Page 61 of 25 Alive

“Too many to list,” Joann said, “but they’d fight. He’d say ugly things to her, insults, threats, curses, and he’d never apologize. Never. And Angela would blame herself. But what Brett Palmer had was charm. He could be funny. Socially, he wasn’t aggressive. Privately, with my daughter, he was unfeeling and cruel. From what Angela told me, the man was a sociopath.”

Cindy pictured the mild-looking man she and Lindsay had met with. Was he a sociopath? She’d known a few. They were excellent at masking. She looked toward the painting on the wall over the sofa and asked, “Is that painting of Angela?”

Joann nodded yes and passed her phone over to Cindy with the screensaver face up. It was a photo of Angela and Joann at the beach, their arms around each other, both smiling, relaxed, happy.

“When my husband took this picture, Ange was five days away from getting married,” Joann said. “I took this one of Ange with Vic.”

Cindy looked at the photos of happy times before the unthinkable tragedy. She asked, “None of the three of you had any sense then that Brett was dangerous?”

“Not then,” Joann said. “Like I said, he had a nice way about him. Vic and I thought Angela had made this decision too soon, but she was in love.” Joann took back her phone and smiled sadly at the photo. “And maybe Brettdidn’tkillAngela. There was no physical evidence that he did. No witnesses. No drunken confession.”

“Joann, did you see writing on the bottoms of Angela’s shoes?”

“Yes. ‘I said. You dead.’ Why would Angela write something like that on her own shoes? Makes no sense. It’s not written from the point of view of a suicide, is it?

“But I wonder if we would have even suspected Brett if it wasn’t for what happened to his first wife, Roxanne. You heard how she drowned in the bathtub? Yet there was no evidence of ‘foul play.’ No drugs in her system, no suicide note, no sign of a struggle. The police thought Roxanne may have drowned herself on purpose. Or did Brett kill her? In my opinion, yes, he did. I’ve talked to Roxanne’s mother a couple times. Donna Sands. It was hard to be with her. Even though her daughter died longer ago, this pain doesn’t really go away. We were both so raw.”

“Did Donna think Brett killed her daughter Roxanne?”

“Donna never accused Brett. But I think she holds Brett responsible. She definitely thinks he seduced her daughter, emotionally abused her, then divorced her—and that Roxanne then killed herself out of shame, depression, and heartbreak. Donna doesn’t say so, but I’m sure she thinks my daughter killed herself, too. ButI’msure that she didn’t. I never ever thought that Angela killed herself, Cindy. She would never write something as dumb as ‘I said. You dead’ on her shoes. Not suicide. Not Angela.

“Brett Palmer killed my daughter. And I also blame Brett for breaking her dad’s heart and killing Victor, too.”

CHAPTER92

CINDY TOLD JOANN how sorry she was, and the grieving woman shook off some of her sadness and brought a printed photo album back to the table. Cindy noted the happy faces and playfulness of this family—including a photo of Brett and Victor playing a paddleball game on the beach.

Cindy said, “Can we talk a little more about Brett? When did you start to feel suspicious of him?”

Joann sighed. “The first time Angela called me after a fight, she was sobbing hard. I thought,Well, that happens with newlyweds.I was rationalizing. But I felt there was something sick going on when Brett brought his stepbrother, Nate Miller, to have dinner with us. Nate didn’t converse. He made cracks. We were all uncomfortable.

“After Nate left that night, Brett told us a lot of awful stuff about his stepbrother. He said that Nate was perpetually angry. That he killed small animals for fun when he was a boy. That he had been in the military, and after that, his angercould get out of control. Brett said than Nate could be violent. A trait that I think Brett and Nate shared.

“After Angela died … I blamed Brett. I didn’t see how Nate could have gotten close enough to Angela to do that to her. I even thought that Brett had told us about Nate to throw suspicion onto the violent brother. But my gut still believed it was Brett. Both of them had alibis, and that left me with ambivalence and doubt.”

Then Joann said, “I have something for you. Hang on.”

She got up from the table, went to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and when she returned, she was holding a small, handheld digital recorder.

Joann sat down again and passed the recorder to Cindy.

She said, “Picture this. A week or so after Angie’s funeral, Brett came to the house to see us. He had a lot of bags and cases with him. He was going to London to see a client. He sat in Victor’s chair and unloaded his briefcase and computer case and carry-on bag. After his visit, maybe six hours later, he called from the airport, to ask if he’d left his voice recorder here. I looked around and said, ‘No.’ Months later, when I was doing a real clean, I found it way under Victor’s lounge chair. I didn’t call Brett.

“I thought about listening to the recording, but then I didn’t want to hear his voice. I thought maybe some other time, when I felt stronger. I kept it in the junk drawer. And then, when I was tidying up ahead of your visit, I thought about that mini recorder. Here. You take this. Just … tell me what you find on it, okay?”

“Really? Great. Thank you.”

“And if you don’t mind, Cindy, may I see you out? I’m all stirred up and I need to take a nap.”

“Of course, Joann. I’ll call you after I do some research.”

“That’s fine. Oh, Cindy, one more thing. Nate Miller lives in San Francisco.”

Cindy’s mind put on the brakes. Nate lived in San Francisco? Joann said he was abusive and a trained fighter and maybe he was crazy. Brett or Nate could have killed Angela. But one thing really bothered Cindy about that theory.

How could either stepbrother have had a murderous hate on for Warren Jacobi?

CHAPTER93

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