“Those files I asked to see,” she said, “the ones for Lindy and Tyler—they’re missing,”
“Missing? Did you check?”
“I did. They’re not here. Do you have any idea why this is the case?”
“I don’t. We keep files on every student. They’re used to store teacher observations as well as counselor records. Even if those files are empty, they should still be there.”
“I’m looking at Dana’s laptop. Do you know the password?”
“Let me see . . .”
Maggie heard several clicks of a computer mouse, followed by the tapping of keyboard keys. Then Ellis came back on the line. “Helga.”
Maggie’s belly burned.
She hurried Ellis off the phone and then entered the password. The lock screen gave way to a blank desktop. No gazillion icons cluttering the screen. No unusual wallpaper to give psychologists a bone to gnaw on.
Maggie navigated to the Documents folder, scanning through what seemed like an endless list of internal memos and school curriculum material. Nothing leaping out at her. Everything work related and official.
She inspected the other Library folders, finding them either empty or containing default files.
She opened the email app, finding nothing but junk mail.
Even the trash can was empty.
It was as though, supernaturally, Dana had sensed her demise was on its way and cleaned everything out.
Did you know you were going to die? Maggie wondered as she closed the lid.
Steve and Maggie were headed south on the toll road when Loomis rang Maggie’s phone on FaceTime. Loomis had recently discovered the app, and video calling had quickly become his choice of communication when they were both off duty.
“Hey there, punch bag,” he said as his image came to life on the screen. He was in his sunny kitchen, a mug of coffee in hand. “How’s it going? Bruised ribs hurt like . . . fudge.”
“Fudge?”
“Small humans in the immediate vicinity.” He angled his phone so that she could see the twins sitting in their high chairs, spooning slop at everything except their mouths.
Loomis came back into the frame. “I just got off the phone with Smits. He wanted to know why I didn’t have a handle on what my partner was doing at three o’clock this morning.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him to go fudge himself.”
“For real?”
“Absolutely not. What do you think I got, Novak—a death wish?” He took a sip of coffee. “I told him you’re emotionally invested right now, and that because this case has a personal element, you’re supremely focused. So much so that it’s keeping you up at night.”
“It is.” She’d managed to grab less than a handful of hours’ sleep the whole weekend, and it was beginning to show. “Did Smits tell you everything about what happened at Cullen’s place?” she asked.
Both Loomis’s tone and his expression became less lighthearted. “You got lucky,” he said. “Next time you plan on a midnight excursion, call me first, okay? It’ll save us both from the earache.” He sipped coffee. “So what’s with this cash you found stashed in Dana’s running shoes? Escape or extortion?”
“The carry-on suggests escape,” she said. “But we found no travel documents in her purse, or accommodation reservations.”
“Staying with a friend covers that.”
“If you believe Cullen, she didn’t have any. The more I think about it, Loomis, the more I’m thinking she needed to settle a debt quickly, or satisfy a guilty conscience.”
“I like the way you think, Novak.”
“So do I,” Steve said.
“Please concentrate on driving,” Maggie said to him, and followed it with a smile. “What is clear,” she said to Loomis, “is that Dana didn’t need the cash in order to leave her husband. The money came from her own private account. It was hers already to do with as she pleased. She didn’t need to withdraw it to fund an escape.”
“Okay, then somebody was blackmailing her.”
“Possibly.”
“It could explain where she was going with all that paper stuffed in her kicks. To meet her blackmailer.”
Maggie nodded at Loomis’s image on the screen. She’d already given the exact thing some thought, but hadn’t been able to come up with a reason why somebody might be blackmailing Dana.
First impressions indicated she’d led a pretty humdrum life, consisting mainly of work and the occasional weekend runaway. Their search of the Cullen household hadn’t turned up any third-party demands for money, either from a blackmailer or from loan companies. No clipped communications put together out of newspaper headlines.
“If she was hoping to pay someone for their silence,” Maggie said, “it all went awry the moment she forgot the carry-on.”
“And that’s why the blackmailer killed her.” Loomis nodded. “It’s a nice theory, Novak. It means Cullen is innocent. But right now, other than the money you found, we’ve no reason to consider blackmail. By the way, I hear you clocked the Pruitt kid.”
Maggie touched the bruise on her chin. “Pretty sure it was him.”
“What do you think he was doing there?”
“Definitely looking for something. Right before I spooked him he was rummaging through kitchen cupboards.”
She saw Loomis snicker. “You know what teenagers are like, Novak. Their hungry switch is always on. Besides, it’s equally possible he was planting something.”
“Like what?”
“Like more incriminating evidence for starters. Fresh as the morning dew.”
“Which implies Tyler is the one framing Cullen, and therefore the killer.”
“Like I’ve been saying all along.”
“No, you haven’t. I know you, too, Loomis. You hedge your bets by saying everyone’s guilty until proven innocent. That way, you’re never wrong.”
His snicker came back. “Get the fudge outta here, Novak.”
“Anyway, after visiting the school, I’m thinking it could’ve been Tyler’s psych file he was looking for.”
“Whoa. Hold up. You were at the school? I thought you guys were headed to the beach?”
