Having a private investigator on retainer sounds much fancier than it is . . . and that’s part of the reason the partnership works. On the podcast, I make liberal mention of “my investigator, Ioana,” which lends an air of professionalism to my research. In return, Ioana gets the constant name checks plus the cachet of being the investigator for an up-and-coming podcast.
Ioana and I met through that true crime TV show host who convinced me to reinvent my blog as a podcast. Soon after I started, I realized I needed to do more than just rehash old cases.
My podcast might focus on people killed by a partner, but it still falls under the umbrella of true crime, and I need to keep it there if I want an audience. I’d bristle at the suggestion that I’m adding sugar to the medicine, because that would imply women are in need of medicine and too foolish to take it without the sugar. What I do is teach by example without victim blaming or shaming.
Women are the primary consumers of true crime, especially crimes against women. They joke that it’s like a self-defense class—studying how they can avoid the same fate. It’s a joke that’s not really a joke.
Raven has been dating a woman with an off-the-grid cottage in northern British Columbia, and Raven says that her news feed shows her every bear-attack story because the algorithm knows she’ll read it. Why does she read it? For tips. What prompted the attack? How did the person deal with it? Did they survive? Women live in “bear country” every day of their lives. Most encounters with our “bears” are uneventful or even positive. But we still need to be ready for the meeting that goes wrong. That is one reason why women consume true crime. To prepare for the encounter with a man that goes wrong.
Being a true crime podcast means I can’t just regurgitate what’s in the news. I need to dig deeper. That’s where Ioana comes in. I find the cases and do my preliminary work, and then I turn them over to Ioana for additional investigation. In the beginning, I tried to do more investigating myself and screwed up. I learned my lesson, and I leave the detective work to her.
Normally, I’d just text Ioana and ask her to call when she’s free. I’m overly cautious now, though—paranoid, even. If Oliver is the target of this mystery woman, I need to be as discreet as possible.
I make the fifteen-minute drive to Ioana’s office, which is in one of those old downtown-area Victorian homes where I’d once fantasized about living. This particular house has been turned into offices, and hers is on the third floor.
As I pull in, I admit that Oliver was right to dissuade me from taking an apartment in one of these houses. Parking is around back, the rear yard having been paved for vehicles. There’s an eight-foot solid wooden fence and hundred-year-old trees, and even midday, the lot is dim and shadowed.
From the lot, I enter through the back door. The grand old house has been gutted in the most cost-effective way possible. The stairwell is cramped, with a bulb that barely illuminates the stairs.
There’s zero security. No lock on the back door. No camera in the stairwell. Anyone can walk into Ioana’s office. Her only protection is . . . Well, it’s the guy sitting at the first desk.
If I were asked to picture a private eye, my Hollywood-tainted mental image would be of someone who could slip about unnoticed. The kind of person who blends in a crowd. I wouldn’t imagine Ioana Balan, who looks like a corporate VP. Nor would I imagine her business partner, Dean Castillo.
In fact, if I ever spotted Castillo tailing me, I’d get to a public place, fast. He’s well over six feet, bulky in that way that’s 75 percent muscle and 25 percent “big guy mostly stuck at desk job.” His left cheek is badly pitted with what looks like acne scars, but I know it’s from shrapnel. Castillo spent his young adulthood in the US military, before an explosion sent him home and made him decide on a career change.
All that makes Castillo intimidating, but what slides him over the line into “wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley” is his permanent scowl.
Okay, fine. The scowl isn’t permanent. Or so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t personally know, because that scowl is all I ever see.
“Hey, Dean,” I say, as brightly as I can.
He doesn’t look up from his computer. “Ioana’s not in.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Your phone not working? That’s how people communicate in the twenty-first century, Gibson. They text. They email. They call. They don’t just show up and expect people to be there, ready to help them.”
Yep, Castillo is a delight. He analyzed the minimum amount of data about me—lives off a trust fund while playing podcaster and half-heartedly pursuing a doctorate—and spat out a box designed to fit me, and everything I do is interpreted within the confines of that box.
