Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  The call dropped and Nora’s image disappeared completely. Frustrated, he smacked the side of the laptop and almost knocked it off the desk, startling Dingo on the other side of the room. Travis took a deep breath, righted the laptop, and tried to reconnect the call. After a few unsuccessful attempts, it seemed like they were never going to achieve the call quality they had for any length of time.

  “We can keep trying,” Travis wrote in a message.

  “I don’t think it’s going to work. Sometimes it just becomes completely nonfunctional.”

  “But there must be something we can do to get it to work. Why not try another program?” he added. It’d been so long since the last good call that his skin was starting to feel a chill.

  “I’m sorry, Travis. I’ve got more to do tonight and can’t keep fiddling with this,” she wrote. His frustration shot through the roof. He already didn’t like technology in principle, and this failure gave him further evidence for the sentiment.

  “Why don’t we wait a few minutes and then give it another shot?” he asked.

  “I’ve kind of lost the mood for it. Really, I’m sorry. I’ll give you a call later sometime,” she wrote. Travis put his face in his hand, glad she couldn’t see his dejected reaction.

  “Sure. Good luck with it,” he wrote.

  Soon she had logged off the program and he’d shut down his computer. He’d gotten so riled up and now he had to face the long burning disappointment.

  A knock on the front door got his attention. He put his t-shirt back on and trotted over to answer, sure it was somebody he was going to have to tell to get lost. But when he opened the door, he saw Vanessa standing there in a stunning navy blue dress that could’ve roused the dead. She had a dog leash in one hand that she tugged on with the other.

  “I’m here to pick up Dingo,” she said.

  “Oh, right. Sure,” he said, turning to let her enter his apartment. She strolled into the living room, but stopped short of putting the leash on Dingo and turned back to Travis.

  “But I could pick up you too,” she said. He’d seen that look in her eyes many times, the look she had when she set her sights on something she wanted.

  “Vanessa, we decided it was for the best if we ended it.”

  She came a little closer and grinned. Not even Hercules would’ve had the strength to resist glancing over her.

  “Maybe that was a mistake. We were so good and I didn’t realize what kind of a force we were together.” Vanessa was involved in New York State politics and had ambition to spare. It was possible she felt having an FBI agent at her side would help propel her, but there was another possibility.

  “And what made you realize that, another woman knocking on my door? We can’t go through this again. It wasn’t healthy and I can’t do it,” he said, but his resolve was weakening. It hadn’t even been that long since they were together, only a couple of months. He could still remember everything about her.

  “Really? That tent you’re pitching is telling a different story,” she said, glancing at the front of his shorts.

  “I’m serious,” he said. There wasn’t enough blood in his brain for him to think clearly, but disappointing video chat or not, he was going to hold out for Nora.

  “That’s too bad,” Vanessa said, sighing. “But you should know I don’t give up easily.”

  She brushed by him and went for the door, taking the leash with her but leaving the dog behind. He knew she’d be back with a more convincing argument than even a sexy dress could provide. Travis sighed and grabbed a leash from his closet to take Dingo for a walk. If there was ever a night where he needed some air to help him cool off, this was it.

  CHAPTER 15

  1428 SPRUCE STREET

  BERKELEY, CA

  Nora had a queasy feeling come over her after she closed Skype and let Travis go. She knew she didn’t exactly come through for Travis and was using the program’s technical malfunctions as an excuse to some degree. After seeing that video of Lauren, the thought of being so exposed on the Internet made it impossible to feel comfortable risking that, even with Travis.

  Her pajamas were on the bed behind her, and she quickly put them on. Glad to be covered from neck to ankle, she allowed herself to imagine for one moment what it would be like to have what happened to Lauren happen to her. It felt like spiders under her skin. The loss of control, the loss of privacy was frightening.

  When the door to her bedroom popped open, the sudden loss of privacy felt all too real. Thank goodness she wasn’t undressed and in front of her laptop. Caroline poked her head in and a startled gasp escaped Nora’s lips.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Caroline said. A wide smile appeared on her face. “Are those the same Dora the Explorer pajamas you had in college? You haven’t changed at all.”

  “They are the same, but I think I have changed. What’s up?” Nora asked.

  “Have you seen Stephanie? I’ve been looking all over for her.”

  “Not since we were meeting with Chip downstairs. Maybe she went to the bar for a drink,” Nora said, getting a snort out of Caroline.

  “I hope not. And what are you doing?”

  “Still just trying to sort through all of this stuff,” Nora said, wondering why she wouldn’t tell Caroline the truth, that she was about to look into Maria’s case some more. She didn’t want to face the embarrassment of failing again.

  “OK, if you need a break Grady and I are downstairs watching Frozen. Yes, I force him to watch Disney movies even though he hates them, but I know you’ll have a blast.”

  Nora nodded as Caroline shut the door behind her and headed downstairs. While they were watching a movie, Nora would have the perfect opportunity to follow up on an idea that she’d been dying to explore. Because her phone was new, she had to search through her email inbox for an old number.

