“Max,” Nick said, lowering his body on top of hers, “you are hardly perfect, but you care about the truth. About justice. You can’t possibly know what you would do if you were a teenager today. They face a different world. For all your flaws, you’re not a mean person. You have far more compassion than you give yourself credit for.”
“That sure sounds like a backwards compliment,” she whispered.
“It is a compliment.” He kissed her. “You’re one of a kind, Maxine Revere. Never forget it.”
Chapter Twenty-four
FRIDAY
Max woke in Nick’s bed to her vibrating cell phone and the smell of coffee. When she moaned, Nick rolled over and put his arm around her, pulling her against his hard, naked body. “It’s six o’clock. You don’t have to get that.”
“It’s nine in New York,” she muttered, reaching for her phone on the nightstand.
He kissed her shoulder and traced the small memorial tattoo on her shoulder. The one she’d had designed after her friend Karen was killed.
She put the phone to her ear, but didn’t have to say a word. “Where are you?” her producer demanded.
“Good morning, Ben.”
“David said you left town.”
“I’m in bed with Nick.”
“Shit, Maxine.”
“It’s six in the morning.”
“I just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to soothe Paula Wallace. She saw the show last night, you ignored her calls, David ignored her calls, the police said there’s nothing they can do about the show, and she’s been fuming ever since. Her husband is a fucking lawyer, Max. A corporate lawyer.”
“I know.”
“You should have told me!”
“It’s in my report.”
“Like I have time to read all your notes?”
“I didn’t do anything illegal.”
“She said she didn’t give permission for Austin to be on the show.”
“I didn’t ask her. I didn’t put him on camera, except in B-roll and from behind. Can’t even tell it’s him.”
“I suppose I can thank David for that.”
She fumed. “And even if I had put him on, we’re clear. Ethically I should get parental permission, but it’s not mandatory.”
“You quoted him.”
“I have an unaired segment where I interviewed Austin. If it will help calm her down, I’ll show it to her.”
“We may be beyond that. Her husband is coming home from his business trip early and our lawyers are having a cow.”
“Relax, Ben.” Max sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, but she didn’t get up. She was exhausted. They didn’t get to sleep until two, but she’d had four solid hours of sleep. More than she had any other night this week. “This case has turned, I feel it.”
“Why did you leave town? We have calls coming in, clips you need to listen to, follow-up—”
“Because I have David and he’s worth three assistants. I’m interviewing someone important to the case this morning, and since I worked all weekend and didn’t get to have sex with Nick, I deserve a night off.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re high-strung. I’ll be back in Sausalito by noon. I’ll deal with Paula Wallace.”
“Let the lawyer handle her.”
“Normally I’d agree with you, but I know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t get arrested.”
She laughed. “Getting arrested is half the fun.”
“Dammit, Maxine!”
“Don’t worry, this time I have the police on my side.”
“A first for everything.”
Her good humor dried up. “Goodbye, Benji.” She pressed End and put her phone back on the nightstand. She turned to her naked lover. Nick was watching her with a combination of apprehension and lust.
Max said, “I don’t have a lot of time, but I need a shower.”
“We have a drought here in California. They ask that we limit showers to seven minutes.”
“Seven minutes for me, seven minutes for you … that’s fourteen minutes together.” She walked her fingers up his chest. Nick grabbed her wrist and pulled her in for a kiss.
* * *
Max had an early morning breakfast with her grandmother, Eleanor Revere. She hadn’t told her she would be in town until yesterday, and part of her wished that her grandmother had had plans. Yet, Max hadn’t seen her since April and while they had an understanding and mutual respect, Max still didn’t approve of what Eleanor had done. Specifically, getting a judge to send Lindy’s killer to a sanitarium instead of prison.
Max appreciated her wealth and the opportunities it afforded her—such as paying for NCFI to re-create the Ivy Lake crime scene, or being able to fly first-class cross-country to spend a weekend with Nick. But she didn’t approve of using money and connections to circumvent the justice system, and that’s exactly what had happened when Eleanor got involved.