Steve leaned over. “We are. At least, I hope we are.”
“We are,” Maggie said. “It was just one small diversion; that’s all. Now, stop ganging up on me. I hate bullies.”
She proceeded to tell Loomis about her talk with Principal Ellis and her subsequent one-woman tour of Dana Cullen’s office.
“Turns out both files are missing,” she said. “I’m thinking Tyler’s may contain something he doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“Explains his breaking and entering.”
“But not how he knew the file wasn’t in her office.”
Loomis sipped coffee. “Any theories? I know how much you like them.”
“Only two, so far.”
“The day is yet young.”
“Either Tyler already checked the office and presumed she’d taken it home with her. Or he was there for a different reason.”
“Which brings us all the way back to him playing a part in Dana’s murder. And I hate to say it, Novak, but I told you so. I also have a third theory for you. The kid was there looking for the money you found.”
“Tyler blackmailed Dana.”
“Only to kill her when she showed up penniless.”
“Blackmail her over what exactly?”
“The affair she was having. Like you said to Cullen in his interview. All those weekends away from home. Very suspicious. Maybe Tyler bumped into Dana at one of those beach hotels. Figured the guy she was with wasn’t her husband. Threatened to tell Cullen if she didn’t meet his financial demands. Let’s face it, Novak, the kid’s a nut job. And dangerous. Anything’s possible with someone like that. Plus, that ride of his isn’t paying for itself.”
Maggie tried to fit the probability into the equation. It felt a little clunky, needing more elements to balance things out.<
br />
Loomis came closer to the camera. “Smits said the kid’s in the wind.”
Following Maggie’s attack, a patrol unit had been dispatched to Tyler’s address. Tyler wasn’t home. And his grandfather claimed not to know his grandson’s whereabouts. Countywide, an attempt to locate order had been issued on Tyler and a BOLO put on his bloodred Charger. Several times already this morning, Maggie had checked in with dispatch to see if Tyler had been picked up. So far, he was successfully evading detection.
“Never fear,” Loomis said, seemingly picking up on her thoughts. “Driving that kind of car, he won’t be on the lam for long. Sooner or later we’ll spot him.”
She saw him glance behind him at the twins.
“I’ll do what I can from this end,” he said. “Abby is taking the yearlings here on a baby club playdate. I have the entire afternoon all to my lonesome.”
“And you haven’t been invited?”
He laughed. “Later, Novak. I’ll call if I get any news. Meanwhile, enjoy your beach day, you bums. And wear sunscreen. It’s going to be a hot one.”
Chapter Twenty
COOKING THE BOOKS
Out of all the famous surfing spots dotted along Florida’s eastern coastline, Sebastian Inlet was probably the least well known. And that was its draw.
Maggie and Steve left the Tahoe at the beachside parking lot and picked out a sheltered spot at the head of the beach, where the grassy dunes surrendered to flatter sand.
“Looks like that storm tail is kicking up some great swells,” Steve commented as he changed into his wet suit.
Maggie took his word for it. To her, the ocean looked far too choppy to surf. Gray, frothy breakers rearing up before smashing against the beach. Several surfers already shooting the curls, and crashing haphazardly into the waves. Beyond, the remnants of last night’s steely thunderheads parading the horizon.
It was a beautiful spot, but Maggie’s thoughts were back in the city.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked as he hefted his board.
“I have phone calls to make,” she said, “and plenty of reading material to keep me occupied. Now go. Find that perfect wedge.”
Maggie waited until Steve had reached the water before she settled down in one of the beach chairs they’d brought with them. Despite the sea breeze, it was punishingly hot, and even in the shade of the beach umbrella, Spartacus was panting, his tongue dangling like a red rag out the side of his mouth.
Maggie kicked off her deck shoes and buried her toes in the soft white sand. She had always liked the feel of the beach under her feet, the surface heat contrasting with the coolness just a few inches under. It brought back happy memories of childhood vacations to Cancun: her father strutting around in his swim shorts like Sean Connery in Thunderball while their exasperated mother fanned her face and rolled her eyes; Nora being scared of the water and freaking out if she so much as got splashed; Bryan being eaten alive by sea lice and wearing his bug bites like a rite of passage.
None of the children aware that their mother had been having affairs even then.
Maggie opened Dana’s notebook on her lap and turned to the midpoint, marked by the envelope addressed to her.
At best, she had an hour to read what remained before time would force her to contact Smits, either with new information to support Cullen’s guilt, or without.
With the bill of her OCSO ball cap pulled down, and the rumble of the rollers in the background, she started to read Dana’s notebook from where she had left off earlier.
Spartacus let out a long sigh and flopped onto his side.
In their youth, Rita had shared many a convoluted verse with Maggie as they sat in the trees by the lake at the end of Rita’s street. Swinging their legs and dreaming of things to come. Sunlight glimmering off the lake, and the rough bark chafing their thighs.
Even then, Maggie had considered Rita’s poems a little too dark for her taste, filled with nightmarish themes and supernatural undertones. Although Rita had never described herself as such, she was an all-out goth, dressing in black and wearing the kind of grim reaper makeup that most grown-ups declared demonic. Rita hadn’t cared. Subscribing to the subculture had separated her from the crowd at school and divided adult opinion—neither of which had deterred her from following her own flame.
