Notorious

by Allison Brennan

  “He was with Olivia.”

  The information shocked her cousin. “Olivia Langstrom?”

  “Yes. She confirmed it. So get off your high horse and either help me, or stay out of my way. Because I’m not leaving town until I find out who killed Lindy.”

  * * *

  Max was even later than twelve thirty when she arrived at Atherton Prep. She quickly slipped out of her heels and into sneakers so she could comfortably walk the grounds.

  Jasper was talking to the headmaster, Greer Bascomb, who hadn’t seemed to age since Max graduated thirteen years ago. He’d looked forty-something then, he looked forty-something now. She knew, however, that he was fifty-eight. Bascomb had been the headmaster of Atherton Prep for nearly twenty years. They were having a big fund-raising gala in his honor next month to celebrate this milestone. Fortunately, Max wouldn’t still be in town. Ever since Lindy had told her that his secretary gave him head under his desk, when she saw the diminutive man she wanted to laugh.

  With Jasper and Bascomb was also a woman who looked familiar, but Max couldn’t place her.

  “Maxine Revere,” Bascomb said and extended his hand. “Good to see you again.”

  She shook his hand, then turned to the woman next to him. She wore little makeup, and her light brown hair was cut in a stylish bob. “Hello, Maxine Revere—did we go to school together?”

  The woman seemed surprised that she recognized her. “Yes, I’m Faith Voss, I graduated the year after you.”

  “Volleyball—I should have remembered.”

  She laughed lightly. “I was a benchwarmer most of the time I played.”

  Voss—she had a sister, too, who’d graduated the year before Max. Carrie. She had a far wilder reputation than her sister. Faith had always been smart and sweet, from what Max remembered.

  “Do you work for Jasper?”

  “I’m the admissions director for ACP.”

  Max couldn’t imagine working at her alma mater. She hadn’t liked high school much.

  “What’s Carrie up to these days? She went to Berkeley, right?”

  “Good memory. She dropped out and moved to Europe.” A hint of sadness clouded her expression.

  “Carrie always was spontaneous.”

  Bascomb said to Max, “We are so fortunate that your uncle, Archer Sterling, and Jasper have given so much to Atherton Prep. We were in dire need of a new gym, and the Sterling Pierce Sports Center is the perfect solution.”

  That was his subtle way of telling her she hadn’t given to her alma mater.

  “I agree,” she said.

  “You should visit more often,” Bascomb said. “Career Day in October, perhaps. Faith, make a note.”

  Faith wrote quickly in her notepad, the charms on her bracelet clinking. Admissions director and personal secretary, it seemed. Max handed Faith her business card. To Bascomb, she said, “You could always invite me to keynote graduation.”

  “I, um, of course, I’ll bring that up to the board, but as you know, it’s both a board and student decision on which alumnus is asked to give the commencement speech.”

  He was talking so fast Max wanted to laugh, again, at the weasel. He was such a glad-hander it made her cringe.

  “That’s right—my uncle Brooks is on the board. I guess I won’t expect an invitation anytime soon.” She winked at Jasper, who looked bemused at the conversation.

  Bascomb couldn’t leave fast enough. He thanked Jasper for talking to the donors, then made a lame excuse and walked back to the main campus with Faith on his heels. She glanced back at Max and rolled her eyes. Max laughed.

  “I hope Faith gets paid well to work for that sycophant jackass,” she muttered.

  Jasper laughed. “He wasn’t here when I was in school, but his credentials are impeccable.”

  “I’m sure they are. For an administrator and fund-raiser, he’s done well for the school, so I have no complaints there.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Jasper waved over a short, burly man in a flannel shirt and faded jeans. He introduced her to Brian Robeaux. Brian shook her hand firmly. He said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to look into my nephew’s murder. I haven’t slept well since it happened. I knew I should have come here with him that night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jason was convinced that someone had been digging around the site. There was some unexplained loose dirt, like someone had filled a hole about this size”—he put up his arms like he was carrying a sack—“but we dug up one of them and nothing was there. I think it was some of the kids at the school messing around. Still do. Except—what if I was wrong?”

  “Can you show me one of those holes?”

  “They won’t still be there,” he said. “Not after five months. With the rain and everything.”

  “Maybe it’s still happening.”

  “Nah, I think I would have noticed.” Brian glanced at Jasper. He looked undecided.

  “It can’t hurt,” Jasper said.

  They walked around the construction site and toward the back fence. Brian said, “We still miss him.”

  “You always will,” Max said. “But time helps,” she added. It sounded like a lie sometimes, and this was one of those times. Jason’s murder was senseless.

  “Jasper said Michael’s folks wrote to you about Jason?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t feel it necessary to go into details. “I met with them Saturday and they filled me in.”

  “They’re good people. Considered me family, too, ever since Sara married Mike. Practically adopted me. Our folks have been gone for some time, it was just Sara and me for a while.” Brian stopped at the edge of a line of redwoods. He glanced back toward the construction site, then looked at the trees.

