In the Temple, page 17
“Right.” Georgia nodded from the back seat taking another big bite of the burger. It wasn't fantastic, but as fast food places went, it was better than most. She was discovering that these little, small franchises had to step up their game to compete with the big guns. They did it by simply tasting better. “Does it mean the cops weren’t even going to file the boating accident, but after the murder they felt they had to?”
“It honestly makes me doubt the whole setup,” Cindy added.
“True, but you're thinking in today's terms,” Jesse told them both.
Georgia wondered what that meant, but luckily, the lead investigator was ready. “Seventeen years ago, I don't believe that this town was filing these reports electronically. They do now. When Georgia and I were in the other day, we absolutely saw that.”
“We did?” Georgia asked, cheese curd paused between her fingers with the question.
“Did you not see the officer filing the warrant?”
Georgia shrugged. She probably had but hadn't known that that's what it was. “They don't even have to take it to the judge anymore?”
“They do, but it's electronic.” Jesse seemed to like explaining. “And it does look like the town is electronic now. They can even video call the judge for a warrant. But it appeared that those forms—from the day Zoe died—were first recorded on paper.”
“That initial report was handwritten by an officer with extremely bad handwriting,” Georgia added. It had taken both of them to figure out a few of the words in the write up, as it did not entirely match the later typewritten one that was an official filing. It hadn't seemed like anything all that important, though, at least not at the time.
Now, Georgia filed that away. Just in case. “It could maybe be that the officer sat down and filed that report later. Not being a murder, being a small town boating incident with no tickets filed, maybe it could just wait. Maybe the accident wasn’t that important. Callie was the only one who went to a doctor, and she said her family took her. There was no ambulance or anything. They could have just filled it all in later in the day.”
“Yeah, but the boat had to be towed. It was taking on water.” Jesse took the ramp onto the freeway that would lead them back toward the Godwins’ house.
Georgia had known the boat had needed to be towed, but simply figured it was just undrivable after the instance. Or maybe they weren't willing to let anyone take it back to shore.
“Do we think Mr. Greenbrier just enabled these kids?” Cindy asked as she wadded up the wrapper from her burger, and Georgia found herself doing the same. Jesse, of course, was still eating, taking her time and keeping her eyes on the road.
“You mean the thing where,” Georgia asked, taking a moment, “the parents have always gotten the kids off the hook for everything, so they just keep getting worse and worse until somebody commits murder?”
“Maybe,” Cindy replied. “It sounds like it wasn't just Seth who got away with everything because of Hank’s influence.”
“That's true,” Jesse added. “Greenbrier seemed to think all the kids were his family.”
Though she wondered what they might get out of the man, Georgia wondered what he would have to say. She wondered how slick or slimy that interview would feel. But it needed to be done.
“We definitely need to interview Hank,” Georgia added and watched the front seat as Cindy suppressed a shiver.
36
Georgia once again sat down on the older couch across from Mrs. Godwin and her daughter Lila. She smiled before scooting over to make room for Cindy.
As she settled into her seat she noticed a small stain on the front of her white t shirt. Dammit. Not professional. Hoping no one noticed, she grabbed the zipper on the front of her cropped sweater and pulled it a little higher. She wasn't cut out for corporate gear, certainly, and this kind of business casual was still clearly escaping her. The fast food burger had gotten the better of her.
Though Cindy had just arrived late last night, Georgia was already getting used to them being a trio again. She liked Cindy. She liked what Cindy brought to the work, but more than that, she liked the woman herself. Despite their over twenty year gap in age, something seemed kindred.
Cindy had older sensibilities, liked different music than Georgia did, and certainly still could maintain a level of etiquette that seemed to be sloughing off as the generations passed. She had experience in different jobs. She'd lived different places. She had interesting stories to tell, for certain. But underneath all of that, the core of Cindy Baker was rock hard. She was angry at the whole world, but it didn't come out in the immature way that many people flailed at everything around them, not meaning to hurt anyone, but hurting everyone.
Cindy's anger was controlled, justified, even.
And it reminded her of Aunt Sin.
It didn't escape Georgia's notice that as they were introducing their newest member around, Cindy held out her hand. She moved as though she always did it—that old school etiquette. Georgia’s generation didn’t call and didn’t shake hands mostly unless someone older wanted them too.
Cindy smiled calmly through clasping first Mrs. Godwin's hand and then Lila's. She sat down, her own hands folded in her lap, and no one who didn't know would be able to tell anything. Georgia wondered what that simple gesture had cost her.
“So do you know yet?” Mrs. Godwin asked anxiously.
Georgia let Jesse field that one.
“We know all kinds of things,” Jesse said evenly. “We've made excellent progress, but we don't yet have the full evidence we need to get Gordon out of jail.”
The woman swallowed. “You did tell me it would take a while.”
Georgia was glad the boss lady had set that expectation. The first time she’d sat here, she’d entertained the possibility that the women were bonkers. That they were holding tightly to a memory of a boy who’d become a murderer and they were willing to pay a lot of money to help them ignore the truth.
