P.S. I Spook You

by S. E. Harmon

  “You shouldn’t be touching that,” Ethan advised.

  “Shut it,” I advised right back.

  A furrow creased my brow as I turned the book upside down and gave it a shake. More hundreds fell out. I shook the book until I was sure it was empty. “Guess somebody’s hiding a secret,” I murmured.

  “Everyone has secrets,” Ethan whispered.

  I certainly did. At best I was talking to a ghost. At worst I was chatting it up with a figment of my imagination. I picked up the bills and set the book back on the shelf. I checked the others, just in case, but in the end, it was just the original twenty bills. Two grand.

  “Where’d she get this kind of money?”

  “She has a job,” Ethan suggested.

  “Maybe.” I stared thoughtfully at the bills. “But why hide them in a book?”

  “Who’re you talking to?”

  I started at the voice in the doorway and looked to find Amy’s mother standing there, limpid blue eyes only mildly curious. I turned back, only to find Ethan gone.

  “No one,” I said and shook my head. I held up the money. “Did Amy have a second job?”

  She scowled at me. “She had school. Activities. She didn’t have time for another job.”

  “Then where would she have gotten this kind of money?” I didn’t add legally, but I might as well have.

  She glared at me. “I don’t like that kind of talk,” she said angrily. “She was a good girl. Worked hard. She wasn’t a whore.”

  My eyes widened. “I didn’t call her a—”

  “Or a drug dealer or anything else you’re thinking.” She lifted a trembling hand to her lips for a drag that lasted an inordinate amount of time. “Bet you cops just love to get all the dirt, don’t you?”

  “I’m not a detective. I’m with the FBI,” I said mildly. “I have no interest in anything other than what will help us solve this case. I’d kind of like an answer to my question. Do you have an idea where Amy would’ve gotten this kind of money?”

  Her silence was deafening. Telling. Her sheet-white face even more so. “She was not that… kind of girl.” Her hand trembled. “And I think you should leave now.”

  “Maybe it would interest you to know she has a life insurance policy on Amy.” I turned to find Danny in the doorway, flipping his phone closed. “Just got a call from Kevin. One hundred thousand dollars in fact. That’s a lot of insurance on a healthy teenager.”

  We both turned and looked at Dinah, who blinked at us. “Insurance is not a crime,” she said.

  “Wow,” Danny said with a sharp intake of breath. “You really don’t care if you ever see her again. As long as you have your insurance payout, you’ll be A-OK.”

  Dinah’s face suffused with color. “You can’t speak to me like that.” For all of her rough exterior, at that moment, she sounded like Anne of Green Gables. Insert petticoat and pearls to clutch.

  “I just call it like I see it. It’s going to go pretty bad for you in the joint,” Danny continued. “Do you know what they do to child murderers?”

  “Fuck you.”

  I held out a hand. Things were getting a little intense a little too fast. “Danny—”

  “We’re busting our asses looking for her kid, and she can’t even tell us the truth,” he snapped as he raked a hand through his hair. “The only thing she cares about is money.”

  “I’m going to have both of your badges,” Dinah hollered.

  “Enough.” I stepped between them and cut off the line of sight between the combatants. “Detective McKenna, perhaps it would be better if you went outside.”

  Usually Danny’s eyes were melting pools of blue, like the deepest parts of the ocean. Usually. Right then those beautiful eyes were liquid-nitrogen cold. His voice was a close match. “Dr. Christiansen, I don’t really need your permission to conduct my investigation the way I see fit.”

  “Right now you need to cool off,” I said coldly. “Outside.”

  A moment of breathless silence. I was really, really hoping he’d just comply. Because physically? There was no way I was going to be able to move him. And then he threw up his hand, clearly disgusted with us both. “I’ll be out in the car.”

  Where you’re going to get an earful. I knew that without being told. But damned if I’d let a witness be spoken to that way. Or suspect. Witness. Whatever. I rubbed my temples as he stormed out.

  Dinah stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the dresser. “This is exactly why I hate the police.”

  It wasn’t worth formulating a response. I pointed at the lighthouse painting. “Can I take this picture with me? It might be important.”

  She glared at me for a moment and resignation filtered through her expression. “Take the damned thing. Now you can follow your buddy right out that door.”

  I lifted a brow. “Things to do? Life insurance to file?” She stubbornly looked past my shoulder, arms crossed. I fished my card from my pocket and held it out. “If you think of anything else.”

  The upraised FBI seal glittered under the dim light, and the grooves that lined her face grew deeper and bracketed her mouth like parentheses. She made no move to take the card from my outstretched hand and took another slow, calculated drag of her cigarette.

  I left it on the dresser and had one last glance at the brightly colored room. Broken promise and unfulfilled potential. I couldn’t leave fast enough.

  BY THE time I got to the car, I’d built up a head of steam myself. I put the painting in the trunk and took my time to secure the money in an evidence bag and take a few pictures with my phone. When I got in the car, I ignored Danny and put on my seatbelt deliberately. He didn’t start the car, and I gave him a pointed look.

