Trust No One (6 page)

“But flinching just because she got an email?”

“Could be a million reasons why it startled her,” Devlin said. “She might have been anticipating a note from a boyfriend—maybe an old one she doesn’t want to hear from or a new one she’s hoping will call. And there you were standing in her kitchen when she got the ping. Maybe it was your presence that made her tense.”

“She’s tense, all right, the question is why. Okay, that’s my report.
I’m going to do some work on the computer and then I’m going to bed. Thanks for dinner, and tell Irene she doesn’t need to set me up with any more blind dates. One is more than enough.”

Devlin cleared his throat. “There is the little matter of the money that somehow disappeared from the Witherspoon accounts. Setting aside the question of murder, do you think it’s possible that Grace is the embezzler?”

“I considered it but if she was sitting on a big pile of money, why would she be holed up here in Cloud Lake trying to figure out how to get another job?”

“Always assuming that’s why she’s here.”

There was another short silence.

“So,” Devlin continued, “you got as far as the kitchen, right? I can tell Irene that much?”

“I’m going to hang up now, Dev.”

“Hard to see you drinking herbal tea. Was there any chanting or incense involved?”

Julius cut the connection.

H
e stood at the end of the dock, watching the moonlight on the water and thinking about how Grace had flinched when the email alert sounded. Then he thought some more about the new locks on the doors.

He checked the Elland house. The lights were still on.

What the hell. Nothing to lose. He’d already screwed up the evening.

He opened the phone again and hit the newest name on his short list of personal contacts.

Grace answered on the first ring. “Who is this?”

The tension in her voice made him go very cold. He realized she probably hadn’t recognized his number.

“It’s Julius. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

There was a brief pause. “I’m fine. What made you think I might not be okay?”

“Four new locks on your doors.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“Very observant of you,” she said.

“You sound surprised.”

“I decided to upgrade the locks because I’ll probably be here for a while and I’m living alone. Cloud Lake is no longer the small, sleepy little town it once was.”

“According to what I heard, it wasn’t the safest place on the planet back when you were a kid.”

The moment of silence hummed with tension.

“Someone told you about what happened at the old Cloud Lake asylum,” Grace said eventually.

It wasn’t a question. She sounded resigned.

“Harley Montoya and Dev both mentioned it,” Julius said. “I was curious so I pulled up a few of the newspaper stories from that time. But according to Harley, Dev and the reports, it happened at the old Cloud Lake Inn up at the north end of the lake, not an asylum.”

“The inn was originally built as a private hospital for the mentally ill. That was back in the late nineteen hundreds. After the asylum was closed, it went through several different owners who all tried to turn it into a hotel or resort. The last owner named it the Cloud Lake Inn. The place has been boarded up for years.”

“The story I heard is that you stumbled onto a murder in the basement of the place when you were sixteen. You confronted the killer.”

There was another long silence on the other end of the connection.

“Just how much research did you do?” she asked, clearly wary.

“You rescued a little kid. Damn near got yourself killed in the process. But it was the killer who died.”

“It was a long time ago,” Grace said. “I try not to think about it.”

“Is that what you positive-thinker types do? Try to forget the bad stuff?”

“Yes,” she said very firmly. “Where are you going with this?”

“Ten days ago you came across another murder scene.”

“So?”

“Finding Witherspoon’s body must have dredged up a lot of unpleasant memories. And in Witherspoon’s case, the killer is still at large, so I’m guessing you’re having a hard time trying not to think about the past.”

“What’s going on here?” Grace asked. “Are you the one playing analyst now?”

“Just looking at facts,” Julius said. “Connecting dots.”

“You don’t need to remind me of any of it, believe me.”

“You’re scared.”

Another silence stretched across the distance between them. For a moment Julius wondered if Grace would deny her fear.

“I’m . . . uneasy,” Grace said eventually. “I didn’t think I would be so nervous, not here in Cloud Lake.”

