Lost Lake Read online

  “I guess. There’s a line, though, isn’t there? How easy is it to slide from placing casual bets into a full-blown compulsion? Aren’t these bookies taking advantage of gambling addictions? I have to imagine their business models depend on their clients—is that what they’re called?—getting their next fix. The house wins most of the time, doesn’t it? Same with the bookies?” I asked.

  “Sure, it’s sad to see someone sucked into the circus, draining their retirement accounts to place hundreds and thousands of dollars on the speed and agility of some college football player who may or may not have been wasted the night before.” Moriarty shrugged. “Anyway, your source stinks like yesterday’s tuna sandwich. I make it my business to know what’s going on in these circles, and trust me, I’ve never heard Sari Chesney’s name come up, not even whispered, not even once.”

  “What’s your interest in this world, Lou?”

  Moriarty grew smug. “It’s a side hobby. I busted a few punks running a money laundering operation about ten years ago, and it’s been an interest ever since.”

  His cell phone rang and he retrieved it from his pocket. “I’ve got to take this, excuse me. Thanks for the candy bar.”

  I sat back, thinking. Maybe Chesney’s debts existed in the online gambling world. Or maybe she owed money to someone who operated beyond the local circles, beyond the legitimate casinos … someone on the outside.

  Someone unknown even to Lou Moriarty.

  I was in a tough spot. Because Chesney was merely missing, as opposed to a crime victim or a suspect, it would be difficult to gain access to her financial records. In a strange and twisted way, the longer she remained missing, the easier it would be to investigate her. Another few days and I could convene a search party, put out her photograph on the national wire, start to dig deep into her background.

  As it was, there was still the strong likelihood that she walked out of Lost Lake and vanished on purpose. Financial struggles, abusive relationships, trouble with work … these were just a few of the reasons why people abandon their lives in search of something better. The reality is that very few missing persons are victims of crime.

  Still annoyed about giving up my chocolate, I moved aside my piles of notes to reach a jar of nuts buried on my desk. A handful of almonds later, I opened the Sari Chesney file and reviewed the few notes that were there.

  Had she gone to her boss, Betty Starbuck, and asked for money? Based on what Patrick Crabbe told me about his mother’s preference to give to organizations and not individuals, Starbuck would likely have said no to Chesney. Did that decision cause her death?

  I closed my eyes, trying to imagine a scenario where Chesney could have experienced a rage so terrible it resulted in the murder of another human being.

  I couldn’t imagine it.

  But I didn’t know Chesney. I didn’t know what she was capable of.

  Opening my eyes, I studied the photograph in the file, the one of Chesney and Mac Stephens and Ally Chang. Chesney’s eyes were bright and her smile full. In the background, the mountains loomed under a sun-drenched sky. Her red-and-black flannel shirt looked too warm for the weather, but that was Colorado for you—it could be sunny and bright and thirty degrees.

  All of a sudden, the thing that had been bothering me since Betty Starbuck’s autopsy came roaring to the front of my mind, and I dropped the photograph, cursing.

  “Son of a bitch. It was right there in front of you.”

  I quickly called the medical examiner’s office and got through to Bonaire. He listened to my question, checked his notes, then came back to the phone. “Forensics hasn’t come back yet, but yes, the fibers could be from a plaid flannel shirt such as the one you describe. The key phrase here is could be.”

  Mac Stephens had made a point to tell me that Sari was wearing the same shirt and boots the night she disappeared.

  Was Sari missing … or was she on the run?

  Was she a victim or a murderer?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Finn stepped back into the squad room as I ended the call with Bonaire. Though he was the last person I wanted to talk to, he was still my partner.

  I cleared my throat as he sat down.

  Nothing.

  “Ahem,” I said. He turned around and stared at me with his eyebrows raised. It took everything I had to adopt the most neutral, professional voice I could to tell Finn about my conversations with Kent Starbuck, Ally Chang, and Dr. Bonaire.

