and went cold,” Jace said, not looking as upset as he had earlier.
“Exactly,” Fitz agreed. “That’s why when Lorna started calling me, I dove into the case file.”
“Hold on a second,” Ronan said. “You said Lorna’s been calling you for over a year, since the cold case department at Salem PD was established.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Have you been working on this case for all that time without telling us?” Ronan sounded hurt.
“Not exactly.” Fitz shrugged and sat forward. “I worked on it when we were stuck on other cases or between cases. I met with Lorna and Kenny on several occasions, but didn’t develop any new leads.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jude asked.
“This case is as unsolvable as it gets. There have been no new leads in ten years. The husband packed up and moved to Florida. He’s got a thriving landscaping business and a new family. There have been no incidences of domestic violence in the time he’s been in Florida and he hasn’t been in any other kind of legal trouble. Patrick pays his bills on time and volunteers at an animal shelter on Saturdays. I didn’t have anything else to go on.” Fitz slumped back in his seat. “I’d planned to read you both in on this case a month ago, when we were supposed to go to Florida for Thanksgiving. I was going to pay Patrick a visit then, but the trip got cancelled when River and Barb’s daughter was born early. So, here we are.”
“Here we are,” Ten muttered under his breath. “I don’t like this at all. Every time we go somewhere this happens. Work gets in the way of relaxing and unwinding. Fitz, why can’t you call that friend of yours, the one we met with when River was in jail for his business partner’s murder? Let the police handle this matter.”
“Mark Richmond,” Fitz said. “I’m absolutely ready to get him in on this case when there’s something he can do. Right now, there’s nothing, just a ten year old suspicion that this man killed his first wife.”
Ten sighed. He knew there was nothing else he could say on the matter. This poor woman had been brutally murdered in her own home early Christmas morning and her family had spent the last nine Christmases missing their daughter and wanting justice for her death. What would it hurt if the guys investigated the husband for a few days? “Okay, Ten said on a sigh, “you’ve got until Christmas Eve to figure this out.”
“What’s Christmas Eve?” Jude asked.
“You mean aside from the obvious?” Ten had almost exploded at Cope, but then remembered Ronan might not have told him the plan. “River and Barb are having a party that night. It’s potluck and some of her family will be there along with neighbors and friends. They’ve got our Christmas presents. It was a good idea to ship them down ahead of time, so the kids don’t know what we did. They’re unwrapped, so we’ll have that to do when we get home from the party after we get the kids to bed, which won’t be an easy task.” Ten remembered how hard it had been the year before. Ezra hadn’t really understood what was going on, but he could feel there was something in the air. Everly hadn’t fallen asleep until nearly half past one. By the time the presents had been wrapped and put under the tree it was nearly four in the morning.
“Gotcha,” Jude said. “Are you coming with us when we meet with Patrick?”
Ten nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do everything I can to get some answers. Did you bring Jillian’s rings, Fitz?”
“I did. They’re in my bag.” Fitz pointed to the compartment above Ten’s head. “Do you want to see them now?”
“No, let’s give it a try tonight after we’re settled into the house and the kids are in bed.” The sooner Ten got his hands on the rings and could reach out to Jillian, the better, which meant they could get back to their vacation. “Everly’s out.”
“Agreed,” Ronan said. “She’s on the bench for this case.”
Ten took Ronan at his word. He knew his husband wouldn’t ask their daughter about the case, but also knew Everly had a way of finding things out on her own. All Tennyson wanted was a murder-free Christmas.
Santa, apparently, didn’t get the memo.