“Because you’re not in Seattle, where the murder occurred? I get the logic. But it’s deeply flawed and, therefore, not working. Want to tell me why you jumped as if you’d touched a live electric wire when your phone pinged you about a new email?”

“I did not jump.”

“You flinched and not in a good way.”

“There’s a good way to flinch?” Grace asked coldly.

“Let’s use your word. Uneasy. The ping made you uneasy.” He decided to try out one of the theories that Devlin had mentioned. “Old boyfriend giving you trouble?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Grace said.

She said it so matter-of-factly and with such assurance that he was inclined to believe her. But it also brought questions. There must be a few old boyfriends scattered about in her past.

“Someone else who is bothering you?” he pressed.

There was another short pause.

“I’ve been getting weird emails at night,” Grace said finally. “The messages are short, just snide little variations of the affirmations taken from the Witherspoon cookbook and the blog. I would say it was just some disgruntled client but the creepy part is that they’re all coming from Sprague’s personal account.”

A chill went through him, heightening all of his senses in the old, unpleasant way. He was acutely aware of the crisp night air, the featureless surface of the lake and the soft rustle of tree branches. You had to assume that the enemy could be anywhere.

“You’re right,” he said. “That is very creepy.”

“There’s something else,” Grace said. “The day I found Sprague’s body, there was an affirmation pinned to his pajamas. Someone, presumably the killer, had printed it out from a computer.”

He got the feeling that now that she had blurted out the truth she wanted to keep going.

“You told the cops about the affirmation at the scene?” he asked.

“They saw it for themselves,” Grace said. “I didn’t touch it.”

“Did you report the emails that you’ve been receiving?”

“Of course,” Grace said. “I was told that someone would look into the matter. Every time I get one I forward it to the detective in charge of the investigation but I think he believes I might be sending them to myself.”

“Motive?”

“To enhance my appearance of innocence.” Grace exhaled deeply. “The bottom line is that the cops haven’t come up with anything so far.”

“Do you have any idea who is sending the emails?”

“Maybe,” Grace said. She was speaking more slowly now, choosing her words. “Sprague did not have a good relationship with his adult
daughter, Nyla Witherspoon. In her own weird way I think she was jealous of those of us who worked in the Witherspoon offices—especially me.”

“Why you in particular?”

“It’s . . . complicated.”

Julius felt as if he had just fallen off the dock into the cold, dark waters of the lake.

“You were having an affair with Witherspoon?” he asked without inflection.

“Good grief, no.” Grace sounded astonished, not offended. “What in the world would make you think that?”

“Gosh, I dunno. Not like there’s any history of bosses sleeping with the women on their office staff.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?” she asked. This time there was an edge on the words.

The lady had claws. Julius smiled, oddly satisfied. Good to know she hadn’t been sleeping with Witherspoon. Good to know she could draw blood if you pushed her too far.

“No,” he said. “A long time ago I was warned not to get personally involved with the people who work for me.
That way madness lies.
”

Grace startled him with a burble of laughter. “Oh, wow, you get your affirmations from Shakespeare. Not sure the Witherspoon Way affirmations can compete.”

“It’s a strict policy, not an affirmation, and I didn’t get it from Shakespeare. I got it from my next-door neighbor.”

“Harley Montoya? What does he know about the dangers of office relationships? I thought he was devoted to his fishing and his garden. He and my neighbor, Agnes, have been rivals in the annual Cloud Lake Garden Club competition ever since he moved to town.”

“Harley wasn’t always retired.”

“Of course not,” Grace said. “Sometimes I forget that he was a successful businessman before he moved here.”

“The quote about the dangers of getting involved with employees isn’t an affirmation, just a realistic assessment of the potential risks. I don’t do affirmations. I have a couple of rules instead.”

“Really?” She sounded intrigued. “What are they?”

“Rule Number Two is
Everyone has a hidden agenda
.”

“I’ll bet that’s a hard rule to live by.”

“Actually, it’s pretty damn useful. You can’t be successful in my world unless you know what is really motivating your clients, your competition and the people who work for you. When it comes to closing the deal, you need to know everyone’s real agenda.”

