Poisonous: A Novel (2 page)

Max hated these sort of games, especially when kids were involved. She had no children of her own and doubted she ever would. But she’d interviewed enough kids over the years and learned one important fact: young people picked up on lies faster than most adults. Even if their parents tried to shelter them, they knew what was going on in their family.

Nick refused to say a negative word about Nancy in front of his son, and while Max could respect his position on the one hand, telling the truth was not being negative. The truth was neither good nor bad, it simply
was
, and Logan was smart enough to come to his own conclusions.

“You’re thinking quite loudly,” David said.

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Sometimes you don’t need to.”

“Speaking of kids, will you be
allowed
to see Emma?” She winced at her tone. David didn’t deserve her anger, though he seemed to be trying to irritate her. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did,” David said. “I’m going to Brittney’s tonight. She said we’d play it by ear.”

“Another manipulative bitch,” Max said under her breath.

“She is,” David concurred, “but I want to see my daughter, so I deal with it. I have fewer rights than Nick because Brittney and I never got married. I will not risk my time with Emma.” He paused, then added, “Stay away from Brittney, Max.”

In one sentence, David’s tone had gone from normal to threatening. A few months ago, Max would have pushed the conversation, but she’d realized over this last summer how deeply she valued David’s friendship. She wasn’t risking her relationship with her best friend and business partner by arguing with him about the mother of his daughter. So, as difficult as it was for Max to shut up, she shut up.

Brittney treated David like garbage. She insulted him in front of Emma and refused to let David have more time with his daughter than the court mandated. The one consolation was that Emma was a smart and completely wonderful girl. She’d be thirteen next week and adored her father. Considering her parents didn’t get along, she was surprisingly well-adjusted. Brittney may be a bitch, but David got along with his ex-wife’s parents and apparently they had a lot of clout over her. If it weren’t for them, David once said, he couldn’t have been a part of Emma’s life.

Max put David and Nick and their respective children out of her mind and spent the remainder of the drive responding to messages from her producer, Ben Lawson, and staff. Ben had wanted to send a small crew with Max because he sensed this case was going to be good—meaning good for “Maximum Exposure” ratings
.
Max axed the idea of traveling with anyone but David. She needed time in the field without a cameraman. The interpersonal connections she made were key to her investigative success. Nuances in tone, expression, and body language could be lost when a camera was involved. Before agreeing to host “Maximum Exposure” for the cable network NET, Max had been a freelance reporter for years and she still preferred to work a case alone, asking questions, pushing people to be truthful, proving or disproving evidence.

She’d be the first to admit she was happy to let the competent NET research team take over much of the grunt work. They’d compiled all the public information on the Ivy Lake investigation, including news clippings, profiles of Ivy’s friends and family, and television coverage. Having a staff saved her hundreds of research hours.

After going back and forth with Ben on the news crew until her irritation overflowed, she sent back a message:
I’ll call in the crew when I see fit. TTYL.

Ben just didn’t know when to drop a subject, or how to give up control.

She could relate.

While Ivy’s stepbrother’s letter had affected Max and prompted her to act, she’d grown even more curious about the case after actually speaking on the phone to Tommy Wallace. Or trying to; Tommy barely spoke. She’d tried to get him to talk about why he wrote the letter, and his responses were simple and brief. Any other case and she would have been suspicious and likely dropped the matter altogether, but after reading the Ivy Lake media reports, she realized Tommy was mentally handicapped.

Which made her wonder if he wrote the letter himself or if someone helped him. And if so, why?

After talking to Tommy Wallace, Max had spoken to Grace Martin, the detective in charge of the Ivy Lake investigation. Max wanted to feel out whether law enforcement was inclined to help or hinder her investigation, and then specifically to ask about Tommy.

“I spoke to Tommy Wallace several times,” Grace had said. “He’s slow, not stupid.”

Grace seemed amenable to Max’s involvement when they talked on the phone—the case was fourteen months cold with no leads. She agreed to meet with Max in person, which was a big win for Max—too often she had to fight with the local police for access.

