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“I already talked to her.”
“Who? Maryanne Osgoode?” she said, surprised. “Like she’s a real person?”
“Pseudonym.”
“I knew that name was a fake!” She jumped to her feet, and the cat, caught off guard, leaped to the back of the couch and arched his back to glare at Noah. “She’s an actual human being? An author? Where?”
“Lives in Sacramento,” he said.
“Where did you get this information?”
“Research. There’s a lot on the Internet if you know how to get through a few barriers, and I have a tech who works with me who”—he lifted his hand and tilted it—“is a bit of a hacker. I found out that ‘Maryanne’ even went to Las Vegas and interviewed Didi’s old boss.”
“Harold Rimes?” Her stomach turned sour. “Funny. He didn’t bother mentioning that he was interviewed by her when he called. He’s such a slime.”
“He phoned you?”
“Oh yeah. Just tonight. Claimed Didi owes him money and he wants it back. Even threatened me.”
“Nice guy,” he said dryly.
“What about Aunt Vera—Vera Gibbs? Was she interviewed, too? Someone had to have been to get all that old information on her when she was a kid in Missouri.”
“Oh, yeah, she was interviewed,” he said. “But here’s the kicker: Maryanne Osgoode’s real name is Gertrude Crenshaw.” He waited a beat, then saw her putting it together.
“Trudie?” she whispered, dumbfounded. “My mother had a friend . . . and . . .” Her eyebrows drew together. “Crenshaw? As in Ned Crenshaw?”
“Uh-huh. Your mother’s biographer just happens to have married one of Didi’s ex-husbands.” He let that sink in for a second, then said, “So I’d say that Maryanne Osgoode had some pretty good sources of information.”
“I guess. But I thought Ned was in . . . Montana or—”
“Boulder, Colorado. He was. Until a couple of years ago. Now he’s living in Sacramento.”
“You talked to him?”
“Not yet. I got all this from—”
“Your hacker friend,” she said, standing. She picked up both wet jackets, tossing his to him. “Let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Right now. It’s been long enough. Sacramento? What is that? Two hours away? Maybe an hour and a half, if we push it?” she asked, glancing at the digital clock tucked into a corner of the bookcase. Was it really only seven-thirty? It was so damn dark. “We can be there by ten, maybe even nine-thirty if we’re lucky. I’ll drive.”
“I’ll drive,” he insisted, patting his jacket pockets, t
hen his jeans. “Wait a second. I must’ve dropped my wallet. It’s not—”
She reached into her own pocket and, to his amazement, pulled out his leather tri-fold before tossing it to him. He caught it on the fly. “But—wait a sec,” he said, then understood. “You picked my pocket?”
She slid him a sly look. “Kaspar the Great was my stepfather. One of them.”
“The magician,” he said, realizing there was still a lot to Remmi Storm he didn’t know. “But how did you do it?”
“I never reveal my secrets,” she said, and for the first time that night, he caught a glimpse of the teenager who liked to tease him, flirt with him.
“Okay. Then why?”
“I needed to check you out. See if you were being honest.” Her expression turned a little harder. “As I said, I don’t really know you.”
