Killing Secrets

by Dianne Emley

  As he signed the receipt, he said, “Nan, by the way, Ashton McCarthy has filed a complaint against you. He claims that you threatened him during an altercation at Coopersmith School today.”

  Nan gritted her teeth. “I have a different take on what happened. There were witnesses.”

  “It has to be investigated, but don’t worry about it.”

  Nan nodded. She’d been investigated by Professional Standards, the PPD’s equivalent of Internal Affairs, before and over much more serious things than getting into a shouting match with a rebellious teenager. Still, it was good to know that Tovar had her covered. Over the years, she’d made enemies in the PPD and she never knew when what should be an innocuous situation would end up costing her her badge.

  Nan had gathered her things and was ready to go but stayed put, thinking the time was right to tell them something she hadn’t yet revealed. “You should know that Ashton took something from the crime scene.” Ashton certainly hadn’t done her any favors lately.

  Tovar and Early both stopped preparing to leave and turned their attention to her.

  Nan took a deep breath. “Emily told me that during the big party at the Balsam house the night of the memorial, she saw Ashton and Nacy Dena huddled together, acting like they were doing business. Em said she thought that Ashton was buying pot, but then it looked as if Ashton was doing the selling. It seemed like the transaction went south because Nacy stomped off. When Ashton came back over to Em, she asked him what was going on. He was vague but said enough for her to figure out that he was trying to sell something he’d picked up from the scene and he admitted it.”

  Early asked, “What was it?”

  “He wouldn’t tell her. He said she’d just tell me, which she did. He said he found whatever it was on the ground, out in the open, and said it could have been already lying there. It was cool and valuable and Nacy wanted to buy it but wouldn’t give him his price.”

  Tovar said, “Jewelry?”

  “Could be,” Nan said. “I asked Ashton about it earlier today when he and I had our discussion at Coopersmith. He accused Emily of telling a lie to get him into trouble.”

  “Good luck getting Nacy Dena to admit to anything,” Early said.

  “Let’s file that information away and revisit it if it seems important. Have a nice evening.” Tovar slid from the booth and headed out.

  Chapter 38

  In the parking lot, Tovar and Early got into their cars and left while Nan remained sitting inside hers, thinking about her meeting with them. She had been pleased to hear Tovar say that Lieutenant Beltran’s handling of the Erica-Jared case was being investigated. Beltran’s ambition and love of the spotlight had led him to make questionable decisions, yet he seemed Teflon coated and had so far managed to come out unscathed. With Nolan Wales in the picture, Beltran’s gentle handling of Keller now made sense; she couldn’t see Beltran putting himself on the line for Keller based only on friendship. But if Wales had asked Beltran to close the case quickly, Beltran would have happily curried favor with the deputy chief.

  Nan wondered if Ryan Keller had known about Wales’s relationship with Erica. Could that be why he’d called Erica a slut when he attacked her in her classroom? Wales may suspect that Keller had murdered Erica and Jared, but rather than risk his own reputation and lifestyle, Wales was protecting Keller by enlisting Beltran, his slimy lieutenant, to be the public face and take the heat. Maybe Wales had promised Beltran a promotion to commander once Wales became chief. It was sick and disgusting yet it made sense.

  Nan thought about Wales’s coolly regal demeanor. She knew where he and his wife lived, in an elegant two-story colonial-style house tucked behind gates in one of Pasadena’s premiere neighborhoods in the hills above the Rose Bowl. Most everyone with the PPD couldn’t afford to live in Pasadena, much less at such a tony address. Department scuttlebutt floated that Wales’s career in law enforcement was a hobby, something to keep him out from under his wife’s feet at home. Nan had never believed that. She had great respect for Chief Haglund and doubted that he had let nepotism influence his decision to bring Wales, the son of Haglund’s longtime friend, into the critical second-in-command spot. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She’d forgotten to get takeout for her and Emily. Em had strangely not responded to her earlier text. Then she had gotten busy with the meeting and forgotten about it. Sitting in her car, she texted again, got impatient waiting for a response, and called Emily’s cell phone. After four rings, voice mail picked up. She left a message for Em to call her right away, banking on Em picking up the phone message even though she and her friends considered voice mail a waste of time.

