Saving Ben (25 page)

“No, but she does know
someone
.” I walked over to the window. “George Turner. He lives right over there.” I pointed across the creek. “He was here last night. For about an hour. But that was early, around seven or so.”

Collins furrowed his eyebrows. “George Turner? As in Holden Turner, the commonwealth attorney’s son?”

“He’s the one,” I answered.

“Have you had any communication with him this morning?” Hathaway asked.

“No, but it’s not even ten o’clock.” When Ben saw the stern look on Hathaway’s face, he whipped his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll send him a text now.”

“Don’t send him a text, boy,” Collins said to Ben. “Call him. And if he doesn’t answer his cell phone, try his house line.”

We all held our breath while Ben dialed both numbers and left messages on each line.

“Holden Turner is an important man around these parts. Looks like we have no choice but to call in the big guns on this one,” Collins said to his partner, who nodded in agreement.

While Hathaway paced up and down in front of the fireplace in the living room, snapping orders at dispatch to call in the detectives, Collins went outside to his patrol car for supplies. From the kitchen window, we watched him take pictures with a digital camera and spray something out of an aerosol can onto various footprints along the line from the house to Emma’s car and down to the dock.

Reed and Maddie disappeared to their room and returned a little while later with their overnight bags strung across their shoulders. I could see the tension in Reed’s face when he pulled Ben and me aside. “I’m sorry about all this. I guess a person’s true character really shows itself during a crisis.”

“Don’t sweat it, buddy,” Ben said, squeezing Reed’s shoulder. “Maddie doesn’t know us that well. I can only imagine what she thinks. If you don’t mind, though, will you check with the police to see if they have any questions for you before you leave?”

Reed nodded. “I’m gonna drive Maddie to Richmond and come straight back.”

Ben smiled at his friend. “With any luck, by the time the police are through with you, Emma will be back and we can all go home to Richmond together.”

“Yeah dude, wouldn’t that be nice?” Reed said, offering Ben a high five. “We should auction off the opportunity to be the first to slug her when she shows. I can promise you I’ll be the highest bidder.”

***

Detectives Bonnie Breton and Eric Erikson stepped from their unmarked car and took command of the scene with the experience and confidence the patrol officers lacked. Right away, Detective Breton honed in on the most obvious detail that Humpty and Dumpty failed to notice. “What happened to your face?”

“I had a fight with my roommate,” I said to her, running my fingers along the welt on my cheek.

Gently, in a way that reminded me of my grandmother, the detective lifted my chin toward the light. I lowered my eyes and watched her as she examined the scratch. With her crooked teeth and double chin, there was nothing pretty about the female detective, but I found her slate-blue eyes warm and full of compassion, a sentiment her partner seemed to lack.

Detective Ericson curled his lip up as if he’d gotten a whiff of rotting fish. “Now let me guess. Your roommate and the missing person are one and the same?”

I shrugged. “Naturally.”

To make certain the detectives understood the whole scope of the situation, Ben and I described our relationship with Emma, and for the second time that day, Thompson presented his theory about Emma’s psychopathic behavior. Both Breton and Ericson seemed to believe our stories, although they cautioned us that their opinions might change if Emma didn’t show up in a couple of days.

“You did the right thing in calling us,” Detective Breton assured Ben and me. “Typically we don’t respond so quickly to missing-person calls, but having only one set of footprints leading to the dock complicates the situation. There are several things that concern me here, enough to do a little more digging before I’m willing to assume Emma got in a boat and took off with her lover.”

“I’d be willing to bet my next pay she’s just shacking up with some lucky bastard she met along the way.” Ericson’s chuckle was awkward in the midst of our silence. He cleared his throat. “But maybe she just went down to the dock to get some fresh air, fell and hit her head, and knocked herself out on the way overboard.”

Detective Breton turned to Ben and me. “Although it’s too late to test for it now, judging from the way the two of you described your experiences last night, I believe there’s a good chance you were drugged. And yes, probably with Liquid X or a similar substance. Do you think it’s possible Emma took some herself?”