But family was family. And while on the surface Eleanor’s motives might have seemed pure, the simple fact was her grandmother did not want to be associated with a felon. She wanted the problem to disappear. Image was everything. That Eleanor would rather have a mentally ill relative locked up in a hospital for the criminally insane rather than a felon locked up in maximum security boggled the mind.
Especially since Lindy’s killer wasn’t crazy. Narcissistic, twisted, a borderline sociopath—but not insane.
Maybe Eleanor was the reason Max understood Paula Wallace. Her grandmother was the same … with one crucial difference. Eleanor would never have allowed Max or any of her children or grandchildren to go as far as Ivy had with her blog and social media.
The morning was too cold to eat outside, so she and her grandmother sat in the glass-enclosed breakfast nook off her opulent, Tuscany-style kitchen.
Eleanor always drank tea, and Max joined her. Max didn’t particularly like tea, but she loved the ritual, and no one did it better than Eleanor. There had been days when Max was younger when she missed her mother for reasons she didn’t understand—it wasn’t like her mother had ever acted maternal—when Eleanor would brew a pot of tea and they would sit in the rose garden or here in the breakfast nook. Rarely talking, just being together. There was a peace Max longed for that she’d only attained in those quiet moments with her grandmother.
“You’re staying with Detective Santini, I assume.” Eleanor wasn’t a prude, but she thought Max should be dating CEOs and senators, not cops and FBI agents.
“Just last night,” Max said. “I’m at the Madrona in Sausalito.”
“You’ve been here all week?”
“In Sausalito. I’ve been working, otherwise I would have come down sooner.”
“Hmm.” That was Eleanor’s way of showing disapproval. “You haven’t been sleeping,” Eleanor said.
“When I get involved in a case, my mind doesn’t stop working.” Max had never told Eleanor or anyone in the family about what happened in New York three months ago. They knew she’d been attacked—that had been on the news—but she hadn’t given them more details than had been revealed publicly. She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to keep it from them—maybe she just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“No, it’s more than that,” Eleanor said, studying her.
Max didn’t like how her grandmother analyzed her. It wasn’t like Eleanor was psychic, even though at times she had an uncanny ability to see through people.
“How’s William? The boys?” Max asked, changing the subject.
“I invited him over for tea. He declined.”
It had been nearly six months since Max had turned his life upside down with her investigation into Lindy’s murder. Max hadn’t apologized; she’d found the truth. It had to come out. There was nothing she’d done that she wouldn’t do again.
But she missed seeing her young cousins.
“Tell me about your work,” Eleanor said. She took a dainty bite out of her scone.<
br />
Instead of rehashing the investigation, Max said, “What do you think of social media?”
“That’s a broad question.”
“You don’t have a Facebook page, for example. But Uncle Arthur does.” Arthur Sterling was Eleanor’s brother—they were close in age, and Max knew enough retired people on Facebook that she didn’t think Eleanor’s age had as much to do with her disdain for the medium as her personality.
“I’ve heard of it, of course. I’m old, not ignorant.”
“That’s not what I meant. My investigation involves a teenager who revealed other people’s private business on social media. Embarrassing things.”
Eleanor raised her eyebrow and look pointedly at Max. “Familiar.”
Well, that took the knife and twisted it. Maybe this was a bad idea, coming here—and asking Eleanor for her opinion. Max knew what she would say—yet she came anyway. Eleanor loved her, Max didn’t doubt it, but the two women sometimes had very different perspectives.
“Ivy did it to be mean, to hurt people. Things that between two people aren’t embarrassing, but when exposed for the world are humiliating.”
“Sex,” Eleanor said bluntly.
Max almost blushed. Eleanor was not a person who had discussed sex with her when she was growing up.
“Basically.”
“I would imagine this girl did such things for attention.”
