“Not sure,” Sergeant Callahan said as he turned toward the door. “But I’m keeping all options on the table.”
Ed sat in his car and stared at Olivia’s text message.
Rex Cavanaugh was dead.
He thought of what Olivia and Kitty had told him: about Ronny DeStefano, who’d tried to blackmail Christopher; about Coach Creed, who’d made Christopher’s life hell at Archway; and about Rex Cavanaugh, who shared a secret with Christopher, and who’d bullied him mercilessly as a result.
He thought of Christopher Beeman, placing the noose around his own neck in the boiler room of Archway Military Academy. Now three of the people responsible for driving him to suicide were dead with him.
Maybe there was justice in the world after all.
He checked the time on his phone, then laid it on the passenger seat and picked up a pair of mini binoculars, training them on a house at the end of the tree-lined residential street on which he was parked.
Should be any minute now.
After two hours of stakeout, the block was familiar now—the luxe gardens and expansive lawns, the mix of natural wood and white-washed fences delineating one property from the next, the luxury SUVs in every driveway. The house he gazed at through the binoculars seemed exactly like its neighbors, indistinct in every way. But that was only on the surface. Inside, Ed knew that house had been marked by tragedy.
A charcoal-gray sedan rounded the corner at the end of the street and pulled into the driveway of Brant and Wanda Beeman’s Palo Alto home. Ed was tense with anticipation as Wanda climbed out of her car and walked to the front door, then stopped dead in her tracks.
He could practically see her thought process as she stared at her front door, which Ed had broken into and left wide open. Did I forget to lock the door? It doesn’t look like someone broke in. No, I’m pretty sure I locked it. Is Brant home early from his business trip? No, the flight from LA was delayed.
Ed held his breath. Would she do it? Would she take the bait? After a few seconds, Wanda pulled out her cell phone and hurried back to her car.
Bingo.
If Ed had guessed correctly, and he was pretty confident that he had, Wanda Beeman was, at that very moment, calling whatever friend or family member had graduated from the police academy twenty years ago. He’d been very careful in his breaking and entering: he didn’t want it to look as if the house had been burglarized, because that would send Mrs. Beeman dialing 911 in a hot minute. No, he wanted it to be a disturbing but possibly innocuous event. She couldn’t be sure she had closed and locked the door behind her, but she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t. Not wanting to clog the emergency lines, she’d call whoever it was she knew in local law enforcement.
The wait seemed to take forever. Ed had been unable to find any Beemans in the local police force directories, and this was his last, best chance to follow this line of investigation. Maybe he was being paranoid? As if a cop would really be involved in this DGM murder mess. Still, a cop with a personal tie to Christopher Beeman? It was a plausible motivation.
Finally, a car turned the corner and Ed crouched down in the driver’s seat as a black-and-white police cruiser pulled up in front of the Beemans’ house. Ed peered through the binoculars, barely able to breathe as an officer stepped from the car, giving Ed a close look at his face.
“Oh shit.”
THIRTY
KITTY LOOKED AROUND OLIVIA’S LIVING ROOM, THE LATEST DGM meeting place, and prayed that her teammates had been more successful in their investigations than she had been.
“Are we all ready?” she asked.
Ed the Head grinned at her. “Ready and able.”
Olivia nodded, her face grim.
John leaned forward and spoke into Kitty’s phone, which lay faceup on the coffee table. “Can you hear us, Bree?”
Bree’s voice crackled through the speakerphone. “Loud and clear.”
“Awesome idea to leave your phone with her,” Kitty said, smiling approvingly at John. As uncomfortable as she’d initially been to have him in on their little secret, she had changed her tune. They were going to need all the help they could get.
“Oh my God!” Bree’s heavy exhale rustled the speaker. “It’s so good to hear you guys.”
“I know how much you’ve missed me,” Ed said with a smirk.
Bree snorted. “Yeah, and I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.”
Kitty shook her head. “Chitchat later, kids. Olivia’s mom will be back from rehearsal in a few hours. We’ve got limited time.”
“When do we not?” Ed asked.
