Notorious

by Allison Brennan

  “Too bad, I would have taken you up on a game.” She leaned into his car. “Thanks, Jasper, I mean it.”

  “I should be thanking you. We’re one step closer to finding Jason’s killer.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’re skeptical.”

  “I think we have the motive, but beyond that? I don’t know.”

  “It’s more than we had yesterday.”

  “Santini really ticks me off. I’m not backing down off this, just because he’s the one with the badge.”

  “I don’t think he would have minded if you stayed.”

  “He kicked me out.” She eyed him. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

  “There’s a cop named Beck who has it out for you. You know him?”

  “Yes,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Santini said that when he calls in the gravesite, he has to report who discovered it. He said Beck will be all over the place, and he didn’t want you there in the middle of it.”

  “I can handle Beck.”

  “It’s a distraction for Santini.” Jasper hesitated, then said, “It’s pretty clear he’s interested.”

  “In the grave? He damn well better be.”

  “In you.”

  She blinked. “Well. You would be wrong. He had some choice words to say about my profession, and me personally.”

  “I’ve been wrong, on a rare occasion.” Jasper grinned. “I’m going back. If I hear anything interesting, I’ll let you know.” He drove off.

  Max dismissed what Jasper said about Nick Santini’s interest in her. There was no denying the mutual attraction, but what he said last night really bothered her, far more than she’d admitted even to herself, until now. She was her job. Hate her job, hate her.

  She walked up to her hotel room, showered and changed. Her suit needed cleaning, so she left it in a bag with a dry-cleaning tag, and changed into slacks and a blouse. Neither formal nor casual, because she wasn’t quite sure what her plans were.

  She updated her two boards. On Jason Hoffman’s, she put a sticky note under her “motive” heading related to the grave.

  What did Jason find that no one wanted him to talk about?

  Brian Robeaux had said that he’d seen three or four small holes, the size of a bucket, that had been filled in. The one she and Jasper had found was huge in comparison. Had Jason found the grave? If so, did he tell someone? Maybe someone at the school? Why wouldn’t he call the police?

  Unless he hadn’t found the grave, but someone feared he might.

  She had to let Nick and his team do their job—for all she knew they would find a full skeleton, and once they identified the remains, they might have all the answers they needed. Until then, she could do nothing but sit and wait.

  She preferred action to waiting.

  She turned her attention to the board she’d been working on for Lindy. She added a sticky note about her conversation with Gerald Ames and her follow-up with Olivia.

  Max looked back at Jason’s board.

  There hadn’t been two murders at Atherton Prep.

  There had been three.

  Max pulled out a third trifold board that she’d stuffed behind the television and wrote on the top: Unidentified Victim: Grave

  The grave was on ACP property. Jason Hoffman was killed on ACP property because he was suspicious—but not so suspicious that he’d shared any specific concerns with anyone, other than being interested in who was digging around on his site.

  And Lindy was killed on ACP property.

  Max couldn’t see any connection between Lindy and the other two murders, the unknown victim and Jason, but that there were three people killed at the same location made Max’s instincts do more than twitch. They were ringing bells in her head.

  She did a quick search on persons who went missing more than a year ago. She wasn’t certain how quickly a body would decompose if buried in the ground unprotected, but she would imagine for a finger bone to be devoid of all flesh and muscle, it had to be there at least a year.

  There were about a dozen people reported missing, from Atherton and Menlo Park but no one she knew, and no one who had a connection with Atherton Prep—at least a connection that was obvious. No alumni, no students, no teachers, no parents, no employees.

  Maybe she was thinking about this the wrong way.

  Still, she made a list of the missing people to ask Santini about later—if he planned on talking to her again. Until they had the identity of the victim, or confirmation of how long the victim had been in the ground, all she was doing now was speculating.

  She turned back to Lindy’s board and added the information she’d learned from William and Olivia about Lindy’s secret diary.

  Where was it?

  Max had always suspected that Lindy had kept another diary after her mother burned her first one, but after the argument Max and Lindy had about Lindy’s propensity to gather information—and then not use it to help anyone—Lindy hadn’t shared anything else with her.

  And they’d had a huge fight over how to reveal the information about Brooks and Kimberly’s affair. Lindy had uncovered the affair in the first place, but after she told Max, Max had followed Brooks for weeks in order to see for herself. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to believe it—she and Brooks had never gotten along—but she wasn’t going to say a word unless she had proof.

  Once she saw them, Max had wanted to document the affair and show the evidence to Aunt Joanne and Lindy’s father; Lindy had some devious plan to get back at her mother. In the end, Max had gone for bold: she’d announced the affair at a family dinner. Lindy had been angry with her for a long time after that, and in some ways Max couldn’t blame her. They’d had a fundamental disagreement about what to do with the scandalous information. Max believed the truth needed to be out there. Lindy wanted to manipulate her mother instead. Max won because she refused to keep the secret. She hated secrets. What good had ever come from them?

  Max rubbed her temples, then swallowed two aspirin with half a bottle of water. She picked up the key she’d found in Kevin’s apartment. Why couldn’t he have made this easy and told her what it went to? Was he worried someone else would find it?

