by Ben Rehder
What I’d learned from Google Maps was that Alex Albeck had a swimming pool in his backyard—as did most of the homes in this upper-end neighborhood. We had speculated that if Boz Gentry was hiding out at Albeck’s house, he wouldn’t show his face—except in the backyard. And maybe only at night. He had to go outside for fresh air at some point, right? He’d get cabin fever. Everybody would eventually. Might even decide to go for a swim.
So we’d decided it would be worth the gamble to see if we could get a camera set up back there. There were pitfalls, but we’d concluded that none of them posed a serious problem.
For instance, if Albeck had security cameras around his place, there would be no reason for him to review the video, because we weren’t going to break into his home or steal anything from the exterior.
If he had a dog, I’d brought along a can of premium dog food. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of dogs, including aggressive or anxious ones, will stop what they’re doing to eat savory chunks of lamb and chicken, smothered in a stewed broth. I think I’d have a tough time resisting that myself.
If the gate to Albeck’s backyard fence had a lock on it—and I’d seen from Google photos that he did have a fence—I’d go over it.
And if I got caught in the act? I’d run like hell.
Mia and I exited the van together, wearing our matching turquoise polo shirts, both of us carrying a vase full of flowers. I was also carrying the tote bag containing the covert camera and the tools I’d need to mount it in some discreet location on the back of Albeck’s house. There were probably other utility boxes back there, so this one would fit right in.
“If I’m not back in five minutes, save yourself,” I said. “Run and don’t look back. But think of me from time to time.”
“Funny.”
She started up the sidewalk to the Williamsons’ house, and I proceeded along the street for thirty feet, then turned up Albeck’s driveway. What were the odds that two side-by-side neighbors would be getting a delivery from the same florist at the same time? Well, slim, sure, but it could happen. It was happening, wasn’t it? That’s what anyone watching would think. Seriously, how many average Joes would conclude that we were there on a spying mission? They’d have confidence in young Brett, the guard, who would screen out any potential spies, right?
I marched right up the steps to Albeck’s door like I belonged there. Set the tote bag down. Pretended to knock, but didn’t. If Gentry was inside, I didn’t want to alert him that I was here. I pretended to knock again. Waited for half a minute. Nothing. I picked up the tote bag, stepped down off the porch, and looked around.
If anyone was watching, my body language suddenly said, Hey, look—a cobblestone pathway that leads to the backyard. A delivery person such as myself should check to see if the resident is back there.
I followed the curved pathway counterclockwise toward the side of the house. I didn’t see any surveillance cameras dangling from the eaves. Along the front of the house, to my left as I walked, was a nicely landscaped bed filled with elephant ears and other plants I couldn’t name. Ironic, with me being from a flower shop and all.
I reached the corner and turned, and now I could see the wrought iron fence. Not a privacy fence, which was good, because, for reasons I can’t explain, it would seem much more inappropriate for a delivery person to peek through or over a privacy fence.
Still no cameras. No window stickers announcing that the home was protected by such-and-such security system. Didn’t mean much. By the time I reached the gate, I could see part of the pool, with patio furniture carefully arranged around it.
I stopped. Waited. I didn’t see anybody. I did notice that the gate had no lock on it, which was fortunate. I thumbed the latch and swung the gate open. It made a very faint squealing sound, but nothing to be concerned about.
I left the gate open and continued along the cobblestone pathway. After six or seven more steps, I came to the rear corner of the house, and by then I could see that there wasn’t just a swimming pool back here, there was also a hot tub.
And in that hot tub was a woman staring right at me.
As Mia would tell me later, Mrs. Williamson was about ninety years old, and the idea that she was receiving flowers from an anonymous sender tickled her to no end.
“Oh, aren’t those gorgeous!” Mrs. Williamson was saying, as she accepted the vase, which was just about the time I was pretending to knock on Albeck’s door. “Those must be calla lilies?”
“Actually they’re Casablanca lilies,” Mia said.
“Casablanca lilies?”
“Yes, ma’am. Imported from Holland.”
And they were. Normally quite expensive, but we had found them deeply discounted at a florist on the way over here.
Mrs. Williamson made some clucking sounds, showing just how pleased she was as she studied the flowers. “Just wonderful,” she said. “Even the vase is lovely.” Then she looked at Mia and said, “And look at you. You’re even prettier than these flowers are.”
“That’s so sweet. Thank you.”
“Which florist are you with?”
“R and M.”
“Pardon?”
“R and M.”
“Aranim?”
“R and M.” Mia gestured toward the logo on her shirt.
“Oh, R&M! I believe I’ve ordered from you before.”
Not likely, lady.
Mia said, “You’ll want to keep them away from direct sunlight and in a cool environment. And please add water regularly. You can also recut the stems every day or two if you’d like them to last longer.”
“I’ll do that!” She looked over her eyeglasses at Mia. “You can’t give me any clue who sent them? Just a hint?”
Mia smiled. “I’m afraid not. I don’t even know.”