“Kitty,” Bree said, her voice full of concern. “I’m so sorry about your uncle’s warehouse. Will the insurance cover everything?”
The image of the fire came rushing back to her, the words “I’m back” glowing in the darkened alley as the warehouse burned to the ground. “The fire was ruled arson,” Kitty said. “If they prove my uncle set it, the insurance is void and he’ll probably go to jail.”
“Damn,” John said.
“We’ll find out who did this,” Bree said. From the harshness in her voice Kitty could picture the fierce look on Bree’s face. “And prove that your uncle is innocent.”
“Thanks.” It was sweet of Bree to say, but the last thing Kitty wanted to do right now was linger on her personal stakes. It wasn’t going to help them. “The medical examiner was pretty clear: Rex was murdered.”
Ed fidgeted in his seat. “And a DGM card was left on the body.”
Kitty stood up and walked behind the sofa. She needed to think, which meant she needed to move. “Rex Cavanaugh, Coach Creed, Ronny DeStefano. What do they have in common?”
Ed the Head snorted. “Other than being Grade A douche bags?”
“And connected to Christopher Beeman,” Bree said.
“I think the Beeman connection is overhyped,” Ed said. “We’ve found nothing tangible connected to him.”
“They’re also all former DGM victims,” John suggested.
DGM victims. “Speaking of,” Kitty said with a heavy sigh, “I overheard Sergeant Callahan say that Xavier Hathaway has been listed as a missing person.”
Ed folded his arms across his chest. “Good riddance.”
Kitty ignored him. “And according to Logan, the Gertler twins have also disappeared.”
“What?” Olivia cried.
Kitty nodded. “Logan told me and I confirmed it today. They disappeared from the surf shop last night. No trace of them.”
Olivia slumped in her chair. “Oh my God.”
“Logan thinks you might be involved,” Kitty continued, looking pointedly at Olivia. “But I told him it was just a coincidence.”
“I’ve got even worse news,” Bree said. She sounded alarmed. “Wendy Marshall is missing too.”
“What?” Olivia repeated.
“Yeah, I heard it on the radio.”
“Xavier Hathaway, Wendy Marshall, and the Gertler twins.” Kitty felt her breaths coming faster. She’d known it couldn’t be a coincidence when she heard about Xavier, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it. “Four missing persons, all connected to DGM.”
“And all people we personally investigated this week.” Ed the Head whistled. “That’s no coincidence.”
Kitty’s mind raced. She pulled a piece of paper from her duffel bag, the list she’d made with Ed and Olivia in the computer lab just days ago, and began to read off the names.
“Number one—Wendy Marshall,” she said. “Missing. Two—Christina Huang, East Coast. Xavier Hathaway, missing. The Gertlers, missing. Melissa Barndorfer, in Europe. Tammi Barnes . . .” Kitty looked up at her phone. “Bree, you saw her this morning, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And again tomorrow.”
“We’ll list her as not missing for now.” Kitty returned to her list. “Then we’ve got Ronny, Coach Creed, and now Rex Cavanaugh.”
“All DOA,” Ed added, stating the obvious.
“If our killer is a former DGM target
,” Kitty said, looking at the phone on the table, “then Tammi is the only possible suspect.”
“It’s not Tammi,” Bree said quickly.
Ed snorted. “How do you know?”
Kitty bit her lip, waiting on Bree’s silence. She could almost see her flecking off bits of her nail polish on the other end of the line.
“I just don’t think it’s her,” she said at last.
“I’m so glad you’ve found this deep love for Tammi Barnes,” Ed said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “But may I remind you what she did to earn the scorn of DGM? I saw those blow job scorecards. Nasty stuff.”
Olivia scowled at him. “Yeah, and weren’t you taking side bets on which freshmen would score the highest?”
“I’m a businessman.” Ed snapped his fingers. “Oh, and how did Tammi attack her stepdad? With a baseball bat?”
“The same way Ronny was killed,” Olivia said slowly.
“She didn’t do it!” Bree repeated.
