CHAPTER TWELVE
Ella and Ripley sat in a tiny kitchen opposite Lily Michaels, sister of the recently deceased Rose Michaels.
The resemblance was a hammer to the heart; same button nose, same brown hair.
Lily’s hair was shorter, her face gaunter, and a mole dotted her chin.
Lily was slumped in her chair, drained of everything but nicotine given the empty cigarette packets on the table.
She had another one burning right now but she hadn’t taken a drag in over a minute.
‘One second she’s here,’ Lily said, ‘then the next, she’s not.’
‘We’re very sorry,’ Ella said. It was a stock phrase that never helped, but what else was there? She couldn’t exactly whip out her own bereavement journey and measure it against Lily’s. Pain was pain, no matter how someone sliced it.
‘Can you tell us about her?’ Ripley tried. Humanizing was textbook, reminded them the body in the morgue had a face, a laugh, a favorite TV show. Probably worked great on paper, but not so much when you were throwing a question at a woman who was one stiff breeze from breaking in half.
Lily glanced at a battered acoustic guitar resting in the corner.
‘Music. That’s what we had in common. The house was full of it growing up.
Soon as she could work, Rose saved every nickel for a guitar.
Never thought she’d do anything with it, then one day she goes and tells me she’d joined a Guns n’ Roses cover band. ’
Ella struggled to merge the image with what she’d seen in the crime scene photos: a bubbly ingénue in a sundress and sandals. But Lily seemed to draw strength from the memory of her sister’s inner rock star. Ella let her talk.
‘Pity she wasn’t the singer,’ Ella said. ‘Could have been Axl Rose Michaels.’
That earned her a sniffle from Lily. It was preferable to tears.
‘Got gigs too, can you believe it? I mean, nothing huge, but she was out there one night a week living the dream. At least until she had Leo.’
‘Leo?’ asked Ripley.
‘Her boy, only just turned two.’
Ella reached for her glass of water then stopped. ‘Wait, Rose had a child?’
‘Yup. Gorgeous little thing he is.’
She looked around the room, as though toddler might waddle out from the living room and grab her leg. ‘Where is he?’
‘Lives with his dad, always has.’
Ripley leaned forward. ‘Rewind a second. Rose had a two-year-old boy? What’s the father’s name?’
‘Jared Novak. Rose lived with him until six months ago, then things got ugly.’
Ella arched a brow. This was a similar story to Amber and her cheat of a partner too. ‘What happened?’
Lily wiped her eyes with her forearm then took a drag. ‘Don’t quote me on all this, because all I got was second hand info from Rose, alright?’
Ella nodded.
‘So Jared started off just fine. He had a decent job, treated her okay, and Rose got pregnant with Leo. Not long after he was born, things went bad. Got controlling, you know? Checking her phone, timing her showers, getting pissy when she was five minutes late. Real piece of work.’
A portrait Ella could sketch from memory. She'd met dozens of Jared Novaks over the years, men who hid their real intentions behind bouquets of flowers. 'Right.'
'Then they split. Rose couldn't take his macho crap anymore, so she packed up Leo and bounced. She came here, got waitress gigs, and hit the open mic nights when she could. It was tight, but she was making it work.'
‘How long were they together before Leo came along?’ Ella asked.
‘About two years. And before you ask, no, he wasn’t like that at first. It wasn’t until Rose got pregnant that he changed. Anyway, he swooped in playing Daddy Of The Year and sued for custody.’
Ella added it all to her mental file. She was getting a read on this Jared Novak and she didn’t like his vibe at all, not to mention this seemed alarmingly similar to Amber’s ex.
Ripley asked, ‘What grounds did he have to sue her?’
Lily breathed in enough cigarette chemicals to destroy her lungs right there.
‘Depression. And the judge ate it up. Suddenly all Rose’s quirks became proof she wasn’t fit.
The bout of postnatal after Leo, the scratches on her wrists.
Hell, Jared even tried to use her music against her, said their boy didn’t need to be raised by some wannabe rockstar. ’
‘Slow down,’ Ella said. ‘Scratches on her wrists?’
Lily stubbed her Marlboro out so hard the ember skittered to the floor. She grabbed another one. ‘Rose used to cut herself, back when we were teens.’
Ella didn’t like this picture at all. The conflicting elements were mounting too high. ‘Suicide attempts?’
Lily scoffed. ‘No. Rose just thought it was cool. Rebellious. Luckily she saw sense not long after.’
‘But the scars remained,’ Ella said.
‘Yup, and that son of a bitch Jared used it against her. He had the money for some shark lawyer, so Rose had to settle for every other weekend and that was only if Jared deigned to show up. Half the time he’d call at the last minute with some excuse. Broke her heart every goddamn time.’
Jesus, Ella thought. This poor woman had been dragged through the ringer and then some. Ella wanted to reach across the cheap pressboard table and take her hand but she held back. Tears pricked at Lily’s eyes but she blinked them away.
‘Did Rose ever push back?’ Ripley asked.
‘No, the case wiped her out. Financially, emotionally, the works. She didn’t have the muscle to go another round with Jared’s lawyer. Besides, if she kicked up a fuss, Jared’d just use it as proof she was hysterical. He had her coming and going.’
‘How was she in the days leading up to... to what happened?’ Ella asked, valiantly ignoring the headache pounding at her temples.
