And then she gathered her materials, Yvonne opened the door, and the two of them exited stage left. Landon pulled out his cell phone and began a low, terse conversation, his eyes on me the whole time. Trey stared at his paperwork.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, “but did you just become the boss of me?”
He underlined something with a highlighter. “It’s not a chain of command relationship. I’m more of a coordinator.”
“Does that mean you get to tell me what to do?”
“Yes.”
He stood up abruptly. I scooped up my folders and stood too, clipping my new ID rather clumsily to my sweater. It read LIAISON in neat block script.
“Does it mean I finally get to question suspects?”
“No.”
He cocked his head and frowned at me. Tucking his files under one arm, he reached out with both hands and straightened my ID badge one millimeter. His knuckle grazed my chin.
I kept my mouth shut. And I didn’t say what I was thinking, that regardless of his rule, if suspects presented themselves, I was going to question them. Even if those suspects were the Beaumonts themselves. And no pathetic, photoshopped, slipped-under-the-windshield threats were going to stop me.
Chapter 21
The corporate headquarters of Beaumont Enterprises rose like a steel beanstalk right at the corner of Ponce de Leon and Peachtree, only a few blocks from the Fox Theatre, which still carried the architectural echoes of its former life as a Masonic lodge. The streets and sidewalks mingled separate tributaries—joggers, bicyclists, tourists asking for directions.
Mark Beaumont held court in a top-floor office that had a distinct members-only feel to it. The decorating scheme was earthy, with cinnamon drapes and cocoa carpeting in a vaguely Aztec-looking pattern. His walls, however, functioned as a wall-to-wall press release: thank-you plaques from prominent organizations, smiling handshake shots with various mayors.
And in the center of the commotion, Mark himself. Dressed for press, he sported conservative navy slacks and a photogenic blue shirt. A gaggle of similarly attired men and women surrounded him, each one vying for his attention.
Trey got it, however. Instantly. Mark saw him approaching and headed our way, hand outstretched. People moved aside for him, made clear the path.
“Trey,” he said, smiling. “Marisa told me you’d be here.” He nodded in my direction. “You’re in on this now?”
“I hear I have Janie to thank for it.”
His face sobered. “God, I can’t imagine what she’s going through now. All I can do…well, I’m doing all I can do. I just hope it’s enough.”
At that moment, a young woman touched his elbow and offered him a clipboard. He took it, and they spoke for a few seconds in low discreet tones. Trey’s eyes roamed the room, slowly, and I was willing to bet that he had every face memorized in about four seconds.
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Beaumont?”
“Mark, please.”
I smiled. “Mark. Where can I find Janie?”
“She’s right through there, in Charley’s office.” He clapped Trey on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get started.”
Trey turned back to me as he melted into the crowd. “Stay close.”
I felt a prickle. “Why? You think something’s going to happen?”
“No. But I might need you. Or you might need me.” He said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Which maybe it was.
“I’ll be right here,” I called. But I was talking to his back.
***
I saw Charley first, seated on a rust-colored loveseat, one arm draped along the back. She’d pulled her hair into a chignon, all piece-ey and messy at the nape, and wore a jacket and pants set in the same hue as the furniture. Janie sat beside her. She’d dressed up too, in a floral dress with a sewn-on vest, her curly hair subdued with thin gold barrettes. She’d put on make-up, but her eyes were red and she was fidgety. She’d twist her fingers together, fiddle with her crucifix, then lay them deliberately in her lap, smoothing out the material. I couldn’t tell if nerves gripped her, or a nicotine fit.
I moved to her side of the loveseat. “Thanks for letting me in on this.”
“We had a deal, remember?” Her eyes dipped, taking in my ID. “They got you all official pretty quick like.”
Charley spoke up. “So you know Kent?”
It seemed odd to hear someone calling Landon by his first name. “We’ve met.”
“Kent’s been with Mark ever since we moved here. But he leaves the grunt work to Trey and what’s-his-name, that curly-headed one?”
“Steve Simpson.”
“Right. That one. They were all working at Beau Elan on Thursday, but Kent was with me that afternoon. He said I might have to testify to that. I told him not to worry, that Mark would make sure he didn’t have any trouble from the authorities.”
I raised an eyebrow at that one, but said nothing. I knew Landon had connections—even Eric had asked him to pull some strings—and it was fast becoming obvious that his connections didn’t mind being used.
Janie indicated the outer office. “So which one’s Trey?”
“Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome in the black suit.”
She squinted in that general direction. “I haven’t seen him before.”
“He stays behind the scenes mostly.”
Charley made a noise. “I’ll say. I don’t think he likes natural light.”
She said it with meanness at the edge, and I felt my backbone straighten involuntarily. She watched me, waiting for a response.
Janie watched me too, but without the predatory gleam. “You want to find me later? Maybe we could talk some more?”
She said it nonchalantly, but I detected the hint of something significant behind her words. I started to ask her what was wrong, but before I could, there was a knock at the door.
