“Threatening her how?” I asked.
“Blackmail? She knew something, I guess.” Lena looked up. “I don’t know what, I swear. I just saw one of the emails over her shoulder one day because I went hunting for her to ask about a math problem. She clicked it right off when I asked what it was, and she wouldn’t say anything about it no matter how hard I pressed. I told her it was horrible, that Stella had forgiven her and everything, and I asked her how could she, but she just sat there and shook her head.”
“And you’ve never asked Stella about it?”
“I was afraid it’d upset her if she knew I knew, and I don’t really know anything except what I just told you.”
“Tenley didn’t give any indication why she was doing this?”
Lena shook her head. “Sorry.” Her eyes said she wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
I nodded, pinching my lips together. “Thanks for your time.”
Graham handed Rachel a card. “If she remembers anything else, please have her give me a call? My cell number is on the back.”
Graham and I were quiet for several blocks, I suspected turning over very different takeaways from that conversation. I liked the silence, though. Easier to think, and I didn’t have to pretend to entertain his theory that Tenley had started using, gotten so desperate for money she was blackmailing the wheelchair-bound gymnastics coach, and decided she could fly. Until Graham had an explanation for somebody hacking at the poor girl after she jumped, I wasn’t listening.
Someone else was with Tenley when she died. Someone who knew her pretty well. And if she was really blackmailing Stella, I couldn’t trust a word of the story Stella had given me the day before.
“This is getting more complicated the further we dig.” Graham ran one hand through his close-cropped hair. “This girl was into secrets. If she had something on the gymnastics coach, and the woman was tired of paying her to keep her mouth shut . . .”
“It’s sure got me wondering about the accident the two of them were in.” I stopped in the parking lot behind Graham’s cruiser. “Any idea if Tenley’s phone was found at the scene?”
“I can find out. You take the accident report, I’ll check evidence?”
I nodded, the same creeping dread I’d felt walking out of the gym yesterday sending my skin crawling right up my arms. Was Stella Connolly’s secret the kind worth killing for, too?
20
It happened at 2:33 on a Thursday morning.
That was the first thing that jumped off the accident report at me.
I grabbed a pen and pulled my notebook from my back pocket.
Where was a teenage girl going in the middle of a school night? I put a star by the question and kept scrolling, wondering about my chances of talking to the Richardson boy again. I remembered high school pretty well, and I’d bet my last smoke Tenley hadn’t told her parents where she’d really been. The BFF was definitely a better source for that kind of truth.
I kept scrolling. No evidence of intoxication on the part of driver A, according to the officer’s narrative. Driver A said she glanced at her GPS screen and ran the stop sign at the southwest corner of Westlake and Redbud. Driver B was transported to University Medical Center with severe trauma to her lower extremities. Driver A admitted fault at scene, could not produce license. Called father from accident scene.
GPS screen. I scribbled that, too, then saved the document to my laptop in case I needed it again.
So. Two years ago, Tenley Andre, who only had a learner’s permit, was going somewhere she didn’t know how to get to in the middle of the night on a Wednesday. By herself.
So many things weird about that I didn’t know how to list them all. But my gut said there’d been big stuff going on with Tenley. Maybe stuff that got her killed. It was the which thing and the how that my gut lacked a bead on just yet.
I clicked over to the county court site and searched for the case. A crash like that was more than enough grounds for a reckless-driving charge, but I had a hard time with the idea that Stanford was taking a golden girl with a record on a full sports scholarship. That only seems to happen in football.
The computer flashed a No results found for Tenley’s name. I clicked the report back up on my screen and copied the date, moving back to the court search box. Before my hand stopped.
Wait.
Permit. Because Tenley wasn’t sixteen yet.
Fifteen. Tenley was fifteen two years ago. Did Jim say she was seventeen when he started the postmortem this morning? I closed my eyes.
Yep. He did.
Which meant I subtracted my way to the wrong birth year when I’d tried to crack Erica’s phone.
I stood to go fetch the thing from the truck, and mine buzzed on the desk next to my laptop. I flipped it over. Austin area code, number I didn’t recognize.
“Faith McClellan,” I said, putting the phone to my ear.
“Hi Miss—Officer—um. Ranger McClellan? This is Erica Andre. We met at Marshall High yesterday?”
“Of course, Mrs. Andre.” I knew better than to ask how the woman was doing. I had come to despise that question after Charity died. How the fuck do you think I’m doing? Don’t you know somebody killed my big sister? That’s what I’d wanted to scream. Every time. But of course that would never do. The governor would’ve had me locked up for the rest of forever over such an outburst.
“What can I help you with today?” I asked Erica.
“I seem to have misplaced my handbag yesterday, of all the stupid things, and I’m hoping I left it in your truck, because I’m down to my last place to look for it.” Erica’s voice was bright on the surface, but I caught the frailty in the depths. Sunshine and normalcy two breaths from shattering into a million tiny pieces.
“I do have it,” I said. “I was planning to bring it by to you today, but I didn’t want to call so early.” True. I just didn’t say it was because I wanted a look into her phone.
