The Cold Case of Bridget Mayes

I asked Sherry for the name of the church, and that little wrinkle moved again.

"I'm not religious at all even though Lisa tries to convert me all the time, so I'm not sure of the name of the church. I think it has divinity or divine in the name though.

I really got suspicious when I asked if Lisa had a cell phone. Sherry said she did, but she dropped it yesterday and now it didn't work. She didn't have a phone number for the church either. She said Lisa didn't like to be called there because there were several people in the office who would have overheard the call.

I thanked Sherry and said I'd try again tomorrow. She smiled.

"I'll be sure to tell her you want to talk to here."

As I drove away, I was pretty sure that Lisa was there and listening to our conversation. I figured one of them had looked out the window and saw me. Sherry knew who I was and what I probably wanted to talk about, and Lisa was sitting in another room waiting for me to leave.

I didn't have anything that told me why, but the little wrinkle in Sherry's forehead told me she was lying. It was also pretty convenient that the day I came back to talk to Lisa, she just had to stay over at the church. It was pretty convenient that Sherry didn't know which church, and really hard to believe that Lisa had broken her cell phone the day before. If Lisa didn't want to talk to me, there had to be a reason, and that reason might have something to do with Miss Mayes.

I went home then because it was after five. When I walked in the door, Rochelle was fixing dinner.

"I'm making tacos for dinner because they're easy and I've been busy. Wanna know what I found out?"

I suppose all successful authors are not people to give up in their search for things. I'd just never met one before Rochelle, and she continues to surprise me with how she can find out things I can't.

"I called the school where Bridget had to go and asked them about her. There was nobody there who remembered her, but the secretary told me the principal at the time had retired. I looked his name up, and he still lives in Knoxville. I called him and said I was writing a mystery novel about a woman named Bridget Mayes who went to his school in the 1980's, and I wondered if he remembered her.

"He said he did because she was one of the best students in the school and that he'd read about her death in the newspaper. He said she was never in trouble and that she made straight "A's" all the time she was there.

"I asked him if he knew anything about her home life, and he said he knew the Tollidays because they were very involved in the education process. They came to every parent-teacher conference and that was a little odd since Bridget was a foster child. He said they'd had a few other foster kids in school, and the foster parents did what they were supposed to do, but not to the extent the Tollidays did. Makes you think Bridget was more than just a foster child to the Tollidays, doesn't it?

"Then he frowned and said it wasn't any of his business, but Bridget didn't seem to like any of the boys at the school. He didn't know if that was because she started at his school when she was sixteen and hadn't developed any friendships before, or if it was because she was so smart. As far as he knew, she just came to school, made good grades, and then went home. She never came to any of the ball games or to any of the school dances.

"I'm thinking that Bridget was really a lesbian, though she probably didn't know it at the time. That's the only reason I can think of for the female DNA the coroner found in her vagina.

"So, did you find out anything?"

"I got a few more dates for you to add to the timeline. The other thing I tried to do didn't do anything except raise a new question. I drove out to talk to Sherry and Lisa Miller again and I got there at four because that's when Sherry told me Lisa got home.

"Lisa wasn't there and the reasons seemed pretty fishy. She just happened to have to work over at her job today, Sherry didn't know the name or phone number of the church where Lisa volunteers, and Lisa just happened to drop her cell phone yesterday and broke it.

"One of them knows something they aren't telling me, and I think it's probably Lisa since she seems to be avoiding me. I'm sure that when I drove into the drive of the house, somebody peeked out from behind a window curtain and recognized me. I think Lisa was there and Sherry was trying to get me to leave.

"When I drove to their house, I was thinking maybe something happened between the Tollidays and Miss Mayes that ended up with her dead. After what you just told me, the Tollidays went to the bottom of my list and Sherry and Lisa went to the top."

Rochelle nodded.

"Well that would fit with it being a lesbian that killed her. Do you think Sherry and Lisa are lesbians?"