  The redwoods were two and three deep, all along the west fence, from the edge of the old gym all the way to the far north property line. Max could see the tree she’d climbed on the other side of the old gym, where the trees were a mix of magnolias, oaks, and elm.

  “Well, shit,” Brian said, then glanced at Max. “Sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I really don’t remember where they were. Jason pointed out three, maybe four. But this is a hundred-yard stretch of trees here, and it was someplace in the middle. Close together—I remember that. But they could have been made by anyone, even an animal, like I’d told Jason.”

  “I’ll walk through here and see if anything pops out at me,” Max said. She picked up a long stick and poked at the ground. There was a lot of soft ground here, mulch and needles from the redwood trees. And Brian was right—five months of rain and drainage, the ground would have settled.

  But if the holes were deep or big enough, there might be remnants. With the clear sky and sun nearly straight up, this was the best light of the day. And if she didn’t find anything now, she’d be back tomorrow.

  Brian said, “Jasper, I have to call the cement contractor about tomorrow’s pour.”

  “Go. I’ll keep Ms. Revere out of harm’s way.”

  Brian left, and Max glanced at Jasper. “You will?” She walked slowly, eyes cast downward, poking the stick into the ground periodically.

  “Wouldn’t want you falling down the rabbit hole,” Jasper teased.

  “You don’t have to stay with me,” she said. “I’m okay on my own.”

  “I have no place I need to be.”

  “Why is it that neither Brian nor you mentioned Jason’s interest with these trees to the police? That Jason found evidence there had been digging?”

  “Honestly, it wasn’t on our minds. Jason was very detail-oriented. He noticed things that other people missed all the time. Very focused. Brian and I thought he was being quirky.”

  Max squatted to check out a mound of dirt; it was an anthill. She moved quickly away from it.

  Jasper grinned. “Don’t like bugs?”

  “Not particularly, but I’m n
ot squeamish, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Not generally squeamish. However, there were a few situations over the years she’d found herself in that she hoped were never repeated.

  They walked all the way to the corner and found nothing suspicious. Max took a heavy-duty Maglite from her purse.

  “Do you always carry a two-pound flashlight in your purse?”

  She laughed. “I thought it might be a little dark here. Maybe the light will reflect something.” She handed him her stick. “You poke this time.”

  They walked back just as slowly as they’d come. Max was glad that Jasper didn’t feel the need for a constant stream of conversation. She had the distinct impression he was still trying to convince her to go out with him.

  “There’s probably nothing here,” Jasper said five minutes later. They were near the middle of the section of trees.

  “Jason thought there was.”

  “Five months ago.”

  Max wasn’t deterred. Jason was killed for a reason; it wasn’t just a random crime. At least, it didn’t feel like a random crime.

  “I’ll come back in the morning,” Max said, “at dawn. The light will be different.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here a—” Jasper’s voice cut off and he yelped. She would have laughed at the sound if he hadn’t sworn a blue streak right after.

  She turned and found Jasper on the ground. His foot was buried in dirt. “Shit, that hurts.”

  “What happened?”

  She shined the light around Jasper.

  “A sinkhole. As soon as I put my weight on it, my foot went in.”

  His foot was deep in the hole, halfway up his left calf.

  “Is it broken?” Max asked.

  “No, but it hurts.” Still sitting, he pulled his foot from the hole. He felt the ground. “This soil doesn’t seem any different from the rest.”

  “Except for a hole.” She tilted her head. “Don’t move.”

  “What? Is something crawling on me?”

  “No, just trust me.”

  She walked to the edge of the trees. The hole that Jasper had stepped in was in the middle of a slight concave. Almost imperceptible. She took out her cell phone, made sure the flash was on, and took a picture of the ground. With the flash, it was obvious that the ground had sunk in. It was narrow, but several feet long. She showed Jasper the image. “What does this look like to you?”

  “I don’t know—a sinkhole?”

  Max frowned. Was she the only one who saw something more sinister?

  Jasper got up and winced. “Twisted my ankle.”

  “Sit—I want to do something.” She took several pictures, then shined her light all around the area. She got on all fours and crawled around the sinkhole, moving the dirt with her hands. “Here,” she said. “There is an obvious cut in the earth here from a shovel. It’s been filled in, but someone dug a hole here.”

  “That’s odd.”

  Max didn’t say anything as she continued to inspect the area. Her knee pressed against something hard, and she reached down. She picked up what she thought was a gray-white stone and almost tossed it, but it had very little weight. She shined her light on it. A thrill of discovery sent butterflies through her stomach.

  “I’m ninety-nine percent certain that this is a bone. A finger.” She held it up for Jasper to see.

  “Animal. It has to be an animal.”

  “I’m going to call Detective Santini. He’s got to get a forensics team out here immediately.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “Yes, I do. I think that somehow Jason found out about a crime, and someone killed him to keep him quiet.”

  Jasper paled as he stared at the ground where his foot had plunged. “Dear Lord, there’s a body down there?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s concave. That means something was removed. I think when the sports complex was approved, a killer came here to remove his victim.” She held up the bone. “And Jason caught him in the act.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nick Santini showed up at Atherton Prep nearly an hour after Max called him. Alone.

