Poisonous

by Allison Brennan

“It’s gotten worse,” he said.

  “Not true.” She hated lying, and tried to avoid it. Worse, he knew she was lying.

  He just stared at her.

  “Okay, it’s worse some nights,” she admitted. “But I slept well in Lake Tahoe.”

  “If you can call five hours a night sleeping well.”

  “You were keeping track?” One look at his face and she knew it wasn’t David keeping track. Her hand tightened around the door frame. “Nick! Do not discuss me with Nick! He had no right to talk to you about me.”

  David stepped forward, just as angry as she was. “If you were honest with me, and with Nick, he wouldn’t be so worried.”

  “I’m not lying to you or anybody. And there hasn’t been a night I’ve slept more than six hours for as long as I can remember. So when I say I’ll be fine, I will be fine. And Nick can damn well talk to me about it if he’s so damn concerned.”

  She shut the door. Terrific. Her night was officially ruined. She should never have vacationed together with both David and Nick. What a stupid, idiotic thing to do. Of course they had bonded, they were both former military. They were single dads, each with a kid they couldn’t see as much as they wanted. They liked boating. Maybe they should start screwing each other, because Max was beginning to feel like the third wheel in this odd relationship.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. Her phone rang and she looked at the caller ID.

  Nick.

  Of course.

  She declined the call and went to bed.

  * * *

  In his tree house, Tommy read the e-mail from Maxine Revere over and over again.

  Dear Tommy,

  Last week I told you that I’d agreed to look into your stepsister’s murder. I arrived in town earlier today and have already met with the police detective in charge of the investigation. I would also like to talk to you as soon as possible.

  Please contact me on my cell phone or e-mail me to let me know when would be a good time for us to meet. How about tomorrow after school? I can meet you anywhere you’d like. In your letter, you mentioned that you like ice cream. So do I. Online, I saw that there is a wonderful gelato shop not too far from your school. Maybe we could meet there?

  Sincerely,

  Maxine Revere

  She was here and she’d e-mailed him—just like she said she would! Wow. She really wanted to help him. He liked gelato, though he preferred real ice cream. But he would have gelato with Maxine Revere if that’s what she wanted.

  He was about to respond to the e-mail, then hesitated. Austin had wanted to know when Maxine Revere e-mailed or called. Tommy had come up to his tree house after dinner because he didn’t want his mom to hear him talking to the reporter. His face grew warm. He didn’t like to keep anything from his mom.

  He forwarded the e-mail to Austin and added a message: What should I tell her? Right after school? I don’t have to be home until 5:30. I want you to come. I don’t want to talk to her alone. I’m scared she’ll think I’m stupid and will leave and not help us.

  He was waiting for Austin to e-mail him back when the bell at the bottom of his tree rang. Tommy burst out into a grin. Austin? Then he froze. Austin was going to get in trouble for sneaking out of the house after dark and visiting him. Tommy didn’t want Austin to get in trouble. Tommy opened the trapdoor in the floor of his tree house. “Hello? What’s the password?” He shined his flashlight down the tree.

  It wasn’t Austin; it was his sister Amanda.

  “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “You can’t come up without the password.”

  “Tommy, Mom sent me out to get you. It’s after ten—you should be in bed.”

  “I’m eighteen, I don’t have a bedtime.”

  “You have school tomorrow.” Amanda put her hand on the ladder.

  “Password.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned. She didn’t say anything for a minute, a frown on her face. Then suddenly she snapped her fingers. “SpongePants SquareBob!”

  He laughed. “See, you remembered!”

  She climbed up the ladder and sat on the trapdoor ledge. “What are you doing up here so late?”

  “I sent Austin an e-mail. I’m waiting for him to send one back to me.” Amanda knew that Austin wasn’t supposed to come over here, but she didn’t tell on him to their dad. As long as Austin was nice to Tommy, she wouldn’t say anything.

  “Is Austin still grounded? I thought I saw him here this afternoon.”

  “He’s not grounded anymore.” Tommy looked down at his laptop. Austin still hadn’t e-mailed him. It had been fifteen minutes.

