4
The ringtone Sabrina had assigned to Adam broke into her thoughts.
“Hey,” she said.
“I got another call from Gabe.”
Uh-oh.
“I’m going to head over to the victim’s house. He has a deputy on the way. Once he intercepts us, he’ll follow you home.”
“What happened?” The silence on the other end of the line told her it was bad. “Adam?”
“Gabe didn’t give me a lot of details. But it turns out Lisa Palmer was the accountant for several prominent businessmen in town.”
“Let me guess. Someone’s been up to no good.”
“It’s unclear. We’re going to need a forensic accountant to go through everything. She left a note, but Gabe thinks it’s fake.” He let out a frustrated groan. “It’s too soon to know anything. We don’t even have an exact cause or time of death. But it’s unlikely her death was a suicide, and it’s more likely she knew something—something dark enough that someone killed her for it. And I’m guessing it’s what she wanted to talk to me about last week.”
Sabrina took a moment to process his words. “But we already suspected that. Why does Gabe need you to come tonight?”
“He wants me to see the place. He thinks someone’s been through everything.”
“Someone tossed her house?”
“No. They didn’t. On the surface, nothing obvious is missing. But Gabe is convinced someone’s been looking for something. Carefully and methodically. Probably most of last night. He wants another set of eyes.”
Sabrina pulled to a stop at a red light. A marked police car flashed its lights to her right. “I’m guessing that’s my escort?”
“It is,” Adam said. “I’m sorry to have to rush off. Pete will take good care of you.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She disconnected the call. The police car followed her, and in her rearview mirror she saw Adam turn left.
She reached the driveway to her house ten minutes later and punched in the access code on the keypad. The gates swung open and the deputy pulled in close behind her. When she parked, he hopped out of his car and jogged to her door, motioning for her to roll the window down.
“Yes?”
“Hi, Dr. Fleming. I’m Pete. Adam wants me to check everything out before you go inside. He insisted.”
Adam did have a chivalrous streak. It was unnecessary, but she knew him well enough to know he couldn’t help it. It was part of his DNA.
And the truth was, she rather liked it.
“No problem.” She handed the keys to Pete.
“Do you mind staying in the car?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He was back in three minutes. “Cute house, Dr. Fleming. I’ve seen these tiny houses on TV, but I’ve never been inside one. Doesn’t take long to check out, that’s for sure. But everything looks good.”
“Thank you.”
Pete opened her car door and waited as she grabbed her bag. He handed her a card. “That has my direct number on it. I’m going to be in the area tonight. If you need anything, let me know.”
“I appreciate it, Pete. That’s very kind of you.”
“Um . . . Adam asked me to wait until you put my number into your phone.”
Oh, good grief. “I’ll do him one better.” She punched in the number and Pete’s phone rang. “There. Now it’s in my phone and it’s my most recently dialed number.”
Pete grinned. “Thanks, Dr. Fleming.”
“It’s Sabrina.” She extended her hand and he shook it.
“Thanks, Sabrina. I’ll stay until you’re inside.”
“Did he tell you he’s going overboard with this? That I’m in no danger at all? The laptop is in my lab, not here.”
Pete shrugged. “Your house is in my patrol area, ma’am. I don’t know that it’s overboard to want you to have a quick way to reach me. You live out here all alone. Might be nice to have my number handy.”
“Okay. I get it. You’re as bad as he is. But that’s okay. I appreciate it. Have a good night, Pete.”
“Thank you. I hope you do too.” Pete leaned against his patrol car and watched her until she entered the door. As she turned the deadbolt, she heard his car door close.
She glanced around her small space. Nothing obvious was out of place. She opened her tiny fridge and selected last night’s leftover pad Thai. While it spun in the microwave, she pulled her laptop from her bag and ran a quick search on the victim. She’d start with the basics—social media and regular internet searches. But there was so much more information available online than most people realized. Of course, it helped if you knew where to look. And she did.
“Lisa Palmer, what have you been up to?”