Landon stuck his head in. “They’re ready to start.”
Behind him I saw Trey. Janie got up, Charley too, and I followed them out. Then I saw it, at the door. As Charley passed Trey, she stopped and looked up at him. He met her eyes, direct and unblinking. No words, no gestures, just this singular moment of eye-to-eye contact, a split second, nothing more. Then she turned her head and kept walking, her jaw tight.
Trey looked at me. “Are you ready?”
Chapter 22
The press conference was everything I expected it to be. Landon started with a little speech about Phoenix. Then the Beaumonts took the podium, explaining their reasons for offering the reward, for standing up for one of their own. Janie stood silent through it all, hidden behind the principals, clutching at her cross.
Mark Beaumont brought the proceedings to a close. “It comes down to what we do for each other. Eliza mattered, and I’m here, with these fine women and men, to make sure that she keeps on mattering.”
Not especially profound, but the applause rose rich and thick around Mark as the nucleus, the center of the spin. One of the reporters—this rangy disreputable-looking kid—moved forward and fired off shot after shot just as Charley took Mark’s hand. She looked nervous in the staccato bursts of light, and I wasn’t surprised when one of the security guards took the guy firmly by the elbow. He fought it briefly, flashing a nasty grin toward the stage, and then allowed himself to be led away, still popping off shots with one hand.
When it was over, Landon and Trey escorted the Beaumonts back to their offices. I was about to follow when I felt a hand at my elbow.
It was Janie. “Get me out of here before I blow and start using the f-word,” she said.
***
We went across the street to a wine and chocolate shop that also sold coffee—she sucked down a cigarette on the walk over. I resisted the urge. But I did get two cappuccinos and a gigantic chocolate muffin before joining Janie on the patio. By then, her hands weren’t shaking quite so badly, and she’d stopped fidget
ing.
She took the top off her cup. “Thank you. That was starting to get to me.” She stirred her foam with her finger. “I mean, I’m really grateful to the Beaumonts for everything they’re doing. But I just want to get Eliza and go home.”
The sidewalk teemed with people lured outside by the clear undiluted sunshine. But the bright air carried an unexpected bite, especially in this part of downtown, shot through with crosscurrent breezes that ambushed you at every corner. The tourists huddled under the Fox marquee with their Starbucks and street maps. The dog walkers kept their arms folded and practically dragged their Chihuahuas and terriers down the sidewalk.
I offered Janie some muffin. She shook her head. She was still pretty, and I could see the high school girl she must have been once, before she had to grow up and be responsible for everyone around her.
“They told me we could have an open casket. Mama will be relieved.” She said it emotionlessly. “Do you have any news?”
“Maybe.” I thought about the intake report Rico had delivered to me, the one he’d marked for my eyes only. He’d found it filed away at a data collection service when it was supposed to have been expunged, something he said happened all the time. “Did you know William Perkins—I mean, Bulldog—when you were in high school?”
“No, not really.”
“Do you remember if he ever went away for a while?”
She frowned. “Went away? You mean like moved?”
“I mean like juvenile hall.”
She licked the milky coffee from her finger. “Like I said, I didn’t know him that well.”
I pulled out the file Rico had sent me. “I’ve got some information that says he spent six months in a juvenile correctional facility. Of course, he went on to get a grown-up rap for some petty robbery, possession, meth especially. On probation now.”
“So?”
“So it’s the juvie charge that’s got my interest.” I tapped the papers. “Breaking and entering. The report mentions two people committing the crimes, one of them a girl. She’d be lookout while he ransacked the place. She fled the scene when the cops arrived, though, and Bulldog never spilled her name.”
She stared at the report like it was a snake, or a bear trap, something unpredictable and dangerous. In the lot beside us, the stop-go drone of jackhammers intensified into a cacophony.
“How did you get this?” she said.
“Does it matter?”
She lowered her voice. “Do the cops know?”
“They can’t. It’s sealed.”
“So how did you get it?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does! If the cops see this, they’ll think she was going to rob your brother’s house.”
“Maybe she was. Doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her.”
Janie glowered, like she wanted to argue.
“Just tell me,” I said. “Is it true?”
She sat there for a second, then exhaled. “Yeah, it’s true. She always felt like she owed him for that one, and he made sure she kept feeling that way.” Janie shoved the papers back at me. “He did it, didn’t he? He killed her.”
“I don’t know.”
“I told her to stay away, but she wouldn’t listen. He kept telling Eliza he was a better man when he was with her, and she believed that. She liked that.”
Don’t we all? I thought.
“But she mainly kept him around for the drugs, you know? She said she was kicking the stuff, and I believed her…but then I found out otherwise.” She looked me right in the eye, and I saw effort behind it. “They found drugs at her apartment, some meth, some pot. The manager at her place told the cops he’d been suspicious, but that he hadn’t wanted to say anything.”
“You mean Jake Whitaker?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember his name.”