Forget that my “trust fund” comes because my mother was murdered. Forget that my podcast has loftier goals than fame or fortune. Forget that my doctorate is taking longer than usual because of my podcast and the time I took off school after my mother’s death.
I’m accustomed to Castillo’s rudeness. I’m also aware that I’ve given him reason to dislike me—50 percent misunderstanding and 50 percent justified—but that’s another story. Mostly, I deal with it by staying out of his way.
“Okay,” I say. “Sorry for bothering you. I’ll text Ioana—”
“She’s busy. Important case in Toronto.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
He still hasn’t looked up from his work. “No idea. I only know it’s important, and she doesn’t have time to play research monkey for you.”
Breathe. Just breathe.
“I understand,” I say, as calmly as I can, while reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll find someone else—”
“That a threat? Taking your business elsewhere because Ioana isn’t at your beck and call?”
I keep my jaw clenched to the count of three and fight for the same calm tone. “You just said Ioana was busy, and I have something urgent—personal, not professional. That means I might need to hire someone else, for this one thing only.”
“What about me?”
I give a short laugh. “You wouldn’t do it.”
“Did you ask?”
I cross my arms and stare at him, hoping it’s just a stare, though I suspect there’s a hint of a glower in there, too. “Do I look like Charlie Brown?”
His brows twitch up at that.
I wave at my jeans and sweater. “Note that I am not wearing a yellow shirt. Therefore, I am not going to fall for the trick where I try to kick the football and you pull it away. Or where you goad me into asking whether you’re available and then sneer that you wouldn’t work for me if I paid you double.”
“You’re offering to pay me double?” Castillo leans back in his office chair, boots on the desk. “That’s mighty generous of you, Gibson. You don’t need to go that far, though. I’d do it for fifty percent above the standard.”
I want to walk out, but I hesitate for two reasons. One is the fear that if I do, I’ll look like the snotty socialite swanning off with her nose in the air. The other is that I don’t want to insult Ioana by taking any business to another agency.
“Twenty-five percent above standard,” I say.
“Thirty-five.”
I do a quick calculation. “I can afford ten hours at that. Will you warn me if you expect it to take longer?”
He grunts something that sounds like assent.
“It’s about my brother,” I say.
“I know.” He takes out his phone, flips to a screen and shoves it across the desk at me. “We run automatic search alerts for our clients. Ioana sent that this morning.”
I read it where it lies on the desk, and then I really do glower at him while wishing I were the kind of person who could whip a cell phone at someone’s head.
I read the text aloud. “Hey, seems Amy had a problem at her show last night, and it might not be a run-of-the-mill troll. If she comes by, can you squeeze her in, please?” I lift my gaze to Castillo’s and then read Ioana’s final text. “Oh, and don’t be an ass and overcharge her.”
“Huh,” he says. “I missed that part.”
“Whatever,” I say. “I can afford it, and judging by those ragged-ass boots, you need the money more than I do.”
I shouldn’t stoop to his level, but the pang of guilt is outweighed by the satisfaction of seeing how fast his boots vanish under the desk.
“You deserved that,” I say. “Now, if we can put aside the schoolyard shit and talk, please.”
“You shouldn’t swear, Gibson. You sound like a five-year-old saying a bad word.”
“Last shot goes to Mr. Castillo,” I say. “And I concede.”
I pull up a chair and explain what happened last night at the show. Then I tell him about Oliver’s questioning and what I found on the woman who sat in that seat.
Castillo doesn’t interrupt. He even takes notes, jotting them on his phone faster than one would think possible for fingers his size.
“You think this woman called in a tip to the police,” he says when I finish.
I shrug. “It’s a theory. Otherwise, she’d need to work for the police and know they planned to bring Oliver in. She bought the ticket that morning, and he wasn’t questioned until evening.”
He leans back in the chair and props his boots again. “Yeah, most likely scenario is that she called it in. You didn’t recognize her?”
“No, but I can give a description.”
He lifts his phone and waves for me to go on. I read aloud the notes I took on my own phone.
“Thorough,” he says.
“I always get a good look at any potential threat.”
I expect a snarky comment, or at least an eye roll that says I’m overreacting. Instead, he mutters, “Good,” and I’m not sure what to do with that.