  Nan called her home phone. Emily would always answer the phone when caller ID showed that her mom was calling. But she would also always answer her cell phone when Nan called, and she hadn’t. Voice mail answered. Nan left a message: “Em, please call me ASAP. I’m worried about you.” Emily knew better than to ignore her mom’s calls. Nan allowed herself to be scared.

  She again tried texting Emily: Contact me, Em. Worried.

  Nan hated to again call Julie Principe, the mom of Emily’s friend Aubrey, trying to track down her errant Emily, but she made the call.

  Julie’s information further panicked her. “Aubrey’s been home all night, Nan. She didn’t say anything about Emily.” She said with an exasperated sigh, “Let me go speak with her. Hang on.”

  Nan heard a television news show through the phone as she waited. After several minutes, which felt to her like an hour, she heard Julie and Aubrey arguing. Aubrey’s voice was high pitched and whining.

  Julie said, “Nan, here’s Aubrey. I’ll put you on speakerphone.”

  Aubrey came on. “Mrs. Vining, I’m sorry. Em promised that she’d be home long before you got home.”

  Nan forced herself to stay calm. “Where is she?”

  Aubrey’s words tumbled out. “She went to meet Ashton. He wanted to talk to her in person and kept bugging her to meet him. She decided to go because she wanted to talk to him face-to-face about the roofie and the argument with you at school today and everything. She called me and asked if she should see him and I said ‘Yeah, if you think it’ll help you sort things out once and for all, but just make sure you get home before your mom so she doesn’t end up calling me looking for you like last time.’ I’m really, really sorry, Mrs. Vining. I should have told her to stay home.”

  “I accept your apology, Aubrey. Please don’t ever do this again.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Julie chimed in, her voice stern, “She won’t.”

  Nan asked Aubrey, “Where was Emily meeting him?”

  “At Cuppa Crown City over by PCC.”

  Nan said, “Aubrey, is there anything else I should know that you kids have talked about? Something relevant to what’s been going on? Anything at all.”

  “Well, Em was mad at Ashton for a bunch of things, but I guess the newest one was when Ashton told you that Em had lied about him taking something from the park where the murders were.”

  Julie yelped, “What? What’s all this about?”

  Nan was getting annoyed by Julie’s interjections. “And so, what happened?”

  “Em said to Ashton, ‘You told me that you picked up something valuable from the crime scene. How do I know that you’re not lying to me?’ So he texted a picture of it.”

  Nan’s pulse accelerated. “A picture of what?”

  “A pen. A Montblanc pen. It’s true that they’re worth a couple hundred dollars.”

  “Some of them cost a lot more than that,” Julie opined.

  Nan said, “Aubrey, did you see the picture?”

  “I have it. Em texted it to me.”

  “Could you send it to me, please?” Nan’s voice grew strangled as her throat tightened.

  “I’ll do it right now. Mrs. Vining, I should have told my mom and dad right away about this and now I’m seriously worried about Emily.” A sob burst from her. She managed t
o get out, “Here’s my mom.”

  Julie took the call off speakerphone as Aubrey sobbed in the backgroud. “Nan, I’m dumbstruck. I had no clue.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Aubrey will be punished for this. No worries. I may ground her until she’s eighteen. I’ll let you go and have Aubrey text you the photo.”

  Nan said goodbye and ended the call. She couldn’t wrap her mind around proper punishment for Emily. She was too sick with fear that her daughter was in danger to even think about it. She stared at her cell phone message screen and waited for Aubrey’s text to come in. Finally, it arrived. She opened the picture. It was of a black pen with gold trim being held in what could be Ashton’s hand. He was holding the pen to show the brand’s iconic white star logo on the top. There was something along the side of the cap. The photo quality was too poor for Nan to make it out. It could have been a reflection of the light, a dirty smudge, or the pen might have been engraved. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Chapter 39

  Nan turned left out of Shakers’s parking lot onto Fair Oaks, going up Sheep Hill and down the other side, passing medical buildings that flanked the Huntington Hospital complex, weaving in and out of the traffic on the always busy avenue. She took Del Mar to South Hill, where she turned left, driving along the western edge of Pasadena City College, and then turned right onto Colorado Boulevard, passing in front of the Shatford Library. She made an illegal U-turn and parked in the red in front of Cuppa Crown City, which was among a row of casual eateries and other businesses that catered to the student population. She didn’t see Emily’s white BMW.

