by JoAnn Chaney
“I’m sure it is,” Loren said, dropping down in one of the plush chairs in front of the desk. If he’d sat behind the desk instead, he thought Jill here might throw a fit. “I know Mr.—ah, Mr. E would appreciate you helping me out.”
Jill nodded and sat down in the chair beside him, her back straight and her knees pressed primly together. Eager-beaver Jill: there was one like her in every office. Jill, who had huge tits but still wasn’t sexy, because you could tell by the way she moved that she treated them like a hassle because they were sure to catch spills and lint and everything else, like they had their own gravitational pull. It was impossible to tell her exact age—she was somewhere between twenty-five and forty, but where exactly did she fall on that scale? You couldn’t know. Jill, who’d be sure to bring her boss a slice of cake on a paper plate when someone in the office had a birthday; Jill, who’d start dating a man and then be left in tears when he ghosted her. Sure, Loren had known plenty of women like Jill, who were all smart and hardworking and great assistants, and they were always so damn eager, but they were also easy to overlook. They were background noise. Static. Always there, but you wouldn’t notice them until you needed them. Or needed to get rid of them. Loren had known Evans wasn’t here, that he was at home away from prying eyes, but Loren had come anyway, because there was always someone in the office who knew more than anyone thought, who brought coffee and carried away secrets. And that person, Loren thought, might just be the woman sitting beside him, chewing nervously on a hank of her hair.
“Okay,” Jill said, nodding so hard her hair bounced around her shoulders. She looked like a kid ready to start a test and hoping they had all the right answers. “Fire away.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Three years.”
“And you like it?”
“Definitely,” Jill said.
“Your boss is a good guy?”
“Yes. He’s the best.”
“And you know his wife?”
“Not very well,” Jill said, her tone turning stiff and awkward. Ah, Marie was a sensitive subject with this one. She stood up and went back to the window, looked down over the view again. “I was horrified when I heard what happened. I’m sure he’s devastated. I had a fruit basket couriered to him from the office with a card we all signed. We feel terrible about it.”
“Did Mrs. Evans stop by the office a lot?”
“Uh, sometimes. She was just here last week. Stopped in while Mr. E was out at lunch to pick up his golf clubs. She wanted to get them engraved for his birthday next month.” Jill pursed her lips. “She asked where he was, but Mr. E wasn’t picking up his cell phone and I didn’t know where he had gone or when he’d be back, and she wasn’t very happy about it.”
“What did she do?”
“She was upset. Came in here without me—Mr. E doesn’t like anyone in here alone because there’s sensitive paperwork and financial documents, but she insisted. Said she was going to make a few calls, and then she left. Didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Do you know where he was?”
Jill licked her lips.
“Like I said, I had no idea,” she said.
She tugged her collar again. Most people aren’t good liars; they give themselves away. Little things, usually. Gritting their teeth or looking away or touching their noses—signs of a liar.
Jill was lying.
“Your boss-man, is he porking anyone in the office?” Loren asked, a grin slowly blooming on his face.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, you heard me, Jilly. Is there some hot little piece of ass in the mailroom that might be riding his baloney pony during lunch hours?”
“Oh my,” Jill said, sitting back suddenly, practically wilting into the arms of the chair. The color had drained from her face.
“Don’t have a fainting spell, Jill!” Loren said. “I didn’t bring my smelling salts today. It’s a simple question. Is your boss having an affair with someone in the office?”
She stared, gap-mouthed. Loren barely noticed, it’d happened so frequently before. The shock of having a cop—a detective, no less—speak like that was always a kick in the teeth.
“Well, Jill? Was he getting himself some strange? Was Mr. E dipping his wick in some other inkpot?”
“I—I don’t think so,” Jill stammered.
“Then where was he when his wife came looking for him? I think you know, Jill. Did you book him some fleabag room down on Colfax so he could spend his lunch hour bending a lady over the side of the bed?”
There were tears standing in her eyes, and one blink sent them rolling down her cheeks.
“Why’re you crying?” Loren asked. “What’s making you so upset?”
“I don’t know,” she said, turning to look at the ceiling and gently patting the delicate skin under her eyes. “I’ve never had to talk to the police before, and I guess I didn’t expect you to be so—so crude.”
Loren laughed. He’d been called plenty of things before, but he didn’t think crude was ever one of them.
“Well, since this is your first time, let me give you some tips. When a cop asks you a question, you don’t just sit there and boo-hoo. The proper response is to answer the damn question.”
She was weeping now. Loren sighed. Time to change tactics. Sympathy came in handy during these times.
“Jill, I know you care about your boss. Maybe you even love him. No judgment, it happens. But I’m the police, and I’m asking you a question. Has your boss been having an affair?”
He let her cry for a moment, then grabbed the box of tissues off the desk and thrust it into her hands. She dabbed at her eyes, then noisily blew her nose.
“I don’t want to get Mr. E into any trouble,” she said.
“Oh, he doesn’t need your help with that. Between you and me, Jilly, Mr. E is doing well enough getting himself into a whole heap of trouble.”
