I sat on the ground and leafed through the book, the sight of my small, neat handwriting pulling up brief memories of me scribbling things down. I had pages and pages of notes about a woman named Shawna Mack, while others were about Brynn Bodwell. Neither name registered with me, but that annoying tickle was at the back of my brain for a moment before fading. Like the annoying tingle in your nose when you need to sneeze, and just before you do, your eyes watering, the sensation goes away, robbing you of satisfaction.
For reasons unknown, I flipped to the back of the notebook. It was muscle memory more than a hunch; a repeated action wired into my marrow. Notes were written on the inside back cover.
The Collector Private Chat
The Client Exclusive Chat
Websites and passwords were listed for both, as well as an email address and password I had no memory of. My heart thudded in my chest but there was no stress-induced headache. Hope swelled like an inflated balloon. I scrambled to my feet and darted for my computer.
Hours of poring over the wealth of information in these newly revealed locations didn’t just poke holes in that black curtain—it tore great swaths of fabric loose.
Years ago, I had ventured into the world of photography forums. I sought other “shutterbugs” who loved the craft. People I could talk to when I’d no longer been able to talk to my father—losing him first to his alcoholism, and later to death caused by his addiction. In the forums, I’d found a new family. A family who understood me.
Over time, a few revealed they were voyeurists, as we called ourselves. There were more of us than I ever imagined, so I created a safe haven for us. Nudists have colonies, we had the private chat. A place where we wouldn’t be shamed for our interests. It was in this chat that I first met The Client. We didn’t use names for years to help protect our privacy.
The voyeurists issued each other challenges. They started out juvenile—snapping a picture under a woman’s skirt without her knowing, for example. But the challenges evolved over time. They got more complicated, more difficult, more dangerous. I excelled, though. I captured images and tracked down information better than anyone else.
It was through these challenges that I caught The Client’s eye. He started offering to pay me handsomely for challenges exclusive to me. His first challenge had been to watch a woman named Shawna Mack in Taos, New Mexico. I’d been living in Central California at the time, and my father’s health had gotten so bad he was on hospice care, being tended to by my doormat of a mother.
I had originally planned to visit New Mexico just for a few weeks, but I’d loved it there. So I moved to the state permanently, settling in Albuquerque after the Taos jobs were done. I happily left my parents behind. Before I fled the state, I took three of my father’s most prized film cameras. He’d made me clean the things once a month like clockwork for years. I knew those machines better than he did. He couldn’t even use them anymore, and my mother was too much of a mess to notice they were gone. They belonged with me.
From then on, for ten glorious years, The Client would contact me when he had a new woman for me to surveil. He footed the bill for my travel and extended stays in whatever place he wanted me to go next.
But that all stopped in 2011, when The Client suffered an accident on a construction job. After a long hospital stay, several surgeries, and physical therapy, he wasn’t the same man. Just like my father. And just like with my father, I’d been cast aside, though The Client had done his best to sound upset about it.
We had a good run, but the signs tell me it’s time for a change. If you keep my secrets, I’ll keep yours.
That was it. Ten years of working together and I was dropped.
I made the best of it. The skills I gathered while working for him allowed me to create a lucrative business for myself. But it had never been the same. No one ever paid me as well, no one ever appreciated my skills as much. A pang that was some part grief, some part longing wracked my soul as I read old messages between us. The black curtain was in tatters now.
He was who I needed. He could get me out of the horrible financial mess I was in.
Alas, life was unfair.
Closing my laptop, I gathered my belongings, got dressed, and went out into the night again, searching for a woman who could solve my problems.
CHAPTER 17
Riley awoke the next morning a little after 10. Michael had left hours ago. They’d stayed up for several hours talking about Emery Dawson and doing another search for her online, now that there was a name to put in the search bar. But not much more came up than what Jonah had already shown them.
