Poisonous

by Allison Brennan

  Or maybe Ben’s gut was right. He usually was.

  * * *

  Because he was late to school, Travis Whitman had to park his small pickup on the far edge of student parking. He didn’t like being late, not that it mattered—he was a senior; he already had three top schools looking at him to play football in college; UCLA had offered him a scholarship; and his grades didn’t suck. Still, he ran into the building and straight to the office to get a tardy slip.

  “Mr. Whitman,” the secretary said, her hand already filling out the green paper. She shook her head disapprovingly, but he saw her smile.

  “Sorry, Ms. Brewster,” he said, flashing his dimples. His dimples had gotten him out of more trouble than he could remember. He remembered Ivy telling him they were one of his prime assets, one of those compliments of hers that almost sounded like a dig. That was when they were still going out, way before they broke up, way before—he put it out of his mind and smiled Ms. Brewster’s way. “I don’t have a good excuse, I just hit the snooze button too many times.”

  “This is your second tardy in the first three weeks of school.” She handed him the slip. “Let’s try to do better.”

  “Scout’s honor. Are you coming to the game Friday? We’re playing West Valley.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “You never do. The team appreciates it, Ms. Brewster.”

  “Get along now, no more tardies this week.”

  He waved and strode down the hall to his locker. Most of the schools in San Francisco no longer had lockers, but there’d never been any problems with weapons in Corte Madera, and they didn’t even have metal detectors at the entrances like nearly every other big high school. Even drug use was low-key—though once a month the cops walked a drug dog through the school.

  Travis steered clear of drugs because of football. His coach tested everyone at the beginning of the year and once randomly in the middle of the season. Their best kicker had been cut from the team last year because he’d become a dope fiend over the summer. Travis wasn’t going to lose a scholarship just to get high. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to college, he had to do it on his own. There was no way he was going to let them down.

  He quickly spun his combination and pulled out his science notebook and a pencil. He was about to stuff his whole backpack in the locker when a phone rang.

  He frowned, looked around, then shrugged and figured it was someone’s phone in one of the lockers next to him.

  It rang again and he realized it was coming from the top shelf of his locker. He reached up and found an unfamiliar phone. The screen showed an unknown caller. As soon as he opened it to answer the call, it stopped ringing. Then a text message popped up.

  You disabled your ChatMe account. We have to talk ASAP.

  His breakfast rose up his throat. He swallowed, his partly digested meal burning on its way back down. This could not be happening.

  He looked around and saw no one. Of course not—Bailey had changed schools. Had the phone been ringing all morning? Why didn’t she just call him direct? Why all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit? He wrote: Who is this?

  It had to be Bailey. Who else could it be?

  There’s a reporter from New York asking questions about Ivy. Avoid her. She’ll eventually go away.

  He rested his head against his locker, the cold metal doing little to temper the rush of fever that hit him. This was not happening. Not now, not when the scouts were here, not when he was getting his life back together after that bitch nearly ruined it. It had been a friggin year since Ivy died. Why now? Why the fuck now?

  He turned the phone off and almost tossed it in the trash, but at the last minute put it back on his locker shelf. It was about time that he and Bailey talked about this because there was no way in hell he was going to get in trouble for anything. He didn’t do anything. Who did that bitch think she was, anyway? Always so perfect, so mightier-than-thou pretty girl, rich bitch snob. She had no right to come back now and fuck with him.

  Travis slammed his locker shut.

  Bailey Fairstein was no better than Ivy. People in glass houses and all that shit—and if she wanted to fuck with him, he’d destroy her.

  He’d learned from the best.

  Chapter Six

  Growing up in the digital era, Lance Lorenzo embraced social media as if it were a god. When Max woke up at three and couldn’t get back to sleep, she read Lorenzo’s online news archives. He maintained a blog where he “reported” news that could be taken as gossip; he covered not just crime in the small community, but politics and anything potentially controversial. He seemed to thrive on controversy, creating much of it in the bombastic way in which he reported the news. Based on his blog, Max wasn’t a fan, but she needed his help. From his focus on San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, he definitely liked big-city news and politics. He seemed to be the type of guy who planned to move up and out of the small-town community quickly.

  Max might be able to use that ambition to gain his favor and assistance. Because reporters often had their own agenda—personal or professional—Max didn’t trust most of them. She understood that they wanted the story. That she got, but she didn’t care as much about the byline as she did about solving the crime. If Lance Lorenzo proved honest and useful, Max would help him any way she could. Which, considering her reputation and contacts, could be substantial. If he screwed her, she’d bury him.

  She hoped she didn’t have to explain all this to him.

  It was nine when she walked into Peet’s Coffee in Corte Madera where they’d agreed to meet. He was already there—she’d seen his photo online, but she would have quickly picked him out by the way he was sitting, eyeing everyone going in and out, a razor-thin laptop open in front of him.

  She didn’t pretend not to see him—she was five foot ten with dark red hair and tended to stand out in a crowd. She approached him and said, “Lance, I’m Maxine Revere.” She extended her hand. “What can I get for you?”