“Well, I guess I should just be glad anyone cares enough about a little old lady to even remember me,” Mrs. Williamson said. “I mean, it’s not even my birthday.”
Mia said, “Okay, I hope you enjoy them, ma’am,” and she started to turn.
“Oh, wait, let me get a little something for you,” Mrs. Williamson said. “I’ll grab my purse.”
“That’s not necessary, and in fact, we have a policy against accepting tips.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am, but thanks anyway, and you have a wonderful day.”
“Oh, I will! Thank you!”
I froze. Simply stood still for a moment. Maybe the woman in the hot tub wasn’t staring at me after all. She had sunglasses on, and a big floppy hat. Maybe her eyes were closed. Dozing. It would be better if I could slip away without any interaction. I could continue with the ruse if necessary and give her the flowers, but it would be better to avoid it. Only one way to find out.
I waved at her. No response.
So I stepped back a few feet. Now I was more or less peeking around the corner of the house, and I was seeing her through the leafy branches of a small ornamental tree halfway between me and the hot tub. If she hadn’t seen me before, it was unlikely she’d notice me now.
I could have slipped away, but I waited. Was she alone back here? Was someone going to join her? I wanted to find out, but I couldn’t stay here for more than another minute or so. Mia would be back at the van by now. Brett would be wondering what was taking so long.
The woman twitched suddenly, as if jerking awake from a nap. She stretched her arms out in front of her. Yawned. She twisted her torso to her left and picked up a magazine that was lying on the concrete beside the hot tub. Opened it up. The sunglasses must have been too dark for her to read easily, because she removed them, and I finally got a good look at her face. For the second time in 36 hours, I was totally taken aback by who I was seeing. On Saturday evening, it was Candice—Tyler Lutz’s receptionist—at Albeck’s ranch. And now this.
The woman in the hot tub was Shelley. Boz Gentry’s dental hygienist.
25
Mia was waiting in the driver’s seat with
the engine running when I returned to the van. She could tell by my expression as I approached that I had some big news. I came around to the sliding door, climbed inside, and closed it behind me.
“What happened?” she asked. She popped it into gear and got moving. “Was Albeck home?”
I was shaking my head, still trying to figure out what I had just seen.
“You’ll never guess who was in Albeck’s hot tub,” I said.
“Mickey Thomas, your old friend from Cub Scouts?” Mia said, throwing my joke from yesterday back at me, which I would have complimented under normal circumstances.
“Boz Gentry’s dental hygienist,” I said. “Shelley.”
She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, her mouth agape. “No way!”
“Yes, the same woman who admitted stealing Gentry’s dental records is hanging out at Gentry’s best friend’s house. What in the holy hell is going on here?”
“Did you talk to her?” Mia asked.
“No.”
“Did she see you?”
“No, but I snapped a couple of pics with my phone.”
“You’d better get in back,” she said, because we were getting closer to the guard shack.
I climbed over the bench seat and got into my hiding spot. I felt the van slowing, and then it came to a stop.
“Hey, there,” Mia said.
“I was wondering where you were,” Brett said, “but then I remembered that Mrs. Williamson is a little, uh, chatty.”
“Ah, she’s sweet as can be. And she was totally surprised, so thanks.”
“No problem. So... it’s okay if I call you?”
“Sure, but...”
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something right up front. I’ve found it makes things easier in the long run, because it sorta freaks some guys out. So I’ll just come right out with it. I have seven children from previous marriages.”
I came this close to laughing out loud. I could picture Brett waiting for some indication that Mia was joking, but her face would remain dead serious. It was perfect. She had just ensured that she would never hear from Brett. Ever.
“Wow,” Brett finally said, because really, what else do you say in that situation? “That’s a lot.”
“Four from the first marriage, one from the second, and two from the third. Oldest is twelve, youngest is eleven months. They keep me pretty busy, so it’s always nice to have another adult around to help out.”
“I, uh—”
“Do you know how to change a diaper?”
Mia turned west on Bee Caves Road. As she drove, we tried to figure out the meaning of what I had just seen—Shelley Milligan in Albeck’s hot tub. We didn’t come up with much. But we both agreed that it might mean that Albeck was involved in the scam. It was frustrating, because we knew we had several pieces of the puzzle, but we still didn’t know how they all fit together.
“If we don’t make some sort of breakthrough soon,” I said, now sitting in the passenger seat, “we’ll have to confront all of these people head on and see what they have to say.”
By “these people,” I meant Alex Albeck, Shelley Milligan, and Candice the receptionist.
“But we aren’t there yet, are we?” Mia said.
“I don’t think so. Right now, we have an advantage. We know things they don’t know we know.”
“Still a lot of blanks to fill in,” Mia said.
“True. Like the connection between Albeck and Shelley.”
“Dripping Springs is a small town,” Mia said. “Everybody knows everybody. Isn’t that what Lutz said?”
