Her brow wrinkled for a moment. “I’m not an IT expert, but I would assume if someone had managed to overtake a computer with a virus, then yes, that’s entirely within the bounds of reality.”
She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. Ethan wanted to weep. The touch was gentle, soft, opposite of everything he’d been getting for the past two days.
“We’ll figure it out, sir. I’ll be in touch.”
* * *
Holly believed him. Maybe she wasn’t a seasoned investigator yet, maybe she was being snookered. But damn if she didn’t believe him. Now she had to find a way to investigate Wilde without him knowing Ethan had shared the blackmail demand. It was definitely time for a seasoned detective to step in. She wasn’t about to blow this case, and there were suddenly more moving parts than she could handle alone. One thing she’d learned from her dad, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Holly had just gotten into her car when the phone rang. She put it on speaker as she put on her safety belt.
“Officer Graham? It’s Ivy Brookes.”
“Hello, Ms. Brookes. What can I do for you?”
“Could you come by the house? I have some more information I need to share.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute. I’m close.”
“Yes, you are.”
The phone went dead. What was this about?
A CHANGE OF HEART
Holly was at Brookes’s door five minutes later. Ivy looked pale and drawn. She didn’t offer refreshments, just stood with her arms wrapped tightly around her body, clearly distressed.
“Come in.”
The door shut behind her with a bang. “What’s wrong, Ms. Brookes?”
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“I’m all ears,” Holly said.
Brookes was pacing now, walking the short length of her apartment with staccato steps. “Ethan killed her. I’m sure of it.”
“Why? Why the change of heart? Last time we talked, you seemed to think Sutton was the one who’d orchestrated this week’s drama.”
“I was trying to protect Sutton. To protect them both. They’ve been through so much. At first, when he told me she was gone, I really thought Sutton was just playing with him, punishing him. But now, I’m truly starting to think he hurt her, and I can’t stay silent any longer.”
“Go on.”
“Look.” A lightweight silver laptop was on the counter. Brookes turned it around to show an email account. “I just received this. It came in a few days ago. For some reason, it got caught in my spam filter.”
“What is it?”
“An email from Sutton, dated Friday night. I was out of town on business. I had an away message on. I wasn’t checking email. I didn’t see this. If I had...”
The email was open. There was no greeting, just the stark words in black and white.
Really bad one tonight. He gets worse and worse. I think he’s going to kill me one of these days. If something happens to me, make sure they know who did it.
Holly felt a punch of adrenaline. Was everything Ethan Montclair had just told her a lie? Was he that good of an actor, that he could look her in the eye and create a story? He was a professional liar, after all, paid to create stories out of nothing. Was she that big of a dupe?
“Wow. Rather damning.”
Ivy nodded and closed the computer. “He was hitting her. It started soon after they moved into the house. That bloodstain on the counter? They say it was from blueberries but everyone knows the truth. He gave her a bloody nose. They were fighting over something stupid, and she mouthed off to him, and he punched her in the face. It wasn’t the first time. It definitely wasn’t the last.”
“Did you ever see him hurt her?”
“Not directly, no. But I’d see the aftermath. The bruises. You should look at her phone. There are photos. I used to make her take a picture after every incident. I wanted her to go to the police, to file charges against him. She never would. They kept it all a secret.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the abuse when I asked before?”
“Because if Sutton is alive, she will be furious with me for telling you. Like I said, it was a secret. I’m the only one who knew.”
“There were calls to the police, domestic calls, when they were fighting. It wasn’t that much of a secret.”
“The public face of abuse is very different than the private. Look at OJ and Nicole. No one wanted to believe that their hero was an obsessed narcissist who slit her throat.”
“Did Ethan know you knew?”
“I don’t know.” A small sob escaped Brookes’s lips. “This is why I called. The email, and... I’ve been getting strange phone calls the past few days. Hang-ups, from a number I don’t recognize. I’m worried.”
“Do you have the number?”
“Yes. I’ll write it down for you.”
“Do you think Ethan might try and hurt you?”
“Like he did Sutton?” A little gasp, her hand over her mouth. “I mean, we don’t know for sure that he has hurt her. But I can’t see any other truth. Think about it. He waited for hours to tell anyone she was gone—and that’s according to him. It was the weekend. She could have been gone for much longer. None of us saw her in the few days before she left. Her last email to me was on Friday. He could easily be lying about when she actually disappeared. Combined with the abuse, the fear—Sutton was constantly afraid of him—it’s frightening. Alarming, really.”
“I will admit, it was odd to show up to take the report and see he’d already hired a lawyer. It doesn’t help his case.”
Ivy blushed. “Um...that was my fault. He suggested it and I agreed it was a good idea. I was still protecting him, protecting them. At the time, I didn’t think Sutton was in danger, and I didn’t want him to be railroaded. Looking back, if he wasn’t guilty, he would have told me I was insane and not done it.”
“Can I see that number now?”
