Poisonous: A Novel (31 page)

“You’re right about one thing, Grandmother. I would never have used the Internet to expose anyone. Not because I’m noble or good, but because I wouldn’t want your disapproval.”

Eleanor laughed, and Max was surprised. “Dear, if you feared my disapproval, you wouldn’t have done half the things you’ve done in your life. But you wouldn’t have done what that girl did because it was wrong. You’re a much better person. Maxine, never have I doubted you knew right from wrong and acted accordingly.”

Max cleared the table and hugged her grandmother goodbye. As she drove to meet Justin Brock, she realized that she was glad she’d taken the time to visit. Eleanor
was
eighty-two and if something happened to her and Max had not told her that she loved her and that she appreciated how Eleanor had taken her in when her mother walked out—well, Max didn’t want to take her for granted.

Warts and all, a dysfunctional family was still a family.

*   *   *

Justin Brock was staring into an extralarge cup of coffee when Max walked into the coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto. She recognized him from his pictures, but he’d also sent her a message that he’d be wearing a white Oxford shirt with jeans. He was a handsome young man of twenty-two, a senior in college, prelaw, of average height and build, but with the tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. The research she’d done into the Brock family supported an adventurous lifestyle—skiing, waterskiing, swimming, running. Justin had played baseball in high school, but hadn’t continued in college.

Max slipped into the chair across from him. “Hello, Justin. I’m Maxine Revere. Thank you for meeting with me.” She slid over a business card.

He glared at it, didn’t pick it up. “I only agreed to see you because I don’t want you talking to my parents or to my fiancée.”

Max hadn’t actually promised not to talk to his parents, but she said, “I appreciate your concern for them. I’m sure you’re having a difficult time as well.”

“It’s not the same.” Justin stared at her, anger etched on his face, perhaps permanently. He looked both young and old at the same time. Max recognized the expression. “Heather was my little sister. I miss her. But she was my mom’s baby. It’s just not the same.”

“You’re in prelaw.”

“Prelaw and psychology. I had planned on going into family law, but I’m leaning toward criminal justice. But I don’t know anymore. I’m rethinking whether I can even be a lawyer.” He cleared his throat and it was evident from the way he shifted his position that he hadn’t intended to share any of that with Max.

Max understood what Justin was going through. When tragedy hit close to home, everything changed. Fifteen years ago, Max had planned on majoring in literature and art history, or possibly archeology, with the idea of working at a museum.

But when your college roommate disappears and there’s enough of her blood found to declare her dead—but no body and no conviction—priorities changed.

Max would never let anyone else decide her fate. And maybe that, more than anything, was why the events in New York had affected her so deeply. That bastard had taken away her control, her ability to make her own choices. She’d been drugged and restrained and that niggling fear in the back of her mind, the fear from her childhood that her life wasn’t her own, that she had no choice about where she would go or how she would live because her mother moved on a whim.

Max refocused on Justin. He was contemplative, sad, protective. She said, “I read the civil suit your parents filed against Ivy Lake and the Wallaces but the settlement is sealed.”

Justin’s jaw tightened. “And you’re trying to defend Ivy, I don’t believe it.”

“I’m not defending her. I’m trying to find out who killed her.”

“The question you should be asking is who
wouldn’t
have wanted her dead? She destroyed my family. It’s been nearly two years and my mother still cries nearly every day.”

“Someone killed Ivy,” said Max. “Evidence is thin, suspects are plenty. But no one fits perfectly. Solving Ivy’s murder is important—not just to her parents, but her siblings.”

“Her parents? Maybe they now understand a little of what we suffered because of their daughter.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you want? For Paula Wallace to cry every day like your mother?”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“I get that you’re angry. I would be, too. What Ivy did was cruel. Her parents should have stopped it. But sometimes parents can’t prevent their children from doing bad things.” Though Max suspected Paula Wallace had been in denial up until the civil suit was filed. And possibly even after. Then when Ivy died, Paula decided to ignore all the bad things that Ivy had done. Not just ignore, but declare untrue.

