Dispatched Confessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 2)

by Talia Maxwell

  It read:

  Dear Multnomah County Police:

  I am Violet Winslow and a student at Rosa Parks High School. I know you are currently looking for Alex Gamarra for the murder of my friend Claire Gregor. Alex was at the park that night because I told him to go there. But he didn’t murder Claire. She was dead when we got there I promise. Thank you. Violet.

  Holly didn’t understand.

  “Alex was at the park,” she repeated. She thought of the Love is Murder girls plotting the timeframe and she thought of Alex actually escaping the detention center—no one knowing he was gone. Holly felt a pang in her side, a pang of guilt, of terror. No, that was worse. This was worse. Violet placed Alex at the scene of the murder instead of providing him with an alibi away from the murder. She seethed. Violet’s letter lacked details or authority and she understood immediately why the police hadn’t given it credence.

  “I told him to come that night,” Violet said. “We were going to apologize.” She broke off, unable to continue. “Claire was dead when we got there, I swear….I arrived first and was heading up to her and then Alex came from the other direction. The way her body was…we just ran…”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “Alex called in the body.”

  “On his cell phone?”

  Violet nodded.

  The cell phone records would put Alex at the crime scene then. She thought of telling her friends that their allegiance was pointless. Joel and Holly exchanged a look of annoyance and worry. No, this had not been the pot of gold at the end of the find Alex rainbow they’d hoped for. Holly likened it to the time her father wrapped the receipt for Alex’s crib in a giant box at her baby shower—and she, like a fool, cried at the trick because she was young and pregnant and stupid enough at the time to think she could make anything all about her.

  “Please,” Holly breathed. “Violet…who killed Claire?”

  “I don’t know,” Violet said and she lowered her head.

  “Yes, you know something.”

  “I know that Alex knew. He told me the next day that he knew something and that it was big.”

  “He wasn’t allowed at school.”

  “Dude,” Violet rolled her eyes, “you think we’re chatty at school? The only way anyone talks is through social. We messaged all day. Freaked out.”

  “On which app,” Joel asked, wondering about the conversations.

  “The 10S. The 10-second message one,” she shrugged. All messages deleted after ten seconds. Good for snoopy parents because the app also hid under a fake icon of a tutoring app. When Alex showed her how it worked on his phone, she’d been appalled. But she didn’t make him take it off his phone.

  She trusted him.

  Like all parents of beautiful and bright and creative children, she believed him when he said he didn’t go to the park.

  She felt foolish and when she felt foolish, she got angry.

  “Great. So, we have no way to verify what you’re saying,” Holly said and rolled her own eyes, feeling the teenage angst rise up against her middle-aged fuck-all attitude, the two powerhouses of emotions storming.

  “You don’t have to believe me, but I’m not lying to you.”

  “Tell me everything,” Holly said and she crossed her arms. “Start at the beginning and tell me everything. How is my son involved in this and why did you need to apologize? Why was he so god damn angry at you in the letter…what—”

  “You don’t know any of that?” Violet asked, her implication clear: what Holly’s own son didn’t choose to divulge was not specifically her problem. “I just thought between Mr. Rusk and Alex, you’d know it all.”

  Holly’s cheeks burned.

  Right.

  She’d thought that, too.

  She felt the dig and didn’t understand where it was coming from. She felt old-fashioned and perhaps out-of-touch, but weren’t teenagers supposed to treat moms with respect? And did the kids at Rosa Parks already know about her and Joel? If she’d hoped to calm the blushing, her internal monologue worried about who knew what made it impossible to quell.

  She took a deep breath.

  No. She was in control of this situation—she was going to get the answers she needed and then she was going to find her son. Joel stiffened next to her, picking up on the subtle shift in energy. She didn’t care if he could feel her amping up, but he didn’t try to touch her and tell her to back down, but neither did he encourage her.

  “Start at the beginning, Violet,” Holly said. “The men in my life have been holding out on me.”