  She pulled out the letter he’d written and read it again, looking for a clue, but nothing jumped out at her.

  Kevin had put the letter in her first book, the story about Karen’s disappearance. Was that a clue? Max didn’t think so—but maybe.

  Missing in Miami didn’t compare with the names of the six storage facilities in Menlo Park. Max looked at the list of storage units. She’d already called all of them. Five had a locker 110. None would tell her if it was rented to Kevin O’Neal. Two she manipulated into telling her that the registered owner wasn’t Kevin, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t used an assumed name.

  It looked like she was going to have to try all five, but she didn’t have time today. She picked the closest to Kevin’s apartment and left.

  It only took ten minutes to get there. It was small and dark. The guard let her into the main area when she flashed a smile and told him she forgot the door code.

  Unfortunately, the key didn’t work on the door. These units all had their own lock, brought by the owner. She hadn’t thought to ask that question.

  Max called the remaining four storage lockers. She asked each manager if they provided a lock and key, or if the renter was required to bring a lock. Only two provided locked doors—and one of those was all electric. The renters didn’t even have a key, they set their own PIN number.

  Palm Storage and Lock. Palm … palm trees. Could have been a clue related to Miami, or just a coincidence, but Max didn’t care. It was also the farthest away. By the time she arrived, she only had ten minutes before they closed.

  She walked into the office and rang the bell. A frizzy-haired woman in a bright muumuu came in from the back room. “We’re closing in ten minutes,” she said. “I can get you situated with a storage unit, but you ca
n’t move your stuff until tomorrow.”

  “Locker one-ten, please.”

  “Go right in. But, like I said, ten minutes.”

  It was a two-story facility with small, cinder block rooms. Still, it smelled stale with artificial air and the scent of old. Like some of these treasures had been locked in their rooms for decades. The building looked like it had been built before World War II, and for California that was ancient.

  Kevin’s unit was stifling and musty. The temperature was cold enough to raise goose bumps on her arms, and she had no time to retrieve her blazer from her car. When she turned on the light she saw a desk stacked with files—the missing files from Kevin’s apartment. There were odds and ends of things—old skis, boots, textbooks. Why had he moved his files here? His apartment would be far more comfortable to work in.

  She looked through the boxes, stunned with the volume of research Kevin had done. Maps, books, newspaper articles, and all the files on her family, the Talbots, and from his lawyer. More information than she could possibly digest tonight. More information than she could go through in a week.

  Over the loudspeaker the manager said, “Palm Storage is closing in five minutes. Please lock up your unit and exit the building.”

  Max frowned. Why couldn’t Kevin have picked a storage facility that had twenty-four-hour access?

  She didn’t have time to go through everything. It would take several trips from the unit to the car to bring all the files. She grabbed a shoe box in the corner, dumped the shoes on the floor, and took the files that seemed the most relevant to Lindy Ames’s murder. She quickly opened the desk drawers. They were empty except for a letter and a leather journal.

  The letter was addressed to her.

  The speaker came on again. “Palm Storage is now closed. Please exit the building immediately.”

  Max put the letter and leather book on the top of the files in the box. She left the room, locked it, and hurried out.

  The woman glared at her. “I have a life, too, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said without an ounce of remorse. This was a business—where was the customer service?

  Max put the box in her backseat, but brought the letter and journal up front. The woman made her leave the parking lot—she had to lock the gate—and Max parked down the street.

  She opened the letter. It was after seven, and the sunlight was nearly gone. She turned on the overhead light in the car.

  Max—

  I’m sure you remember Lindy’s diary and what a scandal it caused when Mrs. Frauke found it. It’s a double standard, you’d say. It’s expected that men have affairs, practically tolerated, but women wear a scarlet letter for life.

  Lindy started another diary after you exposed her mother’s affair with Brooks Revere. I don’t think she could help it—she was obsessed with information, with knowing who was doing what, who was lying, who was cheating. It was like … a religion for her. Every time she found out something bad, she’d tell me, “See, so-and-so is a hypocrite, just like I said.” She’d be high-and-mighty, but deep down she was hurt. It’s like she wanted to hurt herself knowing all the bad shit about everyone.

  I always assumed that the diary was in police evidence and nothing ever came of it. But last summer, when I finally cleaned up my act enough to ask my attorney for his records, I learned they’d taken everything, but never logged in her diary.

  If it was still around, I thought it would be in her clubhouse. When Gerald and Kimberly were out of town, I used the old gate and searched, but the journal wasn’t in her clubhouse. So I put myself in Lindy’s shoes. Where would she hide it?

  It took a while for me to find it, but it was in plain sight—in Gerald’s private study among the old books. He probably didn’t even know it was there.

  I don’t understand most of it. It’s in code. I know what she’s saying, but not who she’s talking about.

  But if you look at the last entry, it says that Hester is back. Lindy saw her going into a doctor’s office and followed her. I thought she might have meant Mrs. Frauke, but I tracked Mrs. Frauke down and she’s retired and living in Vermont. All her entries were like that. She was obsessed with The Scarlet Letter, remember? She’d spray-painted a red A on her mother’s new Jaguar when she first found out about her affair with your uncle.

