A Body to Spare (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) (8 page)

Wow, talk about timing. If I’d waited to call Barbara, I might not have reached her. The information she’d be giving me would be very valuable, both for my own snooping as well as what I did for the law firm. After we said goodbye, I put a reminder in my calendar to send flowers to Barbara’s new place to wish her well in her new home.

While I waited for the information from Barbara, I continued reading the report. The morning the Finches discovered that Zach had not slept in his own bed, his parents had called his friends and learned nothing except that they had dropped him off the night before. They called other friends of Zach’s, including a girl he’d been dating off and on, but no one knew anything about Zach’s whereabouts. His buddies had dropped him off, watched him go into the house through the side entrance, and then he had simply vanished down a rabbit hole, never to be seen again—until he ended up as a corpse in my trunk.

Why now? Why
my
trunk? I didn’t know this kid or his family. I needed to trace his journey from that night in Illinois until now in Southern California. I read on.

The Finches received a call from the kidnappers later that same day instructing them to leave two million dollars in a specific spot by six the next evening. The money would buy their son back. No police were to be involved or Zach would die. Once the money was delivered to the designated dropoff, the Finches were to wait until ten that night. At that time they would be given instructions on where to find Zach unharmed. According to the report, Alec Finch had gathered the money from various accounts and delivered it to an abandoned barn several counties away from their home. Zach had not been at the barn, nor did any instructions arrive as to where they could find him. The next day, the Finches waited again for more information, but none came. That night they finally called the police and reported the crime.

I stopped reading and tried to put myself in the shoes of Zach’s parents. Were they stupid or exercising caution by not involving the authorities sooner? Even though I did not have children of my own, I couldn’t imagine the horror of a child gone missing. Tragically, it happened all the time. Sometimes the children were found shortly after. Sometimes they surfaced years later after escaping their abductors. But usually they weren’t found at all or, if they were, they were identifiable only by their skeletal remains. Their disappearances remained unsolved mysteries and crimes while parents held out hope and prayed for signs of life or even signs of death, some believing that knowing their child was dead was preferable to the hell of limbo. To those parents, learning of the death of their son or daughter was closure—a deep, ugly, jagged wound that would never heal but could now stop bleeding.

It was too late for Maryanne Finch, but Alec Finch could now have that closure. If I were in Mr. Finch’s shoes, I wouldn’t stop until I learned the truth. I was searching for the truth myself, but I needed to find out what had happened to get my big butt off the short suspect list and the limelight off of Willie and Elaine. To do that, I had to find out the connection between the Finches and me. There had to be one. I seriously doubted that whomever had dumped the body was walking down the alley behind our home, spotted my car in the carport, and said to themselves, “Hey, this looks like a great place to dump a body!”

No, there had to be a connection between me and the Finches or whomever had dumped the body knew of my gift for finding corpses. It was too much of a coinkydink, as Dev would say, that Zach’s body had showed up out of the blue. I just had to find that connection and poke at it until it revealed the truth, and the sooner the better.

I got up and used the bathroom, then checked on the stew, giving it a good stir. It was lunchtime, so I made myself a fluffernutter—
a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. My mother used to make these for me when I was a kid, and I’ve never lost my taste for them. Clark loves them too and it wasn’t until I found my mother in Massachusetts that I realized that’s where she’d picked up the recipe, not that there really was one. But, like lobster and whole-bellied fried clams, it is definitely a New England delicacy.

Due to their sticky nature, fluffernutters go best with hot beverages, and so do rainy days. I took my mug of hot tea and my sandwich and settled down at the kitchen table, positioning myself so I could look out our sliding doors into our cheerful backyard and patio, beyond which was the carport that now housed our rental car. We had a roomy garage, but that usually housed Greg’s van. With all its customization, we couldn’t afford to have it vandalized or broken into. Not that we lived in a bad neighborhood—we didn’t—but why take the chance with something so valuable? I could easily get a rental if something happened to my wheels; Greg could not. And if both of our vehicles were in the garage at the same time, Greg could not easily transfer between his wheelchair and the van. Did whoever had dumped the body know that my car was always parked in the carport? Or had it been just dumb luck on their part to find it out in the open when they needed to get to it?