An hour later she still had questions, but she also had a lot of answers. Lisa Palmer was forty-three years old even though she looked a decade older. Single. Never married. Not a local. She’d graduated from the University of Georgia and worked as a CPA in Atlanta for ten years before moving to Carrington to start her own business. Her largest client was Zinzer Hospitality Group. They provided contract services for the hospitality industry all over the Southeast. They offered housekeeping, janitorial, groundskeeping, and facility maintenance services. She’d worked out of their offices for five years before she cut ties with them. It wasn’t clear why. At that point her clientele became even more elite. Fewer businesses and more wealthy individuals. At some point after that she began working with Sabrina’s father.
How had her dad found this woman? Had she had any idea what kind of man he was? Or what he had done? Sabrina had never been able to get an answer from her dad. Well, not an answer she could make sense of.
Sabrina chewed on her lip. On paper, everything looked legitimate, but something felt off. Stop it. You’ve spent too much time looking for the bad guys and now you see them everywhere. Lisa Palmer may very well have been innocent and gotten caught up in something she didn’t understand.
Sabrina kept digging. Lisa Palmer had a dog until about five years ago, when he died of an accidental poisoning. Her parents still lived in Georgia, her sister in Tennessee. She had two nieces who smiled toothy grins in every picture.
She dropped her head. Oh, Father, be with them. So much pain was headed into their world.
Her phone rang. A different ringtone. Sabrina glanced at her clock—9:28 p.m. A bit late for Martine to be calling. “Hello,” she said.
“Hi, Sabrina. You doing okay tonight?”
“I’m good, Martine, thanks.” Martine Roberts ran a local anti–human trafficking group that Sabrina volunteered for called FreedomForAll.
“Great. Listen, I was wondering if you might be available to help with the Campbell Christmas Charity Gala this year. Since they have so graciously made us the primary beneficiary of the gala, we’ve volunteered to help make reminder calls to the guests and then be there a little early to welcome people as they come in.”
Sabrina set her glasses on the table and rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Martine. Galas aren’t my area of expertise. And I’m afraid I’m in the middle of a big project right now and it’s taking most of my time. I’m not going to be able to—”
“Oh, it wouldn’t take much time,” Martine said. “The gala committee has everything lined up. It would just be a few phone calls and then helping on the day of.”
Sabrina fought the annoyance spreading through her mind like a virus. Martine was passionate about ending modern-day slavery, and Sabrina appreciated that about her.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said in her firmest professorial tone. “I can’t take on anything else right now.”
“Well, I’ll pencil you in as a maybe,” Martine said. “If you finish up your project, you can let me know, okay?”
This woman would be the death of her.
“Martine, I’m going to have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay. Thank you!”
Sabrina set the phone on the table and put her head in her hands. She’d specifically said no and somehow Martine decided it was okay to pencil her in? Really?
Sabrina pushed the aggravation from her mind and focused on typing her notes about Lisa Palmer. When she was finished, she emailed the file to her secure email account and to Adam’s. Maybe the digging she’d done tonight would save him some time tomorrow.
She ran another search. This time for Rosita Garcia. It was the same basic search she ran every night. And again, the results were the same.
A big fat zero.
Sabrina needed to find Rosita. She needed to know for sure what had happened. Lives weren’t like hard drives. She could never wipe the slate clean. But if it was as bad as she feared, she needed to do everything she could to make reparations for the things her dad had done.
Her phone rang again. This time she cringed when she recognized the ringtone. “Hello, Mother.” She tried to keep her tone respectful.
“Hello. I only have a few moments. I’m meeting a client for dinner and then catching a red-eye from Seattle to Dulles.”
“Okay.”
“I was wondering if you’ve given any more thought to selling the house.”
Her mom was never one to beat around the bush.
“I told you I talked to my lawyer. It makes sense to wait until I’m thirty. Everything will be much easier then. We don’t need the money. It isn’t hurting anything. I check on it every week.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t move into the house if you won’t sell it. It makes no sense to live like a pauper in a tin can on the property.”
Sabrina didn’t bother responding.
“You could at least stay in the guesthouse.”
The guesthouse was two thousand square feet. “I don’t need that kind of space, Mother.”
“Everyone needs that kind of space,” her mother said. “I have never understood you.”
The feeling was mutual.
