by Vivien Chien
The night passed quickly, and even though I’d napped earlier, I could feel myself getting sleepy again. Adam called an Uber, and we headed back to North Olmsted.
He stayed the night with me, and we fell asleep almost as soon as we got back to the apartment. I was dreaming about being in high school again with my old boss from my previous office job as my math teacher when the bell sounded and jarred me awake. Only it wasn’t a school bell ringing, it was my phone.
Adam stirred next to me. I reached for the phone, my eyes groggy with sleep, and squinted to read the screen. It was Donna.
I thought about letting it go to voice mail, but it was really late and I had a pit in my stomach that told me something was wrong. So I answered. “Donna?”
“Lana.” Her voice was gravelly and she didn’t sound at all like herself.
I sat up in the bed, my pulse beginning to quicken. “Donna, what’s wrong?”
“Lana, I’m at the hospital. There’s been a situation at the house.” She coughed heavily.
“What happened?”
“There was a bad fire that started downstairs—half the house caught on fire. I was able to get the girls out fine, but we’re all suffering from smoke inhalation.”
“What about Rosemary?” I asked. “Is she okay?”
“Fortunately, she’d already left for the day,” she told me. “Listen, I didn’t want to alarm you, but I am lying in this hospital bed just sick about the whole thing. I’m positive this is another message for me.”
“Were there signs of a break-in? Do you know anything?”
Adam put a hand on my arm. He was sitting up and listening to my conversation. I leaned in his direction and held the phone close to his ear so he could hear Donna, too.
“Not that I’m aware of. I passed out for a little, and the girls are still sick from the smoke as well, so the nurse told the police that now is not the time to talk with us. They’ll be back in the morning. We’re not even entirely sure what caused the fire yet.”
I felt silly asking considering what they had just gone through, but formality’s sake, I posed the question anyway. “Are you guys okay for the most part?”
“Jill and Jessica seem to be coughing quite a bit more than myself, but we’re going to be okay. They’re taking good care of us here.”
“Is there anything that I can do? Do you want me to come there in the morning? I can be there first thing.”
“No, dear, I appreciate that, but it’s not necessary. However, there is something else that I would like you to do.”
“Okay…”
“I think I underestimated what we’re dealing with here. I didn’t think anything else would happen so quickly after Alice’s murder. I should have listened to you … we need to hire Lydia Shepard to help. Can you take care of it?”
Adam and I glanced at each other, and he nodded in approval. “Of course. I’ll get in touch with her first thing in the morning.”
“Oh, but Lana, I will only trust this woman under one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“She has to allow you to be involved in every step. I would handle it myself, but I think I might wring the woman’s neck if I have to be in her presence for too long.” She began to cough heavily; it sounded as if she were choking.
“Donna, why don’t you try to get some sleep? We can talk about the particulars tomorrow after you’ve had time to rest.”
“You’re right, dear,” she said through a coughing fit. “Talk to you then.”
She hung up before I could say goodbye.
Adam wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him. I rested my head on his chest and sighed.
* * *
The rest of the night I slept fitfully. To my dismay, I was up before nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. I found that type of behavior to be sacrilegious. Slipping out of bed, Kikko and I ventured out into the kitchen, where I readied the coffeepot and took her out to tinkle.
After I’d gotten off the phone with Donna, I’d wanted to check the Internet for information on the fire. But Adam told me that they would probably have limited knowledge at the time and it wasn’t worth stressing myself out over it. Instead, he’d insisted on me going back to sleep and leaving everything for the morning. I’d lain there for a long while with his arm draped over me, heavy and slick with sweat from his warm body. Moving him had been impossible: Every time I tried, he’d grunt and hold me tighter. I finally gave up and counted to one hundred, hoping that the numeric focus would calm my mind. I must have been sleepier than I thought, though, since I couldn’t remember anything past seventeen.
When Kikko was satisfied with her potty adventures, we headed back to the apartment and straight for the coffeemaker. I poured myself a cup, added cream and sugar, and just stood in front of the coffee machine while I took my first sips.
Megan’s door was closed and I knew she’d be sleeping for quite some time. I’d heard her come in around three thirty that morning.
I settled myself on the couch while Kikko stuck her nose in her food bowl and enjoyed some breakfast. I watched her eat and thought about the day ahead.
If anything, I felt a lot of relief now that Donna was willing to get Lydia involved. I didn’t know how Lydia would feel when I told her that Donna wanted me to work with her on the case. Hell, I didn’t know how I felt about the whole thing.
But even though I was comforted that a professional was getting involved with the particulars, there was still the situation of the house fire to contend with. The whole thing made me nervous. It crossed my mind that Bryce had been over there earlier that day, and I wondered if his real intention was to get another look around the house before lighting the place up like a campfire. But I assumed that he hadn’t been left unattended in the home, so I doubted that he’d had time to plant anything there … like a bomb that was set to go off while the family was sleeping.
No, it was more likely that he returned to the home sometime that night, and his visit earlier had only been meant as an opportunity to scope the place out.
