by Nic Joseph
“Hello. How can I help you?” a voice said.
We both looked up at a woman who was walking toward us from the direction where the man had gone. She was a tall woman, with big, exaggerated features and a severely cut bob that framed her face. She was wearing an apron, and she had oven mitts on both hands.
She walked up to us and took off the mitts, one after the other, before extending a perfectly manicured hand to Gayla. “I’m Eleanor Griggs,” she said. “My assistant told me that you’re with the police?”
I glanced over at Gayla and saw that her cheeks were bright red.
“Oh, your assistant…” she started. She cleared her throat. “I’m Detective Gayla Ocasio, and this is my partner Steven Paul. We’re here about a matter concerning your husband. Is he home?”
“No, he’s not,” Eleanor said, frowning, still holding both of the oven mitts in her hands. “My husband is in Philadelphia.”
“Philadelphia?” Gayla asked, stealing a glance at me.
“Yes, on business. He’s been there the entire week, working out of that office. What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“We just need to talk to him about an important matter. We spoke to his assistant earlier today, and she thought he was working from home. Any reason why she wouldn’t know that he was in Philadelphia?”
“She knows where he is,” she said. “Sam can be a bit protective of Ryan and his time. A bit too protective.”
“When is the last time you spoke with him?”
“This morning,” she said. “Why, is something wrong? You can’t keep asking me these questions without giving me some clue as to what this is about.”
“Nothing is wrong. We just wanted to touch base with him,” Gayla said. “Would it be possible to give him a call now?”
I saw something flicker in the woman’s eyes, but she covered it quickly. “When he’s on business, it’s very hard to get ahold of him. I’m happy to try, but I happen to know that he’s in meetings all day.”
“Do you have a way we can get in touch with him?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said hesitantly. “I can give you his cell phone number. He’ll be back today, though, so you could just talk to him when he gets home.”
“What time are you expecting him?”
“Late. I’ll ask him to call you, but it might not be until tomorrow.”
Gayla nodded, and she handed the woman her card.
Eleanor took it and looked at it for a moment. “You have to tell me what’s going on,” she said. “Something has to be wrong. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
Gayla and I looked at each other again, and she finally nodded.
“We want to talk to him about his correspondence with a woman named Emily Lindsey,” I said. “From the website Carmen Street Confessions.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “I should have known,” she said. “Is that woman at it again? Ryan told her that he would sue if she continued to post such libelous information about him or the company. My husband works very hard at his business, and safety is one of his top concerns. Everyone who works with him would say that.”
“She hasn’t written a new article,” I said. “She was attacked last night.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and she took a step back, the mitts dropping from her hand.
“Attacked?” she said, bending down to pick them up. “Where?” The perfectly polished woman disappeared for a second, and I could see real concern in her eyes.
“We’re not positive,” I said. “But she was found in her home.”
She stood there for a moment, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide. After a pause, she blinked. “Oh, my cake,” she said. “It’s—” She turned and walked quickly toward the kitchen, pausing to look over her shoulder. “Please, come,” she said.
We followed her toward the back of the house. We stepped into the huge, modern kitchen, which was filled with granite and stainless steel in places it wasn’t needed and a large island in the middle of the room with a built-in wine cabinet. I stepped closer to the island and put my hat down. Eleanor walked over to the oven and put on her mitts before opening it and pulling out a cake. I noticed that the cake wasn’t burnt at all—it was barely done—and I had a feeling she’d really just needed a moment to compose herself.
“It’s for a fund-raiser that I’m going to tonight,” she said, spinning the pan and placing it back in the oven. “I mean, that I was going to. I don’t know… So what happened to her? You don’t have any idea who attacked her?”
“No, that’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Gayla said.
“You mean, you think Ryan had something to do with it?” she asked. “I hope that’s not why you’re here.”
“We don’t think anything at the moment,” Gayla said. “We’re here to learn more about what happened, and we’re trying to talk to anyone and everyone who has had interaction with Emily in the last couple of months.”
“You mean bad interactions, right?” She sighed. “Look, I’ll admit that my husband didn’t handle himself in the best way during that whole ordeal, but it wasn’t all his fault. If you read the story, you’d see that she was jeopardizing his entire livelihood because of a few rumors,” she said. “And to make it worse, she published his post the next day, but she removed everything she’d said in their back and forth. Yes, he got carried away, but she did, too. She didn’t post her comments, only his.”
“Which threatened to find her and make it impossible for her to type another word about him,” Gayla said.
Eleanor cringed. “I told you, he didn’t handle that well. But my husband isn’t the type of person to break into a woman’s home and attack her,” she said. “Not even close to it.”
“What are your thoughts about her accusations?”
