Every Waking Hour

by Joanna Schaffhausen

  “I’m sorry. She was fourteen back then. A child. Are you saying he was attracted to her?”

  “No, probably not then. I’m saying that because of their history they both get a brain buzz, so to speak, when they are in each other’s presence. Over time, that buzzing may turn into attraction.”

  “I don’t get it,” said the anchorwoman. “Imagine having a serial killer for your matchmaker.” An image of Francis Coben from his federal trial flashed on the screen and Ellery shrank back into the cushions. She grabbed the remote and clicked the television off, but her heart continued to pound even in the silence. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to breathe. She’d been an idiot to think it would ever work with Reed, that they could invent whatever relationship they wanted. Their story only ever went one place.

  “Ellery?” Reed poked his head out from her bedroom.

  She jerked up. “Yes?”

  “Come see what I’ve done with your bedroom wall.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” she grumbled as she gingerly got up from the couch. “I like my wall the way it was.”

  “It’s a temporary redesign.”

  She discovered he’d tacked up a bunch of yellow sticky notes. Each one had his handwriting on it, and she moved closer to inspect them. “‘Irma Goodwin breaks her leg,’” she read off the first note. She turned to him. “Who is Irma Goodwin?”

  “That’s the start of it all,” he said, a glint in his eye, the satisfaction of a man who had cracked the puzzle. He seemed to want her to play along now, but her head hurt.

  “Reed, just tell me. What is all of this?”

  “It’s the answer to who killed Trevor Stone and Carol Frick,” he replied, and she looked with fresh eyes across the long string of sticky notes. She limped along, barely reading them until she got to the end.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed as she pulled the square of paper free from the wall to stare at his conclusion. No wonder the cops had been running in circles for fifteen years. They had the theory of the crime wrong from the very beginning. Reed had discovered the answer to a question no one bothered to ask.

  Reed put his hands on his hips and surveyed his handiwork. “Mind you, I can’t actually prove any of this yet. I’m not sure it would ever rise to the level of a criminal prosecution.”

  “Who would you even prosecute? Bobby Frick was right about one thing—we’re far too late.”

  He made a beleaguered gesture at the timeline. “Yeah, but if this is true, Bobby Frick was wrong about everything else.”

  34

  The dean’s office at Penn displayed several oil paintings of past men who had held the title. They wore dark robes and serious expressions, and Reed felt their eyes on him as he sat with his briefcase full of scant evidence at his feet. In the end, he had pinned his hopes on some old phone records, a piece of charred jewelry, and the only timeline of events that made coherent sense. His boss had demurred when Reed pitched the idea of this particular confrontation. It’s not the agency’s purview, she had said. It’s a university matter.

  The university failed to act, he had protested. It set everything in motion.

  Even if I find that argument persuasive, and believe me, I’m inclined to find fault with them, it doesn’t change the facts.

  The facts are currently not on record, he’d replied. We can change that. This case had been a wrecking ball swinging loose through multiple families now. He could not repair the damage, but he could perhaps bring it to a halt.

  He sat with the current dean, George Altman; the attorney representing the university, Ava Moss; and Ellery, who had insisted on coming even if she, too, was skeptical of what the outcome would be. The actual murderer is beyond criminal prosecution at this point. All you have left is … I don’t know … humiliation and public ruin, she’d said.

  Then public ruin it shall be, he’d replied.

  He turned as the last person joined the meeting. Ethan Stone stopped with surprise by the open door, but he recovered quickly and forced his features into a welcoming smile. “George, good to see you. Agent Markham, I didn’t realize you’d be back to visit us again so soon. Teresa’s daughter is home safe and sound, I see. How wonderful.”

  “Thank you for coming, Ethan,” the dean said. “Won’t you have a seat?”

  “Of course.” His gaze slid to the lawyer, Moss. “It’s Eva, isn’t it?”

