“It’s heavier than I’d have thought,” Sadie said, making an exaggerated act of hefting the camera in her hand.
Eric cleared his throat. “It retails for about two grand,” he said, whistling slightly. He leaned toward Sadie. “Does it have a battery grip?”
Sadie had no idea what a battery grip was, but Eric looked at the camera and nodded.
“It does,” Eric said. “Add a couple hundred more to the price—assuming that’s the stock lens and not a specialty lens he swapped it out for.”
Josh’s face paled and his voice took on a kind of forced calm when he spoke again. “Please. Just put it back in the case.”
Sadie ignored him because he wasn’t yet offering his cooperation. “How do you work this thing, anyway?” she asked, looping the strap around her neck as though she were preparing to take some photos. She turned the camera in her hands, looking at all the buttons and gauges. It seemed to her that having to adjust so many things would suck all the fun right out of taking pictures. She accidentally popped off the lens cap and noticed Josh tense.
“Don’t,” Josh said quickly, then clenched his mouth shut and took a breath. The anger was morphing into a begging kind of fear. “Please don’t touch anything.”
Eric scooted his chair closer to Sadie, looking as curious about the camera as she was. “My brother used to have a fancy camera like this,” Eric said. “See if there’s a latch or a button by the bottom of the lens. It should allow you to change out the different lenses—though, unfortunately also exposes all those sensitive innards of the camera itself.”
Sure enough, there was a tiny button. She pressed it and the lens popped off a fraction of an inch.
“Cool,” Eric said, twisting the lens free from the rest of the camera. Sadie and Eric looked at Josh at the same time. “Shall we continue?” Eric asked. “You’ve got a lot invested in this thing, right? Your career, your future. Are you sure it’s worth not telling us things that are going to come out anyway?”
“Okay,” Josh said in surrender, reaching his free hand toward the camera. “I’ll tell you what I know, just leave the camera alone.”
Eric snapped the lens back on, and Sadie removed the strap from around her neck. She put the camera back down on the table, pushing it closer to Josh, but not so close that he could take it from her. In reality, she was relieved he’d given in. There was no way she’d actually damage something so important to him. Had he not agreed to cooperate he’d have figured that out eventually and called her bluff and then she’d be out of luck.
Sadie laid her one good arm on the table, wishing she could lace her fingers together and stare at him menacingly. It didn’t seem to work as well with the sling, but she did her best with what she had to work with. “Who killed Mark Ogreski?”
Josh was silent, his nostrils flaring. It was very hard to not show her discomfort. “I don’t know,” he said.
Eric reached forward and took hold of the camera strap, pulling the camera a couple of inches toward himself.
“I swear,” Josh said, putting his hand out in a stopping motion. He strained at the belts before giving into the futility of it and sat back once more. “I don’t know who arranged the shooting. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“That’s really hard for me to believe,” Sadie said. “You were up there taking pictures of a dead man. To do something like that you’d have to be involved.”
“Well, I guess I am involved—kind of,” Josh said with a nod. “But not with the shooting. I came to the dinner to take photos for Thom’s website—that’s what Mark asked me to do.”
Sadie noted that he was on a first name basis with the deceased. “Then why did your mother say Thom invited you?” Sadie asked, lining up questions in her mind as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to miss anything.
Josh shrugged. “Same thing—Mark controls everything. He’s the one who asked me to come and agreed to pay the expenses. Thom was glad to have me there, though. I haven’t seen him for a long time.”
“And so when Mr. Ogreski ended up dead on stage, you just decided to snap some pictures and pretend to be a crime scene photographer?” Sadie asked, definitely missing the logic of such a choice. She turned to Eric and resorted to sarcasm, “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, how about you?”
Eric nodded and lifted his eyebrows, answering her with equal sarcasm. “I’m sure I’d have done the same thing.”
The way they worked so well together helped bolster Sadie’s confidence that they could get what they needed. She was suddenly feeling very grateful for Donna Hender. Without that crazy woman, Sadie would never have met Eric at all.
“It wasn’t like that,” Josh said, letting out a haggard breath. “I took the pictures to prove to myself—and to Thom—that it was real. I admit it looks bad, but I’m a photographer. I chronicle life through pictures. It’s what I do, and it just sort of . . . happened.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “You break the law and put yourself center stage—literally—to prove something both you and Thom already witnessed? That’s just . . . stupid.”
Josh glared at her. “Well, I guess I’m stupid then.”
Sadie leaned forward. “But that’s the thing. I don’t think you are stupid, which means you have another reason to make yourself vulnerable—like . . .” She reviewed all the motives of murder she’d come up against these last few months, but unfortunately revenge and self-preservation didn’t fit this situation. But greed did. “Profit,” she said out loud. “How would Mr. Ogreski’s death be profitable to you either personally or financially?”
Josh said nothing, but his jaw tensed.
Sadie was on to something.
After waiting a few moments for Josh to defend himself, Eric scooted his chair back to his computer and started tapping keys. “I wonder . . .” he said, letting his voice trail off. “What would someone pay for those photos? My brother—the one with the fancy camera—used to work as a stringer in college. He’d make a few hundred bucks if the newspaper bought his shots.”
