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Sorry this took a while - combo of real life crud to deal with and the fact that wouldn't let me upload it for a couple days!

Part Fifteen: Mommy Dearest

August 31, 2006

Jordan watched the interrogation through the one-way mirror. Jeanette Holloway had, according to Woody, been very calm when they came for her. He'd taken one look at the place and called her, trying to circumvent CSU, preferring Jordan's and Nigel's methods. The place was bloody, in shambles, its walls like a rusted Jackson Pollack painting – only the pigment was hemoglobin. A fain smell lingered in the air as well. Corruption of a body, sweet, gagging in the nostrils.

Jordan found the body - that of an apparent transient whoit would later turn out had witnessed one of her frimes -quickly and headed back to the morgue to run preliminary tests. Nigel remained behind, collecting what amounted to cartloads of evidence. Now Woody was trying to get the woman to say anything, Her calm had become something like catatonia. Jordan tapped on the window. Woody excused himself.

He came out of the interrogation room, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I don't know what to make of her. Aside from the obvious fact, her daughter's death didn't do much for her mental stability."

Jordan handed him a small book, wrapped in an evidence bag. "You're assuming she had any to start with."

He glanced down at the item she proffered. "What's this?"

"Jeannette Holloway's diary – of Amanda's life."

"She was obsessed with her own daughter?"

Jordan nodded. "Every success Amanda had validated something in her mother. She pushed and pushed Amanda into the lifestyle that eventually led to her car accident and disfigurement. Then she kept telling Amanda that it would all be okay, the doctors would fix her – those exact words, apparently. She was furious when Amanda moved to Maine and even worse when the girl committed suicide. The mother felt the daughter let her down, that the daughter was weak."

Woody cocked his head. "Okay, but why start killing these models?"

"These models – all of them were used on that calendar. The calendar was-"

"Jeannette Holloway's idea."

"Yeah. It was going to be sold for charity, but more than that, it was going to mark Amanda's triumphant return to the world of high fashion and beauty."

"Only Amanda didn't play along." Woody was following Jordan easily now. "But the project had been given the green light so other models were chosen."

"That's about it," Jordan confirmed.

The detective stared through the glass for a moment. "Let's see what she says now." He went back into the interrogation room, giving Ms. Holloway a cool, dispassionate gaze. "It's really tragic about your daughter, Ms. Holloway."

The woman, an aging blond who spent more time on a treadmill than on a therapist's couch and looked it, her eyes anxiety-filled orbs that never settled on anything to look at for more than a few seconds, her body taut and thin, too many bones too clearly highlighted through her skin, snorted. "You never knew my daughter."

"No." Woody kept his tone even." But I have lost people very close to me."

"People you loved? People you sacrificed all your own talents, all your own dreams for? People who turned around and threw those sacrifices in your face, who claimed you ruined their lives?" She waited for Woody to shake his head. "Then you don't know much about it."

"Why don't you tell me?"

She rolled her eyes, seeming to dismiss the detective as an imbecile. Then, with frightening quickness, her features contorted and she leaned across the table, her voice a rasp against Woody's ears and those of his observers. "That calendar was to be Amanda's return to the top! She would have shown the world how beautiful she was once again, would have been loved and adored once again."

"You would have had all those things again?" Woody's voice was neutral, but to the point.

The killer shrugged. "Incidental. But – But how sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child – that's King Lear, you know?" She flicked up her eyebrows. Woody nodded, trepidation about a conviction creeping in. "Well, I know what that old monarch felt. Amanda informed me from that – that shack up in Maine that she wasn't coming back, that she'd not been seeing the specialists that she didn't ever want to return to that world. Well, I'll tell you, I wasn't having it! I told her I was still her mother and she would still listen and her brother would be up to fetch her." She paused, gulping from the glass of water at her elbow. "And do you know what that ungrateful child did? Do you know, Detective?"

His tongue thick with loathing, he replied, "She took her own life."

Ms. Holloway's fist pounded on the table. "Exactly! To spite me! She was always trying little things like that." She shook her head. "Well, that wasn't going to work, was it? So I let the project go ahead. I even offered to provide the accessories. I became friends with each of those so-called models – not a one who held a candle to my Amanda. I let them think the honor of being chosen was theirs, not some cast-off from a much more accomplished model. I thought it might be all right, but, you see, Detective, none of them were grateful either. In every last one of those girls – and the one other – I could see those flashes of ingratitude. They had become Amanda and I simply couldn't let that go. They could never really be her and I could not allow her to believe she had won."