So many questions were whirling around in my head, it was beginning to bang and clank like an unbalanced washing machine.

I ate my sandwich and drank my tea and made the decision to follow the timeline of Zach’s disappearance from the date and point of origin. I could either follow the dots from the beginning of his ordeal or from the end, meaning my car trunk, but the end led me smack into a brick wall. At least it gave me something to do while I waited for Elaine to get my message and call me back…if she called.

After putting my dishes in the sink, I retrieved a yellow legal pad and pen from our home office and returned to the kitchen table. I plucked an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and took a big bite. Holding the fruit in my left hand, I turned the page horizontally with my right and got to work sketching out the timeline between bites.

Zach had gone missing eight years and four months earlier. I printed that date in small neat characters to the far left. Next to it I noted that the ransom had been paid but no Zach returned. On the far right I printed the date he’d been found in my trunk. The gap between yawned at me like a hungry mouth waiting to be fed. By the time I’d eaten my apple down to the core, I still hadn’t added anything to the time gap.

My frustration with having no information was interrupted by my laptop dinging to tell me I had a new email. It was from Barbara and contained all the information and passwords she had promised.

ten

Barbara’s email contained information
and passwords for five different sites. Three of them I already knew something about, having used them myself a few times but never as a subscriber. The other two looked to be more for professional use and were accessed on a subscription-only basis. In fact, out of curiosity, I ran a Google search for them and came up with nothing. These were research sites not publicly listed on web search engines. I knew there was a deep web out there—a dark and often scary part of the Internet hidden from the general public. I didn’t think these sites were part of the bowels of the Internet but maybe somewhere between where I usually poke and prod and the deep underground. At first review, I could see where these sites, particularly the stealthy ones, would be of great use.

I opened the first site unfamiliar to me using Barbara’s password and went to the user profile. As she had noted in her email, Barbara had changed the attached email address on the account to mine so that any search reports would come straight to me, but she had left her name and phone attached so that the folks running the site would think it was still her using it. She’d explained that she didn’t want my information out there unless and until I decided to continue the subscription. She was being cautious, and I was thankful for that.

First I visited each site under Barbara’s user name and jotted down the subscription information—the cost of each and how much time was left on the subscription, calculating the prorated amount I wanted to pay Barbara for their use. The three common search services had anywhere between one and two months left on them and were minimal in cost. From the use history of these search sites, it looked like Barbara hadn’t been utilizing them much lately, probably because they were for amateurs. One of the deep search sites had less than a month left, and the other still had eight months to go on its subscription. Both of these were much more expensive. From their search histories, it looked like Barbara had discovered and been using the one with more time left the most in the past few months. It had obviously become her favorite. It was called, simply, Marigold. There wasn’t a single thing about its name that indicated it could unlock information about anyone anywhere. Instead, the name conjured up thoughts of gardening tips or florists. I could even see a bakery with this name.

After jotting down the cost of the deep sites on my notepad, I paused and wondered if my brother and other people Willie employed used these sites. They always seemed to know a lot about people, even as much and often more than the police. And if these deep sites were not open to public search engines, someone would have to refer the site to you for you to even know about its existence. I could even see Elaine Powers using these powerful know-all Wizard of Oz sites for her dark dealings.

To test it, I put my name and birthdate into the Marigold search engine and waited. It had asked for more personal information to help the search along, but I wanted to see what the minimal brought up. A message popped up saying that the search was in progress and would be delivered to my email within two hours or less. It wasn’t instantaneous, as I had hoped, but then a thorough search shouldn’t be. I was almost afraid of what it would turn up. Not that I had anything to hide, but the more personal information the search uncovered, the scarier and less secure I would feel personally—yet, on the flip side, the more useful I would know this site to be for my snooping purposes. It was very expensive and I wanted to be sure it would be worth it. Barbara had thought so, and it looked to be the only site she’d been using lately for information on individuals or companies. She’d even noted in her email that Marigold was the best, in her opinion.

After drumming my fingers on the table for nearly a minute, I checked my email. Nothing. Not for the first time, I thought about what a joke my middle name of Patience was and how it mocked me.

