by Nic Joseph
“So you approach Emily, she agrees to give you a try, and you succeed,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Tell me about how often you and Emily met, how you worked together,” I said.
He spun in his chair and looped his arms behind his head. “We only met in person maybe once a month. Other than that, we texted, emailed, talked on the phone.”
“What was she like to work with?”
“Emily is really…introverted, I guess,” he said. “She’s an amazing writer, and she has a lot to say but not actually say,” he said. “I hope that’s not out of line. I just never got the sense that she liked interacting with people.”
“Nothing’s out of line in an investigation like this,” I said. “Not if it’s the truth.”
He nodded.
“Her doctor told us that her parents died when she was younger?” I said.
“Yeah, in a car accident.”
“Do you know who raised her?” I asked.
“I don’t know all of that,” he said. “I mean, we just worked together. I only knew about her parents because she wore that locket around her neck with their pictures in it.”
“Locket?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That thing was a beauty. Had to be worth a small fortune. My father was in the jewelry business, and the minute I saw it, I knew it was something special. When you grow up around jewelry—I mean, real jewelry—you notice little things,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like the way someone responds when you compliment them on a piece. It’s usually pretty easy to tell when it’s something that means a lot to them or if it’s something they picked up randomly at the mall. This locket, it was something different, that’s for sure.”
“What did this locket look like?” I asked.
“Gold with teal stones flanking each side in the shape of a heart. She had a picture of each of her parents on either side.” He paused. “Wait, she’s not wearing it?”
I shook my head.
“That’s weird,” he said. “She was wearing it each time we met, and I finally asked her about it. She told me that she never took it off.”
“Do you think she could have just been exaggerating?”
“No,” he said. “The way she said it, I could tell it was really important to her. She had it on the few times I met her, and she always toyed with it. Like a nervous habit, you know?”
I made a note about the locket. It didn’t make any sense—where could the locket have gone? Did she lose it on the way home? Or worse, did she lose it in some kind of struggle? Had it been stolen?
And why hadn’t Dan Lindsey said anything about it? If it was so important, wouldn’t he have noticed?
“So you think someone attacked Emily for her locket?” he asked. “I guess crazier things have happened.”
That hadn’t been what I was thinking, but I didn’t feel the need to correct him.
“How does Emily interact with her blog readers?” I asked, switching angles.
He paused, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to figure out what the answer was to the question or how to answer it.
“Depends on the type of reader,” he said, measuring his words. “She spends hours on the site, answering reader comments, starting discussion threads. Sometimes it wasn’t so pleasant, but it’s the nature of what she does. But she never shied away from it. She didn’t like interacting with people in person, but she’s a whole different person online,” he said. He shrugged. “Online, she was Carmen Street.”
“When you say it wasn’t pleasant sometimes, you mean the readers? Or Emily?”
He sighed and lifted one hand to rub the back of his neck. “I guess I mean both?” he said. “Emily…let’s just say she could shoot fire from her fingertips, just as much as her internet trolls could.”
“Would Ryan Griggs be one of those trolls?”
He rolled his eyes. “That asshole. Not much to tell that you don’t already know, I’ll bet. He’s definitely hiding something when it comes to his drugs. I’ll bet he knew what was in ’em and thought he could get away with it.”
“Ever had any interaction with him? In person?”
He shook his head.
“One more question,” I said. “Did you ever meet Emily’s husband? Dan Lindsey?”
Todd nodded. “Yeah, a couple of times. Like once, I had to go by their house to drop off a report for Emily, and he was home.”
“Now I need you to be completely candid with me. What was he like?”
“Dan? He was great,” he said. He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, you don’t think he could have had anything to do with this, do you? They were a perfect couple.”
“How can you say that?” I asked. “You said you only met him a couple of times, and you worked with Emily mostly online anyway.”
“Yeah, but Emily talked about him all the time. I mean all the time. About how wonderful he was. And when I went to the house, they seemed great, happy. He was doting and loving. Couldn’t keep his hands off of her. It was kind of gross, actually. You know those couples. Honey baby this, and baby honey that.”
If their sleeping situation was any indication, there was a lot more to it than that. It was the second time someone had described them as being extremely happy and in love—Emily’s neighbor had said the same thing. Emily seemed to go out of her way to tell anyone who would listen about her wonderful marriage, even her business acquaintances.
Perfect couple, or a cover for something else going on?
And “doting” husband could easily be a misread for possessive.
“Well, thanks for your time,” I said, standing and heading toward the door. I pulled a card from my pocket and handed it to him. “If you think of anything else that seems important—”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’ll call you.”
I left and headed toward the station. The missing locket was one of those small details that could be nothing at all.
When I got back to the station, Gayla was sitting behind her desk, typing furiously.
“Hey,” she said. “How’d it go?”
I filled her in on everything that happened with the webmaster.
“That is weird,” she said. “We’ll have to search the house again for the locket. It’s hard to believe that all of this could have been about a theft, but I’ve seen crazier things.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.
