Notorious

by Allison Brennan

  William—he is intelligent, considerate, and has a heart with far more compassion than his father. Today, he looks more a man than I’ve ever seen him.

  Maxine—More my daughter than my granddaughter. I never understood Martha, but Maxine—she says what I wish I could say. I admire her passion for life. Her love of friends and family, her firm commitment to her values, the depth of her self-awareness. I will miss her greatly.

  Max had to reread the comment because she’d never heard her grandmother say anything like this to her.

  I will miss her greatly.

  Max had walked away from home, gone to college, rarely come home because she never thought she would be missed. The friction her presence caused the family had always upset her grandmother. Yet, she admired her?

  Max had to put it aside because she wasn’t here to read about June. And that what she was about to do would tear apart the family from its very foundation made her want to leave for New York on the next flight and forget everything she’d seen or heard.

  Except, of course she’d never do that. The truth had to come out. Gerald and Kimberly Ames deserved to know what happened to their daughter. The Hoffmans deserved to know what happened to Jason. Faith deserved to know what happened to her sister.

  And why.

  In December after graduation, during his winter break, Eleanor took William to England as his graduation present. They didn’t go over the summer because of Lindy’s murder.

  December tenth through the twenty-second.

  The postcard from Carrie was postmarked December eleventh.

  She didn’t want to believe it. How could she? How could she not only believe that her cousin was a killer, but that he’d been so calculating? That he’d lied to her, and she’d believed him, because she had believed Kevin O’Neal and had been right about him?

  William has a heart with far more compassion than his father.

  Could kind, considerate, polite, compassionate William have brutally murdered three people? Lindy? Carrie? Jason?

  William’s explanation of their fight didn’t make any sense. Lindy was mad about another girl he dated—why would she be? She’d been cheating on Kevin with William, William had been cheating on Caitlin with Lindy, it was one big cluster-fuck and Max had been totally in the dark.

  Had she been? Had she truly been that clueless about her friends?

  Maybe. She had Andy then, they’d been together all the time. She’d been planning for college, playing volleyball in the fall, skiing in the winter, swimming in the spring, she’d always kept busy, and her senior year was particularly hectic because of the added stress of college applications. Had she been so wrapped up in her own life that she’d forgotten to pay attention to the world around her?

  Or maybe, subconsciously, she knew everyone had secrets, and she was willfully ignorant of them. Because she didn’t want to think about people she loved lying to her. Intentionally blind.

  If William killed Lindy and Carrie, why? If he killed them, that meant he’d also killed Jason Hoffman because Jason had seen him removing Carrie Voss’s remains. Then William had taken her bones and … what? Reburied them? Burned them? Scattered them in the woods?

  Max felt physically sick as she looked at the next date, the following winter—when it was summer in the land of Oz. Genie, her great-grandmother, had been ill. She had never been to Australia and said that before she died, she wanted to visit. It had been a difficult trip for the woman, but Max had never seen her happier. She’d died nine months later, but at peace.

  While Genie and Eleanor had stayed for six weeks in a house they rented in Sydney, Max had joined them for a week. William was there. The Talbots had all visited at different times.

  The dates William was in Sydney matched up with the postmark.

  Max almost didn’t keep looking, but one thing being a reporter taught her was that she had to have all her facts. She had to make a solid case. If she was going to convince William to confess, she had to give him incontrovertible proof that he had no option. That there was enough evidence to put him in prison. She took pictures of each page in the date books, in case her grandmother destroyed them. She hoped not, because as she read notes in her grandmother’s impeccable, formal script, she saw a history unfold that she wanted to read more about. A history she wanted to write about.

  She knew if she did this, if she used these date books to put William in prison for murder, her family would disown her. She’d still be part of the trust, she’d still have her money, but she would never be able to come home again. No matter what Eleanor had written about her in the books, some things would be unforgivable.

  It was perhaps ironic that she never wanted to come home … until the idea that she couldn’t terrified her.

  The money had never been important to Max, yet that would be all she had left of her family and her heritage.

  But what choice did she have? She’d promised herself long ago that exposing the truth was the only way she could live in balance. That harboring secrets would only give her heartache and failure. Her mother’s lies and deception, Lindy’s secret diary, Karen’s disappearance and murder … the truth wasn’t pretty, but it was real, and Max had to hold on to that.

  Eleanor kept a copy of everyone’s travel schedule because she wanted to know where they were in case she needed to reach them. She also said once, over dinner, that knowing where her family was gave her a continuity in her life, so she would remember to ask about their trips, to view their pictures, to remember what it was like to be young and active. Eleanor was the most active seventy-nine-year-old Max had ever known, taking after Eleanor’s mother, Genie. Strong, active, smart women. Even with all the secrets and the battle of duty and family over truth, Max greatly admired the women in her life.

  The women who stayed.

  As Max compared the postcards to the date books, she realized that something was off. There were several dates that didn’t match up with postmarks. The postcard from New York City—that was sent nine years ago. William was supposed to fly to New York to stay with Max for a month after he’d graduated from college, but he canceled it because Max was still in Miami looking for clues in Karen’s disappearance.

