When All The Girls Have Gone(54)

"Don't move," Roxanne said nervously. "I swear, if you move, I'll shoot."

"I won't move," Max said.

"Roxanne was just telling me that she was desperate to raise cash for another round of expensive rehab for her son," Charlotte said. "You were right-Nolan is Gordon Greenslade's son."   





 

"I shot that lying son of a bitch because years ago he promised to leave my son his fair share of the Greenslade money," Roxanne said hoarsely.

"Obviously he lied about that," Max said. "Is that why you decided to sell the contents of the old evidence box? To get enough money to send Nolan back to rehab?"

"I had no choice," Roxanne whispered. "Egan had been slowly bleeding Gordon for years by threatening to let that evidence box suddenly get discovered-maybe in a closet at the old police station or some such nonsense. But the truth was, he'd hidden it in our basement."

"Gordon Greenslade paid blackmail all those years to protect Trey?" Charlotte said.

"No." Roxanne shook her head. "Gordon Greenslade didn't give a damn about either one of his sons. But he did care about his family's reputation in Loring. Or, at least, he did, until he went crazy and decided to run off with that woman he met online."

"Did your husband know that you killed Gordon Greenslade?" Charlotte asked.

"No, of course not. Egan never gave me credit for having the guts to do something like that. Besides, he didn't know I had a motive."

"You mean Egan never suspected that Nolan was Gordon's son?" Max asked.

"No." Roxanne smiled a thin, cold smile. "I'm a woman of my word. I promised Gordon that I would keep quiet so long as he made sure that Nolan was in his will. The only times I asked Gordon for money were when Nolan needed treatment. Egan refused to pay for rehab, so I went to Gordon for the money. He gave it to me the first two times. Everyone, including Egan, assumed both occasions were acts of charity. Gordon was very big on charity if it made him look good to the community."

"Trey continued to pay blackmail after his father's death, didn't he?" Charlotte said.

"Yes. Egan contacted him-anonymously-and Trey paid up the first couple of times. But I knew that Trey was far more dangerous than his father."

"Did Egan know that Trey had escalated from rape to murder?" Max asked.

"Of course," Roxanne said. "I'll say one thing for Egan-he was a pretty good cop. He kept an eye on Trey over the years. Whenever there was a new rape case with elements that were similar to the Jocelyn Pruett case, he made notes. Egan figured out right away that Trey had switched from blindfolds to drugs to keep his victims from being able to identify him. Recently Egan was also certain that Trey had started murdering the women he raped."

"Trey started escalating after his father was killed, didn't he?" Max said.

"Yes." Roxanne frowned. "It's weird, but on some deep level I think Trey was afraid of his father. Once Gordon was dead, though, it was as if someone had taken a lid off a boiling pot."

"Did Egan know that the evidence box he tried to sell to Trey was filled with magazines and books?"

"No." Roxanne looked disgusted. "The fool never bothered to check. Why would he? He was in a terrible rush to leave that day. He went down into the basement, grabbed the box and stowed it in the SUV. The box felt full because after I removed the evidence I stuffed it with the magazines and books. I resealed it exactly the same way that Egan had the last time he opened it to add some data about Trey's latest crimes."

"You were afraid of Trey Greenslade, even though you knew he could have paid the most for the evidence," Max said. "So you tried to contact Jocelyn Pruett. But you got Louise Flint instead."

"It's not like there were a lot of potential buyers," Roxanne said. "Yes, Louise Flint took my call. She said Jocelyn was out of town for a month. She said she was Jocelyn's best friend and that she knew Jocelyn would want her to buy whatever I was selling. I told her I needed ten thousand dollars. She said she could get her hands on that much money and meet me in a few hours."

"Ten thousand would have covered another round of rehab for Nolan," Max said.

"Yes. I met Flint at a fast-food restaurant just outside of Loring. She gave me the money and I gave her the package containing the contents of the evidence box. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Everything went wrong."

