Ellery rode to the Owens house with the car window down and her hand stuck out to feel the passing breeze. She’d been raised in Chicago, where the winter wind came screaming off the lake, and then moved to Massachusetts, where spring didn’t arrive until mid-June some years. Mild temperatures in February felt like an exotic novelty to her. She stretched out her fingers to catch the sun, and the big, leafy palm trees seemed to be waving back at her. It was difficult to imagine anything horrible happening in such a warm and lovely place.
“I think this is the house,” Reed said as he rolled the car to a stop in front of a well-manicured two-story home. It, too, boasted a welcoming palm tree that stood as high as the house itself. Half the lawn was decorated in a rocky hardscape, while the other half shone a brilliant emerald green that Ellery had only glimpsed on golf courses in the summertime.
She turned and squinted at Reed. “So how do you want to play this?”
“I just want to get a feel for his story, see what he remembers. As we’ve noted, forty years is a long time. If he’s been holding on to some kind of secret, he might be willing to let go.”
Ellery looked at Reed with a touch of surprise. “You think you can go in there and just have him confess, just like that?”
Reed shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. That’s probably the only way this case is getting solved—if someone who wasn’t willing to talk forty years ago finally comes forward.” He leaned into her personal space to study the house. “If you can, I’d like you to separate the wife, Amy, and chat her up a bit. Find out what she knew of Camilla’s death back then, and what, if anything, David has said about it in the intervening years. If he’s confessed to anybody, it would probably be her.”
Ellery remained skeptical that it could ever be that easy, but she cracked a smile in his direction. “So what you’re saying is that you want me to use my feminine touch.”
“I don’t know,” Reed replied. “Are you quite sure you have one?”
She shoved him lightly before exiting the car. “Isolate the wife. Make her squeal. Got it.”
She meant the words ironically, but Reed tilted his head in a quizzical manner as they headed for the house. “You might find she has an interesting perspective of her own,” he said. “David and Amy Owens will be celebrating their forty-third wedding anniversary this fall.”
Ellery did some quick math in her head. “Married forty-three years. That’s a quick rebound for young David after his intended fiancée was murdered.”
“Yes,” Reed replied through a fixed smile as he reached for the doorbell. “In some circles it might even be referred to as motive.”
The door opened to reveal a pleasantly plump woman in her early sixties, tanned, with bleach-blond hair and wide-set blue eyes. “Can I help you?” she asked with a genuine, friendly smile that suggested she sincerely did want to be of service.
Ellery hung back as Reed pulled out his FBI credentials. “Reed Markham, ma’am,” he said, his voice low and gruff. “This is my associate Ellery Hathaway. We were hoping to speak with you and your husband for a few minutes, if you can spare the time.” Her eyes grew even wider as he spoke, and she put a hand to her mouth.
“Oh, my heavens! Brad Ramsey told us you might be coming by, but he didn’t say it would be today. I’m Amy Owens. Please, please come in.” She stepped aside and let them into the home.
Ellery looked around with interest at the neat, new-construction home. She’d grown up in a brick walk-up—thick and sturdy, built by people who remembered the great fire. Her apartment in Boston had once been a factory that had manufactured everything from soap to salt. By contrast, the Owens home dated to perhaps 2010—clean and new, with bright white walls and shiny white tile on the floor. The rooms had curved archways instead of the hard right angles Ellery was used to, and watercolor paintings in beachy tones hung on the walls.
Amy had turned to yell up the stairs for her husband. “David! David, the man from the FBI is here!”
Ellery heard footfalls and turned so she could see the shadow coming into view, curious as to what he might look like, the man who might have hacked his petite girlfriend to death and then resumed a normal, ordinary life. “Hello, I’m David Owens,” he said as he ducked to avoid hitting his head on the arch as he entered the room. His baritone greeting was pleasant, but there was an alertness in his gaze and tension in his handshake that belied his relaxed demeanor. He had broad shoulders and a toned physique atypical for a man his age. Ellery had no trouble imagining the authoritative figure he must have looked like in uniform, armed with a gun. “Welcome,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Did Amy offer you something to drink? She’s also rustled up some fresh-baked cherry chocolate chip cookies that are not to be missed.”
“No thank you,” Reed said at the same time Ellery replied, “That sounds delicious.”