Her mother made a sound of displeasure. “My car is early. Why can’t people show up when they say they will? Anyway, there’s a chance I’ll be in your area sometime in the next week or two, but nothing is definite yet. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.”
The only response was dead air.
At 6:00 a.m. Sabrina’s alarm jolted her to awareness. Her dreams had been troubled. Nothing specific, but everything was dark and angry. That’s what she got for digging up the past.
She guzzled a glass of water, dressed, chose some music, and slid her phone into the zipper pocket on the leg of her jogging pants. She stepped outside and secured a wireless earbud in each ear. With sunrise still an hour away, stars twinkled and the moon shone brightly as she jogged down the long driveway toward her father’s house. She’d turned the corner by the pond when her earbuds died. Awesome. Now she’d be stuck with nothing but her thoughts for the rest of her run.
She eyed the large home visible in the distance past the pond. She’d never lived in it. Never wanted to live in it. Never understood why he’d bought the monstrosity in the first place.
But he’d been adamant that he would not go to any sort of assisted living facility. Said he didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. Lined up all his own caregivers before his mind completely deserted him.
She stretched out her legs and tried to lose herself in the feeling of her feet hitting the pavement, the crisp air stinging her ears and nose, the air whooshing in and out of her lungs.
But the memories came anyway.
It was one afternoon while she was sitting with her father that he’d said the words that had turned everything on edge. “Rosita, where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I’m sorry.”
Over the next few months, he mentioned Rosita from time to time and called her Rosita more than once.
She’d tried to make sense of the rambling, but—
She slammed into a large mass. One earbud fell from her ear as she crashed to the ground on her right hip.
Her leg throbbed as she tried to scramble to her feet, but something hard shoved her back to the ground. The other earbud fell and she heard heavy breathing. A dark shape rose in front of her.
She rolled to her right, mind racing. She pushed back the panic rising in her. She had to think. Fight back or run?
She was fast, but not faster than a bullet. But it was dark enough that she wouldn’t be an easy target. If she could get this guy on his back, she could make a dash for the trees. She’d never lived in the house, but she’d spent hours exploring the grounds around it. If she could get away, she might stand a chance.
Desperation clawed through her mind as he moved toward her. It was now or never.
She made a swipe for the legs she could barely make out in the fading moonlight. The bulky form stumbled back a step but then recovered and lunged at her.
Pain splintered through her head.
And everything went dark.
Monday morning came way too early. Adam parked his unmarked sedan in the sheriff’s office parking lot before seven. He checked his phone as he climbed out—no messages from Sabrina. Pete was going to make a final pass near her house before his shift ended in a few minutes.
A brief blast from a horn startled him. He glanced around until he found the culprit. Ryan Parker laughed as he got out of the car and started walking toward him. “Gotcha.”
Adam didn’t bother to respond.
“Wow. You’re cheery this morning,” Ryan said as they entered the building.
Even Ryan’s sarcasm was upbeat. It took longer than it should have to register why that might be. “Wait a minute,” Adam said. “Did you propose to Leigh?”
A Texas-wide grin spread across Ryan’s face. “Yep.”
“That’s awesome.” He clapped Ryan on the back. “Congratulations.” They entered the elevator that would take them to their offices on the third floor.
“Thanks, man, but you’re assuming she said yes.”
“That was a foregone conclusion. And even if I had a smidgen of doubt, your excessive happiness would have made it pretty clear how things went.”
The elevator doors opened.
“I’m not excessively happy.”
Gabe glared at the two of them from the coffee station. “Yes, you are. Congratulations.”
He stalked toward the homicide offices without a backward glance. “Campbell. I have information for you when you’re ready.”
“This is going to be a fun day.” Ryan didn’t sound convinced of his own words.
Gabe poked his head out the door. “Ryan, you come too. I want to bounce a few things off you.” He disappeared, then reemerged a few moments later. “I don’t suppose Leigh made cookies or anything?”
Ryan held up a lunchbox. “Two dozen.”
The elevator doors opened again and Anissa Bell stepped out.
“I love her,” Gabe said.
“Who?” Anissa looked around the room.