  Finn listened quietly, a polite look on his face, his gaze targeting a spot on the wall slightly to the right of my head. He took few notes as I spoke, but when I got to the part about the fibers on Betty Starbuck being a possible match to the shirt Sari Chesney was wearing when she disappeared, Finn got excited.

  “All right, all right.” He rubbed his hands together. “Finally, something to work with.”

  “It’s weak. Those fibers could be from anything. I’m concerned that Kent Starbuck has no alibi for the night of his mother’s murder. And Patrick Crabbe’s got an alibi, but there’s something off about him. I don’t trust either one of them.”

  “Patrick is scared of his own shadow,” Finn said. “He didn’t kill his mother.”

  “How do you know? For sure, I mean? What are the chances that Betty Starbuck let a stranger into the museum in the middle of the night? Isn’t it much more likely she met up with someone known to her, like a family member or an employee?”

  Finn nodded. “Yes. An employee … like Sari Chesney. We have a statement from Ally Chang that Chesney had gambling debts. Her own boyfriend said her tastes ran to the expensive side. So, Chesney steals the diary, kills Starbuck, and ‘disappears’ from Lost Lake. While we’ve got our eyes on Starbuck’s sons, Chesney is halfway across the country.”

  “I still think it’s a ridiculous idea. Sari’s a young woman with no prior history of violence.”

  The excitement slowly died in Finn’s eyes, and the polite, nearly frosty gleam reappeared. He pushed back, though it was mild, reserved, said in the kind of voice you use with a stranger. “Chesney might be a young woman, but you know perfectly well that age has nothing to do with violence.”

  It was obvious he’d made up his mind.

  I said, “I’m going to brief Chavez. You coming?”

  Finn shook his head and turned away. “I’m going to keep plugging away at interviewing the guests from the gala. It’s a long shot, but maybe someone saw something. I’ve got the intern working on half the list, and I took the other. So far everyone’s got the same story: great party, so-so food, terrible about the murder, didn’t see a thing.”

  “Okay.”

  The intern was a young man with a name I could never remember and a personality like an index card: plain, square-edged, functional. He’d been with us a few months and so far, he was doing okay.

  I found Chief Chavez in his office, his red and swollen nose buried in a stack of budget books. He looked grateful for the interruption, and I took my time briefing him on the latest developments in the Chesney and Starbuck cases.

  “Any word on those extra resources, Chief? Finn and I can’t be in two places at once. I need more intel on Chesney, but I can’t devote much time to her while we’ve got a killer loose.”

  “Seems to me her debts are the key here. We’ve seen it before—people walk away and start fresh somewhere else. They believe their credit history won’t follow them.” Chavez peered at me over the reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. “You’ve gotten lucky with the fibers, however weak that may be. I think it’s enough to justify getting you help. Moriarty and Armstrong are around, aren’t they? See what their caseload is like. How about the intern?”

  “I’ll talk to Moriarty. Finn’s already got the intern interviewing attendees from the gala.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “The intern? I don’t have a clue.”

  “Damn. Me neither. What about the other thing?”

  “Chief?”

  Chavez
sighed. “The other thing. The leaker. Any headway on that?”

  You mean since you put me on it this morning? Inwardly, I groaned. Hadn’t I just reiterated to the chief that I was stretched too thin? It was frustrating that he’d asked me to find the leaker in the first place. And it was ridiculous that he thought I should be making headway on that issue while Chesney was who knew where and Starbuck’s body was lying in the morgue.

  “Well? I know that look, Gemma. Wipe it off your face. You think I’m callous? Dense? Give me a break. Your top priorities are to find Starbuck’s killer and find Sari Chesney. The leaker is lower on our list of priorities. But it’s still on the damn list. Sooner or later an investigation is going to get compromised, and when I say compromised, I mean screwed.”

  “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  He dismissed me with a wave, and I left his office, closing the door softly behind me.