  Joel didn’t protest.

  Violet looked to her counselor and then to Holly. She shrugged and pointed to her bed, inviting them to sit down. Holly declined and Joel said no, as well. They stood and Violet sat in the office chair and spun lazily, one way and then another.

  “We’d been…catfishing….”

  “I know about that,” Holly said with a nod.

  “Claire catfished Alex. And I was only mentioned in the letter because when he found out, she threw me under the bus. Said it was my idea. Which I was petrified about because…when I saw how angrily he responded…he was pissed. Because she made a fool of him. I never went as far as she did.”

  It was a safe accusation. Claire could never defend herself.

  “Who killed her?” Holly asked again.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who did Alex think killed her?” Joel asked.

  “He never told me. I had two clues. We were supposed to meet up but then he texted that he was leaving the state for a bit and not to text and to forget about the news, he was wrong.”

  “You think he was wrong?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t know. I mean…no, I don’t know. But I haven’t heard from him, like, recently…”

  “When was the last time?” Holly asked immediately aware that meant the girl had heard from him at some point.

  Violet stammered and looked to the ground.

  “When was the last time you heard from him?” Holly pushed again.

  The teenager stood up and went and retrieved her phone from her nightstand. She discreetly typed in her code and then scrolled through her notifications screen. After ten seconds, she looked up and gave an apathetic shrug. “I saw him this morning."

  Recently, Holly thought. They had different perspectives on that.

  She stuck out the phone and Holly leaned forward and looked at the screen. It was a picture of Alex, although she didn’t recognize the social app, and his message to Violet was clear: Over soon. Stay safe. Low profile.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Joel said. The timbre of his voice was commanding, determined, and the child shied away from it, disappearing into her phone for a bit as he continued. It was easy to tell that Joel didn’t use his swagger and presence in an intimidating way often. Still, he was aware. His tallness and his strength filled the space between them. “Do you know who is responsible? Who is after Alex?”

  Violet waffled.

  “Do you know what your silence is? It’s obstruction of justice…” Holly began, but she felt Joel’s hand reach out and quiet her. He gave her hand a tug: I’ve got this, it said. She stopped her rant and let him fill the space instead.

  “He never told me, Mr. Rusk,” Violet said again. “Don’t you understand…I would tell you if I knew, but I don’t. You don’t understand, everyone has it all wrong. And yet I couldn’t just come out and fucking tell anyone. Look,” she appeared pained to finally confess a portion of the story she hadn’t before, “Claire really hurt Alex…but he got over that when Claire told him that she thought things might have gone too far. She was scared. It was just stupid and fun, but then it wasn’t. The gun wasn’t for Claire like that. It wasn’t to hurt her.”

  Holly froze and Violet seemed to understand that she’d said something significant.

  “Wait,” Holy said and she stepped in front of Joel and gained ground on the girl—he put his hand on her shoulder. “
He brought the gun to school to give to Claire…because she was frightened of someone else she’d misled online?”

  Violet didn’t respond.

  “Violet?” Joel pushed.

  “It wasn’t quite like that.” The girl closed her eyes, weighing the consequences of full-fledged truth. “Okay, okay, so I do know that someone got Claire into this whole thing….like told her to do it, told her which people to target and, like, Claire wanted out because she thought it was fun at first, but then people like Alex were getting hurt and, like, at first it was assholes, but then it was like free-reign and…it got gross. Okay. And, like, Claire taught me to do it…but she never told me who put her up to it at first. But then, she said she needed the gun…”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Joel shook his head and he stared at Holly, unblinking. Then he looked at Violet and narrowed his eyes, thinking, getting closer to locking all the pieces into place. “Alex was going to give the gun to Claire to protect her from someone.”

  Violet nodded and frowned, realizing the admission was a huge breach of whatever teenage rules of friendship she’d created.

