1st to Die (Women's Murder Club 1)

“She felt used, dropped like worn baggage. Joanna had put him through school, supported him when he first started writing. When Nick bagged law school, she even went back to her job.”

“And afterward,” I asked, “did she continue to hate him?”

“I believe she continued to try and sue him. After they split up, she tried to sue him for a lien against future earnings. Nonperformance, breach of contract. Anything she could find.”

I felt sorry for Joanna Wade. But could it drive her to that kind of revenge? Could it cause her to kill six people?

The following day, I obtained a copy of the divorce proceedings from County Records. Through the usual boilerplate, I got the sense it was an especially bitter case. She was seeking three million dollars judgment against future earnings. She ended up with five thousand a month, escalating to ten if Jenks’s earnings substantially increased.

I couldn’t believe the bizarre transformation that was starting to take over my mind.

It had been Joanna who had first mentioned the book. Who felt cheated, spurned, and carried a resentment far deeper than what she had revealed. Joanna, the Tae-Bo instructor who was strong enough to take down a man twice her size. Who even had access to the Jenkses’ home.

It seemed crazy to be thinking this way. More than preposterous…it was impossible.

The murders were committed by a male, by Nicholas Jenks.

Chapter 105

THE NEXT DAY, as we shared a hot dog and a pretzel in front of City Hall, I told Chris what I had found.

He looked at me in much the same way the girls had a few days before. Shock, confusion. Disbelief. But he didn’t get negative.

“She could’ve set the whole thing up,” I said. “She knew about the book. She lobbed it out there for us to find. She knew Jenks’s taste — champagne, clothes — his involvement with Sparrow Ridge. She even had access to the house.”

“I might buy it,” he said, “but these murders were committed by a man. Jenks, Lindsay. We even have him on film.”

“Or someone made up to look like Jenks. Every sighting of him was inconclusive.”

“Lindsay, the DNA was a match.”

“I spoke to the officers who went to the house when he beat Joanna,” I pressed on. “They said, as enraged as Jenks was, she was dishing it right back to him, just as strong. They had to restrain her as they took him away in the car.”

“She dropped the charges, Lindsay. She got tired of being abused. She may not have gotten what she deserved, but she filed and started a new life.”

“That’s just it, Chris. She didn’t file. It was Jenks who left her. She sacrificed everything for Jenks. Marks described her as a model of codependency.”

I could see Chris wanted to believe, but he was unconvinced. I had a man in jail with almost incontrovertible evidence against him. And here I was unraveling everything. What was the matter with me?

Then, out of the blue, something came back to me, something I had filed away long ago. Laurie Birnbaum, the witness from the Brandt wedding. How she had described the man she saw. Something strange … The beard made him seem older, but the rest of him was young.

Joanna Wade, medium-height, right-handed, the Tae-Bo instructor, was strong enough to handle a man twice her size. And Jenks’s nine millimeter. He said he hadn’t seen it in years. At the house in Montana… The records showed he had bought the gun ten years ago. When he was married to Joanna.

“You should see her,” I said with rising conviction. “She’s tough enough to handle any of us. She’s the one link who knew about everything: wine, clothes, Always a Bridesmaid. She had the means to pull it all together.

The photos, the sightings were inconclusive. What if it was her, Chris?”

I was holding his hand — my mind racing with the possibilities — when I felt a sudden, awful tightness in my chest. I thought it was the shock of what I had just proposed, but it hit me with the speed of an oncoming train.

Vertigo, nausea. It swept from my stomach to my head.

“Lindsay?” Chris said. I felt his hand bracing my shoulder.

“I feel kind of weird,” I muttered. The sweats, a rush, then terrible light-headedness. As if armies were marching and clashing in my chest.

“Lindsay?” he said again, this time with real concern.

I leaned into him. This was the weirdest, scariest sensation. I felt both momentarily robbed of strength and then back in control; lucid, then very woozy again.