  In front of the coffeehouse, an iron fence surrounded a few steel tables and chairs that were empty in the chilly night air. Two young guys, each with a messenger bag with its strap across their chests, pushed through the café’s door to leave just as Nan arrived, almost hitting her with it. She glowered at them as she waited for them to clear the way, glancing through the windows and not seeing Emily or Ashton among the young people there, who were mostly sitting by themselves, pecking at laptops or tablets.

  There were no customers at the counter. Nan walked up to a smiling young woman who was standing behind it. Her short, ragged-cut hair was dyed raven-black and her upper body was covered in tattoos, which were on display beneath her camisole. She had several piercings in each ear. A name badge clipped to the barista’s camisole said HANNAH. With her behind the counter was a young man, who didn’t have nearly as many visible tattoos or piercings as his co-worker. His long dirty-blond hair was pulled into a topknot on his head and he was busy cleaning a coffeepot.

  Hannah cheerily said to Nan, “Hi. What can I get for you?”

  Nan debated whether to flash her badge and decided not to, that she’d do better with these two without intimidation. “Hi, Hannah. I’m looking for my daughter. I was told she was here. She’s sixteen and my height and has long dark hair. She might have been here with a boy, seventeen. He’s tall with curly light brown hair.”

  “Sure. Yeah. They were here.” Hannah turned her green eyes, which had been heavily outlined with a kohl pencil, toward a corner where an empty chair and couch faced a battered wooden coffee table. “They sat over there for an hour or so.”

  The male barista turned around and Nan saw that his badge said BEN. He said, “She had a caramel latte and he had hot chocolate.”

  Hannah added, “And she had a maple scone.”

  Nan’s heart beat faster since caramel lattes and maple scones were Em’s favorites. “When did they leave?”

  Hannah and Ben exchanged a look and she said with a shrug, “She left…maybe about an hour ago.”

  That information spiked Nan’s anxiety. It wasn’t like Em to not respond to her mom’s texts and calls. Where was she? “The girl left and the boy stayed?”

  She and almost everyone else in the café turned to look through the front windows as several PPD cruisers sped code three down Colorado Boulevard, heading east with lights flashing and sirens blaring. After the cruisers, two black Crown Vics came along, also at high speed and also traveling code three. There was a major incident somewhere. Nan’s cell phone in her slacks back pocket was quiet. No one had called her because she wasn’t officially on duty. Her hands and legs began to tremble as her panic swelled. She tried to keep her breathing steady as she returned her attention to the baristas.

  Nan repeated her question to Hannah and Ben, who’d stopped cleaning and was standing beside his co-worker. “So the girl left and the boy stayed here?”

  “Yeah,” Hannah said. “They’d been having a pretty intense conversation. She was crying. I had the impression that he was in trouble with her and trying to apologize and she was mad and upset. I wasn’t being nosy, but we weren’t busy and all the other customers were staring at their computers or phones, you know?”

  “Of course,” Nan said. “How much later did he leave?”

  “The girl left after this guy came in,” Ben said. “Remember, Hannah?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Hannah leaned toward Nan and lowered her voice. “He was like a gangbanger-type guy. No judgment, but they don’t really come in here. He looked kind of scary. It was mostly his attitude, but he had gang tats.”

  “Can you describe him for me?”

  Hannah looked at Ben before she began. “Latino. Not tall. Maybe five six. Regular build. Shaved head with a tat on his scalp across the back of his head and up the back of his neck. Words in script. I didn’t look that close.”

