Notorious

by Allison Brennan

  Dru had come home from work, found Nick waiting for her with questions, got scared, packed quickly, and left. Where’d she been when she called Max? Had she been packing up? Already driving? She’d said she could be at the Caltrain station in twenty minutes; her house was less than fifteen minutes away. Max guessed she was here, packed and ready to go.

  The computer was on and there was no security or passwords required. Max first looked at her browser history. Dru had indeed looked up train times to San Francisco right before she’d called Max. She’d also checked her e-mail.

  Because she used an SMTP protocol, all her e-mail popped up into her computer. Max didn’t need a password to access it.

  More than half the messages were from makeup and clothing stores with 25 percent off coupons or one-day-only sales. Most of the others were from environmental groups. Few seemed personal. Nothing had come in yesterday or today that looked odd or suspicious. Max checked the deleted items folder; nothing was there, either. She searched the mailbox for messages from anyone at Evergreen; nothing except a woman named Janice Platt who sent weekly messages about schedules. She searched for Roger Lawrence; nothing. Brian Robeaux; nothing. Sara Hoffman; nothing. But people often didn’t use their full or real names in e-mails. She searched “Hoffman” alone and immediately hundreds of messages popped up—all from Jason Hoffman, they were dated more than a year before he died and up until the morning of his murder.

  Max started reading them.

  It was immediately clear that Dru and Jason were more than casual acquaintances. They might have had a relationship, but they were also friends. The last message he sent, the morning he died, was cryptic, because there were no messages before or after in the thread. It was as if he was continuing a verbal conversation.

  Dru, thanks for understanding. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, tonight I have something to do. Jase

  Why hadn’t Dru come clean about their relationship? Why hadn’t she told Nick that Jason had canceled plans with her the night he was killed?

  Two nights before he died, Jason sent Dru another cryptic message.

  Dru, you know plants better than I do. I need you to look at something for me, but you can’t tell anyone.

  Dru had e-mailed back: Sure, when and where?

  Jason responded: I’ll call you.

  All the other messages were while Jason was away at college, talking about his classes, sharing some of his design projects, asking how various construction projects were going. Dru told him about her friends, her classes, and vented about how one of the guys at the site would touch her whenever he came in for his paycheck, and that he was creepy. Jason wanted to know who, she wouldn’t tell him.

  Roger said he’d talk to him—I don’t want you getting in the middle of it. It’s really not a big deal, I just don’t like grabby hands.

  The more Max read, the more she thought that Jason and Dru were just friends. There was nothing romantic in any of the messages, no “I love you” or “I miss you;” mostly chitchat. A lot about the sports complex.

  She almost missed it because it was an old message, but one thread caught Max’s attention. Jason sent it a almost a year before he was killed.

  I might be able to save Evergreen. Jasper and I talked about working with Gordon and bidding on the Atherton Prep Sports Center. Jasper can get us to be considered because he’s the one who put together the financing for half the project. Still, Gordon and I have lots of ideas that we think will work. I wish my uncle had the vision. Don’t say anything to anyone, I don’t want Uncle Brian finding out I’m working behind his back on this.

  Dru never responded, but three days later Jason sent a second message.

  Wow, thanks for all the information. Lay low, I’ll check into it after I graduate. In the meantime, Jasper talked to Brian and they’re working up a bid. Gordon already has a winning design—I’m certain he’ll get it. If Gordon’s in, I’m in. I just don’t know if Evergreen will make it. Cross your fingers.

  There was no printer in her room—odd, considering she was a college student—so Max took a picture of each of the e-mails with her cell phone.

  So Jason and Jasper were working behind Brian’s back. Maybe Jason’s murder was personal. At the least, Nick should follow up with Brian Robeaux, maybe check out that party again.

  Max looked around. If someone was worried that Dru knew something about Jason’s murder, why hadn’t they come in here and searched? Unless they knew exactly what they were looking for. Of course, it could simply be that she had information—and if that was the case, she was still in danger.

  Or, maybe, the killer just thought she knew something that would trigger a closer investigation into Jason’s murder.

  How did they know that Nick Santini had come to talk to her? Unless it was Max’s presence yesterday morning that spooked them.

  She made a note to ask Jasper Pierce, when she finally met with him, about the e-mails Jason sent to Dru, as well as the financing and no-bid project. Then she went to work searching Dru’s drawers, desk, and closet. It was under her bed that she found the jackpot. A file box of all Dru’s personal information—her school transcripts, grades, bank statements, insurance payments.

  Max quickly photographed all the bank statements, but immediately something jumped out at her: DL Environmental.

  Every other week, DLE deposited between four and five thousand dollars into Dru’s bank account through a direct deposit. Then, three days later, the money was wire transferred to a company called R4E, minus three hundred dollars.

  Once or twice wouldn’t have caused Max’s radar to go wacky, but twice a month for nearly two years—twenty months total. The odd deposit and withdrawal history started three months after she started working for Evergreen. Coincidence? Or was there something wonky going on? Dru, essentially, made six hundred dollars a month for allowing her bank account to be used as a pass-through. For what? And did it have anything to do with the knife attack on Dru or Jason’s murder five months ago?

