Chapter Fourteen
CJ swiped the strands of hair that had fallen free of her ponytail from her damp face, then plunked her hands on her hips.
Her T-shirt clung to her sweaty skin. She’d been at this for hours.
First thing when she’d gotten up that morning, she’d taken Jenkins a cup of coffee and asked him if it would be okay to clean up Shelley’s room.
Jenkins had checked with Braddock, who’d given his okay. The forensic guy likely wouldn’t be back.
CJ had begged off breakfast with Edward. He’d been disappointed, but she had needed to do this. And, truthfully, she hadn’t been able to face him after last night. He’d always believed in her, trusted her to be smart and do the right thing.
Last night had been more than a mistake. It had been wrong on so many levels, she couldn’t begin to label them.
She had made the mistake of trusting Braddock once. That wasn’t happening again. Last night had been some kind of mental meltdown. Otherwise she would never have allowed him to touch her, not in a million years.
Focus, CJ. Clues. She needed clues. Where was her sister’s cell phone? Braddock had said that Shelley’s cell hadn’t been found at the scene. Where the hell was it? Shelley never went anywhere without it.
She blew out a disgusted breath.
First thing, she had opened every window to air the place out and to get some relief from the heat, then she’d gone through the entire house.
Every shelf, every drawer, every hiding place they had used as kids.
She’d basically turned the house upside down, then slowly put things back in a slightly more organized manner.
Gloves and about a gallon of bleach had cleaned up the biggest part of the mess on the wall in Shelley’s room.
CJ shuddered. It would take stain blocker and paint to finish the job.
If Banks and Nash thought they could scare her off that easily, they could think again. She wasn’t going to be run out of her own house.
So far her work had proven futile. The cell phone was nowhere in the house.
She’d found no notes, no anything relevant to what had been going on in her sister’s life the past few days or weeks.
All she’d discovered was the obvious indication that her sister was eating better than she had in the past. There had even been empty milk containers in the trash. Shelley never drank milk.
Had someone else been staying here? There were no clothes or toiletries that would point to that being so.
Frustration wound CJ a little tighter.
Why hadn’t Shelley talked to her about this change?
Regret and guilt tied big knots in CJ’s stomach. Because her sister knew that she wouldn’t believe her. She’d promised to get clean too many times.
Dammit. There had to be something here. This was Shelley’s home.
Her haven. A scribbled note, anything, indicating what had turned her around.
Made her want to give up the drugs and pull her act together.
She’d been trying to get clean for years.
What had suddenly made it happen? Even if only for a few days.
CJ turned to leave her sister’s bedroom but stalled at the door.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
The bathroom.
CJ hurried down the hall to the only bathroom in the house.
She stared a moment at the antiquated medicine cabinet that hung over the wall-mounted sink. How had they done this?
Open the door first or don’t open it? She couldn’t recall.
Screw it.
CJ grabbed hold of the glass door, a hand on either side, and pulled. She pulled so hard she stumbled back and hit the wall when the cabinet pulled free easily. The contents jangled around inside the cabinet.
“Damn.” Using her foot, she closed the toilet lid and placed the metal-and-glass cabinet on top of it.
She’d already gone through the contents of the cabinet.
Aspirin and miscellaneous store-bought pharmaceuticals.
Nothing CJ didn’t know about already. Her sister kept an array of over-the-counter painkillers and sleep aids on hand at all times.
Holding her breath, CJ went up on her tiptoes, leaned over the sink, and peered into the wall cavity. A smile stretched across her lips. “Aha!”
When she and Shelley were kids, they had discovered quite by accident that the crosspiece that was supposed to support the worn-out medicine cabinet was actually six inches too low.
They’d been fighting over who got the last pink Flintstone vitamin and had ripped the medicine cabinet right out of the wall.
Evidently there had been a longer cabinet there at one time or another.
Either that or the carpenter who’d installed it hadn’t bothered with proper brace work.
He certainly hadn’t secured it properly.
Anything they didn’t want their mother or any of her “friends” to find, they’d hidden in that cavity.
Holding her breath, CJ reached in. Three items sat on the aged two-by-four crosspiece: a bottle, what appeared to be a business card, and a folded piece of paper.