“Yeah, but even if Albeck knows Shelley—even if Albeck was one of Dr. Wilkins’s patients—why would Shelley be enjoying a dip in Albeck’s hot tub?”
“And on a Monday morning?” Mia said. “Why isn’t she at work?”
“There was a sign in Wilkins’s office saying they were closed on Mondays. So we can assume she didn’t quit or get fired or anything like that.”
“What if Albeck and Shelley are having an affair?” Mia said.
I pondered that possibility while Mia turned right on Highway 71 in the village of Bee Cave.
“Shelley is married,” I said, “and she took the money for Boz’s file so she could surprise her husband with an anniversary trip. Just doesn’t seem likely that she’s sleeping with Albeck.”
Mia drove past the massive shopping complex called the Hill Country Galleria, which used to be a lush, wide-open field where livestock grazed.
“Okay,” Mia said. “No affair. Maybe they’re related.”
“That’s a good theory,” I said, “and for that reason, I’ll pretend I was thinking the same thing.”
“Naturally.”
I grabbed my laptop. “Won’t take long to find out, and you know who’s going to help us?”
“Who?”
“The Mormons,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Mia asked.
“Mormons,” I said, “are the most ardent genealogists in the world.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“You want to know why?”
“Not really,” Mia said.
“It’s because they believe they can obtain salvation for their dead ancestors—or any dead person who wasn’t Mormon—by baptizing them by proxy into the Mormon faith.”
“Wait. What? By proxy?”
“Someone else stands in for the dead person,” I said.
“I know what it means, goober. But where do they get the right to decide what the dead person wants?”
“Got me,” I said. “All I know is, they trace their family trees way back and baptize all their dead ancestors. Then the entire family can live together eternally.”
“Well,” Mia said. “Okay.”
“They have this huge vault—a repository—built into the mountains just outside Salt Lake City, and it has doors that weigh something like ten or twelve tons, so it’s supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast. It’s climate controlled, and they have millions of rolls of microfilm containing more than two billion names.”
“Now you are totally making stuff up,” Mia said.
“I’m not, I swear. They’ve got birth records, death records, marriages, divorces, wills, all that kind of stuff—so they can go back years and years, which allows them to baptize and save great-great-great Uncle Bob and Aunt Sally and all their kids.”
Mia turned left on Hamilton Pool Road and continued west.
I said, “The important thing is, the Mormons have made it a lot easier to track your family tree, whether you’re Mormon or not. They have an incredible genealogy website. So let me see if I can find a connection between Shelley Milligan and Alex Albeck.”
We rode in silence as I surfed. I’d been on the Mormon site often enough to know how to navigate it well, and how to quickly find the information I needed, or to discover that the information I needed wasn’t there.
Mia reached Ranch Road 12, went south to Dripping Springs, turned west on Highway 290, and by the time we reached the little community of Henly and turned left on FM 165, I’d found what I was looking for.
It was another twist that I hadn’t seen coming.
“Shelley Milligan and Alex Albeck have no family connection at all,” I said.
Mia glanced over at me and saw the knowing grin on my face. “But... ?”
I said, “You’ll never guess who—”
“Roy!”
“Okay, okay. Shelley Milligan is Erin Gentry’s aunt from her dad’s first wife.”
“Holy crap!” Mia said.
“I’m pretty sure Shelley wasn’t completely honest with me,” I said.
“Ya think?” Mia said. “I’d say you totally got played.”
“Maybe so, but isn’t it time we stopped dwelling on the past and moved forward with our investigation?”
“Are we still gonna do this?” she asked, nodding toward the windshield. Toward Alex Albeck’s ranch. That was the other action we
’d decided we could take to propel the case forward—another visit to the ranch. If Boz Gentry was there, he wouldn’t be expecting me to show up a second time.
“Now I’m starting to wonder about Erin Gentry again,” I said. “Is she involved in this scheme or not? There are too many different possibilities here. I can’t even think straight.”
“Remember: We don’t have to figure out who did what,” Mia said. “We just have to prove Boz Gentry is alive.”
“That’s very wise,” I said.
“You said it last night.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“Right before I kicked your ass,” Mia said.
“You’re full of piss and vinegar this morning, aren’t you?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
We were getting closer to the ranch entrance. We could drive past it and keep going. Maybe return to the café at the Blanco Bowling Club and weigh our options. Ponder what we’d learned this morning. Brainstorm some more. See if there was a more logical plan. But I was restless. This case had me feeling like I was standing in quicksand, and I wanted to make something happen.
“What the hell,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
26
Part two of today’s agenda went like this: Mia would drop me at Albeck’s ranch, and I would take another look around—but I would approach it differently this time. Last time, the house appeared to be empty—and I’m fairly certain it was. No light was showing from any windows at all. The electric meter wasn’t moving. I had noted the reading on the meter, and I would check it again, but I didn’t expect any change.
Then I would set out to explore the ranch itself. Not all eight hundred acres—just a select portion. It had been Mia’s idea, and I had agreed that it was a good one.