Erica sighed. “Thank God. Can I meet you somewhere and pick it up? It feels a bit like missing an arm, not having my phone.”
“Of course. Or I can drop it by to you if that’s better.”
“We’re not home right now,” Erica said. “We’re getting coffee and discussing . . .” She paused so long I thought the call had dropped. I pulled the phone away from my head and the screen lit up. Still connected. “Arrangements,” Erica said finally.
Ah.
“Whatever is convenient for you, ma’am.”
“Could you hold for one moment?”
“Sure.”
I stood, closing the laptop, and shoved the notebook back in my pocket before I grabbed my keys. I wanted a last crack at the phone before I had to give it back. Didn’t want to let the magic rock slip through my fingers because of policy.
“Can you meet us at Lola Savannah? Anytime in the next half hour or so would be fine,” Erica said in my ear.
That was ten minutes away, tops, which gave me at least a few to try my new passcode theory. Perfect. “Of course.”
“Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver.”
I shook my head at her word choice. Not usually, but I tried to make up for it by getting justice for the ones that had needed saving.
“See you soon, Mrs. Andre.” Touching the “End” circle on the screen, I tossed a five on the dresser for the maid on my way out the door.
My phone buzzed again as I punched the elevator button. Graham: Phone is in the evidence locker at TCSO. It’s fingerprint locked. Photo of her and the wrestler kid on the wallpaper.
Outstanding.
I stepped into the elevator, typing. Can you check it out? 12 hours?
Buzz. Why?
I just want a crack at it. What if the answer is sitting in your evidence room in a little electronic box?
The elevator doors opened onto the lobby as his reply came through.
Buzz. There are rules about this stuff. And they change all the time.
I’ll be careful, I tapped. Really, why d
id it matter to anyone whether I got into the phone’s data today or the cyber guys did it three weeks from now? It didn’t as far as I could see, except the trail was a whole lot hotter today. Well. Trails. But that was exactly why I needed the phone. Maybe it would help me figure out which was the hottest.
By the time I made it to the truck, the computer search I hadn’t gotten to finish had gone completely out of my head.
21
Erica’s phone screen popped right to life when I typed in Tenley’s birthday with the correct year.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Give me something.”
I clicked the contacts first, looking for the track coach. Found him. Selected the text icon and followed that to the thread.
Nine messages in twelve months, all of them about Tenley’s training.
So maybe the weird vibe between Simpson and Erica did mean the coach was involved with the girl. Might be a good idea to mention the guy to dad and see what kind of reaction I got.
Email? I touched the blue button and scrolled. Lots of messages. Lots of names on the return addresses I recognized.
Including my mother’s.
I stared at my last name on Erica’s screen for way longer than I should have.
Why was Erica Andre getting emails from my mother? And for the love of God, why did I care so much?
I kept scrolling. I might not be sure what was going on with Tenley and her family, but I knew that I knew Ruth McClellan had nothing to do with it. She despised drama. Wouldn’t even get within field-goal range of a production this big. Which meant reading that was nothing but an invasion of privacy. I couldn’t.
A dozen messages down, I found a thread from Stella Connolly.
That one, I was happy to click on.
“‘Tenley has more than repaid you, and God knows we’ve given you enough money,’” I muttered as my eyes skimmed the newest message. “‘I’m not sure you understand who you’re screwing with here, so let me make it clear: I’m not what I appear to be, and I will do anything for my daughter. Leave my family alone, or sit by and watch your life become an utter dumpster fire.’”
Holy shit.
I’m not what I appear to be. I stared at those letters until they were seared onto my retinas. Maybe Erica was bluffing, talking big to jettison a blackmailer.
I clicked one message up. From [email protected], three weeks ago yesterday: If you want your perfect golden child to keep her perfect golden crown, you will transfer another 2500 to the account on file by midnight Friday.
The blazing pink-purple crepe myrtle on the other side of my windshield went fuzzy; my eyes unfocused as the variables of this fragmented equation shifted yet again: Stella didn’t drop the charges against Tenley out of the goodness of her heart, or to give a “broken” kid a new friend. She did it because the Andres paid her off.
And it looked like she got greedy.
Of course. I should’ve gotten there faster. Second rule of a homicide investigation: always find and follow the money. But how much money? And what could Stella possibly do to hurt Tenley? I looked back at the message. Ticked back through a day and a half of random witness interviews. Everyone knew Tenley hit Stella and paralyzed her; that wasn’t a secret.
So what else did Stella know? And how did this trail work, exactly—was Tenley blackmailing Stella because she knew Stella was shaking her parents down? Why wouldn’t she just blackmail her into leaving Erica and Brent alone? It didn’t fit. There had to be another variable at play here that I couldn’t see yet.
Bank records. But that would require a warrant. To be legal, anyway.
Later.
Right now my time with this phone was ticking away. I had to take it back to Erica.
So I kept scrolling through emails.
Nothing else jumped. Back to texts.
Found a thread with Tenley. I pulled it up and scrolled, but there wasn’t much. Five fashion memes, a link to a news story about Governor Holdsthwaite’s new child bride redoing the mansion that made my nose wrinkle regardless of how I felt about my parents, and a few When are you coming home? type messages.
