Chapter Thirty-One Margo Angelhart #2
“Maybe. But it would be harder because every card key is logged after hours. Dad inadvertently gave them a fall guy. Himself.
And because he confessed, the police didn’t follow up on anything else.”
I was positive I was right, or mostly right, because nothing else fit.
Jack turned off at the main Avondale exit.
“What if Dad didn’t go along with it?” Jack said as he navigated through traffic. “What if he called their bluff and turned
everything over to the police?”
“Remember what Mom said? That the pictures disappeared?”
“But Dad was a respected doctor, Mom was the former county attorney. The police would have listened to them. He tells the
truth, and they investigate.”
“And maybe one of us dies. Maybe they make it look like an accident, but Dad would know it was because he didn’t do what they
wanted—he didn’t confess. He would be destroyed, even if the police caught the real killer.”
Jack didn’t say anything. “Maybe they wouldn’t have gone after us.”
“Someone killed Devin. Dad logically assumed they would kill again.”
Jack drove through one of the original Avondale neighborhoods. The houses looked identical, most clean and neat, many with
patio chairs and toys strewn across small porches.
Christina Aberdeen’s older sister, Rachel Davis, was a stay-at-home mom of four kids. We didn’t call her in advance because
it would be harder for her to refuse to talk to us in person than over the phone. Tess’s basic research said that her kids
were all school age, so we timed the visit for after the kids would be in school. We were successful: A large SUV was in the
driveway when we arrived.
I knocked and stood in front of Jack, since my appearance was less intimidating than my brother’s. A dog barked, a woman swore,
and a moment later she opened the door with admonitions to the dog to be quiet.
“Yes?” she said.
“Mrs. Davis, my name is Margo Angelhart and this is my brother Jack. We’re private investigators and have a couple of questions
about your sister’s death, if you have a few minutes.”
She frowned and I thought she might tell us to go to hell, but then she said, “Jack—you’re Austin Angelhart’s dad.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My daughter was in his class in third and fourth grades. I thought you looked familiar.”
“Oh, I’m sorry I don’t remember,” Jack said with a half smile.
She dismissed his apology. “I don’t think we formally met. You want to talk about Christina? Can I ask why? She died nearly
four years ago.”
“It’s about the drug trial that she was a part of before her death,” Jack said.
“You can say suicide,” Rachel said. “It was hard on me at first, but I’ve come to terms with it.” She unlocked the screen
door and held back the large mutt. “I’m going to put him out back, he gets hyper around guests.”
They entered and stood in the small living room that was neat and mostly unused. An upright piano with a family portrait above
it was the focal point, and two love seats faced each other with a coffee table in between them. Bookshelves with both books
and knickknacks framed the piano. On the other side of the tile foyer was a dining room with a farm-style table that sat six.
Stairs went up and, though I couldn’t see the back of the house clearly, there appeared to be a large kitchen and family room.
“I looked at this model when Whitney and I got married,” Jack said wistfully. “I liked it, but she felt it was too small.”
I didn’t want to talk about Jack’s ex-wife, who I had never liked. Of course she thought it was too small—she wanted big and grand. Now she lived in a 3000-square-foot house with her eleven-year-old son and no husband because she had betrayed and divorced one of the best men in the world.
But now, it didn’t bother me as much as it used to. Jack had found love a second time around and I genuinely liked Laura and
her kids. Laura was good for Jack, and vice versa.
Rachel came back into the room. “Please, sit.” She motioned to the two couches, then sat on the piano bench. “Tell me why
you’re interested in Christina’s suicide.”
Because Jack was uncomfortable with lying, I began. “We’ve been hired to investigate a drug trial conducted through the VA
four years ago,” I said. “There were some irregularities. Your sister was part of that trial.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know about it at the time. Christina was very private.” She hesitated, then said, “When Christina was
in high school, she had been raped by a teacher. She was sixteen, and while her rapist was fired, he didn’t actually do any
jail time. He fought it, said she was willing, that he was wrong because she was a student, and ended up pleading to statutory
rape. Because Christina was confused and he had convinced her it was her fault, her story wasn’t consistent. And it got out.