“You mean the horrible, defamatory article she wrote about my husband’s business, which he has put blood and sweat into for more than twenty-five years?” she said. “You’re really asking me what I think about that?” She shook her head. “I think it’s a great way to get views.”
“So you don’t think there’s any truth to the Zoanet safety concerns?”
“Look, Detectives, is this why you’re here?” she asked. “To probe into that? Because believe me, we have every regulatory agency you can think to make up an acronym for knocking on our door, and we’ll be dealing with this for a long time. We don’t need you doing that, too.”
“No, we’re here to find out what happened to Emily Lindsey,” Gayla said. “And your husband was known to have a problem with her. So we’re just asking the questions we have to ask. I hope you can appreciate that.”
Eleanor sighed and nodded. “Yes, of course. Look, I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’d be lying if I said that anyone in my family, or with Kelium, was a big fan of Carmen Street, the infamous Emily, or any of her fans. I’m not going to pretend that’s the case. But we had nothing to do with whatever it was that happened to Emily last night. I’m sorry I can’t be any more help to you.”
“Okay, well, thanks for your time,” Gayla said.
Eleanor let us out though the patio door off the kitchen, and we walked along the side of the house, back toward the street.
“Philadelphia, huh?” I asked, looking back at Gayla over my shoulder.
“Yeah. Still find it odd that his assistant didn’t know that,” she said. “I’ll call her when we get back to the station.”
We walked across the driveway back to our cars. Gayla stopped at hers before she got in. “Part of me thinks we’re barking up the wrong tree, and we need to get out to Piper Lake soon,” she said. “Griggs may have been the worst of them, but there were a lot of other people who could have been upset about what Emily was posting on Carmen Street. What if we have the wrong one?”
“Yeah, it’s possible,” I said as she ope
ned her car door. “I’ll see you back at the station.”
Gayla got in her car and drove off. I followed suit and made a U-turn on the Griggses’ street to head back to the highway.
I’d only gotten about two blocks when I looked down on the seat beside me and realized I’d forgotten my hat back at the Griggses’ home.
“Shit,” I said out loud, making another U-turn and heading back.
I stopped the car in the same place and opened the door. I stepped out and jogged back up the driveway, moving back around the side of the house.
I reached the screen door of the kitchen and peered inside. Eleanor had left the glass door partially open, and I could still smell the scent of the vanilla in her cake as it drifted outside.
I’d raised my hand to knock on the glass when I saw movement in front of me.
Eleanor Griggs was walking back into the room, her cell phone up to her ear, and she was looking down at a piece of paper in her hands.
“Ryan!” she said angrily, and I froze, my hand inches from the glass. “You have to call me back. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but the cops were just here. Something happened to that Carmen Street bitch, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with you in three days. Call me back the minute you get this.”
As she finished speaking, she looked up and saw me standing on the other side of the screen door, watching her with my arm still poised to knock.
“Oh shit…” she said on a breath, her face covered in shock and her eyes wide as she pitched the cell phone directly at my face.
Chapter Twelve
The cell phone bounced off the screen and hurtled back toward her before clattering noisily on her kitchen floor. Eleanor stared at me, her mouth forming a perfect O, and I slowly lowered my arm down to my side.
Well, damn.
Even with the screen door and distance between us, I could practically see her racking her brain for a way to spin what I’d just heard.
I put one hand on the glass and leaned my face close to the screen. “Sorry to sneak up on you,” I said. I cleared my throat and pointed to the edge of the island. “I forgot my hat?”
“Your what?” she asked, her gaze not moving from mine.
“My hat,” I repeated, still pointing. She finally turned to look at it, but she didn’t move closer to it or say anything.
A few moments passed, and she finally spoke again. “Why didn’t you come back through the front door?”
“Because I just came out this way, and I knew you were back here,” I said. “I didn’t know you were on the phone.”
She still didn’t move, and I think she was trying to figure out what to say to get me to go away. She blinked a few times and then opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, she walked over to the patio door and pressed her own face close to the screen.
“You should probably let me back in,” I said.
“Do I have to?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Do I have to let you back in?”
I sighed. “No, you don’t have to, but trust me, it’s better for us to talk about this now, okay?”
Her bottom lip was shaking, and she nodded. She reached forward and unlocked the screen door, pushing it open so that I could step back into her kitchen.
I’d just been there, moments earlier, but everything felt different now. Eleanor Griggs had been so in control, practically kicking us out of her house, promising us that there was no way her husband could be involved in what happened to Emily.
Now, her entire body was shaking, and she looked down at the floor. The truth was out. She’d lied to our faces, and there was no going back.
I watched as she swallowed nervously. I walked over to the island to pick up my hat and then took a few steps behind the island and bent down to pick up her cell phone. Walking back, I handed it to her. She stared at it as if she’d never seen it before.
