Ozarks Missing Person, page 16
“Yes. Hello, Stu. I take it you have results?” he responded, hoping to make it clear he didn’t expect the man to stand on ceremony just because Matthew was the victim’s next of kin.
“I’ve forwarded my report to Special Agent Reed.” Stu sighed. “Damn, Matthew, I couldn’t not call you. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I appreciate you,” he replied, his voice growing hoarse. “I don’t suppose you have anything you can tell me?”
“You know how hard it is when a body is pulled from water. We’re assuming she was there a few days or more.”
“Which can slow any decomposition,” Matthew interjected.
“And the clock sped up the minute she was on dry land again,” the pathologist reminded him. “One thing we do know for certain is there was a blow to her head.”
“With a flat object,” Matthew said dully.
“Flat, smooth, but with some kind of divot or channel. A depression in the surface of some kind. Definitely not a log or anything rough. Some kind of finished surface.” He paused. “I shouldn’t say more than that until the agent from CID wants to release the information.”
Matthew nodded his understanding, belatedly remembering the man on the other end couldn’t see him. “Yes. Of course,” he said quickly. “I understand. I’m expecting to hear from Agent Reed soon.”
“I’m sorry, Matthew. Helluva thing.”
“Thanks, Stu. I appreciate the call.”
After hitting the end button, he rocked back in his chair, the phone clasped in his hand. A smooth, flat object with a divot or channel. He swished his chair back and forth as he tried to stir his sluggish brain to life and come up with some ideas, but a thick, oppressive fog had descended on him.
The only thing he wanted to do was call Grace, but he couldn’t. She had texted to say she had a meeting set up with Taylor Greene, and he didn’t want to disturb her. But a text—he could send a text asking her to call as soon as she was available. He was trying to rouse himself enough to do just that when his office door flew open and Nate stormed in.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded without preamble.
Instinctively, Matthew curled the hand holding his phone into his chest. His boss stood in the now open doorway.
“She has no clue who she’s messing with—”
He gaped at Nate’s disheveled hair, mug-free hand and scowling expression. He’d never seen the man ruffled. Nor had he heard him angry. And he was upset about... Grace? The shroud of lethargy instantly lifted. He surged to his feet, unwilling to cede the position of dominance in his own office.
“Who does who think they’re messing with?” he deflected.
“They have search warrants for the house and all the watercraft,” Nate exclaimed.
Matthew stared at him, astounded by the consummate politician’s sudden lack of self-control. Apparently he wasn’t the only one. Nearly every lawyer and assistant in the open-concept office was practically falling out of their chair to get a better view of the floor show.
“Hey, take it down a notch,” Matthew cautioned, making a tamping motion with his hand.
“I will not take it down a notch,” the PA retorted, his voice rising to a shout. “I had Harold Dennis climbing straight up my backside, and I can tell you your name was mentioned more than once.”
Matthew stepped forward, grasped Nate’s arm and jerked him aside enough to swing the office door closed. The moment they were alone, he locked eyes with his boss.
“I don’t care if Harold Dennis was using every letter of my name to spell out the numerous ways you’re up his backside,” Matthew hissed. “You’re a damn prosecuting attorney. A crime has been committed. I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but you’re supposed to be on the side of the law.”
“Who says there’s been a crime? You? The grieving brother?”
He said the last with heavy sarcasm, and it cut Matthew to the quick. Nate had hit the nail on the head. The brain fog? It was grief. Partnered with a few bonuses...like shock.
Disbelief.
Disillusionment.
He almost laughed when the last word popped into his head. He’d thought he couldn’t get any more jaded, but he was wrong.
“Mallory was struck from behind. The coroner’s report has been sent to CID.” He paused to take a shaky breath. “My sister was killed. She either fell or was dropped into Table Rock Lake. Someone left her there. Either way, a crime was committed.”
“You have no proof Trey Powers is involved in any way,” Nate persisted.
“We have proof the last place she was seen alive was at the Powerses’ lake house. A judge seemed to think we had enough cause to search the place.”
“I’d like to know which judge issued those warrants—” Nate began.
“I’m sure Harold Dennis can tell you. They do have to be signed, after all.”
“No judge in three counties would dare—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Matthew ordered, holding up a hand.
To his credit, Nate stopped speaking. Matthew held his former mentor’s gaze.
“I am a grieving brother,” he said quietly. “I’m also a citizen. One who not only voted for you but also worked on your campaign. I’m not going to pretend I don’t know who butters the bread around here. Please listen to me when I tell you I will not hesitate to report you to the bar if you do anything other than help the police convict whoever did this to Mallory. No matter who was involved.”
He waited a beat, lifted a hand to Nate’s shoulder and gave it a meaningful squeeze. “Are we clear?”
“Matthew, you don’t understand—” Nate began, suddenly cajoling. Almost pleading.
“I do understand,” Matthew shot back, letting his hand fall away. He spun around and scooped his laptop from his desk. Next, he snatched the messenger bag from the floor by its strap. “I understand better than you want me to,” he said as he stuffed the computer into the bag.