  “He wasn’t coming to the park,” Violet said, whispering now, “to hear an apology….” her lip trembled, admitting the lie, “…he was coming to help her stand up to her bully. The fight at the detention center was all to help him get there. I have people, Mr. Rusk and Mrs. Gamarra, I had people, I guess. But we got there too late…”

  “Why,” Holly interrupted, close to tears herself, “did you let Alex take the fall for this? Why didn’t you just tell the police this exact thing?”

  “I tried to contact the police,” Violet said, but her voice was small, tiny, and lost. “Mrs. Gamarra, I’m sorry. I was afraid and I knew Alex was safe. And he’d told me just to lie low and not do anything…so…” she seemed to believe this was a good enough reason to keep quiet.

  Before Violet could answer, Holly interrupted. “Wait. I’m sorry. Earlier. When Alex told you he thought he knew who did it. You said he gave you two clues. What two clues?” she asked.

  The girl took a breath. “They were real vague and—”

  “What were the two clues?” she tried again.

  Violet closed her eyes. “Okay,” she opened them. “Someone from the school. Not a teacher. An adult though. And then he accidentally said something about protecting her investment…”

  Violet shrugged. The words meant nothing to her, but Joel grabbed Holly’s hand and he turned to her, his eyes wide.

  “Shit,” Joel said.

  “You know who he meant. That means something to you? Protecting her investment? You know who killed the girl,” Holly said, not a question.

  “No, not with one-hundred-percent certainty. But there’s a lot that makes sense. Shit, Holly. I think I do. Yes. I do.” She could tell he was spinning; his mind-whirling, processing. “I really think I do. We need to go.”

  Violet, clueless, looked between them. “Alex said he’d do everything to stay hidden until the person was in custody. He had a plan, Mrs. Gamarra.”

  “Do you know anything else that you haven’t told us?” Holly asked, but her edge had melted away, her empathy for the girl was outweighing her anger at her silence. She tried to imagine herself at fifteen, with such unbridled and unsupervised access to the entire world. She wondered how people made it out of adolescence at all.

  “No,” she said with a sigh.

  And after an awkward handshake, they left the Winslow girl in her bubble-gum pink room, decorated with dolls and boys and all the other trappings of teenage life.

  They said goodbye to the Winslows, who seemed oddly nonplussed by their arrival or departure and ventured out into the night. It was surreal and Holly had to take a second to lean against the car and breathe in slowly, surely, to make sure she was getting enough oxygen into her lungs.

  “Joel,” she said. “I think I know where he went.”

  Joel nodded, wordlessly, and leaned down to open the door for her. He paused, his arm outstretched, and Holly collapsed into his chest. He didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her and hold her, the weight of him against her shoulders and chest.

  She let herself enjoy his arms for ten seconds and then she pulled away. She wasn’t going to let herself go down this rabbit hole again.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s go,” he whispered. “Tell me where to go.”

  “Do you think you know who killed her?” she asked in a whisper. She went and climbed into the passenger seat of the car.

  Joel shut the door and walked back around. He turned and sighed, wiping sweat off his brow. “We’ll go get Alex and bring him to safety. That’s the only thing I care about right now. Don’t worry, this nightmare will be over soon.”

  She nodded. Joel started the car. Before she could give him directions, he turned and cupped her chin in his hand. She took his hand and put it down.

  He turned away.

  “You’re strong,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Holly wanted to believe him. She didn’t reply.

  Back to Xiomara’s house they went.

  This time, Holly was gun-less and she’d lost her muster and her anger. Shit, she thought, with growing self-realization. Alex didn’t think she’d believe him. She tried to replay all of the conversations in her head as she remembered them, and he never even tried to tell her the truth. He’d misread her anger and buried himself into a hole, choosing Xiomara’s blind allegiance to the child over convincing his mom.