I heard a bedroom door open and craned my neck to look down the hallway. Adam came stumbling out, scratching at the scruff on this face that had grown overnight.
“Why are you up already?” he asked. He didn’t bother asking if I’d made coffee, just went straight into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup.
“I couldn’t sleep anymore,” I told him. “I was up most of the night.”
“I know,” he said, joining me on the couch. “I could feel you trying to squirm free.”
“I just want this over with,” I said, leaning on his shoulder. “What if Donna hadn’t been able to get the girls out in time? Or what if she herself hadn’t made it out?”
“Believe me, I know.” He sipped his coffee. “Maybe you’d better stay at my place.”
I lifted my head up. “But I’ve never stayed at your place.”
The reason had never been clear to me, but Adam wasn’t fond of me spending the night at his apartment. He preferred staying here, and since I liked being home surrounded by my things, I didn’t mind or complain. I’d hardly even been there in the months since we’d started dating. Only a few times did we stop through his place so he could grab something, or occasionally I’d swing by for pizza and a movie.
“Well, maybe it’s time,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s such a guy’s place. I never have things to eat other than the basics, there’s nothing girlie there for you, and half the time I run out of toilet paper. You wouldn’t last an hour without toilet paper.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not that bad.”
“Do you want Megan to weigh in on that?” he said, laughing.
“Speaking of which, what will she do? I can’t just leave her here by herself.”
“We need to get her a boyfriend with a crappy apartment, too,” he quipped.
I playfully smacked his chest. “Come on.”
He shrugged. “She could come stay with me, t
oo. I don’t know how she feels about sleeping on a leather couch.”
I thought it over. “Do you think we’ve reached that point? That someone might come here next?”
“It depends on if this person knows that you’re involved or not.”
I told him my theory about Bryce being the one who’d set the fire. If Bryce was the guilty party, then he would definitely know I was up to something.
Adam drank his coffee and contemplated the idea. “I don’t know, Lana. Anything to do with this guy could just be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, but what about the fact that Alice’s own friends never heard of this supposed engagement?” I asked.
“If she was a private person, then it’s possible that she wouldn’t have mentioned it. Didn’t you tell me both Bryce and that Susan woman said she kept things to herself?”
I gawked at him. “Yeah, but what woman do you know who doesn’t tell her friends someone proposed to her? I’m convinced he’s lying. I feel like he only told Donna that story so he could get to Alice’s stuff. I have no idea what he would want from her … maybe he was searching for the thumb drive. As far as he would know, it would still be in her possession.”
“It’s thin, Lana. Very thin.”
“Thin or not, it’s something we need to consider at this point.”
“And you’re absolutely going to believe a hundred percent that this Susan Han woman was telling you the truth and she’d never heard anything about an engagement?”
“Sorta,” I said, suddenly doubting my willingness to believe her. Maybe it was the conservative manner of her clothing and the fact that she reminded me of my sister. Now that I thought about it, I really couldn’t say why I believed everything she’d said. “Do you think she wasn’t telling the truth?”
“In most cases, when I interview people, they lie about something small. Sometimes it’s relevant and sometimes it’s not. But without being there myself, I couldn’t tell you for sure. You have to be good at reading someone’s tells.”
“Can you teach me about that?” I asked. “How to read tells and stuff?”
He chuckled and gave me a wink over his coffee mug. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, let’s get ahold of this Lydia person. She’s going to need to be brought up to speed pretty quickly.”
CHAPTER
23
I called Price Investigations and Meredith answered the phone. She told me that Lydia didn’t come into the office on Saturdays, but she’d put a call through to her and let her know that I was interested in talking to her.
In the meantime, I dragged Adam to the grocery store. It was still kind of funny to do domestic-type things with him. When we’d first started dating, it was hard to imagine him doing anything besides being a detective or sitting on a barstool. He always seemed so serious to me in the beginning, but as we’d gotten to know each other more and had become closer, he’d loosened up a lot and I’d become familiar with his softer and more relaxed side.
After we finished at the grocery store, we stopped for gas on our way back to the apartment. He helped me carry in the grocery bags, and when we entered the apartment, we found Megan sitting at the kitchen table scrolling on her iPad and eating a bagel.
“Oh good, you guys went to the store. I just ate the last one,” she said, holding up the bagel slice in her hand.
Since Adam and I had yet to eat, I’d bought stuff to make French toast, and while the two of them sat at the kitchen table, I fried egg-battered bread and scrambled some eggs. As we ate, I filled Megan in on what had happened at Donna’s house the night before.
Once we’d finished breakfast, Adam told me he had to check in at the station, but had the day off so he’d be back in a little while.
“I think I’m going to head to Denise Jung’s house and see if I can learn anything from her. Donna starred her name on the list she gave me, and she’s my last open link aside from Yvette Howard.”
“If I came with you, that would probably be suspicious,” he said. “Call me when you’re done.”
We said our goodbyes and he headed out the door.