As I walked to my desk, I heard a man’s voice behind me.
“Excuse me?”
I spun around. Standing in front of me was Eleanor, Ryan Griggs’s wife, and a man I’d never seen before. They both looked nervous as they stared at Gayla and myself. We walked over to them.
“Mrs. Griggs,” I said. “How can we help you?”
She looked at the man standing beside her. Her eyes were puffy and wide, and I could see something else in them, besides the nervousness.
Determination.
She looked at the man and waited for him to say something.
The man spread his arms, and they communicated with each other silently.
“I don’t…” the man started.
She shook her head. “You have to tell them,” she said. “He could be hurt.”
The man sighed and turned back to us. “My name is Philip Jameson,” he said. “I work for Kelium Pharmaceuticals. I’m on the executive committee.”
“Okay,” Gayla said. “What can we do for you, Mr. Jameson?”
He hesitated again, and I saw something that looked like frustration on Eleanor Griggs’s face.
“If you don’t tell them, I will,” she said, and she sighed, softening her voice. “Please, Philip. You’re going to have to let them know sooner or later.”
“Let us know what?” Gayla asked, stepping forward. She didn’t do
well with things like this, and I knew that if one of them didn’t speak soon, she was going to find a way to pull it out of them.
Jameson sighed again and shrugged. “She wanted me to come and tell you this, even though I’m not really sure that it’s relevant right now. But I guess it could be, even though he’d kill me for coming here.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Anything you can tell us, any information you have, might be beneficial and help us in finding Ryan and figuring out what happened. You have to tell us.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what he was doing exactly. Ryan could be a hothead. That’s his biggest problem. He’s not really a bad person, but he just couldn’t let things go sometimes, even with all of us telling him he had to.”
“Couldn’t let what go?” Gayla asked.
“The whole thing with the Carmen Street woman. He called me the other night,” he said, trailing off again.
“And?”
“He told me that he was meeting up with her.”
“Wait, when was this?” I asked, feeling my heart rate increase.
“Uh, like Thursday, I think?”
“He was meeting her where?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “He said that first, he went to see one of those patients, Enid Greene, and then—”
“Wait, one of the patients that Emily interviewed?” Gayla asked. “But isn’t Enid Greene the one who lives here? I thought he went to Philadelphia first.”
“I thought so, too,” Eleanor said, her eyes watery. She looked over at Jameson. “Tell them the rest.”
“Well, yeah, he said he went to see Enid and then that he was on his way to meet Emily. I think they talked sometimes. Not a lot, but I know they had each other’s cell phone numbers, because I caught him talking to her one day at work. I told him he should quit, that he didn’t need to keep talking with her, pleading with her, threatening her.”
“Wait, he threatened her?”
“Well, I mean online. I never heard him threaten her on the phone. Actually, when I overheard their conversation, it sounded pretty cordial.”
“What were they talking about?” I asked.
“I think they were arranging some kind of meeting.”
“How long ago was this?”
“A few weeks ago,” he said. “And then I didn’t hear anything else until he called me a couple of days ago.”
“What exactly did he say?” I asked. “His exact words.”
“Just that they agreed to meet up to settle some things,” he said. “To sort of…squash it.”
Eleanor Griggs was staring at the man, her entire body shaking, and when he finished speaking, she turned back to me. “So what are you going to do?” she asked. “You have to find my husband. I know she did something to him. I just know it. Please, tell me you’ll do absolutely everything you can to find him.”
Chapter Sixteen
Then
Lill sat on her bed with her legs crossed beneath her. She looked down at the key in her hands.
You can do it.
Mother Deena had given her the key just one week after she’d sobbed in her arms in the kitchen, but Lill hadn’t used it yet. As Deena’s belly grew, she seemed sadder and more tired, and Lill had made up her mind that she was going to go visit her tonight.
At first, she’d been mad at Jack for tricking her.
“There’s no way I’m doing this,” she said. “We could get in so much trouble.”
But Jack had stared at her, his jaw set, and he’d spoken so softly that it broke her heart.
“I can’t make you do it,” he said. “But please, you have to. I need to know what happened to Mother Breanna. It’s killing me. And Mother Deena—”
“Don’t even try it,” she snapped, and she felt bad, but she knew she was right. “This isn’t about helping her. You’re using her to get what you want.”
“You’re right,” he said, slumping, and he looked up at her. “I didn’t have any other choice. You could give me the key, say you lost it, and I’ll never tell anybody, I promise. But we have to find a way to get upstairs.”
She’d thought about it. And in the end, it had been Mother Deena, the way she looked in the hallways, that had made up Lill’s mind. It was getting worse. Now, it seemed like she was crying every day, her eyes puffy, her stride slow. And every time she saw Lill, she’d smile and raise her eyebrows.
Lill had seen her earlier that day in the cafeteria, and Mother Deena had taken her aside. “Maybe you could use the key I gave you,” she said softly, sniffling and wiping at the corners of her eyes, and Lill had nodded furiously.
