To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,60

been married and divorced twice. “Are they the same woman?”

Catherine nodded. “It gets better. Guess the name of the witness who claimed Brennan pushed James Gleason into the street at the festival.”

I gasped.

After a moment, Cory responded, “Elizabeth Smith?”

“That’s right. And even though both the surname and the last name are quite common, I confirmed it’s the same woman. She really gets around.”

Cory frowned in my direction. “How come you didn’t recognize her?”

I remembered Evie’s comments about Elizabeth Smith’s new hair. “She had a new hairdo, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t look at her all that carefully on the day Gleason died.” Some detective I made. Ray had been right all along to dismiss my investigative efforts. “So she was blackmailing Brennan, and Wayne knew about it.”

Catherine tapped her pen on the paper in front of her. “Are you referring to the five thousand dollar monthly payments to her father?”

“Yes. She must have known something Brennan didn’t want anyone to know—like the fact he was drinking the night Monica Gleason died. No wonder both Wayne and Elizabeth denied it. Wayne probably got a cut of the money.”

“Actually, Jolene, I spoke to Mr. Potter last night. He claimed Elizabeth didn’t know anything about the payments. Brennan arranged to help pay her medical bills years ago. Mr. Potter didn’t like accepting what he referred to as ‘charity’, but Brennan insisted. Only her father and mother knew where the money came from to pay off all her bills. They didn’t tell Elizabeth.”

Cory leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Okay, but why didn’t Brennan recognize her? She stood right next to him and pointed her finger in his face.”

Catherine reached down into her briefcase, which was on the floor beside her chair, and pulled out a book. “She went through the windshield of the car and needed reconstructive surgery on her face: her nose, her eyelids, her cheekbones. She’s not the same girl she was in high school.” Catherine laid the book on the table. It was another yearbook from Brennan’s graduation class, but this one had an unfamiliar girl’s name embossed on it. She flipped through the pages until she came to Elizabeth Potter’s photo.

I recalled Elizabeth’s mother’s very similar words to Cory and me. “Where did you get this yearbook?”

“I graduated from Albany Law School. It’s a world-renowned school. The partners recruit from there all the time. One of our associates was born and raised in Albany. She attended the same high school as Brennan and was in her freshman year when he graduated. She wanted to help with his first case. She brought in her yearbook so I could see the two other people who were in the car crash with Brennan. Now she’s helping with both cases.”

Cory held out his hand for the yearbook. “May I see it?”

Catherine handed it over.

He turned the pages until he found Monica Gleason’s photo. He studied it a moment, then spun the yearbook to face me. “Jo, look hard at her. Who does she look like that we met?”

I studied the blond hair, the sparkling eyes and the dimples. It was the dimples that reminded me. “Matthew Gleason.”

“Exactly.”

Catherine glanced back and forth between us. “She was his aunt. It’s not surprising he would look like her. They share a gene pool.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I wish we had met or at least seen his mother. He doesn’t look anything like I remember his father. He had red hair and different features.”

Cory snapped his fingers. “We saw her picture at their home. He doesn’t look anything like the woman in the picture. She had dark-hair and glasses, remember, Jo?”

“I do. Can a dark-haired woman and a redhead make a blond?” I looked to Catherine for an answer.

She made a face. “I’ve had to research questions like that before for cases involving proving parentage. Genetics for hair color are not as firm as eye color. It has to do with the amount of color in the hair as well as the two alleles each parent passes on. It’s certainly possible, but I would expect some red tints to the blond hair. How blond is Matthew?”

“Very. Like white blond.”

Catherine reached for the yearbook and returned to Monica Gleason’s photo. “It’s a black and white photo. Hard to say how blond she was.”

“She was very blond. Like white blond, too. We saw the two- by-three color photo of her. It was in Brennan’s yearbook, remember Cory?”

He nodded. “She was pure blond.”

I