Castillo leaves Oliver’s house shortly after the conversation. I stay with Dinah while the police finish their search. As much as I’d love to see Oliver, that’s not possible. Instead, Dinah drops me off to get my car and then grabs takeout and meets me at her temporary office, where we hang out while we await news.
Dinah and I talk a bit, catching up, but it’s hard to focus on anything except Martine in the hospital and Oliver in prison and what happened to my mother. I don’t want to think about Mom. I want my full attention and sympathy to be with Martine. But being here with Dinah takes me back eight years to when she sat with me at home, waiting for news about Grant White.
Now I’m waiting to hear whether my brother will be charged with attempting to kill his girlfriend, and Dinah is with me again, and those two cases swim along the same stream in my mind.
Martine and my mother. Oliver and Grant White.
Is there any chance Oliver did this? Logically, it makes no sense. But then I think of White’s children and friends and loved ones, and all the waiting they’d done at each stage, still in shock that he had been charged with my mother’s murder, still thinking there’d been some mistake.
Am I doing the same thing?
I really hope not.
It’s nearly five by the time the call comes. The police have finished with the security logs and footage. I wait for the news that they found no evidence of Oliver leaving last night. That they have security-tape evidence of someone stealing and then returning his car.
That is not what they found.
“I don’t understand,” I say to Dinah. “There’s nothing?”
“Nothing between nine last night and one this morning. Someone turned the system off.”
“Or maybe Oliver never turned it on.”
Dinah shakes her head. “It was on after he returned from work. Then it goes offline for four hours.”
I consider that. “Could someone have hacked it?”
“That’s my theory,” Dinah says, “but of course the police are going with the simpler solution.”
“That Oliver turned it off to hide him leaving.”
“Yes.”
“The charges won’t be dropped then.”
“I’m going to speak to the prosecutor and see whether they have anything substantiative enough to warrant the charge. Worst case, they’ll string us along for a few days. Either way, your brother will be out—on dropped charges or bail.”
Before heading home from Dinah’s office, I go to start the map app and realize my phone is turned off from this morning. Both Castillo and Dinah had been with me—and Oliver in prison—so there was no one I needed or wanted to hear from.
When I turn it on, I have so many message notifications that I’m tempted to shut it down again. Most are from people and numbers I don’t recognize. One, though, makes me wince, and I sit in the law firm parking lot as I return the call.
“What the fuck is going on?” Raven says when she answers.
“I’m sorry.”
I tell her the whole story, and I relax a little as the edge falls from her tone.
“So someone stole Oliver’s car and is framing him for murder?” Raven says.
I tense. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“Hell, no. It sounds great. For a true crime story, that is. Not so great if your brother is in the middle of it, though.”
I roll my eyes. “You think?”
She sighs. “Fine. I’ll turn my producer brain off. Halfway off anyway.” She pauses. “Someone seriously hates your brother, Amy.”
“You think?” I say again.
“At least you haven’t lost your sense of sarcasm.” A rustling, as if she’s walking while talking. “Oliver’s lawyers will handle this. We need to concentrate on podcast damage control, because either way, this is damaging.”
I fight a spark of panic. “How damaging?”
“If your brother was somehow convicted, you’d have two choices. Either close shop or turn him into an example.”
“Fall on my sword and use myself as an example, too. How even those close to a predator might be blind to it.”
“Yes, even if you still thought he was innocent. But the trial isn’t happening tomorrow. The problem is that, if it goes to trial, you need to address it in a way that doesn’t condemn him . . . but doesn’t support him, either.” A moment of silence, and then her voice drops. “You cannot publicly support him or defend him in any way.”
“I know.”
“You could do that?”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that, but if it does, then I agree that either I’d need to do it or I’d need to end the show.”
“You have something here, Amy. Your growth rate is one of the best I’ve seen. This could be a career for you . . . if the podcast doesn’t get derailed by what’s happening to Oliver.”
A bird calls in the background, and she pauses, as if waiting it out.
Raven continues, “I’ll fight like hell alongside you if that’s what you want, but if you decide it’s not worth it, you’d damn well better let me know. I don’t want to look up and realize I’m the only one bailing out the ship.”
“I understand.”
“There’s more. You lost two sponsors today, Amy. Henderson Berry Farms and Old Crone Brews.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Shit.”
“It’s not a huge deal. They’re both local, and they weren’t exactly shoveling money into your coffers. But if this story goes national, you’re going to lose more.” She pauses. “Maybe all.”
