Tom examined the picture and nodded as soon as he connected the dots. “Wait, I do know this guy,” Tom said. “He was at the country club shindig Boyd invited me to.”
Marvin returned a puzzled look. “Forgive the judgment pass, but you just don’t strike me as the country club type,” Marvin said.
“I’m not. Believe me, Boyd won’t be inviting me back anytime soon. He’s convinced I’m sleeping with his wife. But before all that, he introduced me to this guy as Frank Dee, not Delacroix.”
Tom flashed on a memory of Frank Dee from the club that night. He remembered wondering whether Dee had recently divorced. Apparently, it wasn’t a wedding ring he typically wore on that hand.
“Frank Dee is his new name,” Marvin said. “He changed it after he was released from prison.”
“Prison? What for?”
“Guess.”
“Betting on baseball?”
“Guess again.”
“Okay. Scopolamine smuggling.”
“Close,” Marvin said, smiling. “Try crystal meth. Seems like this guy was a master cooker. But as you now know, that’s not all he can cook. Mr. My-Name-Once-Was-Delacroix got into the restaurant business after he got out of the meth cooking business. He’s now the franchise owner for a bunch of restaurants throughout the state, including that Johnny Rockets on one-forty.”
“But why wasn’t this guy in jail? Isn’t crystal meth a pretty serious offense?”
“Case never went to trial,” Marvin said. “A few weeks before the trial a wee little procedural no-no came up. A technicality with the search warrant, which renders all the crucial evidence against Delacroix inadmissible in court.”
“D.A. dropped the charges after that, I suppose,” Tom said.
Marvin pantomimed the ringing of an imaginary bell. “And guess who Mr. Delacroix-Dee is related to? First cousin related.”
“Kip Lange,” Tom said.
Again, Marvin pantomimed that ringing bell.
“So Lange must have brought Dee into the deal,” Tom said. “Probably promised him a cut. But how does a guy like Dee run a family business? With the Web being what it is, you’d think somebody would have picked up on his past and made a big stink about it.”
“Well, Mr. Delacroix went through a pretty extensive life makeover. New ID. New Social Security number. Essentially, he became a whole new person. You search the Web and it’s clean of any link between the old Delacroix and the new Dee. Then I came across this New York Times investigative report about how the Internet is making it easier for people to live a double life. One article in the series focused on the Delacroix to Dee transformation. Apparently, the new Dee hired a company that specializes in online reputation management.”
“What’s online reputation management?” asked Tom.
“Basically, you can pay these specialists and they’ll keep you looking good on the Web. Its like a twenty-four-hour-a-day Internet watchdog to stamp out slander, lies, and malicious rumors about their clients. I wanted to know if Dee’s online reputation was still being scrubbed clean by somebody, so I posted a bunch of pretty inflammatory comments on the New York Times Web site that I figured would get picked up in a search engine and broadcast to anybody monitoring for such things.”
“And what happened?” Tom asked.
“Within twelve hours, my comments were removed. Then I got an e-mail from somebody at Cortland & Associates, warning me to refrain from any further attempts at slander or face legal action.”
“Who’s that?”
“Cortland & Associates is a large PR firm headquartered in Boston, but with offices all around the world. They do a lot of standard corporate PR work, but it seems they have a subspecialty in online reputation management.”
“But what you posted about Dee wasn’t a rumor. It was the truth.”
“The Internet is fast replacing television as the disseminator of the truth,” Marvin said. “What’s available online for people to find and read is what the people now believe.”
Tom moved the keyboard to Marvin’s computer over to where he could type.
“You look like you’ve lost another liter of blood,” Marvin said.
“No, it’s the name of that PR firm,” Tom said. “I met a guy at the club the night Boyd introduced me to Frank Dee. His name was Simon Cortland.”
“Interesting.”
“But you just made me think of something even more interesting than that. After I got out on bail, I paid a little visit to James Mann.”
“You did what?”
