“Fine, keep your secrets for now. But I love the effect he’s havin’ on you, so I like the man already.”
“I really want you to hold that thought.”
After hanging up with her father, Jane made coffee in the tiny hotel room coffee pot. It wasn’t Starbucks, but it was hot and caffeinated, which she needed this morning.
And then her phone rang.
Jane didn’t even glance at it.
“Hi again, Dad.”
“Guess again.”
She nearly dropped the cell. Valentine.
“I thought you’d never get off the phone.”
No one had buzzed in on the other line. Jane opened her mouth, ready to yell for Byron, but his voice forestalled her.
“Don’t wake the mobster. This is about you and me, the way it should’ve always been.”
“What do you want?”
An unspoken “you” hovered in the air. “How’s True Love?”
Oh, God, he knew.
“What do you mean?”
“Stop lying, Jane. I was wrong about you.”
“And I was wrong about you too.”
He laughed. “You’ve been very busy the past couple of days. In fact, you’re sitting in the Love Nest motel at this very moment.”
Jane bit the inside of her cheek.
For a wild second, she wondered if he’d somehow snuck into the room and was spying on her, but there was a much more logical solution.
“You’ve been watching me.” Her gaze settled on the open laptop in front of her. “On the computer.” Jane slammed the lid shut, but it was much too late.
I’m so stupid. Once she learned about Valentine’s tendency to stalk people electronically, she should’ve had Vick scan her laptop.
“And your cell phone.”
She snatched the thing away from her ear like it was a viper in her grasp. To finish the call, Jane hit the speaker phone button and lowered the volume so she wouldn’t wake Byron. Yet.
“Ah, the wonders of technology. A simple virus slipped into an email can give you a window into someone’s world without their knowledge.”
Again, she felt dirty, violated. As soon as the conversation was over, Jane would haul all their electronic devices out to the SUV, shut them off, pull out their batteries. Though it was too little, too late—the damage had already been done.
“You must be paying a fortune for tech support.”
“Money is no object.” His family had a lot of wealth. From what she could tell, Valentine was the only one accessing it. It was yet another red flag, one she should’ve pursued earlier.
“I’m curious about you.” Jane wanted to keep him talking, find out more. “Why the blonde girls?”
“My father, Otis Valentine, had a weakness for them.”
Juliet had been right. “So this is about getting even?”
“No, it’s about doin’ what’s right. I’m savin’ these girls.”
“By killing them?”
“I’m purifying them, so they are clean for their maker.”
Trying to reason with a crazy person was futile.
“Did your father like one blonde girl in particular?”
“Yes. Annie was a lifeguard at the local pool—you know the type—pretty, young, big breasts. She paraded in front of him in her skimpy bathing suits, daring him to take it.”
She always looked for shades of meaning in her client’s testimony. Jane thought “it” was a telling statement, as though the lifeguard was an object, a thing Otis could possess.
Valentine’s assessment of the young woman was interesting too. As a lifeguard, Annie’s job was to wear a bathing suit and patrol the pool. Jane doubted she “paraded” around. Yet Valentine blamed the young woman for his father’s infidelity. Though she thought it was typical. Society blamed women in these situations for stirring a man’s lust and being a “homewrecker,” like the husband had no will of his own. Otis had been an older married man with family responsibilities—therefore he bore the brunt of the blame, in her view, anyway.
“So your father started an affair with Annie?”
“He couldn’t keep it in his pants. Otis started swimming before work every morning and then it was late nights and weekends.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens in these stories, Jane. Otis divorced my mother, so he could openly date the slut.”
Jane cringed.
“You know I loathe using such vile terms, but it suits such a hateful, scheming woman.”
“And when did it happen?”
“My sophomore year in high school. He moved out of the house one weekend and never came back.”
By her calculations, it was right around the time Oscar had attacked Juliet. Maybe his father’s infidelity and subsequent divorce had been the stressor which sent him off the deep end. In her experience, serial killers had a natural inclination toward killing, but a high-pressure situation often led to their first murder.