  Kimberly was having another affair, but she didn’t name names—she called the participants by nicknames. I only knew she was talking about Kimberly because she called her Joan Crawford. You know, from Mommie Dearest. Someone was embezzling from her father’s company, but Gerald wouldn’t listen to her. She had been cheating on me almost the entire time we were dating, but she wrote, “There’s a phrase in the Bible that says you reap what you sow. I cheated, so I’m not surprised I’m being cheated on.” That was two weeks after we broke up.

  You have to read it. I was going to send it to you, but I didn’t want it to get lost, and I was afraid you’d throw it away without opening it.

  I’m sorry about everything. I should have told the truth from the beginning.

  —Kev

  P.S. Consider my suicide a mercy killing. I destroyed my body with drugs, and there’s no coming back. I would have been dead by the end of the year.

  Dead? Was Kevin dying? How? He was hardly old.

  But she couldn’t think about that now. Her heart beat rapidly as she realized exactly what she had in her hands. This was what she needed. She knew Lindy better than anyone, and she knew she could figure out Lindy’s code. It was a puzzle, and she would put every last piece in place and finally know what happened thirteen years ago. The diary was Lindy’s last days, what she knew and who she knew it about.

  What if she hadn’t been raped? What if the police assumed she’d been raped because she’d had sex with William before she was killed? Max’s heart thudded. Was William the one cheating on her? William said she’d broken up with him because she didn’t want to go public with their relationship—was that the real reason? Or an excuse?

  Max needed to do this at her hotel, with better light and room to spread everything out. She put her car into gear and glanced in her rearview mirror.

  A van was speeding up the street and looked like it would sideswipe her. She waited for it to pass, and then the van’s lights temporarily blinded her as the driver turned and aimed right for her car. She had no place to turn, no time to get out of the way or get out of the car.

  The van slammed into her trunk. The air bag popped open and her face slammed against it at the same time. All air left her lungs, and she took a deep breath and started coughing from the powder in the air.

  Diary.

  She felt around but it had fallen from her hands. She tasted blood as it dripped down her nose.

  A shadow crossed her window. A quick glance showed a masked man. He tried the door and found it locked. She saw the hammer just in time to turn her head and shield her eyes as the glass shattered.

  He reached in through the broken window and opened the door, then grabbed her and tried to pull her from the car. Her seat belt resisted him. He grunted, leaned over, and unbuckled it.

  Max wasn’t going to let him take her without a fight. She pounded his body with her fists as he yanked her from the car. She tried to scream, but her throat was raw from the air bag’s chemicals and it came out raspy. She saw the hammer coming down toward her head and grabbed his wrist. She was strong, pumped with the adrenaline of survival, but he was on top and had muscles that didn’t seem evident from his slender build.

  She kicked him in the groin, but didn’t get close enough to do serious damage. He backhanded her, her head hit the pavement, and she lay stunned. Her attacker went back into her car, and then sped away in the van that had hit her.

  She pushed herself up on all fours, but fell back down, dizzy. She shook off the vertigo and crawled to her car. Her purse was still there.

  Lindy’s diary was not.

  This wasn’t a robbery.

  You were follow
ed twice this week!

  She’d been so stupid. She’d hit herself if she wasn’t already in such pain.

  She took out her phone and her vision was fuzzy. Jasper Pierce must still be in the area. She hoped. She hit redial.

  “Santini.”

  She was confused. Was he the last person she’d called? She couldn’t remember. She needed to focus.

  “Max? You there?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was not her own. She took a deep breath, sat on the sidewalk and leaned against the car. “I—um—r-r-remember when you said if I needed help just to ask-k-k?” Her words sounded funny. She spit blood onto the sidewalk and felt her teeth with her tongue. They seemed to all be there. What an odd thing to think about. But she had nice, straight, white teeth and the thought that some bastard might have dislodged one made her angry.

  “Are you drunk? You’re slurring.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I wish I were. I need a ride.”

  “Where are you?”

  She gave him the address of Palm Storage. “But I’m down the street. Someone hit my car.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Not serious. Just shaken.”

  “I’ll call a patrol and ambulance.”

  “No ambulance. Dammit, can I just get a ride back to the hotel and I can tell you what the bastard stole?”

  “Your car was stolen?”

  “No, Lindy’s journal.”

  “Who’s Lindy?”

  “We have a lot to talk about.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Nick could not be trusted. He called a patrol and an ambulance, and Max sat in the back of the ambulance while the paramedics cleaned up the cuts on her face and hands. She felt sore and stupid and irate.

  She glared at Nick as he talked to the patrol officer. She’d already given her statement and all she wanted to do was go home.

  Home. She didn’t have a home to go to. She had a hotel.

  While she knew that she could go to her grandmother’s and curl up in her old bed and have Regina prepare her favorite comfort foods, she would also be subjected to a lecture, an argument about tracking Lindy’s killer, and a cold shoulder. It wasn’t worth it.