Now that she’d heard Gordon’s confession for herself, she also wholly believed he was innocent of the murder. She wondered now if he’d even been driving the boat earlier that day when it went into the bridge.
“A case like his requires something rock solid. Something that a judge simply can't turn away,” Jesse reminded them. “We can prove it to ourselves that he’s innocent and it still won’t get him out of jail.”
Georgia watched as the older woman's lips turned in, and she bit them either out of fear or worry or anger or all of it.
Jesse was still going. “You said the goal was to get him released. So that’s what we are working toward. The addition of my assistant, Ms. Baker—” She waved a hand toward Cindy, “should help us speed this up considerably.”
Mrs. Godwin nodded, smiling, thanking Cindy for joining them. All Georgia could think was, Well, that went smoothly. Certainly, better than she'd expected.
“Is it enough progress?” Mrs. Godwin asked.
Interestingly enough, Jesse turned to Georgia.
“It's excellent progress for the time we've had,” Georgia said, hoping that she was actually correct and that Jesse would be proud of her presentation. “We have located all of the kids who were at the party that night.”
“They're not kids anymore,” Mrs. Godwin corrected absently.
And Lila was even speaking over her mother. “We've all grown up since then.”
“It's true,” Georgia agreed. Then, taking a page from Jesse’s playbook, she looked at each of them in turn, trying to be as professional as she could. “Our hope is that the passage of time can be our friend.”
“It can mean the evidence is lost.” Lila seemed to know something, but Georgia wasn’t ready to dive into that. She filed another thing away and wished she could write a note on her phone. It just would not be good to say “can you wait while I jot something down?”
Instead, she said, “That can happen.” Then she let the two women know they had gone into the police evidence lockers and actually checked the evidence. “It did not look like anything was lost.”
It just simply hadn't been handled well in the first place. She didn’t tell them that part. And she also didn't add that they'd petitioned to see evidence from the night Seth was murdered. Or that they were trying to get information about Mariana Martinez, because that wasn't even declared a murder.
She took a breath. “The hope is that whatever was holding people back from telling the truth in the first place may be lifted. Alliances have shifted.”
“Alliances?” Lila asked, suddenly curious.
Georgia realized she'd stepped in it. She tried to scrape the muck off her proverbial shoe. “We don't even think about it. We support the people we like, especially as kids. But as adults, they may be more willing to tell us things that they know. They might remember things that they covered up that don’t seem like such a big deal now.”
“They'd all been drinking,” Mrs. Godwin pressed her hands in her lap. At least acknowledging on some level that her own son had been part of that.
“We were also hoping,” Jesse merged back into the conversation, “That you could answer a few questions for us, and I hate to do this, but they are financial questions.”
“Of course, whatever you need.” Mrs. Godwin’s openness almost made Georgia feel guilty.
But Jesse seemed to be tossing the question to her again. She was the one who’d found the concerning connection, after all. She dove right in but kept her tone measured. “You said you crowdfunded covering the private investigation fees.”
Lila nodded as did her mother. But Gordon’s sister was leaning forward, now more interested than guilty, more curious than needing to confess anything.
“Why was that?”
“Gordon won't let us hire any more investigators.” Lila said it as if it were an obvious issue.
“I don't understand,” Jesse jumped in again. Then she added, “Why does Gordon get a say in whether or not the two of you hire investigators?”
That was an odd answer, so Georgia wanted to know, too. “Is he mad because he confessed to the crime?”
“He says he doesn't want us wasting our money, and I don't understand why he confessed.” Mrs. Godwin looked away, her lips pressed in again. It pained her that she and her son were on different sides of this issue. “He made it very clear that he wouldn't fund any more investigators.”
Georgia tried not to look sideways at Jesse. What had Gordon funded? The past round of PIs?
And how?
37
Jesse set her suitcase on the bed and watched as it slowly sank. It appeared the mattress was just one big hunk of memory foam. She’d managed to talk the hotel into giving them a very late checkout for a partial fee, and she'd found this rental house.
It was available for the next month, not that there was much of a tourist season here at all. For another extra fee, she'd managed to leave their exit open ended. This place would clearly suit better.
Turning around, she looked at the bathroom door, then headed over and slid it back on tracks. It had a barn door feel to it, despite the nautical theme that was clearly defining this bedroom. In the bathroom, she spotted a sink that she thought was exactly the same as she’d seen in the last two of these rental homes she'd been in. This place had tile all the way throughout, but at least there was a very thick rug under the bed.
These little houses certainly had their quirks. She liked that she was now tucked away in a neighborhood, hopefully blending in a little more to the community. They never knew who they would wind up needing to talk to. However, she wasn't sure who thought a sliding bathroom door was a good idea. It had an almost full inch gap underneath it.
She was blinking at that and shaking her head as she watched the other door slide back. Georgia looked across the small space at her. “We can share the bathroom. At least we each have our own room.”
Jesse nodded. She wasn’t sure who was happier about that, herself or Georgia. And Georgia was the one who occasionally snored.
