Remember Murder Read online

  CLAIRE MORGAN MURDER MYSTERIES

  by LINDA LADD

  Head to Head

  Dark Places

  Die Smiling

  Enter Evil

  Remember Murder

  Remember Murder

  LINDA LADD

  eKENSINGTON

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  BOOKS BY LINDA LADD

  Title Page

  Prologue - Jesse’s Girl

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Epilogue

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Jesse’s Girl

  The night of the accident

  Choking, coughing, gasping for air, all he could hear at first was the blood pounding deep inside his ears. Groggy, he didn’t know where he was. Somewhere far away was a raucous wail of screaming sirens. Soaking wet, shivering from cold and shock, he crawled out of the water and laid his cheek on the slick muddy bank, half in and half out of the rushing river, blood streaming down his face and stinging his eyes. Somehow, he knew he had to keep going. He was in bad trouble. One arm felt so numb that he couldn’t feel his fingers, felt like it was broken, hurt somehow, but he could move it. He couldn’t quite think clearly. He needed to find help. Yeah, that’s right, he had to get help.

  Oh, God, where was he? All he could see in the dark night were towering trees and thick, impenetrable undergrowth. It was windy, tossing the tops of the trees around and making him shiver uncontrollably. With all his strength, he forced himself to his feet. There had to be a path, a road, a house, something somewhere in these woods. He sank to his knees, legs still shaky, trying to cage his racing mind, to remember what had happened to him, but he was woozy and weak and felt sick to his stomach. The darkness around him was ominous, with wind and sirens and the strident buzz of night insects.

  Tired, confused, he just rested there on his hands and knees, struggling to breathe normally. Then he pushed up again and braced both his palms against a giant oak tree, debating which way to go, what to do, and what had happened to him. Finally, the cacophony inside his head slowed to a low, painful roar and he began to remember. There had been a crash, he thought blearily, yes, that was it. His car had plunged into a river; he had barely fought his way back up to the surface and escaped with his life.

  Sucking in the humid night air, he forced himself to forge ahead, through the clinging bushes and dead leaves carpeting the ground. The distant sirens suddenly stopped, one after another. The night was dead quiet then, but it was beginning to rain. He could hear the patter of drops striking the leaves above him. Exhausted, he dragged himself along, cradling his injured arm against his chest and pressing his other palm against the bleeding wound on his forehead. When he found a path, he eventually broke out of the clinging vegetation and onto a wide grassy yard. Right there, he went down to the ground again, spent, but relieved he was no longer alone in the deep woods. The lights were on in the old farmhouse up on the hill. Someone was at home, thank God. And now, he was beginning to remember everything that happened. Annie, oh, Annie, where are you? He burst into tears, heaving great, wracking sobs for a few minutes.

  Unable to stop crying, he climbed his way up to the house and collapsed wearily at the bottom of the porch steps. He rested there a moment and tried to control his grief over Annie’s drowning. Annie was his girl. She’d always been his, and his alone. How could he live without her? Finally, still weeping, he crawled all the way up the steps. The window in the door sent a square of yellow light cascading over him, and he could see the blood on his hands. It was still oozing down his face. Fighting weakness and a woozy mind, he banged one fist on the screen door and then let himself lie there, facedown and filthy, too wrung out to lift his head. A few moments later, the overhead porch light came on. An old woman opened the door and found him prostrate on her doorstep.

  “Oh, my word, young man. What’s happened to you?”

  With effort, he sat up. “I crashed my car into the river, I think. Please help me. Please.”

  “Why, of course, I will. Here now, can you stand up? Lean on me, you poor thing.”

  He did that, leaning heavily on her shoulder. Inside the house, it looked like a photograph out of the 1950s or 1960s. Where in the world was he? The small living room’s wallpaper was a pattern of big red and purple roses on a yellow background, all faded to dusty pastel hues. He picked up the distinct odor of mothballs and lemon floor wax and maybe the old lady’s powdery-scented perfume. He leaned on her frail frame, thinking she was too elderly and vulnerable to let a stranger like him into her house, that she shouldn’t open her door to men she didn’t know. But thank goodness she was so trusting. She helped him bodily into her small kitchen and lowered him into a red vinyl chair at an old-fashioned dining table with aluminum legs. The top was covered by a red-checkered plastic tablecloth. There was a yellow lazy Susan in the middle with ceramic salt and pepper shakers made like pink pigs and a plastic napkin holder in the shape of a yellow daisy. There was a white apron with a bib and long ties lying over the chair beside him. He felt like he was in Auntie Em’s house in The Wizard of Oz, and Judy Garland would come downstairs any minute with that little dog of hers. He couldn’t remember its name, though.

  “Thank you so much for helping me,” he managed to get out in a voice that wavered and sounded unfamiliar. Truth was, though, he did feel a little bit stronger.

  “Now, now, don’t you worry yourself about that, honey. It’s not often I get company out this a way. It’s real good to hear another voice inside this house.”