  The front door shut, and Max quickly boxed back up the personal information. She grabbed her backpack from where she’d put it next to Dru’s door, and unzipped it, as if she were unpacking.

  “Dru?” she called out. “Is that you?”

  “No,” a female voice said.

  Max stepped out into the hall. A petite blonde who looked like she’d just rolled out of bed was going through the mail on the kitchen table. “Hi,” Max said. “I’m Max, a friend of Dru’s. She said I could crash with her for a day or two, since my boyfriend is being an ass.”

  “Whatev.” The girl glanced over at Max. “How do you know Dru?”

  “High school. We haven’t talked much lately. Which roommate are you? Amy or Whitney?”

  “Whitney. Dru’s not here?”

  “She gave me a key yesterday and said she was going to be out all night.”

  “Huh. She must be shacking up with J. C. for the weekend.”

  “She didn’t say anything to me.” Who was J. C.? Max hadn’t seen any e-mails from a boyfriend, but with all the messages going back and forth via texting and Twitter and other social media, it would take Max a while to find it. She wondered if Nick had access to Dru’s phone, or if Gorman was going through the calls and logs.

  “Talk about a jerk, but she’s all into him. He’s hot, but a wacko. I thought they weren’t together anymore, but it’s back and forth.” She rolled her eyes.

  “He’s not from work,” Max said as if it were a fact.

  Whitney snorted. She walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed a Diet Coke. “Hardly. Want one?”

  Max rarely drank soda, but she also knew that sharing a meal or drinks loosened tongues.

  “Thanks.” She took the can and opened it.

  Whitney sat at the table, one leg under her body, and leaned back. “I should go save her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be saved.”

  “That’s the problem. Dru is such a sweetheart, she gets sucked i
nto all these wild causes and J. C. is the worst. Was she like that in high school?”

  This was going to get tricky. It didn’t seem that Whitney was setting her up, but Max couldn’t quite tell. Fortunately, she knew the basics about Dru’s family life. “I’m a couple years older. I was friends with her sister.”

  “How is Gina?”

  Max shrugged. “We lost touch when she moved to L.A. We just keep up on Facebook.”

  “I know. My best friend, Tiff, she got a full-ride scholarship to play volleyball in Texas. I never see her, we never talk. It’s like I don’t exist.”

  Bitter. Best friend going to a four-year college, Whitney stuck at a community college and working to pay her way.

  Max said, “I’m going to leave a note for Dru, but I have to run.”

  “If you come back tonight, just be quiet. Amy and I have to be at work at six, so we crash early.”

  “Promise. Thanks.” Max went back to Dru’s room. She sat down at the computer and looked for any e-mails from a J. C. She found nothing. She went back to the browser history and found Dru’s Facebook page. She was still logged in—a bad but easy habit to get into when one didn’t share a computer.

  She scanned all Dru’s friends and found one that matched.

  J. C. Potrero, San Mateo. She clicked through and found pictures of him, Dru, and others at a variety of protests and parties.

  J. C. Potrero’s page indicated that he was the owner of DL Environmental, the business that was depositing nearly $9,000 a month into Dru Parker’s account in small, hard-to-track amounts.

  Maybe this scheme had nothing to do with Jason Hoffman’s murder.

  Or maybe it was the reason.

  * * *

  Max sat in her car down the street from the legal address for DL Environmental, which was a mail drop. She pulled up all the information she could find for the business on the Internet. DLE appeared to be an environmental watchdog group that gathered petitions on a myriad of causes. They seemed to be advocates of all things green, but it was all surface—she couldn’t find anything specific that they had done other than write letters and petitions to politicians. They solicited online donations and had a fancy Web site, but no substance.

  She called a friend of hers in Washington, D.C. Shelley Abbott, a legislative aide, had a finger on the pulse of all things environmental.

  “Shell, it’s Max.”

  “Maxine?” Shelley squealed. Then she laughed. “It’s been three, four—no, seven—months since you called me. You must want information.”

  “You know me too well.”

  “Too damn well. Some day, I’m going to tell you to fuck off.”

  “I know too many of your secrets.”

  “That you do, Maxie.”

  Max cringed at the nickname Shelley knew she hated. They’d gone to college together and used to have brutal arguments about nearly everything, which Karen had mediated. Karen’s murder had hurt Shelley as much as Max, and Shelley was one of the few people Max still talked to about Karen. Max loved Shelley like an annoying but fun sister; she was pretty sure Shelley felt the same about her.

  “What do you need?”

  “DL Environmental. It’s an activist group in California.”

  “Never heard of them, but they’re really a dime a dozen. It’s not one of the big groups.”

  “Can you check your database?”

  “It’s Sunday night.”

  Max glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Four in the afternoon—seven in D.C.

  “Sorry, babe.”

  “Don’t call me babe.”

  “Don’t call me Maxie.”

  Shelley sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting off my ass and walking to my computer. What are you up to?”

  “I’m in California for a funeral.”

  Shelley’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”

  “Old friend I haven’t seen in a long time.”

