A Justified Murder by Jude Deveraux

Author:Jude Deveraux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2019-01-07T19:24:20+00:00

Twelve

JACK AND KATE went outside to help bring the boxes in. When Chet lifted the back door of the van, they gasped. It was jammed with file boxes, all labeled with a date and subject matter.

It took a while to get them out, carry them inside, and pile them up in Sara’s formal dining room. They filled the one wall that wasn’t all glass.

Once they were in place, Chet stood there, waiting. To open or not? seemed to be his question.

“We decided to tell you everything we know,” Sara said. “But you first.”

He nodded, pleased that a deal had been struck.

Chet looked at Kate. “You asked about a divorce. Yes, they did. He filed, and Janet took nothing from him. Appears to have been as friendly as those things can be. But...” He paused. “After the divorce, Carl Olsen moved a lot. I had a hard time tracking him. My guess is he’s a bit of a squirrely character. She did well to get away from him.”

Kate nodded. It fit with everything they’d heard about Janet Beeson.

Chet pulled three boxes off the top of the stack, put them on the table, and opened them. Inside were thick file pockets, some of them tied together with string. Some were old and worn, a few were new and plastic. He was showing them twenty-plus years of collected data. The first box contained printouts of the original interviews with each of the customers and the sales staff of the store. The hundreds of pages had notes in different colors of ink.

“I use colored pens too,” Sara said and she and Chet looked at each other as though they’d discovered yet another cosmic coincidence.

Jack and Kate rolled their eyes.

Chet began talking about the contents. There were many boxes of data from the first year after the case. Two boxes held ledgers with records of every call that had come in, crank and otherwise. It seemed that many people had seen Mrs. Crawford go into the store. They had noticed the pretty baby in her pink-and-white outfit.

When the alarm went off and half a dozen police cars arrived, people outside the store had stopped to see what was going on. Within minutes, there was a crowd. Many of those people had also been interviewed.

Chet picked up a handful of papers. “Everyone said the same thing. They saw the baby in the stroller go in but no one came out carrying a baby. Right after the kidnapping, the whole city seemed to shut down. Everyone was involved. I arrested two drunks who got into a knife fight. One said the baby was dead, the other said she was alive. They were willing to kill each other over it.”

“But little Jeanne was found,” Kate said.

“In the fire station. I talked to the men who found her. At first I suspected one of them, but...” Chet’s head came up. “I’m not proud of the way I was back then. I was obsessed. I wanted to know who had done such a heinous thing.

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