  Then, a year later, Brooks Revere had just divorced his wife and taken his girlfriend to France. William refused to go. Brooks went with the Talbots. There weren’t details on who in the Talbot family had gone. Andy? Andy and William often traveled together, especially when they were younger, before William married. Max didn’t know why, but she’d much rather have her ex-boyfriend be the villain in this picture than her cousin. Somehow, it made the situation more tolerable. How bad did that make her?

  The last postcard was sent six years ago from Ireland. William was definitely in Ireland at the time—he and Caitlin were both there, on their honeymoon.

  It was the only time period where Carrie allegedly sent three postcards closer than several months apart. France. Italy. Ireland.

  There were seventeen postcards total. William had been to half the locations where the cards were sent from. But Caitlin had also been to many of them … and could easily have sent them. Caitlin had been in Australia the same week as William and Andy and Max. The only one that didn’t make any sense was the first postcard, from England.

  Did Andy use Caitlin? Or could Caitlin have planned all this? Was she so twisted and methodical that she forged postcards from Carrie and sent them to her family? So her mother and sister would think she was alive and living it up in Europe? How could she be so calculating?

  Except … Max had known Caitlin as long as she’d known anyone in Atherton. Caitlin had been the competitive girl. She’d been the angry one, always finding a way to embarrass Max or Lindy or any of the other girls they hung out with. And she’d always been infatuated with William.

  The more Max thought about Caitlin Talbot Revere, the more she knew she was guilty. All the years Max studied crime and criminals, all the books she’d devoured and psychologists she’d int
erviewed trying to understand the psychopathic mind—and her cousin was married to one. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

  Maybe she had—in the small ways. She hadn’t completely been joking when she commented to William that Caitlin would put hemlock in her salad. Caitlin had that manner, that aura that she wanted to hurt Max, and would if she could get away with it. Max had always dismissed it as jealousy—Caitlin was jealous of Max’s independence, of her relationship with William, of everything others had that Caitlin didn’t. Money couldn’t buy real friends, and it couldn’t buy class.

  Proving Caitlin was a killer was going to be difficult. Not everyone kept records as meticulous as Max’s grandmother. There might not be travel records going back more than a decade. And then there was the question of the first postcard, when Max knew that William and her grandmother had gone to England together.

  Did Caitlin simply fly to Europe herself? Or maybe she’d given the card to William to mail. Why wouldn’t he have questioned it?

  Because, as Eleanor noted in her date books, William was intellectually smart, but had little to no common sense. He believed what people told him.

  There was no proof that William killed Carrie Voss. Nick didn’t have access to these date books, and even if he did—even if Max did her responsibility and told him about them—there were holes. The stigma of being a murderer would be held over William’s head for the rest of his life.

  There was no proof that Andy had killed Carrie Voss. But that made more sense—he’d admitted to being at Lindy’s house, to moving her body to the pool. How could he have been there and not seen the murderer?

  Maybe he’d moved Lindy’s body and Carrie had seen him. He killed her to cover it up. Based on the notes in Carrie’s house, she and Lindy had been in contact during the weeks prior to their deaths.

  But Andy was smart—very smart. He would have thought to check the blueprints of the sports complex before deciding whether he needed to move the remains. Wouldn’t he? That had been over Thanksgiving—where was he that weekend?

  The door opened and Eleanor walked in wearing a shimmery silver-blue cocktail dress with a matching wrap. She stopped and stared at Max. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to prove that William didn’t kill Lindy.”

  “You’re a little late.”

  That’s when she saw how pale her grandmother was. How red her eyes were.

  Max went to her side. “Grandmother—”

  Eleanor walked around to her desk slowly. “He was just arrested. The police searched his car—with his permission because he said he had nothing to hide—and found evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Dirt. I don’t know what that means. I thought we had the best defense attorney—Maxine, William will not survive in prison.”

  Max put the date book she was reading back on the shelf and took out the book for last year. She opened it up to the day Jason Hoffman died. William was in town. Dammit. She put it back.

  “Does William own a gun?”

  “I don’t think so. He doesn’t like guns.”

  That didn’t mean anything. People who didn’t like guns used them all the time.

  “I need to know something, Grandmother, because I’m going to take a huge leap and hope it works.”

  Eleanor looked very old in that moment.

  “What, Maxine?” she said quietly.

  “Do you believe William killed Lindy? Do you think he’s capable of killing a woman in a rage, then methodically burying her body and keeping the secret for the last thirteen years? Do you think that he’s capable of shooting an innocent man in cold blood because he was caught removing the bones of the woman he killed thirteen years ago?”

  “I don’t think anyone is capable of all that.”

  “People are. Of that, and worse. So you’re saying, you don’t know.”

  “No, I’m not. This is William! He’s weak, he’s just like his father, but he’s not cruel.”

  “No, he’s not.” Max had to act fast to clear Williams name. “Grandmother, this is extremely important. Find out from William’s attorney exactly what the police found in his car. I need to go to his house before the police get there with a search warrant.”