“Attention and popularity.”
“There are better ways to hurt people.”
“But the Internet is faster.”
“Hmm.” Eleanor sipped her tea. “And perhaps that’s why I don’t care for social media. I’ve found that in the heat of a conversation, people sometimes say things they may mean but would never utter if given another moment to think. Social media takes away that … hesitation, I suppose you might call it. That moment of contemplation. When I write a letter—any letter, for business or personal, I think about what I want to say. Then I reread the letter to make sure that my meaning is clear. If I’m upset about something, I’ll sit on the letter for a day to make sure I want my feeling on the matter known, and how I want it to come across. Civil society requires civility. It requires individuals to consider the repercussions of their words as well as their actions. Today I fear people—not just teenagers, who did not exhibit self-control even in my day—rarely consider the repercussions of anything they do or say.”
Max leaned back. Her grandmother had always been regal, judgmental, and wise. But she said something that put Ivy’s behavior in a completely different light.
Ivy didn’t post anything spontaneously. She did it with purpose and full knowledge of how it would be perceived by her peers. She planned and orchestrated the cyberattack on Heather over months. She had the photos of Heather and her boyfriend for weeks before she posted them—as if waiting for the most devastating time to reveal them to the public.
“Do you disagree?” Eleanor asked Max.
“No,” she said. “I was thinking about this girl Ivy’s image. How she wanted to be seen, but more than that, how she wanted others to be seen.”
“So she attempted to make herself look better by making others look worse.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Crass,” Eleanor said.
“Her mother is concerned about image as well.”
“She must not have known what her daughter was doing.”
“She did.”
Eleanor looked surprised. “Oh? And she allowed it?”
Max almost smiled. “What would you have done to me, Eleanor? Some parents have no control over their teenagers.”
“You would never have been so pedestrian.”
“I did things to expose people’s lies. Ivy would likely say she was doing the same, calling people out for their hypocrisy.”
“Posting sexually explicit material is hardly calling someone a hypocrite, unless that person has put themselves out as some sort of saintly individual, like a minister or a married woman. It’s the public spectacle that this girl created, as well as the private information she shared. It’s one thing to have a secret; it’s quite another to reveal that secret.”
“You’re right about one thing, Grandmother. I would never have used the Internet to expose anyone. Not because I’m noble or good, but because I wouldn’t want your disapproval.”
Eleanor laughed, and Max was surprised. “Dear, if you feared my disapproval, you wouldn’t have done half the things you’ve done in your life. But you wouldn’t have done what that girl did because it was wrong. You’re a much better person. Maxine, never have I doubted you knew right from wrong and acted accordingly.”
Max cleared the table and hugged her grandmother goodbye. As she drove to meet Justin Brock, she realized that she was glad she’d taken the time to visit. Eleanor was eighty-two and if something happened to her and Max had not told her that she loved her and that she appreciated how Eleanor had taken her in when her mother walked out—well, Max didn’t want to take her for granted.
Warts and all, a dysfunctional family was still a family.
* * *
Justin Brock was staring into an extralarge cup of coffee when Max walked into the coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto. She recognized him from his pictures, but he’d also sent her a message that he’d be wearing a white Oxford shirt with jeans. He was a handsome young man of twenty-two, a senior in college, prelaw, of average height and build, but with the tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. The research she’d done into the Brock family supported an adventurous lifestyle—skiing, waterskiing, swimming, running. Justin had played baseball in high school, but hadn’t continued in college.
Max slipped into the chair across from him. “Hello, Justin. I’m Maxine Revere. Thank you for meeting with me.” She slid over a business card.
He glared at it, didn’t pick it up. “I only agreed to see you because I don’t want you talking to my parents or to my fiancée.”
Max hadn’t actually promised not to talk to his parents, but she said, “I appreciate your concern for them. I’m sure you’re having a difficult time as well.”