  “Hey, Tommy, it’s okay,” Amanda said.

  “It’s my fault he was grounded.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  He stared at his hands.

  “Hey—I’m sorry.” She took his hands. “I didn’t mean that you were stupid, Tommy. I meant that it’s not your fault that Austin was grounded. His mother told him he couldn’t see you, and he broke the rules.”

  “Do you think that’s fair? Maybe I should stay away from him so he doesn’t get into any more trouble.”

  “No, it’s not fair. And if you want to see Austin—if he is good to you—then you should see him. Paula is a bitch.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “She is, and I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it. She is a mean, nasty bitch. She hurt your feelings for no reason except that she’s a stuck-up bitch. Austin knows he’ll get in trouble, but he still comes over anyway. I think that means he really likes you.”

  “We’re brothers. Brothers love each other, just like we do.” Tommy smiled.

  Amanda was sixteen and just got her driver’s license last month. She took him to school every morning now. He put his bike in the back because she had stuff to do after school and he rode his bike home. She never once complained about driving him places. Amanda agreed with Austin that Tommy should be able to get his driver’s license. She said she’d help him study for the test. She also said she’d talk to their mom about letting him get his license, but she hadn’t done that yet. She said she had to find the right time. He didn’t understand that, but maybe that just meant when their mom wasn’t tired or upset. She was tired or upset a lot.

  Amanda tilted her head. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in the tree house over the last couple of weeks.”

  “I like it here.” That was true, but it felt like he was lying to her, and he didn’t like the feeling. “You think tree houses are for little kids?”

  “Who told you that?” Amanda demanded, suddenly mad. “Was it Austin?”

  “No, Austin likes the tree house.”

  “Then who?”

  “Why are you mad?”

  “I think this tree house is fantastic. Even if Daddy built it for the wrong reasons.”

  Tommy had no idea what she meant. “He didn’t want to?” He realized he was about to cry. The best thing his dad ever gave him was this tree house. “You’re still mad at Daddy for leaving. He left a long time ago.”

  “Seven and a half years ago.”

  “Well, I guess—you think—I mean, Mom said once that the tree house was a guilt house. What does that mean?”

  Amanda didn’t want to tell him, he knew it. Sometimes Amanda treated him like a little kid, like his mom, but more and more she was treating him like Austin did, like a big kid. Now she said, “You always wanted a tree house, right? Ever since you saw it in Little Rascals.”

  He nodded. He loved that movie.

  “Dad built it right before he left. Mom says he did it because he felt guilty. She says he already knew he was leaving, and that he built it so you wouldn’t hate him.”

  “But I don’t hate Daddy. I don’t hate anyone.”

  She hugged him tightly. “That’s why I love you so much, Tommy. Now, let’s go in the house. It’s getting late, and we both have school tomorrow.”

  He glanced at his laptop and Austin still hadn’t responded. H
e closed it and put it in the box that protected it from wind and wet. His tree house had one electrical socket that his dad had hired a man to put in, so Tommy sometimes left his laptop up here. He made sure it was plugged in so that it wouldn’t die.

  “Can we have a bowl of ice cream first?” he asked as they climbed out of the tree house.

  “Sure,” Amanda said. “You get the bowls, I’ll dish up.”

  Chapter Five

  TUESDAY

  Max had been up since well before dawn, unable to sleep. Insomnia was a familiar part of her life. David thought her lack of sleep was a direct result of being drugged and tortured by a psycho nutcase last June, but sleep had never been easy for her, so she didn’t know why he kept hounding her about it—like he had last night. She’d even seen a doctor about her insomnia—which was a waste of time.

  “I can prescribe you sleeping pills,” he’d said.

  “No,” she’d replied. Maybe three months ago she’d have gone the pill route if she was desperate for slumber, but after being drugged by the psychopathic whack-job, she refused even the mildest pain meds, so she wasn’t going to take pills to sleep.

