A Grave Prediction

by Victoria Laurie

  “Is that what you’re pulling out of the ether, as you like to say it?” she asked.

  “Yes. We need to work both cases, side by side.”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “My plate’s already full. What’s a little more?”

  Candice grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

  Kelsey then gestured to the whiteboard. “Talk to me about that sketch,” she said, indicating the drawing I’d made of the imagery of my dream.

  I told her about the dream and meeting Mrs. Clawson and her daughter at the nail salon, then following them to the store where they bumped into Mrs. Edwards and, finally, home to a house in the same neighborhood as the Edwardses.

  “What makes you think that Mrs. Clawson is involved with Edwards in the bank heists?” she asked, then added, “And don’t say that you have a hunch, Abby, because I need a little more to go on than that.”

  I pointed to my sketch again of the dream. “See?” I said. “In my dream the vine had hundred-dollar bills for leaves and I’m in a bathtub of warm water, which I think is symbolic for mother. The vine is obviously Ivy, and the bath is her mom.”

  Kelsey narrowed her eyes at the sketch. “Those are bills?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to make the money a little clearer and managing only to really mess up the sketch on the whiteboard.

  Candice reached into her bag and pulled out my sketch. “I had this saved just in case,” she said, and slid it over to Kelsey so she could see.

  Kelsey took the sketch and her brow furrowed. “Why is the vine severed at the base?”

  Candice and I traded a look. “We think it’s possible that Ivy may become one of the young girls that gets murdered by Trace and is buried at the excavation site.”

  Kelsey’s eyes widened. “That’s a hell of a leap,” she said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But if Mrs. Clawson is involved with the robberies, it would explain how the bank robberies and the murders are linked together.”

  Candice said, “I snooped around in Mrs. Clawson’s background. She’s had three speeding tickets in six years, but other than the lead foot, she looks clean. At least on paper. Same for Mr. Clawson, except he’s got a clean driving record. There’s no criminal history for either of them, and they’re both pretty active in the community.”

  “Doesn’t mean one or both of them aren’t criminals,” I insisted, but even I was starting to doubt my own theory.

  “I’ve only taken a preliminary look at Cindy Clawson,” Kelsey admitted. “I looked into both her and Will Edwards.”

  That surprised me. “You did?” I asked.

  She grinned. “Yes, Abby. I can be proactive too. And at the time, I figured if you two were so focused on Edwards, it must be for a reason. Nothing that I looked at came back as overly suspicious, but just to be sure I asked Rivera to sign off on a subpoena for Edwards while I was in his office convincing him to sign off on one for Cindy.”

  “Did he?” Candice asked. “Sign off on both?”

  “He did,” she said, “and without a lot of questions when I told him that both leads came from Abby.”

  “Seems I’ve created another convert,” I said with a smug smile. “What happens once you get the subpoena?”

  “I file it with Edwards’s Internet and cell phone provider, which I did this morning, and now I’m just waiting for them to grant me access to his accounts.”

  It’s a little-publicized fact that the FBI can snoop around in all your electronic files simply by submitting a subpoena for them. Now, they don’t do this a lot, and it’s got a fair amount of oversight attached to it, so if there wasn’t anything in Edwards’s electronic files that was incriminating, it could lead to Kelsey being in hot water with the higher-ups. Risky to be sure, but I was certain we’d find something if we kept on digging.

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s usually pretty quick. I’d expect it sometime today or early tomorrow.”

  All of a sudden I felt a sense of urgency I couldn’t quite explain. There was something shifting in the ether; some new action or direction had been taken to alter plans, and it was going to make things harder on us if we didn’t move fast. “Can you press them to hurry it along?” I asked.

  “I can, but I hate to do that unless time is of the essence.”

  “Time is of the essence,” I said.

  Candice looked from me to Kelsey and said, “Get on them. She’s usually never wrong about that kind of thing.”