  He gave me the look right back. “You’re angry? What a fucking coinkydink.”

  I took a moment to gather my temper. Don’t be air to his fire. Bring the flames down. Be baking soda. Be baking soda. It wasn’t exactly self-help book material, but I would follow it to the letter. “I don’t run my investigations that way,” I said evenly. “And I don’t lose my shit on witnesses.”

  “I did not lose my shit on a witness.” At my snort he colored. “I may’ve come on a bit strong, but it’s not like she was a shrinking violet either.”

  “What do you think Tate would say about that?”

  He looked out the window, jaw tight, fingers drumming on the wheel. “You going to tell her?”

  “Do I need to?” He didn’t answer, and I sighed and looked away from his tense profile. Because I was still actively trying to be baking soda to his flames, I didn’t press the issue. “Guess we won’t be invited back for another talk.”

  “It’s not as if she was being so forthcoming anyway. I’m starting to think we should start looking for Amy under her rosebushes.”

  “You popping off at that woman going to help find that girl?”

  “Her kid is out there, maybe dead, and she couldn’t care less. That doesn’t bother you?”

  I sent him a cool look that made him redden.

  “I don’t know what I expected from the Iceman,” he muttered.

  “Iceman.” I repeated the word as though it were Russian. Fuck baking soda. Be kerosene. The next time I repeated it, my voice was decidedly higher. “Iceman? I stay compartmentalized so I can be effective. Being overly emotional isn’t going to help them or me.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening. “Hell, the only time I’ve ever seen you lose control is when we were….” He seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Unless even that was an act.”

  My jaw worked. I wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. When I spoke, my voice was like a dip in a natural spring… in Antarctica. “You about finished?”

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’m finished. More finished than I’ve ever been.”

  Hitting below the belt, I see. He wanted a reaction, and I wasn’t going to give him one. Clearly this was about more than Dinah Greene’s evasiveness. During an investigation it was more surpri
sing when someone told the truth than when they lied. That was status quo. It shouldn’t affect him so much. Unless the case had triggered something.

  I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”

  “It’s about finding a missing girl,” he snapped. “That not enough motivation for you?”

  It was about more than that, and he knew it. Obviously he wasn’t ready to share. Not with me anyway. I let out a calming breath. This wasn’t helping either of us.

  “We need to look at this money angle,” I said. “I want to find out where she’s getting this extra cash.”

  Danny’s mouth twisted, and I knew he was holding his tongue from saying something cutting. I appreciated the effort. “Fine by me” was all he said.

  “We should talk to her best friend.”

  “Okay.”

  “She lives with her mother, Margaret Macmillan. Margaret is fairly important in the community. She knows the police commissioner.”

  “I know that.”

  “She may be resistant. Probably not happy to see us. I doubt she wants us talking to her daughter. Five years is a long time, and a lot of people have moved on.”

  “You’re telling me this why?”

  “Because if you do that again?” I jerked my thumb toward the Greene house with a serious look. “We’ll both be out of a job. I kind of like eating. And not living in a cardboard box.”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior.” At my look he rolled his eyes. “Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Scout.”

  “No, but I like camping.” He paused. “And cookies.”

  “That’s girl—” I cut myself off and shook my head. “You’ll do.”

  We were extra solicitous with one another on the way over. Extra careful not to dance over the shaky truce we’d laid, somewhere in the middle of the ever-growing space between us. I couldn’t help but think Taylor Swift had it right—it had never been clearer that we were never, ever, ever getting back together again.

  Chapter 8

  THE MACMILLANS lived in a quiet cul-de-sac. Everything about the exterior seemed the polar opposite of the Greene home. Margaret Macmillan was clearly serious about maintaining the two-story building, and the house was the picture of Nantucket perfection, with white-and-blue shutters and a neatly trimmed yard.

  She certainly put out better snacks than the last few places we’d been. We sat at her fancyass table as she served us fancyass tea and little cookies with a fancyass name. I couldn’t remember what the fancy name was, but that didn’t stop me from having six. Maybe I wouldn’t be so hungry if my partner believed in lunches. And bathroom breaks.

  It helped distract me from our marked lack of progress. Frankly I didn’t know how many versions of the same answer I could handle. Everyone we spoke to seemed to have gotten ahold of Stock Answers for Suspicious People and memorized that shit, cover to cover.

  “No, I had no idea where Amy was headed the day she disappeared. No, we didn’t have any problems. No, she didn’t have any issues with anyone. Everyone loved Amy.” My all-time, down-home, fan favorite? “She didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  I quietly observed Jenna as her mother steamrolled her and answered yet another question that hadn’t been directed at her. In her high school photos, Jenna sported short, spiky blonde hair and excessive black eyeliner. This Jenna, with the shoulder-length brown hair and muted makeup, was a complete one eighty from the Jenna of five years earlier. She looked like exactly what she was—an elementary school teacher. Fresh-faced. Clean-cut. Trustworthy.

  She didn’t make much eye contact and busily doctored her tea with cream and sugar as though it were brain surgery. She hadn’t said much since we’d arrived. Hell, she didn’t need to say anything with her mother serving as her mouthpiece. I started to understand why she insisted on meeting with her mother there.