  The doctor wouldn’t let it go. Feeling quite sure that Max needed more sleep, he suggested another approach. “Doctor Olsen is the best psychiatrist I’ve worked with. She doesn’t take many new patients, but I can convince her to add you.”

  Hell no, Max wanted to say. Instead, she’d politely declined.

  A shrink. Absolutely not. Max understood her own problems, idiosyncrasies, and baggage. She didn’t need anyone else telling her she was a judgmental bitch who let the past control her present. She was far more self-aware than most people. She didn’t know who her dad was. She didn’t have a birth certificate—she didn’t even know where she’d been born. Hell, she didn’t even know if her birthday was really December 31 or if her mother just made it up so Max’s birthday was always a party. Her mother’s disappearance when she was ten, and her college roommate’s murder more than a decade later, had very clearly fueled her obsession with investigating cold cases. What happened in high school was simply more fodder for her neuroses. She didn’t need to spend two hundred dollars an hour on a doctor to tell her she’d had an unusual and difficult childhood. She didn’t need someone to explain why she didn’t trust people or why she was unforgiving to liars. She knew why, and talking it out with some arrogant know-it-all head wasn’t going to change her worldview. Max knew who she was and she was okay with it.

  She just wanted an extra hour of sleep each night.

  A benefit of insomnia, however, was early morning productivity. She drank coffee and updated her boards. The timeline was solid, as she’d told David the night before. She filled in additional details about the people involved in Ivy’s life that she’d learned from Grace or through her staff notes. But it was that two-hour window that intrigued Max.

  Max didn’t have a copy of Ivy’s phone records—she didn’t have the authority to get them on her own, and Grace wouldn’t give her a copy—but Grace had told her that Ivy’s phone hadn’t been used to make a call after she left her house just before ten thirty the night she was killed. She’d sent a dozen text messages to different people up until ten thirty, but Grace had spoken with each person and there was nothing incriminating. Nothing about meeting up, no arguments, nothing suspicious. Max wanted to see those messages nonetheless, and she hoped that when Graham and his team arrived tomorrow he could sweet-talk Grace into sharing.

  Another fact: Ivy, who practically lived her life on social media, hadn’t posted anything from ten the evening she died, until a single tweet at one ten in the morning. Her 10 P.M. update was a selfie taken in her bedroom, a close-up with her eyebrow arched in a mightier-than-thou pose. Below the pic were her last known words: If you think I don’t know what you did, think again, dipshit.

  According to Grace, no one claimed to know who the dipshit was or what Ivy was talking about in that post.

  Max’s producer and general pain-in-her-ass friend Ben Lawson called at eight in the morning. “I expected to hear from you earlier,” she said.

  “Three-hour time difference. Thought you’d need your beauty sleep. Or maybe your current bedmate was entertaining you.”

  “Don’t be crude, Benji.”

  “Even you calling me that horrific name isn’t going to ruin my spirits. I have good news. Paula Wallace has agreed to be interviewed. She’s expecting your call this morning to set up a time. I’m sending Charlie Morelli out late tonight so he’ll be ready for you first thing in the morning.”

  “Good—I need him at the crime scene when Graham and his people arrive. It’ll make good B-roll. And I have a list of places he can film in the meantime.”

  “What about the cop?”

  “I didn’t ask her yet if she’d go on camera. I wanted to go slow. After she agreed to Graham—pending approval—she started to put the walls up. I didn’t push. So what should I know about Paula Wallace?”

  “You won’t like her.”

  “That was quick.”

  “I call them like I see them, Maxie.”

  “Don’t. Call. Me. That.”

  “Quid pro quo, babe,” he said. “Remember Betsy Abbott?”

  Her hand tightened around her cell phone. Betsy had been her friend Karen’s roommate the year before Max arrived at Columbia. She came from the same wealthy, old-money family as Ben and Max, but class wasn’t something that came with privilege. Betsy was selfish, demanding, and made everything about her.