Suddenly, I was thinking about Whitaker, how he’d lied when he said Eliza was well-liked. And I remembered something else that had been bothering me.
“This may sound off the subject, but how well did Eliza know Mark Beaumont?”
“She’d met him at one of the staff events, said he was real nice. He even sent her this Christmas card one time.”
“So they were close?”
Janie looked at me like I was a little cracked. “He’s Mark Beaumont. She’s a receptionist. Everybody got Christmas cards.”
“But he’s doing all this—”
“Yeah, well, I appreciate it, I really do.” She unfolded her napkin, wiped her mouth, folded it again. “But it’s not really about Eliza, you know?”
Yeah, I knew. The construction noise across the street abruptly ceased, and a startling silence fell. It was disconcerting, like being in the middle of a party when suddenly the only voice you can hear is your own. A mockingbird trilled from the shrub beside me. I guessed it had been singing all along.
Janie didn’t speak. It wasn’t until I reached for my bag that she said, “There’s something else.”
I waited. She stared at her napkin. “I went to the bank to clear out her account. Mama thought we could use it for the funeral. Anyway, Eliza had been getting money, a lot of money.”
“How much?”
“A thousand here, more or less there.”
“For how long?”
“Ever since she moved here, six months or so. The police found a shoebox full of cash on the top shelf of her closet.” Janie cast her eyes sideways, like she was afraid of being overheard. “I know what that looks like, all that money. I know what the police are thinking, especially since she got hooked up with Bulldog again.”
“Was she involved with any other shady people?”
“You mean like that stripper friend of hers?”
“What stripper friend?”
“I don’t know, Bambi, Tricksie, something like that.”
A stripper. I remembered the other thing Rico had discovered—that my mysterious caller had called me from a pay phone right in front of a strip club.
Janie’s eyes went shiny, but her composure didn’t crack. “The cops wouldn’t let me have any of her stuff, not the cards I sent her, not her computer. I went over there to get something for her to wear. She had textbooks for this psychology course and some flowers in a vase in the kitchen, one of those bouquets you get at the supermarket. I keep thinking, if she could have found something to get serious about…”
I imagined the scene, a life cut short in midstream, the rest of the world running on around the absence, eventually washing over it. I thought about my old apartment—the sheets that hadn’t been changed, the half-eaten roll of cookie dough in the fridge, the risqué e-mails from my ex-boyfriend.
She pushed her coffee away. “I’ve got to clean it out eventually. Of course I do, it’s always me. And she’s family, flesh and blood, I ain’t denying it. But you tell me, what the hell do I do with all this?”
“I don’t know, Janie.” And we just sat there for five more minutes. And I was telling the truth—I didn’t know what to do next, especially not with my envelope full of illicit information—but I hoped that I would figure it out, and soon.
The jackhammer started again. Something always did.
Chapter 23
I waited until Trey and I were pulling out of the Beaumont Enterprises parking deck to spring it on him. “Hypothetical situation. Pretend I have some information that I technically shouldn’t have.”
“What kind of information?”
“Juvenile records.”
His eyes snapped my way, then back on the road. “You can’t get information like that without breaking the law.”
“I didn’t break the law.”
“You said this was hypothetical.”
“Hypothetically hypothetical.”
We hit a red light and he turned to face me. “Say it again.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “I didn’t break the law.”
He watched my mouth, focused on my eyes.
“You’re reading me.”
The light turned green, and he returned his attention to the road. “You’re doing it again. Technically truthful but—”
“Damn it, I just want to know what I should do!”
“You can’t use illegally procured information in a criminal investigation.”
“How do you know it’s illegally procured?”
“I know that juvenile records are sealed. Therefore—”
“I know, I know, you’re Captain Rules. Got it.”
Trey stopped arguing. There was a wrinkle right between his eyes, and one hand rested on the wheel, the other on the gearshift. His fingers were fidgety. Tap tap tap.
At the next light, a familiar figure crossed the street in front of us, cell phone pressed to his ear, camera around his neck. He looked like one of those gaunt models in certain blue jean ads, with pale tight skin and black hair spiked above his forehead, and he was so engrossed in his conversation that he didn’t look our way.
“Hey,” I said, “isn’t that the guy who was taking pictures at the end of the press conference, the one they threw out?”
Trey’s eyes followed him. “Yes, it is. The security guard didn’t get a name.”
The car behind us honked and Trey drove forward, slowly. I whipped around in my seat and watched the guy get into a black Ford Explorer with tinted windows. He roared away from the curb with a lurch, still talking on his cell phone.
I caught the license plate—D MAN—and I smiled. “Wanna bet it’s Dylan Flint?”
Trey watched in his rearview mirror as the SUV rolled down the street. He nodded sagely, but otherwise showed little interest.
I stared at him. “You’re not following him?
“Why would I do that?”
“Because he was following us on Saturday!”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Then call somebody! Tell them he’s headed down Peachtree…Damn it, which Peachtree is this again?”
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