  “Ava Moss,” she said without a trace of warmth. Reed had given both the dean and the attorney a brief synopsis of the reason for this meeting.

  “And this is my colleague who has assisted me in the investigation, Detective Ellery Hathaway,” Reed said, indicating Ellery.

  Ethan’s eyes lingered on her. “I think we all know Ms. Hathaway. Not as well as you do, though, I’m sure.” Reed took out his folders and put them on the table in front of him without opening the contents. Ethan regarded them with interest. “I thought you closed the case—Chloe’s abductor killed himself. He was that boy of Carol’s; at least that is what I read in the papers.”

  “You read correctly,” Reed told him. “We’re not here to discuss Chloe Lockhart’s kidnapping. We’re here because we finally know what happened to your son.”

  He sat back, his jaw going slack with shock. “Trevor? You know who killed him?”

  “Yes, but we can’t start with that day, not if we’re to understand what happened. We have to go back some years. You’re a world-renowned expert in economics, Professor Stone. What would you say that the basic principle of economics is?”

  A furrow appeared in his brow. “Supply and demand, I suppose. Why?”

  “Everything has a price. Is that right?”

  “Yes. It varies according to relative scarcity of the goods or services in question and the size of the consumer audience.”

  “And there are trade-offs. You give up something to get something.”

  “Of course. I don’t see what this has to do with Trevor.”

  “He was the price,” Reed said, his voice taking on a hard edge. “The one you didn’t see coming.”

  Stone turned to the dean in confusion. “George, help me out here. What is he talking about?”

  “Shut up and listen,” Altman replied.

  “Carol Frick had been cleaning your house for about three years at the time of her death and that of your son,” Reed said. “How did you come to hire her?”

  Stone appeared incredulous. “That was twenty years ago. You expect me to remember a decades-old interview process for a housekeeper? Teresa and I both worked long hours. We had a small child who liked to track dirt into our house. We needed someone to help out. I don’t recall how we found Carol. She may have been recommended by a friend or we may have called a service. Teresa handled most of our household affairs, so you’d do better to ask her.”

  “That’s interesting you would mention Teresa’s role as head of the household.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said she managed the household.”

  Reed held his gaze. “Is there a difference? You just admitted you have no idea how Carol Frick came to be in your employ.”

  Irritated, Stone held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, Teresa wore the pants in the family. Is that what you want me to say?”

  Reed took out the phone records from the folder in front of him. “So Teresa was the one who coordinated Carol Frick’s schedule. She told her when to come and what you needed done on any particular week, is that right?”

  “Yes. I didn’t notice when the silver needed polishing.” He said it like tracking this work was beneath him, but Reed would wager he’d notice if the flatware showed up tarnished on the dinner table.

  “The day Trevor died,” Reed said, sliding the phone records across to him, “Teresa didn’t call Carol Frick. Neither did you, it seems. The records indicate that Carol called your office here at the university. Three times, in fact. Do you remember what you talked about?”

  Stone did not immediately pick up the paper. He looked at Reed, h
is gaze assessing, trying to work out the correct answer. He cleared his throat and glanced at the phone records. “I’m afraid I don’t recall. Carol would phone me sometimes if she had a question—did we want her to change the bed linens or that sort of thing.”

  “You just said Teresa handled any instructions to Carol.”

  “My wife was busy with her surgeries. She wasn’t always reachable.” He gave a thin smile. “My job is comparably more sedate.”

  “Carol phoned you three times that afternoon. That’s a lot of questions.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe she got my secretary on her first couple of tries.” He pushed the paper back at Reed. “You were going to tell me about Trevor.”

  “Yes, I promise it’s all related.” Reed took out a different piece of evidence, a photo of the gun retrieved from Ethan Stone’s backyard. “Do you recognize this weapon?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “It was recovered from the shed behind your old house.”