The lack of a “Body of Missing Woman Found” article about Emery suggested she was still considered a missing person. Were her parents still holding out hope that their introverted daughter was out there somewhere, maybe living a secret life across the border? Since Emery was from an entirely different state, Riley could understand why her disappearance hadn’t been connected to Shawna’s and Brynn’s—especially if her body had never been found. But it begged the question: Why was a photographer with a storage unit in Clovis, who had presumably been in Texas—over five hours away—taking surveillance pictures of Emery, in addition to two women from Taos? How had he even found Emery, and what had he done with her afterward?
After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and toast, she took a shower, and then settled in front of her laptop. She knew she needed to let Carter know that she’d figured out the identity of her “mystery woman,” as he called her, but doing so through text messages felt a little too informal. She was halfway through an email to him when her phone chimed.
It was a text from Nina.
Made contact with Amy Velasco. Available for a meeting this afternoon? She can meet during her lunch break today at 12:15.
Riley checked the time. It was 11:45. Yep. Text me the address of where we’re going. I’ll leave here in a few.
She closed her laptop on the half-written message, vowing that she’d let him know about Emery later. After changing her outfit four times, she went back to the first thing she’d put on, pulled on some flats and hurried out the door.
Epicurean Subs was a gourmet place Riley had only been to once. It was a bit overpriced, but the turkey, cranberry, cream cheese, and arugula sandwich she’d gotten had been surprisingly good. Riley had arrived at the shop first, so she put in her order and was waiting at a table with a numbered card when Nina strolled in. Amy cautiously walked in a minute later.
Amy had the same dark hair as her mother, Riley noted. She felt a pang at seeing both how anxious Amy was, and how young. She guessed Amy was even younger than she was.
Once food orders for everyone had been placed and received, they settled at a table near the back of the small space. There were only half a dozen tables here, and they were currently the only ones dining in. The handful of people who’d come in since Riley had arrived had only placed to-go orders.
“Thank you for meeting with us,” Nina said, guiding the conversation. If it had been left up to Riley, she’d still be in the awkward silence stage.
“Sure,” Amy said, her tone tentative as her gaze shifted from Nina to Riley and back again. “Curiosity got me here more than anything.”
“Who was it who contacted you first?” Nina asked.
“The realtor who sold the house to Julie Young. He told me there had been a ghost hunt at the house and that someone had …” She swallowed. “Someone had made contact with my mom? He asked me if I wanted to talk to the current owner of the house first, or to the person who led the investigation. I said I wanted to talk to Julie, since I figured if there was a cuckoo person in this whole scenario, it was probably the ghost hunters.” She swallowed again, heat rising in her cheeks. “Sorry.”
“Eh,” Nina said, waving the comment away. “If only cuckoo was the worst I’ve been called.”
Amy laughed involuntarily at that, given how fast she cut the laugh off and how much redder her cheeks grew because of it. “Julie sai
d you guys were really great, though, so I figured it was safe to meet you.”
Riley and Nina had already briefly discussed the fact that they’d need to keep the gorier details of what had happened to Iris out of the conversation. Amy would have already known her mother had suffered from a fatal fall down the stairs—there was no need to go into the fact that Riley had witnessed every bone-crunching horror of said fall.
“We were called in because of the activity in the house,” Nina said. “It was clear once we got there that the spirit wanted to relay a message. We believe the message is for you.”
Amy’s eyes welled, but the tears didn’t fall. She sniffed hard.
“I know this is a delicate subject, and if this gets too uncomfortable for you, we can stop at any time, okay?” Nina asked.
Amy nodded.
In her soft, gentle way, Nina said, “We know that your mother’s death was deemed a suicide. Do you know the details of why it’s considered a suicide and not an accident?”
