“Okay,” he said, “they were going to talk things through. Allie and whoever. Get stuff off their chests. I’ll go ahead and state the obvious. She’d just had a fight with the husband. Nick.”
“I can’t see him suggesting a walk in the woods,” I said. “He’s not the outdoorsy type.”
“But to appease his wife? Like, ‘Here, honey, I’m doing this thing you know I hate for your sake.’”
“Maybe, but he told me he slept till noon that day and that she’d already left for the airport by the time he got up.” I told Jim about my conversation with Nick during the funeral reception, his version of the argument he and Allison had had. Afterward she’d worked in her office, he’d said, editing pictures—in reality, as we now knew, making what would be her final video diary entry—and gone to bed, while he’d remained up until the wee hours, drinking and playing video games.
Jim sipped his drink. “In the videos, she says she kept her divorce plans secret.”
I nodded. “She wanted to wait until she had all her ducks in a row before springing it on him.”
“But now it’s Christmas night and they’re having this fight about him getting fired. Sounds like it was a doozy. I’m thinking she might’ve gotten so worked up that she spilled the beans about the divorce, you know, threw it in his face.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was there when he found out she was planning to divorce him. It came as a total surprise. Either that or he’s a better actor than he gets credit for.” Which, I had to admit, was possible.
“But he was cheating with her friend Skye,” Jim said, “and being pretty sloppy about covering his tracks, according to the videos. He really thought she didn’t know?”
“Cheaters always think their spouses haven’t a clue,” I said. “Once in a while they’re even right.”
“Well, I still think she might have let it slip during their fight,” he said. “That he was about to get dumped. Or at least that she knew about the affair.”
“In which case he, what, made nice and suggested they take a walk in the woods the next morning before her flight?”
“To talk things over.” He made air quotes. “So they could ‘clear the air and move on.’”
I shivered, my mind involuntarily moving a few steps ahead. “But how would he have... I mean, the way it looked...” I took a fortifying sip, set down the snifter.
“You mean, how could it have been murder?” he asked. “Since all the evidence points to her accidentally falling through thin ice?”
“Yeah, about that ice. Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, Allison was a seasoned outdoorswoman. Even I know to test ice before putting my weight on it.”
“That does bother me. The only thing I can think is that someone chased her onto the ice, that she had no choice but to risk it.”
“Like maybe the person had a weapon?” I said.
“Something like that.” Jim spread his hands as if to say, That’s all I’ve got.
“What about the Barbie?” I asked.
“What about the Barbie?”
“If Nick did cause Allison’s death, why would he have planted a headless Barbie, altered to look like her, in their mailbox for her to find? That was back in November, more than a month before her death.”
“Maybe it really does have nothing to do with all of this,” he said. “Kids. A prank.”
“That would be the simplest explanation, wouldn’t it?” I said.
Jim sat back in his chair. “What about Skye?”
“You think she might have left the Barbie?”
“I think she might have been the one who proposed a nice, civilized stroll through the woods for the purpose of clearing the air,” he said. “Sort of like, ‘Sorry I was doing the nasty with your husband, let’s be friends again.’”
“You have to remember, though, Skye and Nick didn’t know that Allison had gotten wind of the affair.”
“Unless—” Jim raised a finger “—Allie did indeed tell Nick about her intention to divorce him during that argument on Christmas night. Allie tells Nick. Nick gets right on the phone and tells Skye. Skye calls Allie and says it’s time for a girls’ outing to hash this thing out.”
“And Skye tells her not to mention it to anyone? Maybe not even to Nick?” At Jim’s quizzical expression, I added, “Allison said she was supposed to keep it secret, remember? ‘Don’t spill the beans.’ Like whoever she was meeting at the preserve didn’t want anyone else to know about it. Tell me that doesn’t sound suspicious.”
“Allie didn’t think so.” He frowned. “She was too trusting.”
“Let me ask you,” I said. “How much do you know about Brenda Yates?”