  Ben added with his eyebrows raised, “He had tattooed tears on his cheek. He gave off a vibe, like trouble. He was wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt that was buttoned up and loose, hanging over his jeans. I noticed because I was robbed here once by a guy like that who was wearing a shirt that way. He had a gun stuck in his waistband, so I kept my eye on this guy.”

  Nan was confident they were describing Nacy Dena. “What did he do when he came in?”

  “The young guy got up and they knuckle-bumped and all.” Ben pantomimed the action. “The girl, your daughter, kind of waved. I relaxed when I saw that this guy knew those kids. He sat on the couch beside the boy. The girl got up and started to go. The boy tried to get her to stay. The Latino guy did too. He said, ‘Hang out. I want to talk to you about something.’ He reached for her and she stepped back. She said she had to go and left in a hurry.”

  Nan was proud of Em’s gumption, but it didn’t quell her panic. “What did the two guys do?”

  “I was still keeping my eye on them,” Ben said. “They talked for a few minutes, sitting close together on the couch. I heard the kid say, ‘I don’t know, man,’ and then the gang guy said, ‘I think you do.’ It was getting intense and I was kind of worried. Then they got up and left. The kid got into the other guy’s car, which was parked right in front. It was a tricked-out Honda Civic. Black. Dark windows. Low to the ground. They drove off.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  “That way.” Ben pointed west. “I was just glad they were gone.”

  Hannah nodded. “It was a lot of drama.”

  “Thank you,” Nan said.

  “Is your daughter in trouble?” Hannah asked with concern. “Is everything okay?”

  “I hope so.”

  “How about a coffee on the house?” Ben held up his hand toward a row of chrome coffee warmers behind him. “I just made a fresh pot of Crown City Blend.”

  —

  Nan left the café, carrying her cup of coffee. She got into her car, took a sip of the scalding brew, and had just put it into the cup holder when her phone in her back pocket buzzed, signaling a text message. Her heart leaped into her throat as she prayed it was Emily. She fished out the phone and saw the text was from Alex Caspers: 187 in alley behind Bobo’s. You’ll want to see this.

  Chapter 40

  Nan sped around traffic on Colorado Boulevard, tires squealing, as she drove east, heading to the homicide behind a popular billiard joint. This stretch of the boulev
ard was lined with car dealerships, questionable motels, and bars. Nan was lucky in hitting green or yellow lights. Her luck ran out at a busy intersection and she slammed on her brakes to avoid barreling into crossing traffic. She rolled down her car window and leaned out to see a TV news helicopter in the air in the vicinity of Bobo’s Billiards. She mentally read between the lines of Caspers’s sort of jocular text. As callow as Alex could sometimes be, he wouldn’t have sent her a message if Emily was the homicide victim.

  When the traffic cleared, she went through the intersection while the light was still red. A few blocks ahead, she saw traffic slowing where the boulevard was barricaded in both directions. In the block where Bobo’s was located, uniformed officers were diverting traffic onto side streets. While all the other businesses were shuttered for the night, having closed early, the lights in the pool hall blazed. People had come out of the apartment buildings and small homes off Colorado and were milling around on the sidewalks.

  Making a quick right turn, Nan skirted the crowd and approached the crime scene from the rear, parking in a lot behind a sushi restaurant where she and Jim often ate lunch. Holding her flat badge in her left hand and her Maglite in her right, she hoofed it to the barricade that marked the southern perimeter of the crime scene, pushing through clutches of nervous citizens. Raising her hand with her badge, she didn’t pause when she reached the barrier and went around it. The officers there didn’t stop her. On the other side was a Chevy Tahoe that was the command post. Lieutenant Nancy Gilmore was the incident commander and her back was to Nan as she talked with a sergeant. Nan didn’t pause, muttering to the scribe who was keeping track of who entered and left the scene, “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Nan walked past modest homes, most with their lights on inside, the residents roused by the police activity. Officers were interviewing people on front porches, in yards, or on the sidewalk, taking notes as neighbors pointed and gestured about what they had seen and heard. Members of the PPD Forensics team and uniformed officers were searching the yard of a home beside a cinder-block wall that bordered an alley behind Bobo’s.