Free Mistaken Identity by Diane Fanning Page B

out and talked to her on the porch and then went into the house. The grandmother rang the doorbell again but Jeanine didn’t answer.”
    “What did the grandmother do?”
    “She just stood there for a while. Then she pulled this big silver cross out of her purse and waved it all around the front door and left. Like I told ya, that woman is crazy.”

Fourteen
     
    Lucinda stepped on the elevator in the justice center thinking about Victoria Whitehead. She had a lot of questions for her but even more about her. Ted might have found some of those answers by now. She didn’t want to speak to him at all – she was too angry about his neglect of his estranged and hospitalized wife, Ellen – but she promised herself she’d be civil and professional.
    Walking into his workspace, she said, “What have you and your research moles dug up for me today?”
    “I don’t know where to start, Lucinda. I have volumes.”
    “How about starting with Victoria Whitehead?”
    Ted tapped on his keyboard and said, “Born Victoria Dulaney in Baltimore on June twenty-eighth 1943. Married to Francis Pippin in 1964. First child born May third 1965. Widowed 1966 …”
    “Wait. Did you say first child? Does that mean there is more than one?”
    “Yes. She had three children, two girls and a boy.”
    “Who else besides Jeanine?”
    “The first child is Susan Victoria Pippin.”
    “How did her first husband die?” Lucinda asked.
    “You have a suspicious mind, Lucinda,” Ted said with a grin. “Her first husband was a casualty of the Vietnam War – can’t blame Victoria for that one.”
    “You can’t blame me for trying. Okay, then what?”
    “Married again before the year was out to Brian Jacoby – he was with Francis in the war. They were divorced in 1967, less than a year after the marriage – no children from that relationship.”
    “And then?”
    “Then, she married a Navy guy – an officer – Lieutenant Commander Frederick Winters in 1969. Six months after the nuptials, her second child was born – Jeanine Victoria Winters on December sixteenth 1969. Her third child, Frederick Victor Winters, was born on August thirty-first 1973. He died when he was six years old in the same automobile accident that killed his father – head-on collision caused by a drunk driver who crossed over into their lane on July fourth 1979.”
    “That had to be tough – maybe that’s why she’s so whacky.”
    “Not too whacky – she found another guy to marry her in 1982. A civilian this time – Gary Finnerman – they made it to 1987 before they divorced. Then Victoria was single for nearly a decade. She married Charles Whitehead in 1996. She became a widow for the third time in 1999. Natural causes listed for that death and considering Whitehead was eighty-two at the time, probably legitimate. Looked like she was going to inherit a sizeable estate from husband number five until his children – four of them, who were all older than Victoria – challenged the new will. There must have been something questionable about it because Victoria backed down and agreed to a settlement which barely covered the bills she accumulated in her spending frenzy after Whitehead’s death. That’s when she moved here and into a home that her daughter and son-in-law bought for her.”
    “Do you have that in a document you could print out for me?” Lucinda asked.
    “I will in just a few minutes. I was about to format it into a chronological chart when you came in.”
    “Have you located any of her living ex-husbands or her oldest daughter?”
    “Haven’t started looking yet.”
    “When you find them, call the exes and see if you can fill in a bit more background information. But don’t call the daughter – I’ll do that.”
    “So what are you seeing here, Lucinda? Do you think Victoria might be involved in her daughter’s death?”
    “I don’t know. I do know they were having problems at least three days before the murders. It could have