The Victorian had a third place hidden from view. One Alice had created the day she locked up Derek’s room and pocketed the only key.
She went there now. Unlocked the door. The faintest wisp of teenage boy hung in the air. A low moon threw a beam of light into the room that slashed it in half. Everything remained the same. The computer on his desk, the schoolbooks she’d never returned, the indent in his pillow. Alice stepped into the darkened room and closed the door behind her. Clicked the lock.
The door to the closet stood open, and she stared into a past that had already transpired and couldn’t be fixed.
This was the only closet in the whole house she could breach. She couldn’t even go into the pantry; instead she’d moved all the cans of tomatoes, the boxes of cereal, the bags of pasta, to other cabinets. Ones where the shelves stretched to the edge. Storage areas that could be used only for storage. Nothing else.
But this closet. This closet was different. She’d never tried to articulate it. Not to her therapist. Not even to herself. By all rational accounts, this should be the one closet she couldn’t—shouldn’t—be able to bear. And yet, this was her refuge. The one place she could unleash the emotions she hid from the world. There were no surprises here. The worst had already happened. She’d survived.
She ran her hands along her son’s clothes. Soft cotton T-shirts, stiff denim jeans. The felted JV letterman jacket he’d worn only once but had to have after his father convinced him to try out for the football team when he was a gawky freshman. They all hung from the rails that surrounded her in two tiers. Her son still lived in this room.
He lived as long as she came there.
From high school on, Derek had spent untold hours in his room gaming. His grades had plummeted, and he’d withdrawn from anything that wasn’t connected to a console. His whole life took place in an alternate reality, populated by people she’d never met. People she’d grown to hate with an intensity she hadn’t known was possible.
After Alice found the files her husband was too cowardly to act upon, Derek’s closet had become her war chamber. It was where she fueled her rage. Schemed against those who’d dragged her son into their world and swallowed him whole.
She slid down the back wall until she sat on the floor. An empty hanger hung between sweat shirts, its arm canted downward as if the item it held had been stripped off it in a hurry. Her hand shot out, patting the floor, but she knew. The sweat shirt hadn’t slipped off the hanger.
Olivia.
Alice stretched her arm deeper under the clothes. The air cooled around her and an icy tingle crawled along her scalp and spread across her chest, slowing her heart. Her fingers scraped the baseboard of the rear wall, but it was gone. Her teeth chattered. It was all gone.
She scrambled to her feet, striking the clothes rod with her shoulder, and nearly fell back down.
“Olivia!”
The bedroom door refused to open and she yanked several times, rattling the door in its frame before remembering to turn the key in the old-fashioned lock. Freed, she stormed Olivia’s empty room. Then she half ran, half slid down the stairs.
“Olivia!”
Her husband sauntered out of his study. “She’s not here.”
She hated him for his nonchalance. “Where is she?”
“She had rehearsal.”
“Did she have anything with her?” she asked.
“No, she said she was going to walk over to Kim’s house and catch a ride with her.”
“Not anyone.” Alice gritted her teeth. How could such a brilliant man be so dense? “Anything. Was she carrying anything?”
“Her schoolbag, I think.”
“Soft brown leather, worn across the body?”
“I guess,” he said.
Her bag. Not Olivia’s. Hers.
She ran her hands through her hair. Strands caught on her ring and then dragged like spider webs across her skin. She’d have to deal with her daughter later. It wasn’t too late to fix this. She was an Ambrose.
“You should have told me.” She paced the foyer. Her shoulder brushed against the Christmas tree, and the crystal ornaments clinked festively. “How can I make things right when I don’t know what’s truly wrong?”
“Make what right?” he asked.
Alice scooped up her keys. “It’s too late to play the innocent, Zachary. The files. Why did you create the files if you weren’t going to avenge our son?”
“My God, Alice. What have you done?”
After the dossiers. The lies. The horror on his face enflamed her.
“Everything you couldn’t.”