“It’s not the same.” Justin stared at her, anger etched on his face, perhaps permanently. He looked both young and old at the same time. Max recognized the expression. “Heather was my little sister. I miss her. But she was my mom’s baby. It’s just not the same.”
“You’re in prelaw.”
“Prelaw and psychology. I had planned on going into family law, but I’m leaning toward criminal justice. But I don’t know anymore. I’m rethinking whether I can even be a lawyer.” He cleared his throat and it was evident from the way he shifted his position that he hadn’t intended to share any of that with Max.
Max understood what Justin was going through. When tragedy hit close to home, everything changed. Fifteen years ago, Max had planned on majoring in literature and art history, or possibly archeology, with the idea of working at a museum.
But when your college roommate disappears and there’s enough of her blood found to declare her dead—but no body and no conviction—priorities changed.
Max would never let anyone else decide her fate. And maybe that, more than anything, was why the events in New York had affected her so deeply. That bastard had taken away her control, her ability to make her own choices. She’d been drugged and restrained and that niggling fear in the back of her mind, the fear from her childhood that her life wasn’t her own, that she had no choice about where she would go or how she would live because her mother moved on a whim.
Max refocused on Justin. He was contemplative, sad, protective. She said, “I read the civil suit your parents filed against Ivy Lake and the Wallaces but the settlement is sealed.”
Justin’s jaw tightened. “And you’re trying to defend Ivy, I don’t believe it.”
“I’m not defending her. I’m trying to find out who killed her.”
“The question you should be asking is who wouldn’t have wan
ted her dead? She destroyed my family. It’s been nearly two years and my mother still cries nearly every day.”
“Someone killed Ivy,” said Max. “Evidence is thin, suspects are plenty. But no one fits perfectly. Solving Ivy’s murder is important—not just to her parents, but her siblings.”
“Her parents? Maybe they now understand a little of what we suffered because of their daughter.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you want? For Paula Wallace to cry every day like your mother?”
“Don’t twist my words.”
“I get that you’re angry. I would be, too. What Ivy did was cruel. Her parents should have stopped it. But sometimes parents can’t prevent their children from doing bad things.” Though Max suspected Paula Wallace had been in denial up until the civil suit was filed. And possibly even after. Then when Ivy died, Paula decided to ignore all the bad things that Ivy had done. Not just ignore, but declare untrue.
Max waited until Justin looked at her, then said, “The end result is Ivy intentionally, deliberately, methodically set out to tear your sister apart.”
He stared at her, expression open in disbelief. “If you believe that, why are you helping them?”
“Her parents? I’m not investigating this case because the Wallaces asked me to.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because Tommy Wallace asked me to.”
At first, Justin’s face was blank. Then he leaned back, confused. “Tommy? He’s, um, retarded, isn’t he?”
“He is more than capable of understanding what’s going on in his life—and Ivy’s murder has greatly affected him, as well as Ivy’s brother, Austin. They deserve to know what happened to their sister or it will hang over them forever.
“But beyond that,” Max said, “someone killed Ivy.”
He scowled. “I honestly don’t care. Ivy Lake might as well have killed Heather herself. I’m sorry about her brothers, but there’s nothing I can do. I don’t even know why you wanted to talk to me, except to find out about Ivy and my sister. Well, here it is: Ivy hurt a lot of people. She destroyed my sister’s life to the point where Heather didn’t think she had anything to live for. Ivy should have paid for that, but now she’s dead and my parents won’t go after her parents. They agreed to settle, to keep silent about what happened. Why didn’t her mother stop her? My mother talked to Mrs. Wallace several times. She knew what Ivy was up to and did nothing to stop it. My father confronted Mr. Wallace and he claimed to not know anything about it. Said girls could be mean and would grow out of it. Grow out of it? They were sixteen! It had been going on for nearly two years. I don’t care what Heather may have done to Ivy, nothing justified what that little bitch did to my sister. Nothing.”
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