“What did he do?”
“You’re forgetting how this works, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to be asking the questions here, I am. Now, I’m only going to ask one more time before I start to get pissed, and I promise I am not pleasant to be around when I’m pissed. Was Matt Evans romantically or physically involved with a woman who works in this office?”
“Okay,” she said, her lower lip trembling as she watched him warily. “I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard a rumor that Mr. Evans has been friendly with a girl down in real estate.”
“A rumor? You see this man every damn day and that’s all you got? Can’t do any better than a rumor?”
“All right!” she cried. “He’s been meeting up with a woman during his lunch hour. Sometimes after work. And they’ve spent a lot of time alone in here with the door locked even though she doesn’t directly report to him.”
“What’s her name?”
She gave him a sour look.
“Riley Tipton.”
“See, was it really that hard to just open up and tell the police the truth?” Loren asked. “Do you know if this Riley Tipton is here today?”
“She’s on vacation,” Jill said. “She left last week for a trip to South America.”
“When will she be back?”
“Not for another week at least. September twelfth at the earliest.”
“How convenient,” Loren muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Did you book the trip?” Loren asked, winking. “That’s how you know all this? Mr. E is footing the bill for his lady love’s time abroad?”
Jill wouldn’t look up from the tissue crumpled in her hands.
“Yes. If Mr. E is traveling, I do all the legwork for him. Booking flights and hotels, renting cars. All of it.”
“All right,” he said easily. “Now, I just have one more question. If you’re the one booking all these trips for your boss, you probably planned this one out to Estes Park, too?”
“No,” Jill said. “All he asked me to do was request some literature about the area for him, but
I didn’t actually plan any of it.”
“Do you happen to have any of those things lying around? I’d love to take a look if you do.”
“Give me a second, let me see.” She stood and leaned over the desk, grabbed a tissue, and noisily blew her nose, glaring at Loren as she did. Then she opened one of the drawers. Slid the first one shut and opened another. “Yes, it’s right here. It’s stuff about the town and things to do. Restaurants and shops, that kind of thing. And there’s a map of the national park.”
Loren smiled and took the thin sheaf of papers she held out, shuffled through them. Flipped open the map.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been a big—”
He paused. His heart had taken a small skip and was now thundering away in his chest, loud enough that he was sure this woman could clearly hear it.
“Detective?” Jill said. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fucking dandy,” he said, pushing past Jill and out of the office, past the cubicles fluttering with activity and the front reception desk and into an elevator. The whole place smelled like fresh-baked bread—Jill had explained that the corporate kitchens were upstairs and they’d been testing a new recipe that morning, one that’d hopefully end up being rolled out to serve in the restaurants. When he was alone in the elevator, heading back down to the ground floor, he pushed a button and waited until the movement shuddered to a stop, then kneeled and opened up the map again. It was a map of Rocky Mountain National Park, just like Jill had said. All the landmarks and trails and lakes and restrooms and campgrounds had been drawn out so curious tourists could plan their days, but someone had put an extra mark on this map. It was an X, written in red, and the pen had pushed down so hard on the paper it’d nearly ripped through to the other side. And that X had been put right where Marie Evans had fallen to her death.
X marks the spot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
There are two types of people in this world. The first are the people who’d love to go back to high school if they could, those were their glory days, that’s when they peaked.
The other type is made up of people who’d like to forget those four years completely.
Spengler had always fallen firmly into the second category. She’d grown up poor, raised by a single parent who constantly struggled to make ends meet. She looked different than everyone else, had a mother who didn’t speak English well, couldn’t afford the little things all teenagers want to have. Marion Spengler was doomed to be a high school loser from the moment she was born, and once she graduated she’d never expected to set foot inside one again.
But here she was.
“We’ve all been friends with Marie so long, the news of what happened was such a shock,” one of the women said. “Detective, could you hand me that seashell? No, not that one. The curvy one. Yes. Thank you so much.”
Book club, running club, volunteer work at the hospital and library—all of those things in Marie’s life led back to a particular group of women: the PTA at Taft High School. They’d be happy to assist any way they could, Spengler was told when she reached the school’s front desk—they were spending all day at the high school decorating the gym for the upcoming dance, but she was welcome to join them. The theme was Under the Sea, and when Spengler came in it looked like an ocean reef had thrown up. It was corny, but she’d seen worse.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” one of the women asked, sighing as she gazed around. “I wish I’d been so lucky to go to dances like this in high school.”
Personally, Spengler thought the kids wouldn’t give a damn about the decorations, but she kept that opinion to herself. Ten years from now, this event would be nothing but a vague blip on the high school memory time line. She had a feeling it meant more to the PTA than it did the students.
“Who’s running the PTA?” she asked the woman.
“No one is, now that Marie’s gone. We’re planning another election, and I’d guess Alice Schottelman will win. Alice and Marie always had a kind of rivalry.”
“Which one is Alice?”
“The one over there. In the yoga pants.”
