“Holy shit. Every time I see you today, you look worse. What happened?”
I told him as I went to the freezer and pulled out two ice packs. As I passed, I noticed a stack of mail on the counter; Ellmann had obviously brought it in. Toward the bottom, I saw the distinctive beige envelope with the orange trim.
He bit back a sigh and pulled a hand through his hair. “I heard a funny story when I went to the gym today. The one about a yoga instructor getting attacked by a crazy woman. You hear that one?”
I sat at the table, one ice pack resting on the back of my right hand, the second pressed to my face. “Yeah, I heard that one. Guess I’ve had a busy day.”
Ellmann leaned forward, his eyes on mine. “Did you know about Vandreen before you went over there tonight?”
I knew where this was going. “More or less.”
“It was reckless to go there alone.” He wasn’t lecturing me, because that isn’t his style, and he knows how well that goes over with me, but he was pointing out a fact. One I’d overlooked—intentionally, but overlooked all the same.
“I know. But, you know, guys like that, they’re all the same. They prey on the weak. They’re not so tough when you fight back.”
“All it would have taken,” he said evenly, “was one tiny misstep and things could have ended very differently, no matter how skilled you are or how spineless he is.”
“I know,” I said again and sighed. “I’m not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn’t. Things happened really fast. I did not intend for our confrontation to be physical.”
“But when it went that way, you didn’t back down.”
“Of course not. That’s no way to deal with a bully.”
“Zoe—”
“He’d beaten up his wife for talking to me this afternoon,” I said, shooting to my feet. “He knocked out one of her teeth he hit her so hard, and EMS said she had one broken rib, maybe two, from earlier in the week. All four of the children had extensive bruising, and two of them had untreated fractures. He wouldn’t even let her take the kids to a doctor!”
He winced at this. “I’m not saying he didn’t get what he deserved,” he said softly. “I just—you were almost killed not so long ago. You’re not invincible.”
I pointed to my face. “I know.”
He came over to me, taking the ice pack from my hand and setting in on the counter. Then he held my hand in his.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you. I haven’t had enough time with you yet.”
I squeezed his hand. I wanted to hug him, but I was covered in blood.
I took a deep breath, then nodded.
“I know,” I said. “Me too.”
I needed a shower. I put the ice packs back in the freezer. As I moved by the counter again, I stopped and pulled out the beige and orange envelope. My name and address were handwritten in a familiar script on the front, with an ugly black stamp beside them. screened. I opened the end drawer and deposited the envelope inside, stacking it on the others.
“Hey, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect you.”
“The FBI is in my office. My family is in my house. I had to go somewhere. I have work to do. Plus, I needed some time alone.” He sighed and ran a hand back through his hair. “Sometimes I think it was a mistake to move away from my family. We were never close, and we don’t really know each other. Sometimes I think I should have stayed and changed that. Then I spend time with them, and I remember the reason I’m not close with them and why I moved away.”
I sank back down into a chair. “Why’s that?”
He sat again. “I don’t like them.”
I glanced at the closed drawer, thinking of the envelopes. They were from my mother, currently being held at the detention center while she awaits trial. It had been her who had sold me out to the drug dealers who’d been trying to kill me two months ago. She’d been laundering money for them, and she’d been caught. The case was a slam-dunk, but she wouldn’t take a deal. Which meant the jury was likely to sentence her to the maximum.
“Family is hard,” I said.
He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair again.
“They’re nothing like me. If they weren’t family, they wouldn’t be the kind of people I’d spend time with.”
“Look, it’s just for a few days. Then you won’t have to see them until the wedding.”
“Who says I’m going to the wedding?”
This was a good question. I’d just assumed he would. He wasn’t close to the family, but he was family, and weddings are family affairs.
“Aren’t you?”
He sighed. “Probably. Will you go with me?”
“Oh, uh, listen, Ellmann … .” I rose and stood behind the chair. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. This situation with your family seems kind of … stressful. I don’t want to make things worse. Maybe it’s better not to push it.”
I’d thought about it some since leaving the restaurant, and I’d decided maybe it wasn’t entirely me. Some of it was. I mean, my first impression left a lot to be desired. Who wouldn’t be concerned if the girl their son or brother was dating showed up looking like some kind of delinquent? But I thought some of it might have just been because I was the one dating Ellmann, and that anyone who filled that role would have a mountain to climb.
“Please don’t let them get to you,” he said. “My father …” He shook his head. “He’s not a very nice guy. And my sister lives in a world of her own a lot of the time.”
“I don’t want to come between you and your family. Whatever flaws they have, they’re still your family.”
He scoffed. “Believe me, it’s not you between my family and me.”
“Maybe not today, but I don’t want the resentment or animosity or whatever to build, because eventually it will get between you all. They don’t like me. That’s fine. But I don’t want to push it.”