Objectively speaking, that won’t affect my bottom line. Right now, I make 90 percent of my podcast earnings from advertising and Patreon. Sponsorship at this stage is mostly free website hosting, discount show merch, and—in the case of Old Crone Brews—a monthly tea shipment that I’ve been giving away online because I’m more of a coffee drinker.
But small-scale sponsorship is a stepping stone to the big bucks. It’s also a stamp of validity. If my podcast has sponsors, it’s not a vanity project. When those names disappear, it’ll be noticed.
“I have an idea, though,” Raven continues.
“Okay . . .”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”
“I’m bracing,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah. Seriously, though, I think we could turn this into a real growth opportunity.”
“Switch my show focus to people who’ve been wrongly accused of killing a loved one?”
“Hey, if you meant that, I’d be all for it.” A pause. “Strike that. My money-grubbing soul would be all for it. Ethically, I like where you are now. And I know you only want to be where you are now, which is the quandary.”
“Yep.”
“Do you remember when I first reached out to you? What had you done that caught my attention?”
“Quintupled my subscribers in a week.”
She snorts. “You went from a hundred subscribers to five hundred. Not exactly hitting the big leagues. It wasn’t the numbers that caught my eye—it was the growth.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
She ignores me and continues, “Most podcasts can trace that kind of spike to an outside element. They’re recommended by someone big. They get media coverage for a specific show. You did it organically. That’s what put you on my radar. You added something to the format, and it spiked subscribers and kept them. Then you continued growing because you continued adding that new ingredient.”
“I started investigating cases rather than just regurgitating them.”
“Exactly. And that’s how you can not only weather this storm but ride these winds to where you want to be.”
I hesitate. “If you’re suggesting I investigate Oliver’s case, I can’t do that. I only dig into completed cases so that I don’t interfere with the prosecution and defense’s work.”
“I’m not suggesting you investigate. I’m suggesting you report, as only someone in your position can. I’m suggesting you cover the case.”
“Cover a case about my brother as an attempted-murder suspect? While remaining completely neutral and not shaping the data in any way, because that would be unethical?”
“Yes.”
“So you want me to be the kind of cold-hearted bitch who’d use a tragedy in her family to increase ratings?”
She sighs dramatically.
“What?” I say. “That’s what I’d be doing, right?”
“No. Someone else might do that, but you are one of the few people I know who could cover this dispassionately. It’s not milking a family tragedy. It’s acknowledging what is happening and proving your commitment to the podcast by not sweeping it under the rug.”
I say nothing.
“Think about it,” she says. “See what happens.”
“I wouldn’t do it if Oliver objected,” I say.
“Understood.”
“And I wouldn’t do it if Oliver’s lawyer objected.”
“Understood.”
With any luck, those charges are going away, and this will all be moot, because I don’t want to cover my brother’s case . . . and I really don’t want to ask whether that’d be all right with him.
I get two texts from Dinah that night. Short and sweet.
If it were anyone other than Dinah, I’d worry that telling me to stay offline meant something had happened and she didn’t want me to see it. I know better. She’s saying that there isn’t any news, and so anything I see online is either speculation or outright fabrication, probably with some slander thrown in.
My mother’s murder taught me the wisdom of Dinah’s words. I’ll be the first to know of new developments, and surfing will only keep me awake at night. I need to sleep, and I think—with a little chemical help—I can manage it.
Martine is alive and in stable condition.
My brother didn’t shoot her.
This will all be cleared up soon.
Do I really believe that?
I’m not sure.
I do sleep, though the pill means I wake up groggy to incoming texts. I hadn’t bothered to set an alarm, and when I open my eyes, I see it’s almost nine. That has me scrambling up, reaching for my phone.
The texts are from Dinah.
I read her texts twice, hoping to see something that I’m missing, some nuance that says my twisting stomach is an overreaction.
If she’s picking me up and taking me to Oliver, something has happened. A development that’s more than “charges not dropped.”
I must resist the urge to go online. No good can come of it, not when Dinah will be here in ten minutes and I’ll get the facts straight from her.
I yank on clothing, and I’m washing my face when the buzzer sounds. I make sure it’s Dinah, and then get my hair brushed before she’s there.
“I overslept,” I say as I open the door.
“Good. You needed it.”
“Just let me grab a coffee and an apple.”
“We’ll hit a drive-through on the way.”