“I can try convincing the library to give me the booking info,” I say. “But the troll isn’t the original seat holder.”
“The original seat holder might be able to help, but I doubt the troll communicated with the seller using anything traceable. I’ll see what I can do with that.” He pockets his phone. “Tell me about your brother.”
“He didn’t kill his wife,” I say immediately.
Now I do get a roll of those dark eyes. “No shit.” He taps a pen on his desk. “I looked into it once. Clear-cut case of accidental drowning.”
Okay, that was not what I expected.
“What can you tell me about the college girlfriend?” he says. “I looked that up after I saw her mentioned in the stuff about last night, but there wasn’t anything online.”
I relax a little. “Her name was Greta. It happened in Vancouver, where they were both going to the University of British Columbia for business. I wasn’t part of Oliver’s life then. He’s my half brother, on my dad’s side, a decade older than me. My parents divorced before I was born.”
“You didn’t see Oliver when your dad had custody time? He lived with his mom?”
I shake my head. “Oliver lived with our dad. My father didn’t . . .” I clear my throat. “My father remarried shortly after I was born. We . . .” Another throat clearing. “There was no custody time.”
Castillo stares at me. “He didn’t get to see you?”
I keep my voice as level as I can. “He didn’t wish to see me.”
He grunts, and it almost sounds apologetic.
I continue, “Greta died long before I came back into Oliver’s life, so I can only tell you what he told me. She was struggling with school. An MBA was her parents’ dream, and that’s part of what brought Oliver and Greta together—both were in the program because of their parents. Oliver tolerated it, but he had an aptitude for it. Greta hated it. Her gifts were in the arts—she was a skilled sculptor. She’d been struggling, and Oliver thought it was just . . . normal stuff. Problems with parents, school, whatnot.”
I tense, realizing what I’ve said can open me up to sarcasm. Rich-people problems. But Castillo just keeps listening.
“She took pills,” I say. “Oliver wasn’t even in Vancouver that weekend, which he blames himself for. She was found by her roommate, and he’d been in Seattle since the day before.”
“And the new girlfriend? What’s their relationship like?”
I pull my legs up onto the chair, sitting cross-legged. “While I never met Greta, my sense is that Martine has more in common with her than with Laura. Martine is quiet and introverted. She’s a music teacher, and she plays flute in their city orchestra. She’d been married once. Her husband died of cancer. That’s how she met Oliver—in a therapy group for widows and widowers.”
“This woman at the library suggested there was an issue between Martine and Oliver. Abuse? Physical? Psychological?”
“She didn’t specify, and I . . .” I rub the back of my neck. “I want to say that I can’t believe Oliver would do that, but I can only see him as a brother. What a girlfriend might see could be very different. However, I can say categorically that I’ve never noticed anything that caused me concern. Martine might be very quiet, but it’s not because Oliver speaks over her or controls her interactions. He does most of the relationship planning—where to go, what to do—but he’s told me that makes him uncomfortable. It makes him feel controlling, even when it’s her choice. He’d like her to be less . . .”
“Passive?”
I nod. “They’ve only been dating for six months. My sense is that she’s not comfortable taking the lead yet. That might be learned experience.”
“Her husband?”
“I got the feeling, from Oliver, that there were some . . . danger signs in that relationship. Oliver suspects Martine is still getting used to a more equitable partnership, and he’s trying to give her space to do that.”
“Okay.” Castillo swings his feet down. “So this troll gave the cops some tip about your sister-in-law’s death and feigned concern for the new girlfriend’s safety. That put the cops in an awkward position. They had to follow up, but there wasn’t enough evidence to do more than question Oliver. The bigger issue comes if this troll doesn’t drop it.”
“She might try again.”
He nods. “Yes. I have a contact at the department. I’ll get what I can and work on identifying her. It’ll be four hours’ work, maybe five.”
“Thank you.”
He makes a dismissive gesture, clearly uncomfortable with the gratitude.
“I’ll text you when I have something,” he says. “And don’t try playing detective again. Go home and . . .” He waves a hand. “Study or whatever.”