I thought back to the night, during rush last year, when I found Emma and Ben with their noses in a mountain of cocaine. “It wouldn’t be the first time she used drugs,” I said to the detectives, avoiding my brother’s gaze.

“Then I can think of a hundred scenarios that might have happened to a drugged person stumbling around on a dock on a night as pitch-dark as last night.” Breton looked pointedly at Ericson. “Why don’t you and I have a look around outside while these kids keep trying to get in touch with George Turner?”

I glanced toward Maddie who’d been sitting on the edge of the sofa, during our chat with the detectives, waiting to pounce on the first opportunity to get the hell out of our lives. “Detective Breton, do you think it’s possible to get whatever statement you need from my friends before you go down to the dock? Maddie and Reed have to get back to Richmond for a family commitment this afternoon,” I lied, anything to get the hostile bitch out of our house.

“Of course.” She handed a form to both Maddie and Reed. “If you would please write down whatever information you think might be pertinent, including your contact information, then you’re free to leave.” She started for the door, but then turned back around. “This might sound a little strange, but given the circumstances, it would be helpful if you could leave the shoes you were wearing last night so we can make prints. We’ll get them back to you as soon as we can.”

It took a lot for Reed to convince Maddie to loosen her grip on her Tory Burch boots. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, and whether he told her he’d buy her a new pair of boots or whether he promised her a weekend by the fire in his parents’ mountain ski lodge, his proposition seemed to placate her. Maddie smiled up at her lover, nodding her head, but she glared at Ben and me as she dropped her boots beside the front door on her way out.

Ben and I walked them to their car.

“Look, man,” Reed said to Ben, “I’m counting on you to be in the taproom at the club for the six o’clock football game tonight. That’s how sure I am this bitch will show up any second with some lame explanation.”

“It’s a beautiful thought, bro,” Ben said, leaning back against the hood of the car. “But don’t hold your breath.”

While Ben and Reed said their goodbyes, I wandered over to Emma’s car and lifted the door handle, surprised to find it unlocked. Once Reed and Maddie had driven off, I called Ben over. “Look at this shit,” I said, removing an oversized Michael Kors tote bag from the passenger seat. “Do you have any idea how much the bag alone costs?”

Ben opened the back door and pulled out a large Louis Vuitton duffle. “No, but I’m pretty sure this one costs at least a grand. It looks like the little poor girl has found herself some rich bastard to wrap around her pinky finger.” Ben stuck his head inside the car. “Do you see her keys anywhere? Or her cell phone?”

I found her keys in the cup holder and held them up, jingling them. “But I don’t see her phone, unless it’s in one of these bags.” I dumped the contents of the tote on the driver’s seat, and searched through the tubes of lipstick and tampons and other assorted bottom-of-pocketbook junk until I found a small satin satchel. I shook a pair of diamond studs and a sapphire ring out into my hand. “That little thief.”

“Are those
your
earrings?” Ben asked, his eyes wide with horror. “The one’s MayMay left you?”

“Yep, and this is Archer’s ring.” I slid the sapphire ring on my middle finger and looked up at my brother. “Ben, when Thompson and I came upstairs after my fight with Emma last night, I hid these earrings way back in the back of my bedside table drawer. Unless she snuck upstairs sometime during dinner or while we were watching the ball drop—and I seriously doubt that happened because I don’t remember her leaving the group—Emma took these earrings while Thompson and I were asleep.”

Ben slumped against the car. “This is almost more than I can handle.” He placed the LV duffle on the hood of the car and ripped it open. “Holy shit,” he said, thumbing through a rubber-banded wad of cash. “All hundred-dollar bills.” He put the cash back and removed a small zippered case. “What the heck? Did she rob a jewelry store?” He reached inside the case and pulled out a handful of designer jewelry—David Yurman and Roberto Coin and the likes.

I went around to the passenger’s side and began searching the glove compartment and down on the floorboard. “I’m guessing you want this back,” I said, handing him Emma’s computer. “Is the serial number registered in your name?”

He shrugged. “I paid for it with my credit card, but I gave it to her as a gift. It’s not going to matter much if she’s dead, now is it?”