While others had caroled in the choir, she had sung the lead.
Rita had been the first of their friends to smoke a cigarette, to get a tattoo, to initiate the first move in any sexual encounter.
Some people called it outspoken, or unruly, or sluttish.
Maggie called it courage, or character.
It was one of the things about Rita that Maggie had been attracted to, and one of the things that had pushed her away.
How did Rita the butterfly retrogress into Dana the chrysalis?
Maggie hadn’t given it much thought at the time—her age and inexperience limiting her from seeing outside the box—but in retrospect, she had to hand it to Rita: Despite the ridicule, the name-calling, the social segregation, the attempts to clip her wings, she had remained true to herself. And it took balls to stand tall in a hail of hate.
The second half of the notebook was filled with more poetry and personal observations, spanning Dana’s thirties. Page after page of her internalizing. Most of it as dark as Maggie remembered, but in a different way.
Whereas Rita’s early poems had been forged from her firebrand spirit, questioning morality, society, oppression, and suffering, this later batch seemed much more philosophical in nature, examining life’s bigger themes of purpose, reproduction, and passing over. Maggie wanted it to be uplifting, to reveal that the rebellious Rita had still lived at the heart of Dana, but the poems were woefully depressing, and they left Maggie feeling downcast and melancholy.
No mention of her husband, or of her work at the school.
Another Polaroid photograph separated the last written page from a few dozen blanks at the back of the book. As with the Polaroid jammed into the beginning, this one was another close-up of Dana’s face, only much more current. This time, Dana the school counselor, with her skin painted white to match the classic Pierrot clown, her lank hair held back with bobby pins. In red ink on the white space beneath the picture was a single question mark:
?
Was Dana suffering an identity crisis?
Maggie laid both Polaroids side by side, amazed at the stark differences. The seventeen-year-old girl and the thirty-eight-year-old woman, a lifetime of sadness between them. The dainty and the dumpy. From flawless to fractured in the space of twenty years.
A choking lump in Maggie’s throat. She looked away from the photos, blowing out air.
On the water, surfers sat on their boards, some stroking away from the shore while others paddled furiously. She spotted Steve out near Monster Hole, and she raised a hand, not knowing if he could see her.
Spartacus snored at her feet.
She drained half a bottle of cool water, her thoughts rewinding to the time of the Oak Street fire.
Rita had excelled at all things arty. Not just creative writing, but theatre, too, her acting skills winning her the leading roles in several school stage productions. She’d planned on going to Hollywood after graduation, of becoming an actor, and no one and nothing was going to stop her.
But something had. Something unseen, unpredictable, and beyond her control. A fire. Creeping through the house in the dead of night and demoting her dreams to dust.
At the time, the official account was that the Grigoryan family had all perished in their sleep.
But Maggie now knew it was a lie.
The fire had clearly happened; through stinging tears, Maggie had seen the blackened, skeletal timbers, the remnants of a happy home reduced to rubble, the sooty sludge slipping down the street and into the storm drain. She’d stood on the corner the next morning, her knees trembling, her heart quaking, knowing that she could never put right the wrong she’d done.
Why m
ake everyone believe they died?
Whenever Maggie was presented with such a puzzle, she always flipped it around, coming at it from a new angle. In this case, the question wasn’t so much Why lie? but Who stood to gain from the lie?
Rita hadn’t died that fateful night, and neither had the rest of her family. Maggie was absolutely convinced of this now. The fire had been a smoke screen, hiding their relocation to another state.
What would make a family fake their own deaths?
Maggie knew that Rita’s father had been a prominent accountant in the city, known for his outlandish TV ads and his garish billboards. It was possible he’d come unstuck somehow with a client, perhaps after misappropriating funds. She remembered Big Bob dripping in gold jewelry, the latest sports car on the drive, and the whole family enjoying regular European vacations.
Was he skimming off the cream? Did this impropriety come to light, forcing him to flee with his family to Arizona?
In the aftermath of the house fire, Maggie couldn’t recall ever hearing about Big Bob Grigoryan syphoning off millions of dollars from a client. Certainly nothing in the papers or on the local TV news stations. Embezzlement did explain the change in surname from Grigoryan to Burnside, but it didn’t explain the burned bodies recovered from the house fire on Oak Street.
If the Grigoryans didn’t burn to death in that fire, who did?
Sipping more water, Maggie placed a call to the ME’s office.
Much of her work these days was undertaken on the phone or online. Unavoidable. Luckily, Maury Elkin was on his midmorning break and able to take her call.
“If you’re phoning about the girl . . . ,” he began.
“I’m not,” she said, keen to avoid discussing Elkin’s dissection of Lindy over the phone.
Images of Corrigan sharing the bad news with Lindy’s mom had kept invading her thoughts all morning. She’d pictured his sitting her down, consoling her in his gruff manner while telling her, bluntly, that her daughter was no more. Lindy’s mom, teary and chain-smoking, wordless as her world imploded and black mascara drizzled down her cheeks.
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