Size 12 and Ready to Rock (26 page)

“I know a twenty-two-year age difference can work,” I say to Cooper, laying aside the cookie part of my Oreo after eating the filling. “There’ve been some very happy, long-lasting marriages in which the age gap has been even more vast. I think Mr. Rochester was that much older than Jane Eyre, or close to it, and that book is considered one of the greatest romances of all time.”

“Sure,” Cooper says. “And there’ve been some teacher-student relationships that have worked too. But I’m not aware of any in which murder and blackmail have been factored into the mix. Anyway, according to Wikipedia, Tania’s twenty-four now, making our pal Gary forty-six.” He taps some more on his laptop. “So we’re looking for guys named Gary Hall—although I highly doubt that’s his real name—who were born approximately forty-six years ago and have lived in Florida. I take it she doesn’t know his social security number, current address, anything like that?”

“God no,” I say. “She said she’s been having her accountant wire ten thousand dollars into a bank account in his name every month. Her accountant is under the impression—because Tania said she told him as much—that the money is for her ailing grandfather. Since Tania’s also supporting her mother and brothers”—the marriage to the new stepdad had not worked out—“this arrangement has never been questioned by anyone.”

“Of course not,” Cooper says, still typing. “And because Tania is supporting her, the mother has never sold the story about the injudicious first marriage to the press either, even though she could probably make a pretty bundle off it. She’s a real little UN, our Tania, supporting so many in need.”

I think back to the conversation I’d had with Tania in her in-laws’ media room. I’d urged her—no,
begged
her—to go to the police with me, right there, right then, with everything she knew about her ex. She’d refused.

“You don’t understand,” she’d said. “I
went
to the police. I did, Heather, I swear, the first time he . . . the first time. It took everything I had, but I showed them what he did to me. There were bruises and everything. And do you know what they said? They said I could file a report, and they’d arrest him, but most likely all it would do is make him madder, and he’d be out of jail in a few days—maybe even a few hours—and then he’d come home and hit me harder, even if I got an order of protection against him. What I needed to do, they said, was find a safe place to go that he didn’t know about and go stay there, and then if I still wanted to file the report, they’d arrest him. But I didn’t have anywhere like that to go—”

“That’s why there are women’s shelters, Tania,” I’d explained to her. “They’re for women who are being battered. Didn’t the police tell you about them?”

She made a face. “Oh yeah, of course. But I wasn’t going to go to one of
them.
I wasn’t being battered. Gary just hit me sometimes when he was super-stressed.”

Wow,
was all I could think.

“So I never filed,” she said. “Mr. Hall—I mean, Gary—he says if I tell . . .” Her voice had trailed off.

“What?” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “What, Tania? What’s the worst that he can do to you? He’s already murdered Jared, and he tried to kill Bear. Or are you going to sit there and tell me that shooting was totally random, the way you’ve been telling everyone else?”

Tears had filled Tania’s huge Bambi eyes.

“Not me,” she said, with a sob. “I don’t care about me. There’s nothing he can do to me that he hasn’t already done. I just . . . I don’t want him to hurt the baby. I can’t let anything happen to her.”

So that’s what had done it. Tania didn’t care what happened to her—she seemed to think she deserved physical pain, enough to inflict it on herself. But her maternal instinct had already kicked in and would not allow her to let anyone injure her unborn baby.

“All right,” I’d said to her. “But what if he goes after Jordan next? Don’t you think Jordan has a right to know? Jordan loves you. Jordan will understand.”

She’d shaken her head vehemently.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “
He has photos.
He says he’ll send them to Jordan.”

Oh no, I thought to myself. Could this get any worse?

“Tania,” I said, “lots of female performers have had embarrassing photos of themselves published on the Internet. Madonna. Scarlett Johansson. Katy Perry on Twitter that time she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I don’t think Jordan is going to care, and your career can certainly survive it.” A good publicist, I thought, could spin this whole thing into gold in a heartbeat. All Tania would have to do was appear on an Oprah special, provide some pictures of herself as a child in her undoubtedly run-down home, and Gary Hall was going to come off as the monster he was. “A couple of sexy photos—even a sex tape—aren’t going to hurt your marriage or your career.”

“Not
those
kinds of photos,” Tania said, looking shocked. “I’d never do
that.
I’m not
stupid.
I always knew I was going to be famous, and I’d never let some guy—not even my husband—take nasty photos of me. No, he said he’s going to publish the
wedding
photos”—for the first time all evening I saw a hint of the girl from the “So Sue Me” video, the fierce diva holding the whip who wasn’t going to take any guff from any man—“and that is
not
going to happen.
No police. No one.
Just you.”

“Okay,” I’d said, backing off. “We’ll handle it privately.”

Of course I was lying.

“You said he e-mails her his blackmail demands,” Cooper says. “He’s probably smart enough to write to her only from computers in Internet cafés, but did she give you copies of any of the e-mails? Because they could help us track him down if he’s living off the grid.”

“Off the grid?” I ask. “You mean like in the Everglades or something?”

Cooper grins. “No. Guys like him don’t usually have credit cards,” he explains, “because they don’t want to leave a paper trail, anything that might identify them or connect them to a certain place they might have been, either because they’re paranoid or, as in the case of our Mr. Hall, because they’re a criminal. They carry out all their transactions in cash, and they definitely don’t pay taxes. This makes it even more difficult to track their whereabouts. It’s possible he only carries an ATM card connected to the bank in which Tania makes her deposits, so he can withdraw cash whenever he needs it.”

I shake my head. “She didn’t give me copies of his e-mails, but I can try to get some from her.”

“Okay,” Cooper says. “He’s smart, but I doubt he’s smart enough to forge the IP address in his e-mail headers.”

