by Jeff Abbott
Even with Andy possibly cheating her, she was trying to protect him. He was family. “We’ll see,” Mariah said. She walked out the door.
50
MARIAH DROVE BACK to Julie and Andy’s house. Andy’s car was gone, but Julie’s was there. She thought this was the last action Andy would expect her to take. The money was still in the back of her car.
Mariah had on a jacket, and she had moved the baton to her waist, tucked in the small of her back. She didn’t want to aim a gun at Julie. She didn’t think it would be necessary.
Julie opened the door, shock on her face. “What?” She looked flustered.
“Where’s Andy?”
“I can’t talk right now,” and she started to slam the door and Mariah put her foot and shoulder into it. She forced the door open and Julie backed into the small foyer.
“Mariah, what is your problem!”
“Why are you messaging on Faceplace with a dead girl?”
Julie went silent.
“Penny Gladney.”
Her mouth narrowed. “I don’t really know who that is.”
“Penny Gladney is dead. Bethany’s family is connected to her death. Someone is using her name. I think it could be Bethany.”
“How do you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter. If I think this relates to my mother’s case, I’m going straight to the police. They will turn your and Andy’s lives upside down, and I don’t think you want that with thousands of dollars in unexplained cash in your house.”
Julie’s face paled. She took another step back.
“Mommy?” Her little boy, Grant, came into the den, holding a Star Wars figure.
“Sweetie, hi,” Julie said, mom mode slipping into her voice. “What’s the matter?”
“Can I have some juice?”
“Sure.” She turned and went into the kitchen. Grant stared at Mariah like Who are you?
Mariah knelt down, feeling the baton shift in her back, wishing now she hadn’t brought a weapon. There was a child here.
“I don’t know who that is,” she said, pointing at the action figure.
He explained who the action figure was, that he was going to be a Jedi warrior, and that he had several other action figures but sometimes he left them outside and Mom got mad because they were “spensive.”
“Here’s your apple juice, baby. Go back to your room and play, OK?” Julie handed him a juice box.
“Can she play with me?” He pointed at Mariah.
“Not right now. She’s about to leave,” Julie said.
Grant said, “Bye.”
Mariah said, “Bye, sweetheart.”
Grant went down the hall with his juice. He stopped at the stairs and waved a goodbye to Mariah. She waved back, and he went into his room and shut the door, as if he knew an adult argument was brewing.
“You are leaving now,” Julie said in a hiss, “and don’t bring your crazy self to my house again. I tried to help you, and this is the thanks I get?”
“I don’t think you’ve wanted to help me as much as watch me and make sure I didn’t find out anything about you all. The money. Where is it from?”
“What money are you talking about?”
“The duffel bag under your son’s bed.”
Five seconds and Julie kept the controlled expression on her face. “Claudette doesn’t trust banks. We keep it for her.”
“Under your own son’s bed.”
“A burglar wouldn’t think to look under a kid’s bed for money like that.” Julie’s voice was quiet.
“Don’t protect Andy. He’s not worth it. He was sleeping with Lizbeth Gonzales at work. He is involved with Sharon. I saw him kiss her in her house.”
Julie laughed, disbelief contorting her face. “Andy. And Mrs. B. Sure. Right.”
“He has been involved with her for a long time. Since he was a teenager.”
Julie’s eyes widened. Mariah knew she’d landed a punch. “He wasn’t hanging out there in high school and later for Bethany. He was there for Sharon. I think maybe he blackmailed her into it. He knows something about Hal Blevins’s suicide, and it was leverage over her.”
“Get out of my house,” Julie said. But Mariah could see something in her eye, the dawning of realization, of possibility. Julie averted her gaze to the floor, put the back of her hand against her mouth.
“Penny Gladney. Who’s using her name? Is she Bethany?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Her voice lowered. She seemed shaken. She was flushed. “You cannot go to the police. You cannot. This is all Andy. It has nothing to do with me or Grant. You will ruin our lives.”
She was scared of jail. Of being taken from her child. Mariah stared at her. “Bethany’s life was ruined. You were supposed to be her best friend.”
Julie bit her lip.
“Does this…Penny contact you in any other way?”
“She only communicates through the page. And not often. I don’t know her. I just give the message to Andy.”
“What kind of message?”
“She wants to know what Jake is doing, if he’s paying back what Bethany stole. What Sharon is doing—if she’s suffering, if she’s miserable. Sometimes I see it’s a message from her and Andy reads it, not me.”
“Does she ask about anyone else?”
“No. Not to me.”
“Contact her. Ask her where we can meet her.”
Julie didn’t move and Mariah took a step forward. “Now.”
Julie turned and went to her computer. Went to the FIND BETHANY page. Wrote a message to Penny Gladney: I need to see you. Where can we meet?
The answer came back quickly: No way.
Julie wrote: There is a problem. I have to see you. Andy in trouble.
No answer for a minute, and then said: I’ll contact you later. It’s not safe right now.
Safe? Mariah wondered.
Julie wrote: No, now. NOW.
Silence.
Julie typed: Andy is in serious trouble. We have to talk face to face.