It took him a second. “Mitchell’s daughter? Only what was in the videos. She thinks Allie murdered her father. Have you met her?”
“Yep. She was at the funeral. And then I went to see her last week to return a family keepsake the Gleasons wanted her to have. Do you recall what Allison said about the timing of Brenda’s accusation?”
He frowned in concentration. “She made it after finding out her father had disinherited her, that he’d left everything to Allie.”
I asked, “Do you know that a murderer can’t inherit from his victim?”
“I’ve heard that,” he said. “It makes sense.”
“The slayer rule, they call it.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” he said. “If Allie had been found guilty of murdering Mitchell, then his estate would presumably have gone to his daughter.”
“Which means there might be more to Brenda’s accusation than a daughter’s desire to see her father’s murderer brought to justice.”
“Greed,” he said.
“But if that’s the case... well, when I met with her, she seemed to really believe Allison killed her dad.”
“Maybe she does.” Jim swirled his tequila, studying the golden vortex. “And maybe the timing of her accusation, coming after the reading of his will, is coincidence. Maybe the slayer rule never crossed her mind.”
“Allison did something surprising,” I said, and saw him look up in interest. “She left one third of her assets in trust to Brenda’s kids, and took out a million-dollar life-insurance policy naming Brenda as beneficiary.”
“Wow.”
“Brenda considers it the act of a guilty conscience,” I added.
“I’m glad I never met this woman. She sounds like a miserable human being. Let me ask you this. Could she have known about this bequest to her kids, and the life insurance, before Allie died?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, “but she’s not the easiest person to read. I think she keeps a lot bottled up inside. Bottom line is, I can’t be sure.”
“Do you know whether Brenda got the authorities upstate involved in her dad’s supposed murder?” Jim asked. “Allie didn’t mention it in her videos.”
“She did. She says the cops up there didn’t take it seriously. She said she actually had evidence, but it didn’t matter to the ‘yokels’ conducting the investigation. Her word, not mine.”
“Did she say what kind of evidence she had?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She said Mitchell was getting ready to divorce Allison and that that’s why she killed him, because divorce would have left her broke. Maybe that’s what she meant by evidence.”
Jim said, “I didn’t see anything in those videos that would make me think Mitchell had threatened her with divorce.”
“No, it seemed like a loving relationship. Of course, we’re only getting her side.”
“So Brenda thought Allie had gotten away with murdering her father,” he said. “That’s the sort of thing that might make a devoted daughter take matters into her own hands. Only, the devoted part doesn’t really apply, right? Hadn’t they been estranged for years, Brenda and her dad?”
I nodded. “But I get the feeling it’s not that simple, that she has a lot of, I don’t know, emotional conflict.”
“We
ll, it’s a messy situation,” he said. “Psychologically, I mean. Daddy and Mommy split up. Daddy marries a beautiful, much younger woman. He’s deeply in love with her, trying to have children with her. And then suddenly he’s gone and you realize you’ll never get a chance to mend fences. That’s a big, juicy dose of guilt right there, I don’t care who you are.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You minored in psychology.”
He grinned. “Nope, I just talk a good game.”
“You know,” I said, “it could be that whoever was supposed to go for a walk with Allison canceled or didn’t show. Or maybe the person’s not on our radar. A friend we don’t know, someone she might have been on the outs with.”
“I wish we could get ahold of her phone,” Jim said.
“Yeah. That might tell us who contacted—” I jerked upright. “Wait. We have her phone!”
He blinked. “We do?”
“Well, the padre does.” I was out of my seat in an instant, causing Sexy Beast to leap out of his bucket bed and spur me on with rapid-fire barking.
“Who’s the padre?” he called to my retreating back as I ran back to the maid’s room, where I’d left my phone. SB trailed me there and back.
Martin answered my call as I rejoined Jim at the table. “It works,” he said without preamble. I heard bluegrass music and pictured him behind the bar at Murray’s.