  Kelsey nodded and began typing—I assumed she was sending someone somewhere an e-mail.

  When she was done, Candice said, “We interviewed Phil, the security guard at the La Cañada branch, again.”

  “Again?” Kelsey said with a note of alarm. She already knew through Rivera that we’d interviewed him the first time.

  “Yes,” Candice said. “We kept wondering about the coincidence of him being indisposed at the time of the robbery. Turns out he had a severe case of the trots, which we think was brought on by his morning tea.”

  “The robbery was at four o’clock in the afternoon,” Kelsey said.

  “Yeah, but Phil was talked into trying a different herbal tea than he normally purchased from his favorite Starbucks. He told us that a new girl was working there that morning, and she coaxed him into trying a blend that tasted like peppermint. He also said it was very strong, and about seven and a half hours later he was locked inside the men’s room.”

  “Smooth Move tea has a minty taste to it,” Candice continued. “I think this new girl slipped him a dose of two bags, which were sure to have an effect in about seven to seven and a half hours’ time.”

  “Did you follow up with the Starbucks?” Kelsey asked.

  Candice’s face went red again. “We did, but I blew it.”

  “How?”

  Candice explained what’d happened and Kelsey frowned. “You’re right, Candice. You did blow that one. They’ll circle the wagons and I’d have to get a warrant for their employee records and no way would Rivera allow me to pursue the lead. He’d want Robinson and Perez to follow up on it.”

  “Tell them to reinterview Phil,” Candice suggested. I could tell she really felt bad for blowing our only solid lead. “Maybe when he tells them about the girl and the tea, they’ll want to follow up on it.”

  Kelsey tapped her lip with her finger. “Couldn’t we simply go to that Starbucks tomorrow morning and look for her?”

  “According to Phil, she quit right after the banks were robbed,” Candice said. “He hasn’t seen her since.”

  “Hmmm, now that is suspicious,” Kelsey said. “Okay, I’ll pass along the advice to Perez and Robinson, but there’s no guarantee they’ll do it.”

  But something about what she’d said gave me an idea, and I vowed to follow up on it later.

  I got back to the whiteboard and stared at it for a long time. All these weird pieces that didn’t fit—but did somehow. We were missing the common link. I felt so strongly if we could just identify one or two more key pieces of information, we’d be able to put it all together. At least, I hoped we could.

  “There’s something in his past,” I said, tapping the house marked Edwardses.

  “Whose?” Candice asked. “Will’s or Trace’s?”

  “Will’s,” I said, a bit distracted. “There’s something that connects him to the heists in his past, and it has to do with work.”

  Kelsey looked up from her keyboard. “I did discover that he used to work for the company that made the video cameras for the banks.”

  I turned and pointed to her. “Yes! We learned about that too. I almost forgot about it. We have to follow up on that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m not sure how much more there is to follow up on. I confirmed through his tax filings that he worked there for a little over six years before being recru
ited to work for the drone company.”

  I tapped the marker to the board. “How long has he been with the drone company again?”

  “Two years,” she said.

  I felt out the ether. It was murky and fuzzy at best, but I thought I had a pretty good thread leading from Edwards to his previous employer. “There’s information at his former employer’s. Info relevant to this.”

  Kelsey stared at me blankly, but Candice was all over it. She tapped a little on her keyboard, then picked up her cell and began to dial. After a moment she said, “Yes, hello, I’m calling for a reference for a Mr. Will Edwards, and he’s listed on his application that he used to work for your company. Could you connect me, please, to his former supervisor if he’s available?” There was a pause; then Candice lifted her gaze to wink at me. “Yes, I’ll hold for Mr. Scott. Thank you.”

  I moved forward and took a seat at the table, my Spidey senses tingling.

  “Hello, Mr. Scott? Yes, this is Cassidy Sundance. I work for Metcon Industrials, and I’m calling for a reference on a Mr. William Edwards. He listed you as a reference. Can you confirm that he worked with you from”—she turned her head to Kelsey, who quickly scribbled on a pad of paper next to Candice—“August of oh-seven to October of twenty thirteen?”