She smiled at Amy. “I’m starved. They don’t even serve peanuts on the plane anymore.”
Amy flashed a return smile, seeming grateful for the break in tension. “Don’t I know it. We fly to Seattle to see our daughter and grandkids three times a year, and I swear the airplane food gets worse every time. Be right back—I’ll fix you up in a jiff.”
David became uncertain as his wife whisked out of the room. “I guess we ought to take a seat. Knowing Amy, she’s whipping up a three-course meal.”
They followed him into the sunny front room with its matching pale green chairs and floral sofa. Ellery noted a family portrait on the wall that seemed to date back at least twenty years, judging from the poufy hairstyles on the women. It depicted a proud and smiling David and Amy surrounded by their teenage daughters, the oldest of whom was about the same age Camilla Flores was when she died.
David Owens shook his head, bemused. He glanced in Reed’s direction and then away again. “I would’ve known it was you even if the sheriff hadn’t told me why you’re here. You look just like her.”
Ellery watched a pink stain appear on Reed’s cheeks, and his gaze slid to the floor. Whatever he’d been expecting, this clearly wasn’t it. She had become used to strangers approaching her out of nowhere thinking they knew everything about her life since they’d read a book or seen a movie that told Coben’s story. But she and Coben had been the only two people there on the farm during those awful three days—the only two who knew the real story—and so she could turn those strangers away unsatisfied. The ordeal was horrible, but it was hers. In Reed’s case, here was a stranger who knew something about him that Reed did not. Reed had to either live with the gaps in his own narrative or sit there and grope for pieces of it from someone else.
“I remember I asked the detective on the case what was going to happen to you,” Owens continued. “Can’t recollect his name after all these years.”
“Dobson,” Reed supplied immediately. “Lou Dobson.”
“Dobson. That’s right. He asked me why was I asking and did I want to take you?” Even now, Owens looked uncomfortable at the thought. “I was twenty-four and living in a run-down one-bedroom apartment, working ten-hour shifts. How was I supposed to take care of a baby?”
His tone was half apology, half-defensive, as though he wanted Reed to offer him absolution for this long-ago human frailty. Ever the people pleaser, Reed obliged. “I understand,” he said. “It would have been a lot to ask of anyone.”
Owens gave a wry smile. “You may look like her, but you don’t sound like her at all. Camilla still had traces of her Puerto Rican accent, and let me tell you, she could swear a blue streak in Spanish. I didn’t know half the words she said, but Lord, I confess they made me blush on her behalf. You—you’re a Southern man, isn’t that right?”
“Virginia.”
“Yeah, the sheriff told me. Your father’s in politics there or something.”
At the mention of his father, Reed looked up sharply. “Did you know my father?”
“No, sir.” Owens looked puzzled. “Why would I? I’ve never been to Virginia.”
“As it turns out, my father had made some trips out here in the early seventies, entertaining some donors. I just thought maybe you’d crossed paths at one time.”
“No,” Owens said firmly. “Never met the man.”
Amy returned to the room with a tray filled with tall glasses of iced tea and a plate of thick, delicious-looking cookies. Ellery helped herself to two and stifled a groan of pleasure as the combination of sweet chocolate and tart cherries hit her tongue. At the other end of the couch, Reed accepted a glass of tea, took a perfunctory sip, and set it aside with a tight smile. “That’s very nice, thank you.” He shifted his attention back to Owens. “What can you tell me about Camilla’s death?”
Owens, who had been shoving cookies into his own mouth, faltered in surprise at the direct question. He put the latest cookie down, half-uneaten. “Not a lot,” he admitted. “I wasn’t there. Always felt bad about that, knowing she’d been worried someone was after her.”
“And who was that?” Reed asked, although Ellery knew they already had the answer.
“A street punk named Billy Thorndike. Cammie caught him disciplining one of his boys in the alley one night, and unlike most in the neighborhood, she didn’t look the other way.”
“What was your theory of the murder?” Reed asked, and Ellery watched with interest for the answer. Owens took a deep breath and rubbed his palms on his knees as he considered his reply.
“Dobson thought it might have been a burglar. That never made sense to me, even at the time. Camilla barely had two nickels to rub together—who’d want to steal from her? Even her stereo was bought secondhand, ten years old. I could never make the pieces of that story fit together, either. How was it supposed to have gone down—he was piling the stuff by the door when she came home and surprised him? But then you were in your crib. So this guy’s got his knife at the ready when she comes through the door, but he says, ‘Okay, go put the baby down before I kill you’? Doesn’t make any sense.”