"Well, since I've never met Lisa, I can't say about her, but I doubt it. If Lisa volunteers at her church, I can't see her in a lesbian relationship with her sister. Sherry...I don't know because most lesbians look just like any other woman.

I grinned then.

"This case has you fascinated by lesbians, doesn't it?"

Rochelle sighed.

"Why is it that men seem to be really excited by the thought of two women together. From what I've read, half the porn on the Internet is lesbian women with each other.

"I'm not fascinated by lesbians, but how else would female DNA get into Bridget's vagina. It's not like that's the usual way women say "Hi".

I grinned again.

"You have thought about it though, haven't you?"

"Yes, just like almost every other woman in the world has wondered what it would be like, but I like the real thing too much to try it."

Rochelle smiled that smile I've grown to love.

"Speaking of the real thing, think after dinner we might see if it's still good?"

Well, I had no doubts the real thing was still good since we'd only skipped the night before. It was good enough that once Rochelle stopped shaking and gasping for breath, she snuggled up to me and whispered, "I don't think another woman could make me feel like this."

As I fell asleep, I was wondering what I'd done in life to deserve a woman like Rochelle.

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The next morning, I decided to do a little undercover work. If I couldn't go to Lisa, maybe I could get her to come to me. Instead of my usual suit and tie, I wore a plain check shirt and jeans, and I drove my personal car instead of the plain car the department furnishes me.

At six, I drove past their house and saw two cars in the drive, the blue Mazda sedan that had been there both times before and a red Toyota Rav 4 that hadn't. I'd already written down the license number of the Mazda, so I stopped long enough to write down the license number of the Toyota and then drove around the block and back in the direction of Knoxville.

The house where Sherry and Lisa lived was a ways out and there weren't any places to buy gas or anything else without driving down their street and heading into Knoxville proper.

There was a strip mall on the street I figured Lisa would have to take to get much of anywhere, so I parked there and waited.

At about seven-thirty, I saw a red Rav 4 driving down the street. I started my car and waited for the traffic to give me an opening, and then started following the Rav 4. I got close enough once to confirm it was the same Rav 4 I'd seen in their driveway, and then dropped back to see where it was going.

Where the Rav 4 was going ended up being a real estate business. I just got a glimpse of the woman who got out as she walked through the door. After turning into the side street at the next light, I pulled into a filling station and wrote down the name of the real estate agency -- Knoxville Homes and Farms.

I didn't feel like waiting all day for her to come back out and I had other things to check out now, so I drove home, put on my suit and tie again, and then drove to the station.

The first thing I did was query the DMV for the owner of a red Toyota Rav 4 with license number 014 RCOW. Just as I'd expected, the owner came back as Lisa Miller. I then did the same for the Mazda sedan, license number 948 AQUR. That one was a surprise. It was registered to Lisa Miller as well.

My next step was to look up Knoxville Homes and Farms to see if they had an Internet site. They did, and I got my first look at Lisa Miller. Like most realtors, they put pictures of all their agents on their website, and there she was, all pretty face framed in dark brown hair with a small nose, wide lips, and arched eyebrows.

Lisa didn't look much like Sherry, but in my experience that's not all that unusual. I didn't know her history and Rochelle hadn't found a birth announcement for her, so it was possible she had a different father. Even if they had the same father, some kids take after one side of the family and some the other. There was another problem though. Lisa didn't look like she was sixty-one like her driver's license said she was. That could be cosmetic surgery though.

Lisa was a senior agent with over twenty years experience, or so said her bio. She'd won the annual sales award four times in that thirty years, the last time with about three million in sales. At the going rate for sales commissions of about four percent, that meant that year she'd had an income of about a hundred and twenty grand. If she did half that well every year, she'd still be making around sixty grand a year.

When you work enough cases, you start to see some common things. One of those things is in most cases, the house an individual lives in tends to reflect their income. Sherry and Lisa lived in a house that wouldn't have sold for much more than a hundred thousand. When they sold the farm, the price listed by the Recorder of Deeds was almost a quarter of a million. If they bought their house right after selling the farm, they should have had at least a hundred thousand for a house that at that time was probably only worth maybe thirty-five.