Nate started to speak, but Matthew shook his head, emphatically insisting the other man remain silent. When Nate snapped his jaw shut, Matt would swear he heard the man’s teeth clack.
“I’m going to take my bereavement leave starting now,” he said quietly. Stepping past Nate, he opened the door. “I’m sure we’ll be talking soon.”
* * *
“CAN YOU BELIEVE HIM?” Matthew cried, pacing the breadth of Grace’s hotel room.
“Sadly, yes, I can,” she murmured from her perch at the breakfast bar, her eyes glued to the screen of her tablet.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know the half of what it’s like to work with him day in and day out,” he continued, refusing to let his rant be derailed by her inattention. “He wears shorts with the embroidered whales and anchors on them. What guy under seventy wears those?”
“Apparently one guy does.”
At least she was replying on cue. Undeterred, Matthew paced the living area of the suite and unloaded all of it. “He has his teeth professionally whitened and likes to brag about the ‘push presents’ he gave his wife for each of their kids.”
“Better have been diamonds,” she said as she continued scrolling.
“For Hayden yes, but for Natalie she got a BMW. I guess she needed an SUV once they acquired the second kid and a Labrador.”
“Nice.”
Starting to get peeved by her lack of annoyance, he dug deep for something to set her off so they could hate on Nate together. “He only drinks tea.”
“People say it’s the house wine of the South.”
“Not sweet tea, hot tea.” He wrinkled his nose. “And not even real tea like the British, but the nasty ‘stick a bag in the mug and drink some hot water that tastes like yesterday’s socks’ kind of tea.”
“Ugh. Sounds awful,” she mumbled.
Frustrated beyond words, he literally threw his hands in the air. “Okay, I give up. What the hell are you working on over there?”
At last, she looked up. “I’m going through the pathology report.”
Matthew ran his hand over his face. “I told you what Stu said, right?”
“I think it was in there somewhere, but reading the report itself is much easier than trying to read between the lines of whatever you’re going on and on about.”
“I was trying to tell you my boss, the duly elected prosecuting attorney for this county, came into my office irate because I wasn’t stopping you from investigating the death of a young woman who happens to be my sister.”
“Yeah, but there was a lot of stuff about whales, tea parties and push presents. I stopped trying to sort it all out.” She gave him a wan smile and tapped the screen of her tablet. “Your friend Stu is thorough but quite concise.”
“Yeah, he is.”
His sullenness must have seeped through to her, because she finally met his gaze.
“I’m sorry your boss is upset. But he’s not my boss and I’m not afraid of these Powers people. The team is picking up fingerprints all over the boats, and I have a gut feeling we’re on the right track.” She paused and took a deep breath. “But I totally understand if you want to step back and stay out of the line of fire. You have your future to think about. I will see this through, I promise you.”
“I don’t want to step back,” he said, markedly calmer. “I need to be a part of the solution.”
“You need to let his anger roll off your back,” she said, her eyes darting to her phone. “Ooh. Here’s something to distract us.”
“What is it?” he asked, craning his neck to peer at the message on the screen.
“I believe it may be the password for Taylor Greene’s PicturSpam account.”
“You know using illegally obtained information isn’t going to hold up in court,” Matthew warned.
“I’m not looking for evidence, Counselor. I’m looking for an angle. This girl feels like she is on the outside looking in at PP&W. I need to find a way to push those buttons.”
She tapped away at her tablet until the screen filled with images posted with the handle @TGTigress95. She had started to scroll through them when another notification appeared. “Looks like she got into Mallory’s as well. Do you want me to go through hers while you do Taylor’s? There may be stuff on there a brother shouldn’t see,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
Matthew seemed to weigh his options. “Let’s make a go at Taylor’s first. We can deep dive on Mallory’s if we see something to take us there. If you don’t mind,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Grace shook her head. “Not at all.” She nudged the tablet in his direction so they could both see the screen. “Bring the site up on your laptop and log in so we can compare one to the other if we need to.”
“Sure.” Matthew opened his sister’s public profile. Grace leaned in and tapped in the username and password. Sure enough, hundreds more images loaded the moment she hit Enter.
“Jackpot,” she murmured under her breath.
* * *
“HO-LY,” MATTHEW SAID in a shocked whisper.
Grace made a face as she cast him a sidelong glance. “What?”
“Nate,” he replied, his face a picture of stunned disbelief.
She rolled her eyes, but her gaze tracked back to a beaming selfie Mallory had posted the night she disappeared. “Are you still babbling on about your boss?”
“No, I’m telling you this is Nate,” he said, jabbing a finger her tablet.
Intrigued by the urgency in his voice, Grace followed his finger to a picture of a blond all-American-looking type with his arm slung around Taylor Greene’s shoulder.
She squinted at the photo. “Didn’t you tell me he was married?”
“He is married,” Matthew confirmed.
“Definitely not separated or divorced?” she prompted.
