Notorious (9 page)

That was the way it often was—land one choice job, the rest of the jobs came easier. And being affiliated with ACP where there were alumni who had money, Evergreen was probably set for life.

Max needed to run a background on Sara, her brother Brian, and Evergreen Construction. There could be secrets, and construction was one of those businesses that could draw in shady investors. She’d like to talk to Jessica first, but the girl was getting married next week. Except, if she waited Jessine on her honeymoon and Max couldn’t stay more than a few days. She’d have to think that through before she made her next move.

She really wanted to know what spurred the police to interview Jessica again two months after Jason’s murder. Something must have come up. DNA? Contrary to popular television, DNA testing often took months, particularly if there was no viable suspect. Most other lab results would take a few hours to possibly weeks, depending on the agency and the backlog. Or, it could be a standard follow-up on a case before being put in the inactive file—running through potential witnesses and statements and wrapping things up before the detective felt comfortable putting the case aside.

She said to the Hoffmans, “I can’t promise that I’ll adopt your grandson’s case, but I have a couple of days free and I’ll talk to the detective in charge. Whatever I learn, I’ll make sure you know. But you need to understand that there might not be any new information. The police may not have any suspects, or if they do but can’t prove it, they’re not going to share that with me.”

Penny nodded, wide-eyed. “Of course. I just really appreciate your time. I know you’re very busy.”

She dismissed that comment. Everyone was busy, she no more so than anyone else. “Do you have your son and granddaughter’s contact information? I may need to talk to them.”

“Yes, right here.” She pulled her wallet from her purse.

Henry put his hand on Penny’s, but looked at Max. “Mike isn’t going to appreciate us getting involved. I talked to him after Jess’s visit, and he was very angry that Jess had worried us. This is her wedding. I don’t want to ruin it.”

“Nor do I.” Max couldn’t tell him that what she learned wouldn’t impact Jessica’s wedding or divide their family. What s don’t believe that.tt like he wanted and what usually happened whenever a murder was close to home rarely matched.

Henry seemed to understand. His eyes watered. Penny was a bit more clueless.

“I can walk away,” Max said. “Tell me now, and I’ll leave the case alone.”

Penny looked panicked. “No, please—”

Again, Max focused on Henry.

He let go of Penny’s hand. “The truth is better than not knowing,” he said quietly.

Max believed it, but few other people did. Most people said they wanted the truth, but few appreciated it. Many people hated her for telling them the truth—truths that they asked for.

She thanked the Hoffmans and walked out, melancholy and unsettled. But she wasn’t thinking about Jason Hoffman. She was thinking about Lindy.

No one was asking her to look into Lindy’s murder. If anything, people wanted her to steer clear of it. Detective Beck. William. Andy. Max was the one who wanted the truth. Could she live with the truth if she uncovered it?

*   *   *

Max had enough time before the funeral to check out Evergreen Construction. The main office was in downtown Redwood City near the county center, but there was no one in the office today. In this economy, a construction project would be working weekends, and since Jason was killed at Atherton Prep that’s where she would start.

She considered calling Jasper Pierce, or even her great-uncle, Archer Sterling, but decided to use that card when she needed it. Gather information first. Besides, Archer was her grandmother’s brother—he would tell Eleanor everything Max was doing.

She wanted to get a feeling for the business. Maybe someone would talk—it had happened to her more than a few times. Share what they know. Give her a direction, a lead to pursue.

Nostalgia hit her when she drove through Atherton to her high school campus. It was a beautiful campus, most of the land donated by the Ames family, who’d once owned a large chunk of the town. The Sterling Pierce Sports Center was on the south side of the campus—it had once been grass and trees; most of the trees remained, she was pleased to note—the complex made good use of the open space for the substantial footprint of the building.

She used the construction entrance, not the main school entrance. She was surprised at how quickly the building was being constructed—the sign out front boasted that the gym would be open in December. Right now, they had a basement dug out—according to the plans posted near the entrance, the basement would house the wrestling room, weight room, locker rooms, and practice gym. She felt a little thrill at the excitement of the project—what a remarkable facility. She would love to see it when it was complete.

