Lib Novel Page 22
“I’ve noticed.” Lynch turned sharply as the sound of men’s voices rang in the background. “Gotta run,” he whispered. “Literally. I’ll be in touch.”
Before Kendra could reply, he grabbed his phone and cut the connection.
Kendra stared at her now blank bank of monitors. And Lynch was worried about her?
She shut down her system.
CHAPTER
5
The next morning, Kendra rolled to a stop in front of the Carmel Valley home of Marlee Davis, the aunt who’d raised the Morgan sisters after her sister’s murder. A telephone call to Detective Perry had given her the woman’s address, along with the fact that she worked at home most days. Kendra took it as a good sign that a Honda CRV was parked in the driveway. It was an even better sign that a middle-aged woman waved at her from behind a gardenia bush next to the front door.
“Dr. Michaels?”
Kendra climbed out of her car and walked up the front driveway. “I didn’t know I’d be expected.”
The woman peeled off her gardening gloves. “Detective Perry told me that you might be coming. I’m Marlee Davis.”
“Hi. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions.”
“I’ll talk to anyone who might be able to help bring Chloe and Sloane home.” Marlee folded her arms in front of her. “I heard about what happened to Detective Chase. I can’t believe she’s dead. Paula was a huge help to us after my sister was murdered. Even after all these years, she was available to talk to the girls about the case. I understand she reached out to you after they went missing.”
“She did. I met her on the last day of her life.”
“Well, if she thought enough of you to ask for your help, that’s all I need to know. Would you like to come inside?”
“Thank you.”
Kendra followed Marlee inside her pleasant two-story home, which was decorated with pictures and objects that showed a fondness for European travel. Many of the framed photos included shots of the Morgan sisters, Marlee, and a ruggedly handsome man.
“These are nice,” Kendra said. “Is that your husband?”
“Yes. That’s Keith. He passed away from lung cancer a few years ago. The girls were crazy about him.”
“You obviously gave them a nice home.”
Marlee gazed pensively at a photo of two girls with their mother. “My sister did a wonderful job in the short time she had with them, and I just wanted to do everything I could to make them happy. They’ve grown up into two amazing women.”
“So I gather. I’m impressed by how dedicated they are to find their mother’s killer. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Marlee motioned toward a loveseat and couch in her sunken living room. Kendra sat on the loveseat, but Marlee remained standing. “Chloe really started that. She was the older of the two, and she started asking questions about her mother’s death when she was around thirteen or fourteen. My husband was uncomfortable discussing it with her, but I thought it was important to be as honest with the girls as we could. And who were we fooling anyway? Kids are better at finding stuff online than we ever were. Soon she was obsessed with finding out everything she could about Alyssa’s case, and Sloane was right there with her, at least for a while.”
“For a while?”
Marlee finally sat on the arm of the sofa. “Sloane started living life. She was very popular in high school and always had a lot of attention from boys. Chloe also had friends, but she was more academically inclined. She never stopped trying to find answers about what happened to her mother. Sometime during her college years, she started doing more than just digging up old newspaper and magazine articles. She started interviewing people connected with the investigation.”
“Police detectives?”
“Police detectives, uniformed officers, FBI agents, witnesses who appeared in the police reports… It’s when Chloe really started her own investigating. Almost everybody connected with the case was willing to talk to her. It was incredible. And when she exhausted all the leads in her mother’s case, she moved on to the other Bayside Strangler murders. Sloane rejoined the investigation around this time. They were both out of college by then and doing well. Chloe is a coder with a software developer in La Jolla, and Sloane is a PR rep at a firm downtown. They talked to everyone they could about the case. They used dictation software to take their interview recordings and make transcripts that they just pored over. They were obsessed. To be honest, I think it got in the way of their personal relationships. Chloe never spent much time with any one man, and most of her friendships fell by the wayside. Sloane was engaged for a while, but her fiancé was never that supportive of what she and her sister were doing. He didn’t like that it took her away from him so much of the time. I don’t know if he actually made an ultimatum, but he made it clear he wasn’t happy with things. So she left him.”
Kendra nodded. “Did you ever feel they were in danger?”
“No. To be honest, for all the work and time they put into this, they never seemed to be particularly close to solving the case. I think they gathered a lot of information that even the police didn’t have, but nothing that might make the killer feel threatened.”
“That’s probably why the police weren’t interested in their files. Paula told me that, but she also said there was a recent development. Did you know anything about that?”
Marlee nodded. “I was just about to mention it. Their moods changed in the last month or so. Chloe and Sloane were excited about something they found. They wouldn’t tell me what it was, but they became completely absorbed in their project, more than ever before. I found out later that Chloe had even started missing work, calling in sick when I knew she was fine. In all the years they had been investigating their mother’s death, they’ve never shown this kind of urgency.”