“Leigh,” Gabe said. “Who else?”
“You love Leigh?” Anissa’s brow furrowed. “Um . . .” She glanced at Ryan. Then Adam.
“She made cookies.” Ryan patted the lunchbox. “Apparently Gabe’s love can be purchased with baked goods.”
“Not true,” Gabe said. “But it doesn’t hurt.”
Anissa’s face relaxed and she focused on Ryan. “So . . .”
That same goofy grin lit Ryan’s face. “She said yes.”
Anissa hugged Ryan. “I knew it. Congratulations. Have you set a date?”
“Maybe spring? Leigh doesn’t want anything big. She just wants her brother and a few friends from the hospital to come. And all of you, of course.” He turned to Adam. “And Sabrina.”
Sabrina would be so excited for Leigh. And Ryan.
“Look, none of us are surprised by this, so can y’all get your coffee and get in here? We have a murder to solve,” Gabe said.
Adam braced himself for whatever was coming. Gabe’s bad mood didn’t give him much hope that the evening had gone any better after he left the victim’s house.
Anissa and Ryan went to their desks. Adam pulled a chair out from one of the vacant desks and waited for Gabe to fortify himself with three cookies. Gabe pointed to Adam. “Want to start with what we know from last night?”
“Our victim, Lisa Palmer, went over the embankment at the twin bridges around 2:24 a.m. That’s Saturday night/Sunday morning. There was no indication of braking—no skid marks—to indicate she was forced off the road. And while there are a few cameras on the bridge in that area, the video footage we have doesn’t show any other cars either.”
“She could have fallen asleep,” Anissa said.
“Possible. But if she’d fallen asleep, we would have expected to see some evidence on the video of her trying to maneuver the car as she went down the hill. A few good bumps and she should have been awake and panicked. But there was nothing. The video quality is poor, but from what we can see it appears the car bounced down the embankment and into the lake. It took a few minutes to sink. It doesn’t appear that it hit the water that hard or fast. Unless she hit her head and got knocked out somehow, we would have expected her to try to get out of the car, but if our not-so-Good Samaritan can be believed, she was still in her seat belt.”
“I thought somebody said her neck was broken,” Ryan observed.
Gabe rolled his eyes. “Yeah, turns out that is also an observation from the moron who dragged her body out of the lake. Dr. Oliver said she couldn’t say just by looking at her if it was broken or not.”
“Well, she went down a pretty steep hill and hit the water. The broken neck thing seems reasonable.” Adam took a bite of his cookie.
“You’d think,” Gabe said, “but Dr. Oliver says it’s not a foregone conclusion. She says plenty of people survive a trip down a hill like that, and the entry into the lake is at a gentle enough angle that, based on what she saw, she wouldn’t assume Lisa broke her neck on the way down.”
“Wait a minute. So we’re saying she was either unconscious or already dead—and managed to drive herself into the lake? How is that possible?” Ryan asked.
“No idea,” Gabe said.
“So, let me get this straight.” Ryan took a sip of coffee. “She definitely was in the driver’s seat when she ran off the road?”
“What are you thinking?” Gabe asked.
“Could she have been in the passenger seat and someone slid her over into the driver’s side and then swam away?”
Adam tried to suppress a shudder from the mental image of Ryan’s words.
“That is actually possible,” Anissa said. “Our no-Good Samaritan claimed both driver- and passenger-side windows were down. If he had left the body alone, we might have been able to tell if anyone else was in the car with her, but the scene was too contaminated.”
“The guy free dove down and got her out of the car?” Ryan asked. “Couldn’t he tell she was already dead?”
Anissa shrugged. “He was drunk.”
Ryan choked on his coffee. “What?”
“Oh yeah. We couldn’t even interview him properly until he’d dried out. He told the first responders on the scene that he’d been fishing and saw the car, so he dove in to help the lady. He said he had to dive down several times and eventually he was able to drag her out. He claims he didn’t realize she was dead until after he got her to shore.”
“Great.” Ryan set his mug on his desk. “So it’s possible someone drove the car over the embankment and into the lake, then put her in the driver’s seat, maybe while the car was sinking, and then once it was underwater they swam away?”