  “Please pick up,” Nora said to herself, hoping the one person who could help her most would get on the line. If it were her or anyone else her age, seeing an unknown number might’ve caused her to shut off the phone, and if Nora had to leave a message she might never hear back.

  “Hello?” a voice with a Spanish accent came on the line. Nora took a deep breath.

  “Mrs. Correa? Hi, how are you doing? This is Nora Wexler, Maria’s friend.”

  There was a long pause, and for a second she’d thought Maria’s mother had hung up.

  “Hi, I’m fine. And what do you want?” she asked. It would’ve been easier if they were face to face so that Nora could’ve shown her how much she still cared.

  “I hope you don’t mind me calling. I’m back here in Berkeley and I was just thinking about Maria and how much I miss her,” Nora said.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Correa said. Reserved, guarded.

  “I had some ideas about what might’ve happened that I was hoping I’d be able to talk to you about. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “Please, no. It’s all been talked about and I cannot bear another minute of it. It’s been so hard to live with myself and move on since Maria left me,” she said.

  “Mrs. Correa, I realize it’s been very hard on you and that it would be very painful to revisit this, but I feel like I have a strong direction now. There’s something Maria didn’t tell us about her life and I have to find out what it is. You’ve seen the picture of the man from the bar. We know that he wasn’t someone from here in Berkeley or her high school, but he didn’t just appear out of nowhere. She had to have known him from somewhere.”

  A sigh came over the line.

  “The police have looked into everything,” Mrs. Correa said, clearly exasperated. “If she knew him or not, that doesn’t change anything. There is no part of her life I know of that wasn’t turned inside out to look for him. I can’t bear to go through this again.”

  Nora’s brain seemed to flood with anxiety. She hated opening up old wounds in those who least deserved the pain.

  “I’m incredibly sorry, but I believe I can find something. I’ve been wo
rking with the FBI and have real experience now. This isn’t like back in college. If you can just get me some of her personal documents, I’d be able to do this without troubling you at all. Her email address password, Dropbox account, I know you must still have access to those since she died,” Nora said. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and emotion straining her voice.

  “Nora?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If I give you these things and you look through them and you find nothing, will you then let her go? It’s been a struggle to keep the memory of Maria alive without the pain of missing her. We have to hold her in our hearts without obsessing over her. Promise me this will be the end,” Mrs. Correa said. She was a wise woman, but the truth was waiting to be found. Nora paused and took a deep breath to contemplate if she had been obsessing.

  “I promise,” Nora said, unsure if she was facing reality or seizing an opportunity.

  “I will send you these things to your email. Give me some moments. And from now on be happy in your life, Nora Wexler. That’s all Maria wanted for us.”

  The call ended and Nora waited for the email to come through. She had a heavy heart and a heavier mind churning through the possibilities of how thoroughly the police had gone through any of the files she was about to receive. Did they even know what Dropbox was four years ago? What did Maria use it for?

  Nora remembered Maria being a prodigious student who accompanied them to football games, parties, and girls’ nights on the town. Was it possible there was a part of her life that she never told her friends or her mother about? Nora remembered Maria having time alone to study, meet up with yet other friends, get involved with boyfriends, and more. What was Maria doing during that time?

  The email from Mrs. Correa was a short file containing a few usernames and passwords for her accounts online. Her long unused Facebook account information was there in addition to a personal email address, Dropbox, and transcripts of emails from her student accounts. Any one of them could’ve had a message or note buried somewhere that might point her toward Maria’s secret. The movie Caroline and Grady were watching ended long before she’d scratched the surface. Stephanie was in the hall outside her door for a while as well.

  Nora continued to read through countless messages. She discovered that Maria had considered running for a place in the university’s student association, maintained ties with over a hundred peers from back home, and had a guy sending her harassing emails during sophomore year about places where he’d been watching her. Nora was livid that she never heard about Maria’s stalker problems, but after a few clicks on Facebook she’d thoroughly checked the guy out and crossed him off the list. He had transferred away after their second year, which must’ve been a huge relief to Maria.

  As the volume of information began to exceed what Nora could keep straight in her mind, she resorted to creating her own notes and filling out a schedule of all of the activities her friend was involved in before she was killed. She marked off time for classes, a dance group that met on the weekends, as well as weekly calls with a few family members and friends that came up over and over in other messages. After adding times for meals, there was one spot on the calendar conspicuously left completely blank every week.

  “What was Maria doing on Wednesday afternoons?” Nora said aloud.

  Reaching back in her memory was no help. There were so many people coming in and out of Nora’s immediate area that remembering everyone was impossible. She continued searching through messages but couldn’t find anything helpful.

  Nora dug into the Dropbox folders, which contained some creative writing inspired by Maria’s dreams that drifted back and forth between English and Spanish. There were some sketches of attractive young men as well. One folder was labeled only with a dollar sign, and Nora opened it to find saved bank statements and other financial records. Nodding to herself, Nora got the sense that she was getting somewhere.