  She was angry with Xiomara for the overreach, for keeping the boy’s secret, for shutting her out. Then again, the police were all over her house and her actions. With Alex as their main suspect, she wasn’t free from the glare of suspicion. She had to admit her former mother-in-law had the means and the tits to harbor a runaway to prove justice was served. She knew then that Francisco wasn’t involved. There was no way her ex would keep the secret or successfully add to the plan. He was a bumbling mama’s boy. It was so easy to see how that happened: Xiomara, fed up from the challenges life threw at her family, turned into the practiced and pristine lawn-mover. She blazed a trail before her kids, absolving them of negative feelings and opportunities to fail. Now she’d moved her bulldozing skills to Holly’s child. Had Alex been forced to tell the truth instead of going on the run, she wouldn’t have been attacked and all of this would be over.

  She didn’t understand and she was about to put an end to the whole thing.

  They pulled up to Xiomara’s house.

  Like last time, no lights were on inside except for the front room. A TV played a sitcom; Holly couldn’t tell what she was watching, but as they got out of the car and walked across the yard, Holly saw Xiomara on her chair. She wasn’t dressed for visitors. She was wearing a robe, tucked around her small frame, and her chin sagged as her mouth drew down into a frown naturally.

  The woman was lonely.

  And sad.

  “Let’s go,” Holly whispered and she ducked around the edge of the house and walked to the wooden gate to the side. She unlatched the locking mechanism quietly and shoved the gate aside, entering the backyard on the fleshy part of her foot, careful not to make a sound. Joel followed her lead behind her.

  The night she came to Xiomara’s looking for Alex, she’d searched the house and the outbuildings. And it wasn’t until later that she realized she’d left one obvious spot unchecked: the tree house.

  For Alex’s first birthday, Xiomara had a luxury tree house built in her backyard. Of course, the baby was too young and oblivious to use the gift…which seemed to Holly at the time a shallow attempt to get the child over to her house more. Alex wasn’t fond of the tree house even as a growing child and so it slipped her mind as a hiding place. When she’d scanned the yard, the wooden structure in the treetops was hidden by the branches, just beginning to turn yellow and orange.

  Holly and Joel walked through the backyard without a light and slipped to the bottom of the oak tree an
d looked up. Sure enough, a flashlight illuminated a section of the hideaway.

  He was there.

  From the hotel, back to his grandma’s, a text to friends—and nothing to the woman whose heart ached for him every second. She was angry and relieved and her voice wobbled as she called up into the tree, “Alex. It’s your mom. Don’t be scared. I’m coming up.”

  She sent Joel back to the car. And he tiptoed back across the grass the way they came while Holly stepped up the wooden planks against the tree and emerged at the bottom of the tree house. Huddled in the corner, a small light in his lap, a backpack open by his side and a notebook in his hand, was her son. Holly wanted to cry from relief, but she held it together, worried that her own emotions would scare him off.

  “She didn’t tell me,” Holly said as she hoisted herself into the belly of the house and then closed the door behind her. They were enclosed from the world above the ground; it was dark and it was private and all she wanted to do was reach out and grab her child and hug him and scream at him and hug him, but she didn’t. She crawled over to him and put a single hand on his knee. “I figured it out on my own.”

  “Have you called the police?” he asked.

  His first words to her were words of fear.

  “No,” Holly answered, grateful it was the truth.

  “It’s over now,” Alex said. He closed the notebook and handed it to his mom. Then he reached into the backpack and unearthed an old-school tape recorder and six unmarked cassette tapes. “Grandma gave me these. I had everyone tell me their stories.” He popped a tape in the recorder and handed his mom headphones that were plugged into the headphone jack.

  She leaned in as he hit play.

  Her son’s voice appeared first, echoic and distant, scratchy—like the recordings of her youth.

  Alex: When did May Ford tell the girls about catfishing the assholes?

  Unknown girl: At dance camp. The second night. She showed us the account she made to mess with her ex-boyfriend. And then showed us the sites looking for young girls…