Point of Betrayal (21 page)

She smiled and shrugged. “Either, I suppose. I don’t need anything for my flight, but I love ceramics. Who’s the artist?”

“Oh, that would be the owner, Georgie Garritson. Don’t you love her stuff?” she asked excitedly. She held up a wineglass painted with a baby theme and a cute quote about a little wine keeping a future mother sane. “I just love these.”

“Is she local?”

She nodded proudly. “Born and raised in Laguna Beach. Her husband sits on the city council and her father was in real estate. She has a home studio, but sometimes she dabbles here at the shop in the back room. She’s carved out a corner for herself.”

Ari affected a troubled look. “Oh, I think I read about her family. Isn’t her son in some kind of trouble?”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” she said, exasperated. “Sam couldn’t hurt anyone, although if he’d listened to his mother, none of this probably would’ve happened.”

“What do you mean?”

She glanced toward the empty store before she said, “Georgie knew Nina wasn’t right for Sam. She was too clingy and demanding, but I suppose that became a moot point.”

“Why do you say that?”

She leaned closer and said, “I heard Nina was pregnant.”

Ari feigned surprise. “Wow, that wasn’t in the papers. Are you sure?”

She nodded, clearly unworried about airing her boss’s dirty laundry to a commuter stranger she’d never see again. “I overheard Georgie talking to Nina. It was a rather heated argument.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I wasn’t paying too close attention since it was a private conversation, but it sounded like Georgie was trying to convince Nina to go to a doctor, which makes sense if you’re pregnant. She’s full of good advice,” she added proudly. “There was something about getting a second opinion.”

“When was this conversation?”

“A few weeks ago, not too long before she was killed.”

“Did the police ask you about this?”

“Uh-huh. There’s this interesting detective, kinda cute for an older guy. I’m pretty sure he’ll solve it. He told me not to say anything to
anyone
about the pregnancy, but I doubt you’re included,” she said dismissively.

“You don’t think they suspect your boss, do you?”

“No, of course not. Besides she was closing that night.”

“Wow, it sounds pretty interesting around here.” She glanced at her watch. “Oops! I gotta go.”

“What about your gift?” Paisley asked, holding up the wineglass.

“It’ll have to wait. My plane leaves in ten minutes and I’ve got to get through security,” she said, hustling out the door.

She wandered down the concourse a little further and processed what she’d learned. Georgie knew about the baby. She hadn’t liked Nina, but, still, Ari couldn’t imagine a would-be grandmother killing her grandchild. In any case, it seemed as if Georgie had an airtight alibi.

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?”

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 something. 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.