Silence.
“Tell me your login,” Mariah said. Julie did. Mariah logged into Faceplace via her phone’s browser as Julie, so she’d see the reply as soon as it came. “If you warn her, I will call the police and I’ll make sure you and Andy are both arrested. If you stay on the sidelines, you’ll be fine.”
“Please think of my son, please, Mariah…”
“I don’t want to separate you from your child. I know what that is like. Julie, you got into a bad situation. Get out of it. Andy is not worth this.”
Julie pressed her fist against her mouth, and Mariah walked out the door.
Penny Gladney was just a name, a ghost from the past.
Maybe “Penny” was Bethany, hiding behind a name designed to punish her mother.
Or maybe she was the other ghost in the story: Lizbeth Gonzales, who Andy had conveniently made it hard to find, who withdrew from life after Bethany disappeared.
* * *
From her window, Julie watched Mariah heading to her car. She typed onto the laptop, still signed into Faceplace messaging with Penny Gladney: Penny. a woman named Mariah is looking for you. She made me write you.
I understand, the message came back.
She’s logged in as me.
Understood, the reply came. Then that brief burst of messages winked from existence, gone, deleted on Penny’s side while Mariah was not looking at her phone and starting up her car.
Julie watched Mariah drive off. Bethany had been a real disappointment as a friend, stealing that money and blaming Andy, the man Julie had always loved and finally won. Julie was all for women sticking together until she wasn’t, and she wasn’t about to tolerate someone hurting Andy. Bethany had screwed up her life. She wasn’t going to drag Andy, and in turn Julie, down with her.
Julie went to go check on her little boy, hold him, sit with him on his bed and not think about the money. Andy would fix it. He always had.
51
THE WOMAN HAD suggested she and Reveal meet on the route he’d take to the airport. As beautiful a city as Austin was, the stretch of highway closer to the airport was full of mobile home dealers, warehouses, and industrial use. Reveal saw the sign for a company in one of the industrial parks that distributed light fixtures and it was the address she’d given him. He turned into the parking lot.
Reveal had plenty of time to make his flight, and if he told the producers in LA that he was breaking open a case that had stymied the police, they’d push back the meeting. He hoped. This was a gamble, and he felt that all his ambitions and dreams were hanging in the balance for the next ten minutes.
No cars in the back of the lot. That was odd. He went to the door; it was unlocked. Lights out. Fear crept up his spine, but ambition pushed him forward. “Hello? It’s Reveal. I’m here.”
A woman’s voice: “Oh, hey, thanks for coming! I’m back here, sorry I forgot to turn the lights on. Just catching up on paperwork.”
She sounded so casual. He could see a gleam of light back down the hallway, which ran parallel to the warehouse space.
“That’s OK,” he called back. He walked to the lit office.
Stopped in the doorway, stared. Blinked in surprise. Narrowed his gaze at the figure standing, waiting for him in the room.
It took him a moment, it was so unexpected.
“You,” he said.
“Me.”
And then jarring, sharp pain, again and again. He didn’t know how long it lasted. He thought of his parents, and the team in Hollywood, and then Mariah. Oh Mariah. Then he felt the prick of a needle in his neck and all his ambitions and hopes and dreams fell into the darkness.
52
IS IT TRUE?” Claudette sat behind the desk when Andy walked in. He could hear laughter down the hallway, a dispatcher and a trucker in the break room.
He tried the smile that always worked. She didn’t smile back.
“What…is what true, Aunt Claudette?”
“That you, not Bethany, embezzled the money from me.”
“Of course it’s not…”
She held up a hand before he could finish. “Don’t finish a sentence that’s a lie, boy. Not to me.”
He stopped talking.
“Clever,” she said. “You frame Bethany for the theft. You make a deal where we don’t prosecute her and her husband, who doesn’t want bad publicity before his company goes public, ‘restores’ the money to us in small cash increments that don’t get noticed. Along with extra for you and Julie, as a handling fee, and for your silence. So, you pocket the first fifty thousand, and get the scared millionaire to repay even more for your silence, and only some of that cash has made it back to me and my company so far. Do I have it right?”
His mouth worked. “If you will let me explain, Aunt Claudette…”
“It’s clever. It’s actually cleverer than I gave you credit for. I know that scatterbrain Julie didn’t come up with it. And you’re not a planner, Andy. You’re more a dumb opportunist. Maybe that little temp you were screwing, she might have the brains for this.” Her tongue tented her cheek. “I could see the two of you cooking up a scheme. The problem is you’ve impacted me. You’ve dragged us into this and any police investigation. And you’ve made a crazy girl think we had something to do with her mama going missing.” She gestured to the trucks outside. “And I really don’t want the police sniffing around all my trucks, Andy.”
“I’ve taken care of everything.”
“If you had truly taken care, then I wouldn’t have that crazy girl in here with pictures of cash in a duffel bag, what might be my money. You stole from me.”
“I…”
“After all I’ve done for you. This burns, Andy, and I don’t like feeling burned. I don’t like the idea of handing over the company to you if you just create messes.”
