by Ann Roberts
She’d wanted Nina to get a second opinion, which suggested there might’ve been something wrong. She wondered if Evan knew the specifics. Her stomach rumbled. She debated whether to eat one of the chocolate-covered cherries, but she decided to settle for a healthier smoothie instead. When she and Jane had flown in on Sunday, they’d passed a yogurt store and she was rather certain it wasn’t much further down the concourse. She saw the lit sign but noticed an employee lowering the steel gate over the front.
“Excuse me, but are you closing?”
The twenty-something surfer, whose nameplate read “Shane, Manager,” shook his head. “Only for ten minutes. I just need to take my break and I’m the only one here.” She noticed he held a little sign with a clock on it. “We don’t have any bathrooms.”
She looked up and down the concourse and noticed a second shuttered business with a sign. “I guess everyone’s in the same boat,” she said, pointing to the closed shop, which sold Western wear.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s pretty common around here. We either help each other out and cover or we explain to customers why our neighbors are closed.”
The wheels in her mind were turning. She smiled conspiratorially. “So, is it really just for ten minutes?”
He grinned. “Around that. It depends if my girlfriend’s on break too. She works over at the Starbucks.”
“But nobody really keeps track, right? Nobody would know if you closed early and just never came back.”
He grinned and pointed at his nameplate. “I’m the manager, so who would?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
After an hour on the computer and phone, Biz confirmed that Bobby Arco was indeed the scumbag everyone suspected him to be. She wasn’t sure he was a murderer, but he definitely belonged in jail based on the information provided by her friends in various departments of law enforcement. Most damaging was his arrest record for drugs, according to a clerk at the FBI, a woman who’d made the mistake of hooking up with the wrong guy and owed Biz her life—literally.
Arco had already done time in Wyoming for heroin distribution and, as a California resident, had managed to rack up two domestic violence charges, later dropped, with two different women, neither of whom was Eden. He’d never held a steady job until he went to work at Lenny’s. Biz imagined he owed his current employment entirely to Eden. Ari had recounted her visit to the shop and his manhandling of an elderly customer. Biz knew the adage about leopards not changing spots was totally accurate in regard to abusive assholes.
She plotted her course of action and headed to the Laguna Police Department. It only took an hour of schmoozing and charm to get the information she needed. Then it was off to Lenny’s Auto Shop. She wanted to get a look at Eden and Bobby Arco, so she posed as a salesperson. Not surprising, Eden dismissed her immediately, but she finagled a visit to the employee bathroom and on her way there gazed out into the bays and spotted Bobby Arco. Confident they were both remaining at work for the day, she made two quick stops—a grocery store and the Macy’s at the Laguna Hills Mall—before she headed to their home, a condo in the middle of town. Either Lenny had paid for it—it was far too upscale for a mechanic and a secretary to own—or, as she suspected, Arco had other business ventures that kept the cash flowing.
She was relieved to see the complex was older and lacked a security gate. She parked in one of the visitor stalls near their patio entry. The gate latch was secured with a padlock, unlike those of their neighbors, suggesting that Arco felt he had something worth protecting. Grabbing her duffel bag, she fished an enormous ring of keys from its side pocket. She’d learned from a locksmith that companies only make a set number of masters, and during her career she’d acquired many, with the help of a locksmith who understood her need for breaking into various businesses and homes. The sixth key did the trick.
The patio was filled with children’s toys and boxes stacked against the high block wall fence. A security camera perched in a far corner. She adjusted her baseball cap and kept her head down. A basic home model, the image it was capturing was probably going straight to Arco’s computer, not a reputable company that would send out a guard or call the police. She seriously doubted Arco would want to draw attention to himself.
On the other side of the patio door sat a homely brown mutt who seemed to be a cross between an Australian and German shepherd. He barked twice, but she could see the slight wag of his tail, suggesting he was friendly but on guard. She was prepared for this. She’d been bitten several times by animals that were treated as poorly as the women and children in the home. She pulled out a beef marrow bone she’d purchased at the grocery store and showed it to the pooch. He instantly fell silent while she manipulated the tumblers and popped the lock.
She opened the door slightly and dropped the bone at his feet. He scooped it up and ran off. She knew he’d be busy for at least thirty minutes trying to lick the marrow from the middle.
She zipped through the house, assessing the layout and confirming there wasn’t a security keypad anywhere. She assumed Arco was dealing again because of the security camera, but she wasn’t here to look for drugs.
The bottom floor was a typical living space with a small office nook in the corner of the den, complete with a laptop and a two-drawer filing cabinet. She rifled through the files and found nothing but bill statements, information on the auto shop and, ironically, a thick folder containing Arco’s prison paperwork.
She went upstairs and immediately found what she was looking for—a locked door. The master bedroom, guest bath and child’s bedroom doors were wide open, as if everyone had left in a hurry on their way to school or work. The third bedroom door was closed and had a sophisticated lock installed on it.
