“Not popping,” she said with dignity, “but I want to get back to what I was doing. So far, I’ve found two photos from that gap between when Melissa dropped Thurston off at the airport and when she picked him up. Here’s the first one.”
Thurston walking out of a hotel door, one hand raised in an apparent attempt to hold his hair in place against the wind.
“Got the hotel name,” Jennifer said. “I could do a little, uh, snooping. Check phone records, credit cards—”
“Is snooping another word for hacking?” Diana asked.
“Not exactly.”
“You’re not doing it, not even inexactly,” I said. “We’ll pursue options that won’t potentially get you kicked out of that special program before you start.”
She sighed in mature acknowledgment of that wisdom. Also, possibly, at the passing of the wilder days of her youth.
“Anyway, here’s the other one.”
A man’s pantleg, halfway down from the knee to the cuff, at an angle that indicated movement, extended past a suitcase that matched the ones we’d seen in Thurston’s airport photos.
“Could be Thurston, but—”
“It’s got to be. Matches what he was wearing leaving the hotel.”
I checked the two photos. “Doesn’t eliminate him,” I conceded, “but this one’s too blurry to be sure and—”
“Remember, she didn’t take photos of anything but him. Besides, what’s most interesting is the sign beside the door. And that’s not blurry.”
She was right. A small, polished plaque sharply in focus — because that’s what Melissa meant to capture or by accident? — clearly read Chloe Vogt.
“Who is Chloe Vogt?”
“That might be what’s most interesting. I’m having a hard time finding out.”
She sounded more excited than distressed.
“No business name associated with the name. Personal address and phone number well hidden — although I did find her in a very nice part of town from tax records. But, still, no clue what she does. No professional license like a psychiatrist or therapist would have. No listing on a medical board or with a lawyer group. Definitely not a hair stylist. This person is way beyond discreet.
“I had to go way, way back in Internet history to find any other names associated with Chloe Vogt at all — well, except for people who were clearly other Chloe Vogts because they were all over publicly or not in Denver or both. So, these are the other names I found. I sent all you guys the list.”
The fourth name was the key.
* * * *
First, it rattled in my head, echoing with a memory I couldn’t pin down.
We searched the name and “Chloe Vogt.” Nothing came up. I suggested we add “news.” Still nothing. Jennifer asked if she should do her deeper dive into the historical Internet.
“Not yet. Let’s try another search.”
We added TV, took out news, and added scandal. That hit paydirt.
The name belonged to a former anchor in Alabama who first had a public dispute with his young girlfriend at a restaurant that included dumping salsa on her head, capped by being charged with DUI.
Another search, not using quote marks around his name, brought up someone with the same name, now with a middle name inserted, reporting in another part of the country.
Jennifer found photos that confirmed it was the same man, although his look had changed significantly.
With more digging, she found another of the names on the connected-to-Chloe Vogt list who had moved across the country after reinventing himself visually, although with no sign of the scandalous impetus of the first example.
With those hints, I found two references from more than a decade ago mentioning only “Chloe” on closed forums for discussion among TV news professionals.
“They’re awfully vague.” Jennifer didn’t approve.
“They are being cautious and possibly self-protective.” Reading between the lines, I suspected Chloe cleaned up scandals and other messes at that time.
“But why would Thurston go to her?” She sat up. “Unless, he was planning to kill Melissa and wanted to get his ducks in a row and—”
“Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. Evidence leads to theories. Let’s concentrate on evidence. I’ll see what I can find out with methods that do not involve the Internet.”
Jennifer looked doubtful. She might have pursued a protest, but Mike sighed gustily enough to grab our attention.
“I’m feeling a little nostalgic after going through those KWMT newscasts Jennifer sent. That’s the first of two things I have to tell you.”
“That was fast. Plenty of laughs?” I asked.
“Not as many as I’d hoped for, but I did sleep well after. I’d fast-forward and didn’t listen to him, so not as bad as watching him live. Anyway, most of the time he’s definitely had his hair cut between the before-Denver and after-Denver dates. The weird thing is, I’d swear something else changed recently, but I can’t put my finger on it. Clothes or… something. Maybe if you guys watch—”
“No,” came a three-way chorus.
“Fine, but it does have me thinking about when will I ever get to work with someone like Thurston again?”
“When you’re old and wrinkled and all your teeth fall out and you have to take whatever job you can get,” Jennifer said, apparently cheered by that prospect.
“Maybe. But that’s a long way off. In the meantime, I won’t be on a newscast where the anchor calls the Baltimore Orioles the Oreos — multiple times. I told him during the break. But when we came back, he did it again, because he never listens to anyone. I broke in with unscripted cross talk to say it right on-air. Thought he’d have a stroke.”
That part of the memory he liked.
Knowing it would annoy Mike, I said, “Oreos. I find that sweet.”
“Oh, yeah? You didn’t think it was so sweet when he had damage from a storm happening east of downtown Chicago and didn’t listen when you told him his error put the event in Lake Michigan. Or,” he continued, “how about when he said farmers are getting wind of a new kind of bean and he’d be right back with that breaking story?”
“He didn’t.”
“He did.”
Diana confirmed, “He did. And never got it, even when Bruce tried — oh, so gently — to explain it. I can’t decide if it’s better or worse that he never recognizes his gaffes.”
“Worse,” I said. “Never learns, never improves. What’s the second thing you have to tell us, Mike?”
“Yeah, hurry up. I want to get back to the photos,” Jennifer said.
“The only other thing to tell you is I happen to have a transcript of the suicide recording found in Melissa Oxley’s car.”
“What? How—? No, I don’t care how.” It had to have been through his Aunt Gee. Though how he persuaded her to share it when she’d become a fan of Sheriff Russ Conrad, no longer revealing as much to us because she believed the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department could and would thoroughly investigate—
Unless it was Horse Creek County’s status as lead on the case that made the difference.
“I don’t care how,” I repeated. “How fast can you get it to us?”
“I’ve already sent it to Jennifer.”
“Transcript you said, Mike?” Diana asked.
“Yeah. She’d recorded a message to Thurston. It cut off before she, you know. Never sent, but it was there on her phone.”
“Got it,” Jennifer announced. “Stashing a copy where it won’t be found by any nosy officials, and now… yup, copies sent to Elizabeth and Diana.”
With the replica of Melissa’s note on our screens, silence settled in until Mike said, “Aren’t you done yet?”
“Shh.”
After another minute, he said, “Elizabeth, you’re scowling at that like you want it to burst into flames.”
“Wouldn’t do any good. It’s a copy.”
His eyebrows hiked. “Why would you want to destroy it?”
“Because it totally misled people into thinking Melissa Oxley committed suicide.”