In the Temple, page 29
He shrugged and looked away. “I live in the temple. It provides for my family.”
Cindy decided to go for it. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, making sure that her sleeves were down low enough to block contact. The day was warm enough that Jesse and Georgia were wearing short sleeves, but Cindy couldn't afford the risk of exposed skin. She tried to look sympathetic, reached out, put her hand over Gordon's. “I’m so sor—”
He immediately leaped and snatched it back, the chains clanking. “Why are you touching me, bitch? Don't touch me!”
She held her hands up, leaning back, but it had been more than enough. “You didn't kill Zoe Warsaw.”
“It doesn't matter what you believe.” He seemed to still be reeling from being touched. “I'm in here and I confessed.”
“Your confession was bullshit,” Jesse argued. “You got details of the crime scene wrong.”
He shook his head. But Jesse pushed as if he had a bruise, and she was digging her thumb into it. “That's all Zoe ever meant to you? I thought she was your friend. Serena's still suffering. Seth is dead. Oliver's probably still out there committing crimes. Did he do it?”
Gordon’s look made it clear that Gordon not only knew who killed Zoe, but he knew it wasn't Oliver.
This time, it was Jesse who reached forward, but she didn't touch Gordon. She just leaned in and asked in a low solid voice. “I don't get it, Gordon. You're spending your whole life locked up for a crime you didn't commit. What happens if you tell the truth?”
62
They walked out of the prison and Georgia somehow made it to the middle of the pack. It was an odd dynamic even when it was just her and Jesse. Georgia was rarely the top dog. She was the youngest. Probably the least trained.
And she was probably in the prime spot because Jesse wanted the hand sanitizer she carried and so did Cindy.
But once they were in the car, she was in the back seat again. She leaned forward, tapping at Cindy, “What did you see?”
“Well, he doesn't have a job. He didn't kill Zoe, and he knows who did.”
“You didn't see who that was, though? Did you?”
“Nope.” Cindy seemed as frustrated by that as Georgia felt. “It seems like he's been holding it close to the vest for so long that mentally it’s still a secret he won’t share.”
Georgia couldn't help but nod. They had to accept whatever Cindy got and be grateful. It was still far better than where they could get without her. “Hank Greenbrier has been paying the Godwins all these years.”
Jesse nodded from the front seat as she pulled out of the parking lot. “It has to be him.”
“The Warsaws don't know that Key's scholarship money was Greenbrier buying them off. Gordon knows, but his mom and sister don't know that the money they've been living on is hush money coming to them from the man who put their son in prison.”
“Ouch,” Jesse replied. “I hadn't thought of it quite that way.”
Cindy got in on it too. “Gordon definitely doesn't have a job. They aren’t even really faking it.”
They’d not been able to quite trace the shell corporation that paid Gordon’s checks back to Hank Greenbrier, but the corporation did keep its holdings at Greenbrier Bank. It was a good enough bet that they were all willing to take it.
“Is everyone good to go to Serena's next?” Jesse asked.
They all agreed, but the day was packed, ending with Hank’s interview which made them all very nervous.
Georgia was most curious if Cindy was up for it all. She’d had a shock, not just from touching Gordon, but also being in the prison and having Gordon give such a physical reaction to her. She’d clearly been startled. But Cindy agreed to the next meeting, tougher than she looked.
“Can we go see the apartment manager first?” Georgia had an idea. “Maybe they'll tell us who pays Serena's rent.”
It was a bit of a drive back into town and they got to the office just as the office employee was letting himself in, probably from a late lunch break. Young, not the kind of rich kid Seth and associates had been. Georgia stepped forward.
“Hi,” she offered a breathy introduction as she followed him in the door, barely waiting until he was behind the desk and setting his things down. “I was really hoping you could help me out. My friend, she lives in this complex.” She rattled off Serena's unit. “We were apartment hunting ourselves. Can you tell us what she's paying in rent?”
“It depends on the size of the apartment, which layout it is.” He didn’t seem the confident type and Georgia used that as an advantage.
She left her expression blank, as if not catching on. She would simply wait like a Labrador until he produced the information.
She probably should have come in by herself. The three of them standing here across the counter was clearly a bit intimidating. He seemed a little nervous but told them to wait a moment while he pulled up the records. Then he rattled off the price for that standard unit, but she could see something was bothering him.
“What is it?”
“I'm sorry, I can't tell you anything more.”
“We were looking at renting a three bedroom,” she tried a new tack and hoped word hadn't gotten around that they were actually private investigators opening an old murder case that had rocked the town. “Can you show us a unit?”
She felt the odd vibes as Cindy and Jesse tried to play along though they clearly didn’t follow what she was doing. “Can we do that now?”
A few moments later he was leading them out the door, turning and locking it behind them and flipping the sign that he would be back. Damn.
The three followed him down the sidewalk, clearly getting the standard spiel, when Jesse tapped her on the shoulder, as if to ask what the hell are we doing? But Georgia just motioned Jesse to go along.
“Oh, are these garden units?” She skipped ahead, bumping up against him. She'd seen which pocket the keys went into. Then she tripped off the edge of the sidewalk, going down.
