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I was having a chat with Raymond the next morning, trying to decide whether meditation was something I should try. My mom and Miss Nancy would probably say yes. Don would roll his eyes. Raymond cocked his head and I picked up some calm vibes that I took to mean that he was on board with the meditation plan.
“I think so, too, Ray,” I said. “I mean, with all the crazy that’s been going on around me lately, maybe it would help me focus and prioritize. And I could get one of those cool cushions to sit on.”
I took a sip of my coffee and thought about how having chats with a squirrel named Raymond was probably going to be part of my new normal. I could live with that.
A knock at the door sent Raymond skittering back up the tree and I got up to let Don in.
“Am I interrupting?” He asked. “I thought I heard voices.”
“I was just discussing the merits of meditation with Raymond. What’s up?”
“You were... no. Not asking. What’s up is more important. Have you looked at the news this morning?”
“No. What happened?”
I moved to the coffee table and opened my laptop.
“Helena Wilton was arrested early this morning.”
“No!”
I opened one of the local news websites and there it was, with video and pictures and everything: “Local Philanthropist Arrested for Developer Husband’s Murder”.
“Holy crap,” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Look how calm she looks.”
The video showed Helena Wilton, in handcuffs, being escorted from her River Oaks mansion to an unmarked police car. Detective Perez, her face grim, was at Helena’s side. Helena’s face was unreadable, her hair in a twist and her make-up perfect. She’d probably take a glamourous mugshot. I didn’t see Petreski anywhere.
“They must have found out something new,” Don said. “Some new evidence.”
“Hmm.”
“Let me guess. You’re not buying it.”
“I’m not ruling it out completely. I’d like to know what they found that was big enough to arrest her for, though.”
“Maybe it’s in the article.” Don started scrolling down, reading the text below the video. “Ugh, don’t they have proofreaders look at this stuff before they post it?”
“Oh man. I wonder how Tom is handling this?”
“You couldn’t call him, even if you had his number. Do you have his number?”
“No, I don’t.”
Don’s phone rang and we both turned to look at it where it sat on the coffee table.
“Do you have his number?” I asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never even spoken to him. Oh, it’s Petreski.”
“Answer it! Answer it!”
“I am. Geez. Hello? Yes, we saw it on the news. He’s right here.” He handed the phone to me.
“Hello?”
“Jake, Don said y’all saw Helena Wilton’s arrest on the news.”
“Yeah. She didn’t look like she was worried. I don’t think she did it.”
“People with as much money and as many lawyers as she has don’t worry.”
“Wow. Cynical.”
I could practically hear him shrug. “You see it happen.”
“Or... and here’s a thought... she’s not worried because she didn’t do it. That’s my bet.”
“Your money’s still on Katz?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s just no evidence, Jake.”
“He and Jennifer were arguing about something major the night Dawn Thrasher was killed. Or whatever her name was.”
“What?”
“What what?”
“Dawn whatever her name was? What do you mean?”
“I mean, her name wasn’t always Thrasher, right? And whatever else her name was, I’m guessing it connected her to the Wiltons somehow.”
He was silent, and I waited.
After a few moments he sighed, and I sat back on the sofa, the phone pressed to my ear.
“No, it wasn’t. What do you know? You need to tell me.”
“Only that someone heard you refer to her by a name other than Thrasher. I don’t know what, though.”
More silence.
“Wilton.”
“What?”
“Dawn Thrasher was born Dawn Wilton. She was the daughter of Clarence’s older brother, Roger.”
“She was Clarence’s niece?” Don turned to look at me when I said that, and I nodded at the shocked look on his face.
“Yes. And now I’ve told you more than I should. I need to go.”
“Wait – why did you call in the first place?”
“What?”
“Why did you call?”
“Just, uh, checking in. Making sure you and Don were doing okay. No more threats or uncomfortable encounters, that kind of thing? Right. Okay, gotta go.”
The line went silent and I looked at the phone before handing it back to Don.
