You Don't Own Me Read online

  “But what about that saying, the truth will set you free?” Laurie asked.

  Longfellow scoffed. “Total nonsense. Think about it: If I had confronted my wife—my wife—with photos of her kissing another man, she would have known that I had spied on her. And, maybe even worse, she would know that I still wanted her, despite the affair. She never would have respected me again. I just wanted the affair to end.”

  Laurie had come here knowing that the connection between Daniel Longfellow and Joe Brenner was important. Now her instinct was telling her that Longfellow was a flawed but honest man. She tried to put herself in his shoes and ask what he would have done next after learning from a private eye that his wife was seeing another man.

  She saw the scene as if it were unfolding before her eyes. “You told Brenner to take the photographs of Leigh Ann and Martin to Kendra.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “In some of the photographs Brenner showed me, you couldn’t make out Leigh Ann’s face, but the man was definitely Martin Bell. I figured Kendra had more power than I did to make the affair stop.”

  Laurie pictured Kendra five years earlier—suffering from postpartum depression and drug and alcohol abuse.

  “Kendra had no power at all,” Laurie said.

  “Of course she did. She and Martin had young children. I assumed she would demand that her husband end the affair or risk losing his entire family.”

  Laurie shook her head. “What kind of way is that to salvage your marriage?”

  He scoffed, seeing the irony. “Probably a really bad one. But I thought once the affair ended, I could work harder to be a better husband. I’d leave the assembly if necessary, come back to the city, and go into the private sector if I had to. But no matter what—I’d win back Leigh Ann’s heart, and everything would return to normal. At least, that’s what I assumed.”

  “So what happened when Brenner told Kendra about the affair?”

  The laugh that followed was bitter and completely unexpected. “At first, I thought the plan had worked. Brenner called me, saying he’d met Kendra at a dive bar and—quote, unquote—‘had it all taken care of.’ And, literally, a few minutes later, I got a phone call from the governor about the Senate appointment. It seemed as if fate had turned a corner. The next night, Leigh Ann surprised me with dinner—at the same table at the same restaurant where we had our first real date after we met. All of a sudden, she was back. I assumed Kendra had confronted Martin about his affair and that Martin had broken things off with Leigh Ann. We’d get to live happily ever after, as if the affair had never happened. But then Martin was killed. Don’t you see? Kendra must have been so angry about the affair that she hired a hit man.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police this?”

  He took a deep breath, struggling not to cry. “Because I love my wife, and I don’t want to see her humiliated in public. I also don’t want to lose her. To this day, she has no idea that I found out about the affair.”

  “You may think Kendra hired a hit man, but it’s just as likely that you did. After all, you’re the one who initially involved Joe Brenner, and you’re the one who was desperate to have your wife back.”

  “Absolutely not. I would never do something like that. And I showed the police our financial records at the time. Everything was in order. I only paid Brenner a few hundred bucks in cash—certainly not enough to order a hit!”

  At Laurie’s request, Leo had already confirmed this information with the NYPD, but she had wanted to hear it directly from Daniel. The lead detective told Leo that the senator had provided complete financial statements from both his and his wife’s accounts, and no large amounts of cash were unaccounted for.

  “Well, I don’t think it was Kendra, either. Because, here’s the thing, Senator: Brenner never did as you instructed. He never gave Kendra proof of an affair.”

  She waited to see if Daniel would draw the same conclusion she had. His face went pale. “Dear God. You think Brenner killed Martin?” She could tell that he had never entertained the idea.

  She nodded. “At least, I think so. He entrapped Kendra into saying terrible things about Martin and recorded the conversations. I think he shot Martin, knowing that he could blackmail Kendra for the rest of their lives.”

  “In which case, I’m the one who set it all in motion,” he said, his voice drifting off. “I should have known that lies never go away. They ripple through time. I have to do what’s right, even if it means telling Leigh Ann what I know. Even if it ends my career. I’ll go on your show. I’ll go to the police. I’m willing to drag my secrets into the light.”