Lily’s brow puckered in a frown. ‘Quiet. Sad. More so than usual, I mean. She’d always get bummed after Jared’s weekends with Leo, but this was different. She seemed like she’d had enough. Like she’d finally given up hope.’
Ella glanced at Mia but she was busy taking notes on her cell. And she had the audacity to pretend she wasn’t interested in a murder investigation, Ella thought idly. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. ‘Lily, do you know who Rose was with the night she died?’
The sister shrugged. ‘No clue. She went out around nine and said don’t wait up. That wasn’t unusual though, she’d often go to Roxy’s for their emo night on Sundays.’
Ella chewed the inside of her cheek and weighed her next question. There was no easy way to phrase this, but it had to be asked. ‘Lily, are you aware of anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt Rose? Anyone with a grudge, a score to settle?’
Lily wilted a little more. Her shoulders slumped like the air had been let out of her, but Ella saw the anger just below the surface.
‘None beside Jared, as far as I know. She wasn’t the type. Too damn nice for her own good sometimes.’
Ella took a moment to process it all. This wasn’t the Rose Michaels she expected. Ella had imagined a quiet girl, a church-going type. ‘Was Rose seeing anyone new?’
‘No. She was out a lot, but she kept telling me she was done with men. I figured maybe she was telling me, you know...’ Lily made a vague hand gesture that could’ve meant anything from gay to Amish.
‘It ain’t exactly the French Quarter around here.
Maybe Rose thought I’d judge if she started bringing home a girlfriend. ’
Mia hummed and made another note. Ella thought everything through, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the evidence bags.
She found the ballet dancer from Rose Michaels’ scene and held it up, watching Lily’s face carefully for any sign of recognition.
A quivering lip, a twitch in the eye. A lot of interviewees switched their weight to their opposite leg when confronted with a striking visual aid too.
‘Lily, do you know what this figurine might go to?’
Lily squinted at it. ‘No. Where’s it from?’
‘We found this in your sister’s hand. But we don’t know why.’
The sister pushed two fingers against her eyelids and sobbed. ‘What is this? Some kind of sick game to him?’
Ella wished she could offer some kind of comfort, but in moments like this, words held no weight. Anything you could say was just an empty platitude. ‘We’re figuring that out,’ she said.
‘You’ll catch who did this, right?’ Lily cried. ‘You’ll find this sick freak and put him in jail?’
‘That’s why we’re here.’
Ella looked at the ballet dancer in her hand. Lily had given her nothing on it, which was what she’d expected but not what she’d wanted. She was about to put both bags away when something made her stop.
A hunch, nothing more. Merely the nagging sense that if the figurines connected the victims, then showing each victim’s figurine only to their own family was the wrong approach.
These objects didn’t belong to the women they were found on.
That was the whole point. The killer had brought them, so where had they come from?
She pulled out the second evidence bag. The snowman. Ceramic, white body, black dot eyes, orange nose. Found on Amber Holloway’s necklace.
She held it up.
‘What about this one?’
Lily glanced at it and nearly dropped her cigarette. ‘Where the hell did you get that?’
Ella sensed a revelation on the horizon. Her heart began to pound. ‘You recognize it?’
The sister reached out and took it. ‘Yes… this is… Rose’s. It’s from her music box.’
Ella caught Ripley’s eye. They had something.
‘Lily, you’re sure this belonged to Rose?’
‘One hundred percent. See this little blue mark on the bottom? Leo did that, with a blue pen. I remember Rose rushing to stop him doing it.’
Ella felt the back of her neck go cold. ‘This happened here? In this apartment?’
‘Yeah. The music box was a gift from Jared. I told you, he bought all kinds of crap for her.’
‘The music box. Is it here now?’
‘No. Rose gave it away, along with a bunch of stuff Jared got her. Clothes, ornaments, you name it.’
‘To who?’
‘I don’t know. A donation place. She bagged it all up and dropped it off somewhere, but I don’t know where. I’m sorry. Where did you find the snowman?’
Ripley had stopped taking notes on her phone. Ella ran through likelihoods in her head and came to two possibilities: whoever Rose gave the snowman to was the one who killed Amber Holloway and planted it on her body, and that person might have been her ex-boyfriend, Jared Novak.
‘Lily,’ Ella said. ‘You told us Jared made threats. That he said Rose would regret leaving him. Did he ever threaten physical violence? Specifically.’
The sister wiped her eyes with her sleeve and said, ‘Pretty much. I mean, he didn’t say it outright, but he implied it. Rose said he’d say things like ‘you’ll regret this.’
‘We need to know where Rose donated that music box to,’ Ripley said. ‘Are there receipts? Or any donation centers you know she went to?’
Lily’s hands began to move hysterically, as though the burden of responsibility was too much to bear. ‘I’ll try. I’ll look around. But I can’t promise. I don’t know everything she did.’
Ella took the snowman back and turned to Lily. ‘Thank you. You’ve been incredibly helpful. If you think of anything else, like the name of the shop or anything Jared said – call me directly.’ She placed a card on the table.
Lily didn’t pick it up. She was staring at the spot where the evidence bag had been, as though the snowman’s ghost was still sitting there on the pressboard.
Ella and Ripley showed themselves out. The door clicked shut behind them and the sound of a woman crying followed them down the stairs and all the way to the cruiser.