  When your boss asks you to find the source of the leak in your department, you find the source of the leak in your department. Though I had little choice but to obey his order—and make no mistake, no matter how mildly it was delivered, it was an order—I still had mixed feelings about the assignment. On the one hand, I was furious that one of my colleagues was improperly sharing information with the press. On the other hand, I hated the idea of sneaking behind people’s backs, investigating them. It felt like dirty work.

  I sat at my desk and looked around, taking stock of where things were in the investigations. Finn and the intern were covering the gala guests. We were waiting on further forensic reports. I needed to look into Larry Bornstein’s background as well as interview Patrick Crabbe again in light of the information I’d gotten from Lois Freeman and Bornstein. I also needed to tackle a question that had been buzzing in my head since Saturday morning: Just who was Sari Chesney?

  There was a lot to do. I shot an email off to Moriarty and Armstrong and begged for some assistance if they could spare it. As I hit the send button, Chief Chavez walked through the room. As he passed my desk, he rapped his knuckles gently on the copy of The Valley Voice that lay on top of my files.

  I sighed. Message received, loud and clear.

  I spent the next hour online cross-checking articles from the paper’s archives with cases from the last few months, on guard the entire time in case someone came to my desk and asked me what I was doing. But no one did, and when I was finished, I was pleased to have learned a few things.

  The first was that information seemed to be going to a single person: Bryce Ventura, with The Valley Voice. He was the author of every article that cited an anonymous source for his information.

  I knew Ventura, though not well. He was a meek middle-aged man with doughy, pale skin and ebony hair that he wore combed straight back from his heart-shaped face, reminiscent of Elvis Presley in his later days. In addition to his reporting gig, Ventura was a house painter, and he typically appeared at newsworthy events in jeans and T-shirts splattered with various colors of paint.

  “Bryce Ventura,” I murmured. “It’s a start.”

  I scanned the squad room again. At his desk, Finn was on his phone, speaking in a low voice. Across the aisle, Moriarty and Armstrong compared notes on some case they were working. The intern walked by me, giving a tentative wave as he struggled to balance three huge boxes of files that he had no doubt been assigned to sort and store.

  All of them good people, going about their business.

  What motivated someone to leak information to the press? I could think of three things, though I was sure there were others: revenge, concern, money. Revenge for some wrong done to them by their employer, the police department (or a specific individual within it). Concern—perhaps the leaker felt the department wasn’t doing enough to solve cases, wasn’t working fast enough. Finally, money. This was both the most troubling motive and the cleanest reason—someone was exchanging information for cash.

  I glanced around again. Finn moved his arm, and his platinum watch caught the overhead light.

  His new platinum watch, the one that he’d made a point of showing all of us.

  How many trips had he been on in the last few months? Palm Springs and Las Vegas, at least twice. Then there were the flashy clothes and the new Kimber Custom 1911 pistol, which I knew cost over a thousand bucks.

  Finn was a single man living in a rent-controlled apartment with a damn decent salary, but I knew he’d been saving for a down payment on a house and repair work on the speedboat he kept at Horsetail Reservoir. I also knew he was aggressive with his pension accounts to support his goal of socking away enough to retire at fifty-five and live out his days on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean, a margarita in one hand and a fishing pole in the other.

  “What is it?” Finn suddenly asked, and I jumped. “You’ve been staring at me for five minutes.”

  Flustered, I said lamely, “Sorry. I zoned out for a second.”

  “Well, knock it off. You’re giving me a complex.”

  I turned back to my desk, my face on fire. Before we were made partners the previous fall, I’d heard enough about Finn to have a healthy mistrust of the guy. His heart was in the right place, but cases are made and broken in the courtroom—not in the squad room, not in the jail cell, and certainly not on the streets. Any halfway decent lawyer with a speck of evidence that the arresting officer mishandled evidence or coerced a witness could get a case tossed in a matter of minutes.

  And just like that, the perp would walk.

