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When he cooled down, Peralta described Grace’s father: a self-made man, owning a successful company in Chandler that sold garage-door mechanisms. In a metropolitan area where big garages were almost as sacred as unlimited gun rights and red-light running, it was a very good business. The daughter he described to Peralta was smart, a National Merit Scholar finalist, but a young woman with a rebellious side. Her father had wanted her to attend Stanford, so of course she had chosen San Diego State. In retaliation, he had made her pay her own way.
“They didn’t get along?” I asked.
“Didn’t sound like it,” he said. “The guy struck me as a prick. Chip on his shoulder. Sense of entitlement. And he’s got a wife half his age, so he’s desperately trying to stay in shape and be the extreme athlete, totally focused on trying to be her age. He’s had work done, I could tell.”
“She’s not Grace’s mother…”
“No. They divorced when Grace was a freshman in college and her mother found out dad had a girlfriend on the side that was his daughter’s age. He said Grace blamed him for the divorce, but the parents had been fighting for years. Grace couldn’t wait to get out of that house.”
“The dad told you all this?”
“No,” he said. “The housekeeper did. I don’t know whether she’s legal or not, but let’s say she was a fan. ‘My Sheriff,’ she called me. She was happy to help.”
“Where was the new wife?”
“Where else? The spa at the Sanctuary.”
After the divorce, Grace had come home to the Phoenix less often, and had visited her dad less still. She hated the young woman who, in her eyes, had broken up her parents’ marriage, and refused even to see her.
So her father was surprised and proud when Grace asked him for a loan to start her own business in San Diego. He was even happier when she paid him back.
“How did he seem to be taking her death?”
“Like a tough guy,” Peralta said, “but I could tell it’s eating at him.”
“Did he bring up Zisman?”
“No, but I did. He claimed he didn’t know Zisman. Grace never mentioned the guy to either parent.”
“Or what her real business was.”
“Right. But Grace had no known enemies and she was emotionally stable, even the housekeeper backed that up. She said Grace was the only nice person in the family. No history of suicide attempts. Later, I talked to her mother on the phone and it all jibed. The mother moved back to Iowa and hadn’t seen Grace for a year.”
“Do they think it was suicide?”
“They don’t know what to think. The dad wanted to know who hired us, and of course he had never heard of Felix Smith. They didn’t know about her boyfriend, either.”
“And they didn’t know they were grandparents?”
He shook his head.
Her mother last spoke to her on the phone the day before she died and Grace said she wanted to tell her some good news. She said it was a complicated story. But her mom was at work, so they decided to talk about it the next day. But the call never came.”
That made me even more suspicious: additional witnesses that Grace was not depressive, not suicidal. And a phone call promising good news: I assumed that meant telling her about her new baby. This was not a woman who killed herself.
“We have missing time to fill in,” I said. “On April twenty-second, Grace was gone when Tim returned at three that afternoon. She didn’t die until nearly midnight. None of that time was spent calling her mom in Iowa. So what was she doing?”
I also didn’t like the cell-phone situation. Someone Grace’s age couldn’t live without constant texting. And yet she had a new cell with nothing on it. I looked once more at my phone, willing Mister UNKNOWN to call again. He didn’t.
“San Diego PD will re-open this as a homicide based on your report,” Peralta said. “It will take time, but they can find her other phone records.”
“We don’t have time.” My temples were starting to ache from stress.
“Maybe I can help.” Lindsey was behind me.
I didn’t know how much she had heard. But I didn’t want her anywhere near a case that involved what would no doubt be a dead baby. Yet before I could speak, Peralta said, “That would be great, Lindsey.” To me, “Give her the flash drive with Grace’s clients. It’s encrypted.”
“I need to go to the Apple store at the Biltmore,” she said. “And a Radio Shack. Then I can get started.”