I realized part of this was my fear. I often wondered what the hell Ellmann was doing with me. If his family kept pointing out all my shortcomings, Ellmann might get wise to the fact that he could do better. Or, he could certainly do more normal. But I really didn’t want to agitate whatever tenuous relationship existed between him and his family, either.
“Look,” he said, standing. “The damage between my family and me was done a long time ago. That’s a fact, and nothing can change it.” He reached for my hand, peeling it off the back of the chair. “You and me, that’s not going to change either. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
I took a breath to respond, and he held up a hand.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “I’ll prove it. Give me time. While I’m doing that, will you at least think about going to the wedding?”
“That seems fair.”
His lips turned up in a small smile. “It’s in two weeks. In Malibu. You know, we’ve talked about taking a vacation. Maybe we could stay on the beach for a few days.”
“Well, if we’re going to take a vacation, we need to do it this summer. And I’ve never been to Malibu.”
“Why this summer?”
“School starts in August.”
“School?”
I told him about signing up for classes.
“When did you decide to go back to school?” he asked.
I thought I detected the barest hint of a smile on his mouth.
“I’ve always wanted to go back and finish. I regretted quitting almost as soon as I moved.”
“Uh-huh. You’ve wanted to go back but suddenly signed up today?”
“Well, you know, I had some time today. Amy’s class is going really well, and she’ll continue in the fall. I thought it was time.”
He was definitely smiling now.
“It’s funny all this is coming up today.”
“Really? And why’s that?”
“Because it was only yesterday we ran into an old high school enemy who was bragging about being a big hotshot lawyer with a fancy education.”
“No, of course not,” he said. “It’s obvious she doesn’t affect your thinking in any way.”
“Shut up, Ellmann,” I said, spinning on my heel and walking out.
I heard chuckling behind me.
“You suck!” I called as I climbed the stairs for the shower.
__________
After I showered and disinfected the bathroom, I lay down and tried to get some sleep. I tossed and turned for almost an hour then got up. My shoulder was aching from my activities a few hours earlier, and my mind was busy. This thing with Danielle Dillon was really bothering me. The deadline on locating her was closing in, but more important than that, I wanted to know what was going on. I don’t like questions with no answers.
I went into the office and sat at my computer. The light in the kitchen was still on, and I assumed Ellmann was still working at the table. I had questions to ask him, but I wanted to give him the time alone he’d been looking for when he came over. I was sure he’d let me know when he’d had his fill. Until then, I would see what I could come up with.
I grabbed my notepad and began making notes. At random places on one page, I wrote names or events or questions, then drew lines between them, illustrating connections. On a separate page, I made a list of things I still needed to figure out. First, I needed to figure out where Danielle Dillon was. I was pretty sure I would do that by figuring out what was going on. How was Rusty Conrad connected to her? What name was she currently using? Why was she using an alias at all? What had she been hiding from? What was she hiding from now? It would have been helpful to know something about her. What did she do for a living? Who were her friends? What was important to her?
Since I didn’t know those things yet, I had to stick with what I did know. At some point, Danielle Dillon’s name had been associated with the Conrads’ address. She also had some connection to their son. Her other known addresses were the Burbanks’ Country Club place, the McKinnons’ pricey house, and Eric Dunn’s house. So far, I’d found no connection between the Burbanks, the McKinnons, and anything else associated with the case. The same could not be said of Eric Dunn, however. He had a connection to Danielle Dillon and Jeremiah Vandreen, who was also connected to Danielle Dillon. Two of her addresses turned out to be connected. It stood to reason the other two were worth looking into.
I pulled out my notes and looked at the names and addresses Mrs. Burbank’s accountant had given me for the housekeeper and gardener. I was relatively sure Mrs. Burbank had been telling me the truth when she’d said she didn’t know Dillon’s name or recognize her photo, but I needed to talk to Mr. Burbank and the house staff to be sure. Rich people have a tendency to lie, and sometimes I can’t pick up on it. I think because they don’t feel bad about it. It’s like they think their money entitles them to play outside the rules of the game.
I also needed to talk to Linda McKinnon’s husband. Just to be thorough, I’d ask Amy about the McKinnons and see what light she could shed. We’d learned a long time ago that you could tell a lot about a person by their house. Imagine, then, what you could learn when you were cleaning their house.
I turned to the computer and logged on to the Sideline database. I typed in the names Virginia Burbank, Henry Burbank, Linda McKinnon, and David McKinnon. Nothing popped. “Thorough” being my middle name, I also punched in the names Andrea Hammond and Todd Lindgren, the Burbanks’ housekeeper and gardener. Nothing popped for Andrea, but the same was not so for Lindgren.
Ten years before, Todd Lindgren had been charged with theft. There weren’t many details about the case, but the bond had been handled by Sideline. It was fairly small, so I guessed it had been Lindgren’s first offense, given he would have been around twenty at the time. There was nothing for him since.
