The Stranger

Chapter 33

Audrey Fine finally said something relevant. And that led to Johanna’s first real lead.

Police Chief Johanna Griffin had been right about the county guys. They had put on their spouse blinders and zoomed in on Marty Dann for the murder of his wife, Heidi. Even the fact that poor Marty had a rock-solid alibi for the timing of the killing hadn’t dissuaded them. Yet. They had assumed a “professional hit job” from the start, so now they were digging into poor Marty’s phone records and texts and e-mails. They were asking around the offices of TTI Floor Care about his recent behavior, about his contacts, about where he went out for drinks or lunch, that kind of thing, hoping to find some connection between Marty and a possible hit man.

Lunch was the key.

Not where Marty had lunch, though. That’s where the county boys had messed up again.

But where Heidi ate lunch.

Johanna knew about Heidi’s weekly lunch with the girls. She had even gone a time or two. At first, Johanna had dismissed it as indulgent, as a privileged waste of time. There was some of that. But these were also women who wanted to bond with other women. These were women who made it a priority to make their lunch hour last a little longer so that they could share time with friends and connect to something other than their own family or career.

What was wrong with that?

This week, the lunch had taken place at Red Lobster and included Audrey Fine, Katey Brannum, Stephanie Keiles, and Heidi. No one noticed anything unusual. According to all of them, Heidi, fewer than twenty-four hours from being murdered in her home, had been her usual ebullient self. It was an odd thing talking to these other women. All of them were beyond devastated. All of them had felt that they had lost their closest friend in Heidi, the one person whom they could confide in, the one who was the strongest among their friends.

Johanna felt that way too. Yep, Heidi was magic. She was one of those people who made all those around her feel somehow better about themselves.

How, Johanna wondered, does one bullet take out a spirit like that?

So Johanna met with the entire lunch group and listened to them give her nothing. She was about to call it a day and see if she could uncover some other lead, something else the county boys wouldn’t consider, when Audrey remembered something.

“Heidi was talking to a young couple in the parking lot.”

Johanna had been drifting off, lost in a memory. Twenty years ago, after much trial and error, Johanna had gotten “miracle” pregnant through IVF. Heidi had been with her at the ob-gyn when she’d gotten the news. And Heidi had been the first person Johanna had called when she’d miscarried. Heidi had driven over. Johanna slipped into the passenger seat and told her the news. The two women sat in the car and cried together for a long time. Johanna would never forget the way Heidi lowered her head onto the steering wheel, her hair spread out like a fan, and cried for Johanna’s loss. Somehow they both knew.

There would be no more miracles. This pregnancy had been Johanna’s only chance. She and Ricky ended up never having any children.

“Wait,” Johanna said. “What young couple?”

“We all said our good-byes and we got in our cars. I started pulling out onto Orange Place, but this truck zoomed by so fast, I thought it’d take my front grille off. I looked in the rearview mirror, and I saw Heidi talking to this young couple.”

“Could you describe them?”

“Not really. The girl had blond hair. The guy had a baseball cap on. I figured that they were asking her directions or something.”

Audrey remembered nothing else. Why would she? But the entire world, especially the parking lots of chain stores and restaurants, had video cameras. Getting the warrant would take time, so Johanna just went to Red Lobster on her own. The head of security put the video on a DVD for her, which felt a little old school, and asked for it to be returned. “Policy,” he said to Johanna. “We need it back.”

“No problem.”

The Beachwood police station had a DVD player. Johanna hurried in to her office, closed the door, and jammed the DVD into the slot. The screen came to life. The security guy knew his stuff. Two seconds into the video, Heidi appeared from the right-hand corner. Johanna gasped out loud at the sight. Something about seeing her dead friend, alive, teetering as she did on those heels, made the tragedy too real.

Heidi was dead. Gone forever.

There was no sound on the tape. Heidi kept walking. Suddenly, she stopped and looked up. There was a man in a baseball cap and a blond woman. They did indeed look young. Later, the second and the third and the fourth time Johanna watched the tape, she would try to make out their facial features more, but at this height and this angle, there wasn’t much to see. Eventually, she would send it to county and let them get their computer guys and techno-whizzes to get whatever they could from the tape.

But not just yet.

At first, watching silently, it did indeed appear as though the young couple was asking for directions. That might make sense to a casual observer. But as time passed, Johanna felt the room chill. The conversation was taking much too long for this to just be about directions, for one thing. But more than that, Johanna knew her friend. She knew her mannerisms and her body language, and right now, even watching silently, Johanna could see that they were both all wrong.

As the conversation continued, Johanna grew more and more still. At one point, Johanna was sure that she even saw her friend’s legs buckle. A minute later, the young couple got into their car and drove away. For almost a full minute, Heidi just stood in the lot, dazed, lost, before she got into her car. From her angle, Johanna could no longer see her friend. But time passed. Ten seconds. Twenty, thirty. Then, suddenly, there was movement in the front windshield. Johanna squinted and moved closer. It was hard to see, hard to make out, but Johanna recognized it now.

Heidi’s hair spread out like a fan.

Oh no…

Heidi had lowered her head to the steering wheel, the same way she had done twenty years ago when Johanna had told her about the miscarriage.

She was, Johanna was certain, crying.

“What the hell did they say to you?” Johanna asked out loud.

She backed up the tape now and watched the young couple pull out of the parking lot. She slowed it down and then hit the pause button. She zoomed in, picked up her phone, and dialed in the number.

“Hey, Norbert,” she said, “I need you to run a license plate for me right away.”