Ellery supposed it was possible that the burglar had panicked when he’d heard Cammie’s key in the door, grabbed the knife, and lain in wait for her to enter the room. Perhaps when he saw the baby he’d remained in his hiding spot until Cammie had put Reed in the crib.
“So then you liked Billy Thorndike,” Reed concluded, and Owens pointed at him.
“Now there’s a real suspect. Cammie squealed on him and he’d threatened to make her pay for it. He was trying to intimidate her—you know, scare her so she wouldn’t testify. She got some weird hang-ups on the phone, like heavy breathing and then no reply. One morning, she got up and found all four of her tires slashed. I was worried enough that I’d started sleeping over her place most nights that I wasn’t working.”
“Who would like more tea?” Amy interrupted, leaping to her feet.
Ellery glanced at Reed, who nodded at her. She repressed a sigh because Owens’s story was just starting to get interesting and now she had to go follow the wife into the kitchen. “I’d love some,” she said to Amy. “Please let me help.”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” Amy replied, but she allowed Ellery to follow her to the kitchen. Ellery’s first thought when she saw the room was that Reed would be right at home there. It was a chef’s dream, with a six-burner stove, a wide granite island that had its own deep sink, and a plethora of hanging pots and pans. Amy tugged open the door on the enormous Sub-Zero stainless-steel refrigerator, and Ellery glimpsed a veritable bounty of food in all shapes and colors. Her own refrigerator growing up had often been bare, especially in the few days leading up to her mother’s payday. They’d eaten mostly out of cans—gray peas and sickly-sweet peaches or oranges that had a metallic aftertaste. Fresh fruits and vegetables that rotted in under a few days were a luxury that the Hathaway household had not been able to afford.
Amy must’ve caught her staring, because she smiled and pulled out a large bowl of fruit salad. “I whipped this up last night, but David barely touched it this morning. Would you like some?”
“It looks amazing,” Ellery admitted, and Amy got out two white porcelain bowls. As Amy served up the fruit, Ellery searched around for a way to begin the awkward conversation. “It must’ve been a surprise when the sheriff called and said we were coming to ask about Camilla Flores. The case has been inactive for a long time.”
Amy shrugged and did not look up from her fruit. “Maybe. But it’s not like it ever went away, either. People talk. Of course, some of them thought David might’ve done it.” She paused to see how Ellery took this possibility, but Ellery just stabbed a plump strawberry with her fork.
“That must have been hard, living with other people’s suspicions.”
Amy pursed her mouth. “No one who knows David ever believed a word of it. I could tell it bothered him, though, especially in the months right after it happened when everyone was still spooked. And since no one ever got caught for it, the talk never stopped entirely. You get a long look from someone when you’re out at a restaurant or hear a whisper in the line after church. People love to gossip.”
“Did you know her? Camilla, I mean.”
“No, I only heard the stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
Amy’s big blue eyes grew wary. “I don’t like to talk ill about the dead. God rest her soul.”
“Ill? About Camilla?” The sheriff had spoken like he’d wanted to pin a medal on her for standing up to Billy Thorndike.
“Well, it’s not like she had much of a choice, I s’pose.” Amy pushed the fruit around in her bowl. “She had a baby to care for, and waitressing doesn’t pay all that much.”
“What are you saying?”
Amy gave a heavy sigh. “Probably more than I ought to. It’s just … there was some talk at the time that Camilla and her friend Angie used to entertain guys for money.”
Ellery put her fork down and glanced in the direction of the living room. “You’re saying they were prostitutes?” Reed had not mentioned anything of this possibility, which probably meant he hadn’t seen it in any of the reports.
“I don’t know the particulars. Maybe. They were young girls, and good looking, too, I saw from the pictures they ran in the papers. Las Vegas always has its share of working girls. Men come here, far away from their wives with a lot of money to spend … if you needed quick and easy cash, that’s one way to get it.”
The sweet taste of the fruit on Ellery’s tongue suddenly turned bitter. She was going to have to report the details of this conversation to Reed, and she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to raise the possibility that his conception might have involved a cash transaction. Amy, as it turned out, had no such qualms.