  Max was standing at his door before he even turned off the ignition. “You took long enough—where’s everyone else?”

  He didn’t say anything but got out of the Bronco. He looked at her from head to feet. She glanced down at her torn panty hose, dirt-stained knees, and formerly white sneakers, then caught his eye. “I told you we found a grave.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Jasper limped over. “Detective.”

  “Pierce. Explain what you two were doing here.”

  Why was Nick addressing Jasper? Max didn’t give Jasper a chance to respond. She said, “As I told you the other day, Dru said that Jason was concerned about holes in those trees.” She pointed to the redwoods. “I asked Jasper to come out with me and inspect the area. I thought he might have an idea of what was off about the trees that had Jason so concerned. Brian Robeaux said there were a couple of small holes in the ground, not in the trees specifically but around the trees. Brian didn’t think it was important, but Jason thought it was strange. Because Jason was killed here, next to the trailer, Brian didn’t think to mention anything about Jason’s interest in the holes. He said he didn’t make the connection at all.

  “While Jasper and I walked through the area looking for evidence of the holes, Jasper stepped into an area of loose dirt and twisted his ankle. I took a picture.” She handed Nick her phone with the pictures of the concave area. “That looks like a grave. And considering I found this”—she handed him the finger bone—“I think I’m right.”

  Nick stared at the bone, pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, and put the bone in. “You think you found a grave and yet you removed evidence.”

  “I was crawling around the area and knelt on it. I didn’t know it was a finger bone until I picked it up. There could be more, I didn’t look. Once I knew what was there, I stopped searching. So now, why don’t you have a forensics team with you? It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours.”

  “I want to look at it first,” Nick said. “You can leave.”

  “Leave? Hell, no. I found this grave. This is why Jason Hoffman was killed. You know it, I know it. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Nick took out his handcuffs and cuffed her to his door handle. He did it so fast that by the time she saw it coming, she was too shocked to stop him.

  Without a word, he motioned for Jasper to follow him to the trees. Jasper gave her a surprised look, then shrugged and followed Nick. Damn them both.

  Max was more than a little furious. She jerked her wrist, watching Jasper and Nick talk as they headed over to the grave that Max had marked with a construction cone.

  Damn cop.

  She reached into her hair and took out a bobby pin. David had taught her how to pick locks, but she’d never had to do it with her left hand before. And handcuffs were different. She dropped the pin and had to pull another from her hair. It took a minute, but she got the cuffs off.

  That was a trick she was going to have to practice a few times. It was a useful skill.

  She rubbed her wrist and glanced in Nick’s Bronco. She sat in the driver’s seat and went through a stack of files on the passenger seat. The top file was the Jason Hoffman case. Most of the stuff she already knew. Except for one tidbit.

  Nick had taken notes, apparently from a conversation he had with one of the federal agents. Since Amy was talking in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence, she’d admitted that she’d called Potrero when Nick was outside the house talking to Dru. Potrero’s cell phone history confirmed he’d called Cross immediately after Amy called him, not long before Dru was attacked. It was obvious to Max that Potrero and Cross thought Dru was going to expose their pot farm and money laundering scheme, which is why they went after her. While both of them had lawyered up, they each emphatically denied killing Jason Hoffman, and each had an alibi for the nigh
t Jason died, which Nick had verified.

  Nick had several sticky notes on the inside of his file. One caught her eye: Follow up on Max’s theory about the holes/trees at the construction site.

  He’d planned on coming out here anyway—why was he giving her such a hard time?

  She was so engrossed in the files that she didn’t hear the men approach until she felt Nick’s stare.

  She turned to him and smiled. “You locked me up, what was I supposed to do?” She closed the file she was looking at and put it back on the passenger seat.

  Nick held up his cuffs, which she’d draped over the door. “I see you have many talents.”

  “And? Do you agree that there was a grave under those trees?”

  “It appears to be, but it could have been a pet dug up by scavengers. It might not be human.”

  “Who digs a five-foot-long grave for a family pet?”

  “You measured.”

  “Of course I measured.”

  He jerked his head toward Jasper. “Your boyfriend is going to make sure you get back to your hotel safely.”

  She hated being kept in the dark.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” Max got out of the Bronco and punched a finger in Nick’s chest. “And the next time you put cuffs on me, it had better be part of a sex game, otherwise I’ll skewer you on the front page of The New York Times.”

  Max started to walk away.

  Nick said, “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  He looked at her a moment too long, long enough for Max to realize she was going to get herself in a heap of trouble if she got involved with yet another cop. Look what happened with her and Marco. And it was more than obvious, even with his initial flirting, even after that kiss in the restaurant, that Nick didn’t like her. The men she got involved with, at a minimum, had to respect her.

  Though there was an added benefit that Nick Santini lived three thousand miles away, she would never sleep with a man who didn’t like her or respect her career.

  * * *

  Jasper followed Max to the Stanford Park Hotel, but didn’t get out of his car. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. You’re the one with a sprained ankle.”

  “No racquetball for me this week.”