Cindy's room was on the other side of the unit. This bathroom was a Jack and Jill model, while Cindy actually had to leave her bedroom to get to that bathroom.
Quirks, Jesse thought. The rooms weren't large. It looked as if the extra bedroom that Cindy was in had maybe been carved out of what was once a formal living room.
Still. “Did you see the dining room table?”
“Yes!” Georgia replied, the word drawn out. “I already set my laptop and my tablet and the notebook on it, and there's plenty of room for the rest of you. We should definitely be doing this from the start next time.”
Jesse felt her eyebrow go up. Next time? But she didn't ask. The way the case with Sin was going she couldn’t tell how it would end. There was a good possibility they would finish this case with Gordon Godwin and Georgia and the Dunhams would tap out. The information about Sandoval was certainly more than anyone had bargained for. And probably why Sin had buried her daughter’s adoption deep enough that even family friends didn’t know.
The other option was that the Dunhams had no fear, and they would keep going. But Jesse wasn’t sure she had no fear. It didn’t matter though. She’d made the mistake of taking the case.
“There are four full burners on the stove, Ladies!” Cindy called from the main room.
Georgia and Jesse nearly laughed at each other before sliding their doors closed and heading out into the main area for the three of them to meet up.
“Do you cook?” Jesse asked and the question clearly made Cindy pause.
“I mean, I can put food over heat, but no one likes to eat it. Carter is the culinary genius in our family. You?”
She looked at Georgia. Georgia raised her hands in surrender before backtracking. “No, that's not true. I can bake!”
“You can bake?” Why did Jesse feel surprised to learn this and left out that she didn’t already know?
“My mom and dad believed that everybody needed to be in the kitchen and know how to feed themselves. My mother's answer to getting us to cook for ourselves early was to teach us to bake cookies and brownies.”
“That's pretty smart.” She could have done that with Ciara. Too late.
“I will tell my mother you said so, but I do make the best brownies this side of well, anything.”
Cindy looked at Jesse and shrugged and Jesse agreed with that sentiment. Hell, if they could get Georgia to make them brownies, she’d be happier.
“You make them from scratch? It's a lot of ingredients.” Cindy asked it like she was planning a grocery trip. But here they could do that.
“I can doctor a box mix like nobody's business. Oh, and I do make a real mean mac and cheese.”
Jesse threw her head back and laughed. She lived with Ciara for long enough that she asked Georgia, “Do you also do chicken fingers? Or dino nuggets?”
“Hey,” Georgia managed to sound deeply offended. “Don't knock the dino nuggets. They're good and they're actually reasonably good for you.”
“I'm passable in a kitchen,” Jesse replied, “but it's really nice to have enough of a kitchen that we could use it if we want. We should maybe stock cereal, fruit, snacks, drinks.”
Jesse was beginning to think that was an analogy for the whole case. Even for the three of them.
“Exactly,” Cindy said, sticking to the idea of food and Jesse could see the relief on the other woman's face.
Georgia was the only one of them who seemed content to just eat fast food and delivered pizza all of the time. The younger woman put her arms out and spun around despite there not being quite enough space for that.
“Nobody is walking down the hall in the middle of the night to get ice! No long walk in from the parking lot. There’s even a nice patio out back!”
It was all true, but they were here to work. Jesse asked, “Shall we convene?”
“Are we a council?” Cindy asked, and again, Jesse laughed.
Shit. She’d made friends. Friends that she needed to pay for their work for her company, and they hadn't discussed it yet.
Damn it. She wasn't going to discuss it tonight, either, unless one of the others brought it up.
Cindy pulled out a chair which seemed a sign that the council was in session. “Okay, so that shit about Gordon paying for the PIs that was a surprise to you, too?”
The center of the table held a wooden carved bowl full of little wicker spheres and what looked like globe Christmas ornaments that had had their ties removed. Jesse set it over on the sideboard, further clearing the space before she sat.
“We should probably make a timeline,” Georgia suggested.
“Not a bad idea.” Jesse pulled out her notebook. She marked down the date seventeen years ago, but left space above it in case they figured out more that needed to go ahead of the boating accident and the party. She pointed to it. “It's only a week later that Gordon is arrested for the murder.”
“And is it really a murder?” Cindy said, seeming to have the same problem that Georgia did.
“He got tried for second degree murder, yes. She died from strangulation. But . . .” Jesse sighed. There was a point there. “I don't even know. They were at least drunk and maybe high, and it might have been an accidental death, but it's clocked as a murder.”
She added the next line. “Gordon's family hires him a lawyer.”
The three of them marked all the significant happenings through Gordon being convicted.
“The family immediately began the appeals process. Right?” Georgia asked. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and began tapping on it, pulling up notes that she had taken quietly while the two women were talking.
Jesse nodded adding it to the list. “Also, Mrs. Godwin said that she and Mr. Godwin had not initially gotten large life insurance policies because they were both young and healthy. By the time he started becoming ill, it was too late to change it. It wasn’t as big as we thought it was from them paying off the house and getting new cars.”