“Mom was allergic to Tylenol,” Amy said. “Like, deathly allergic. She had a scare when she was ten or so. She was home sick from school and had a really bad headache. Her dad was home with her, but he’d been on the phone so she got into the medicine cabinet on her own and took two tabs of Tylenol. She started acting really weird and broke out in hives. Her dad realized she was having an allergic reaction, so he took her to the hospital. On the way there, she went into anaphylactic shock. Grandad liked to tell the story of how he drove to the hospital so fast that day, he almost broke the sound barrier.” She smiled sadly to herself. “Anyway, he got her to the hospital in time to get a dose of epinephrine. Ever since then, she was really good about making sure not to take the stuff. I don’t understand how she could die from something she didn’t even keep in the house.
“They did an autopsy and found that she had taken at least three tabs of Tylenol. For someone as allergic as she is, that would easily kill her if she didn’t get an EpiPen in time. There were EpiPens all over that house, too. None of them were used. So the theory is that the Tylenol would have killed her if the fall down the stairs hadn’t done it first. They tried to tell me that maybe she kept some on hand to take if things ever got really bad for her. As if she were a spy who kept cyanide pills hidden in a pocket in case she was ever arrested for war crimes or something. Ridiculous.”
Riley frowned.
“I know she didn’t kill herself,” Amy said, wiping away an escaped tear. “I know it in my gut. Maybe that’s just me being in denial or something, I don’t know. She’d just gone through a bad breakup with her boyfriend a month or so before that. Maybe she was more heartbroken about that than I thought?”
Riley had started shaking her head halfway through Amy’s musings.
Amy cocked her head at her. “No? Did her message have something to do with the way she died?”
Riley cast a quick glance at Nina, who nodded, letting her know it was okay to answer. “I can … see things. Spirits. Pieces of the past. Stuff like that. Your mom showed me that she actually had fallen twice that day. The first time, she’d fallen off a ladder—”
Amy let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Oh my God. I can’t tell you how many times I yelled at her for that! My parents divorced about five years ago. He’s off in Florida with a new wife and kid already. Anyway, ever since then, she’s tried to do all the handiwork herself. She was probably cleaning out the gutters.” She shook her head, amused while fighting back tears at the same time.
“We think the fall off the ladder gave her a concussion, which caused confusion,” Riley said. “A young guy in the neighborhood either saw the fall or found her lying in front of the house and helped her inside. He gave her something for her headache, and because of her confused state due to the concussion, we believe she took Tylenol by accident. It’s possible he had it on him and gave it to her not knowing she was allergic.”
Amy’s bottom lip quivered.
Nina said, “One of the symptoms of anaphylactic shock is also confusion. We believe her concussion compounded that, which would explain why she didn’t get to her EpiPen in time. It’s possible she forgot where the pens were.”
“She was very disoriented,” Riley said, recalling how often Iris had walked into her bedroom from the bathroom, forgotten what she’d been doing, and then had gone back into the bathroom—how she’d brushed her teeth multiple times.
“So you … saw her? Did she talk to you?” Amy lightly pressed a hand to her forehead. “God, I don’t even know if I believe in ghosts, you know? I don’t know if I’m accepting all this because I need confirmation that she didn’t die on purpose. I need closure, I guess, since it was so sudden. Not that I think you two are scam artists or something.” Her cheeks heated again, and she buried her face in her hands for a moment.
“Would you like proof?” Nina asked after a moment.
Riley and Amy both turned to her, brows raised.
“What kind of proof?” Amy asked.
Nina explained what EVPs were, and that she had four she could listen to. “You can let me know if it sounds like your mother’s voice.”
Amy chewed on a thumb nail for a few long seconds before she nodded.
Nina cued up the EVPs on her phone, apparently having anticipated that she might need to share them.
Laying her phone on the table, she turned up the volume. “There are four here. They’ll play back-to-back. Riley and I were unsure of the second two. Maybe you’ll have more insights than we did.” She hit play on the file.
Amy visibly swallowed.
Olivia asked, “Is your name Amy Velasco?”
Iris replied with, “Daughter.”