Max read Tommy’s letter multiple times. What really hit her was the lack of anger or grief. Maybe Tommy’s “slowness” made him less emotional. Generally, when people wrote to Max of tragic events, there was pain and anger. Rage on the page, Ben called it. But Tommy’s plea was unlike any she’d read before. And while he may have had help writing the letter, there was no doubt its sentiments were all his. There was a truth in the words that pulled her in immediately.

Tommy’s letter got her looking at Ivy Lake’s death, but the circumstances themselves propelled Max to action. Ivy had been seventeen when she’d been killed—pushed off a cliff, according to the forensics report. The police had interviewed dozens of individuals, mostly teenagers, and it seemed many had reason to hate Ivy.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, the keyboard is mightier than the pen. Perhaps unwisely, Ivy had used her keyboard to expose the secrets of her schoolmates through social media—including one girl who’d committed suicide after bearing the brunt of Ivy’s attacks.

Ivy’s dramatic death from being pushed or thrown off a cliff had spun a web of coverage in the media about cyberbullying, but in the end, the news stories stopped, the investigation hit a dead end, and life went on. With no killer in custody. No answers for the family.

No justice for Ivy.

Chapter Two

Max had reserved two suites in the Mansion at Casa Madrona, one for her and one for David. The facility was less than an hour from the airport and had amazing views of the San Francisco Bay. She’d stayed at the Sausalito luxury hotel and spa several times before. Once, during a particularly contentious meeting of the Sterling Trust, the multimillion dollar fund that had been established by her great-grandparents, her family had reserved the entire Mansion at $25,000 a night for three days.

This week, she’d reserved two deluxe suites on the second floor of the Mansion, each with a living room, bedroom, and spectacular views. Max found the sight of water soothing, comforting in a way she didn’t fully understand. She’d picked her penthouse in New York because of the view of and its proximity to the Hudson River; most of her vacations—rare though they were—centered around an ocean, lake, or river.

“You should take a nap before your meeting,” David told Max after they checked in.

“I don’t nap,” she said.

“Start.”

She ignored him. “Go see Emma’s mother and try to get into her good graces for the week. If you’re not back by five, I’ll take a taxi to my meeting with Detective Martin.”

He glanced at his watch, then turned and left her suite without further comment.

You need to stay out of it, Max
. She suspected David’s advice was not only directed toward her relationship with Nick.

While Max had three hours, she had no time to take it easy—for a soak in the Jacuzzi bath or for a nap. First, she unpacked. She hated living out of suitcases. She’d done that for the first ten years of her life. She took the time to put away her clothes in drawers or hang them up in her closet. She unpacked her toiletries into the bathroom drawers, then frowned. There was no bathtub. The shower was large and wide, but no Jacuzzi. Dammit.

She caught a glance of herself in the mirror. David was right; she looked tired. A cross-country flight would do that, and she hadn’t slept well last night. Insomnia was par for the course—when Max did sleep, she slept deep, but when she woke up, whether it was 2:00
A.M.
or four or six, she could never get back to sleep. Last night she went to bed at eleven and woke up at two. And that was it.

Once she stowed her suitcases, she went to the living room and opened the doors that led to the balcony. The salty air of the San Francisco Bay refreshed her and the mild headache that had followed her from New York faded. The bright blue sky crystallized the bay, jewels of light sparkling as far as she could see, the water dotted with boats. She loved Sausalito, a community nestled on the edge of the bay, with unique shops, delicious restaurants, and numerous bike trails.

Sitting on a chair on the balcony, she kicked off her shoes. She could take a minute before getting to work. The last time she’d stayed at the Madrona had been solely for pleasure. Was it really three years ago? Before she’d started hosting “Maximum Exposure,” she’d had a major argument with her then-lover, FBI Agent Marco Lopez, and Max had traveled almost as far from Miami as she could get while remaining in the continental United States. Still, Marco had followed her. They’d argued and made up, basically the cycle of their on-again/off-again relationship. After a weekend of hot sex, good food, and invigorating sailing she’d talked herself into the false idea that everything would work out between them.