Anticipation sent her pulse into a faster rhythm. As a doctor, she couldn’t help herself. She looked at the bottle first. Large. Vitamins? Then she read the label and the attached prescription sticker.
Prenatal vitamins.
CJ’s chest tightened.
Did this mean . . . ?
The business card wasn’t a business card.
It was an appointment card. Shelley had had a doctor’s appointment at the village clinic at the end of next week.
CJ dropped the vitamins and the card onto the counter and focused on the paper.
Hands shaking, she carefully unfolded it.
Standard clinic visit form. Shelley had seen the doctor at two o’clock on July thirtieth.
Friday.
The day before she was murdered.
Diagnostic code . . . Adrenaline pumping through her veins, CJ scanned the form until she found the entry she sought.
Positive pregnancy.
Shelley was pregnant?
That ferocious pounding that accompanied her treatment of every trauma victim rushed into the ER erupted in CJ’s chest now.
Her sister had been pregnant.
CJ sagged against the doorjamb.
No wonder she’d been so excited when she called and left that voicemail. She wanted to share the news with CJ.
So . . . who was the father?
Ricky Banks?
Did he even know about this?
Oh God.
The form fluttered to the floor. CJ shoved the medicine cabinet off the toilet and yanked up the lid.
She heaved again and again, though she’d eaten nothing but toast this morning.
CJ collapsed onto the floor, flinching when her knee hit the corner of the medicine cabinet.
Medicine bottles were scattered over the battered linoleum.
Dust and grime had collected on the baseboards and in the corners.
The wallpaper that had been there for as long as CJ remembered had faded and wrinkled, peeling away from the wall here and there.
All those insignificant details inventoried in her stunned mind as she grappled with this new truth.
Shelley had been pregnant.
It didn’t matter at the moment who the father was.
It only mattered that the killer had murdered two people.
CJ staggered to her feet, washed her hands, and threw cold water on her face in an effort to snap out of the daze this news had induced. She stuck her face under the stream of water and rinsed her mouth.
When she’d pulled herself back together, she reached down and picked up the form and the appointment card.
These were evidence. Sort of. Of course the autopsy would reveal that Shelley had been pregnant. But the fact that she had known before she was murdered could be significant. Especially since she’d obviously felt the need to hide the evidence of her pregnancy.
Why would she have done that unless she’d feared repercussions?
CJ had been wrong. It did matter who the father was. If he was a married man or just a jerk who didn’t want children with—CJ swallowed hard—a known sex worker and drug addict, he may have taken matters into his own hands.
She should call Braddock.
CJ hesitated before reaching for her cell phone. The thought of talking to him . . .
No. First she should go to the clinic and see if anyone there knew who the father was. Shelley had been excited. She very well could have gone on and on to whoever delivered the news to her.
After righting the mess she’d made, CJ made it as far as the living room before her knees gave out on her and she dropped into the closest chair.
She closed her eyes and fought the overwhelming ache twisting in her chest. This was so unfair.
Shelley had talked about wanting a kid. On one of those rare occasions when she and CJ weren’t fighting, she’d enthused wildly about how she would never be like their mother.
She would stay clean and be a good mother.
Her baby would never do without the most important element of childhood—loving attention from his or her parents.
That was the deal. Their childhoods hadn’t been so screwed up because they were poor or lived in a less-than-desirable part of town. Their childhoods had been unstable and scary and miserable a good portion of the time because no one had been there to see after them.
CJ had done her best to be both mother and father, starting at age ten. But it hadn’t been enough.
Agony throbbed inside her.
Everything Shelley had ever set out to accomplish had blown up in her face. A lot of her choices had been bad ones, leaving no one to blame but herself. But sometimes fate just cheated her.
Like this time.
Anger propelled CJ to her feet. She could sit here feeling sorry for her sister’s misfortunes and guilty for not being better at taking care of her, or she could find out who killed her.
By the time CJ had snagged her bag, grabbed her keys, and stormed out to the car, she was damned pissed off.
Other than a decent burial, this was the one thing CJ could do for her sister.
Keep digging until she found Shelley’s killer.
The Mill Village Clinic
The clinic was closed.
CJ stared in disbelief at the opening hours. Since when was the clinic open only two days per week?
Wednesdays and Fridays only?