“Everyone in here is wearing yoga pants.”
“Oh, right. She’s the one with the short blond hair. It’s a good salon job, but you can see her roots if you look close enough.”
Catty, Spengler thought. The women in the gym—about twenty of them, maybe more—were a tight-knit group, but they played with their claws unsheathed. Their kids had grown up together, they all lived in the same neighborhood and played Bunco and shared cocktail recipes. They were a group of women drawn together because their husbands had money; they had big houses, they had big diamond rings on their fingers that were definitely the real deal. These women were the modern-day Stepford Wives, but as it usually happens, they didn’t see it for themselves.
Walking through the gym in her blue jeans and boots, Spengler was reminded of a video she’d found online not too long before. It was eight minutes long, and there were no actual people in it, only a single female mannequin wearing a sleek blond wig and dressed in exercise gear, posed in different positions for each changing shot, sometimes moving with arms and legs hooked up to wires and pulleys. A robotic voice had been dubbed over the whole thing, distorted and harsh, chanting the same words again and again.
I am good and fine.
Eight minutes of this, 480 seconds of shaky camcorder footage of a pale plastic figure and that chanting robot voice, it was one of the creepiest things she’d ever seen, and she wasn’t exactly sure why these women reminded her of that video and that creepy, weird mannequin—maybe it was their perfect, unlined skin or their rail-thin bodies, or maybe it was because these women had taken themselves and slapped a thick coat of shellac on top and called it good.
And by all accounts, Marie had been the leader of them all.
“Alice?” Spengler asked, tapping the shoulder of the blond woman who’d been pointed out to her. “Alice Schottelman?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Marion Spengler.” She flashed her badge. “I’m here asking questions about Marie Evans.”
“Oh, god,” Alice said, putting a hand to her chest. “I was torn to pieces when I heard what happened. Marie and I were best friends.”
“Then you’re exactly the person I need to speak with,” Spengler said. “Is there somewhere private we can go?”
“Of course,” Alice said. Her glossy lips parted in a glittering smile. “And I’ll grab a few of the other girls. They wouldn’t want to miss this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Spengler had once heard Loren say a man had a punchable face, and she hadn’t understood what he meant. Now she did, because she’d have liked nothing more than to knock every one of Alice Schottelman’s perfectly capped teeth down her lousy throat.
“Marie’s been the PTA president for the last five years,” Alice said. “Even though Maddie graduated last year, she was elected for another term. She still runs the place. Or ran, I guess. There’ll be another election soon to fill her position. I might just throw myself into the race, see what I can do.”
She winked.
“Make Taft High School great again,” one of the other two women said.
All three of them tittered, their sharp, high-pitched laughs bouncing off the walls of the teachers’ lounge and piercing Spengler’s ear like a knife. She cleared her throat.
“Did you all know the Evans family well?”
“We were best friends,” Alice said. “I knew about the trip to Estes. Marie was excited. She said it was Matt’s idea. A nice romantic getaway. But for it to end like this—it’s so awful.”
“Terrible.”
“Horrifying.”
“I think the worst part of it is that Marie fell off a cliff. I literally can’t imagine her falling off anything. She didn’t like the unexpected. She’d plan her days down to the minute, wrote it all down in this thick planner she’d carry around. She put what time she�
��d be going to sleep at night, can you imagine? Sometimes I wondered what would happen if she’d suffered from insomnia and couldn’t fall asleep according to schedule. It would’ve driven her crazy.” Alice sighed. “I can’t think she’d put her foot down in the wrong spot. But you’re here investigating Matt, right? Because I’m sure Marie didn’t fall. Matt had to have pushed her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Spengler had discovered that Alice only stopped talking when she needed the oxygen, and then she’d only pause for the briefest moment. Spengler started to respond but didn’t have time to form a single word before Alice started talking again.
“Yes, when I heard it was Marie who’d fallen, I was sure it was a mistake. The media screwing things up, reporting errors. But when it turned out to be true—well, every couple has problems, I guess. But if you’d asked me who’d murder who in that marriage, I would’ve put my bet on Marie. She was great at planning things.”
“Do you remember the time Marie planned that surprise party for Holly?” the third woman asked.
“Or the winter carnival two years ago?”
“Or what about—”
This was one of the most bizarre conversations Spengler had ever heard. These three women were enacting a strange sort of memorial service for Marie, remembering all the things she’d done. She let them go on, trading stories and laughing, although she had her own questions she’d ask when there was a break in the conversation. Was Marie afraid of her husband? Had she ever complained about money problems? Did she ever mention feeling in danger in her own home?
No, everything was no. Nothing like that had ever happened. None of them had ever noticed anything was wrong in the Evanses’ marriage. In fact, they all agreed, Marie and Matt never really seemed to have problems—at least, they didn’t air their dirty laundry for everyone to see. Instead, the three women were more interested in rehashing every memory they had of Marie.
“—that time Marie dealt with Kara Mason?”
“God, that was awful.”
“Yeah, I never thought Marie would take it that far.”