The peace didn’t last. Marco wanted to change her. Max didn’t want to change, and resented that Marco thought he could mold her into his perfect woman. And how many times had he interfered with her job?

She didn’t want to change—and Marco couldn’t change. That it took her so long to realize the truth was a testament to how much she cared for him and had wanted their tumultuous relationship to work.

If Nancy Santini had been Marco’s ex-wife, he would never have put up with her bullshit. Max instantly regretted the thought. Comparing Nick to Marco—she didn’t want to go down that path.

Nick wasn’t weak. He more than held his own against Max, and she knew she wasn’t the easiest woman to be involved with. Nick was methodical and cool-headed and extremely intelligent. She had a thing for smart guys. Nick went above and beyond not to make waves or disrupt his son Logan’s life in any way. She loved how Nick was with his son. How he played baseball with him. How he talked to him daily about schoolwork or sports or movies or whatever Logan was interested in. Yet Max could see, as clear as this beautiful late summer afternoon, that Nancy Santini used Nick’s love for and desire to protect his son as a weapon against him.

“Stay out of it,” she whispered, trying to take David’s advice to heart.

Maybe it was best that Nick had canceled this weekend. Max didn’t know if she could have kept her mouth shut for that long about Nancy.

Her stomach growled and she considered ordering room service, but Max didn’t like eating in her hotel room. Back inside, she unpacked her carry-on—her laptop and all the files related to the Ivy Lake investigation. She unrolled a long piece of butcher paper and affixed it to the wall next to the desk. At home she’d created the timeline based on the facts: when Ivy was killed was the midpoint. Prior to that event was the suicide of Heather Brock, the girl who’d allegedly been bullied by Ivy so severely that she’d killed herself. “Allegedly,” only because Max had seen none of the evidence—Ivy’s social media accounts had been taken down, Heather’s family hadn’t returned Max’s call, and no police charges had been filed against Ivy or her family.

There had been a civil case filed by the Brock family, but the filing wasn’t yet online. Max had read a copy that had been sent to her, but it was poor quality and names had been redacted because they were minors. None of the exhibits had been attached. Still, the allegations had been serious.

It wasn’t that Max necessarily assumed Heather’s suicide had anything to do with Ivy’s murder … but two teenage deaths in six months in a town as small as Corte Madera? Her staff was putting together an archive of all of Ivy Lake’s deleted social media pages. Most people thought once something was deleted from the Internet it was gone forever but that was rarely the case. Time, skill, and sometimes bribery could retrieve almost everything. Heather Brock’s family would likely have documentation to prove their civil case.

Max changed into a sundress that, with a light jacket, would work for her meeting with Grace Martin, then she grabbed her oversized purse and left the hotel in search of a light meal. Later tonight she and David had reservations at Scoma’s, one of her favorite seafood restaurants, but a salad or sandwich would tide her over until then.

The streets were crowded, and while Max thrived in the pace of New York City, the crowds in California didn’t move. They crept along, stopping without warning or care, meandering and blocking the way, unmindful of anyone possibly in a hurry right behind them. East Coast, West Coast … two completely different mentalities.

She crossed the street and as she stepped up on the curb noticed a kid who looked familiar. Odd, considering she didn’t know anyone here … she looked again. He was about thirteen and carried a skateboard. It took her a second, but she thought she’d seen him earlier, outside the hotel when she and David had first arrived.

Max never forgot a face. This kid had been at her hotel and was watching her. Dark hair in need of a haircut weeks ago, dark eyes following her. When she caught his eye, he immediately turned away.

Max could ignore him, but that wasn’t in her nature. She strode toward him, brushing past lazy tourists window-shopping. As soon as the kid saw her approach, he hopped on his skateboard and tried to speed up, but he had the same problem that she did—people—so he stepped off the sidewalk and into the street.

Signs everywhere stated that skateboarding was prohibited, but he didn’t care. He took off in the bike lane with a glance back to her, a half grin on his face.