“So weird.” I said.
“What?”
“He called us for, like, no reason.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah.”
“Or did he call to tell you something?”
“Tell me what? I had to pick information out of him.”
“But he told you, didn’t he? I mean, maybe he called so you could ask him the right questions. Maybe he doesn’t think it’s Helena either, but he’s got no choice but to arrest her at this point.”
“You mean, he was being devious? That is so him.”
“And he knew that if he gave us the information we wanted – that he wanted us to have – that we would keep poking at it.”
“That is so us,” I agreed.
“It is.”
“So let’s poke.”
“Ew. Dude.”
“Okay, that sounded bad. But you know what I mean.”
“So bad. I’m telling Petreski you wanted to poke me.”
“I am so killing you. Bridger will be an orphan and it will be your fault.”
“Jake.” Don turned to me, his face serious. “If anything ever happens to me, you have to promise to take care of Bridger.”
“What the fuck, dude? I mean, yeah, of course. But... oh. Ha ha ha. Very funny. You really should consider a career on the stage. Maybe that’s what the road opener candle is trying to tell you.”
❧
Back we went to the digital drawing board, searching for any information we could find on Roger Wilton and his family. We found a record of his marriage to Amelia Thrasher in 1962, and the birth of a daughter, Dawn, in 1967. Dawn must have taken her mother’s maiden name at some point – but when, and why?
Roger was killed in an automobile accident in 1979. The obituary scanned from a local newspaper didn’t give much information, just listing his survivors and information about the services. Dawn would have been twelve. Clarence would have been twenty, just getting started on his handyman/builder career.
I was trying to figure out how any of this would have fit together. We had no way of knowing the Wilton family dynamics. Were they close? Did the accident make them rally together and take care of each other? Or did it drive them apart?
My money was on the latter, since Dawn Wilton became Dawn Thrasher. I wondered whether her mother was still alive, and where. Had she gone back to her maiden name? Petreski probably had some of the answers, but couldn’t tell us. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe Hastings was phenomenally bad at his job.
Don, though... Don had Google-Fu like nobody’s business.
“Don?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look up from his laptop.
“Don, I think I know what the road opener candle is trying to tell you.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I think you should be doing Hastings’s job. You know, information analyst stuff like Hastings is supposed to be doing. Look at what you’ve found just in the public records. Imagine what you could do if you had access to the private stuff.”
Don looked up at that, then off into the distance. He was thinking about it. “Maybe.”
“I could totally see you doing that.”
“Yeah. But first, let’s figure this out. Life plans can wait until tomorrow.”
“Do you think Amelia’s still alive?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I’m looking for death records or obituaries, but I haven’t found anything yet for either name.”
“She could have gotten remarried, and have a completely different name now.”
“But then her marriage record should show up, and I’m not finding anything like that, either.”
“If she is alive, and the police know that Dawn Thrasher was born Dawn Wilton, then they should know about Amelia also, right? If she is still alive, they would have notified her of her daughter’s death.”
“Makes sense.”
I looked back at the screen, at the minimalist obituary for Roger Wilton, and wondered why it was so sparse. “I wish we knew more about the accident that killed Roger.”
“Why? You think there was something hinky about it?”
“I think... I think something’s hinky. It was a small town, and small towns put everything in the paper. There should be an article about the crash, right?”
“Yeah. But it looks like the paper isn’t all online. They probably have all the back issues in an archive.”
“Is the paper still in business?”
“It publishes weekly now, but yeah. We could call them, see what they have?”
“I was thinking road trip.”
“Road trip? But if we call they can just send us a copy of the pertinent article.”
“But what if something else is pertinent? What if there’s something else in the paper that can put it in perspective?”
“You’re just bored and want to take a road trip.”
“Are you working today?”
“No.” Don’s shoulders slumped.
“Road trip! And Bridger stays here – they won’t let him in the newspaper archive.”
“Fine.”