“Oh no! Are you okay?” He seemed genuinely concerned. She tried not to feel bad about it.
“I'll be fine.” She looked at the edge of her pants. “Crap. I scraped my leg. It'll sting, but I've got hand sanitizer and band aids back in the car, in my purse. Can I use the keys, Jesse?”
Seeming to finally catch on, because they all knew Georgia did not have a purse and probably not a scrape on her leg either, Jesse handed over the keys as Georgia waved them on. “You guys go on ahead. I'll catch up.”
Ducking around the corner of the building, she let herself into the office and walked around behind the desk. The system was old and sure enough, if there was a code to lock the system, it either hadn't already timed out, or he simply wasn't using it. The latest information was on the screen where he’d left it.
She scrolled through quickly, seeing that what made him frown wasn't the cost of the unit that Serena was in, but the fact that each month, the building manager had written off the lack of payment.
Serena should have been kicked out a long time ago. And yet, she remained there. Georgia clicked through the pages of her account. She’d lived here all along and her record showed years of zero rent.
63
Georgia rejoined her friends, and thanked the manager of the building for showing them the unit. All of it was a lie, as was the moment where Georgia went, “Oh, it looks like you dropped your keys!” then picked them up and handed them back to him.
He thanked her for her deception, and the three headed to the other side of the complex where Serena's unit was.
When they were out of earshot, Jesse murmured, “What did you see?”
“No one's paying her rent. It’s zeroed out and signed off by the manager every month.”
Cindy looked between them. “Greenbrier is not managing this building himself, right?”
“He almost can’t be,” Jesse mused, and Georgia agreed. “When would he have the time. But he's got his fingers in a lot of things and that’s concerning. While I don't believe our office guy is going to immediately call Hank and let him know he saw us, it’s probably well past time to be concerned that Hank's been getting tipped off about what we're finding.”
Cindy sighed. “That makes sense. He’s not just pulling strings but getting information from everyone who owes him, too. Maybe even Serena.”
Shit. Georgia had not considered that they’d been tattled on each place they went. Wesley didn’t have much contact with his father, but he very well might have made it clear what was happening. Lulu wouldn’t have told, but had Hank somehow found out they’d checked out his house already, under the guise of an article?
Nothing they could do about it now.
Once again at Serena’s door, Jesse commented, “I'll bet this was actually a nicer place when she moved in.”
Georgia knocked.
“Hi,” Serena appeared and held the door open. She glared at them as if to ask, you again? She looked as if they'd just dragged her out of bed, but it hadn't taken her long to get to the door. Georgia was willing to bet she'd been out cold on the couch. This time, she didn't invite them in. “Whatever your story is about Zoe, I don't want to talk about it anymore.”
As far as they’d put together, Serena always drank and partied, but she didn't have a problem, it seemed, until after that summer.
Why did some people become alcoholics? Georgia watched as Jesse flinched when Serena’s breath hit.
It brought back a memory of the first time she'd met the private investigator. She’d broken in because Jesse was asleep on her couch, unkempt, empty bottles of booze on the table in front of her. She'd smelled like a distillery herself, and Georgia had decided that it was an imminently bad decision to hire her, but Jesse had been her last hope.
Sometimes she still wondered if Jesse had a real problem. Or had Georgia just simply caught her at a bad time? The way she was responding to Serena, Georgia wasn't sure now.
“If you could just help us for a moment,” Georgia pushed, refusing to move back and make space on the balcony entrance.
“I can't, and you can't bring Zoe back.”
“But maybe we can fix things.” Georgia didn't know why she said that. Though Serena was closer to Jesse's age, she seemed arrested as a teenager, which put Georgia as her best match. She tried something direct. “I found these old pictures of Zoe's. Can you tell me who these people are?”
Some of them Georgia already recognized. But Serena looked at her like she was frustrated with the intrusion. Georgia waited her out until the woman listed off the names out of exasperation, “Oliver, Dax, Callie, Arisa, Wesley, Gordon, what do you want?”
“And this one?” Georgia held up her phone with a second picture.
Serena listed off much of the same names again.
Georgia thanked her and tried to move out of the way, letting Cindy move into the space. “Hi, I'm Cindy. I'm new to the team. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you before.”
She reached out to shake Serena's hand and Georgia couldn't help but notice the way Cindy stiffened at whatever information she got.
Then Serena said, “I can’t help you.” And she pushed the door shut on them. They all heard the chain bolt slide into place.
Well, that was that.
Cindy looked at both of them. “Serena knows. She lied at the trial and now she's keeping her mouth shut for Hank because he pays her rent.”
64
Jesse felt like there were ants in her veins. She wasn’t usually this skittish, but the interview with Hank Greenbrier was throwing her.
The attempted interview with Serena had gone too fast, so the women had come back to the house, talking all the way, trying to figure out how to play this interview with Hank.
Jesse tried to work her way through it. “Option one, we run the whole interview, and nothing comes up. Hank believes we're doing a story about Zoe. He answers our questions. That's the end of it.”
