And she hung up.
Ethan was suddenly relegated to the role of hysterical husband. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell Graham about Wilde.
But that thought was scrambled, pushed away, making room for the more frightening train that followed.
Was he going to be charged? Was he wrong, and it was all her doing? Joel’s warning paraded into his mind, Bill’s cynicism joined the party. Was there any way Sutton could have hurt herself but made it look like he was to blame? Would she do something so awful? How was he going to cope if she were gone? Would they find a body?
“Oh, God.”
He started through the house, looking out the windows, trying to ascertain if anyone was out there. Then he got a grip on himself and called Graham back.
She didn’t answer. He left her a message.
“You hung up before I was able to tell you everything. I need to talk to you. Right now. I’ve been contacted by someone who claims to know where Sutton is. He wants money. Please ring me back.”
BLACKMAIL, OR HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
Holly had questioned Ellen Jones hard for forty minutes, but she hadn’t budged. She insisted Sutton Montclair was not the person in the video.
It clouded everything Holly knew about this case, which was getting stranger by the second.
She grabbed a bag of Tots and a diet cherry limeade from Sonic and sat in the car, thinking. Ate, made some notes. The loyal friends, the missing money, the doting husband, the professional fall from grace. The note. The baby. None of it was adding up for her. It was like trying to solve a puzzle whose pieces came from different boxes.
Her cell rang, for what felt like the thousandth time today. If this was what being a detective was like...how did they ever get anything done with their phones constantly ringing? She glanced at the caller ID. It was Ethan Montclair again.
“Mr. Montclair? What can I do for you now?”
“Listen, I received a call a little while ago. I left you a message, but you didn’t call me back. I’m assuming you didn’t get it.”
She looked at her call screen, saw the badge alert that indicated she’d received a message. “Ah. So you did. What did you want to tell me?”
“I’m being blackmailed. And I think Sutton might have been, too. I think that’s why she’s run away.”
It took a moment, but relief swept through her. The idea of a concrete villain made everyone’s lives easier. Holly made mental notes. She had to call Moreno, had to call the TBI, the FBI, get all her ducks in a row.
But first, she needed every detail Montclair could provide.
“Tell me.”
He did, finishing with, “Someone’s spying on me. I know it.”
“You sound very paranoid, sir.”
“You would be, too, if you knew what I know. We have to take this seriously. I have to find her. She has to be okay.”
“First, I have to tell my boss.”
“No, you can’t tell anyone.”
“Mr. Montclair, this is nonnegotiable. We both have a lot to lose right now. I’ll be right back to you. Don’t move, don’t talk to anyone.”
She called Moreno. “You might want to meet me at the Montclairs’ house. We’ve got a blackmail attempt ongoing.”
“Who’s blackmailing whom?”
“The blogger who made their lives hell has apparently called and asked for fifty grand in exchange for information about Sutton Montclair leaving the house in the wee hours. He claims he saw her get into a black car and drive off into the night, and that he knows where she is.”
“Think it’s legit?”
“It’s been a solid forty-eight hours since she went missing. The timing stands. Then again, these are public people. It’s entirely possible someone’s playing a cruel joke.”
“Is that what you think’s happening?”
“I don’t know. There is fifty grand missing from their accounts, and Ethan Montclair just tossed out the idea that Sutton was being blackmailed, too.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words, but he intimated that perhaps she paid off whoever it was and then ran. Either this guy is playing us like a fiddle, or something shady’s going on.”
“I’ll meet you there. Give me an hour. I’m tied up.”
* * *
Ethan spilled his guts, and Holly took copious notes.
As he talked, a text message came into his phone. It said, Don’t you dare mention me to the cop. I’ll know if you do.
Ethan handed the phone to Graham. “It says cop. Not cops.”
“Do you think that means something?”
“I do. I think it means he’s watching. You’re a single cop. He saw you come over.”
“You may be right.” She called her boss again. Ethan could hear the gruff voice of Sergeant Moreno, tried to ignore it.
“Sir, we’ve received another threat. I think it would be better if you stayed away. I think Wilde can see the house. He seems to be aware that I’m here. If the whole squad arrives, he’ll know.”
“Do we have a trace on Montclair’s phone?”
“No, and we need one. Can you make that happen?”
“Yes, I’ll do it. We’ll also put someone on the house, discreetly. Tell him, so he doesn’t need to worry. You figure out why this blogger suddenly decided to extort money from the Montclairs, and whether this is for real, or simply a diversion. We’ll work from the opposite direction, try to locate Wilde.” There was a note in Moreno’s voice that was readily understood—make sure Montclair isn’t trying to buy time.
Ethan didn’t react visibly, though a small wave of hopelessness passed through him. They all thought he was involved. All of them.
“Roger that.”
Graham hung up and faced Ethan.
“Start talking. I need to know everything you left out before.”
“What makes you think I left anything out?”