She started to weep. In a moment she was engulfed in great, wracking sobs. She never even noticed when Max crossed the room and gently took the gun from her hand.

Charlotte went forward and touched Roxanne's shoulder. Blinded by tears, Roxanne turned toward her. Charlotte put her arms around her. Roxanne cried harder.

Max watched quietly for a time. He did not speak again until Roxanne began to grow calm.   





 

"One thing we've been wondering," Charlotte said. "How did Trey Greenslade learn so quickly that Louise Flint had gone to Loring to pick up the evidence box? He found out that same day and, with Madison Benson's help, murdered her that night."

Roxanne raised her head from Charlotte's shoulder. "I told you there weren't a lot of potential buyers for that box of evidence."

"Right," Charlotte said. "There were only two-Trey Greenslade and my stepsister."

"There was a third," Roxanne said. "I called her first."

"You contacted Trey's grandmother-Marian Greenslade, didn't you?" Max said quietly.

"Yes." Roxanne wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her flannel shirt. "I went to see her. I approached her as one mother to another. I thought she would pay to protect her son's good name-the good name of the family-especially now that Trey was in line to take charge of Loring-Greenslade. Everyone knew that Trey was her favorite grandson."

"But you guessed wrong," Max said.

"Marian Greenslade told me to go to hell. I warned her that if she didn't come through with the money, I would offer the evidence to the victim, Jocelyn Pruett."

"Marian Greenslade called your bluff," Charlotte said.

It was Max who answered.

"Yes, she did," he said. "That was my news. Walsh just called with an update on Trey Greenslade's story. Turns out that right after Roxanne left her, Marian Greenslade got on the phone to her grandson. She told Trey to clean up the mess he and his father had made or else he would not get control of Loring-Greenslade."





CHAPTER 69




After the police left with Roxanne Briggs, Charlotte contemplated the brilliant green Romanesco and the fresh wild salmon. She decided she no longer felt like cooking. She opened a bottle of wine and sent out for pizza instead.

When the pizza arrived, she and Max sat at the dining bar and talked.

"What do you think will happen to her?" Charlotte asked.

"They're going to hold her for the Loring police," Max said. He ate a bite of pizza. "They've got her on a suicide watch. I talked to Walsh for a few minutes. He's driving into Seattle with an officer to pick her up tomorrow and escort her back to Loring."

"You were right back at the start when you said that once we knew the triggering event, everything else would fall into place."

He nodded and drank some more wine. "That's how it usually works."

"Do you miss being married?"

He paused in midchew, startled by the question. She didn't blame him. She'd had to work up her nerve to broach the subject and in the end she hadn't come up with a particularly elegant segue.

"What I miss is what I used to think marriage would be like," he said.

Walking on eggshells, she thought. Well, so was she.

She smiled. "In other words, you're a romantic."

He gave a crack of laughter, effectively restoring a sense of reality to the conversation.

"Sorry, but you're way off base there," he said. "When I said I miss what I thought marriage would be like, you need to understand I'm talking about the boring parts. I would rather have a tuna fish sandwich and a beer at home than go out to dinner. I'm not the cocktail party type. I'm not good with a lot of emotional drama."

"Understandable."

He started to take another bite of pizza and paused. "It is?"

"Sure. In your work I'm sure you see a lot of drama, and I imagine that very little of it is joyful. There is also bound to be a fair amount of frustration involved in what you do."

"That, too," he agreed. "Someone hires you to find answers and then gets upset with the answers."

"But you go looking for the answers anyway."

"Yeah. Sounds like the classic definition of insanity, doesn't it? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

She leaned forward and helped herself to a slice of pizza. "So why did you become a profiler in the first place and why have you opened your own investigation business now?"

"Probably because I'm good at it. I don't seem to be good at anything else."

She munched some pizza. "And probably because you aren't interested in doing anything else."

"There is that," he agreed. He contemplated her with an unreadable look. "Speaking of my small business, you might be interested to know that I hired a receptionist."