“I mean, the girl did get herself knocked up somehow.”
“She wasn’t with David at the time?” Ellery was still trying to get the timeline straight.
“No, she was already pregnant when they started seeing each other. He felt sorry for her being all alone and having to work on her feet all day.”
“What about the father? He wasn’t in the picture?”
Amy gave her a pointed look. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “I don’t think he wanted to be in the picture. Probably he already had kids of his own somewhere in Los Angeles or Houston or Bloomington, Indiana.”
This acute truth made Ellery shift uncomfortably on her stool, and she tried to steer the conversation back to the place Reed had wanted it to go. “When you say David felt like he was under suspicion, is that because the detectives investigated him?”
“Sure, they had to at least check. But he was across town on the job.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
Amy regarded her with a note of surprise. “Sure I’m sure. I was there.”
“I’m sorry—what?” Ellery’s head started to spin. She didn’t have the case files, hadn’t memorized the details the way Reed had. Keeping track of everyone’s relationships now and back in the 1970s made her brain hurt. David and Cammie. Cammie and Angus Markham. Amy and David. She remembered that Reed wondered about the romantic overlap.
“David and I worked together—that’s how we met. We didn’t ride together all the time, but that day, I remember it well. We had car sixty-seven and we were working in my old neighborhood near Spring Valley.”
“You were a cop?” Ellery tried to imagine this curvy platinum-blond woman with the deep laugh lines and soft hands dressed up in uniform and walking a beat.
Amy grinned as she started clearing away the dishes. “Don’t look so surprised. I was young like you once—I ran an eight-minute mile and could bench-press my body weight.” She stopped to pat her round stomach. “Of course, that was before I discovered Brie and jam sandwiches.”
“So you’re his alibi, then.”
Amy made a face. “You make it sound tawdry when you put it like that,” she replied with a touch of irritation. “But yes, I suppose so. It was a pretty quiet day up until we got the call to report back early. We had a fender bender, a fight at the grocery store because the manager accused one of the cashiers of helping himself to the till, and the alarm went off again at Martinelli Liquors—the fourth time that week—but it turned out to be another false alarm. We told them to get it fixed up or we’d be writing them a citation for wasting our time. I got to thinking about that later, how we were investigating a whole lot of nothing right at the time she got killed. You join up because you think you’re going to make a big difference, you’re going to keep the peace, but it turns out you’re almost never in the right place at the right time to do any damn good.” She shook her head sadly and reached for her tea. “I turned in my shield the day I found out I was pregnant with Mallory, but David stuck it out the full thirty. He’s a good man.”
Ellery had a flash of her own murky future and wondered whether she would have a job back in Boston or she would have to reinvent herself yet again. “Who do you think killed Camilla Flores?” she asked Amy.
Amy blinked those wide-set eyes for a long moment. “You know, no one’s ever asked me that before. I’d guess that Billy Thorndike would top my list, too. But…”
“Yes?” Ellery leaned forward encouragingly.
“There was another girl cut up, about a year before Camilla. Didn’t get as much attention because she was definitely a working girl. Supposedly, the guy was waiting for her in her bedroom one night. He raped her and stabbed her and left her for dead. As far as I know, they never got the guy who did it.”
“You remember her name?”
Amy squinted. “Giselle? Danielle? I don’t know. It’s been a long time.” Ellery caught an undertone of warning, maybe even reproach, in the comment. Then Amy brightened again. “We should be getting back to the boys, don’t you think? They’ll have wondered where we wandered off to.”
When they got back to the living area, Reed was in the process of asking David Owens about Camilla’s friend and neighbor, Angie Rivera. “Angie, yeah,” Owens was saying. “She was a pistol—always with the big plans. She wanted to be a singer and a dancer. Cammie dragged me to some hole-in-the-wall joint once to hear her perform, practically in the middle of the night. It’s not like she was headlining the show, if you get my drift. But when Angie got up and did her numbers, I thought she wasn’t half-bad. But then again, what do I know about singing?”
“I’d like to talk to her if I could,” Reed said.
Owens snorted. “Good luck with that. Angie split right after the murder. Didn’t even come to the funeral.”
“Huh. Why was that?”
“I don’t know. Word was she was real shook up, finding Cammie murdered like that. Can’t really blame her for that one. Some knife-wielding maniac is on the loose and kills your best friend right next door to you—maybe you start thinking you’ll be next.”