The cop looked annoyed. “Mr. Montclair, please don’t play games with me. I want to help you, and I want to find your wife unharmed. I have no agenda here. You called us for help. Help is what I’m offering. But you can’t keep holding back on me. Tell me the truth. What’s really going on here?”
“I am telling you the truth. I haven’t said a single thing that’s not true.”
“You also aren’t telling me everything, or else you wouldn’t have some random blogger trying to extort money from you. Spit it out.”
Ethan walked to the counter, ran his hand over the smooth surface. It had become a talisman for him now. All the fights, all the hurt feelings, over a stupid slab of stone. He was marked for life by it, and he should be. To let his marriage, his wife, slip away over such ridiculous things as ego and blame and emotionless sex branded him forever as a horrible man.
“I had an affair. Wilde found out. He’s threatened to make it public knowledge before. It wasn’t even a thing. I was drunk. I barely remembered it.” You sound like you’re making excuses. Stop. Be a man about it.
“Who was the affair with?”
“It was just...a woman. At a conference. We met in the bar. I was drunk. I made a mistake. It was stupid and senseless and careless of me. Sutton found out. Looking back, I wonder if Wilde tipped her off. I swore to her it was nothing, and we were finally getting things back on track.”
“You never asked how she knew?”
“Of course I did. She wouldn’t tell me. Wouldn’t talk to me at all, actually.”
“When was this affair?”
“More than a year ago. Before the baby died.”
“How did the blogger find out?”
“Supposedly, someone saw us in an elevator at the hotel and blabbed to him. We were kissing. At least that’s what I’m told.”
“You don’t remember this?”
“The evening is very, very blurry.”
“Do you often drink to forgetfulness?”
“Shouldn’t the question be—do I drink to forget? Because the answer to that is yes. Absolutely. As much and as often as I can. But that night...it sounds completely lame, but I really don’t remember it. Last thing I remember was having a steak and a glass of wine at the bar. I woke up in her bed. I was naked, she was naked. Draw your own conclusions. Everyone else did.”
“It explains why Wilde would try to blackmail you. Though if you admitted it to Sutton, the power he had over you was gone. Why try again now?”
Because I didn’t tell her the whole truth. “I don’t know. The last we heard from Wilde, he was claiming Sutton wrote my books.”
“And you think he’s trying to blackmail Sutton, too?”
“Sutton’s always been blameless in all of this. It was stupid of her to engage, but Wilde is the one who dragged it on and on. Maybe he did try to take advantage, and she didn’t tell me.”
“Not entirely blameless. She did light a bag of dog poop on fire on the reviewer’s doorstep. Thanks again for sending the video. That helped.”
Ethan shook his head. “I told you before, I didn’t send you anything.”
“You didn’t?” The cop’s voice was light. “Are you entirely sure, Mr. Montclair? Because as I mentioned before, I did receive the video in an email that traces back to your IP address.”
“Let me see the email.”
The cop was watching him like a hawk above a field, sharp and wanting. There was more, she was holding something back.
“Let me see it again,” he demanded.
“You’re telling me unequivocally you didn’t email me the video of your wife?”
“No, I didn’t. Why would I? What would it gain?”
“You’d be helping the investigation.”
“I’d be discrediting my wife, is more like it. Let me see it.”
Holly didn’t move.
“Please, Officer Graham. May I see the video again?”
Finally, she pulled out her phone. The email address was indecipherable. She queued it up. Ethan watched. When it finished, Graham said, “One problem. Your friend Ellen thinks it’s a fake.”
“What do you mean?”
She queued up the video again. “Ellen felt this wasn’t actually Sutton.”
“That’s crazy. You’d think I’d recognize my own wife.”
“Watch it again.”
He did. Closely. Raised his eyes to the clear hazel of the investigator’s who held his life in her hands.
“Bloody hell. Ellen’s right. It’s not her.”
WHEN ALL YOU KNOW IS FALSE
They played it back again, and again, until Ethan couldn’t see any vestiges of Sutton anymore.
“It’s not her. I can’t believe this. I need tea,” Ethan muttered, started preparing the water. “She wasn’t lying. She told the truth, and I didn’t believe her. I just didn’t look closely enough the first time you showed me.”
“Sutton denied doing this?”
“Sutton denied everything. She said she made one flip comment, and then her account was hacked. That everything that came after the first night was fake. I didn’t believe her. Why would I?”
“Because she was your wife?”
“My wife whom I was having problems with. God help me, I thought she was trying to gather attention, to pay me back for the affair. Aren’t I the arsehole?”
Graham pocketed her phone. She was very still. She’d stationed herself by the breakfast bar, watched him move around the kitchen. “Sir, I want to ask you something. Do you have any reason to believe your son’s death was something other than SIDS?”
The lid of the teapot clattered into place. “Sorry. Clumsy. You’ve been talking to the weird sisters, haven’t you?”
“Excuse me? Who?”
“Sutton’s group of friends. They don’t like me very much.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a bombastic serial cheater who belittled her and held her career back. Or hadn’t you heard?”