  “You live out here all alone, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes, ’fraid so. Ever since my darlin’ Harry died, God rest his precious soul.” She walked across the kitchen and retrieved a clean white dish towel from a drawer and wet it at the old avocado-green sink. He glanced around the kitchen. All her appliances were avocado green. She returned with the dishcloth. “Here, child, press this against that gash on your head. It’s bleeding all over you.” He winced as she fingered the wound. “It really don’t look all that bad. I think we can bind it up a mite and not have to run to the emergency room. It costs so much now that it’s a wonder anybody goes there.”

  The towel she handed to him was thin and worn from many years of use. It had little yellow-and-white daisies hand-embroidered along one edge. He mopped some of the blood off his face and then pressed it to his wound. “Do you have a telephone, ma’am? Maybe we could call an ambulance or a taxi to come get me. Maybe I should go to the hospital. I don’t feel so good.”

  “I gave up the phone service nigh ten years past. Had to, livin’ on my husband’s social security, and whatnot. Don’t have nobody to call anyways. Everybody I ever loved has up and died on me. What’s your name, hon?” She tu
rned away and opened a high cabinet over the stove. He watched her get out a brown bottle of iodine, debating what he should say. One thing he did remember was that he sure couldn’t tell her his real name. Unh-uh. He attempted to come up with a good one, and picked one out of the air.

  “Jesse Jordan,” he told her, liking the sound of it. “What’s yours, ma’am?”

  “I’m Mrs. Rosalee Filamount, but my family always called me Miss Rosie. So did Harry, God rest him.”

  “That sure is a pretty name, Miss Rosie.” Jesse looked at the dated stove and fridge and large counter microwave and old-fashioned light fixtures. “Miss Rosie, surely you’ve got some kind of kin around here that helps you out when you need something. You’re not all alone in the world, are you?”

  “I do fine here all by myself, thank you very much. Lost my only son in the last war and then lost my little sis two years back. Sissy had colon cancer. She was the last of my family to go on to be with Our Lord. I got her old Caprice out in the barn for when I need to run into town. I can take you in there, once we get you all fixed up and feelin’ better. I need to take a grocery run, anyhow.” Miss Rosie smiled, revealing a set of ultra-white perfect dentures. Stepping up close in front of him, she refolded the towel and pressed it down on the open wound to stop the bleeding and then applied the medicine. He groaned at the terrible sting when she splashed it on the gash. “Pretty good knock you got there, Jesse, but it’ll heal up just fine now that we got it doctored. You hurtin’ anywhere else?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think so. My arm’s real sore, but I think it’s just bruised up pretty bad. I can move it okay now. I guess I’m just pretty shook up.” He gave a little laugh that sounded nervous, but his eyes never left her, considering her now, watching. “Sure do owe you a lot, ma’am, Miss Rosie. You’ve been awful good to me.”

  “Well, don’t mention it, boy. You know, I think every time you help somebody in need, or in trouble, you get a precious jewel in your heavenly crown, don’t you, Jesse?”

  “Sure do, Miss Rosie. My mama used to tell me that very same thing.”

  “Well, you listen to your mama. Mamas usually know what they’re talkin’ ’bout. Is she still livin’ amongst us?”

  “Oh, no, she’s long dead, fell down some stairs and died. But she was really beautiful and kind and took good care of me.”

  “Oh, my, I’m so sorry. And you still so young, and all. Well, God bless her soul.” Miss Rosie rested one palm sympathetically on his shoulder. “You’re needin’ some aspirin, I reckon. Headache botherin’ you?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, I’ve got a headache you just wouldn’t believe.”

  Watching her fetch the Bayer aspirin bottle from the same cabinet, he sighed heavily, because now everything was coming back. The hazy confusion inside his brain evaporated and all was clear. He watched Miss Rosie take an old A&W root beer mug off a shelf over the sink. He pressed both hands on the table and stood up. Then he picked up the apron with the long strings and quietly moved up very close behind the old woman where she stood facing the sink. Miss Rosie sensed him and turned quickly. “Oh, dear me, you shouldn’t be up on your feet so soon. You might fall.”

  When he looped the apron tie around her neck and started twisting it tighter and tighter, so tight that her faded blue eyes bulged slightly, she didn’t even struggle much at all, just stared up at him patiently, as if she was ready to die and welcomed it. As if Jesse were doing her a favor. Sending her to heaven wearing her heavenly crown with all those jewels in it. It didn’t take but a few moments for her face to turn eggplant purple and tiny vessels to start breaking blood red in the whites of her eyes. Strands of her thin snow-white hair straggled out of the tight bun at the nape of her neck and fell down over his hands, longer than he’d figured it was, reaching all the way to her waist.

  Her death throes gave Jesse a sort of supreme pleasure, sexually and spiritually, just watching her give up the ghost. Because that’s what she really wanted. That’s why God had led him straight to her house, why she’d let him in her door, so he could kill her and let her join dear Harry Filamount high up in the heavenly clouds. He began to lick her face as she died. He had a friend in the mental ward at the hospital named Bones Fitch, who taught him how to use his tongue like a dog does. It sharpened the senses, made him able to enjoy all the pain and fear and desperation. Now he always licked people when he got the chance; that’s how he got to know them better.