“I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
“I wouldn’t and I don’t.”
“I suggested Mann conduct a little bit of research. He took the risk. I just supplied him with some names. Anyway, we were talking about who would have framed him and why. He thought it had something to do with an upcoming promotion, but only a few people in the company even knew about that, or so he believed. But they did have the press releases ready to go.”
“The press releases,” Marvin said. “Are you thinking…”
Tom brought up the Web site for Cortland & Associates. He showed Marvin the page listing all of Cortland’s many clients. Using Marvin’s computer mouse, Tom highlighted one name in particular.
PrimaMed Corporation.
Tom and Marvin regrouped at the conference table.
“So Frank Dee is connected to Kip Lange,” Marvin said. “And we’ve got Cortland & Associates connected to PrimaMed Corporation, which is also connected to Mr. James Mann.”
“Lange is connected to me,” Tom said. “And so is James Mann.”
“But from what you told me, the only real connection we’ve established between Dee and Cortland is Roland Boyd.”
“So how is Boyd connected to Lange?”
“Well, he knew Lange,” Marvin said. “Weren’t you guys all on the same military base in Germany at the same time?”
“But he wasn’t involved with what happened to Greeley or with the heroin I took out of the country. Kelly was only worried about one person—the guy who orchestrated the heist and recruited her into his plan. Kip Lange. I can tell you after my run-ins with Roland Boyd that he’s just as dangerous as Lange. Kelly would have been terrified of him if she felt she had any reason.”
“What about Cortland and PrimaMed?” Marvin asked. “Do you think they have any links back to Boyd?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “But it sure seems worth finding out.”
Marvin fixed Tom with a cold, unblinking stare. “I need you to come clean with me, Tom. Not that I don’t trust you after you kept your James Mann rendezvous a secret from me, but is there any other reason for Boyd to have you penned on his permanent shit list?”
“No,” Tom said. “We were friends right up until he thought I was sleeping with his wife.”
Tom told Marvin about his having to break in and rescue Jill from inside Roland’s house.
“Are you and Adriana having an affair?” Marvin asked afterward. “Answer me honestly, Tom. Please.”
“No. God, no. Marvin, you can ask Adriana yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“Yes. Ask me.”
Tom and Marvin looked up and saw Adriana Boyd. Their jaws fell open simultaneously. Her truculent stance matched the coldness in her eyes. Tom’s face lit up at the sight of her.
Adriana crossed the room in four long strides. She maneuvered over to where Tom stood, dodging the paper piles with graceful steps.
“Adriana,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Adriana raised her arm. If Tom hadn’t been so surprised, he would have reflexively shifted into a defensive posture. She swung her open palm in an arc toward Tom’s face. The blow landed hard against his cheek, making a thunderclap sound. Tom felt pulses of pain where her hand had been.
“Don’t you dare touch my son again,” she said. Her voice was low and menacing.
“Adriana… you don’t understand….” Tom could only stammer out the words.
&n
bsp; “I understand that you laid your hands on my son Mitchell. Roland, of all people, convinced me not to press charges against you. He said it was all some big misunderstanding. You’re lucky I waited outside in my car as long as I did, or I might not be in control of myself.”
“You followed me here?” Tom said, incredulous.
“I came to your house just as you were pulling out of your driveway,” Adriana said. “Believe me when I tell you that I’m much calmer now.”
“Adriana, look, I understand that you’re upset. But something happened between my daughter and Mitchell that you should know about.”
“I don’t want to know anything about anything, Tom. Stay away from my family. I mean it.”
With that, Adriana Boyd turned on her heels and left.
Minutes passed before either man spoke. Marvin broke the silence first.
“Tom, why didn’t Roland Boyd go to the police after you broke into his house? You told him Jill would probably report the incident. This is a guy who locked you in a cooler because he thinks you were sleeping with his wife. Don’t you think it’s a little bit curious that he didn’t want to press any charges?”
“More than a little,” Tom said.