Next, I Googled everybody. It was about what I expected for the Burbanks and the McKinnons: mentions in the society pages, attendance at this function, donation to that charity, blurbs about their art collections. Andrea Hammond had been in the paper fifteen years ago for leading Fort Collins High School to a soccer championship. She also had a Facebook page, which she did not have set to private. I signed on as Jill again and looked it over. It was all basic stuff, and there was absolutely nothing about her job or employers. I found nothing for Lindgren—no newspaper articles, no Facebook.
I opened dexknows.com and did reverse address searches for Andrea and Lindgren. A Donald Hammond came up for Andrea’s address, and I guessed this to be her husband. A quick search of county records showed they were married and owned the house they lived in. There were two other names for Lindgren’s address: Lyle Young and Andrew Dyer. Property records indicated it was owned by Lyle Young. I’d added everything to my notes and was about to run the new names through Sideline when I heard Ellmann on the stairs.
I spun around in the chair. Ellmann came in and leaned against the doorjamb. He looked exhausted, and there wasn’t a single strand of hair that was not now standing straight up.
“Making any progress?” he asked.
“Some. What about you?”
“Some. There are still a lot of questions right now.”
I got the distinct impression he had made real progress on his case but wasn’t interested in talking about it. To date, there has only been one case Ellmann has been reluctant to discuss with me. That had been the case in which I was smack in the middle and suspect numero uno. I wondered what was going on this time.
“You look beat. You should get some sleep.”
“I’d like to. I wanted to get back to you about that security cam footage.”
“Oh, I don’t need that anymore. I know what they were fighting about now.”
“Well, good. Because I went and checked. There is no footage from those cameras.”
“The cops never thought to pull it? What kind of investigating is that?”
“The case was pretty cut and dried. They knew exactly who everyone was, they apprehended the suspect fleeing the scene, and they had a dozen witnesses. There wasn’t anything to investigate, in the true sense of the word.”
I scoffed. “Still, someone should have bothered to collect the evidence. The woman is entitled to a trial.”
“That’s true. Which is why the arresting officer talked to the bank’s assistant manager about those security cameras. The cameras never recorded that day.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No. The cameras are digital and automatically download to the server each day. When the assistant manager went to check, there was no file for the day of the attack.”
“How lucky for Mr. Vandreen.”
“Vandreen? He’s the victim. It’s lucky for Dillon. Without objective evidence, it’s just everyone’s word against everyone else’s.”
“You’re right,” I said softly, thinking hard. “Without the footage, it’s just everyone’s word.”
“But I guess it doesn’t matter. You figured it out anyway.”
“Well, I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Because there’s no footage?”
“Because there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“No, but there are such things as human error, technical failure, and bad luck.”
He was probably right; this camera footage thing was probably a freak occurrence that no one would have ever noticed had it not happened on the one day someone went looking for it specifically.
“Hey, I had another question for you,” I said. “There were a bunch of cops at Martha Porter’s house this morning. She’s Dillon’s grandmother. I was wondering if you knew what that was about.”
Something flashed in his face behind the cop mask. Why was he keeping me out? What wasn’t he telling me? Something was going on.
; “Yeah, I heard about it.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “What did you hear?”
“She was found dead, murdered.”
I’d tried to prepare myself for that answer, but it still hurt. I’d just spoken to the woman the night before she was killed. I felt a certain kinship with her since she and I had done similar things in our pasts. I felt I understood her a little better than I understood most people, better than most people probably understood her. At the news of her death, what I felt was sadness.
“What happened?” I asked. I noticed my mouth was now dry.
“You know I can’t discuss open cases with you.” He was using his official cop voice.
Perhaps not, but it had only stopped him once before.
I chose to let this pass.
“All right,” I said, logging off the computer and standing. “Let’s not be cops or bounty hunters for the rest of the night. Let’s just be boyfriend and girlfriend.”
I gave Ellmann a hug, then we went to bed. I put my arms around him, and he laid his head on my chest. A minute later, he was asleep and tears rolled silently down my cheeks.
__________
I woke up screaming. I was panting, out of breath, and dripping with sweat. My clothes and hair were stuck to my skin. My heart was hammering against my sternum painfully. I must have been thrashing, because Ellmann was awake beside me on the other side of the bed, and my covers were gone. It was still dark outside, and Ellmann had turned on a lamp.
I’d been twelve years old again. My father had been standing over me with a bat. I was on the same mud-covered hill off the side of the road in the mountains where the SUV I’d been using to escape after being kidnapped had rolled. I’d run but wasn’t able to get away. It was a variation of the same nightmare I’d had for weeks.
I swung my legs out and sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes. I was aware my entire body was trembling. Ellmann got up and walked around to sit beside me, but he didn’t try to crowd or touch me.
Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft Page 14