  “I’ve never seen it before in my life. It certainly wasn’t ours. Teresa saw too many gunshot wounds in her line of work. She would never abide a gun in the home, and I wasn’t keen, either. Not with Trevor so young and Justin…” He trailed off and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, Justin had problems that could only be exacerbated by the presence of a weapon. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Would it surprise you to know it has been linked to a murder?”

  He startled. “Murder. But … Trevor wasn’t shot.”

  “No, it was used to shoot Vincent Frick.”

  “Vincent,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Carol’s husband.”

  “Ah, so you know of him.”

  “Just by name. I heard he died, but I didn’t know any details. I was under the impression it was some sort of accident.”

  “No, Carol murdered him with this gun. She stole it from one of her clients in Baltimore.”

  “What?” Shock colored his features. “She murdered her husband?”

  “And collected fifty thousand dollars in life insurance money, which she used to relocate to Philadelphia and put the down payment on the house she shared with her children. You remember her children, don’t you? Beth, the oldest, would have been about fifteen at the time Carol started working for you.”

  “I knew she had kids. I didn’t know she’d killed anyone.”

  “Beth had a scholarship here. I understand you had a little something to do with that.” He took out a copy of Beth Frick’s senior year portrait, which he’d found in the school yearbook. It showed a young woman with chin-length auburn hair, a shy smile, and silver and mother-of-pearl earrings in the shape of seashells. He showed the portrait to Ethan Stone, who appeared reluctant to look at it.

  “I probably helped her with her application—read it over, offered a word of advice here or there to enhance her chances. I do that with my friends’ kids all the time, so I’m sure I would have helped this girl, too, if her mother had asked. But I’m not on the admissions committee.” He pushed the picture back at Reed after barely glancing at it. “If she got a scholarship, she did it under her own merits.”

  “Her grades were top-notch,” Reed agreed. “She was captain of the volleyball team.”

  Ellery took the picture and looked at it at length. “Those earrings look expensive,” she said. “I know my mother never could have afforded anything like that when I was in high school.”

  “Maybe she had a rich boyfriend,” Stone said. He made a show of checking his watch. “Can we skip ahead to the part about Trevor? I have a seminar to deliver.”

  “We’ve got your class covered,” Dean Altman informed him, and Stone stopped short. He tapped his fingers on the table and regarded the lawyer as if seeing her for the first time.

  “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

  “Observing,” she replied, looking up from her notes.

  “The thing is,” Reed said to Ellery, “the earrings aren’t that expensive. They look like they could be pricey, but these are mass-produced and probably retailed for around a hundred dollars.” She knew this. They had already discussed the whole case in detail, so this conversation was for Ethan Stone’s benefit. “They’re essentially costume jewelry, well made as such—enough to fool someone young or without a lot of experience with fine jewels.”

  “That would be me,” Ellery agreed. “I’m surprised you can tell so much just from this picture.”

  “Oh, I can’t.” Reed withdrew another piece of paper. “The insurance company had them appraised. See?”

  Stone stretched his neck out like a turtle to see what Reed had handed to Ellery. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the insurance assessment from a car fire,” Ellery said as she read it over. “Your car fire, as it happens. There was a seashell earring found among the debris. You don’t recall this?” She gave him the printout to read.

  Stone took longer than necessary to examine the scant few lines that detailed the inventory from the fire. “No,” he said finally. “What a coincidence. I guess Teresa must have owned a similar pair of earrings.”

  “We asked her,” Ellery told him, her gaze turning steely. “She denies ever owning any earrings like these.”

  He snorted. “Of course she would. She’d deny ever knowing me if she thought she could get away with it. Look,” he said, opening his body posture, trying to smile, “I remember now buying those earrings for Teresa. It was a little souvenir I picked up for her on a business trip to Quebec many years ago.”

  Reed saw his left eye twitch. “You buy a lot of jewelry.” He pulled out more paper from his notes and put on his reading glasses to consult the list. “Two sets of earrings, a necklace, and a half-dozen bracelets in the past year alone. One of them contained actual diamonds.” He peered over the top of his glasses and across the table at Stone. “You must have had a great deal to apologize for that time.”