Max waited until Justin looked at her, then said, “The end result is Ivy intentionally, deliberately, methodically set out to tear your sister apart.”

He stared at her, expression open in disbelief. “If you believe that, why are you helping them?”

“Her parents? I’m not investigating this case because the Wallaces asked me to.”

“Then why are you?”

“Because Tommy Wallace asked me to.”

At first, Justin’s face was blank. Then he leaned back, confused. “Tommy? He’s, um, retarded, isn’t he?”

“He is more than capable of understanding what’s going on in his life—and Ivy’s murder has greatly affected him, as well as Ivy’s brother, Austin. They deserve to know what happened to their sister or it will hang over them forever.

“But beyond that,” Max said, “
someone
killed Ivy.”

He scowled. “I honestly don’t care. Ivy Lake might as well have killed Heather herself. I’m sorry about her brothers, but there’s nothing I can do. I don’t even know why you wanted to talk to me, except to find out about Ivy and my sister. Well, here it is: Ivy hurt a lot of people. She destroyed my sister’s life to the point where Heather didn’t think she had anything to live for. Ivy should have paid for that, but now she’s dead and my parents won’t go after her parents. They agreed to settle, to keep silent about what happened. Why didn’t her mother stop her? My mother talked to Mrs. Wallace several times. She
knew
what Ivy was up to and did nothing to stop it. My father confronted Mr. Wallace and he claimed to not know anything about it. Said girls could be mean and would grow out of it.
Grow out of it?
They were sixteen! It had been going on for nearly two years. I don’t care what Heather
may
have done to Ivy,
nothing
justified what that little bitch did to my sister. Nothing.”

“Your future brother-in-law has made it his life’s mission to prove that Ivy’s death was accidental.”

It took Justin a half a minute to calm down and switch gears. He shrugged and leaned back in the chair. “Lance is Lance,” he said. “He thinks the police were pressured to rule that Ivy’s cause of death was inconclusive, because the Wallaces want someone to blame. I honestly don’t care. I don’t have any problem with what the police did—they interrogated me, I told the truth, end of story. I get that they had to talk to me—I’d had a confrontation with Ivy in public. But I didn’t kill her, accidentally or on purpose.”

“Forensically, Ivy’s death is a homicide. There’s proof that she was pushed off that cliff.”

“Lance sent me several scientific reports that state it’s virtually impossible to determine whether a person jumped, fell, or was pushed.”

“
Sometimes
it’s hard to determine, sometimes it’s conclusive, and sometimes forensics can prove what happened.”

“Like I said before, who wouldn’t want her dead?”

Max looked him in the eye. “Maybe Lance is pushing the accident theory because he’s trying to protect you.”

Justin stared at her blankly. As the realization of what she meant came clear, he swore under his breath. “Lance warned me about you, that you’re a shark reporter from New York City who will do or say anything to get a story.”

Max tensed. “Lance is a liar. He lied to me, he lied to the police, and he printed erroneous information in the newspaper that I could sue him for if I were so inclined. As it is, I’ll be satisfied when he’s fired.”

Justin frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“You said you had an argument with your girlfriend and went home alone the night of July third.”

“I don’t have to talk to you about this. I gave my statement to the police.”

“I believe you didn’t kill Ivy.”

He looked confused. “Then why are you even talking to me?”

“Because right now you’re the only one I’m reasonably confident did not kill her. Your statement to the police was that you were with your girlfriend all evening until just before midnight when you had an argument. You didn’t elaborate on what the argument was about, but it was serious enough that you left her place and went home. It couldn’t have been too serious, because you’re now engaged to Laura, but at the time it gave you a weak alibi because the police believed that Ivy was killed between one and two in the morning of July fourth. However, they now know she was killed closer to eleven on July third. Someone posted as her on social media at one ten. Which means that they were either covering their tracks, or they were trying to cast blame elsewhere.”

Justin let everything she said sink in. Then his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked, “Then what the hell do you want from me? You tried to talk to my parents, you scared my fiancée, why me? Why us?”

