by Lis Wiehl
She pointed at a row of cardboard banker’s boxes on a bottom shelf. “Those six are from Scott’s office.” When she leaned down and grabbed the first box, she was surprised by how heavy it was. Then she took off the lid. “Oh, and this one has his computer in it.”
“You just left it down here?” Charlie looked around the room, which had a concrete floor spotted with damp patches.
“I haven’t really had time to turn around, let alone think about what to do with the stuff from Scott’s office.” Mia felt a little defensive. “And it’s not like we need another computer. We already have one in our room”—when would she stop saying our?—“and Gabe’s got a laptop. So who would use this one? Brooke? I’m trying to keep her away from screens as it is.”
Maybe she should sell it. Even a couple hundred dollars would be a welcome addition to her checking account. Between the fees for preschool and parking and school activities, plus feeding a boy who seemed to need to eat seven times a day, plus paying off the credit card mess Scott had left them in, she needed every penny.
“Why don’t you start with the paperwork, and I’ll see what I can find on the computer.” Charlie set it on top of the workbench. In an official investigation, anything device related would be handled by a computer forensics lab, but that didn’t mean a homicide detective didn’t have some rudimentary skills.
“What do you think I should be looking for?” Mia took the lid off another box.
“Basically, anything that makes you think twice.” He looked down at the screen. “I need a password to get in. Got any ideas?”
Mia’s first and second guesses were wrong, but her third wasn’t. How could she have known so much about Scott, down to his passwords, but not the important stuff? She turned back to the file box and began systematically examining each piece of paper she took out. Tax forms. Ledger sheets with entries for things like “project sales,” “direct labor costs,” and “property and premises assets.” Ads for exercise equipment ripped from magazines. Payroll records. Utility statements for various businesses.
“So you said we’re gonna be working together on that case?” Charlie asked as he clicked through various screens.
Mia was grateful for the change of subject. “The issue is whether the kids should be charged as adults. Frank says they haven’t arrested the suspects yet, but he thinks they’re close. As soon as they’re picked up, we’ll want to interview their teachers and neighbors. Maybe the boys themselves, if their lawyers will let us. And I want to talk to the victim’s husband and get a feeling for what he wants.”
She finished up the first box and moved on to the next. At the top was a misshapen purple vase Gabe had made in preschool and that Scott had been using to hold pens and pencils. It didn’t have any special significance to her, but it didn’t feel right to just throw it out. She set it aside to bring into her own office. Under the vase were tax worksheets for various businesses. A list of places Scott seemed to be thinking about for vacation, which made her eyes spark with tears. And then she found a file filled with all the agreements for the credit cards he had taken out in both their names, which made her tears dry up.
She flipped through the papers at the bottom of the box. One felt too thick, and she realized it was stuck to the page below it. When she peeled it apart, she saw it was an IRS letter of notification to Oleg Popov, doing business as Oleg’s Gems and Jewels. She showed it to Charlie, who made a little humming noise.
“So the IRS wanted to audit one of his clients? A jewelry business is the kind that makes it easy to hide income,” he said. “A lot of jewelers offer a twenty percent discount for cash—and then never report the money. And if you don’t report it, you don’t get taxed on it. Even if a business is losing money, it still has to pay the sales tax it takes in. Seven percent doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can add up to thousands every month, and it’s on the gross.”
Mia’s heart sank. “Do you think Scott was helping his clients cheat on their taxes?”
He shrugged. “The audit doesn’t necessarily mean anything. That’s the kind of business the IRS likes to target. It could range from everything being aboveboard, to Scott just taking his clients at their word and not looking too closely at things, to his actively advising clients on how to cheat.” The thought didn’t seem to faze him. He turned back to the computer. “Do you know who Scott was with the night he was killed?”
“No. A client. That’s all he said.”
Charlie tapped on the computer screen. “He kept his calendar online. But all it says is that he had a meeting at eight p.m. at the Jade Kitchen in Coho City.”