She shook her head at the common sight. How many times had she encountered abusive men who flaunted their secrets in front of the women in their lives? She thought the women to be just as responsible for ignoring what existed behind the locked doors rather than demanding to see.
It took nearly six minutes to pick it, but she’d found Arco’s lair. A desk sat under the window with a bookcase beside it that held a few gaming manuals. The far wall was painted black and a dingy leather couch sat against it. Posters advertising various computer games were tacked on the walls, depicting buff men and women in very little clothes, as well as the monsters they would slay. There was nothing that suggested Eden’s presence. She had her own office downstairs.
Biz turned on the computer and heard the hard drive whir. While it was booting up, she donned her black gloves and searched the desk. Besides the usual office supplies she found some interesting treasures, including a crack pipe, a box of condoms and two Playboys. Her gaze settled on the closed closet door.
She opened it, flipped the light switch and was greeted by stacks of book boxes. Most of them were very heavy, but she moved them out in five minutes and surveyed the empty closet. The carpet was tacked down securely and there were no holes in the walls. She scratched her head. Her gut was telling her there was something wrong, but she couldn’t see it.
She opened a box filled with hardbound books. She pulled out an old copy of poetry by W.H. Auden, not a poet she imagined was a favorite of Arco or Eden. On the inside cover was a penciled number two in the right-hand corner. Someone had bought the book at a used book sale or a Goodwill. She thumbed through the pages and found nothing except poetry.
She shook her head and pulled out the second book, The Yearling. She searched it and six more books but found nothing. She was halfway through the box and growing frustrated. While they were all hardbound, there were no similarities. Some were literary classics, while others were technical books, biographies or self-help. She couldn’t imagine Arco or Eden reading any of them and her suspicion fueled her search.
She was at the bottom of the first box, and only four books remained. She opened a copy of The Butterfly Book from the forties and sighed. She checked the covers and fanned the pages. Suddenly she stopped. She’d missed someth
ing. She thumbed through the book slowly, scanning the endless paragraphs of words interspersed with diagrams and pictures of butterflies.
On page twenty-four she found the first one. In place of a butterfly image was the picture of a naked child. Her jaw dropped, and she continued to flip the pages, realizing that many of the book’s original butterfly pictures had been replaced with child pornography. Some of the pictures were completely disgusting, obviously printed from the Internet. Her heart nearly broke when she reached page 212. Staring at her was a black-and-white picture of Michaela in a completely inappropriate pose, sitting on the leather couch just a few feet from where Biz stood now. Ari had shown her the drawing from Michaela’s journal—of a room with black walls and a dragon. Above the couch was a poster of a dragon from an anime game.
She thought she was going to be sick. She took a deep breath and searched through the books again. She determined Arco had a system. He kept the pornography buried under several books that had not been changed, at least not yet. She searched a second box and confirmed her theory. She imagined pornographic books existed in every box, but she didn’t have the time or the stomach to check. She put everything back into the closet and checked her watch. Twenty minutes.
She returned to the computer and faced a password screen. Of course, she thought. She typed in the obvious ones and a few other ideas based on the info from her FBI friend, but she couldn’t crack it. She realized Arco would be smart enough to know the best passwords were long and included a variety of letters, numbers and symbols, but he probably wasn’t smart enough to remember it. So where would he put it? The obvious place would be on a cryptic file on his smartphone or it would need to be someplace close…
She flipped over the keyboard, checked the bottom of the desk lamp and scrounged through the desk again hoping to find a scrap of paper. She shoved the desk drawer closed and wanted to scream. Where was it?
She stared at the posters again. One advertised a game called Hellions Revenge and featured a brunette bombshell in a leather jumpsuit, her cleavage bursting. In the poster’s background was a computer screen with what appeared to be some sort of code on it. Biz grinned. Hiding in plain sight, she thought.
She typed in the random letters and numbers and the password screen disappeared.
“Excellent,” she said. “First things first.”
A series of clicks took her to his security files. Fortunately, it was one she’d conquered before. Within three minutes, she’d erased the footage of her entering the condo, after which she went ahead and disabled the camera.
“Now let’s see what you’re up to.”
She opened his Internet history and wasn’t surprised to see a list of sex chat rooms, sites that she assumed contained child pornography, as well as inmate support groups. It occurred to her that parolees as well as current inmates who were pedophiles would be paranoid about using the Internet for pornography. They would appreciate the library Bobby had accumulated.
His documents folder included a list of names and addresses from around the United States. All were men, save one. About half were in prison, a fact which gave her confidence that her theory was correct.
She found another file of disturbing messages and journal entries where he claimed that the government was conspiring against the people. She quickly closed it, unwilling to spend her last few minutes reading his rants. The other folders contained gaming information, none of which was useful.
She clicked on his picture folder and scrolled through rows of folders with disgusting names such as Naked Tweens and Tubby Photos. She didn’t open any of them since she was certain what she’d find. The last one was titled simply “HER.” She took a deep breath, supposing that he had devoted an entire file to Michaela but uncertain enough to know she needed to check.