47
The tobacconist’s small office barely had room for them both. Jo’s attention remained riveted on the security footage playing on the computer screen while Jakob Anders counted the till and prepared his bank deposit.
She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that twelve days ago—two days before Tye Horton was murdered—on a Friday evening at 1647 hours, Alice Walsenberg had entered the smoke shop and bought a churchwarden pipe. Mr. Anders had emerged from his office and greeted the woman. After a brief discussion, he unlocked the corner display case, removed the pipe, and placed it on a pipe stand in front of her. Never touching the pipe, she nodded. He boxed it and then slid it into a bag. She removed several bills from her wallet, and at the conclusion of the transaction, he handed her a receipt. She was nearly out the door when he spoke to her and she paused. He rushed over to her and gifted her with a small package of tobacco, which she accepted. She tilted her head, and the camera captured the smile that warmed her face and left no doubt as to her identity.
Alice Walsenberg.
And Jo had probably just met the only person in Echo Valley who didn’t know her by name.
“Well, she was all glammed up in the newspaper photo,” Anders explained. “When she came in here, she was wearing a ball cap and boots like she’d just stepped out of the stables. But I’m fairly certain it was her.”
The footage from the multiple cameras played simultaneously. With each pass, Jo viewed a different quadrant of the screen. It was harder to identify Alice from the other angles, but it didn’t matter. It was Alice.
Had Tye’s murder been a family endeavor? Or was Alice an unwitting accomplice? Alice Walsenberg was an outdoorsy woman. A ranch girl who had never outgrown her love of horses. She could have a whole collection of caps. Olivia certainly would. Was the ball cap a convenience or an attempt at subterfuge?
Jo expected her shock to diminish, but it hadn’t.
Alice and Zachary had both been at the resort the night Ronny’s truck brakes were tampered with. Alice had cozied up to Quinn. The DA had tried. Neither had been very successful. Had there been two intended victims that night?
After Jo watched all the camera angles, she copied the footage onto a flash drive. Considering what she’d done to the chief’s blood pressure yesterday, she’d have to put medics on standby when she briefed him tonight.
Her phone vibrated and her pulse spiked, until she saw it was Squint and not the chief. She excused herself and took the call.
He cut to the point. “Dispatch just sent officers to the DA’s house for a DV. Sergeant Finch and Dickinson are on their way.”
This couldn’t be good. “Who called it in?”
“The daughter. I’m at the north end of town. Meet you there?”
“En route.”
* * *
Jo parked a block away and used the shadows to approach the stately Victorian belonging to the Walsenbergs. After nearly three days without fresh snow, the clouds were moving in and a storm was forecasted to blanket the valley later tonight. Clouds scuttled across the moon and bleached the colors of the house to gloomy shades of gray.
Olivia sat on the front steps with her back against the spindled rail, her knees drawn to her chest. Tiny white lights tucked into the foliage in the urns by the door twinkled in a complex pattern behind her.
“It’s a lot warmer inside,
” Jo said.
Olivia stared off into the distance. “Your friends are inside.”
Jo tugged her jacket down as far as it would go and sat on the other side of the steps. Even with the extra layer, the cold bled through her slacks. “Is that why you’re out here?”
Olivia responded with a slight shake of her head that could have meant anything.
“Are you okay?” Clearly she wasn’t. She’d just called the cops on her parents. But Jo was afraid that if she reached out and touched Olivia, the girl would shatter. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“You were the one here earlier, weren’t you?”
“Yes. With my partner, Squint.” Jo pitched her voice low, soothing.
“You think my dad did something.”
Teenagers were smarter than a lot of people gave them credit for, and they possessed finely calibrated BS detectors. Jo couldn’t share a lot about the investigation, but she could confirm this. “I do.”
“You’re wrong,” Olivia said. “Dad didn’t do what you think he did.” She traced the outline of a heart on the frosted porch. “My mother did.” She reached for the leather messenger bag next to her.
Jo held out her hand. “Before you open anything up, why don’t you tell me what you’re getting.”
The youngest Walsenberg pushed the bag toward Jo, obliterating the heart. “Proof.”