  “It’s great to meet you,” Lance said. “I was surprised when I heard you were in town.” His hand was soft and damp. Either he was nervous or that was his natural state. He was of average height and build, and wore black-rimmed glasses that were popular a few years ago. He dressed like many Bay Area twentysomethings—khakis, button-down shirt with no tie, and loafers. Sharper than some beat reporters, more casual than others.

  She kept her voice casual, but she was curious. “You heard I was in town before I called?”

  He grinned. “I know people.”

  Crime reporter. He probably had a cop he talked to. She’d been at the police station with Grace for more than an hour yesterday, it was reasonable that news about her interest in the case would get out. But still, that was pretty fast.

  “Coffee? Latte? Pastry?”

  “Great, thanks. Large latte, triple, and maybe the wheat-free muffin?”

  “Give me a minute,” Max said and went to the counter. It was late enough in the morning that they had missed the rush. It didn’t take long for her to bring back the food and coffee. She had her nonfat latte, plus a croissant. She slid Lance’s order over to him. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  “I was curious. Ivy Lake, huh? Cold case. But that’s your specialty.” He tore off a section of muffin and ate it.

  She couldn’t tell if he had done research on her when he heard her name, like she did on him, or if he had already been familiar with her work. “When I looked into the news reports about the case,” she said, “your name came up. You covered it from the beginning?”

  He nodded. “We have a small circulation, but our online edition gets as many hits as a city five times our size. I cover southern Marin County. Murder is big news here—especially a teenager.”

  “You stated in one of your articles that Ivy’s death may have been an accident, but the police ruled it a homicide. Why do you think it may have been an accident?”

  “Because the police are jerks. They won’t tell me anything
. Maybe because you’re from New York they’ll be more forthcoming, but they treat me like crap. All they reported was that Ivy Lake fell off a cliff and cracked her skull on boulders in the ravine below. Why couldn’t that be suicide? Or an accident? So I pushed, and they wouldn’t give me a thing.”

  Not with that attitude, Max thought. She had an antagonistic relationship with several police departments, but she never initially went in belligerent. To get answers, she always tried the more flies with honey approach before calling upon her inner bitch.

  If Grace Martin wasn’t forthcoming with Lance Lorenzo, there was likely a good reason. Had he burned her before? He’d been a reporter for less than two years, but that was long enough to get a bad rep.

  “Out of all the cold cases in the country, why’d you pick this one?” Lance asked.

  Max decided not to tell him about Tommy’s letter. She didn’t want Lorenzo talking to the boy, especially before she had a chance to speak with him. “In cases like Ivy’s, where there is little to no evidence, sometimes a national eye can bring forth a witness.”

  “So you’re doing a whole show on Ivy Lake?”

  “A ‘Crime NET’ segment,” she said.

  “Don’t you need the family to cooperate?”

  “I’d prefer it, but it’s not necessary,” she said. “Have the Lake or Wallace families been uncooperative?”

  He shrugged. “They don’t like me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I thought you read my articles.”

  “And your blog.” She assessed him. “Nothing I read suggested why they might be annoyed with you. However, you did write extensively about the Brock lawsuit and what Ivy’s death might mean to the Brock family.”

  “Bingo. I wanted Paula Lake Wallace to give me her side of the story—what their defense was to the civil suit. She never gave me the time of day. I had Ivy on record—I sent her an e-mail, to which she responded that she didn’t do anything wrong. Pretty simple and straightforward. Her exact quote, ‘It’s not illegal to tell the truth.’”

  Max had read that in one of Lorenzo’s articles. She agreed with the sentiment, but not Ivy’s actions. “And Mrs. Wallace didn’t agree? Or maybe she didn’t like that you reached out to her daughter?”

  “No idea—she refused to talk to me. When Ivy was killed, I tried to speak to Wallace again, but she shut me down. I even said exactly what you did—sometimes media exposure can spark a memory. Then I wanted to do a one-year review of her death, and the Wallaces still didn’t cooperate. I wrote something anyway, but it was short and didn’t get a lot of interest.”

  “But it did get some interesting comments.” She sipped her coffee. “Several people wrote that she deserved what happened to her.” She paused. “I also read a story under your byline that the Brocks had dropped their lawsuit.”

  “Yes, shortly after the one-year anniversary of Heather’s suicide. I got them on record.” He sounded pleased with himself. “In light of the tragic death of Ivy Lake, they decided not to pursue the civil suit, and all the money from Heather’s college fund went to a nonprofit organization to prevent online bullying.”

  “You seem to have built a rapport with the Brock family.”

  He shrugged. “I guess.” He stuffed the last quarter of his muffin in his mouth and didn’t look her in the eye.

  Something was off about Lance, something he wasn’t saying. “There was an undercurrent of hostility toward the Wallace family in your reports,” she said bluntly. “Not so much in the print articles, but certainly on your blog.”

  His spontaneous laugh didn’t reach his eyes when he looked at her. “I don’t think so.”

  She raised an eyebrow and didn’t comment.