Ed shrugged. “You willing to bet your life on that?”
“Okay,” Kitty said. This bickering wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “If Tammi’s not involved, then she could be the next one to disappear.”
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Bree said quickly, sounding somewhat placated.
“And don’t forget Amber,” Olivia added. “She’s a DGM target too.”
“Tammi Barnes and Amber Stevens,” Ed mused. “Victims or killers? News at eleven.”
“Hm.” John was staring at the ceiling.
“What?” Kitty asked.
He stretched a long arm behind his head and grabbed the back of his chair. “I was just thinking. There’s got to be some way we can use this to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, bouncing his head against the crook of his arm. “You’ve never known exactly where and when the killer was going to strike next, right? This might be our chance to set a trap.”
“You mean use one of them as bait.” Ed slid to the edge of his seat. “I like this plan already.”
Kitty saw both the positives and the negatives of this approach. On the one hand, they might be able to lure him out into the open. On the other, they’d be putting someone’s life in danger. “I like the idea of going on the offensive.”
“Yeah,” Bree chortled. “Cuz that worked out so well the last time.”
“Wasn’t it your idea last time?”
“Semantics.”
“I don’t think I can convince Amber to help us,” Olivia said. “Unless John asks her.”
“Oh, hell no,” Bree said.
“You got a better idea?” Ed asked.
Bree paused. “Tammi. I think I can get Tammi to do it.”
“I wish Margot was here,” Olivia whined. “She’d know what to do.”
“What would Margot do,” John mused. “I like it. We need wristbands or something.”
What would Margot do? It was a more helpful question than perhaps John realized. Margot always took the direct, logical route. Nothing crazy, nothing with a low probability of success. She weighed the pros and cons, evaluated the weak points, calculated the various pieces of each and every plan. Why couldn’t they do the same?
“Okay.” Kitty sat down, her body tense. “Bree, see what you can do with Tammi, but if it doesn’t work, we move to plan B.”
“Plan B?” Bree asked. “What the hell is that?”
“That,” she said slowly, “is where we put on a show.”
THIRTY-ONE
BREE’S PULSE RATE SPIKED AS OLAF CAREENED THE SUV INTO the parking lot at Dr. Walters’s office. In the next sixty minutes she had to avoid mentioning her involvement with DGM, satisfy Dr. Walters’s requirements for “adequate group participation and sharing,” and find out if Tammi Barnes would help her find a killer.
No problem.
Tammi was already seated around the circle when Bree entered the therapy room. She smiled and dipped her head toward the chair next to her, inviting Bree to sit. Here goes nothing.
“Hey,” Tammi said, a furtive smile threatening her face. “How’s it going?”
Bree shrugged. “Same old, same old.” She thrust out her leg so Tammi could see the anklet. “Not much to do when you’re trapped inside all day,” she lied.
“So you can’t leave at all?”
“Just to come here.”
“For how long?”
Until my dad takes the leash off? “Until my hearing.”
Tammi’s eyes grew wide. “Wow. What did you do?”
“Um . . .” Shit. Great job, dumbass. You haven’t even been here thirty seconds and you’ve already walked into the one conversation you don’t want to have. “It was stupid, really.”
Tammi smirked. “Stupid like stealing a car stupid? Or stupid like clocking your stepdad over the head with a softball bat?”
“I’d call that last one more ballsy than stupid.” Ballsy in a way that Bree admired, though as she pictured Tammi standing over the unconscious body of her stepfather, he suddenly morphed into Ronny DeStefano.
“Okay, everyone!” Dr. Walters chimed as she breezed into the room. “I’m glad to see we’re all here on time today. Let’s get started, shall we?” She flounced into an open chair, her voluminous peasant skirt billowing around her, and opened her notebook. “I believe we were going to start with Bree today?”
Bree nodded and took a slow, deep breath. You can do this. “Can we talk about my parents?” she asked, taking control of the conversation.
Dr. Walters’s face lit up, her eyes glistening. Bree guessed that volunteering to discuss her mommy and daddy issues would be like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull, and she wasn’t wrong. “Of course! Where would you like to start?”