Isn’t that what Peter Parker did in the Spider-man comics? Sadie thought, wrinkling her nose at the idea of someone selling pictures of a dead man. Even though she was the one who suggested a profitable motive, she couldn’t imagine who would want to see something so grotesque. She was about to argue her point, maybe suggest finding another hypothesis, when she noticed Josh’s neck had turned red. It took a few moments for her thoughts to catch up. “Really?” she said out loud. “You were going to sell them?”
Josh looked at the table and wriggled in his seat for a moment. When he spoke, his voice had lost some of its heat. “There are literally millions of people out there trying to live by their lens, and most of them eat mac and cheese for dinner every night.”
“You went to the Chicago Institute of Art,” Sadie reminded him, in case he’d forgotten his own credentials. “And your mom said you’ve got a good job.”
“My mom would be just as proud of me if I was taking photos at Walmart. The truth is, I’m one of three assistant photographers at a regional magazine that’s talking about cutting their staff by fifty percent this summer,” Josh said. “I can make a year’s salary off those shots.” He nodded toward the camera. “Any other photographer in my situation tonight would have done the same thing. We see the whole world through our lenses. Letting an opportunity pass by isn’t in us.”
Sadie tsked and shook her head. “That’s disgusting.”
“And illegal,” Eric said.
“Wanna bet?” Josh said, meeting Eric’s gaze head-on. “Those guys who shot photos of Michael Jackson being put into the ambulance made bank. Last year, I was doing a layout for a new high-end resort in Virginia Beach and I got a picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones without any makeup on. Sold it to the Star for four grand and paid off my car. Every photographer I know does the same thing, always looking for the shot that will make all the difference.”
“So if yo
u were going to make money off these photos,” Sadie said carefully, “then you have a motive for murder.”
Josh shook his head quickly. “No, no, no. No way. I told you—I was there to take photos for the new website and see Thom. I didn’t—”
“Website?” Sadie cut in, suddenly remembering the “under construction” note on the site she and Shawn had looked up earlier. “Why is Thom building a new website anyway? Isn’t the book going out of print?”
“No one’s supposed to know the book is going out of print,” Josh said after a moment.
Sadie shrugged that off. “Well, I know, and obviously you know too. So why a new website when the book is about to disappear?”
Josh was quiet again, but in a confused way rather than a defensive one. “I don’t know.”
Sadie glanced at Eric, who looked as unconvinced as she felt.
“Okay, so your story is that you were asked to come take photos for a new website, even though the book is going out of print, and when a horrible public murder happened, you jumped on stage and took some shots you hoped to sell for a million dollars?”
Josh’s expression seemed to say he realized it didn’t sound so good.
“You can’t blame us for finding that rather weak,” Sadie added.
“Weak character, maybe,” Josh said, his voice sounding more humble than it had all night. He met Sadie’s eyes. “But I didn’t kill him, and I don’t know who did.”
Eric cut in. “Didn’t you say in the car that you were glad he was dead?”
Sadie nodded, glad that Eric had brought that up. “And that you’d raise him up and shoot him again if you could.”
Josh paled slightly. “It’s not that I’m . . . glad he’s dead, but he was not a good man. The world is a better place without him in it, and Thom will have a better life, now. Finally.”
“Why?” Eric asked.
“Mark was not a good man.”
Sadie forced a smile and spoke calmly, cocking her head to the side and giving him a come-on-already look. “You can’t just keep saying that,” Sadie said. “Why isn’t he a good man? Why is the world a better place without him in it? Why is Thom better off without him? Didn’t Thom need him? Wasn’t Mr. Ogreski kind of Thom’s caretaker?”
Chapter 41
Josh paused, looking torn. Seeing that he was still unsure about what to say ignited Sadie’s sense of urgency. She leaned forward and decided to offer him an olive branch by filling him in on what she knew in hopes it would then be easier for him to fill in the gaps rather than feel responsible for divulging the bigger secrets.
“Look, I know Thom took credit for Damon’s book. Diane Veeter knew about it, too, and I suspect that Mr. Ogreski may have had something to do with the accident that killed her. I also know Thom’s an alcoholic, that he paid for your college, and that Michele, Frank Argula’s niece, is a friend of yours and she’s a part of this too.”
Josh looked absolutely stunned, as did Eric, reminding Sadie that she hadn’t updated Eric on everything she’d figured out. She continued, “What I want to know is how those pieces came together and how exactly they turned into murder. In the meantime, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and accept that you didn’t kill Mr. Ogreski and that your motives are purely based on greed, but you’ve got to help me with that belief because it’s starting to feel a little shaky.”
Josh blinked. “But . . . how do you know all that?” he asked after a few seconds of silence.
Sadie leveled him with a look. “Funny thing about secrets, Josh, is that they eat at you. For some people they’re like acid, chewing them up rather quickly one day at a time. For other people, secrets are more like wind, eroding their soul little by little, day by day. Eventually—whether it’s acid or wind, or some combination of the two—they break through and then those secrets are nothing but facts, like salt in the wounds they leave behind.”