“Are you?”
“According to them. Her mother will say so, as well. What does the truth matter to a gaggle of women who don’t like a husband?”
“I haven’t been able to touch base with her mother.”
“Lucky you. She’s out of town. Canada, I think. When I told her Sutton was missing, she didn’t seem at all concerned. Told me I didn’t know her daughter and left for her trip.”
“That seems odd.”
“You don’t know Siobhan Healy. She’s no better than a spider—let her eggs hatch, find a wasp for them to feast on, then scurry away.”
“She and Sutton aren’t close?”
“Hardly. Sutton got the hell out the moment she was able to get a job and pay her own way. She hated one of the stepfathers with a passion, felt like Siobhan took his side over Sutton’s. She took off when she was sixteen.”
“One of the stepfathers?”
“Siobhan’s on hubby number four. She never married Sutton’s real father, he was a one-night stand. Sutton never knew him. She grew up hard, my wife. There was a new man every couple of years. They moved around a lot. She finally got fed up and bailed. There’s something...”
“Yes?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
“Everything you can tell me is helpful, Mr. Montclair.”
“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. Something happened when she was a kid. I have no idea what it was. Siobhan is tight-lipped, and Sutton won’t even acknowledge it. She always keeps a rock-solid wall up about her childhood.
“She slipped once, when we were first dating. We were out for a night on the town, at a restaurant in downtown Nashville. A group of people came in, men and women, our age. Looked like they’d come from a big event, they were in evening attire, tuxes, and long gowns. Sutton turned white, and insisted we leave. When I asked what was wrong, she clammed up. She made it to the car before she started to cry. She wouldn’t tell me why, or who had upset her, but when I asked if it was someone from her past, she said yes, but wouldn’t tell me any more. I tried for a week to get her to open up, but she wouldn’t. My wife is a vault when she wants to be, Officer Graham. Her mother’s right. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever really knew her at all.”
He poured out the tea, handed the cop a fresh cup. She declined the fake milk and sugar, took it straight.
“I’ll take a look, see if there’s anything she was involved in that might show up. And, Mr. Montclair, her friends aren’t as unkind to you as you think they are. They are very concerned for her well-being, yes, but so far, no one’s pointing any fingers. There is another odd thing that’s cropped up, though. The password on her laptop.”
“I love Ethan Montclair. Trite.”
“No, that wasn’t it. It was Ethan killed our baby.”
He set the cup carefully on the marble. “Wait. What?”
“The password you provided didn’t get us into your wife’s computer. We had to crack it on our own, and what we found was that accusation.”
“But the notebook, I logged in myself—bollocks. I am so confused.” Ethan set his head in his hands. His voice was soft. “We fought so badly when Dashiell died. We both accused the other of negligence, carelessness, of letting it happen. Accusations that would never have come up if Dashiell hadn’t... Trust me, Officer Graham. I didn’t kill our son, and neither did my wife. His death was a terrible, awful tragedy, and it tore us apart. But we loved him, more than we loved each other, maybe. Hurting him isn’t something either of us could do.”
“I believe you,” Graham said. “But it seems Sutton was sending a message. Could she be try
ing to get you in trouble, Mr. Montclair?”
A huge sigh, relief spreading through his body. “I can’t imagine why she would. She didn’t hate me that much. But Wilde? Wilde is responsible. Wilde is behind this. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I don’t think my marriage was so far gone that my wife would try to set me up.”
Graham nodded. “Obviously the idea of a third party makes this theory very compelling. A blackmail attempt colors the whole investigation.”
“I tried to buy him off. He set up a meet and didn’t show. He’s playing games.”
“You should have told me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“When was this?”
“Earlier tonight. He was just poking me, torturing me.”
“Where were you supposed to meet?”
“Right outside the city limits. He never came. Something’s happened to her. I know it. No one believes me.”
He sounded petulant now, and the cop eyed him like he was a weak, ridiculous child, whining because he couldn’t get a piece of candy in line at the grocery. She took a deep breath, blew it out her nose.
“Mr. Montclair, I believe you. And I have to say, I am starting to agree with you. Something has happened to your wife. We need to change focus, start actively searching for her. We’re currently tracing the calls to your house and cell. We’ll be very discreet, but we’re going to have to get someone in here to guide you in how to talk to Wilde if he calls or texts again. If he’s telling the truth, and he knows where Sutton is, she could very easily be in danger.”
The relief he felt was enormous. Relief, and a new fear. “I think that’s rather clear-cut already, don’t you?”
“I will admit something doesn’t add up. An email you claim you didn’t send, a password different from what you knew. A thwarted blackmail attempt. The woman in the video not being your wife. I’ll take it all to my boss and lay it out for him. And if Wilde calls again, you keep him on the phone as long as you possibly can.”
“Officer Graham? Is it possible for passwords to be changed remotely?”
Lie to Me Page 14