Catherine ignored the clear message that Piper wanted to end the call and asked instead, “Clara left Los Angeles for Scottsdale more than seven years ago with a man named Garrett Reid.” That was a guess on Catherine’s part, but she felt she was right, or close to it. Though initially they believed that Garrett and Clara had connected at one of the resorts where they’d worked, now they knew both of them were from the Los Angeles area and they’d married five years ago, and if Piper hadn’t spoken to Clara in nearly eight years—which was around the time Garrett had left—it reasoned that they left together. “They were married in Las Vegas two years later.”
Another irritated sigh. “What do you want to know, Dr. Jones? Just ask me. If I know, I will tell you.”
“Did anything unusual happen in the months before Clara left town? In your last conversations with her, did she say anything that gave you pause?”
“I suppose salacious gossip is what psychiatrists are more interested in,” Piper said derisively. “I rarely saw Clara after she moved out of the house when she received her trust fund. I rarely spoke to her when she lived here. Gerald and I traveled extensively, including spending two years teaching in Oxford. Sometimes, I wish we had stayed.” She sounded wistful at the memory, then she cleared her throat and said, “I have never seenClara react violently with anyone. She took pleasure in hurting people emotionally, not physically. She was wicked, Dr. Jones. Purely Mephistophelian. That means—”
“I know what it means,” Catherine interrupted. She detested being talked down to by anyone, especially someone who reminded her far too much of her own mother. “Did you witness or hear of anything that Clara was involved with in the months before or after she left?”
“She had an affair with her co-worker’s father and, as I learned from someone I trust, made sure the woman knew what had happened at the most inopportune time: less than a week before the girl’s wedding. The revelation that Clara and Richard Masters had been involved in that way put a damper on the entire wedding, and, ultimately, the marriage quickly ended in a divorce.”
Masters... “Was Clara’s co-worker a woman named Emily Masters?”
“Yes. They had been friends, I thought. Though when Emily won a promotion over Clara, I should have seen something like this coming. Clara does not handle failure well at all.”
“And this happened about eight years ago?”
“Seven and a half years, I believe. Sometime during the holiday season. Clara left town shortly after—maybe a month or two later. I can’t be certain. We saw her on Christmas Eve when she came to get her most treasured belongings because she said she’d found her ‘one true love.’” She said it with such contempt and derision that Catherine was a bit shocked, though in hindsight she shouldn’t be, considering the whole of the conversation.
“Do you have a name?”
“No. Perhaps it’s that Garrett Reid you mentioned. But I didn’t believe it. Clara has been in love many times, and it’s always her one true love, the one man who sees through her beauty to her brains.” Piper laughed and Catherine got a chill.
“What happened to the other men in her life?” she asked.
“Donovan was her high school sweetheart, a smart young man from a good family. He went to Harvard. She couldn’t follow. She wanted to go to Harvard so badly to be with him, but she didn’t have the intellect for it, and we weren’t going to overpay for her to be accepted. Then she dated this boy, Charlie, for a time. I met him once, he was... polite.” She said it as if that was the only complimentary thing she could come up with. “He married Emily Masters long after he and Clara broke up. He and Emily divorced, as I mentioned before.”
“Do you have their last names?”
“Is this all you need, Dr. Jones?”
“Yes,” Catherine said.
“Charlie Rowe and Donovan Prince. I will send you the contact information for the law firm my parents used to establish the trust, though I doubt you will get anything from them without a warrant. And I will also send you the contact information of my own lawyer, who you will need to contact if you would like to speak again. Good day.”
The line went dead.
“Are you okay?” Ryder asked.
Catherine nodded slowly. “I wasn’t expecting that level of coldness.”
“From what I could hear, she sounded unfazed.”
Catherine gave Ryder the names of the two men Clara had been involved with prior to Garrett. “We found the connection to the first victim, Emily Masters Henderson,” Catherine said. “Clara knew her. Find out where they worked, what they did, how to contact Charlie and Donovan. I’m going to call the trust fund lawyer.”
Unfortunately, Catherine quickly learned Clara had transferred her trust fund out of their control and into her own bank. They gave Catherine the name of the branch, but that was all they would share. Catherine didn’t even attempt to contact thebank; she knew they wouldn’t give her any personal information without a warrant. She sent the information to Tony and Zack. Perhaps with the information about the LLCs that Michael and Sloane found, Zack would be able to learn more about Clara’s finances. Maybe, like the beach house here, she had other property in one of her names or any of the LLCs’.
She had a thought and sent a text to the team:
Check specifically boat ownership in all of Clara’s names and LLCs. Likely she used her own boat to dispose of the bodies. If she has one, figure out where it is docked, etc.
Catherine assumed the woman had enough money to vanish—so why hadn’t she? Why kidnap Matt and Kara instead of fleeing after Garrett’s arrest?
Was it because Kara resembled Becca McCarthy? Or because Clara needed to complete her plan? Some killers were driven to act—inaction simply wasn’t an option.
Or because she truly loved Garrett Reid and refused to leave him?
She reflected on what Michael and Sloane had discovered at Clara’s house. Clara liked order and luxury, kept mementos of her life and identities hidden in a box—but nothing from her victims. Once dead, the victims no longer mattered.