Bree launched into a monologue that she’d been carefully going over in her head all morning. She started with her father, how his political career had always been the driving force in his life, dominating all of his decisions, from whom he married (an heiress with a recognizable name) to where he lived (a district where said wife’s family had a stellar and well-known reputation) to where he sent his kids to school (established Catholic institutions with long histories of Ivy League placements). Then she brought up her mother, the spoiled, infantile socialite who hated her life as a wife and mother so much that she’d run away to the South of France as soon as her darling son had left for college.
It made a great story, Bree had to admit. And the best part was that it was all true, every last detail. She couldn’t have written a movie script this believable. Her tragic, neglected little life made for excellent therapy fodder, and Dr. Walters hung on every word, scribbling endless notes as she asked Bree repeatedly how it all made her feel, how her home life influenced her decision making, and where she hoped she’d be at the end of her time in therapy.
And so Bree jumped into her feelings of abandonment and anger. At first she really thought she was playing them up, exaggerating her resentment for the sake of her audience, just like she’d practiced. But as she was relating the story of her brother’s high school graduation, long-buried memories came racing back into her mind, tumbling out of her mouth before she could edit them. The obvious pride displayed by both of her parents that day, the way they fawned over Henry Jr., parading his valedictorian honors in front of her father’s political associates and her mother’s society contacts during a lavish reception at the country club. She remembered how small she felt, how secondary. It was as if her family unit consisted of her parents and her brother, and she was merely some changeling who had appeared on the Deringer doorstep.
Bree loved her brother. Despite the four-year age difference, they’d been pretty close growing up. He was funny and kind and affectionate, all attributes her parents lacked. But as Dr. Walters drew feelings out of her, Bree’s face grew hot, and her eyes stung with the effort to suppress the tears that threatened to blind her vision and swamp her mind.
Which is when she walked in
to a trap.
“Now, Bree, do you think this desperate need for attention and approval from your parents is what prompted your association with DGM?”
Bree caught her breath. Her head jerked up, aware suddenly of her carelessness. Beside her, she could sense Tammi’s body go rigid, hear her breaths as they came faster and faster.
“I . . .”
Dr. Walters’s alarm dinged with perhaps the worst timing in the history of the world.
“And we can pick up with that on Monday. Thank you, ladies.”
Tammi bolted from her chair and raced out the door before Bree could say anything.
Dammit.
Bree ran down the hall and into the lobby, just in time to see Tammi disappear through the door.
“Tammi!” she cried.
“Where you go?” Olaf said, as Bree dashed through the lobby.
But she didn’t wait to explain. Tammi was already hurrying down the street. “Wait!” Bree cried.
Tammi didn’t slow down or even glance back as Bree thundered after her, just continued doggedly forward as fast as she could go without breaking into a run.
“You have to listen to me,” Bree said, as she began to overtake her prey.
“Why?” Tammi asked over her shoulder. “So I can make an idiot of myself again?”
Gah. This was not how this was supposed to go down. And after being outed as DGM, she couldn’t exactly lead with “Hey, would you like to play possum for a killer?” So she tried a different approach. “Tammi, you might be in danger.”
“I live in a halfway house,” Tammi said with a laugh. “How much more dangerous can it get?”
“Wendy Marshall,” Bree said, panting. “Xavier Hathaway. Maxwell and Maven,” she paused for air, “Gertler.”
Tammi stopped, right in the middle of the sidewalk, and half-turned back to Bree. “What about them?”
“They’re all missing,” Bree said.
Tammi stared at the pavement, her mouth working up and down as if she were literally chewing on Bree’s words. “Why are you telling me this?”
Why was she telling Tammi this? If she was the killer, she was tipping her hand. And though in her heart Bree didn’t really believe that Tammi was responsible for three murders, an attempted murder, and four kidnappings, she had tried to kill her stepfather. And DGM had kinda ruined her life. How big of a leap was it to actually finish the deed and get back at her enemies at the same time?
Get Dirty (Don't Get Mad Book 2) Page 16