  “That’s good to know, Senator. Right now, I’d like to ask you to sit tight. I have an idea that could take Brenner down.”

  As soon as she was in a cab, she pulled up Kendra’s cell phone number and dialed. After four rings, the call went to voice mail. “Kendra, it’s Laurie. Give me a call. I know who the Beehive man is. It’s time to turn the tables on him.”

  54

  The following afternoon, Laurie and Leo stood in Kendra’s garage. The show’s lead cameraman, Nick, was waiting outside in the driveway, behind the wheel of their production van, and they were waiting for Grace and Jerry to arrive in Jerry’s new car.

  Laurie’s phone pinged. It was a text from Jerry. Sorry, bad traffic, but we’re out front. Battle stations ready.

  “Okay, everyone’s in place,” Laurie said.

  Kendra stared at her cell phone, her hand visibly shaking.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Laurie asked. “Another alternative is to go to the police.”

  Kendra’s eyes widened. “No. From the sounds of it, this man Brenner has political connections. I saw how the police treated me when Martin was killed. I’m convinced someone in the department pulled strings to gloss over Martin’s affair with Leigh Ann. All these years, I was right about the two of them, but they treated me like I was crazy.”

  Laurie looked at Leo and knew he was biting his tongue. Her father was blue through and through. He had no tolerance for people who did not trust the police, but Laurie understood Kendra’s reservations. For all they knew, Brenner had a friend or two in the NYPD. And if Kendra went to the police now, there was no guarantee they would believe that Brenner acted on his own. Brenner could use those tapes to say that he had killed Martin at her request and cut a deal to save himself by testifying against her.

  “I can’t promise this will work,” Laurie said.

  “I know,” Kendra whispered. “But it’s the best chance I’ve ever had to clear my name.” She ran her fingertips along the silver chain of her necklace. The pendant contained a hidden audio recorder that transmitted to the production van outside.

  “You ready?” Laurie asked. She texted Kendra a photograph from her phone. It was step one of putting the plan in motion. She already had the telephone number from Joe Brenner’s website pulled up on her phone. Step two.

  Kendra nodded, looking more certain than she had since Leo and Laurie’s arrival. “Let’s do this. Let’s nail him to the wall.”

  Laurie hit the dial button.

  • • •

  Three rings in, the call went to voice mail, as Laurie had expected on a Saturday. “Mr. Brenner, this is Laurie Moran.” Leo nodded at her, encouraging her to keep her voice confident and level. “I’m a journalist and a producer at Fisher Blake Studios. Your name has come up in the course of our investigation into the murder of Dr. Martin Bell and we’d like to give you a chance to tell your side of the story on camera before we go to air. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.”

  Laurie felt her heart racing as she hung up the phone. Both Alex and Leo said that private investigators directed their calls to their cell phones so they could check messages at all hours. If they were right, then Joe Brenner was listening to Laurie’s voice right now. They sat in complete silence. There was nothing for them to do but wait.

  Less than two minutes later
, Kendra’s phone rang in her hand. She cringed at the sound as if her hand were burning. She held up the screen to show them that the call was coming from a blocked number.

  It was Brenner.

  Kendra’s voice quivered when she answered. “Hello?”

  She leaned toward Laurie, and Laurie was able to make out Brenner’s end of the conversation. “You’ve been a very bad girl, Kendra. Did you forget our rules? What did you tell those producers?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t say one word about you, but I just got off the phone with Laurie Moran, the head producer. She somehow knows all about you.”

  “Why didn’t you call me immediately?”

  “I literally had my phone in my hand when it rang. I had to go down to my garage so the kids wouldn’t hear me. Then you called me.”

  “So I know where little Bobby and Mindy are now. That was considerate of you.”