“How dare her!” I screamed, slamming the car door shut. “That bitch came into our house as a guest, an unwanted one maybe but still a guest, and she stole from us. Not only did she rob us of our dignity by drugging us and putting us in this embarrassing situation, but she also took our most treasured possessions. If she were here now, I’d kill her myself.”

“What’s going on here?” Detective Ericson called to us as he rounded the corner of the house. “The two of you may have saved us the many hours it would’ve taken to get a search warrant, but you’ve compromised the investigation. Whatever you found in there will not be allowed into evidence.”

“This car is parked on my property, Detective,” I said. “Which in my book makes it fair game. This is an emergency. We were hoping to find her cell phone.”

“And did you?” Breton asked, joining us.

I shook my head. “No such luck.”

She peered over our shoulders at the loot. “Did you find
anything
useful?”

Ben and I stepped aside so the detectives could examine the contents of Emma’s bags. “She’s been babysitting for her aunt and uncle’s children out in Texas over the holidays,” Ben explained. “My guess is, Emma took these things from them, because she certainly couldn’t afford them herself.”

“Is that her computer?” Detective Erickson asked, eyeing the MacBook Air that Ben was holding.

“I’m not sure who it technically belongs to,” Ben said, “but I bought it for her last spring. It’s been in her possession ever since.”

“Then I suggest we take it inside and see what we can find,” Erickson said. “Maybe a telephone number for her mother or her relatives in Texas.”

As it turned out, Ben had already stored in his phone the number to Emma’s home in Altoona when she visited her mother at Christmas a year ago. While the two detectives disappeared into the living room to make the call, I took the computer to the kitchen where the rest of our guests were scrambling eggs and making yet another pot of coffee.

I settled at the bar and flipped open the computer. “Knowing Emma, her password has something to do with money.”

“Good guess,” Ben said, nodding. “Try
gold
.”

Archer raised her eyebrow. “As in,
digger
? How’d you know?”

Ben shrugged. “She told me.”

I typed in the keys and waited. “That’s it. I can’t believe Emma actually set her password as gold.”

Spotty glanced at us over his shoulder from the stove where he was scooping up eggs. “Seriously? After all she has put us through? Nothing would surprise me, even if we learned she was on a flight headed to Las Vegas right now.”

“Except she wouldn’t have boarded a flight to Sin City without this.” I pulled the bundle of money out of Emma’s bag and held it up to show the others.

Archer’s eyes grew wide. “Holy Moley! That’s a lot of cash.”

Detective Ericson entered the room with his pocket-size notebook in his hand and his partner on his heels. “We were able to reach the girl’s mother, one Joyce Stone, but she hasn’t seen or heard from her daughter since Thanksgiving, during which time they had some sort of altercation. According to the police reports, when the mother called the daughter out for coming home stumbling drunk, the daughter came after her with a serrated kitchen knife of some sort. Fortunately, a nosy neighbor happened to be walking his dog by the kitchen window at the time and called 911.

We glanced around the room at one another, our shocked expressions saying what are mouths were unable to speak.

“The good news is that she was able to put us in touch with her aunt out in Texas,” Detective Breton said. “The bad news is that there’s more bad news.”

Ericson cleared his throat and consulted his notebook. “Apparently, the aunt, one Claire Dennison, walked in on Emma and her husband in bed together.” Ignoring his partner’s scornful stare, the detective nodded his head enthusiastically in response to the gasps from our group. “How do you like that? Try to give the girl a break by offering her a job and look what happens. She sleeps with her husband and then robs her blind.”

I held up the wad of money. “Did you ask them about this? Do they make a habit of leaving wads of hundred-dollar bills lying around? There’s at least five thousand dollars here.”

Detective Breton took the bundle of money from me and placed it back in Emma’s bag. “I talked to Mrs. Dennison for a while. It’s actually very sad the way it all played out. Her daughters, Sally and Lena, worshipped their cousin Emma. These two little girls, neither of them older than ten, are the ones who walked in on their father and Emma in bed together. Naturally they were upset. So, while the mother and father were in another part of the house consoling their hysterical daughters, their niece broke into their wall safe and cleaned it out before she took off.”