“Of what?” Jo dragged the heavy bag onto her lap and unzipped the main compartment. The silvered edge of a laptop glinted in the moonlight.
“The laptop was Tye’s,” Olivia said, and went back to her thousand-mile stare.
The sudden reappearance of the laptop prompted an overwhelming number of questions, but Jo forced herself to start at the beginning. “How did you know Tye?”
“Derek introduced me to him.” Olivia’s hair fell across her cheek. “He seemed nice. Derek thought so. That was enough. At least for me.” She straightened her legs, and the bottom of a sweat shirt peeked between the flaps of her pea coat. “I don’t know if you knew it, but Tye designed a really cool game. Derek let me play it a couple of times.”
“How did you get Tye’s laptop?”
“It was hidden in Derek’s room.”
The laptop’s chronology was going to be important. “Had Tye given it to your brother?”
Olivia shook her head again, this time more forcefully. “He couldn’t have. It didn’t show up in his room until last week.”
“How do you know this?”
A car approached the intersection at the end of the block and rolled through the stop sign.
Olivia waited until it had sped past them. “Derek was a goof, but we loved each other. He looked out for me. The whole older-brother thing, you know?” Her eyes welled with tears. “Mom had locked up his room after he died, but I knew where she kept the key. I used to sneak into it when she wasn’t home, and I’d sit there for hours trying to understand how things got so bad that Derek thought killing himself was the only answer. Wondered what I could have done different.” Jo opened her mouth, but Olivia cut her off. “I know. It’s not my fault.”
“Knowing and believing are two different things.”
“Yeah, they are.” She pulled her sleeves over her hands. “The anniversary hit me hard. I just missed him so much. I went into his room.” She plucked at the fabric of her top. “After Derek had gotten his acceptance letter, Tye gave him this sweat shirt. He used to wear it all the time. I found it in the closet. It even still smelled like him for a while. Every time I went into his room, I’d put it on. Pretend he was hugging me. Last week I found the laptop.”
“I’m going to need to keep all this.”
Olivia gave a tight nod. “Yesterday I found more stuff. A notebook. Files. Ronny’s name was on one. He could be a jerk, but he didn’t deserve … My mom …” Olivia buried her face in her hands and wept.
Jo moved closer and put an arm around the girl’s shoulder.
Olivia leaned into Jo. “That’s when I knew I couldn’t leave that stuff in the closet anymore.”
A small movement on the sidewalk caught Jo’s attention. Squint. Jo subtly shook her head. He dissolved back into the shadows and stood watch.
After several minutes, Olivia pulled away. “What’s going to happen now?”
“I won’t know for sure until I read everything in the bag. Is your mom inside?”
“Dad said she’s out looking for me.”
“Does she know you have all this?”
“She knows. She locked herself in Derek’s room after the argument. I grabbed the bag from my room and hid in the yard, trying to figure out what to do. Even out here, I heard her yell my name. Then she charged out of the house, got in her car, and left. A minute later, the two cops came. They wanted to talk to Dad.”
“How come you didn’t give the bag to one of them?”
“I hadn’t decided for sure what I wanted to do with it.”
“Your mom—”
“Don’t.” She inhaled a ragged breath. “Everything you need to know is in that bag. “Please. Don’t make me say it.”
“I’m sorry. You’re shivering.” Jo stood and drew Olivia up with her. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.” She signaled Squint.
Panic pushed people into making bad decisions. Alice might have left in search of her daughter, but at some point she’d realize her plans had gone terribly, terribly awry. And when that happened, Alice Walsenberg would do everything in her power to regain control, clean up loose threads.
And one of those threads was Quinn.
48
Quinn limped the battered Mini Cooper into its assigned parking spot by the dumpster. The meeting with Professor Lucas had gone better than she’d thought possible. She hadn’t even sat down before Lucas blurted that Detective Wyatt had come by his office earlier in the day. It saved Quinn the necessity of explaining everything. Instead of eating crow, she’d presented a final version of the capstone project. It didn’t have Tye’s final polish or all of the upgraded graphics, but it represented the game in its entirety. She’d left with a grade she could live with, an awkward apology she’d never expected, and the knowledge that she’d never have to deal with the man again.