“Theoretically.” Gabe snorted. “I’ll know more by lunchtime. Dr. Oliver is going to do the autopsy this morning. I don’t know that there’s much sense in speculating about the manner of death until we get everything from her.”
Ryan held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “It’s your case. It’s just weird.”
“Oh, it’s about to get weirder, bro.” Gabe pulled four sheets of paper off his desk. “There’s a suicide note.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“Read it.”
I don’t know how long it will be before you find my body. I can’t live with myself anymore. I’ve done horrible things and hurt so many innocent people that there’s nothing I can do in this lifetime to redeem myself. I can only pray God will be merciful to me.
“That doesn’t seem weird to me,” Anissa said.
“What makes it weird is that, from what we’ve been able to determine, the woman was a saint. She volunteered at her church with the teenage girls. Sang in the choir. Went on mission trips every year. Took care of the neighbor’s dogs when he traveled. Looked in on the elderly neighbors across the street. As far as the people in her neighborhood were concerned, she was a wonderful person.”
“Everyone has secrets,” Anissa said in a grim voice.
“No doubt.” Gabe agreed with a nod toward Anissa. “But if that’s true, she had a lot of people fooled.”
“I agree,” Adam said. “Sabrina did some kind of search last night and wasn’t able to find anything out of the ordinary. She emailed me everything she has uncovered so far. Said she was going to do a deep dive on her today while she’s waiting on the hard drive to dry out. I’m going to go through Lisa Palmer’s financial records, phone records, and then whatever Sabrina can pull off the laptop. I’ll let you know if I find anything suspicious.”
Gabe pointed at Adam. “Forensics found three flash drives and an iPad in her bedroom. Sabrina’s going to look at all of them for us, so we’ll see if there’s anything that would indicate Lisa was hiding some deep, dark secret. Can you get them to her?”
“Happy to,” Adam said.
Ryan snickered.
Gabe rolled his eyes.
Even Anissa was fighting a smile.
“What’s so funny?” Adam asked.
“Nothing,” Anissa said.
“You are,” Gabe said at the same time.
Ryan laughed. “Do you really think you have us fooled? You’ve been carrying a torch for Sabrina for at least a year.”
“Longer.” Gabe coughed the word into his hand.
“I’m not . . . we’re not . . .”
“And why is that?” Anissa asked.
The three investigators stared at him. “What is this?” Adam countered. “Are we solving a murder or analyzing my love life?”
“I don’t think we said anything about a love life,” Gabe said. “Did you mention love?” He pointed at Ryan. Then Anissa. “Did you?”
They both shook their heads no.
“You’re the only one talking about love, bro,” Gabe said.
“Don’t you have an autopsy to go to?” Adam asked.
Gabe tapped his watch. “Not for another hour.”
“Just give me the stuff you want me to take to Sabrina.” Adam held out his hand.
“We’re only asking because we want you to be happy,” Anissa said.
“I’m perfectly happy.”
It wasn’t until all three of them roared with laughter that Adam realized he’d growled the words. He took the box from Gabe, signed off on the forms giving him custody of the evidence, and walked away without another word.
They followed him out of the office, but he ignored them. He turned to the elevator and they went to the coffee station. He had to wait for the elevator to reach their floor and overheard Ryan ask, “Do you think we made him mad?”
“Nah,” Gabe said. “He’s aggravated because he knows we’re right.”
“I wonder if Sabrina even realizes how much he cares about her,” Anissa said. “It’s obvious to the rest of us, but she doesn’t always pick up on things.”
The elevator doors opened and four officers stepped out. Their chatter drowned out the rest of the conversation, but Adam couldn’t get their words out of his mind as he rode to the ground floor.
Father, do I risk our friendship to see what else we might have?
His phone buzzed.
“Hey, Pete,” he said.
“Adam, go to the hospital right now.” Pete’s usual easygoing manner had been replaced by an intensity Adam hadn’t known the young officer possessed.
“What—”
“I don’t have time to explain. I’ll meet you there.”
The phone disconnected.
This had to have something to do with Sabrina. Adam ran for his car, praying the whole way.