Ivy handed over her phone. Holly copied down the number.
“I’ll look into this, Ms. Brookes. See if I can trace who might be calling you. Would you please forward me the email Sutton sent on Friday? That will help.”
“Yes, I will.”
Holly caught the barest hesitation in her statement. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
Brookes’s eyes cast down. She planted her hands palms down on the counter, took a deep breath through her nose, let it out in a whoosh. “The baby.”
“Dashiell. He died last year, of SIDS, according to the autopsy report. They found no cause to think he was hurt by the parents.”
“I know what the autopsy said. But Sutton told me she thought Ethan killed the baby.”
The password. Ethan killed our baby.
“Why? Why did she believe this?”
Brookes stared at her a moment, assessing. She chewed her lip, which oddly made her look like a little girl, then held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared down the hallway, came back a few moments later, clutching something small in her hand. She presented it to Holly with all the grace of a cat depositing a dead mouse, practically threw it at her.
It was a bottle of liquid diphenhydramine.
“What’s this?”
“Sutton found it in the baby’s room. Hidden, in the closet, behind an old stack of clothes Dashiell had outgrown. They were getting ready to donate them. It’s generic Benadryl.”
“I’m not following, ma’am.”
“They didn’t test the baby for this.”
“I saw the autopsy report. There was nothing that indicated anything was amiss. SIDS does happen.”
“It didn’t in this case. Ethan gave the baby Benadryl to quiet him. They’d had a huge
fight, I already told you that. Sutton went out. Ethan couldn’t get the baby to stop crying. He dosed him, and it killed him.”
“The tox screen didn’t show that.”
“Then the tox screen wasn’t done properly. I watch those shows on television. I know you can do testing after the fact. You have tissue samples on file. Have them tested again. You’ll see. It was from this bottle. Sutton found it in the closet, and she gave it to me right away for protection.”
“It was hidden away?”
“Yes. And trust me, this is an anomaly. They don’t believe in drugs. They don’t believe in anything that isn’t totally pure, organic, healthy. The both of them are fitness nuts.”
“Except for the alcohol.”
“Everything in moderation. Sutton was never a big drinker. Ethan has food allergies. They were really clean. They’d never give the baby drugs. They barely take anything themselves.”
“I have a question.”
“Anything. Anything that will help find her. Anything that will stop him.”
“If he’s this horrible monster you portray, why stay friends with the man? You were the first one he called, right? You were there when the police arrived, giving moral support.”
Brookes’s eyes shone with tears. “I’m scared of what he might do if I try to pull away. I’ve had to keep an eye on them. I’ve been watching to make sure she was okay. It might not make sense to you, but I couldn’t come forward then. But I have to now. I can’t sit back any longer. He’s evil. I know he hurt her, just like I know he hurt the baby. Ethan is a showman. He’s a brilliant actor. I’ve always wondered...”
“What? Go on.”
Brookes started fiddling with an apple, left out on the counter, a snack interrupted. She was clearly debating something. Finally, she said, “I think Ethan was trying to drive Sutton mad. I am not a computer expert, so I have no way of tracking this down and proving it, but I think Ethan might have been the one who hacked Sutton’s account and was riling up the reviewer. I think he was the one who said all those horrible things.
“After Dashiell...he wanted to destroy her. He blamed her. Even if it was him who gave the drugs, he blamed her for leaving that night. For not wanting a child in the first place. For being who she was. He tried to conform her into his perfect little wife, but Sutton has a wild streak. She’s always fighting herself. She hated being tied down, and the whole concept of marriage and two point four kids and a dog was the opposite of what she ever wanted. Ethan was slowly strangling her.”
“Is there anyone who can corroborate this, Ms. Brookes?”
“Her mother will. They weren’t close, they fought all the time, but she’ll tell you. She’s always known Ethan for who and what he is. A tyrant.”
Brookes began to cry now, large tears gently rolling down her face. “I should have told you sooner. I was hoping she had just taken off for a few days to piss him off. But this doesn’t feel right to me. After that email... God, why didn’t I see it Friday, when I could have helped? I’m afraid for her, Officer Graham. Truly afraid.”
Holly nodded. “This is a huge help. Thank you for your honesty, for being willing to give up your friendship with the Montclairs to do the right thing. I will follow up on all of this, I swear. I will need you to come to the station and give a full report. On the record. Are you willing to do that?”
Brookes sighed and nodded. “Yes. I’m willing to go on the record.”
“Good. I’ll get that scheduled as soon as possible. In the meantime, limit your contact with Mr. Montclair. Do you have any trips planned? I know you travel quite a bit.”
“I’m going to stay right here until we find Sutton. Should we start organizing some sort of search?”
“I’ll get back to you on that. I’ve gotten a lot of information in the past hour. I need to go sort through it all and get my boss moving on a few things.” She pocketed her notebook. “We’ll find her, Ms. Brookes. I promise.”