“Do you think Angie might have had a specific reason to fear for her life?” Reed asked.
“Well, Thorndike hated Cammie, and Angie was Cammie’s best friend. Plus, he was the kind of guy who liked to beat up people just for the hell of it. Anyway, Angie took off—I think she was headed for L.A.—a couple of days after the murder. I haven’t seen her since.”
Reed made a couple of notes, keeping his eyes down as he asked the next question. “About Cammie’s baby—did Angie know who the father was?”
Ellery noticed Reed’s careful, distancing language. Cammie’s baby. The father.
Owens must have noticed it, too, because he cleared his throat twice before answering. “I think so,” he said finally. “Only because I know Angie was bugging Cammie to try to get money out of the guy. I remember one night Cammie was searching through the pockets of her clothes, looking for loose change so she could buy some more diapers. I said I’d pick ’em up, no problem, and Angie blew her stack. ‘You-Know-Who should be paying for them,’ she said to Cammie. ‘I don’t care what other priorities he’s got. He helped make a kid, he can help pay for it.’ Cammie told her to knock it off.”
“I see.” Reed made some more notes, and Ellery felt a pang looking at him, watching him catalog his father’s indifference. “Do you know if Cammie ever did get in touch with him? If she asked for money?”
“Can’t say one way or another. Sorry.”
“Right.” Reed took a deep breath and folded up his notepad. “I guess that’s all my questions for right now. Unless there’s anything else you want to add—anything you think is important that I might have missed.”
Owens spread out his massive hands in bewilderment. “Like what?”
“Like anything else unusual that happened in the days before or the days after she died.”
“I already told you about the hang-up calls and her busted tires.” He stroked his chin as he thought back. “A couple of times, Cammie thought someone might’ve been following her when she drove home from the restaurant. We both thought it was Thorndike or one of his goons. She started taking different routes and she put in for a day shift. It came through three days before she died.”
He sounded at a loss. Silence stretched out across the room, across the ages, as they all sat there imagining a frightened young woman driving home alone at night, blinded by the headlights from a car that was following too close behind.
“We’ll be going then,” Reed said, preparing to stand, but Owens shot out a hand to stop him.
“Wait. There was just one more weird thing. It happened two, maybe three weeks before she died.” He sat back and marveled at himself. “I haven’t thought about this in years.”
“What? What is it?”
“I was working the overnight shift and her restaurant wasn’t on my route, but I’d swing by occasionally during the slow times, just to check on her on account of all the crap going on with Thorndike. This one night, I saw her outside in the parking lot, arguing with a tall, skinny guy with red hair. She was yelling at him pretty good and I would’ve stopped the car, but she didn’t seem scared and I got a radio call. Later, I asked her about it and she said he was a customer who tried to skip out on the bill.” He hesitated. “But I didn’t believe her.”
“Why not?” Reed asked.
“The guy was wearing a nice suit. They were standing near a shiny Cadillac, which I presumed was his car. Why’s a guy like that going to skip out on a five-dollar bill?”
“This man with the red hair, would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“After all this time? No way. I didn’t get a close look on account of I never got out of the car, and I only saw him the one time.”
But Reed had pulled out his cell phone, and they all waited while he fiddled around, tapping the screen. “What about this man?” he asked as he showed the phone to Owens. “Do you think it could have been him?”
Owens squinted at the phone and then brought it close to his face. He shook his head. “Hang on. Let me get my glasses.” Glasses procured, he took the phone and tried again. “Well,” he said after a long look. “Maybe. The body shape looks about right. But maybe not. Like I told you, I can’t really say for sure.”
“Okay, thank you.” Reed tucked away his phone, and both members of the Owens family walked them to the door. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I may be back in touch if I have more questions.”
“We’re not going anyplace. Right, honey?” David put an arm around his wife and hugged her to his side. “I hope … well, maybe it’s selfish of me, but I hope you get some answers, because then I’ll have them, too.”
Ellery could barely wait for the door to close before their backs were turned to the house. “Care to let me in?” she asked as they walked down the path to the car. “Who’s the man with the red hair?”
Reed’s mouth was set in a grim line as he held out the phone so she could look at the image he had shown to David Owens. “His name is Rufus Guthrie,” he replied. “He’s my father’s campaign manager.”