  “No one’s there—Caitlin took the boys to her parents’ house.”

  “Good. No one should be there. And call me or send me a text message when you find out. The faster, the better.”

  “Are you going to destroy evidence?”

  Max looked at her, stunned. “No, of course not.”

  “But if William did what they say, we need to take care of it.”

  Max didn’t know if she was talking to the same woman. “You just said you didn’t believe William did all these things. I don’t, either.”

  “I don’t want to believe, but there is evidence. And if not William, who?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “Maxine, you could make it worse.”

  “Worse? It can’t get worse, Grandmother.”

  * * *

  Max let herself into William’s house using the security code her grandmother gave her.

  She didn’t know how long she’d have before the police showed up to search the house. If they had the warrant to search the car, they probably did it after the interview that morning. Once they found evidence of a crime, they could go back to the judge and ask for a broader warrant. She might have a few hours because it was late Friday night, but most likely the clock was ticking down fast.

  She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but she slipped on leather gloves and started in William and Caitlin’s bedroom. Drawers, the desk, cabinets, boxes—nothing was obvious.

  “Think,” she said to herself. If she were hiding something she knew she should get rid of, but was compelled to keep it, where would she hide it?

  She wouldn’t. If she killed someone, she would get rid of the evidence as fast as possible.

  Unless she was framing someone. Then she’d put it exactly where the police would be most likely to find it.

  She went to William’s office and searched the room.

  She found a 9 mm. gun in a box on the top shelf, behind WW II history books.

  She left it there and went to Caitlin’s study.

  Caitlin was almost as meticulous as Eleanor. She had a date book, like Eleanor’s (and probably copied her in other ways, too) but she wasn’t as detailed in her notations, or as neat. Max took a picture of the date book and sent that, along with a photo of one of Faith’s postcards, to a friend of hers who was a handwriting expert. Were these written by the same person?

  On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Caitlin had the day blocked off as time at her parents’ house. But there was no notation as to when she had returned.

  Caitlin drove a Range Rover. William drove a BMW. If she took William’s car, it was deliberate.

  In fact, if Max was right—if Caitlin orchestrated this entire thing—she’d wanted William to be found guilty if the investigation got this far.

  William had a fight with Lindy the night she was murdered, and had Andy not messed with the evidence, physical evidence of his affair would have been on her body. The police would have looked at him—seriously looked at him.

  The postcards from Carrie to Faith almost completely matched up with trips William took to Europe with Caitlin. The gun in William’s office, his car being used to transport Carrie’s remains, all of it—Caitlin had planned, that if the police got close, they would stop at William.

  Just like they’d stopped at Kevin when they thought they could make a case.

  Motive. Motive was the one thing Maxine couldn’t figure out. Caitlin had always been half in love with William. She told everyone in high school that they’d get married one day. Max never believed it, just the dreams of a teenager; she always thought William would go to college and find someone. Instead, he slept around and never settled down, until after college and he came home and Caitlin was here.
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br />   Max pulled Kevin’s letter from her pocket, the letter he’d left with the diary. He talked about Lindy’s last entry. Hester has returned. Max thought that meant the teacher who’d been having an affair with the headmaster. Except … what if it meant Carrie? William had never been faithful to any of his girlfriends, but it was usually the girl who got the bad reputation. William didn’t kiss and tell, it was more just by reputation that everyone knew he fooled around. And he always went back to Caitlin.

  Carrie was only a year older than William, he could easily have had a fling with her. But how would Lindy have known? Was that why she and William fought?

  She squeezed her eyes shut. That gave William another motive to kill Lindy.

  Except. Why would he? He’d been eighteen, he wasn’t married, why would he kill Lindy to keep his relationship with Carrie a secret?

  Carrie and Lindy had lunch prior to their murders. What if Carrie told Lindy about being pregnant? What if William was the father? Lindy would have been furious—at Carrie, at William, at the whole situation. Calling Carrie Hester was a bit harsh, but it fit with Lindy’s character and her obsession with keeping her secret diary in code to prevent it from getting out like it had when they were freshmen.

  Olivia had said that Caitlin had been the one to show Lindy’s first diary to Mrs. Frauke, which got Lindy suspended. It had been the impetus for Lindy to write in code and be more secretive.

  Competitive Caitlin, who’d been obsessed with William from an early age. And William had repeatedly cheated on her. Broken up with her. Lied to her. Because he was weak and couldn’t just stay away from her for good.

  Obsessed. In hindsight, Max saw the obsession of Caitlin. It wasn’t something she would have recognized back in high school. She hoped she saw it and wasn’t just wishing for it to be true. But what woman would repeatedly take a man back who had strayed? Someone who was obsessed with him, who could lie to herself about a perfect life, who helped perpetuate the myth that all was well. It was the same mentality that abused wives had, that if they only did this or that other thing, their husbands wouldn’t hit them anymore. Did Caitlin lie to herself that each mistress was the last? That it would never happen again? Or did she keep her blinders on and refuse to see that William was sleeping with his secretary? Max was pretty certain that Minnie was only the latest in a long line of bed buddies.