The tears stopped. Brookes swiped a hand across her face. “I hope you do. Before it’s too late.”
“One last thing. Did you happen to make a call to my cell phone yesterday?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Though now that I see this email from Sutton, I wish I had.”
I’M COMING HOME, I’M COMING HOME
Then
“Ethan, come here!”
He hurried to the other side of the house, drawn by the urgency in her voice. She was in her office. No makeup, hair in a ponytail, spilling down her back. Feet bare, toenails polished red. She looked so young, so carefree. He couldn’t help the spike of love he felt when he saw her. Sometimes he forgot how things were now. For a moment, their reality fled away and he saw her with early eyes, the ones he had before their world went to hell.
“What is it, love?”
“That asshole Wilde is after me again.”
He bit back the sigh. This little drama was getting very old.
Sutton’s office was so empty now. Without the baby’s basket, it seemed practically frigid. They were in the first flush of winter, and the skies were gray and dreary. Looking closer, he could see Sutton was pale, black circles under her eyes. Neither of them slept well anymore. When had they slept together recently? He tried to think back to the luxurious warmth between her legs. It had been weeks.
He needed to rectify this. He needed to fix his marriage. They’d gone through hell and back, and if they had any hope of surviving, they needed to find one another again.
But all Sutton could focus on was some stupid online blogger who kept poking her crazy.
“You need to ignore him.”
“I have been. You know that. But now he’s attacking you.”
A rush of fury. And a little voice in the back of his mind... Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. “What? Let me see.”
The article was only two hundred words, very succinct. It was titled Who’s Really Writing Ethan Montclair’s Books?
“That bloody arsehole!”
“I know. We have to do something. This is defamation.”
Ethan skimmed the article again, enough to take away that Wilde was intimating it was Sutton who was writing Ethan’s books, from start to finish. That he had severe writer’s block, or maybe he’d plagiarized the first book, stole it completely from another author who wasn’t published, someone he’d come across in a writing class.
Rage filled him. His vision blackened, and it took a good five minutes before he could really hear Sutton. She was crying. That shook him from his state.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Let go of me!”
He looked down, realized he was gripping Sutton’s forearm so tightly her hand was turning white. He released her as if burned.
“Oh my God, Sutton. I am so sorry.”
She cradled her arm in her lap. There was going to be a bruise. It would be bad, too. Sutton was so easily damaged these days.
“You scared me. I thought you were going to hurt me. You grabbed my arm, and you wouldn’t let go. It’s turning black already. My God, Ethan.”
He threw his arms around her. “Baby, baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d never hurt you on purpose.”
But her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. She was cringing in her chair, pulling away.
He tried to stay calm. He stepped back, put some space between them. “Where would he get this idea? That you’re writing my books? That I plagiarized someone?”
“I have no idea. It’s preposterous. I mean, all I ever do is edit you, and that lightly. Accusing me of writing them is silly. Everyone knows you write your own books. You were a writer well before you met me. I’m going to put ice on my arm.”
“Let me get it for you.” He rushed to the kitchen, came back to see Sutton taki
ng a photo of the burgeoning bruise.
“What in the world are you doing?”
“I can’t see it properly. It looks like two fingerprints.”
“Here.” He handed her the ice, took the phone from her hand. “Move your arm to the right.” She did, and he snapped the picture. He handed her the phone. “See. It’s not as bad as you think.”
She stared at it.
“You should probably delete that. You don’t want the weird sisters to see it and get the wrong idea.”
“No one can tell what it is, it just looks like a smudge.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Come here.” This time she let him hug her. He arranged her on the small sofa, tucked the ice pack in around her arm. “Do you want some Advil?”
“No, the ice is fine.”
“I’m sorry Wilde is at it again. I think we should look at hiring someone to get him to back off.”
“A lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I see it takes him attacking you for you to take this seriously.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I should have been paying more attention. I’ve been having a lousy few weeks. The book’s not working. Hell, maybe you should start writing it for me. Kidding,” he said at her dark look. “Why don’t I give Joel a call, see if he can give us some advice.”
“I already talked to Joel, the last time Wilde acted up. He said we could sue but it’s going to take a lot of time and money, and without any proof that I didn’t post those notes, we’re going to have a—quote unquote—uphill battle to get a conviction.”
“But this is different, don’t you think?”
“Call him, then. Let’s hear what he has to say.” She took the ice off her arm, started poking at the bruise.
“Stop that. You’ll make it worse.”
“I was just seeing how much it hurts.”
“I’m sure it will hurt much less if you stop poking it.”
“Call Joel.”
“I am. Sutton...”
She looked at him with those blue-gray eyes, the smudges beneath hard as rain. There was no look of love or joy or acceptance in them. Of course not, he’d just hurt her, all she could be around him now was wary. They hurt each other all the time now, their words striking harder than slaps, the bruises deeper than broken blood vessels. They both knew how to use words, knew they were the greatest weapon of all.
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