Images of Nina appeared. He’d obviously followed her during her evening run on multiple occasions. Judging from the people in the background, it was summer and Laguna was filled with tourists. Nina wore her cute jogging attire and he’d made a point of taking photos when she bent over to stretch. It was evident she had no idea she was being photographed. Biz’s heart skipped a beat when she saw that the last photos were taken at the murder site.
At the end of the pictures was another subfolder—untitled. Her eyes grew wide at the images she found. Nina’s head from the previous candid pictures had been PhotoShopped onto the bodies of several naked women in pornographic poses.
She closed the screens and inserted her thumb drive into the computer to begin the copying process. As the files transferred she pulled the Macy’s bag from her duffel.
“You’re going down,” she whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ari unclenched her teeth as she chugged up the Garritsons’ long driveway. It was after three and she’d lost nearly an hour to an accident on the freeway that closed two lanes of traffic. Sam was home alone, and she’d decided to confront him about the baby and ask him about the journal entry.
He answered the door wearing his familiar button-down shirt and khakis, as well as a pained expression. “Let’s go out to the veranda. Lately it’s the only place I like to be.”
“Could I ask a favor? I was wondering if you’d give me a little tour of this amazing house.”
“Sure,” he said, unenthused.
He wasn’t in the mood to be much of a tour guide, but she learned the general floor plan, making mental notes of where she wanted to snoop while he pointed and stated the obvious like, “Kitchen.”
He also off-handedly mentioned they were alone, as it was the housekeeper’s day off.
“Where’s your mother?” she asked, wondering if there was any possibility Paisley would meet up with Georgie.
“She’s making her bi-monthly trip to San Diego today. She won’t be home until tomorrow.” He pointed down a hallway to a door in a glass atrium. “That leads to Mom’s studio.” He turned and faced her. “That’s it.”
She nodded and they returned to the veranda. After he served them both a glass of lemonade, she took a deep breath. “Sam, I came here today to tell you something that I think you have a right to know. Nina was pregnant when she was killed.”
“What?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “Say that again?”
“Nina was pregnant,” she said gently.
He shook his head in disbelief. “That can’t be. She would’ve told me. She should’ve told me.”
“I don’t think she knew for very long before she died, and you two had broken up. She might have been waiting for the right time.”
“How do you know about this?”
“The detective assigned to the case told me,” she lied. “I happened to meet him and we were comparing notes.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“I’m not sure. Nina may have told someone in confidence just because she needed a friend,” she said slowly.
He closed his eyes. “Evan. I’ll bet she told him.”
“Why would you say that?”
His shoulders sagged, and she sensed his growing anger. “Because she told him everything. He wanted her, but she only wanted to be friends. Best friends.” He licked his lips and stared at her. “If I find out that son of a bitch knew about my child before me…”
“Sam, you need to calm down—”
“Calm? You expect me to be calm?”
He jumped up and accidentally knocked over his glass, which shattered on the Mexican tile. He stomped through the gate that led to the beach. She watched him trudge along the shoreline, his head hung low and his hands stuffed in his pockets. When he was merely a dot on the sand, she darted into the house, determined to search Steve’s office and Georgie’s studio while she had the chance.
Steve’s large office included a wet bar and a fifty-five-inch TV mounted on a wall facing a leather sofa that smelled expensive. All of the cabinetry was a rich, dark oak, and most of his awards were clustered together on a display shelf near the door. Visitors would be
instantly greeted by his accomplishments, particularly his large framed diploma from Yale. It’s almost like he’s got something to prove, she thought.
She grinned when she saw the PEZ dispenser collection arrayed along a window frame. It included some cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and some vintage designs such as a green Easter bunny without much form or definition. She’d never seen a PEZ dispenser with feet.
Rows of books about history, business and public speaking lined the wall behind his desk, which also included a large bay window that faced the ocean. She imagined him working on a speech and turning his chair to face the sea for inspiration.
Two of the drawers were locked, and a key was nowhere to be found. The other four drawers contained knickknacks and office supplies and a few files of projects and notes for his work on the city council. On his desk was a file labeled“Child Abuse Prevention Task Force.” She flipped through the pages, which included an overview of the child abuse problem as well as recommendations from experts. He’d made notes in the margins and underlined key facts and statistics. He’d also circled the summary at the end.
As they’d discussed at dinner, if the governor were successful, there would be stiffer penalties for spouses who didn’t report domestic abuse in homes where children were present. In other words, women who were victims of continued domestic abuse could be guilty of child abuse if their children continually witnessed acts of violence. Ari could only imagine how Nina would have felt about turning abused women into criminals. What if Steve had been threatened by her potential vocal opposition? Once the baby came she’d be part of the family. Would he be forced to step aside?
She looked for a day planner and realized it was probably with him or he kept it on his laptop, which was also missing, the cords abandoned on the desk. She picked up a family photo taken when the boys were teenagers. She was struck anew by the twins’ handsomeness as they smiled at the camera in matching red sweaters.