Megan finished her cup of coffee and set it in the sink. “So now what?”
I sank in the chair and wrapped my hands around my coffee mug. “Honestly, I don’t know. All I can think to do is keep going until I hear back from Lydia. I have a gross feeling about this Bryce guy that I can’t shake.”
“Not about Rosemary?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about that, too. But I feel like her loyalty would be to Donna, not against her. If Alice’s death were an isolated incident, I would be more likely to believe that Rosemary had some involvement. But this fire was clearly targeting Donna. And I don’t see Rosemary doing that.”
“But we don’t know that to be one hundred percent true. Maybe she’s a pissed-off employee.”
“Donna insists that the person who left the thumb drive is the same one who killed Alice … and is responsible for this fire.”
“Yeah, but so what about what Donna thinks? We still don’t know for sure that Alice isn’t the one who left the thumb drive. We don’t know conclusively that Donna isn’t the one responsible for all of this, and we don’t know what lengths someone like Rosemary Chan would go to on any level.” She leaned against the kitchen sink. “By the way, have you ever asked Donna if Rosemary knows her secret? Even that little bit of information would help us greatly.”
“No, I just assumed that she didn’t. Donna said that the only person who knows is me, and Thomas … well, okay, and Lydia.”
“Yeah, but now Adam also knows … and so do I. And Donna doesn’t know that.”
“So?”
“So, that means that Donna doesn’t know everything. How does she know that Rosemary didn’t accidentally stumble upon what Thomas was doing? Or how does Donna even know that Thomas didn’t tell Rosemary himself? Maybe he thought Rosemary already knew.”
“True. I suppose those are all realistic scenarios.”
“Lana, I know you want to go by whatever Donna is saying and believe it to be the whole truth and nothing but. I get that. But don’t forget what we’re always saying to ourselves. We have to be objective.”
* * *
It was well into the afternoon, and I hadn’t heard anything from Lydia. I decided to call the number that Susan Han had given me for Yvette Howard. I got her voice mail and left a message telling her who I was and that Susan had sent me her way. I left my cell phone number and told her to call me back anytime she got the chance.
With nothing else to do at the moment, I decided to head over to Denise Jung’s house and use my earring story.
Denise answered the door herself. I was surprised because it seemed everyone else had someone to do that for them. I was also surprised to find that she was the other woman at the party that Brenda Choi had been gossiping with.
“Can I help you?” She glared down her nose at me, which really wasn’t hard considering there was a step up into the house. She barricaded the door with her body, her arm outstretched against the frame, clearly stating with body language that she would not be inviting me in.
I tried to straighten my back and hold firm on my position. She wouldn’t get rid of me that easily. “I was stopping by to see if you’d lost an earring the night of Donna’s birthday party.” I began to dig in my purse for the baggie containing the earring.
“I don’t believe I lost anything that night,” she replied coldly. “I would have noticed right away.”
She didn’t even give me the chance to pull it out and show her. “Okay, do you know anybody it might have belonged to?” I asked. I was grasping and she knew it.
“How would I know whose earring it was? I don’t go around looking at everyone’s accessories. What is the real reason you’re here? I don’t appreciate people who waste my time.”
Immediately, my cheeks were hot with embarrassment. I think in different circumstances, I would have been furious, but in this instance,
I felt like a child being scolded.
“Well?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t have all day.”
“Okay, truth is, I was wondering if you happened to know anything about Alice Kam or if you saw anything suspicious the night of Donna’s party.”
“What do you mean, anything suspicious? What kind of question is that to ask someone?”
“If you saw something—”
“Is this you trying to stick your nose in other people’s business again? I read about you in the paper. I know you’ve meddled in people’s private affairs before.”
I blanched. Meddled? I helped solved the case, you rude—I pushed down the profanities that were threatening to bubble up. “The police aren’t getting anywhere with what they know. Donna is a family friend, and I thought she was yours, too. I’m only trying to help.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” She shifted her weight. “The only thing that stuck out to me that night was the fact that Donna completely lost it on that innocent girl. And now I’ve heard she had some kind of house fire on top of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that batty woman lit the damn thing herself. Probably wants to collect the insurance money or take attention away from the real crime that happened there.”
I couldn’t help but find myself completely appalled by this woman’s reaction. And she was supposed to be one of Donna’s friends? “Do you really believe that?” I sounded like a child who’d just heard that Santa Claus wasn’t real.
She stuck out her chin. “Yes, I do believe it. Ever since she lost Thomas, she has been slowly falling apart. Piece by piece, she’s become totally erratic. Every time I see her she has a drink in her hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was completely intoxicated at her birthday party. Probably doesn’t even remember killing her nanny. If I were that Rosemary woman, I’d watch myself. She could be next on the chopping block.”
I couldn’t listen to this anymore. “How can you call yourself Donna’s friend and think these terrible things about her at the same time?”
“I would use the term friend loosely. Besides, with her current state of affairs it’s not that far a stretch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more important things that I need to do with my time than talk about Donna Feng.”