  “Still.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay, I’m logging into my network. DL…” she typed, mumbling to herself. “I have nothing.”

  “Nothing nothing?”

  “I have the group logged as a tier seven.”

  “You’re talking in-speak again. Pretend I can’t read your mind,” Max teased.

  “Sorry. Just my personal shorthand. That means they’re a letter-writing group. No ties with any state or national group. I suspect they’re run out of someone’s house. Don’t give political or nonprofit donations. They are a registered nonprofit, which is the only reason they’re in my system at all.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “A guy named J. C. Potrero says he’s employed by them.”

  “Maybe.” Max heard the shrug in her voice. Shelley continued. “A lot of these little groups will raise money for a local issue, like saving a park or protesting a development that impacts a river, things like that. They hire someone, usually a relative or friend of the organizer. I wouldn’t call them a scam, but the employee does little more than maintain a Web site or organize a letter-writing campaign. Nothing illegal, nothing that helps except for their one pet cause, often they’re absorbed into a state group when it’s done. But there’s nothing on DL or this Potrero person.”

  “What if I told you that DL was depositing between eight and nine thousand dollars a month in a college student’s account and then that student was sending a wire transfer of almost the same amount out to another group?”

  “Sounds like money laundering to me. Why don’t you call your hot Cuban G-man? What’s his name? Marco. Even his name sizzles smoothly off the tongue.”

  Max laughed. “He’s not my hot Cuban, not anymore.”

  “That’s what you said last time he pissed you off. And the time before that. And—”

  “Cool it, Abbott.”

  “Touchy.”

  “I can’t think of a reason for the money laundering,” Max said to get the conversation back on track.

  “Could be a fund-raising scam. The FBI would be all over that if you get a whiff of something underhanded.”

  “Maybe,” she said, thinking. Very possibly right, but then why the laundering through Dru’s account?

  “I’ll dig around if you want. Where in California?”

  “They’re based in San Mateo.”

  “I have a friend in San Francisco who knows everything about anything green. I’ll call him and let you know what’s up.”

  “Thanks, Shell.”

  “Anytime. But seriously, Max, don’t wait until you need something to call. I miss you.”

  “Hey, the phone lines go both ways.”

  “Touché.” Shelley laughed and hung up.

  Shelley had a point. Max tended to keep her friends at a distance, and she wasn’t sure why. She really didn’t like psychoanalysis, but she suspected her need to avoid close attachments was related directly to Karen’s death as well as her mother’s disappearance. No-brainer, she was sure any first-year shrink would diagnose her as having abandonment issues or some such nonsense. Whatev, as Whitney said earlier.

  Sitting down the street from a mail drop wasn’t going to help her find J. C. Potrero. There had been nothing in Dru’s room with his address or phone number—that information was likely in her cell phone. If the police had recovered her cell phone, Nick might be able to get it, but then she’d have to explain why, and she wasn’t certain there was anything to this theory. In fact, she didn’t even have a real theory. Nothing that connected to Jason Hoffman.

  If Potrero’s mail drop was in San Mateo, it was reasonable to think that he lived or worked in the area.

  She logged into a public files database that was used primarily by private investigators. She did a variety of searches, but it wasn’t until she went back to his Facebook page and learned that his full name was John Carlos that was she able to find his home address.

  John Carlos Potrero was twenty-one, a year older than Dru, and lived in a pricey con
do west of El Camino Real in San Mateo. Just up the hill from the complex were some of the most expensive homes in the region and Crystal Springs School, which had been a rival of Max’s own Atherton Prep.

  Family money—maybe. But when Max did an ownership search on the address, the condo was owned by DL Environmental. And she couldn’t find anything on a Potrero family trust or a DLE trust. Didn’t mean there wasn’t family money, but if there was, it wasn’t obvious.

  Max sent the information she’d uncovered to Shelley, then approached the building.

  The apartment building was a combination of condos in a three-story structure and bungalows, which surrounded the main building. She pulled a flyer from a unit that was for sale and was surprised it was listed for more than half a million dollars. J. C.’s property was a bungalow in the back, likely worth more than the condos. There was a single car garage attached. Max couldn’t see in through the shuttered windows.

  She knocked on the front door and there was no answer. She considered breaking in like she’d done at Dru’s house, except here was a lot more dangerous and she didn’t have a plausible excuse. All the shutters were closed and she couldn’t see into the unit. She turned to leave.

  “You’re trespassing,” a guy said behind her.

  She turned back and faced who she knew to be J. C. Potrero from his Facebook profile. “J. C., right?” He wore jeans and a red windbreaker. He looked like he was leaving, but he hadn’t answered the door. Odd.

  “What do you want?”

  She extended her card. “Maxine Revere, freelance reporter. I’m writing an article about the attack on Dru Parker last night. She’s a friend of yours.”

  “Why would a reporter care?”

  “Because she had a meeting scheduled with me last night, but was attacked before we could meet.”

  “That’s none of my business.”

  “But you’re her employer.”

  “She works for a construction company in Redwood City.”

  “But you own DL Environmental.”