Woody was silent as Jeannette Holloway swallowed the last of the water. He was trying to think of something relevant to ask her, all the while feeling pretty certain that this one wouldn't go to court. If the diary Jordan had found showed premeditation it would go against an insanity plea; if not, well, the woman was not exactly rowing with both oars in the water. In fact, Woody that she may have lost the oars all together a while back. A question did strike him. "One more thing, Ms. Holloway."

She gave him a look of bland agreement.

"None of these models ever made the connection between you and your daughter?"

She giggled. It sent chills to Woody's toes via express mail. "I used the name of my jewelry line – the line I created especially for this project. And of course, I befriended them, took them under my wing, much as I always had with my own Amanda. In the end, it made them quite easy to approach." She made a small frown. "There were those two innocent bystanders – I never realized the Martin girl had a twin – sad that. And the woman who came up me disposing of young Audra. If only I could have avoided killing her, but it couldn't be helped."

Woody thought he might throw up, but he kept his mind on the fact that a bunch of people were about to get justice. Curiosity gave him one more query. "What was the name of our jewelry line?"

She smiled up at him, her mouth curved into a wicked grin. "Why, Madame De Farge, of course."

XXXXX

Walking down the hallway, Woody glanced over at Jordan. "Looney or sane enough to play it loony?"

"I hope that's not a personal question," Jordan shot back with a short-lived smile.

He chuckled. "It's not. Unless you're Jeannette Holloway."

"Thank you, no." The M.E. shook her head. "I know a thing or two about obsession, but wow. Still…." She shrugged. "I don't know. I do lean toward the second choice though."

"Why?" His face bore real surprise.

"Madame De Farge? A little creepy, don't you think?"

"Uhhh… I might if I knew who that was?"

Jordan stopped and eyed him. "She's the lady who sits and knits day after day by the guillotine, watching all those people go to their deaths. She just knits and knits, her stitches mean more to her than the lives of – of thousands."

"I really missed something there."

She smiled. "A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens?"

"Oh! Yeah, okay. We had a comic version of that when I was a kid."

Jordan smacked him on the shoulder. "Our kids are not reading comic versions of classic literature. My dad may have screwed up – pretty big sometimes – but one great thing he always did was make sure I read."

XXXXX

Jeannette Holloway never went to trial. She confessed to the crimes, copped a plea that kept her off of Death Row, and then her story – her fifteen minutes of fame as the Calendar Girl Killer – passed. She lived her own Death Row for about two months in prison before she was found lying in a pool of blood beneath a pine tree in the exercise yard. A large, gift wrap bow was stuck to her head. Maybe she was indeed the present 'neath someone's Christmas tree. No one really cared.

XXXXX

Shortly after catching Holloway, Jordan woke up one morning – a day off, she exulted – to a funny feeling on her left hand. Woody was in the shower as she looked down. And then up. And then around. Somehow, without waking her, he had scattered rose petals over the bed, placed vases of flowers around the room, catching the morning light to perfection and, most amazing of all, he'd slipped onto her finger the friendship ring he'd once offered, she'd turned down and then regretted it for… well, until now. She got up and, wearing nothing but the diamond studded ring, joined him in the shower.

They lay on damp sheets, twined in each other's arms, Woody playing with the ring on Jordan's finger. "Do you really like it?"

She nodded and cupped his face to kiss him. "It's perfect. I thought it looked especially good this morning." Her eyes sparkled with happy mischievousness.

Woody agreed, but admonished, "I do hope you won't show it off quite like that to anyone else."

She pretended to consider it. "All right," she agreed at last. "I'll quit my part time job at the Meow-Meow Club." She sighed theatrically. "I was going to anyway."

He nuzzled her ear. "Glad to hear it, Doc." Then he pulled away. "Any particular reason?"

She shrugged. "Probably because I love you."

"Yeah?"

She nodded in reply, running one finger along his chest, toward his navel. He groaned. "And probably because they'd have fired me anyway."

"Hard to believe," he gasped, enjoying the flirtatious little game. Then again, there wasn't much about Jordan he didn't enjoy.

"She murmured into his ear. "Well, you know, I hear it's tough to do a pole dance when you're pregnant."

"I'm sure it – What?" He pulled back. "What? Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"You owe me a house in the suburbs, Farm Boy." She paused. "And a dog. After all, I'm working on the two-point-five kids." She saw panic flare in his eyes. "One at a time," she assured him.

Woody began to babble enthusiastically about the nursery they would put together until Jordan began to murmur seductively about her plans for their bedroom. They decided to see how well those plans might work.

END