  When Karen disappeared on spring break and Max stayed in Miami to hound the police and FBI into doing their jobs, Betsy had contacted the media and made an embarrassing public plea. She set up candlelight vigils and created a scholarship in Karen’s name, and each and every time she did anything, she sought out the press and made damn sure she got her face on camera. Nothing she’d done had helped, nothing she’d done had impacted the case in a positive way; she’d only served to humiliate her family and promote one person: Betsy Abbott.

  “You’re quiet,” said Ben.

  “You’re saying Paula wants the attention. Then why didn’t she do anything to get it last year?”

  “She did—Jess is e-mailing you clips from a televised appeal she gave a few days after Ivy was killed. It was all over the news for a weekend, then gone.”

  “Sometimes that’s the only way to get someone to step forward,” Max said with sympathy. “Many parents go on-camera to spark interest in their child’s murder. What makes Paula Wallace a self-promoter like dear old Betsy?”

  “Her tone. Her questions. My instincts.”

  Max appreciated Ben’s insight, but he hadn’t had as much experience with grieving families as she had. After a year, Paula Wallace may have given up hope that anyone would be interested in her daughter’s murder. Hearing from Ben could have excited her—at last, someone, finally, would listen. Maybe Ben was right … but Max decided to reserve judgment.

  Paula Wallace already has an opinion—she thinks her stepson killed Ivy. Or is that just an easy way to cast blame?

  “You’re only going to have forty-eight hours to put this together, Max. I’ve restructured the show for this, and Charlie is going to bust his hump to edit and give us seven good minutes in time.”

  “Have I ever let you down, sweetheart?”

  “You always cut it too close. Keep me in the loop, I don’t want any surprises.”

  “I’ll try my best,” she said drolly and hung up.

  Max took another look at the timeline. She needed to get ready to meet with Lance Lorenzo. She was taking him to breakfast—one thing she’d learned early on when dealing with local reporters was that they were far more forthcoming when well fed. Maybe that was true about everyone, she thought, feeling hungry right then.

  She was about to step away when she saw an e-mail pop up from her staff with the clip from Paula Wallace’s plea last year. Another glance at her watch—Max had a little time. She clicked on the link. It was
only a forty-five-second clip.

  Paula Wallace was impeccable—from her shoulder-length highlighted blond bob to her light application of makeup to her simple but expensive jewelry. She’d dressed for the camera. One week after the murder of her daughter, she was more than presentable. She could have walked into a boardroom and taken charge.

  But Paula may have felt she would be taken more seriously if she was dressed well, or she could simply be vain and concerned about what she looked like on television. Or she could be fastidious, always leaving the house put together—no running shorts or tennis shoes or hair stuck up in a ratty tail.

  The news conference had been held just before noon outside the police station. The chief of police finished speaking and handed the podium over to Paula. A man Max recognized as Bill Wallace stood in the background as Paula stepped forward.

  “Thank you, Chief Reinecke.” She took a breath, paused before looking directly into the camera lens. “I’m Paula Lake Wallace and Ivy was my daughter. As Chief Reinecke said, the police are doing everything they can to find out what happened to Ivy. But I want to ask the people of Corte Madera, as a mother who has just lost her daughter”—she paused, took a breath—“to think back to the night of July third. We are a small town. Ivy drove a white Volkswagen. Any tiny detail, even if you don’t think it’s important, may give the police the information they need to bring the person who killed my daughter to justice. You can remain anonymous. You can call the hotline at the number on the screen and the police will take every call seriously. Please.” Paula paused, looking out at the group assembled. Max couldn’t tell how many were in the audience, but Paula clearly had no fear of speaking to the press. “Bill and I need to know what happened. If Ivy was your daughter or your sister, you would want to know what happened. Just like we need to know. Thank you.” She turned, chin up, and walked back to Bill Wallace. He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. The clip ended.

  Max understood grief better than most people—not because she had suffered any more than anyone else, but because she often surrounded herself with people who grieved. She’d seen tears, anger, resolve. So she might not be inclined to trust Ben’s impression that Paula was like Betsy Abbott … but Max sensed Paula Wallace was primarily concerned with appearances. And that was something she could work with during their interview.