Score one for Wyatt.
The apartment complex parking lot was icy but empty. Most of the people who lived in the apartments were students and they’d gone home for winter break. Stu/Stan watched her as she picked her way across the slippery pavement.
“I only had to chase one guy away today,” he said. “I warned him you’d doctored the photos. In real life you were hideous.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“I’m ordering pizza tonight,” he said. “Want some? My treat.”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“The discussion board. That was a dick thing for me to do.”
“Is that an apology?” Because seriously, if that was the best he could do, she was going to hit him in the throat.
He upped the ante. “I’ll throw in some Mountain Dew.”
“Deal. But it still doesn’t make you a nice person, and your apology sucks.”
He retreated into his apartment. “I’ll let you know when it arrives.”
This evening the stairs stretched into forever. The homecoming routine sapped her energy, but it had to be done. Check the corridor. Empty. Footprints? Hard to tell in the slush. Business card in door. Undisturbed. Breathe. Unlock door. Thread keys between fingers. Go! Living room, kitchenette, bathroom, bedroom, closet. Safe.
Breathe.
She set her messenger bag on the dinette table next to an empty canvas duffle bag. She’d expected to hear from Wyatt by now. The detective had checked in with annoying frequency over the past several days. On the one hand, it was comforting to know that Wyatt took her safety seriously. On the other hand, it was a reminder that a cop believed she had reason to be worried.
A surprising amount of safety tips were available on the web. Most of the forums agreed on one thing: afte
r politely but firmly telling the whackjob to fuck off, don’t engage. But the websites assumed that the victim knew who was doing the stalking. Quinn didn’t know a phone number to block, an email address to blacklist, or the name to write on a restraining order. The best she could do were the things Wyatt had advised: carry her cell phone with her, lock her doors, and have an escape plan—which in a second-story apartment with only one door was not very complicated.
She flipped open the messenger bag and transferred some newly acquired toiletries to the duffle. In her bedroom, she riffled through her drawers. If she pretended she was going away for the weekend, it didn’t seem as bad. Plus her underwear didn’t need to match.
A buzz against her hip made her jump. She jammed the clothes in the duffle, then pulled her phone from her jeans pocket. Rather than Wyatt, Alice Walsenberg’s name appeared on her screen.
“Nope.” Quinn sent the call to voice mail and tossed the phone on the table.
Her current circumstances reminded her of a time when she was ten and her sister’s cat, Ms. Snugglebunny—Snuggles for short—had cornered a mouse on their apartment balcony. Each time the mouse tried to dart past, the cat’s paw whipped out and swatted it back into the corner. The standoff ended when the cat stretched, then hopped onto one of the plastic patio chairs, where it curled up. Quinn was about to go finish her homework when the mouse took a few tentative steps. The cat didn’t move. One more hesitant step and then the little gray rodent made a break for it, its tiny pink feet a blur. In a flash, the cat pounced. With a pathetic squeak, the mouse disappeared under the cat’s belly. After a quick skirmish, the cat batted the mouse back into the corner with such force that it somersaulted against the wall. Quinn couldn’t watch any longer, and she locked Snuggles inside.
It was Wyatt’s lesson with the training simulator all over again. Just when you think it’s safe—whammo! Some new threat pops up.
She added a package of cookies to the bag.
Since Sunday, Quinn had been trying to think like a cop. It was exhausting. She played the what-if game with everyone she encountered. What if that pedestrian was armed? Welcome to Colorado. Every truck on the roadway had gun racks in its rear window. What if the waitress wanted to brain her with the coffee carafe? Somehow she didn’t think ducking under the counter and returning fire with little thimbles of creamer was going to be very effective. And no matter how hard Wyatt tried to even the odds, in a game of cat and mouse, the cat had all the advantages.
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