Not wanting to waste time, I started plugging in the names of Zach’s friends and family and got those searches going. Since Marigold was the priciest of the sites, I was determined to get my money’s worth. All I had was names to go on, but I made a stab at birth years based on the ages they had been when Zach disappeared. One of the filters was place of birth. Since the kids were young, I inserted Illinois in on all of them. One after another, messages popped up letting me know each search was under way and would be delivered to my email box in two hours or less. That seemed to be the standard response time.

Once those searches were started, I checked my email. Still nothing, but only about fifteen minutes had passed. I got up and made myself a mug of hot chocolate. It was still raining, and the sky was gloomy and gray. Even though it was warm inside the house, I shivered and rubbed my arms through the long sleeves of my sweatshirt. It was a favorite of mine. It was the kind of clothing we all have—too old and raggedy to wear outside the house but as comforting as a fluffy afghan, so we never gave it up. I had a few of these, and so did Greg. Today’s comfort ensemble was a maroon sweatshirt with
CAMBRIA
emblazoned across my chest in large white letters. It was embellished with pale green paint stains from when Greg and I had repainted the guest bathroom last year. I’d paired it today with equally worn and beat-up yoga pants. My hair was dirty and pulled back from my makeup-free face with a wide elastic headband; no wonder Clark had made that crack. Maybe I should use the two hours or less promised by the search site to shower and clean up.

Twenty minutes later, freshly showered and shampooed and dressed in jeans and a nice casual V-neck sweater in teal over a white camisole, I checked my email again to find the search results for myself waiting.

I sent the report to the printer in our home office. Reading it online was easy enough, but I found I paid more attention to details when reading in hard print—and this thing I wanted to read in great detail. While it printed, I stirred and nuked my forgotten hot chocolate, then sat down with both and a yellow highlighter to see exactly what Marigold had found out about me.

Holy crap!
It contained everything about me except which molar I had capped last.

Using the highlighter, I took note of my social security number, my place of birth, parents, education history, employment history, and all of my residences since I came into the world. My driver’s license was noted, together with all vehicles I’d owned, along with their registration information and all tickets I’d received. Even my income was listed. I highlighted them all, including my notary commission information. I stopped reading when my eyes caught on a list of the crimes with which I’d been involved. They were noted under a heading called Criminal Activity. Not that I’d committed any of these crimes, which the report clarified by simply calling me “an interested party.”

I scanned the list again and wished I’d had something stronger than cocoa in my mug. These were the murders and nefarious activities I’d stumbled upon in my capacity as a corpse magnet. Each contained a small summary, a list of involved individuals, and the outcome. If I ever had a memory lapse of all the trouble I’d gotten into over the years, here was the cheat sheet to remind me. I’d stored each one in a separate compartment in my brain, keeping them apart and shrouded in denial of their severity. It was my coping mechanism. But seeing them like this—in one bunch like overripe bananas, dark yellow and spotted with black—was a shock to my system, and a cold, icy stream started to run through my veins. I drained my mug and thought seriously about the bottle of scotch we kept in the cupboard.

There was even a reference to the person I’d shot and killed several years earlier. That entry was summed up with the words
determined self-defense
. The only crime not listed was the murder of Zach Finch. But hey, that was just a few days ago, and it was a bit comforting to see that Marigold wasn’t on top of things as they happened.

So who or what is this Marigold? Was it a super program that pulled information from all available databases everywhere? Or was there a team of nerds sitting in a dark room in front of computers who took the search requests, then hacked into whatever database was needed to harvest the information? I looked over my report again. None of this information was a secret. It was all out there, mostly scattered through various government agency databases. For example, my notary commission was listed with the California Secretary of State. My license, driving record, and vehicle information was kept with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. It was some comfort to see that my medical history wasn’t listed anywhere, only my blood type. My marriage to Greg was noted, but, again, that was public record.