“Mrs. Griggs?” I said.
She blinked before reaching out to take it. “Thanks,” she said.
“You know, you shouldn’t throw things at people,” I said, hoping to calm her down a little bit. Her face scrunched up as if she were about to cry. “Hey, sorry,” I said. “Look, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re—” she started.
I raised my hand to stop her. “I heard every word,” I said. “So let’s not go through that. Let’s start with the fact that you haven’t heard from your husband in three days, and just a little while ago, you told me that you talked to him this morning.”
Eleanor walked back over to the island and put both hands on it, leaning forward. I could almost see all the resolve flowing out of her, and she sighed deeply, her shoulders sagging.
“If you heard everything, then I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’ve been calling him nonstop since Thursday,” she said. “He won’t pick up or text me back or email or anything. It’s so frustrating. And then you guys showed up here this morning, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you decided to lie?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what you wanted, and I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t heard from him,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s a good husband. He really is. Sometimes, he’s just sort of absentminded, you know. He knows I’m okay, and he doesn’t have to check on me all the time. It can just be a little difficult sometimes.”
I didn’t feel the need to point out that she seemed to be trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince me.
“Are you sure he made it to Philadelphia?” I asked.
“He called me Wednesday night when he got in, so I think so,” she said.
“Is it normal for him not to call you back?”
“Sometimes he gets really busy.” She looked down at the phone.
I could tell there was something else she was hiding. “If there’s something else, you need to tell me, Mrs. Griggs,” I said. “You should do so now. Please.”
Her bottom lip wavered. “He just wanted to go talk to them,” she said quietly. “I promise, that’s all it was.”
“Talk to whom?”
“The patients in the Carmen Street article.”
“What?”
“There are four of them, one in Philadelphia. That’s why he went there.”
“He went to visit them?” I asked. “I thought you said he was traveling on business.”
“Well, it is business, of sorts,” she said. “He was supposed to leave Philly on Thursday and head to Indianapolis to meet another. Then one in Chicago and finally one back here.”
“Why was he going to visit them?” I asked.
“Just to talk to them,” she said. “That’s it. He wanted to see how they were doing, learn more about what they’re going through, without the media or any thoughts of that Carmen Street woman—” She covered her mouth and stared at me. “I shouldn’t talk bad about her, I’m sorry. But he didn’t do anything to her. I promise you, my husband’s not like that.”
“But you just admitted to me that you don’t know where he is. Truth is, you don’t know if he actually made it to Philly and whether he ever moved on to Indianapolis.”
“Yes, I don’t know that for sure, but I know what type of man my husband is,” she said. “And like I told you before, he’s not a lunatic. He didn’t break into her house and attack her. He could never do that, Detective. You have to believe me.”
“Okay,” I said. “But maybe I should explain this a little better. Emily Lindsey was attacked last night, but she is fine. Yes, she’s shaken up, but she’s okay. Not a single scratch on her.”
“Wait, what?” Eleanor asked, her face turning white.
“Not a scratch,” I said again. “But there was a gallon of blood found on her body and in her home. Blood that did not come from Emily Lin
dsey. So we need to hear from your husband, and we need to hear from him soon—he might be the one who’s hurt.”
She stared at me, her whole body shaking, and I could tell I’d gotten through to her.
“Now,” I said. “Will you call me the moment you hear from him?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I will.”
I met Gayla back at the station about half an hour later. She was typing on her computer as I walked in, and she looked up with a frown on her face.
“What took you so long?” she asked. “I thought you were right behind me, then you disappeared.”
“I went back to the house because I left my hat in the kitchen,” I said. “And you’ll never guess what happened.” I filled Gayla in on the cell phone incident.
She stood up abruptly. “She lied to us. What the hell is wrong with her?” she asked.
“I think she thought she was protecting her husband,” I said. “But I brought her up to speed.”
“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked. “That such a small woman as Emily could overtake a guy like Ryan Griggs?”
“Yeah, I think anything is possible when someone has enough rage in them,” I said.
Gayla walked over to her chair and picked up her coat. “I got a call from the hospital,” she said. “They want us to come by.”
“She’s ready to talk?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“No. Apparently, word’s gotten out that the owner of Carmen Street Confessions is there,” she said. “And the response has been, let’s say…mixed. You ready?”
I thought back to the last time we’d been there and the symbol that Emily had drawn all over her body.
No, I’m not ready.
Not even close.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”
• • •
We walked through the doors of McKinney Memorial Hospital less than twenty-four hours after our first visit, but we were armed with a lot more knowledge than the first time around. A lot more information, but a lot more questions, too.