  Twin spots of rage appeared on Stone’s face. “You’ve been prying into my records? Is that legal? Can he do that?” he appealed to Ava Moss, who dismissed him coolly.

  “I’m not here for you.”

  “Then I’m not here at all,” Stone said, shoving back from the table.

  “You don’t want to know about Trevor?” Reed asked, and Stone halted with his hands balled into fists. “Or maybe you know already. Maybe you’ve always known, deep down.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You abuse your students,” Reed replied. “You grope some and court others. We tracked down that diamond bracelet and found it in possession of a young woman named Shelby Colson. She was your teaching assistant last year. You seduced her, and when she tried to break it off you didn’t take no for an answer. She ended up in the E.R. with a split lip and a broken collarbone.”

  “And she says I did it to her?”

  “No, she’s sticking to her story that she went over the handlebars on her bicycle.” Reed paused for effect. “I talked to her roommate, though. It seems that Shelby doesn’t own a bike.”

  “Beth Frick had next to nothing,” Ellery added. “Her mom blew through the insurance money in under a year and the family was back to barely scraping by. Beth knew the only way out was to go to a good school, and her mother said she knew someone who could help her with that. She turned to you. You met with the girl, showed her around, maybe took her out to a fancy meal at the club on campus. You’re a big man around here, right? She would have been wowed by you.”

  “They all are at first,” Reed said. “Isn’t that right? And then when it goes bad, when you push it too far and hurt them, they think it must be their fault. You’re practically a god at this place.”

  “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this bunch of lies.” He tried to push past Altman to the door, but the dean stopped him with one raised hand.

  “Actually, you do.”

  “George, you can’t believe what he’s saying. It’s pure fantasy.”

  “Sit
down.”

  Stone refused. He stood by the table with his arms folded. “You’re wrong about everything, and if you breathe a word of it outside this room, I will sue you for defamation.”

  “You gave Beth Frick those earrings,” Reed said calmly. “Whether it was before or after you slept with her, I don’t know. It’s been so long and too many players in this drama are not around to confirm the gaps.”

  “Gaps? Canyons, maybe. This is a bunch of horseshit you’re shoveling. George, you can’t be buying any of it.”

  “She threw the earrings back at you, probably when she turned up pregnant. I can imagine how terrified she must have been, how angry. Her future had been set and now suddenly everything went to ruin. She set your car on fire.”

  Stone’s jaw worked back and forth. “So you say.”

  “You’re right. I can’t prove it. But I think you knew who it was even at the time, which is why you tried to prevent any real investigation. You wanted the whole mess to go away quietly, including Beth, and she obliged you by driving her car into a cement barrier.”

  Ava Moss stopped taking notes. “Are you saying the girl killed herself?”

  “It’s impossible to know for sure,” Reed said. “What we do know is that the day Trevor Stone was murdered, Beth’s mother, Carol Frick, was cleaning out Beth’s room. Something she found in there triggered her to call Ethan Stone at his office. Repeatedly. When she couldn’t reach him, she went to the house. Maybe she was looking for him. Or maybe she was already looking for Trevor.”

  He looked to Stone, whose face drained of color, his lips bloodless and waxy. “N—no,” he stammered, shaking his head.

  “You took her child,” Reed told him. “So she took yours.”

  “No, it can’t be. Someone broke in. A stranger. One of the landscapers.”

  “No one broke in. Carol had a key, if she needed it, but the back door was open. She knew where you kept the recycled plastic bags because she often put them there herself. She didn’t grapple with any murderer at the top of your staircase. She went to Trevor’s room, surprised him from behind with the plastic bag, and smothered him to death. Then, in despair and fearing the consequences of her actions, she threw herself off the upstairs walkway onto the marble floor below.”