It looked to me like Lisa was paying most of the bills, but she didn't seem to be using much of their income and I wondered why. Most realtors will try to steer you into a house that costs as much as three times your annual income. That's what most mortgage companies feel comfortable with, so they should have been living in a house that cost over a hundred thousand at the time and would now be worth almost three hundred thousand. Maybe she was just conservative with her money and was building a retirement fund, but she was probably making enough to do that as well as afford a nicer house. There had to be another reason, and the only reason I could think of was that she didn't want to attract attention from anybody. That just made her more interesting to me.

Before, I'd narrowed my suspects down to either the Tollidays or some stranger who killed Miss Mayes for some unknown reason and just happened to drop her body by the pond. That was because the Tollidays knew Miss Mayes and had the opportunity to kill her if she visited. Their motive was probably that she kept begging them for money. I had no motive for a stranger, and the opportunity was probably just chance.

Of the two, I was leaning toward the Tollidays because they'd have known where the pond was and a stranger wouldn't. Rochelle had pretty much blown up my Tolliday theory after her conversation with the retired principle. If the Tollidays were that interested in Miss Mayes' education, they probably wouldn't have killed her.

That left only two people who could have had the opportunity -- Sherry and Lisa Miller. They were the only people close enough to have put Miss Mayes by that pond without risking their car being seen when they took her to the pond. If they killed her at their house, all they had to do was carry her about a quarter of a mile, go through the gate to the pasture, and then carry her down to the pond. I figured since Sherry had probably lied to me about knowing the Tollidays or knowing Miss Mayes, they probably knew about the pond and how to get there as well.

What I was lacking was two things -- a motive and a method. The motive might be what Rochelle had suggested. Miss Mayes was a lover to one of the sisters and it hadn't ended well. Once one sister had killed Miss Mayes, the other helped her take her body to the pond.

There was still no obvious method until I got a report back from one of the labs. The report listed a few conditions the DNA analysis said the woman might be susceptible to and two things stood out. She had the genetic markers for risk of a stroke and for the risk of a ruptured blood vessel if her blood pressure got much higher than normal.

That wasn't exactly a method, but coupled with what Jack had told me and what Rochelle's doctor had told her, I could make a case that her killer had managed to raise Miss Mayes' blood pressure high enough to result in the brain hemorrhage that killed her.

I just didn't know how her killer could have planned that unless he or she had access to Miss Mayes' medical records, and a foster child's medical records are a carefully guarded secret. They're normally accessible only by the child's caseworker and the child's foster parents, or in the case of an investigation by the police, specific members of the police force who can produce a valid reason for seeing them.

That night, I explained all that to Rochelle. She listened and nodded occasionally, and when I finished, she frowned.

"So the only people who could have known about her condition probably aren't the people who killed her, and you think Sherry or Lisa might have done it?"

I nodded.

"It's just a theory I have. They were living close enough to the Tolliday place to get Miss Mayes' into the pond without raising much suspicion. I don't have a motive except for your thought that she was a lesbian and maybe one of them was her lover. I have a method, sort of, but I can't put together any scenario where either Sherry or Lisa would know that raising her blood pressure might kill her.

"That's why I'm frustrated. To find that out, I'd have to get at least one of them into an interrogation room and question her until she breaks. I don't have any way to do that."

Rochelle thought for a few seconds, and then frowned again.

"What if they didn't know about her condition? Remember what my doctor told me about the woman who died of a brain hemorrhage while she was masturbating? Maybe Sherry or Lisa was responsible for Bridget's death, but it was an accident instead of murder. They got scared after they figured out she was dead, and took her to the pond, not to hide her, but to make sure somebody found her. It could have been one of them who called Harry and gave him her name."

"Well that theory fits pretty well, but that's all it is. Before I can question them, I need a reason. So far, I don't have anything except a theory."

Rochelle went to her fact board and added Sherry Miller and Lisa Miller to her list of people, then asked what we knew about them. All I had was the fact that they'd inherited the farm, both had a driver's license, that Lisa was a real estate agent, and that Lisa seemed to be paying for everything.