“I thought money was at the top of the list for people in your world.”

“Everyone involved will certainly tell you that,” he said. “People like to think they base their high-stakes business decisions on rational financial logic. But that’s not true. They make decisions based on emotion, every damn time. Afterward they can always find the logic and reason they need to back up the decisions.”

“And you take advantage of that insight to make lots of money, is that what you’re telling me?”

“I don’t always win but I usually know when to cut my losses.” Time to change the subject. “You said you think Nyla Witherspoon might have been jealous of you and the other members of Witherspoon’s staff. Are your colleagues receiving those emails?”

“I asked Millicent and Kristy that question. Neither of them has received the emails but they agreed that Nyla is the most likely culprit.”

“Did you get anything from Witherspoon’s estate?”

“Heavens no,” Grace said. “No one on the staff was in Sprague’s will. He paid us all very well but he left his entire estate to Nyla.”

“And now a large chunk of it has gone missing.”

“It’s news to me but if you and Devlin know that, then it’s safe to say that Nyla is also aware of the embezzlement by now. But I started getting the emails immediately after Sprague was murdered—before anyone realized that someone had been stealing from the Witherspoon Way accounts.”

“If she started emailing you because she wanted to take out some of her anger and jealousy on you, then the missing money would have served to enrage her all the more.”

“A cheerful thought. You really are not a glass-half-full kind of man, are you?”

He watched the moonlight ripple on the jewel-black lake for a moment.

“Have you talked to Dev about the case?” he asked.

“Some,” Grace said. “But I haven’t gone into great detail. The thing is, I don’t know Devlin very well. Between you and me, I think he has some doubts about my innocence.”

Julius decided that it was not a good time to confirm her theory.

“Does Dev know you’ve got a stalker?” he said instead.

“I haven’t told him about the emails, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, it’s exactly what I mean.”

“This isn’t his case,” Grace said. She sounded defensive.

“Did you mention them to Irene?”

“No. I don’t want to make her any more concerned than she is already.”

“Dev is the chief of police in this town. He needs to know what’s going on. Talk to him tomorrow morning.”

Grace hesitated. “Okay. But there really isn’t anything Devlin can do about this.”

“Dev’s a good cop. He might have some ideas. Meanwhile try to get some sleep.”

“Oh, sure, easy for you to say.”

He couldn’t think of a response to that. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get a lot of sleep, either.

“Good night,” he said again.

“Hang on, I’ve got a question. You said that your father came around asking for money after you got rich.”

Should have kept my mouth shut,
he thought.

“That’s right,” he said. “So?”

“Did you give him the loan?”

“He and I both knew it wouldn’t have been a loan because he would never have repaid it.”

“Did you give him the money?” Grace asked quietly.

Julius looked out over the water. “What do you think?”

“I think you did a deal based on emotion. You gave him the money and I have a hunch it was never repaid.”

Julius’s mouth twitched at the corner. “Right on both counts. It was the worst investment I ever made. Still don’t know why I did it.”

“The why is easy,” Grace said. “He was your dad. You broke Rule Number Two for him.”

“No surprise that it turned out badly.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“Good night,” he said.

“Wait, what’s Rule Number One?” she asked.

“Trust no one.”

He ended the connection and clipped the phone to his belt. He stood at the end of the dock for a while longer, meditating on the conversation.

It hadn’t really been phone sex, he decided. But talking to Grace had seemed a lot more intimate than any of the sexual encounters he’d had since his divorce.

•   •   •

H
e was right about one thing—sleep was hard to come by. At two-fifteen he got up, pulled on his jeans and a jacket and went outside into the cold night. He walked to the end of the dock and looked across the expanse of dark water toward the Elland house.

The back porch light was still on and a weak glow illuminated the curtains in all the windows. He knew the night-lights would still be on at dawn when he went past the house on his morning run. They had been lit up all night, every night since Grace had arrived in Cloud Lake.