  Miss Rosie succumbed to death a lot more quietly than he liked, and more easily than the other people he’d strangled. Poor old lady. She really didn’t deserve this kind of ending to such a long and happy life. And he liked old people like her. But he’d make it up to her. He’d take her head along with him when he left. His mama would like that a lot, a new friend to talk to, and he’d introduce them as soon as he dug up Mama’s grave and got her head back.

  After Miss Rosie went totally limp, Jesse licked the rest of the tears off her face and found she tasted like Cover Girl face powder. He liked the taste of that. His mama had worn face powder before his daddy killed her. He laid Miss Rosie’s birdlike little body on the kitchen’s yellow and red and blue rag rug and then he checked out all the drawers for a meat cleaver. He was sure Miss Rosie had one. All country people kept sharp, well-honed meat cleavers to cut off chickens’ heads, and stuff. Everything was going to be all right now. He was doctored up, free from his troubles, and not hurt badly enough to ruin his plans. But his tears soon welled and rolled down his cheeks again because he’d lost his sweet Annie in the river. All the plans he’d made while in the hospital were gone now. He would never get to take her away, never live happily ever after with her.

  But maybe he could find Annie’s body. Steal it, like he was gonna steal his mama’s. Oh, yes, that would work out really fine. Just when things looked really bad for his future, Mrs. Filamount opened her door and gave him her house and car and a nice quiet place to figure out where Annie’s body was. Things were really looking up now. Cleaver in hand, he took hold of the old lady’s hair and dragged her down the hall in search of a bathtub. He couldn’t bloody up her nice, clean, and tidy house, now could he? Not after she’d been so nice to him.

  Chapter One

  Present day

  I wasn’t sure where I was. I wasn’t sure who I was. I didn’t care. It was all misty gray and cool and ephemeral, like drifting inside the loveliest, quietest cloud ever created. I was just floating around, softly, swaying gently, and I liked it. It was peaceful and calm, no noise, no bother, no fear. I realized that I was anchored to the ground, somewhere far, far below, at the other end of a shiny silver tether that slipped down through the clouds mounding like giant, fluffy cotton below me. That didn’t matter. I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to be very still and enjoy the soft rocking motions of the gentle breezes. I wanted the clouds to take me higher, up very high, up into the bright white light making the clouds glow above me. It beckoned to me, but I couldn’t seem to make myself loosen the silver cord holding me in place so I could float up to that beautiful place.

  I shut my eyes and knew nothing more until a man’s voice awoke me. It was deep and husky and sounded scared and insistent and determined. I didn’t like it, but the voice was familiar somehow, and somehow I knew I had to listen.

  “Come on, baby, I know you can hear me. I know you can. You can come back. Just try, try to open your eyes, try to follow my voice back.” Then the voice melted away and there was a strangled sound, and I saw a face materialize inside my mind, with blue eyes and black hair, but I didn’t really recognize it. I ignored it then and let the rocking lull me to sleep again.

  The voice came often and made me weary of listening because I liked the quiet. And then other voices came, not as often as the blue-eyed face, but enough to disrupt my peace and wake me up.

  “It’s me, Claire, Bud. C’mon, please don’t do this to us. The doctors say you can recover, if you’ll just wake up. You’re in a coma, that’s the proble
m. You gotta wake up to get well. Charlie’s here, too. We’re all here.”

  That voice didn’t even sound familiar. Neither did the ones that came after his. I slept again, wishing they would just leave me alone and give me the tranquility I wanted. But they didn’t, they wouldn’t stop, and the voices seemed to go on night and day and forever.

  “It’s Black, Claire. Listen to me, listen, damn it. You can do this. Everybody’s been here to see you. It’s okay to wake up. I’ve got you back home now, and I’m not going anywhere until you open your eyes. You’ll be all right. It’s over. I’ve got the best doctors in the world on your case. You’re healing just fine. All you have to do is come back to me. You’ve got to come back. Just do it. Do it, Claire.”

  I slept some more. The voice would not stop. Now it was reading to me. Shut up and go away, I thought. Leave me alone. That same face loomed in my mind, and he looked vaguely familiar now, but I still didn’t know him. I didn’t want to know him.

  His voice seemed always to be there, always talking to me. “The sheriff needs you, Claire. You love being a detective, remember? You’re good at it. You’ve put lots of criminals behind bars. You got them, all of them. They’re never going to kill anybody again. Charlie needs you back on the job. I need you back.”

  Then a long time later, another voice came in to wake me, slow and drawling. “Listen here, Claire Morgan, this’s Joe McKay. What you tryin’ to pull doin’ something like this? Scarin’ us all to death. You get your pretty little butt back here and outta this bed. Lizzie’s here with me. She wants to say hi, too.”