Chapter 61
Tom drove Kelly’s eight-year-old Honda home from Marvin’s on autopilot. He was lost in a fog. Only when he neared the house could he vaguely recall having driven there.
Marvin had made Tom swear, with his right hand pressed on his case file, that he’d keep his distance from Roland Boyd and Frank Dee.
“Let me do some more digging before you go charging at them,” his lawyer pleaded. “I’m not convinced this doesn’t have something to do with your trial. I need to learn everything I can about Frank Dee and how he operates. Last thing we need is an incendiary like you blowing things up before I can even piece it together.”
“Agreed,” Tom said.
The first call he made was to Adriana. He dialed her cell phone from the landline in the kitchen. As he expected, the call went to voice mail.
“I’m not looking for redemption here, Adriana,” Tom said in his message. “I value our friendship, and I’m forever grateful for your generosity. But my child was in danger, and you may be as well. Please give me a chance to explain. Call me.”
Tom set the wireless phone back in its cradle. He felt a sudden craving for a cup of tea. He selected a packet Kelly had kept in the cupboard. His head still wasn’t right, and Marvin’s findings, though provocative, cluttered his thoughts and overwhelmed him. Perhaps a cup of raspberry green tea and an afternoon nap would do him some good. Concussions, after all, weren’t overcome by the sheer desire to overcome them. He didn’t need a medical degree to know that a bit of rest was good medicine. He could clean up the kitchen after a quick nap.
Still sensitive to light, Tom lowered the shades in the living room. Teacup in hand, he settled himself onto the couch. Two sips and already his eyelids were shutting. He set the cup and saucer carefully on the floor and laid his body lengthwise on the couch. The quiet was blissful. There was a distinct smell that the late morning sun had baked into the cushions—an odor of sleepiness.
And so the darkness came to him.
“Dad!”
Tom stirred.
“Dad!” Jill’s voice cried again.
Tom opened his eyes and saw his daughter’s tear-streaked face staring down at him. He sat upright and knocked over the teacup with a loud clank when his feet found the floor.
“Jill… what are you doing home?” he asked, while his hands vigorously rubbed his face awake. “What time is it?” Tom peeked at the gap between the window and shade and saw bright light seeping through.
“Lindsey is missing,” Jill managed to say before her tears said the rest.
“Missing? What are you talking about?” Tom stood and gripped his daughter by the shoulder.
Jill regained some composure after taking a few deep breaths. “She wasn’t at school. Hasn’t been answering her cell phone, either. I figured she was home sick. Then her mother called me. She wanted to know if I’d seen Lindsey at school.”
“Didn’t her mother know if she went to school?”
Jill shook her head no. “She says she was asleep and didn’t hear Lin leave. But I know that means she was passed out in the living room. Lindsey could be missing for hours. What are we going to do? Her mom is totally freaking out, and so am I.”
Tom encouraged Jill to take a seat on the couch. “Wait here,” he said to her. He gathered up the teacup and saucer, then returned them to the kitchen. He came back holding a tall glass of water. “Drink this slowly,” he instructed. Jill did as she was told, and it seemed to help. “Now, tell me why you think she’s missing and didn’t run away or something. She’s under a lot of pressure.”
“No. Lindsey wouldn’t do that. I know her. She’d have called me.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” Tom asked. “You don’t always know what your friends will do.”
“No, there’s more. I didn’t tell you the truth about that night at Mitchell’s. I think something’s happened to Lindsey because of it, and it’s my fault.”
Tom felt his chest tightening. “What did you hide from me, Jill?” Tom said as he braced himself to hear the word rape.
“Mitchell didn’t try to have sex with me,” Jill confessed. “I found images on his computer. Naked pictures of me. There were pictures of Lindsey, too. And other girls from school. Girls I didn’t even know.”
Tom gave his daughter a fractured look. He could not have misheard her, but what she said didn’t make any sense. “Pictures? What do you mean?”
