“Kevin told me he was with you at Fake Lake the night Lindy was killed. You could have spared him a trial and the police would have focused on other possible suspects. You alone could have done that. But you remained silent.”
“You need to leave.”
“What secret is so dangerous that you can’t even speak of it thirteen years later?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Max continued to stare at the spineless woman in front of her. “You were Lindy’s friend, I know you cared about her. Your statement would have exonerated Kevin. They might have found her killer. So I will ask one more time: why didn’t you go to the police?”
Olivia shook her head, twirling the watch slowly around her wrist.
“Did Detective Beck ask you, after Kevin’s trial, if you had been with him that night?”
Olivia didn’t need to answer the question, the surprise on her face told Max what she needed to know.
“Did you tell the detective that you hadn’t been with Kevin? That you were home with your family?”
She nodded.
“Was that the truth? Or were you with Kevin at Fake Lake?”
She didn’t make eye contact. “I was going to run away, from home. Kevin talked me out of it, but I didn’t want anyone to know that he was with me.”
“Does Anita still work for your parents?”
Olivia frowned and looked at Max quizzically. “Yes, why?”
“I’ll ask her.”
“No!”
So Olivia did have a voice louder than a whisper.
“It would be easier for you to tell me the truth now, but if you don’t, I will figure it out. It’s what I do, Olivia. And if Anita doesn’t know, I’ll ask your father.”
The fear that crossed Olivia’s face was so tangible that Max almost felt it. Everything Kevin had said was true: Olivia was terrified of her father.
The front door opened and Olivia jumped. Christopher Ward stepped onto the porch. “Olivia, I didn’t know where you’d run off to.”
He assessed Max, quietly curious, but he didn’t know who she was.
Olivia rose, pulling herself together immediately. She was good at it—too good. This woman was a seasoned liar, Max would bet her career on it. “Christopher, this is Maxine Revere, a friend from school.”
“Revere. I don’t know the name.”
“She’s visiting from New York, just stopped by to say hello.”
“It’s not like you to neglect to offer refreshments, Olivia.”
“She can’t stay.”
Very interesting conversation. Max wanted to contradict Olivia to make her squirm, but she didn’t have time for games.
Max stood. “It was nice to meet you, Professor Ward.”
“Will you be in town long?”
“A few days. Maybe a week.” She smiled at Olivia. “Why don’t you walk me to my car? I’ll give you my contact information.”
Olivia wanted to decline, but Christopher nodded and said, “I’ll meet you back inside, dear. I’m ready for afternoon tea.”
Christopher closed the door behind him and Olivia stared at Max. “Please, don’t talk to my father.”
“Walk me to my car,” she repeated. Olivia reluctantly walked down the path with Max. “Ward is a bit old for you.” He was certainly old for Max, and she didn’t mind dating older guys. Just not that much older. “When did you get married?”
“Nine years ago,” Olivia said quietly.
To each his own, Max said, though it wasn’t lost on her that Christopher was very much like Olivia’s father, Bryant Langstrom. Refined, formal, controlling.
Max gave Olivia her card. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Max stared at the woman. Olivia had always been aloof compared to the rest of the group, but she’d been smart, focused, and sweet. Very kind. That she and Lindy were friends had always seemed odd, except that they were both from old money and longtime Atherton families—but Lindy was nicer to Olivia than to anyone else. Maybe she knew about Olivia’s home life. Lindy had her moments, when she wasn’t completely self-absorbed.
“It matters.”
Olivia shook her head. “You know I was with him, why does it matter if anyone else does? If he’d been convicted, I would have come forward.”
“Why did you tell Beck that you weren’t with Kevin?”
“The trial was over. It didn’t matter.”
“It did. If you told the truth, they might have looked at other evidence, other suspects. They might have found the person who really did kill Lindy.”
“My father—he was there.”
“When Beck questioned you?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t eighteen, my father insisted. I had no other choice. You don’t know my father like I do.”
Max didn’t understand her reasoning. “Kevin’s life was ruined. And then you went off to college while Kevin was ostracized and became a drug addict. You didn’t even go to his funeral today.”
Tears moistened the prim woman’s eyes, and Max didn’t know if they were genuine or an act.
“I loved Kevin. But I was more scared of my father.”
“And you still are. Does your husband know?”
Olivia shook her head, her face reddening. “Don’t come here again.”
Max didn’t make her any promises.
* * *
When Max drove off, she called Gregory Q. Jones’s cell phone number. Normally, she’d be amused and a little curious as to how quickly David procured the information she needed; after her conversation with Olivia, she was agitated and not a little bit angry. A testament to growing up was that she hadn’t lost her temper, much. It happened on occasion, but the passion of anger would have been lost on that woman.
“Jones,” Kevin’s defense lawyer answered on the third ring.
“Mr. Jones, this is Maxine Revere. I’m a friend of Kevin O’Neal, who you represented thirteen years ago in a capital case.”