“Her phone works?” I said. “After being in a frozen lake for nearly two weeks?”
“I charged it, turned it on, bingo. Salt on the rim?”
“There’s salt on the rim?” I asked, as Jim frowned in confusion. “It’s a freshwater lake—”
“Not you,” he said, “I’m making a margarita. So here’s the deal. I read her texts and emails from the days before her death, checked out her calendar entries. Nothing relevant. But she did get a few calls on Christmas day.”
“Was one of those calls from Skye?”
“It sure was,” he said. “They spoke for three minutes and thirty-nine seconds. On the rocks? You know, they have a name for shoes like that, babe, but I’m too much of a gentleman to say it.” The wicked smile in his voice told me he wasn’t too much of a gentleman to think it. I imagined him leaning over the bar to get a better look at his customer’s do-me pumps, no doubt worn for his benefit. He said, “I’d ask how you manage the snow in those, but I don’t really care as long as you wear ’em in here.”
I heard a female giggle and a muted query I couldn’t quite make out but that sounded an awful lot like So, Marty, when do you get off? How the man was able to simultaneously hold a phone conversation, mix drinks, and flirt outrageously with all the female customers was a mystery on the order of, well, how a drowned, thawed-0ut smartphone still managed to wink on and spill its contents.
Like I said, I hate technology, except when it works.
How I wished I knew what Allison and Skye had talked about during their last phone conversation. A suggestion to meet in the woods and clear the air, perhaps?
“What about Brenda?” I asked him. “Did she call Allison?”
“A Brenda Yates called her on Christmas afternoon,” he said. “Who’s she?”
“Allison’s first husband’s daughter. Her stepdaughter, I guess you could say. How long did they speak?”
“Hold on,” he said, “I’ll check. Hey, buddy, how’s it going? I’ll be with you in a sec.” I waited a few moments as Martin located the call in Allison’s phone. “They talked for four minutes and seventeen seconds at two p.m. on the button.”
“Okay, thanks. And you’ll get that phone back into her house like you promised, right?” I said.
“I’ll do it tonight.”
While Nick was asleep upstairs? You don’t want to know, I reminded myself. I said goodbye as the padre took an order for a Moscow Mule.
Jim said, “I’m not even going to ask who that was or how he got Allie’s phone.”
“It’s better that way. So it occurred to me that if she was in trouble in the woods, she would have called nine-one-one, and she didn’t.”
“Maybe she never got the chance,” he said. “And here’s what occurred to me. Allie never would have gone into those woods without—”
“A camera. She took one everywhere. You said so yourself.”
“I did?” he asked.
“You told me that even back in high school, she always had one with her. Beau said the same thing.” At his quizzical expression, I added, “A friend of hers. She was pretty close to him and his wife, Poppy.”
“I think I saw them at the cemetery,” he said. “Tall guy with a beard? She has blonde dreads? She was pretty broken up.”
“That’s them. Anyway, yeah, if Allison had a camera in the woods with her that morning—and she almost certainly would have—where is it now?”
“At the bottom of the lake would be my guess,” he said, “if she was holding it when she fell in.”
“Maybe she put it in a coat pocket,” I said.
“Would it fit?”
“The little one might. The one she called a point-and-shoot.”
“In that case the cops would have returned it to Nick.” Jim studied me. “You think Allie might have taken a picture of whoever she was supposed to meet.”
“You think so too or you wouldn’t have mentioned the camera,” I said.
“A long shot, but...” He gave a little shrug.
“You know, when it comes to the sheer volume of photographs,” I said, “Skye probably had Allison beat, and I don’t think she even owns a camera. That woman is the undisputed queen of the selfies.”
“Yeah, I saw her at the cemetery.” Jim’s mouth tightened. “Looked like she was posting the pictures online. During the service.”
“She chronicles her entire life online. Her social media is filled with—” I sat up straight.
So did Jim. “What?”