I started to touch the return arrow, then paused. The When are you coming home? texts weren’t in blue bubbles. It wasn’t Erica asking when her kid was coming home.
It was Tenley looking for her mom.
Huh.
Clock check. Drop dead for meeting Erica’s half-hour window was in three minutes.
Back to the list of message threads, this time with a mission. Where was dad?
I had to scroll pretty far: Erica hadn’t texted her husband in more than five months. And the last one had been deleted; the most recent date on the thread I pulled up was September twenty-ninth, but iPhones have this funny quirk where if a text is deleted, it goes out of the conversation screen, but the time stamp on the main messages preview window stays with the last message, even after it’s gone. Deleting a whole exchange is the only way to get rid of that.
So what did Erica and Brent text about on November twelfth that she didn’t want to look at anymore? Maybe nothing important. A Christmas gift for Tenley. A holiday card proof. But still—so many questions with these folks.
I pulled out my notebook and scribbled a few big ones, still wishing for just one answer.
Double-clicking the home button to put the windows back the way I found them, I noticed another familiar name on the text screen.
Nicky.
Clock.
Time to go.
Damn.
I touched the messages once more, hit Nicky’s name, and crossed my fingers and toes.
November eighteenth: Something’s wrong with T.
Erica never replied.
What the hell?
I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, cranked the key, and pointed the truck toward Sixth Street.
Deleted texts, an unanswered alert, under-the-table payoffs. Mrs. Andre was not all sweetness and Botox and perfect hair.
Supermom had some secrets of her own.
Time to see if I could pry a few of them loose.
22
Erica and Brent Andre were fighting.
Not the sort of chilly-voiced, barb-filled fight my parents excelled at, either—these people were cage-matching it up in the middle of Tarrytown’s hippest coffeehouse, oblivious to the gawkers catching every screech on their smartphone cameras.
Shit.
I stopped in the doorway as Erica jumped to her feet, knocking her chair over backward. “For fuck’s sake, Brent, you’d have people think I’m advocating tossing my baby in a hole in the backyard!” Her stomping foot rattled the cups lining the top of the copper espresso maker behind her. “Tenley despised the dark, and you know it. Given the choice between ashes and darkness, she’d take the ashes.”
“It’s barbaric,” Brent Andre’s half shout was rough. “You can’t burn her. I won’t have it.”
I puffed a short breath out toward my hairline. Without knowing how long they’d been like this, I wasn’t sure I could stop the video footage from going viral. But I could give it my best shot. That was something I could do to help them today.
Two long strides put me at Erica’s trembling elbow. I laid two fingers on her arm, holding up her purse when she swung furious eyes on me. “Mrs. Andre,” I said, keeping my voice even and light. “Can I get you anything?”
“A less fucking pigheaded man to deal with as I try to lay my child to rest would be great,” she snapped, the words flying out like daggers before her eyes widened. I felt her sharp breath in, even through the light contact with her forearm.
Her “oh,” was much softer, her back and shoulders straightening. “Officer. Thank you so much for coming.”
Just like that, she was back in control, the mask I’d seen when she first stepped into the office at Marshall the day before settling over her features.
The crowd shifted. Phones returned to pockets and purses and tabletops. A barista watched for thirty seconds or so and decided
the cease-fire would hold, then scuttled around the counter to right Erica’s seat.
Mr. Andre didn’t look up, his frame folded into a chair, face buried in his hands. Erica took her purse and tried to smile. I gestured to the counter and repeated my offer. “Can I get you anything?” I asked.
She shook her head, sinking back into the black plastic chair. “Thank you.”
I took the seat between them, leaning back and relaxing my posture to invite ease. Body language sounded like hogwash to me once upon a time, until I’d noticed it was the governor’s single most powerful personal weapon. He wielded it like a master, plying everyone around him to his will. I wasn’t into the whole puppeteer thing, but it had turned out to be damned handy when I wanted folks to talk to me.
“I’m not going to ask how you’re doing,” I said, shifting my eyes between them as Brent sat up. Jesus. His swollen, scarlet-rimmed, and bloodshot eyes and lengthening scruff would have convinced me he was on the fourth day of a three-day bender if I didn’t know better.
“Have you found any leads?” he croaked.
I seesawed one hand back and forth. “Nothing that will get us a warrant yet, but we are pursuing a few different avenues,” I said. “If you’re up for it, I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Anything we can do to help.” Erica sounded rushed, but her shoulders and hands stayed relaxed. “Thank you for coming to return my bag. It might make today slightly easier.”
I nodded like that was actually true. It wasn’t. Nothing would make these people have an easy day for a while yet. Which was why it was best for me to swan dive right in.
“I hate that I have to sit here and ask you questions today,” I said. “But the most difficult thing about my job is that I’m flying blind most of the time. I didn’t know Tenley, but I need to learn her deepest secrets in short order if I’m going to be of any help to y’all.”
“We understand, Officer,” Brent said. “Of course. Anything you want to know.”
Fear No Truth Page 14