Silence prevailed once again and Sadie felt her frustration rising. Josh didn’t even seem to appreciate her poetic symbolism. She had to find another way around his barriers. The quickest way to do that was make Josh defend himself. “Thom paid for your college, right? Hush money?”
Josh shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “It wasn’t anything like that.”
Sadie raised her eyebrows, encouraging him to convince her.
Josh hesitated a moment longer before he let out a breath and leaned back against the chair. “Yes, I knew the book was Damon’s and, yes, Thom paid for my college, but the two things aren’t related.” He seemed to realize how ridiculous that sounded so he continued talking.
Sadie felt herself relax a little.
“Thom had a college fund for Damon. After Damon died, Thom and I stayed close. I think it helped Thom to have me around so he didn’t get so lonely. I wasn’t sure I would even go to college, but then Thom offered me the money—money that would make it possible for me to get a good education without being in debt for the next fifteen years. Remember how I told you most photographers eat mac and cheese?”
“And you lied to your mother about a scholarship?” Sadie asked. “Why lie to your mother?” If he wasn’t the murderer, then he should have a conscience in there somewhere.
“My mom’s a little . . . overprotective sometimes.”
Sadie could attest to that, her head was still throbbing, though it was hard to separate that pain from the pain of her shoulder. Thank goodness the adrenaline seemed to numb everything a little bit.
Josh continued. “And although she was understanding of Thom’s relationship with me, it was still threatening to her sometimes. Thom giving me fifty thousand dollars would be hard for her to swallow. So we made up the scholarship thing and gave her something to brag about. Had she thought about it as much as you have, she’d have realized she never saw an actual award letter and that my grades would have scared pretty much any school away—even an art school that didn’t care about academics. But she wanted to believe good things and so she did.”
“And you didn’t feel guilty about that?” Sadie asked.
“I did,” Josh said, his voice lowering. “But I wanted to make something of myself and I needed a good education to do that. I made a choice—for better or worse.”
Sadie nodded and crossed that question off her internal list. “How about going along with the story that Thom had written Devilish Details. Did you ever feel guilty about that?”
“Not at first,” Josh admitted, surprising Sadie with his candor.
But then Sadie remembered that she had been the one who had compared secrets to acid. Purging oneself of the poison of poor choices was often a very liberating experience. She was glad to have remembered that. It made her feel a lot better about the things she’d been doing tonight when she thought of it as helping people.
“When Thom first talked to me about it,” Josh said, “he said how publishing the book would immortalize Damon and allow his story to live on. Damon was so proud of that book.” Josh smiled a little, though it faded quickly. “Mark had explained to Thom that with Damon’s name on it, the book would never be published. Publishers don’t publish books by dead authors who can’t promote their work or write sequels. And even if someone did publish it, everyone hated Damon for what he did. With Thom’s name on the cover, though, Thom would be able to quit his job, he’d have a foundation to get his own writing published, and in this one way Damon would live forever.”
“But you and Thom would be the only people who knew Damon was the real author,” Eric pointed out. “How does that immortalize Damon if no one knows?”
Excellent point, Sadie thought as she nodded her agreement.
“Thom and I were probably the only two people in the world with any positive feelings about Damon,” Josh said. “And we were the only two who could look past what he’d done and see the good that was in him. He was a gifted writer and that mattered to us. As I got older, I was more uncomfortable with the whole thing, and I understood better what exactly Mark an
d Thom had done, essentially stealing Damon’s book. But by then I could see the toll it was taking on Thom too. Sharing my feelings would have made that worse. I was the only friend Thom had left. Thom had thought it would be an easy thing to do—we both did—but the lies were so hard for him to tell over and over again.”
“And you blamed Mr. Ogreski for that,” Sadie prodded.
Josh’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Absolutely,” he said. “He was the one who came to Thom with the idea. And then when Thom started struggling under the weight of the lies, Mark wriggled his way into every corner of Thom’s life, taking over bit by bit until Thom was completely dependent on him. Thom’s drinking got worse, and it was Mark who kept the whisky handy.”
Eric leaned forward. “You blame the agent for Thom’s drinking? That’s a bit of a stretch.”
“No,” Josh snapped, “it isn’t. I’ve watched this for ten years but I still didn’t see the stranglehold Mark had on Thom until the last nine months or so. When I finally went to Mark and asked him to get Thom help, he fed me all kinds of sympathetic comments, promised to see what he could do, and then did nothing at all. The next time I brought it up, he hedged around and passed the phone off to Thom. That’s when I realized Mark couldn’t let Thom get well because that might mean Thom would tell someone the truth. Mark would lose everything if the truth came out, so he simply kept Thom sauced most of the time.” Josh paused. “And you said you already knew Mark killed Diane Veeter. What more proof of a man’s character do you need?”
Sadie nodded, accepting the point he was making. She could still picture Thom in her mind, lining up those mini-bottles. He was in bad shape, and if Mr. Ogreski helped him get to that point, it was horrible. But she wasn’t going to allow Josh to pass the buck quite that easily. “So you knew Mr. Ogreski was allowing Thom to self-medicate with alcohol and—”
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