Construction sites had valuable equipment, not just machinery and tools, but wiring, pipes, heating and AC units. Had something been delivered that weekend? Valuable enough to kill for, Max supposed, but in the construction thefts she’d read about they usually went in and out late at night, at a site that wasn’t guarded or had no security cameras, and took what they could haul off in a few hours. The thieves were about low risk/high reward—murder wasn’t usually a result.

As soon as she got out of her rental sedan, Max was approached by a burly fifty-year-old in a hard hat. “Can I help you with something, miss?”

She handed him her card. “Maxine Revere. I’m a freelance reporter working on an article about theft on construction sites. I’m also an alum of Atherton Prep. I wanted to talk to the manager about the theft here last year.”

“I’m the foreman, I run this project, but you’d probably want to talk to Mr. Robeaux. He won’t be back until Monday.”

“Actually, I’d rather speak with you.”

He didn’t like the idea of talking to her. “I’m really busy. We run on reduced labor over the weekend, I have deadlines to meet and—”

“Five minutes. I promise.”

He sighed, and said, “You can’t quote me, not without Mr. Robeaux’s permission.”

“Agreed.”

“What paper?”

“Freelance.”

“So you don’t have a job.”

Max was amused. “I’ve had my work published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times—most major newspapers, in addition to numerous magazines.”

“You mean they still have papers?” He laughed. Max did not. She followed him into one of the trailers. A young woman, not more than twenty, was sitting at a desk typing on an electric typewriter, a stack of triplicate forms next to her. She glanced at them without slowing down.

“So, Ms. Revere, what do you want to know?”

He sat behind a cluttered desk with a partially obscured nameplate. She pushed aside the paper blocking his first name. Roger Lawrence.

She pulled out her notepad. “According to my research, there were a total of twenty-eight construction thefts in San Mateo County last year. This robbery was the only one that resulted in a death.”

“Jason.” He shook his head. “Loved that kid.”

“You knew him well?”

“I’ve worked for Mr. Robeaux for fifteen years. Jason loved the business. He loved building design, creating structures that blended in with their surroundings. Not really my cuppa, but he had me sold—just the way he talked about it.” He jerked his thumb toward the door, but Max had no idea what he was referring to. “That big oak in the courtyard? We were going to remove it. The law says we have to preserve as much as possible, a minimum number of trees and such, but not everything. Jason tweaked the plans so the tree could stay, and honestly, the whole place is going to look better for it. He would have made a terrific architect. Gordon Cho, our architect on the project, was particularly devastated by Jason’s death. He’d been Jason’s mentor for years.”

“I haven’t been able to reach the detective in charge of the case, so I don’t have a copy of the police report yet. Do you remember what was taken?”

“Nothing—that’s the thing, there was nothing to take. We’d surveyed the site, were ready to break ground and do some preliminary work that wasn’t dependent on weather. I always thought the thieves were after something in the school, or that they saw Jason lurking around and thought he was a guard or whatever. I don’t think we’ll ever really know.”

“Why was a nine-thousand-square-foot de f Jason here late on a Saturday night?”

“I have no idea. Honestly, Ms. Revere, I don’t know why he was here, other than he loved the project and was excited to start working on it. We’d planned the ground breaking on Monday morning, by the oak tree. He and his uncle had spent most of Saturday here—oh, you know, the trailers had been delivered to the site the Wednesday before. Maybe the thieves thought something was inside.”

A lot of maybes and what-ifs.

As Roger spoke, Max noticed that the secretary was typing slower. More deliberate. The girl was eavesdropping. Max wanted to talk to her, but not here, and not in front of Roger.

“What about security? About half the construction sites had some surveillance, the others took their chances with lock and key.” Max was making up those statistics—she had no idea whether that was true, but she couldn’t quickly think up another way to question Roger about Evergreen security.

“We were putting in a state-of-the-art security system—part of our agreement with the school and financing company. But it wasn’t in at that point.”

Roger grabbed his ringing phone. “Sorry, but this is a supplier, and he’s been calling me for the last three minutes.”