“What kind of website is that?” I ask, squinting at Cooper’s screen. I’m pretty sure I need glasses for looking at computer screens, but I’m trying to fight the inevitable. “One that’s only available to detectives?”

“And anyone else who pays fifteen dollars a month,” Cooper says. “You shouldn’t shop so freely online, by the way. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to take down your social security number? And your loyal fans have tracked down this address and put it on Google Earth. I’ve had to take that down a few times too.”

“Aw,” I say, leaning over to kiss his whisker-scruffed cheek. “My hero.”

“Yes, well,” he says, looking embarrassed. “I wouldn’t want any rat-poison-tainted cupcakes delivered here.”

“I think I can resist the urge to eat food that shows up on our front stoop,” I say. “And what makes you think Gary Hall isn’t his real name?”

“Because I just found two hundred Gary Halls,” he says. “All in their mid to late forties, all of whom seem to have lived in Florida at some time or other. I’ll never be able to figure out which one is the Gary Hall we want. Seems a little convenient to me.”

“Can’t you find out from their marriage certificate?” I ask. “Or their divorce certificate? Those are matters of public record.”

“Sure,” Cooper says. “But we won’t be able to get our hands on either of those until the courthouse opens Monday morning.”

I point to the computer. “Can’t you look them up online, like they do on
CSI?
”

He lets out a cynical laugh. “Oh, you sweet, naive girl. Some information is still available only in paper format, and then only to immediate family members. If you aren’t a family member, you have to physically present yourself at the county clerk’s office, usually with a small bribe, in order to obtain it. And the county clerk will still give it to you only if you’re as suave and debonair as I am, with a bold yet insouciant twinkle in your eye. Otherwise, they’re always on break.”

“I can’t believe you called yourself debonair,” I say. “Bold yes, and definitely insouciant, but debonair? And I’ve never noticed you were particularly suave either.”

“Suave enough to get you, baby,” he says with a wink.

I reach for another Oreo, ignoring him. “Can’t you track him down through the high school’s website?”

“You mean this one?” he says, pointing his laptop screen at me. I blink at the blue-and-white background.

“Does that say Lake Istokpoga High School? How do you even pronounce that?”

“It’s Seminole Indian for ‘many men died here.’ A group of them were swallowed by whirlpools trying to cross the lake.” Cooper has swung the laptop around and is reading from the high school’s web page. “Lake Istokpoga is only four feet deep in most places. Boaters need to be careful not to get stuck in bogs. Interesting that they mention this but not that the town is the birthplace of Tania Trace.”

“Maybe it isn’t something they want to advertise,” I say. Lucy has come back inside, her bone apparently buried to her satisfaction. She trots over to lean against my chair for praise, and I stroke her soft coat. “Especially considering the high school choir teacher ran off with her.”

“Still,” Cooper says, clicking through the school’s website, “you’d think someone might have mentioned it. But it’s not a very detailed site.”

“Tania said it’s not the largest school district—”

“Or . . .” Cooper says in an
Aha!
tone, turning the computer screen toward me, “maybe no one there is aware of who Tatiana Malcuzynski grew up to be.”

I stare at the photo he’s discovered of the first high school choir in the district ever to place in the Florida state finals. Grinning at me cherubically from the second row of sopranos is Tania Trace . . . but unless I’d been looking for her, I wouldn’t have realized it. She’s six years younger, thirty pounds heavier, and a few inches shorter than the Tania with whom I’ve spent most of my evening, her hair a fluffy black aurora around her face and her teeth in braces.

“Okay,” I say. “So she’s basically unrecognizable.”

“What about him?” Cooper taps the screen, and I get my first look at a photo of Gary Hall.

Brown-haired and brown-eyed, neither attractive nor unattractive, not the kind of man who’d ever stand out in a crowd, he looks exactly like . . .

A forty-year-old high school choir teacher.

“Mr. Hall,” I breathe.

“The game,” Cooper says, “is on.”

“Are you going to shoot him?” I ask.

“I am going to do what I’ve been hired to do,” Cooper says, closing his laptop. “Protect my client.”

“So,” I say, “you’re going to shoot him.”

“If he is threatening my client and happens to wander into range,” he says, “then probably, yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

I keep my hand on Lucy’s head. “Not so long as you don’t miss,” I say.

Chapter 19

Other than my bed, there aren’t a lot of places I can stand being on a Sunday morning, but Fischer Hall is one of them. That’s because no one there gets up before noon on weekends—unless they have to, for check-in or checkout. I usually have the place all to myself.

And this morning I need that kind of peace and quiet so I can concentrate. I have a lot of work to do.

I pull open the front door and say hi to the security guard, a woman named Wynona who often works nights, a shift that can sometimes get a bit rough if drunks wander in from the park (or happen to be some of our own residents). But Wynona is no-nonsense enough—and large enough—to handle just about anyone, drunk or sober.

Wynona nods at me over the large coffee she’s holding in both hands, but doesn’t speak. I don’t blame her. It’s been a long night for me too. I have a similar cup in my own hands, even though I know they’ve probably stocked the cafeteria with breakfast for the girls and their chaperones. I couldn’t wait. I nod back.

Jamie is slumped behind the front desk, still in her pajamas. She’s thumbing sleepily through leftover magazines since the post office will allow us to forward only first-class mail.

“Hey,” Jamie says in surprise when she looks up and sees me. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Don’t even ask,” I say. “How did things go last night after I left?”

Jamie shrugs. “Not bad, I guess. Wynona could probably tell you more.”

I glance questioningly at Wynona, but she only shakes her head and says, “Mmm-mmm-mmm,” over her coffee, her signal that she’s not ready to speak about it. I turn back to Jamie.