“You told Detective Martin that in the bookstore you saw Ivy and saw red, that you went up to her and told her she would pay for what she’d done. A threat. You had no alibi for the original TOD before the new forensics report. Who else was in that bookstore? Who else could have heard your threat?”

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. “You think that someone intentionally set me up?”

She nodded, watching him closely. Justin Brock was angry, he was grieving, but he had an inner restraint and solid sense of right and wrong. She could see him confronting Ivy in the bookstore like he had, but not luring her to the preserve and pushing her off a cliff.

“We were standing outside the bookstore,” he said, after thinking for a moment. “There are several shops in the area, it’s a small mall. And Ivy wasn’t alone. She had some people with her, but no one I recognized.”

“Some people? Boys? Girls? Peers?”

“A couple of girls, I didn’t know them. Why would anyone want to frame me?”

“Convenience? I really don’t know for certain. Maybe the killer heard your threat and determined that if Ivy showed up dead, you would be the primary suspect. There was no evidence against you, other than your threat to Ivy—and your motive, of course, to avenge your sister’s own death. There was no evidence against Travis, except that he and Ivy had a confrontation the week before because she posted a doctored photo of him.”

“According to Ivy, she only posted
the truth
,” Justin snapped.

She only posted the truth.

Ivy didn’t know that photo was doctored. She really believed Travis was smoking pot and she exposed him because she was angry with him. Either because he dumped her or because he was with another girl.

Who altered that photo? Who’d sent it to Ivy?

“In the civil lawsuit, your parents identified a witness who would testify that Ivy intentionally sought to hurt Heather. I now know that the witness was Bailey Fairstein.”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“The initial civil suit is public information. I spoke with Pilar Fairstein and Bailey and they confirmed that Bailey went to your parents after Heather killed herself. Bailey indicated that she had been privy to Ivy’s plan because she felt that Heather moved in on her boyfriend. Here’s where I’m stuck. What Ivy did to Heather went far beyond the slight that Bailey spoke of. Meaning, what Heather did in eighth grade seems to pale in comparison to the intensity of Ivy’s response over the next two years. Are you aware of anything else that transpired between these two girls—both of whom are now dead?”

“I can’t even imagine how anyone could do what Ivy did. It went beyond being catty and gossipy.”

He was right about that.

He continued. “I thought after Heather changed schools it would get better, but it didn’t. In some ways it was worse because Heather
thought
it would get better. She lost weight, she grew depressed, and then the video that Ivy posted—we didn’t know about it until after Heather killed herself, but it was the reason, I’m certain of it.”

“Which brings me to another question: who recorded the video?”

“I wish I knew. If it wasn’t Ivy, that person is just as guilty as she was.”

“Did your family try to track down any other victims of Ivy’s abuse? In the civil suit, you’d indicated that you would bring additional witnesses and victims of Ivy’s cyberbullying to support your case. But because of the settlement, none of those names were listed.”

“I honestly don’t know who.”

“Would your parents?”

“Please don’t.” He rubbed his eyes. “They hired a private investigator, but I don’t know how far he got before the settlement.”

“Did you watch the ‘Crime NET’ segment last night?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“I told you, I don’t care about Ivy, I don’t care who killed her, I just want … hell, I don’t know.”

“Maybe if you watch, you’ll understand what I’m trying to do.” When Justin didn’t respond, Max said, “I’d like to see the investigator’s report.”

“I don’t know that we can share it—the terms of the settlement were very strict. The Wallaces paid a lot of money to keep that information private.”

“Legally, if his report was never part of the civil suit to begin with, it wouldn’t be covered under the settlement.” Max had no idea if it was true—but it sounded good.

He hesitated. “I’ll call my dad. It’s the best I can do at this point. It’s up to him. And all I ask is that you respect his decision.”

She agreed. It was the best she was going to get.

Chapter Twenty-five

Driving back to Sausalito, Max used the rental car’s Bluetooth system to talk to her staff and follow up with David on the calls the ‘Crime NET’ hotline received the night before. He had one in particular that he wanted her to listen to. She had just merged onto the Golden Gate Bridge when Detective Grace Martin called.