“He did have a few clients that were restaurants, like that Macho Nacho. I’m pretty sure that Jade Kitchen was another one.” Both were small regional chains. As time went on, Scott had talked less and less about his clients. Only after he died had Mia realized it must have been because there were fewer and fewer of them.
“We should go out there,” Charlie said. “See if anyone remembers him and who he was with that night.”
“Will it matter, though?” Mia asked. “Scott was alone when he died.”
“Maybe whoever he was with followed him after he left. Maybe the staff could tell us if they were arguing.”
Mia went back to looking through the papers, but for some reason she now found herself aware of Charlie’s presence, of the way he breathed, of the slightly sweet way he smelled. She reminded herself that they were work partners, nothing more. It didn’t mean anything that he was a man and she was a woman. After all, fifty percent of the population was male. And when it came to the people she worked with, the percentage was even higher.
Halfway down into the third box, she found a printout of a note Scott had sent to Kenny Zhong, the owner of Jade Kitchen, dated only a week before Scott’s death.
In the paperwork you gave me, you’re reporting $650,000 of gross sales, but there are only $640,000 of credit card receipts. This lopsided ratio of credit transactions to cash transactions could be highly suggestive that your restaurants are underreporting cash. We need to discuss this immediately.
Mia caught her breath. Maybe Scott had been keeping honest books. She turned to Charlie, but he was staring at something on the computer screen that she couldn’t see from where she was standing.
“So who’s Betty?” he asked in a voice that wasn’t quite his regular tone.
“Betty?” It took her a second to remember. “Oh yeah, a couple of months before he died, Scott hired this older lady to help out. It was tax season, which is the crazy time of year for CPAs, especially when you work by yourself.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“No.” Mia had had a mental picture of her, though, a lady with her white hair in a bun and wearing mushroom-colored sensible shoes.
“You didn’t talk to her after Scott died?”
Mia felt her shoulders sag as she remembered the weight that had pressed down on her after the accident. So many people to tell, so many pieces to pick up, so many things to figure out. “I can’t remember. She might have come to the funeral—there were a lot of people there I didn’t recognize. I ended up just going through Scott’s address book and sending out one mass e-mail with all the names in the bcc field.” Mia swallowed down a sudden nausea. “Why are you asking me about her?”
He answered her question with one of his own. “How’d you know Betty was older?”
How had she known? Had Scott ever said? “I guess it was just from the name. I mean, really, who’s named Betty anymore?”
“I found a photo on his computer that was downloaded from a phone.” Charlie’s eyes held an expression she couldn’t read. “It’s labeled ‘Betty,’ although it shows both of them.”
Mia suddenly didn’t want to see. Why had she ever agreed to do this?
Charlie turned the computer screen toward her.
It was a photo of Scott and a young woman. She had a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin, high cheekbones, full lips, and a strong no
se. Her blond wavy hair fell past her shoulders. She was beautiful. She also couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
Mia was still standing, but she felt as if the floor were falling away beneath her feet.
“So you don’t know her?” Charlie asked.
“No. I’ve never seen her before.”
The expression in Charlie’s eyes? It was pity.
Because Betty had her arm around Scott.
And Scott had his arm around her.
CHAPTER 14
Mia must have known. Or maybe, she thought as she stared at the image of her husband and what was obviously his paramour, she must not have wanted to know.
Charlie watched her with eyes that had seen too much and weren’t surprised by anything.
She covered her face with cold hands. She wanted to run away. She wanted to hide in a dark place. Curl into a ball, tighter and tighter until she simply disappeared.
Sixteen years of marriage, and this? It wasn’t enough that Scott had started drinking again. It wasn’t enough he had secretly gotten them into debt that she would now spend years digging them out of. No, he had found another woman, kissed her, laughed with her, whispered to her, caressed her.
Loved her.
And betrayed Mia. Betrayed their family. Lied to Mia every time he claimed to love her.