Everyone at the school knew. At the time, Avondale was a much smaller community. She enlisted in the Army when she was eighteen.”
“I’m sorry she went through that,” I said. “I hope he rots in hell.” I meant it.
“I wish I had been here. I think it would have helped her, but I was at college in Los Angeles. The military helped. I didn’t
see her for a year, but when she came home for leave, she was confident and content with her life.”
Rachel paused.
“I was in the Army for six years,” I said. “Do you know why she didn’t reenlist?”
“She served for nearly nine years. She was engaged to another soldier. He was a great guy—my husband and I both adored him. He was killed in a training accident a month before they were supposed to be married. It gutted her. She was granted a medical discharge. She was so depressed, worse than after the rape. She went to see a psychiatrist with the VA, Dr. Klein. He was good for her. She also joined a church group for grief and I thought she was making progress. Then . . . she killed herself.”
“Do you mind telling us how?” Jack said. “We know the public details, but . . .”
Rachel nodded. “She drove herself off a cliff on Highway 60, above Wickenburg. No drugs or alcohol in her system, and witnesses
say she sped up and went over. They ruled it a suicide because of her history of depression and the fact that she was seeing
a psychiatrist. Then Dr. Klein came to see me after her funeral.”
Jack and I glanced at each other. “He talked to you?” Jack said.
“Yes. He told me that Christina had been a part of a clinical trial for PTSD and he wanted to know if I had seen a change
in her over the three months before she had died. I told him the truth. That she seemed to be getting better, that she was
making plans for a new career and future, then suddenly her personality changed. She went from being even-tempered but still
grieving to having extreme ups and downs. And her downs were awful.”
“Can you share an example?” I asked.
“Well, while I didn’t know about the trial at the time, in hindsight I knew when she started taking the drug.
She came over here in tears, not about her fiancé, but about what happened in high school.
It was like it had just happened, all of her insecurities came back.
She wasn’t the confident soldier I remembered from her first leave.
I thought it was a one-off. Then about three weeks before she died, she came over for dinner.
I thought she seemed off, and in the middle of dinner she started crying.
She ran out, and I was worried. I couldn’t reach her for two days.
She finally returned my calls and didn’t know why I was worried, said she hadn’t gotten hysterical, that I overreacted and blew it out of proportion.
Two days before she died she called me in the middle of the night and said she wanted to die.
I told her I was coming over and we’d get her help.
She wasn’t there. I don’t know where she was, but the police say she’d been living in her car.
She was up and down. It was different than when she was grieving. This was more a roller coaster.”
“What did Dr. Klein say when you told him this?” I asked.
“He listened, seemed very upset. Told me that Christina wasn’t suicidal when he saw her, and he would look into it. He also
said that after she started in the trial, she only had one appointment and had canceled the others. I never heard from him
again. I didn’t follow up. I figured he did what he could do and nothing would change the fact that Christina was dead.”
She glanced over at a grouping of pictures on top of the piano. It looked like a young Rachel and a smaller girl, presumably
Christina. They had their arms around each other with silly expressions on their faces.
“Are you investigating the same study?” Rachel asked after a moment.
“Yes,” Jack said. “Dr. Klein believed that the drug trial excluded adverse side effects in the final report. We’re trying
to prove that.”
“I didn’t know until after the fact that Christina was part of any drug trial.
I can’t state with certainty that she was different only on the days she took the drug, or even if she took it every day.
But generally, I can give a statement about changes in her behavior.
I can look at my old calendars to be more specific, because the dinner that she had a breakdown on was my youngest son’s birthday. ”
“It may help,” Jack said. “Write down what you remember. If this case goes to court, we may ask for a statement.”