But as she sat in her room, she was scared. She didn’t want to get in trouble, and she didn’t want to get Mother Deena in trouble either. But if she didn’t start using it, Mother Deena would just ask for it back, and then Jack would be upset. Lill bit her lip. She still wasn’t sure that she’d help Jack, but she had to help Deena.
Steeling herself, she hopped off the bed and walked out into the hallway.
It would be so much easier if Mother Deena could just come downstairs. Sometimes, when the babies and toddlers in the third-floor nursery had fits, the mothers would bring them downstairs to Lill’s room, where she’d sing them to sleep. Or the mothers would let her spend the night up in the nursery. Lill loved curling up in the bed with the sweet-smelling babies and singing until their eyes got droopy. One of the babies, who they’d nicknamed “Hiccup” due to the strange hiccupping sound he made when he laughed, giggled merrily every time Lill did so much as hum a single note.
“You have the voice of an angel,” Mother Deena had said once while standing in the doorway to Lill’s room as she sang Hiccup to sleep.
The gates would be locked in about an hour, so she didn’t have much time. Mother Deena would be in her room reading or studying before bed. Lill crept through the gates and toward the stairwell. The mothers walked around occasionally, but they weren’t that vigilant until bedtime. Without a key, the kids were stuck on the floor unless they used the elevator, which would alert the guards to their movements immediately. Lill took one look over her shoulder and then moved quickly into the stairwell.
She took a deep breath as she rounded the stairs to the first floor. The adults rarely used the stairs when they could use the elevators instead, and as she peered through the small glass in the door, she was happy to see that the floor appeared empty. Everyone was unwinding before bedtime, and they all thought the kids were safely downstairs. Lill used her key to unlock the stairwell door and stepped inside, letting it close gently behind her.
She walked down the hall slowly, being careful to stay close to the wall in case anyone came around the corner. The hallway was narrow, and there weren’t that many items in it, which didn’t give her anywhere to hide. She moved toward Mother Deena’s room. She’d been there a couple of times before, but what if things had changed? What if she’d moved somewhere else? They hadn’t talked this through well enough, hadn’t figured out all the details, and now Lill was nervous.
She walked up to the door that she thought was Mother Deena’s and took a deep breath before lightly knocking on it. She stepped quickly to the side, hoping she could duck out of sight if it was the wrong room. But a moment later, the door cracked open, and she leaned forward to see Mother Deena standing there, her face covered in tears.
“Lill!” she said softly and then stepped back so the girl could enter.
Lill walked inside and fought the urge to hug her. Mother Deena had always been so kind to her, and while she knew it was wrong to think of her as her mother, there was no denying their special connection.
“I just came to see if you were okay,” Lill said nervously. “I know I shouldn’t be up here.”
“It’s okay,” Deena said, but she nodded, and it was clear that she was also nervous about
Lill being upstairs. “I haven’t been able to sleep in three days. I just lie here.”
“What’s…what’s wrong?” Lill asked. “I mean, I know you’re nervous about having another baby. But you’re also happy, right?”
“Of course I’m happy,” Deena said with a sad chuckle. “I’m happy, but I’m also worried about what’s going to happen to my baby.”
“What do you mean?” Lill asked.
“Three out of the last seven mothers who have given birth have lost their babies,” Deena said softly. “Almost half. Don’t get me wrong. I trust Frank, and he says that if it’s God’s will, it’s God’s will and to never doubt it. And I don’t. It’s just…”
Lill waited, watching her carefully.
“It’s just I don’t want that to happen to me.”
Lill nodded and sat down on the bed next to her.
Deena stared past her. It was unlike her, and Lill wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond. Deena seemed more like a child than one of the adults. Lill hesitated before reaching out and grabbing Deena’s hand.
Deena blinked a few times and looked down at their hands, and the tears began to spill over her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Lill said, pulling her hand back.
Deena shook her head. “No, it’s okay,” she said. But the tears wouldn’t stop.
Without realizing what she was doing, Lill began to hum. It was a soft, gentle sound, because she felt uncomfortable and also because she couldn’t take the risk that any of the other mothers on the floor would hear her. But the sound—a hymn she sometimes sang in assembly on Sundays—began to flow from her, softly filling the room. Deena stopped crying immediately, her eyes going to the young girl’s face, and they stared at each other as Lill continued to hum.
Then Lill opened her mouth and began to sing. It was still incredibly low, so soft she could barely hear herself as she whispered the words across the bed. But it was effective. Deena grasped her hands tighter, and a soft, peaceful expression took over her face. She slid down lower on the bed until she was lying down fully. With her free hand, Lill took the book that was sitting beside her and placed it on Mother Deena’s nightstand, then helped arrange the covers over the woman’s body. It felt wrong, tucking her in this way. They both knew it, and yet Lill could see the effect she was having on Deena and knew that she couldn’t stop. She kept going, letting the melodic sounds fill the room, as Deena settled peacefully into bed.