  I cut in on Margaret midramble. “Jenna, did Amy tell you anything about being unhappy at home?”

  “Absolutely not,” Margaret broke in and pushed the plate of cookies closer to us both to silently remind us to partake. “Amy was a happy, well-adjusted girl. Of course she had the normal teenage gripes—she hated having to babysit her younger brothers, she wanted more allowance, a bigger room, her own bathroom… nothing out of the norm. She was planning on going to college, you know.”

  “So if Amy had any plans to run away, would she have shared them with you?”

  “Of course not,” she said sternly. “Jenna would’ve dissuaded anything like that immediately.”

  Litany. I puffed out my cheeks. Heard it all before. If someone would come up with something new, I would give them a thousand bucks, cash, on the spot. “We’d like to hear that from Jenna, if you don’t mind.”

  “If she was going to take off, I would’ve known.” Jenna risked a glance up from the table. “She was my best friend. She had plans…. Amy was going to be an art major…. You should have seen some of her stuff. She was wonderful with acrylics and watercolors.”

  I smiled. “I saw some of her work in her bedroom.”

  “Then you know. And that’s not even her best stuff. You should talk to her art teacher at the Annex. Robin, I think?”

  “We spoke with her yesterday,” I said. “She said Amy was thinking about going to Pemberton?”

  Jenna shook her head slowly. “Never heard of it. But she was definitely entertaining some scholarship options.”

  “Would you mind telling me what you and Amy spoke about on the night of her disappearance?”

  Jenna shrugged. “We talked briefly on the phone before she went to work.”

  “How did she seem? Nervous? Angry? Had she gotten into a fight with anyone?”

  “She was her usual self.”

  “Do you remember what you spoke about?”

  “Not much.” She shrugged again. “We didn’t talk for long.”

  “It was a forty-two-minute conversation.”

  She sent me an exasperated look that was at odds with her milquetoast personality. “I don’t remember. Okay? It was a long time ago. I’m sure it was just the normal crap teenage girls talk about.”

  Danny sent me a warning look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’d already been kicked out of a house twice. Might as well go for the hat trick. Besides, those other two had been Danny’s fault, not mine.

  “Dr. Christiansen forgets that not everyone has perfect recall,” Danny said dryly. “Why don’t you tell me what you do remember?”

  I scowled as Margaret began to ramble on again and talked over her daughter. Shows what Danny knew. My memory was good, but hardly eidetic. I listened as long as I could, but broke in right around the time Margaret told us about Jenna’s graduate school acceptances. “Can I use your restroom?”

  “Of course.” Margaret nodded toward the hallway. “Through there and to the right.”

  I escaped the table and left Danny to suffer without a smidgen of guilt. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to hurry back.

  I USED my alone time to make a nuisance of myself and poke around upstairs. It wasn’t a difficult task—Margaret’s voice carried like she was using a megaphone, and she clearly wasn’t concerned about an FBI agent loose in her home. Probably because there was nothing to find. It looked like a 1980s bed-and-breakfast. Even though the décor was old-fashioned, everything was neat and well-tended. And covered in flowers. Big, yellow flowers. I grimaced at the busy wallpaper. But bad décor was not a crime. Unfortunately.

  I peered in the doors that were either ajar or wide open and catalogued them as I passed. There was a master bedroom that clearly belonged to Margaret—again with the giant fucking flowers decorating every possible surface. Jenna’s room was two doors over, clearly still a monument to her high school years. Posters, ribbons, and awards littered the walls. A few volleyball trophies lined the dresser. Stuffed animals nearly covered an entire shelf—keepsakes from the looks of them, preserved in dust covers.

  There was only one close
d door in the hallway. To judge by the undisturbed layer of dust beneath the door, it hadn’t been open in some time. I paused before I opened it and glanced back a few times to make sure the coast was clear. I heard the murmur of conversation, so I knew I had a few more minutes to myself.

  What I thought was a guest room was clearly a child’s room. The floor looked like a baseball diamond, complete with bases and a pitcher’s mound. A beanbag chair in the shape of a pitcher’s mitt was angled near the picture window to match the pitcher’s-mitt lamp. Rounded wooden letters spelled out the name Aaron above the twin bed.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I fished it out as I continued to inspect the display of glass baseballs. “Christiansen.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Do you really want an answer to that, Chevy? An honest one, that is?”

  She chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Do you have anything else about the insurance policy?”

  I could almost hear her eye roll. “No. I’ve only been able to unearth serial killers, track fugitives, liaison between the BAU-3 and other departments, and every other crazy request that you’ve been able to come up with for four years. But no, I wasn’t able to find out anything about a single insurance policy.”

  “Yes, but can you do all of those things without attitude? That particular trick I haven’t seen yet.”

  Her huff could have been annoyance or laughter. “Dinah has two insurance policies on Amy—one for 100K and one for 25K,” she said. “Either way that’s a hell of a lot of insurance on a healthy kid.”

  “When did they mature?”