Pause. “I know who you are, Maxine. I can’t talk about Kevin with you. I don’t even represent him anymore, I moved to Los Angeles eight years ago.”
“Kevin is dead,” Max said. “I was at his funeral today.”
“I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.”
“I have some questions about his case.”
“Are you asking as a reporter or as a friend?”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t know,” he responded truthfully.
“A little of both.” Max paused, then added, “Did you know that Kevin lied about his alibi?”
“No, I didn’t. Do the police have new evidence?”
“Kevin told me after the trial that he was with a girl. Olivia Langstrom.”
“The name sounds familiar, but I don’t remember why.”
“I talked to her today, and she admitted it, but didn’t tell me why she never came forward.”
“Maybe she was lying.”
“Why would Kevin tell me twelve years ago, after the trial was over, that he was with her if he wasn’t? I believed him when he said he was home alone.”
Jones didn’t say anything.
“You didn’t,” Max said.
“I had doubts.”
“You thought he might be guilty?”
“I thought there was more than enough reasonable doubt,” Jones said. “I became a criminal defense lawyer because sometimes, the system is fucked. I don’t care if my client is innocent or guilty, but I don’t want to know. I want the cops to do their job right and I want the trial to be fair. Too often, they cut corners to get a conviction. Everyone is guilty, from the cops to the lawyers to the media. There was no hard evidence against Kevin. Only circumstantial evidence. If Lindy Ames wasn’t the daughter of Gerald Ames who had the clout to move the DA into an indictment, the case would never have gone to trial.”
“What did you think of the investigation into Lindy’s death?”
“It was bungled
from the beginning. Little of this made it into the trial, but the Atherton Police Department didn’t call the MPPD for nearly twelve hours after the body had been found. The crime scene was completely contaminated. By the time MPPD got there, they could only work with what was left, and most I got tossed.”
“Anything that pointed to Kevin?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did any of the evidence you had tossed point to Kevin’s guilt?”
“No—but it didn’t exonerate him, either. It was neither—simply that all the evidence collected by Atherton PD was tainted because it was stored improperly and without a clear chain of custody. The judge agreed with me. The DA never fought it, and I believe it’s because the evidence wouldn’t have helped their case.”
“Detective Beck showed up at Kevin’s funeral. I had words with him. I was under the impression Kevin was the only suspect they pursued.”
“I think they had another suspect but dismissed it when Kevin was handed to them on a silver platter.”
Max’s heart skipped a beat. “Who?”
“I have no idea. It was never turned over to me as part of discovery, and my investigator never found anything to support another killer—nor did he find evidence to support Kevin being guilty. It was clear that an anonymous tip to the police hotline told them that Kevin had been spotted in the high school parking lot the night Lindy was killed. Then the police learned about her fight with Kevin the night before, their previous relationship, that he was jealous because she was seeing someone else—”
“Someone the police never named.”
“True.”
“And you don’t know who?”
“I do not. Kevin didn’t know who it was, but said that’s what they’d been fighting about.”
“Mr. Jones, do you have your files on the case?”
“No.”
Max’s heart sank. She realized she’d just driven past her hotel. She made an illegal U-turn and headed back.
“I’d really like the transcripts.”
“You do know that Kevin was obsessed with Lindy’s murder.”
“I didn’t, not until his sister told me after he killed himself.”
That information obviously surprised Jones. “He committed suicide?”
“Do you find that odd?”
“I feel bad because I was avoiding his calls for the last couple of months. He’d become so obsessed with the case I couldn’t keep talking to him, it was taking too much of my time. Maxine, I gave Kevin my personal files.”
“All of them?”
“Last summer. After so many years, I didn’t see the harm—I never thought the police were going to uncover new evidence, or the DA was going to retry the case. I thought maybe reading my notes and the information would help him find closure.”
“Do you have copies?”
“No. My old law office has the official files, including the transcripts, but my personal notes all went to Kevin. I’ll call on Monday if you’d still like a copy of what they have.”
“Yes, I would, thank you. And thank you for your time.”
She sat in the parking lot of her hotel and stared out the window without seeing anything.
If Kevin had his attorney’s files, where were they now? Max had been through his entire apartment. They weren’t there.
And if that revelation wasn’t surprising enough, Max had one more surprise: not two minutes after she hung up with Jones, she got a call from Detective Santini, the cop in charge of the Jason Hoffman murder.
“Detective, thank you for returning my call.”
“It’s not every day I get a message from a national news reporter.”
She couldn’t read his voice, whether he had an opinion about her or not. “I’d like to talk to you about the Jason Hoffman homicide from last November. Do you have time?”
“Not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “I just put the case in the inactive file this week, so you can maybe understand why I’m curious about your interest.”
“If you meet with me, you’ll find out.”
“I don’t talk to reporters.”
Max couldn’t figure out where he was going with this conversation. “Detective, you returned my call—you didn’t send me to Officer Corbett. If you weren’t interested, you wouldn’t have called. Twenty minutes. I’ve already done my background on the case. I just need a bit more information.”