Matthew shook his head adamantly. “He’s a politician. He’s as married as married can be. Two kids and a Labrador, remember? Push presents, a McMansion over in Hickory Hills and a gated subdivision near Beaver Lake.”
Grace leaned over far enough to scroll through more of Taylor’s photos. “Well, I’d say they appear to be more than friends.” She frowned at another one of the photos. “How old is he?”
“Older than me. Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?” Matthew reported.
“She’s fresh out of school. Can’t be more than twenty-six, though she looks much younger. How old are people when they finish law school?”
He shrugged. “Depends on if they go right into it. Direct from undergrad straight through to passing the bar, probably twenty-five unless they’re some kind of prodigy.”
“She’s smart, but I don’t think she’s the skipping-multiple-grades kind of smart,” Grace surmised. “She is naive, though. And I get the feeling she also has one of those pesky moral compasses most of you lawyer types lack.”
“More of us have one than you think,” he insisted.
“If you can introduce me to more than a handful, I’ll buy the next pizza,” she said as she continued flipping from photo to photo.
“Nate and this girl...”
“Wait.” She stared hard at the photos, mentally replaying everything Taylor had told her about the friend she’d been out with that Friday night. “Does this Nate guy have a boat?”
“Of course he does.” Matthew nodded. “Tons of people around here do, and not only people with money.”
“I believe Ms. Greene was out on the boat with Mr....” She paused long enough for him to pick up the cue.
“Able,” he supplied. “Nathaniel Able.”
“Mr. Able and Ms. Greene were out on his boat last Friday evening when they ran into Trey Powers and his friends, and Trey invited them to his crawfish boil.”
“Friday,” Matthew repeated. “I remember Nate saying something about his wife and the kids being at her family’s beach house in Florida week before last. He took off early on Friday. Said he was going fishing.”
“He caught something.”
Grace sifted through photo after photo, scanning the background of each one for clues. She stared at the photo of the two people together as she rewound the conversation she and Taylor had in the first coffee shop. “Did you call him a tea drinker?”
“What?”
“When you were rambling on earlier, didn’t you say something about Nate drinking tea?”
“You were listening?”
“I pick up all sorts of information from ambient noise.”
“Yes, Nate drinks hot tea instead of coffee.”
“Fancy tea or plain old bags?”
“The bag kind, why?”
“Confirming. I can tell you without a doubt Taylor Greene and your boss were involved in something more than a fling. At least, it’s more on her side.”
“Huh. Wow. I always thought Nate was a straight arrow.” Matthew frowned. “He’s a stickler for having things a certain way—making sure everyone dresses appropriately, keeping up appearances.”
“Well, I doubt he was showing her off at fund-raising dinners,” Grace said as she leaned closer to him to inspect the photos on the tablet she’d handed over.
“Do you want this back?” he asked, scooting it closer to where his laptop sat ignored.
“Hang on,” she murmured. When she stopped scrolling, she tapped the screen. “There,” she said, pointing to one of the last photos posted. It was of a group of people seated around an outdoor fire pit.
In the background, a well-lit dock provided access to four boats and a couple of personal watercraft. One of those boats was a sleek red ski boat with multiple wakeboards attached to the towing bar.
Inspired, Grace picked up her phone, opened her messaging app and tapped out a quick directive to the head of the forensics team asking how many wakeboards they’d found attached to the rack when they were on-site. A few minutes later, a message bubble appeared with the number four.
Grace snatched up the tablet, ignoring Matthew’s grunt of protest as she opened the photo to full screen. She used her fingers to expand and refocus, homing in on the red boat. When she was finally able to zoom in on a clear shot of the ski boat, she blew out a low whistle.
“Three. There are only three wakeboards attached to the rack. Two on the driver’s side, one over by where Mallory might have been standing.”
“Conjecture, but I’ll allow it,” he said brusquely. “Where are you going with this?”
“Forensics found four attached to the rack when they reached the boat today. Two on each side.”
“And the wakeboards are important because?” Matthew asked, trying to keep up. His frown morphed into a triumphant smile when at last he caught on. “They’re objects with smooth, flat surfaces,” he concluded.
“Do you know anything about wakeboards?”
“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I’ve ridden them.”
“Are they completely flat on the bottom, or do they have fins and—”
“Channels,” he supplied in a whisper.
Grace snatched up her phone again, but she didn’t bother typing out a message. She pressed the button to make a call.
“Hey, it’s Grace Reed,” she said when the person on the other end picked up. “I need you to pay special attention to the wakeboards. Particularly—” she leaned in and squinted at the photo, trying to make out the colors “—any board not painted black, blue or tie-dye-looking rainbow.”
She let her gaze travel over all the details of the ski boat. If Trey were driving, Mallory would have stuck close to him. If he’d been driving after having a few drinks, she was likely hanging onto something. Had she been drinking? Maybe not if she knew she was pregnant. Had she leaned over the edge to vomit and lost her balance? Possibly, but that wouldn’t explain the blow to the back of the head. But an unwanted pregnancy would.