“I just remembered. She checks in. On Facebook. She clicks that Check In thing to say exactly where she is when she posts some of her status updates.” I was on my feet now, moving back toward the maid’s room, with Jim bringing up the rear. This time SB raised his little head, grumbled something that sounded like Knock yourself out, and went back to sleep.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Jim stood behind me and watched while I took up position at my laptop, navigated to Skye’s Facebook profile, and began scrolling backward in time through dozens—make that hundreds—of status updates, many of which included GPS-generated “Check In” location stamps.
“The gas station? Really?” Jim asked, as a recent update posted from a local Mobil station came into view. It featured a photo of Skye’s yellow Kia at the pump and the words: Running on fumes. Just made it! He shook his head in wonder. “I mean, who cares...?”
“Don’t you know? Everyone cares when and where Skye Guthrie fills her tank, or buys a Big Gulp,” I said, as an update stamped 7-Eleven rolled past and others took its place. “Or gets her nails done... or tosses back a couple of beers... or gets her roots touched up...”
With glazed eyes I scrolled past update after update, a seemingly endless stream of words and pictures documenting Skye’s quotidian existence in reverse order during the past few weeks. Fast-food meals. Shopping malls. The local tanning salon. Bars. Murray’s Pub appeared to be her second home.
Just think of it. All those satellites orbiting our planet, working in concert to triangulate the precise location of Skye Guthrie—or more accurately, Skye Guthrie’s cell phone—at any moment in time. I’m telling you, it’s a damn miracle.
Another gas station. Another fast-food joint. Another few belts at Murray’s. The monotony was interrupted by a trip to Atlantic City the weekend following Allison’s supposed departure for Australia. Eating, drinking, strolling the boardwalk, gambling in the casinos. One grinning selfie taken in front of a slot machine—Ding! Ding! Ding! Fifty-four-dollar jackpot!—amid a whole slew of frowny, thumbs-down selfies taken in front of evil, money-gob
bling slot machines.
Nick’s face didn’t appear once, though I suspected he was the owner of the odd male arm or leg I spied in some photos. Skye might not be the most sophisticated femme fatale who ever lived, but she was canny enough not to advertise her illicit affair with her “best friend’s” husband. In some of the updates, she tagged other Facebook friends, but never Nick.
Poppy had told me Skye worked part-time at a cell-phone store, but I saw no evidence of it on her Facebook timeline. Obviously her job was not scintillating enough to compete with pumping gas or deciding which Pringles to buy: Ranch or Sour Cream & Onion?
Jim mock-whined, “Are we there yet?” as the parade of tiresome updates marched past.
“Almost,” I said. “We made it to New Year’s.” Skye had spent the holiday in a spangly, low-cut dress and do-me pumps. If Nick was with her, he never appeared in her Facebook timeline.
Jim said, “No trips to the library. Not one museum or Broadway play or concert.”
“Well, except for the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.”
“What?” He squinted at the computer.
“Gotcha,” I said. “That was too easy.”
He yanked a lock of my hair. “Brat.”
“Okay, we’re at December twenty-sixth.” I slowed my scrolling and studied the updates Skye had posted the day Allison died. Dinner at a gastropub in Oceanside. She’d ordered the gut-busting house burger—loaded with everything you could imagine heaping onto a slab of ground cow, and some you probably couldn’t—a mound of fries, and beer, with cheesecake for dessert. My stomach gave me what-for. Maybe I should have had something else for dinner besides tequila.
In the afternoon she’d gone to the mall to return a necklace, a hat-and-glove set, a sweater, a pair of boots, and a purse that she’d received for Christmas. Her updates included selfies in which she made grossed-out faces while displaying the unwanted gifts. Another ugly sweater from Grandma, she wrote. Try cash next time! Save me a trip to the store! I could only hope Grandma wasn’t on Facebook.
Scrolling down a bit further, I saw that her lunch had been a fast-food burger at 1:23 p.m. I detected a culinary theme of the day.
Icing Allison Page 14