  “I’m a good reporter,” Lance said. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but with newspapers near death unless you’re some financial expert or a sports guy, there are few openings. I started my own blog when I was thirteen. I used it to talk about things I liked. Video games. Movies. Books. I still get free books to review all the time. Science fiction, mostly, but I’ve started getting into crime novels. I guess I was a nerd in school. Ten years ago that bothered me, I was picked on by the jocks and preps and trust fund brats.” He hesitated just a fraction of a second, and Max knew exactly what his story was and what he knew about her. And why he didn’t like her. It all came clear, and she should have put it together immediately—maybe her increased insomnia was beginning to affect her instincts.

  “The only reason my parents could afford to live in Mill Valley was because my grandparents bought the house fifty years ago,” Lorenzo continued. “When my grandpa died, my grandma wanted us to live with her. My dad worked twelve hours a day, six days a week in construction until he died of a heart attack, and my mom owns a gift shop in Sausalito that is barely in the black. All so they could help me and my sister go to college. She’s a sophomore at UCLA, got a partial scholarship. But we both needed loans and grants and scholarships. I’m still in debt and I went to a cheap state school.

  “So when I see someone privileged like Ivy Lake tormenting someone privileged like Heather Brock, I just roll my eyes. It’s just more of the same like when I was in high school. Except when Heather killed herself and I was assigned the article, I met the Brocks. And then I thought, none of it matters because their daughter is dead. Their money, their house, their cars, I knew just by talking to them that they would give up everything they had if it brought their daughter back.

  “When I talked to Paula Wallace, I didn’t get the same feeling. But when I reported on Ivy Lake’s death, I didn’t put any of that in there. Just the facts.”

  Far more information that Max could have hoped to get, but it said everything.

  “You said Paula Wallace wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

  “She didn’t, but I cornered her a couple of times. She wasn’t helpful either time.”

  Just the facts, he’d said. And a lot of opinion interspersed with those facts, but she didn’t say that. “You reported on Ivy’s murder, but your word choices—your adjectives—showed you had compassion for the Brocks when you wrote about Heather’s suicide and the civil suit.”

  “I didn’t write anything that wasn’t true or attributable.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “Paula Wallace sure seemed to think so. She called my boss.”

  “What did she take issue with?”

  He opened his mouth, then hesitated. “Why are you really here? Because the Wallaces are rich? One of your own? So they’ll talk to you and not me, a lowly beat reporter?”

  “When I first walked in, I’m surprised I didn’t notice the chip on your shoulder, it’s so big,” Max said. While she didn’t hide her heritage, or the fact that her family was wealthy, or that she was on the board of her family’s half-billion-dollar trust that her great-grandparents had built from nothing, she didn’t advertise it.

  “I asked you here because you’re the reporter who covered the Ivy Lake murder. I’d hoped we could share information,” she said to Lance. “I was wrong about you.”

  He leaned forward. “I have been trying to get to the Wallaces for over a year. Just to talk. Interview. Do a fucking profile, something to get an in, and they shun me. You call and they welcome you with open arms?”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation—you have a preconceived notion about me and how I operate. But I’ll explain something to you that I thought you were savvy enough to pick up on your own. I have a cable crime show. Not huge numbers, but every month we’ve grown. However, ‘Crime NET’ is big and the way we integrate the show with the Internet is innovative. That was all my producer’s idea. When you call someone and say you’ll give them airtime to help find the killer of their daughter, they usually want it. It doesn’t matter if it was me or John Walsh or a random network. They think television will give them the exposure that the local media cannot.” She stood. “Thank you for your time, but I’ll do this on my own.”

  Sh
e walked out. She wasn’t taking shit from anyone, especially a young reporter who hated her and the Wallaces just because they had money.

  She was getting into her rental car when Lance ran up. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That all came out wrong. Yeah, you’re right. I don’t like the Wallaces. But not because they have money.”

  “Really?” Sarcasm edged her voice. “Because truthfully, I don’t care if Ivy Lake is a millionaire or a pauper. I care that someone killed her and that person thinks they’ve gotten away with it.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I had thought we could work together. You know the case, you know the people involved, you’ve been following it longer than I have. But I’m damn good at research and I’ll stay here as long as necessary.”

  “The police don’t like me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Most cops don’t like me, either.”

  “Look, I want this.”

  “What specifically?”

  “I want the article. I want the byline. You don’t care about that, do you? I mean, you’re a television reporter, you don’t need a byline. I do. You think I want to stay here forever? I mean, I want to stay near my parents, but I want to work out of San Francisco. Or L.A. I don’t want to be in Smalltown U.S.A. forever.”

  She’d certainly pegged Lance Lorenzo correctly.

  “I don’t want the byline. But I don’t want you writing about what I’m doing until I tell you it’s okay. It’s not a secret that I’m here, but my movements aren’t for public consumption. If you’re discreet, I’ll give you the scoop.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. What do you need?”

  “You’re close to the Brock family.”

  He paled. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “but they don’t want to talk to the media. They just want their privacy.”

  “And Justin Brock was a suspect. I want to talk to him, one-on-one.”