“There is no mess.”
“There won’t be.” Her voice was ice. “You’re going to fix this. Get rid of this Mariah. I don’t want to ever see her here again. And whoever helped you steal this money, shut them up. I don’t like loose ends. Avoiding them is how I’ve gotten to my ripe old age.”
“Aunt Claudette…”
“Not your aunt. Not until you’ve made this right, Andrew. And neither is this company. For years I’ve watched you smile and charm your way through life. And be impulsive. I thought working here would settle you down. I was wrong. I’ve got a phone call into my lawyer to change the will, to strip you of this birthright if you don’t straighten yourself up. This is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, and you’ve risked it for what? Quick cash to keep your limber girlfriend happy and live beyond your means. There’s a reason I don’t live in a vulgar style. I put the money back into the company, and I don’t attract attention from the police or the authorities. Our…other clients admire that about me. Be like me. Not like Julie, not like you. It’s time, boy, for you to grow up. Am I understood?”
He took a step toward, only wanting to plead his case. And then she raised the gun from under the desk.
“Aunt Claudette…”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of. Did you kill Bethany?”
“No…no, I wouldn’t.” He had gone pale.
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“I have a suspicion. But I don’t know for sure,” he said slowly.
She held up a hand. “I do not want to know. But I also do not want you being an accessory after the fact. So you need to clean up this mess so it can’t ever be pointed back at us. Do you understand?”
Andy took another step forward. “I just want you to know I am so sorry…”
“Stop. Not another step. I don’t want to hear your sweet words. They have ceased to work on me. I’ll shoot you in the leg if you threaten me. And Carlos and Dave are down the hall, and I’ve told them already to be ready to beat the living tar out of you and put you in the hospital if you cross me. They’re loyal to me, if my own nephew isn’t.”
“I would never,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken.
“I’m glad. I don’t want to shoot you. Now. Go fix your mess, and then we can talk again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Andy turned and he left.
Claudette watched him. She put the gun back in the desk. She wiped away a tear that had formed in her eye. She opened up the new issue of People and tried her best to focus on the words. These actors today, all polish, no depth.
53
MARIAH CHECKED THE Faceplace page…still no answer from Penny Gladney. But now she had an address in Lakehaven that was tied to Lizbeth, thanks to the Ahoy Transportation file. She drove to the address for Bill Gonzales.
It was a large, older home, with a detached garage and what looked like an apartment above it. It was on a quiet side street, with many towering oaks. One house was being torn down and a McMansion rising in its stead—she parked close to it, where she could still see the Gonzales house. She went to the door and rang the doorbell. No answer.
She went back to her car. She could wait. She internet-searched Bill Gonzales. He owned a number of lighting fixture wholesalers, in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. There wasn’t much else about him. She guessed from the house that he’d done well for himself.
She realized she hadn’t yet done an important task: checking her mother’s calendar from September 4, the day that Bethany Curtis boarded a flight to Houston and vanished.
She slid the flash drive with her mom’s records into the laptop and opened up her mother’s calendar and email files.
On September 4, her mother had an eight a.m. sales meeting with a client at their office in Austin. Then she had a lunch meeting with a product team, and then other meetings at two and four, both in-house.
So she wasn’t in her office that morning. She could have met Bethany.
She went to her mother’s email, and searched on September 4. She had received four dozen emails in the course of the day. Mariah scanned through th
em. Most were internal to her company: a discussion on how to close a big deal that was looming, a product feature request.
There was no email from Bethany or from any suspicious account.
She searched the week before, the week after. It took a while. Salespeople got a lot of emails. Nothing.
She went to the Sent folder. Searched the same, nothing.
Then she saw the Drafts folder. Opened it up. Her mother was apparently a great one for starting emails and then saving them in case she needed them again as she redrafted her sales proposals, her responses to execs who wanted to know why sales numbers were down, and her diplomatically worded requests to the development staff to fix a bug or enhance a feature.
She started searching. On the morning of September 4, an email to a Gmail address with the letters bbc as part of the name:
Leave it for me in your mailbox. And I won’t look at it. And I won’t tell anyone. Where am I supposed to hide this? I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’ll stay quiet.
There wasn’t an email that matched this in the Sent file or in the Archive file. Mom must have deleted those but forgotten about this one. And the police hadn’t noticed this.
She sent a test email to the address. There was no bounceback. It was still out there. BBC. Bethany Blevins Curtis. The timestamp on the draft was at 9:05—she must have gotten out of her early client meeting and been getting ready to return to the office when Bethany emailed her.
Her mom didn’t send another email until 12:12, telling someone she was stuck in a lunch meeting and would call them back shortly.
So she’d had time, during the same two-hour window where no one had seen Bethany Curtis. Maybe not enough time to take Bethany to the airport, but enough time to retrieve something Bethany left for her.
And Bethany had asked to see her. How had Jake or the police missed this in their search for Bethany? She’d had an email account no one knew about. Or it had been wiped by the time Bethany was gone—perhaps by Bethany herself, as part of wiping out her trail. Both the police reports and Jake said she’d erased her computers.