  It took some time to comb through credit card statements and cross-check the short codes in the payments with various retailers and entities. Maria was a frugal shopper who kept a strict eye on her budget. Deposits were few and far between, but one strange one kept appearing in the long list of deductions. Once Nora figured it out, it struck her as remarkably odd. Why was the University of California at Berkeley paying Maria one thousand dollars a month?

  Forced to call in for reinforcements, Nora left her room and nudged open the door to Caroline’s bedroom, which was dark and quiet. She crouched down beside Caroline’s side of the bed and shook her friend’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Caroline!” she whispered.

  “You scared me half to death,” Caroline said. She was groggy, but her attention quickly darted to her boyfriend. Grady unleashed a roar that could’ve come from a dinosaur. He got up and went to the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry,” Nora said.

  “He’s not exactly a big fan of you guys being here,” Caroline admitted.

  “I wish I hadn’t disturbed you, but I think I found something. Did you ever hear anything from Maria about having a work-study job? I’m reeling that she wouldn’t have brought it up once, not even casually.”

  “No, I don’t remember that. You might as well show me,” Caroline said, getting up and grabbing her pillow. Nora guessed the intrusion would end up leaving Caroline on the couch or squeezed on the guest room bed with her.

  “You can see the big gap in her schedule and the regular payments,” Nora said, showing off the results of her incomplete search.

  Caroline gave her a thoughtful look.

  “Maria’s family didn’t have as much money as ours. Your dad is a big-shot politician after all. Maybe she felt ashamed about having to work to earn a little cash and offset her tuition bills.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. I would never do anything to make her feel bad about that, and I didn’t spend money in a way that was grossly conspicuous,” Nora said.

  “I know you wouldn’t, but that’s the thing. Even if you didn’t, she could still perceive the difference. Don’t hold this against me, but there was once or twice when I felt tapped out and you still wanted to go shopping,” Caroline said.

  Nora slumped back against the side of the bed.

  “But that didn’t mean we had to buy anything. I thought it was just the normal stuff that we did together. I wouldn’t have cared if we were all out pouring cement if it meant we could hang out.”

  It was late, emotions were running high, and it all felt like scalding water cascading onto her head.

  “I know that, Nora. Please don’t spend another minute thinking about it.”

  A little hard now, Nora thought. She was suddenly wondering how many times she’d stupidly made her friends uncomfortable. She’d never considered her parents’ money hers, nor did she ask them for things. At least the cross-country flight meant she never had a car on campus.

  Caroline snapped her fingers. “So do you think knowing she had a work-study could actually lead to anything? We know the guy isn’t a student.”

  “Yes, but what if the job was at the library or something and he was someone who came in every now and then. He wouldn’t have even needed an ID to browse around and talk to the student workers.”

  “Maybe,” Caroline said, which was more than enough for Nora to go on.

  It wasn’t until offices opened Monday morning that Nora was able to find out exactly what Maria had done for work-study. She started calling at 8 a.m., as soon as people were supposed to be at their desks, but no one picked up the phone until 8:10.

  After explaining who Maria Correa was and begging for the woman on the other end to look into it, Nora learned that Maria had actually been working in the chemistry lab. It already struck Nora that perhaps Stephanie had known about the job, but there were still more people she was going to have to talk to.

  “Can you tell me who’s in charge of the work-study employees at the Chemistry lab?” Nora asked. She heard clacking on a keyboard before getting an answer.
<
br />   “That would be Professor Gupta,” the woman on the phone answered.

  “And do you know how long he’s been doing that?”

  “Six or seven years, I think.”

  Nora’s eyes widened. Finally, she might just be able to get the information she needed. A job at the chemistry lab didn’t seem like it would put Maria in contact with many people from off campus, but Professor Gupta would have to be the one to confirm that.

  After checking the chemistry department’s website for Professor Gupta’s office hours, Nora decided to drop by for an unexpected visit. She found him in his office spooning clam chowder into his mouth from a steaming bowl.

  “Which class are you in?” he asked, getting up to greet her. He had a big smile and very white teeth. Not recognizing her didn’t stop him from being as warm and welcoming as he had a reputation for being.

  “Oh, I’m not one of your students. I’m Nora. I met you the other day when you were helping Lauren recover after class.”

  Gupta smacked himself lightly on the forehead.

  “That’s right. What a deplorable oversight. Why don’t you come in and have a seat? What can I help you with? Is Lauren doing all right?”

  Nora followed him into the narrow office lined with stacks of books. A back cabinet contained a variety of flasks, each with a different vivid color. She took a seat in a metal folding chair.

  “It’s not about that. Lauren is doing as well as possible, considering. After word got out that she’s taking Preston Lowery to the Disciplinary Review Board, the whole campus seems to have turned against her. She hates walking to class because she gets heckled all the time. For every sympathetic person there are three who just see her as a threat to the football team.”

  Gupta crossed his arms over his chest.

  “The way athletics has taken an oversized role in university life is troubling for a number of reasons, but it shows a particular lack of thought when it is placed above the wellbeing of students.”