Rochelle twisted her lips.

"Well, maybe there's something in their past that we don't know that will tell us something. You didn't check them out as far as prior arrests or convictions yet, did you?

"No, I didn't think there was a need until today. I'll do that tomorrow."

Rochelle grinned.

"Well, could you see if you can check me out at least once tonight?"

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I was feeling pretty relaxed the next morning while we ate breakfast, but then, checking out Rochelle always leaves me feeling like that. I start out feeling great while I'm falling asleep, and I sleep like a baby until I wake up with Rochelle's thigh over mine and her heavy breasts pressed into my chest. That always leads to me checking her out again, and the checking is always pretty fabulous.

When I kissed Rochelle before I left for the station, she said she'd thought of another way to find out about Sherry and Lisa.

"I'm going to call up my retired principle again and see if he remembers them. Maybe he'll know something they did, not something they'd be arrested for, but something that didn't seem right to him. I'll let you know when you get home tonight."

I didn't have high hopes of finding out anything else about Sherry or Lisa, and that proved to be the case. The TBI had one arrest of Sherry for running a stop sign when she was seventeen and nothing on Lisa. NCIC didn't have anything on either of them. On a hunch, I looked for Lisa Miller in the Knox County court records. I thought maybe at some time, she'd sold a house and the buyer wasn't happy. He or she might have sued for compensation and Lisa had to pay up. That might explain why they'd sold the farm but didn't seem to buy a house with the money they'd have gotten from the sale.

As it turned out, Lisa had never had a court date for anything. I looked for Sherry Miller than, and she'd never been in court either. On the surface, it looked like Sherry and Lisa were just two ordinary people who'd never been in any trouble at all.

It was Friday at about eleven when I finished those searches and I was pretty wiped out. I decided I'd take the rest of the day off, and drove home. Rochelle was surprise to see me.

"Since you're home early, you must have found out something."

I shook my head.

"No, not one damned thing. They're both as clean as can be."

Rochelle grinned then.

"Well, not exactly. They are hiding something."

"Oh, what did you find out?"

"I called my retired principle this morning and asked him if I could meet him somewhere. When he said he'd be happy to, I made copies of the driver's license pictures you got on Sherry and Lisa, and then met him a the Dunkin' Donuts on 35th Street.

"He remembered Sherry and said she was an average student, but didn't seem very involved socially. I asked him what that meant and he said she didn't seem to have any dates and that she hadn't come to the senior prom.

"I showed him Lisa's picture then. He looked at it for almost a minute before he said he didn't remember a girl who looked like her and he didn't recall a girl named Lisa Miller. He also said he was positive that Sherry Miller didn't have a sister because Sherry's mother told him Sherry was an only child.

"That's why I couldn't find a birth announcement for Lisa Miller. That also means that Lisa Miller is really somebody else claiming to be Sherry's sister. She probably changed her name because she'd done something in the past that she's either not very proud of or that would keep her from getting the job she has now. Can't you arrest her for that?"

"Well, yes, but I'd have to be able to prove she changed her name to commit fraud. Real estate agents can't easily get a license if they've been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor, even if they've served out their sentence and parole and haven't had any other arrests for at least two years. If she was convicted of something and changed her name because of that, she committed fraud and I could arrest her. Of course, I'd have to know her real name and have her record to prove that. That means I'd need her fingerprints or DNA. As far as I've been able to determine, she's never had her fingerprints taken..."

I'd stopped talking because I was cursing myself for not thinking.

"No, that's not right. In 2004, the laws about real estate licenses changed and all agents had to submit to having their fingerprints taken. If Lisa Miller has a real estate license, she had to have gotten fingerprinted when her license came up for renewal or she'd lose her license. I just have to find out where the print cards are. My guess would be in the police records here in Knoxville. They might not have been sent to TBI or NCIC because they just got lost. I imagine there were a lot of agents wanting their prints taken at that time.