Amy sucked in a breath, hands pressed to her mouth.
Nina’s voice asked, “Why are you still here?”
When Iris replied, Nina hit pause on the file.
It still sounded like “painted” to Riley. Nina thought Iris had said “placement.”
“Holy crap,” Amy said. “Can you play that again?”
Nina obliged, then hit pause once more. “What does it sound like to you?”
“Payment,” Amy said slowly. “Gosh, of course this would be the thing she harped on, even after she died. Okay, so, when my dad left and made it clear he had no intention of coming back, my mom got a life insurance policy for herself. She’d been more reliant on my dad financially than she liked—we almost lost the house at one point after he bailed on us. One of the things she always talked about was that a woman needs to take care of herself and not be tied to a man because of money. So me being taken care of financially was always a huge thing for her. The life insurance was part of that. But there’s a stipulation in the policy that says the policy can’t be paid out if the cause of death is suicide.”
“Oh, so you weren’t able to claim that money …” Riley said.
Amy wiped away another tear, nodding. “You said there are more?”
Nina hit play again.
Riley’s voice asked, “What happened to you?”
She had originally thought the reply had been “down the hall,” while Nina had thought it sounded like “I had it all.”
But upon this second listen, they all heard what Iris had actually said.
“Tylenol,” Riley repeated.
Riley’s recorded voice asked, “Are you here intentionally?”
Iris replied with a crystal clear, “Help Amy.”
Amy choked back a sob, one hand pressed to her chest. Nina and Riley sat quietly as they waited for Amy to compose herself.
Nina eventually reached out to reclaim her phone, but Amy placed a hand on top of it.
“Can you send those to me?” Amy managed.
“Of course,” Nina said.
Amy wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a napkin. “Mom wants me to get this payment, but how am I supposed to do that? It’s not even that I need the money. I sold the house, obviously. I couldn’t live in that place by myself, especially n
ot after Mom died there. But if Mom is sticking around because she wants me to get her cause of death changed, I feel like I need to at least try. I doubt EVPs are considered viable evidence, though.”
Riley managed a laugh. “What we need is to find that kid who helped her. He can confirm your mom fell off the ladder and that he gave her the pills.”
Amy perked up at that. “Did she tell you his name or anything?”
Shaking her head, Riley said, “I saw his face, but I don’t know his name. I don’t know how to find him.”
When Amy deflated again, Nina chimed in with, “But we’re going to keep searching for answers, I promise. I can’t guarantee we’ll find all the information you need, but we’re going to do what we can.”
“What is Julie paying you? I’ll match it. This is so much more work beyond a ghost hunt,” Amy said.
Nina waved this away. “We’re happy to do it. We’ll be in touch, okay?”
Amy checked her phone and winced slightly. “I’ve got to head back to the office.”
None of them had touched their sandwiches.
Collecting their food and belongings, they hugged each other goodbye, Amy thanked them profusely, and then she hurried out of the shop, her wrapped sandwich stuffed into her purse.
Nina and Riley walked out onto the sidewalk.
“How you feeling?” Nina asked.
Riley glanced past Nina, where Amy was quickly walking away, clearly trying to get back to work in time. She wondered how far she’d walked to get here. Maybe she’d needed the fresh air to prepare herself for a meeting with two psychics who claimed to have made contact with her dead mother.
“Pretty good, actually,” Riley asked. “Any ideas on how to find the kid who helped Iris?”
“Not yet. But we can brainstorm. Beyond that, I have a friend who’s a cop. He knows all about me and my abilities. I told him that there’s a chance that evidence of Iris’s fall is in that front yard. Blood residue isn’t the easiest to remove. There could still be some on those bricks around Iris’s front planter, and Julie said they haven’t done anything to the landscaping out front since they moved in. He might be able to pull some strings if we can track down our good Samaritan and present a good case that will convince my friend’s superiors to let him search the yard.”
Shuttered Secrets Page 22