  I gave Kelsey a thumbs-up and focused again on Candice. “You can confirm that? Excellent. And what was the scope of Mr. Edwards’s position?”

  My foot tapped as Candice scribbled on the pad. “I see,” she said. “Right . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . excellent . . . uh-huh . . . my . . . all that? You certainly kept him busy!” Candice laughed lightly and I rolled my eyes. She was playing this up a bit. “Well, all of that sounds excellent, Mr. Scott. I can hear in your voice that you were very pleased with Mr. Edwards’s employment. You must have been sorry to see him go. Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . you don’t say? Oh, that’s so good to hear. We thought he seemed like a genuinely good person and, as you say, very loyal. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Scott. Please have a wonderful day.”

  Candice hung up the phone and raised a fist victoriously. “Jackpot!”

  “What?” I asked. “What?”

  “We got lucky with Scott. He’s a Chatty Cathy when it comes to our buddy Will. According to him, Edwards was such a good guy that, a couple of months ago when the company discovered a problem with a system Edwards had been an integral part in creating, Scott contacted Will to see if he’d do some freelance work to help fix it, and Scott said Will was instrumental in getting it back up and running.’”

  “The virus!” I exclaimed. “They looped him back in when they discovered the breach in security!”

  “Yes,” Candice said. “At least, that’s what it seems like.”

  “Whoa,” said Kelsey. “That’s good, you guys!”

  “It explains how he knew about the security cameras being down,” I said, so excited now that we had an actual link that could crack the case wide-open. “And why it took so long to get them back up. He could’ve easily sabotaged the system a little more to drag it out so that he and his gang could hit as many banks as possible.”

  “We need to talk to this Mr. Scott,” Kelsey said, making herself yet another note.

  “But didn’t you guys already talk to him?” I asked. “I remember you saying that you’d been stonewalled by these guys when you requested the video from the bank.”

  “We were stonewalled, but not by this guy. The head of the company was the one who interfaced with Agent Perez—his name was Meadows, I think.”

  “I still don’t get that,” I said. “I mean, you’d think he’d do everything he could to assist the FBI with the investigation.”

  Kelsey shrugged. “You would hope that the head of a company would want to cooperate fully, but in a world where even the smallest scandal can destroy a company’s reputation, he was probably smart to try to keep this under wraps.”

  “So how do we get Scott to talk to us without Meadows, Perez, or Robinson shutting the conversation down before we even have a chance to ask our first question?” Candice asked.

  Kelsey smiled. “We’ll meet with him for a late lunch and a little chat,” she said, like it was simple as that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  • • •

  Kelsey set things in motion by calling Scott directly. She claimed to be a recruiter for a major defense contractor and said she had come across his profile on LinkedIn. She told him she was very interested in speaking to him about an opportunity that would definitely be worth his while, but she had only an hour and asked him if he could meet her for a late lunch. At first, Scott seemed to resist, but she was persistent and slyly persuasive. In the end it took her only five minutes to talk him into meeting with her.

  Little did he know, he wasn’t even going to spend the time speaking to her. He was going to chitchat with us instead.

  “I’ll be at the next table,” she said as we walked toward the hotel bar, where he’d agreed to meet.

  “I get that in order to interrogate him, you’d have to identify yourself,” I said, mentioning the reasoning she’d offered as to why we’d do all the talking. “But I don’t see why you can’t just sit at the same table and listen.”

  “I’d have to identify myself,” she said simply. “If I didn’t, and Scott mentioned something he shouldn’t that could land him in hot water with us, then it wouldn’t be admissible in court. But if I’m sitting at the next table and overhear, then I can testify as to what he actually said. He can’t have any expectation for privacy in a crowded bar.”

  At that moment we arrived at the hotel bar, which was empty of patrons except for two guys at the actual bar. “Or even an empty one,” she added.