“Not a problem. I have another appointment. Thank you for your time.” She stood and let Roger answer the phone. She walked over to the girl. There was no nameplate on her desk. “Hello,” she said quietly. “Maxine Revere.”

“Dru.” She glanced at Roger. “I can’t talk.”

Max slipped Dru her card. From behind her, Roger said, “Dru! Take these contracts to the post office now. They have to be there by Monday.” He put an express envelope on her desk. “Excuse us, Ms. Revere, we’re really busy right now.”

“I understand.” She walked out and glanced back at the trailer as she drove off. Dru was getting into a bright yellow VW Bug with the package.

The secretary definitely had something to say. Max was going to find out what.

*   *   *

Max waited for Dru outside the closest FedEx office. What was truly odd about the exchange is that most businesses had a shipping account that picked up packages, even on Saturdays. It certainly wasn’t cost-effective to send staff to the storefront for daily shipments. Had Dru not left the construction site, Max may not have gotten suspicious, but it was clear to her that Roger didn’t want Max to talk to the secretary, and that made Max twitch. She sent David a message with Dru’s license plate number, her employer, and her description, and asked him, when he had time, to dig up what he could on her, as well as Roger the foreman.

David sent back a message: Have any last names for me, or are you trying to make this particularly difficult?

She smiled and responded: Roger Lawrence. Nada on Dru.

Dru walked out of the shipping office and toward her car. Max was parked next to her, but Dru didn’t notice her until Max stepped out of her car. The girl jumped, then glanced around.

“Hello, Dru.”

“Did you follow me?”

“No.” Not technically. She’d made an educated guess as to where she’d go to mail the package…” Her voice trailed off.ou>. Considering it was already preprepared in a FedEx pouch, it wasn’t difficult. “Let’s talk.”

“I can’t.”

“Roger isn’t here.”

“Roger?”

“He didn’t seem to want you to talk to me.”

She shrugged it off. “He’s just protective of Evergreen and Mr. Robeaux. There were a lot of people hanging around after Jason’s murder.…” Her voice trailed off. “I have to get back.”

Max walked around her car and put her hand on Dru’s door as she tried to close it. “Dru, don’t you want to know what happened to Jason?”

“He’s dead. I’m sorry, really—I liked Jason a lot. But I don’t want tca would be go

Chapter Eight

Max stopped by her hotel room to drop off supplies she’d picked up earlier. A couple of trifold project boards, sticky notes, markers, tape. She’d bought enough to create expanded storyboards for each case, both Jason Hoffman and Lindy Ames. She didn’t know when, exactly, she’d committed herself to Lindy, whether it was when she saw her death certificate and Kevin’s accusation of drowning, Kevin’s apartment and his suicide postscript, or at the funeral when she realized that she owed it to Lindy to find out the truth. But she wasn’t going to back down.

Still, time wasn’t on her side. She had a commitment with her cable station to cover the Bachman trial for them, and though she didn’t need to be in New York on Monday like Ben wanted, she couldn’t stay in California longer than a week. She feared that spreading herself between two cases was going to mean she solved neither, but she didn’t see that she had a choice. She only hoped that Detective Santini cared and would pursue any threads she uncovered, because she didn’t think she’d be here long enough to follow them.

She changed into a simple black dress and wrapped a multicolored blue and purple scarf around her shoulders. She didn’t have clothes to last a week, which meant hitting both the dry cleaners and the mall—something she enjoyed when she wasn’t pressed for time.

As she was getting ready to leave, she sat down at the hotel desk to straighten her notes when she saw the light on, indicating that she had messages. Had it been blinking, she would have noticed it as soon as she walked in, but the subdued orange light didn’t attract her attention when her arms had been full of office supplies.

She pressed the message button, and instead of being sent to voice mail, the desk clerk answered.

“Yes, Ms. Revere, this is Assistant Manager Devon Hardy, how may I help you?”

“I have a message light on my phone.”’s funeral?”g questions.”

“Yes, thank you, a message was called in. If you can wait one moment.” Less than ten seconds later, the clerk came back on. “I have a message that was called in at four forty-five today.”