Again Jill took in a breath. She told her father about the party she’d attended last June. About getting drunk and passing out. She confessed to having no memory of her top coming off—whether she’d done it herself or someone had done it for her. Then she told him why she’d gone to Mitchell’s in the first place.
“Lindsey and I wanted to know if Mr. Boyd was paying Mitchell to get you in trouble.”
“Jill, this is very serious,” Tom said. “The police found pictures of Lindsey on my computer. Other girls from Shilo High School, too. They might be the same images you found on Mitchell’s computer.”
“You didn’t tell me what they found,” Jill said. “All I knew was that they were illegal. I couldn’t think about what that really meant.”
Tom nodded. He’d shielded Jill from those pictures. He couldn’t face telling her that one set of images was of her best friend naked.
“Why would you think Roland Boyd was involved?” Tom asked, more forcefully than he intended.
“You were so freaked out about my hanging around with Mitchell,” Jill said somewhat sheepishly. “You told me that Roland Boyd was dangerous, and I’d seen Mitchell’s computer room.”
Tom grimaced, but at least it explained her thinking. “Okay, so you go to Mitchell’s house to spy on him and you find these pictures.”
Jill nodded.
“How many pictures are we talking about here?”
Jill shrugged. “I took what I could get. Mitchell found me looking at them.”
“You took them?”
“I copied the images to a storage key he had.”
“And then he attacked you?”
Jill nodded. “He didn’t see me call you. Then, for the longest time, he just paced around in his bedroom with me there on his bed. He kept saying, ‘What am I going to do?’ over and over again. He didn’t hit me or anything. He just kept walking back and forth. Making me swear that I wouldn’t say anything, and whenever I thought he was going to let me go, he’d make me sit back down on the bed and swear to him again.”
“Did he hurt you?” asked Tom.
Jill touched her neck. “He put his hands on me,” she said. “I swear, I thought he was going to kill me. He looked totally insane. But then he’d calm down. I think I had him convinced I’d stay quiet. That’s when you showed up.”
“So he wanted
you to stay quiet about the pictures. Is that it?”
“He said if I didn’t, he’d ruin me,” Jill explained. “He threatened to publish the pictures all over the Internet and send them to everybody in school.”
“You could have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me,” she said in a low voice.
“Jilly, I’m your father. I’ll never be ashamed of you. But I can’t promise I’ll always be proud of your decisions, either. What you did at that party was a stupid mistake. Dangerous, too, and you know it.”
Jill frowned. “I told Lindsey about it,” said Jill. “And I gave her the images I copied.”
“Do you think Lindsey confronted Mitchell?”
Jill shrugged. “I don’t know. She might have. We need to call the police,” Jill said. “Something bad has happened. I can feel it.”
The police, Tom thought. Oh… no. “Jill, think about this for a second. Why did I get arrested?”
“But none of that’s true. We talked about that.”
“Sergeant Murphy isn’t going to see it that way. I’ve got a feeling, if Lindsey really is missing, I’m about to become a prime suspect in her disappearance.”
“No. I was here with you all last night. I’m an alibi.”
“That’s not how it works. Did you fall asleep?”
Jill nodded weakly.
“There goes your alibi. I better let Marvin know what’s going on. I’ve got a feeling I might not be out on bail much longer.”
Tom moved to get the phone in the kitchen, but Jill caught him by the arm and turned him around. “If the police focus on you, they won’t be looking for Lindsey,” Jill said. “They’ll just keep asking you what happened to her.”
“Honey, that’s their job. You’ve got to trust that they know how to do it.”
“But you just said they won’t do it right.”
Tom fixed Jill with the look he typically reserved for her best plays on the soccer field. Jill was always quick thinking, but her logic impressed him nonetheless. Tom studied Jill’s pained expression. She was smart enough to know they had no easy way out of the conundrum. “You’ll need to tell the police about Mitchell and the pictures. If something happened to Lindsey, it would give them another motive to explore.”
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