  His voice was icy, and Laurie felt a lump form in her throat. She reached for Kendra’s free hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “Please, I promise I didn’t say anything. But we should talk . . . in person. I’ll tell you everything she said, but I’m afraid she may have gotten the police to wiretap my phone.”

  The call suddenly went dead. Kendra looked at the screen, wondering if she had lost the signal. A text message appeared from a blocked number.

  Meet me at Cooper Triangle. Forty minutes.

  “Is that a bar or something?” Laurie asked.

  Kendra shook her head quickly. “It’s that little triangle of grass next to Cooper Union. I’ve met him there before.” Cooper Union was a small arts school in the East Village. Laurie knew the exact spot.

  Kendra hit the button to open the garage door, and Laurie and Leo hopped into the van with Nick. She directed the cameraman where to go as she texted the location to Jerry. Cooper Union was only a few blocks away. They’d be in place before Kendra or Brenner arrived. That was the only way their plan would work.

  55

  Exactly thirty-eight minutes later, Laurie watched from the passenger seat of the production van as Kendra walked east on 8th Street and turned right on Cooper Square. Kendra waited for the light to change and made her way to the small, triangular park made from what used to be a concrete traffic median.

  “Almost there,” Kendra said. “Hope you can hear me.”

  At Laurie’s direction, Nick called Kendra’s cell phone, let it ring one time, and hung up. It was the signal they had agreed on to confirm that the audio was transmitting to the van.

  Laurie’s phone buzzed. The text was from Jerry. She’s here! I have a good angle. You guys?

  Laurie hopped up and joined Nick and Leo in the back of the van. Jerry was operating a small dash-mounted camera from his vehicle, but Laurie was depending on Nick for the better footage. Nick was capturing Kendra on video with a long-zoom lens. The camera was mounted on the exterior of the van, hidden inside of a roof-mounted rig. She watched on the screen as Kendra arrived at the traffic median as planned.

  Good here too, she texted back.

  They had never done something this clandestine before. New York required the consent of only one party in order to record a conversation. Thanks to Kendra’s cooperation, they might finally be able to prove whatever role Joe Brenner played in Martin Bell’s death.

  Two minutes after Kendra arrived, a solidly built man in a navy blue hoodie approached from the north, his hands in his pockets. As Kendra and Brenner began to speak, Laurie signaled to Nick and pointed to her ear. They needed more volume. Nick turned a dial, and soon they could hear the conversation clearly.

  “We had a deal,” Brenner said. “You were the one who decided to do this show. You were supposed to keep me out of it. Now I’m getting a phone call from the producer. You owe me an explanation.”

  “I swear, it wasn’t me. Laurie Moran called me today out of the blue. She told me she knows who killed Martin. And then she texted me this photograph.” Kendra held up the screen of her phone and showed Brenner the photograph Laurie had sent moments earlier. The time stamp would line up to the story Kendra was feeding Brenner if he decided to inspect the photograph more closely. Instead, he gave it a cursory glance. It was Brenner’s head shot from the home page of his private investigator website.

  “She give you my name?” Brenner asked.

  Laurie physically crossed her fingers, hoping that Kendra was a competent liar.

  “No,” Kendra said quickly. “Just a photograph. Like I said, I made an excuse to hang up and was about to call you when you reached me first.”

  “What else did the TV people say?” Brenner asked.

  “They asked me whether I was ever approached by a private investigator about the affair I suspected Martin was having. Of course, I told them no. Everyone had been treating me like a looney tune, even before Martin’s death. They were all so convinced that I fabricated the affair from scratch. But then after I called you, I realized the truth. You’re the private investigator they were talking about. Maybe whoever hired you to befriend me told the producers about you. That show is going to prove that you killed Martin.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You might be as crazy as you were five years ago if you think I’m the one who killed your husband.”

  “All these years, I thought you were just a dangerous stranger that I was stupid enough to trust with my problems. But it’s no coincidence that you made those tapes of me complaining about my marriage. You were sent there—hired by a client. Who was it? Daniel Longfellow?”