The other two nodded at her. As far as Jesse could tell, that was the best case scenario.
“What questions do we ask if that’s what happens?” Cindy wanted to know. “Do we ask how he felt to have that happen at his house?”
“We can ask, Did he feel bad for the kids and his own son?” Georgia added from the back seat.
“Maybe he'll volunteer something,” Cindy offered.
Jesse took a breath and tried to steady herself. “Option two, he knows we've been hired by the Godwins—”
“Which he almost definitely does know,” Georgia said.
“Good point. So, option two is really that he admits that he knows that we were hired to find evidence of Gordon’s innocence.”
“So we ask him if he thinks Gordon is really guilty.” Georgia said it as if it were a given. “I mean, what else do we say?”
“I think we ask him about Seth,” Cindy said. “It's an emotional topic, if he’s not a sociopath. If we can get him talking about his son, then if I can touch him, I can see something hopefully related to that.”
“Good point.” Jesse was frustrated. She was driving, as she always did, but she wanted to write notes.
She held out until they made it back to the rental house. But they only had a little bit of time. There were several ideas they’d come up with and they’d needed to stop by. It was better than killing time in town, Jesse knew.
Georgia wanted a recording device. She'd seen several discrete options that Jesse always carried. She was going to put it in her pocket and turn it on before they even walked in.
“Can we do that? Record him?” Cindy asked.
“We can. And we can even do it legally. Alabama is a one party state.” Jesse informed them, she always felt a little more on solid ground when she was able to teach them what she already knew. “That means you can record a phone call or a conversation as long as one member of that conversation consents. I can't sneak a recording of the two of you talking, but if I'm part of the conversation, then I can record you without telling you.”
Georgia said, “It sounds like it’s not like that in every state.”
“Nope, but unless Hank takes us across the state line, we should be fully legal.”
With the main tasks done, the recording device tested, and everyone ready, there was still time to kill. Jesse didn’t want to go early. They sat at the table, quietly reviewing the work until Cindy stopped and looked up at the other two.
“We missed something big. Well, it's small, but it changes everything.”
65
Cindy looked at the information in her hand. They'd all read it before, and everything made sense with the story they had. It hadn't clicked, at least not for her. But now that she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it. And she couldn’t make the story work.
“The night that Zoe was killed, Hank came home. He arrived just before the police got there. If he killed Zoe, he would have been at the party. The kids would have all covered for him.”
“You don’t think they did?” Georgia asked.
“No.” Cindy doubled down. “You think none of them broke over the past seventeen years? And Hank’s not paying most of them off. At least not that we know of. Also—” Cindy shuffled through the papers, making sure she was right. “He’s paying off the Godwins and the Warsaws and Serena, but all of that came later. He didn’t start paying for Gordon’s ‘job’ until after Mr. Godwin died. I don't think any of these kids could have held out for that long to get paid for covering Hank's ass.”
“He could have threatened them,” Jesse posed.
“Sure,” Cindy said, “but it would be Nancy, too. Nancy was with him that night. They were at a bar with friends. Seth called and his dad ran home. Nancy had friends drop her off later once they realized how bad it was.”
She flipped through the papers again, but this time Georgia and Jesse joined her, even if she didn’t quite know what she was looking for.
“Found it. There's no report where those friends at the bar were interviewed. But they do note that the friends dropped Nancy off shortly after the police and EMTs arrived.”
“It's too complicated,” Jesse murmured.
“Exactly!” Cindy felt a little vindicated. “Hank would have had to sneak into his own home, into a room that the kids were going in and out of. Past a bunch of kids mostly partying in the movie and game room next door. Zoe snuck into Seth's room, according to Serena and . . .”
They all looked at each other for a moment before they all nodded. “Unless Hank was waiting in Seth’s room, then killed her and snuck out the window on the second floor. Or else he blackmailed anyone who saw him, and got back to the bar in time . . . it doesn’t work.”
“You know what else doesn’t work?” Georgia asked.
“Oh, now what?” Jesse seemed exasperated, but Cindy knew she wanted to get this right.
“Those pictures I showed Serena, they didn't introduce anybody new, but there was someone I didn't recognize.” She held her phone up, showing off the small picture. Cindy leaned forward, checking it out. She didn't recognize the guy either.
“It's Wesley.”
“What?” Cindy and Jesse both squinted their eyes and looked in closer. Georgia pushed the phone a little farther forward.
“He must have been out all that summer in the pool or something. Or he dyed his hair. It’s bleached and we didn't recognize him. He's notably younger than the others, too. I didn't expect him to be this tall. He looks older than he is.”
“Okay?” Jesse didn’t make the connection that Georgia thought they should, and Cindy was glad she wasn’t the only one. “We knew sometimes Wesley hung out with them, even though Seth didn't like it.”
“But look at Zoe and Wesley. I thought this might be the guy that she was cheating on Seth with.” Georgia held the picture out to them.
They did look chummy. They had their arms around each other in a way that was only disturbing because he was her boyfriend’s younger brother and only fourteen in those pictures.
