Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [140]
Placing the call, she readied herself for what she was going to say. After a number of rings, she knew she was facing voice mail again; then there was a click, and a woman’s voice said cautiously, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Morris?” Alvarez said, glancing down at her notes. Elle’s parents were Brenda and Keane Morris, both retired. He was a pilot, and she was a grade school teacher.
“I can tell you’re calling from Montana. Caller ID says you’re with the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department. You’ve called before. This is about Elle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. We are investigating your daughter’s death.”
“You don’t think it was just a terrible accident?” Her voice grew very small.
“We don’t know. We just want to be sure.”
She started crying softly, and Alvarez’s heart went out to her. This was the hardest part of the job.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Go ahead,” she said, inhaling shakily.
“We interviewed your son-in-law, Tom Alexander. Elle was on the phone to him when the accident occurred.”
“Tom loves Elle. He’s heartbroken. We all are.”
“Tom said your daughter thought another vehicle was driving dangerously. Did he tell you that?” Alvarez asked.
“He said Elle thought the driver was trying to kill her. I don’t know. Sometimes, when you’re driving, you kind of think those things, you know?”
“Yes.”
“He rear-ended her. Tom said she said that. And his lights were really bright. But then, Tom said she must have dropped the phone.... He called nine-one-one. She told him to.”
“Did your daughter have any enemies that you might know of?”
“Oh, no. Not Elle. Everyone loved Elle. Her best friend from high school, Jayne Drummond, still lives around here, and she stopped by and we talked about how much everyone loved her.” Elle’s mother’s voice was growing thick with tears again. “You can talk to her, if you’d like.”
“You have a son, too.”
“Bruce. He’s married. Lives in Florida. I can give you his number, too.”
“Thank you.”
Alvarez wrote down the phone numbers for Jayne Drummond and Bruce Morris as Brenda read them to her. The next questions she wanted to ask were going to sound strange, and she wasn’t quite sure how to approach her with them. “Mrs. Morris, we’re investigating a death in Grizzly Falls of another young woman. She either fell or was pushed over a railing.”
“I’m very sorry for her family,” Brenda said sincerely.
“We would like to help them get closure, as well,” Alvarez said, pushing on. “The woman, Jocelyn Wallis, bore a remarkable resemblance to your daughter. Enough that someone asked if they were related.” A little white lie, but close enough to the truth that Alvarez felt no compunction in using it. “Although I suspect this is just the kind of odd coincidence that crops up from time to time, I wanted to ask about the possibility that they were related somehow. Maybe knew each other?”
It was a total stretch, and Alvarez could hear the embarrassed tone of her own voice. Still, those pictures Trace O’Halleran had discussed with them had offered up more questions than answers. If she could connect any two of the look-alikes, maybe the rest would follow.
“No . . .”
“Elle was born in Boise?”
“Yes.”
“Does she have any connection to Helena?”
A sharp intake of breath. “No . . .”
Alvarez’s pulse jumped. Something here. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you are thinking of something?”
“It’s not ... I don’t . . . I don’t understand how it could.”
“Could you tell me what you mean?”
“Oh, dear. My husband ... oh, dear.” She sighed. “We learned that my husband could not father any children of his own, so we went to a clinic in Helena. It’s no longer there. But it was then, and we went there ... to find a donor.”
“A sperm donor,” Alvarez clarified carefully.
“Yes. Yes. Both of my children were fathered by the same donor.”
“Elle and Bruce.”
“We never told anyone. Bruce still doesn’t know, and Elle didn’t know. I know I should tell my son, but it never seemed like