She dropped her hands from her burning eyes, her shame turning to anger. She couldn’t be like Brooke, who still believed she disappeared if she covered her eyes.
“How about at the funeral? Did she come?”
She made herself look again. This Betty, this stupid girl, couldn’t be more than ten years older than Gabe. Young. So young it was almost obscene to think of Scott being with her. Mia’s jaw started to hurt, and she realized she was gritting her teeth. Why would a beautiful girl like that want to date a married man who was nearly old enough to be her father? He must have given her things, spent money on her. Maybe that was another reason they were so broke.
The funeral had been a blur. Mia had walked down the church aisle on shaky legs, wondering how she could walk at all. How she could breathe. How time could keep heaving itself forward when her life had been destroyed. The only reason she’d been able to stay upright had been the presence of her children on either side. She and her son had stood with their arms across each other’s backs. Which one of them was supporting the other hadn’t been clear.
“I don’t think I remember seeing her there. But I can’t be sure.”
“Do you remember Betty’s last name?”
Mia smiled mirthlessly. “Oddly enough, I do. It’s Eastman. I grew up on East Main Street, so when Scott told me about hiring her, her name stuck.”
“Puyallup County should talk to her,” Charlie said. “Find out what she knows. Find out if there’s any way she could be involved.”
Mia looked at that face again. Was there something sly and self-satisfied in the set of her lips, in her half-lidded eyes? Or if another man were in this photo, would she be seeing something completely different, something more innocent?
A few years earlier Mia had been hurrying down the staircase when she lost her balance. Rather than falling back and bumping painfully downward, she had tried to keep her feet under her by running down the stairs, her arms outstretched.
She had succeeded. At least for a few steps.
But ultimately she hadn’t been able to keep up. The cast she’d had to wear on her wrist for six weeks had served as a reminder that sometimes it was better to accept the pain immediately rather than try to stave it off. Better a bruised bottom than a broken wrist.
Since Scott had died, every day had been like falling down a staircase. Trying to move her feet fast enough that reality couldn’t catch up with her. No money? Go back to work. Car too expensive? Find someone to take the lease. No father for her children? Try to be both mother and father.
No husband? Don’t stand still long enough to think about it. In the days after Scott’s death, Mia had focused on going through the motions. Her children needed her, and she met their needs as best she could, even if at her center she felt ice cold and empty. She thought that maybe if she went through the motions long enough, she could remember how to live.
Maybe it would even become living.
One day became another, and each day it was like she had moved further away from Scott. Even if Mia had wanted to go back, she couldn’t. She just kept getting further away, as if she were on an airport’s moving walkway that Scott had failed to step onto. And now finally he was so far back she couldn’t even see him anymore. Some days she couldn’t remember his face without looking at a photograph. Couldn’t hear his voice in her head. Some days she called the house when no one was there just to hear him say her name one more time: “Scott, Mia, Gabe, and Brooke aren’t at home right now . . .”
But now it was clear that the absence she had felt had been a phantom. A ghost of a marriage past. She stared at Scott’s computer screen, at the girl grinning with her face right next to his, while a red-hot flame consumed the empty void at her center. Had Scott been planning on leaving her and the kids, running off with this silly young thing?
He had to have been. Probably leaving all the debt behind for Mia to clean up.
Charlie was watching her. She could see the sympathy in his tired blue eyes. She wanted to rage and moan and scream until her throat was raw. But the kids might hear, and they had already experienced more than enough stress for the day.
But if she didn’t do something, she would burst. Her eyes fell on the vase. It was nothing special, nothing that Gabe had labored over, nothing that she had even remembered until she saw it again in Scott’s office.
She picked it up, raised it high overhead, and threw it down on the floor, intending to smash it to satisfying smithereens. But it was made of some child-friendly clay that dried in the air, not in a kiln. The only noise it made as it fractured into four or five big pieces came from the pens inside as they clattered onto the cement floor.