  I sighed. The leaker couldn’t be Finn.

  Could it?

  What I needed to figure out was who had been working at times that would have given them access to the information leaked. But we had dozens of employees across the police department, and we ran a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week operation.

  The answer, I quickly realized, was to set a trap.

  I could distribute fake information, for a short period of time, and then see if it made its way to Bryce Ventura and The Valley Voice. If it did, I would have a much smaller pool of employees to work with. And if it didn’t, then I’d move on to another shift, on to another group of people.

  But what information should I distribute? It would have to be something that had an air of truth to it, or Ventura would never buy it. Something juicy but harmless … something that would, if it worked, send Ventura on a wild goose chase while teasing the leaker to the surface.

  The diary curse.

  I grinned. It was perfect. It was exactly the sort of thing that Ventura would eat up with a spoon. As I started to jot down ideas, though, the grin was replaced by a frown. I couldn’t help but wonder two things: why I’d been chosen for this covert operation, and who was investigating me.

  * * *

  Though it was late when I arrived home, I was dismayed to find that once again I’d beaten Brody. My understanding was that his new job was going to be more of an eight-to-five gig, and yet weekends and now evenings seemed to be fair game for work. My hours were unpredictable enough without adding in an ever-changing schedule from him.

  Clementine was good-natured about it all.

  “Don’t worry, Gemma, Brody texted me. He told me to tell you that he’ll pick up dinner and you can eat together,” Clem said. She swept Grace off of the floor, where she’d been lying on her back on an activity mat, and handed her to me. Grace felt heavier than she had when I’d left that morning; she was growing like the weeds that sprouted in our driveway, small and fragile one moment, tall and sturdy the next.

  “So when’s the big day?” Clem asked. “Do I get an invitation?”

  I glanced down at the diamond engagement ring on my left hand, realizing that I’d finally gotten used to the feel of it, the weight of it on my finger.

  Sometimes I even forgot it was there.

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d be a flower girl, Clementine. I’m thinking pink organza and plenty of tulle.”

  “Barf. You two should elope and save yourselves a bucket of money. I could probabl
y be talked into going with you and babysitting Gracie, especially if we’re talking Hawaii or the Bahamas,” she said. She smoothed her hair back from her forehead, and I was envious of her smooth skin, her bright eyes. Ten or eleven years separated us in age, but it could have been decades. Her responsibilities were few, her time mostly her own.

  I sighed. Looking at Clementine was like holding a mirror up and seeing all the cracks in my own veneer. And yet … the look of adoration she and Grace shared was priceless. And I was unlikely to find anyone else willing to work around our increasingly crazy schedules.

  After Clem gathered her things and left, I poured myself a glass of wine, then drew a bubble bath and sat in it with Grace. By the time we’d finished our soak, Brody was home. I fed the baby and put her to bed, then Brody and I finally sat down for dinner at nine o’clock. He’d picked up lasagna, garlic bread, and Caesar salad from Luigi’s. We sat at the kitchen table and ate on red placemats that matched the thick sauce of the lasagna.

  As I loaded my plate, I couldn’t help asking, “Is this the new norm?”

  “Luigi’s? I don’t think my waistline could handle it.”

  “Dinner at nine. You, coming home hours later than expected.”

  Brody set down his fork. “I’m home late a few nights and you get on my case.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I truly was. I was irritable, easily agitated. I’d been on the go for two full days. A murder investigation doesn’t rest easily. “Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “I’ll get it,” Brody replied. He stood and went to the counter. He’d shaved his dark beard, and under the bright kitchen light he somehow looked both older and younger, wiser and more fragile. He held up the bottle to the light, gauging how much of the wine was left, then brought it to the table and sat down.

  Desperate to change the subject, I said the first thing that came to mind. “What do you think of Clem?”

  Pouring himself a glass of the wine, Brody started laughing. “Now that’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one. What do I think of Clem? In what way?”