“I won’t say anything on record. If you can’t agree to that, this conversation is over.”
“I didn’t take this case to write an article.”
“Oh?” He now sounded surprised—and intrigued. Good.
“I’m in town for a friend’s funeral. Jason’s grandparents asked me if I could find out the status of the investigation and maybe give them closure. Because I’m an alumni of Atherton Prep, I agreed to help.”
“Hard to give closure when the killer hasn’t been caught.”
Max couldn’t disagree. “If I write an article, I promise not to quote you without permission.”
“Hmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means nothing. Your reputation is mixed.”
She laughed. “That’s kind. Probably very mixed.”
“Essentially, you’re a bitch, but your word is gold.”
“That’s accurate.”
This time Santini laughed. “I have time tomorrow, late morning. Make it noon.”
“I’ll buy lunch. Menlo Grill. I have one question first. During the initial investigation did you interview the young, blond secretary? Dru—I don’t know her last name.”
“Dru Parker. She had nothing to contribute to the investigation.”
“I think you might want to talk to her again.”
“Why?” His voice went from light to serious in a word.
“I visited the construction site where Jason was killed and talked to Roger Lawrence, the foreman. When he saw me talking to Dru, he sent her on a needless errand. I tracked her down and she left, panicked.”
“Reporters can have that effect on people.” His tone was serious. “I have to go.”
He hung up before Max could say anything else. She’d planted the information in his head that she wanted, and from the sound of his voice, he was going to follow up.
Chances are, if the cops showed up at Dru’s house, she’d call Max in a panic. Wanting to get her story out to cover her bases. It had happened enough times in the past that Max had a good grasp of the people she could manipulate like this.
She was surprised that Nick Santini agreed to meet with her. After her confrontations with Beck and Corbett, she certainly hadn’t expected anyone in the Menlo Park Police Department to be forthcoming with information. He’d been calm and even-tempered on the phone, but all business as soon as she brought up the secretary. She expected he would be the same tomorrow during their lunch meeting.
Maybe this weekend would end on a bright note after all.
Chapter Eight
Max stopped by her hotel room to drop off supplies she’d picked up earlier. A couple of trifold project boards, sticky notes, markers, tape. She’d bought enough to create expanded storyboards for each case, both Jason Hoffman and Lindy Ames. She didn’t know when, exactly, she’d committed herself to Lindy, whether it was when she saw her death certificate and Kevin’s accusation of drowning, Kevin’s apartment and his suicide postscript, or at the funeral when she realized that she owed it to Lindy to find out the truth. But she wasn’t going to back down.
Still, time wasn’t on her side. She had a commitment with her cable station to cover the Bachman trial for them, and though she didn’t need to be in New York on Monday like Ben wanted, she couldn’t stay in California longer than a week. She feared that spreading herself between two cases was going to mean she solved neither, but she didn’t see that she had a choice. She only hoped that Detective Santini cared and would pursue any threads she uncove
red, because she didn’t think she’d be here long enough to follow them.
She changed into a simple black dress and wrapped a multicolored blue and purple scarf around her shoulders. She didn’t have clothes to last a week, which meant hitting both the dry cleaners and the mall—something she enjoyed when she wasn’t pressed for time.
As she was getting ready to leave, she sat down at the hotel desk to straighten her notes when she saw the light on, indicating that she had messages. Had it been blinking, she would have noticed it as soon as she walked in, but the subdued orange light didn’t attract her attention when her arms had been full of office supplies.
She pressed the message button, and instead of being sent to voice mail, the desk clerk answered.
“Yes, Ms. Revere, this is Assistant Manager Devon Hardy, how may I help you?”
“I have a message light on my phone.”
“Yes, thank you, a message was called in. If you can wait one moment.” Less than ten seconds later, the clerk came back on. “I have a message that was called in at four forty-five today.”
That was ten minutes before she returned to her room.
“The caller didn’t want to leave a voice mail, but asked that I take down this message. He said, ‘The Ames case is closed. The family doesn’t want you or anyone else reopening that can of worms. Go back to New York.’” Devon hesitated, then added, “He refused to give me his name. I’m sorry, Ms. Revere, but I have a standing order to give you all messages, even anonymous.”
She always had that policy when she traveled because many people she interviewed felt uncomfortable sharing information, even their name and phone number. Many high-end hotels wouldn’t forward an anonymous message.
“Thank you, Devon.” She hung up.
The family doesn’t want you …
Who’d called in the message? Detective Beck? Max didn’t think so, even though he’d said almost the same thing to her at the funeral. He’d had no problem getting in her face before, he would have left a belligerent voice mail, or used his name with the threat of tossing her in prison. That it had come in not more than an hour after she left Olivia Langstrom Ward’s house made Max wonder who Olivia called after she left. Was she still close to the Ames family? Or had Max been followed?
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