“You okay?” Charlie said mildly.
“Just mad,” Mia said. “Mad and sad.” She half laughed. “I sound like one of Brooke’s early readers. The cat sat on the mat.”
Charlie gave her a crooked smile. “I’m sorry you feel bad. And that Scott seems to have been a cad.”
“I don’t think it’s ‘seems to.’ ” Mia dropped to her knees and began to clean up the mess she had made. “I think he was. And I just didn’t want to know it.” The last piece she reached for was the bottom section of the vase. When she picked it up, she heard a faint rattle.
She peered inside. Her eyes widened. At the bottom was a small black velvet box.
“What is it?” Charlie asked, but Mia was too engrossed to answer. She hooked it out with a finger, then opened the box. She tugged at the glittering thing inside. Then it fell from her grasp and rolled away.
It was a diamond ring.
CHAPTER 15
As the diamond ring rolled across the floor, Charlie muttered an amazed-sounding expletive. Mia was frozen, but she could feel her eyes getting wider.
“Do you think that’s real?” she finally asked.
“Why would he have hidden it if it wasn’t?”
The ring came to rest under one of the plastic shelves. She knelt down but couldn’t see it. Charlie took a flashlight from the top of the workbench and joined in the hunt.
Mia finally fished it out with one of the pens that had been in the vase. “Is it an engagement ring?” she asked as they both stared at it.
The ring itself was made of some silvery metal, white gold or platinum. Six prongs held a large round diamond. Rectangular-cut diamonds were set into the band on either side.
Charlie let out a low whistle. “I guess. But I run in circles where nobody could afford to even look at a ring like that.”
Mia was glad she had taken off her rings a few weeks ago, including the one with a tiny chip of a diamond Scott had given her when he proposed.
Her jaw clenched
so hard her teeth hurt. If she had wanted proof that Scott was really cheating on her, here it was. In glittering carats.
“I wonder why he hadn’t given it to her yet?” Charlie asked.
Mia unclenched her jaw. “Wouldn’t we have to be divorced first?”
“Not if you think of it as the world’s most expensive promise ring.”
In Mia’s dream she and Scott were hiking along a narrow track winding above a rocky coastline. A hundred feet below them, the ocean crashed over boulders. In real life it had been years since they hiked, but in the dream they were fully outfitted in layers of fleece and Gor-Tex, hiking boots on their feet. Scott was ahead of her, clambering over a large rock that blocked the path. Mia called out for him to be careful.
Suddenly Scott slipped. In slow motion he cartwheeled down the steep slope, bouncing off boulders like a rag doll before his body finally hit the water. He sank out of sight. For one moment his head broke through the waves, his arms windmilling, but then he disappeared completely.
The area was deserted, without even a seagull to witness what was happening. Mia didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have a rope. There was no way down, and even if she were able to get there, there wasn’t even a sliver of beach. With a feeling of unspeakable horror, she understood she could not save Scott.
And then the water began to rise.
It was more than just the tide coming in. She realized it was a tsunami, a growing wall of water that quickly swallowed the boulders and then ate up the space that had separated her from the waves. Soon it would pick her up and smash her against the rocks, or push her down, down, down, so deep she would never come up for air.
A small insistent voice slowly roused her.
“I wet the bed, Mommy. And now it’s cold.”
With a groan Mia pushed herself up. Brooke was standing next to the bed, pushing her shoulder with one of her little hands. There was no ocean, no tsunami. Scott was long dead, even if the repercussions of what he had done weren’t.
Mia had had nightmares about the ocean since she had nearly drowned when she was five. She hadn’t learned to swim until Gabe started clamoring to go to the pool. She had found an adult learn-to-swim class, and every Wednesday she forced herself to go. After nearly every lesson she threw up, but she persevered. She still hated it, but she could do it. The irony was that Mia lived in a city defined by water, bordered by Puget Sound on one side and Lake Washington on the other.