  “Kelsey,” Candice said. “You sit at the bar and Abby and I will be at the table right behind you.”

  Once we were all set, we waited, and thank goodness, we didn’t have to wait long. Scott showed up exactly three minutes early. A tall, thin man, with a gray beard and a ring of hair around a shiny pointed dome head, he wore steel glasses, slid a bit down on his nose, and a maroon sweater with black dress slacks. He looked very much like a professor, and Candice waved him over. He seemed a bit confused at my appearance at the table, but he smiled gamely and didn’t hesitate to sit down. A wave of aftershave potent enough to choke a horse sat down with him. “Peter Scott,” he said, offering me his hand.

  “Abigail Cooper,” I said to him as my eyes watered.

  “Candice Fusco,” Candice said when he offered her his hand.

  Scott blinked. “I thought I was meeting a woman named Brenda,” he said.

  “She got tied up at the last minute,” I said easily. “We’re her replacements.”

  “Oh,” Scott said, that big wide smile of his faltering only slightly. “She had said on the phone that she wanted to talk to me about an opportunity at Boeing?”

  Candice placed her hands on the table and laced her fingers together. “Actually, Mr. Scott, that was a lie.”

  He blinked again. “I’m sorry?”

  “It was a lie she told you to lure you here, away from the office, so that we could speak to you about something else entirely,” Candice explained.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We want you to tell us about Will Edwards,” I said. “And his recent involvement with the security cameras at various banks around the region not recording footage of five bank heists all committed by the same gang.”

  The blood drained from Scott’s face. “Who are you?” he asked us point-blank.

  I was glad he didn’t automatically get up and walk out. That he wanted to know who we were was a good sign. “We’re consultants,” I said.

  “Consultants?” he repeated. “For who?”

  “I believe you mean for whom,” Candice—the grammar police—said. “We consult with the FBI, Mr. Scott. They’ve recruited us to find
out more about Mr. Edwards’s possible involvement in the bank heists, and we’ve uncovered a few suspicious inconsistencies that we’d like your feedback on.”

  “The FBI is now hiring consultants?” he said, like we had to be joking.

  “They are,” I said. “You know how it is—resources at the federal level are stretched so thin these days. Farming out what they can to professional investigators like us is becoming the norm.”

  Scott’s eyes shifted back and forth between me and Candice. “I don’t think I should talk to you,” he said.

  Candice made a casual sweeping motion with her hand. “Of course you don’t have to talk to us, Mr. Scott,” she said. “But I guarantee you that if you don’t talk to us, we’re going to think it’s because you’ve got something to hide. I mean, you worked closely with Mr. Edwards for a few years; maybe you two were both involved. And it’s that kind of thinking that’s going to make us head right over to the FBI and tell them that we think you’re a person of interest.”

  “I had nothing to do with that!” he said sharply.

  “We didn’t really think you did,” Candice said. “But Mr. Edwards is a different story.”

  “Why would you suspect Will?” he said, his tone defensive. “He worked long hours trying to clean up and rewrite the software.”

  My brow shot up. We’d suspected, but hadn’t been certain, that Edwards had been involved in the software development, and now we knew that he was. I said, “It’s more that it took such a long time for him to get it working again, I mean, what was the delay?”

  Scott stared at the table for a moment and tugged at the collar of his sweater. “It wasn’t his fault,” he finally said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was going to talk to us. “We were alerted to the problem when one of the banks called to tell us that they’d discovered their cameras weren’t recording. They’d needed the footage to review a slip and fall at the lobby’s ATM. I assigned the issue to the man who replaced Will, but he’s not nearly as good at identifying issues within the code, because he didn’t write it, so I called Will and asked him to take a look. He found the virus almost immediately. He even pulled it out and sent it to me so that I could see that it was sourced out of Russia, and then he told me the entire code would have to be rewritten because the malware had been that invasive.