  He scoffed. “It’s just you and me here, Kendra. After all these years, I’d love to know the truth. You mean to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with taking out your husband?”

  “Of course not,” she insisted. “I think you did it!”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree with that one, sister. Look, it sounds to me like the producers don’t know a thing. Keep your mouth shut like we agreed. I’ll let you know when it’s time for the next payment.” He started to walk away, but Kendra called out after him.

  “The producers never told me your name, but I figured it out, Mr. Brenner.”

  Brenner’s lips were moving, but he had stepped too far away from Kendra. They couldn’t hear him over the sounds of passing cars.

  Kendra spoke again. “After the producer sent me that picture of you, I uploaded it into a Google Images search. Your website came up right away. Your name is Joe Brenner. You have a private eye license that you probably don’t want to lose.” She took three steps toward him. Even on the screen, Laurie could see the fear in her face, but Kendra must have remembered what they had told her about keeping the recorder close to Brenner. “You have been threatening for years to turn those recordings of me over to the police. But a good cop might suspect that you’re the one who killed my husband, all so you could drain me of money until I go to my grave.”

  “Be very careful, Kendra. I don’t respond well to threats.”

  “You’re a bully. You’ve known all along that I was innocent, but you’ve been blackmailing me for five years. It ends today. Just tell me the truth, and we can go our separate ways. Otherwise, I’m going to the police to tell them everything I know, and let the chips fall where they may.”

  Brenner smiled and shook his head, but said nothing. He snatched the phone from Kendra’s hand and inspected it.

  “Just what I was afraid of,” Laurie sighed. “He knows she’s recording him.”

  He began to pat down the front of Kendra’s dress, but she recoiled from his touch. They heard the sounds of a struggle and a loud “Stop!” come through the audio feed.

  Brenner suddenly stood up straight and began turning in a methodical circle. His gaze did a double take when he spotted their van, with the roof mount.

  “He made us,” Leo said.

  Before Laurie knew what she was doing, she was opening the back door of the van.

  “Laurie, no!” her father called out.

  “Dad, he won’t shoot me
in front of a rolling camera. Just keep filming!”

  An approaching taxi laid on its horn as Laurie sprinted across the street.

  56

  Brenner turned to leave, but had nowhere to go. Cars were racing by on either side.

  “I have an armed ex–police officer in that van, so don’t even think about hurting us,” Laurie said.

  He held up both of his hands. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s a huge misunderstanding. I’m a private investigator. I don’t hurt people, let alone kill them.”

  “I have definitive evidence that you were hired by Daniel Longfellow and gathered proof of an affair between his wife and Martin Bell. Then Longfellow instructed you to disclose that proof to Kendra.”

  He shrugged. “Even if that’s true, so what? That’s what private eyes do all the time.”

  “Except you never told Kendra about the affair, did you? You saw a chance for a payday. After you got her on tape saying she wanted to be free of her husband, you killed him and have been blackmailing Kendra ever since.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m the good guy. I never gave Kendra the pictures of her husband with another woman because she was nuts already. There’s no telling what she might have done.”

  As he offered what sounded like an innocent explanation, Brenner’s face softened and his voice sounded less icy. He seemed like a completely different person than when he had been speaking to Kendra alone a few minutes earlier. “Everyone knows Kendra was hanging by a thread.”

  “So you grabbed the chance to blackmail her!”

  “Listen to me, lady. That’s not how it happened.”

  “Why did you record her when she was venting about her marriage?”

  He removed a small digital recorder from his jacket pocket and held it up. She saw a red light on the front. “Because I’m a private eye. I record everything. I erase the stuff I don’t need. But then when the doc was killed, I figured Kendra did it. She had a husband who wanted to dump her. The doc and his parents wanted to take away her kids. They would have left her high and dry with nothing.”