As I said, none of this information is top secret, but much of it would be difficult for Joe Blow off the street to obtain, especially in such bulk and with such speed. Whoever or whatever Marigold is, it had access, legally or illegally, to pretty much every database on which personal information was stored. I knew better than to expect much personal privacy anymore with surveillance cameras recording our every move and the monitoring of citizens by the government, but this blew me away. Was the NSA behind Marigold? Or maybe one of their researchers had found a way to cash in on his or her skills on the side. Whatever it was, I was darn sure it was also noting and saving each of the searches I was doing.

I took a deep breath and wondered if I should continue using the search engine. Putting down the hard copy of my report, I checked my email. The search reports for a couple of the people I was investigating had arrived, and I knew I was hooked. A quick look and I knew that my limited search parameters had hit pay dirt and found the right people. Whatever this Big Brother search engine was, I was going to jump in feet first because I might learn something about the body left in my trunk. In this case, as I had with others, I was choosing “the end justifies the means” approach.

The first completed report was the one on Jean Finch. Opening the attachment, I took note that she was now going by the name of Jean Utley. She could have gotten married or changed it for other reasons. If the name change was due to marriage, it meant she hadn’t married her college sweetheart Ryan Wright, or she had and divorced and remarried in short order.

Scanning the report, I kept my eyes open for her current whereabouts. It looked like she finished college and moved to Chicago, where she took a job as a project manager in a large company. At this point it looked like she was still Jean Finch. The next bit of information on Jean’s report grabbed my attention. Three years ago she’d moved from Chicago to California and was now living in Studio City, and that’s when her last named jumped from Finch to Utley. There was no mention of any husband. There were other addresses listed in California before the Studio City one, but it didn’t look like Jean had stayed at any of them long.

I checked the summary of her stats in the upper right-hand corner. In my eagerness to read the trail of her personal history, I’d missed them. It gave her birthdate and her current age of twenty-six. It was nice of Marigold to tell me that instead of making me do the math. Sure enough, listed right under Jean’s birthday was her marital status: single, not divorced.

My paralegal side kicked into action. I knew that in order to change your name legally, a petition for a decree had to be filed with the court. If Jean made the change a legal one and was living in Studio City at the time, that would mean she would have filed the petition with the Los Angeles Superior Court; that petition, once granted, would have to be published in a public periodical and would become public record. Marigold knew that too. Under a section that gave more detailed personal statistics, like her height and general weight (probably obtained from driver’s license records) and which schools she attended, was a notation that she had changed her name legally. The date of the action was just months after she arrived in Southern California. She hadn’t wasted any time dumping the Finch name.

Why had Jean come to California? Did she know her brother was here? Had she known all along? More importantly, did she know he was now dead and why? And why did she change her name after leaving Chicago?

I really needed to speak to Jean, and pronto. There was a phone number listed with her current address. I thought about calling her, but if she knew about her brother’s recent past and current status, it might spook her into taking off. And why did she choose the name Utley? Maybe it was her mother’s maiden name or the family name of some ancestor.

I’d also asked Marigold for a report on Alec Finch and found it waiting in my email. I opened the attachment and checked his marital status. His was listed as widowed. I scanned his report until I found when he had married Maryanne. Her maiden name had been Worthington, not Utley, so that theory was shot. Alec’s report listed his parents’ names as Helen and Daniel Finch. Next to siblings, it said none.

What I needed to do was make a sneak attack on Jean. I went back to her report. Her occupation was listed as actress. From there I went to the website IMDB, a database that lists actors, films, and TV shows. I put in Jean’s name and up came a nice head shot with a short list of TV appearances. It looked like she’d been getting some small parts here and there in the past couple of years but certainly nothing steady enough to support herself. Her professional bio said nothing about being born in Illinois as Jean Finch. I saved her head shot to my computer and printed it out for a current reference, as well as sent it to my phone. I looked again on the Marigold report for some indication of another more steady job but found none of the usual barista or waitress or temp secretary jobs that many actors work while trying to break into show business.

If Jean didn’t work another job, then she might be home most of the time between auditions. Or maybe she worked from home doing something that paid under the table and which would not show up in reports garnered from the usual databases. No matter who or what was behind Marigold, I doubted it was a boots-on-the-ground type of investigative outfit. But that was something I could do, although in my case it was sneakers on the ground.