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“It’s the middle of the night.”
“She doesn’t exactly keep regular, nine-to-five hours.”
“Handy.”
“Very.” He was finishing off his fries.
“So she can get into bank records and phone records and e-mail? That kind of thing, like hackers do on TV?”
A slow grin slid across his face. “Why, Ms. Storm, are you suggesting I’ve asked her to do something illegal?”
“Never.” They both knew that was a bald-faced lie. She was desperate to get at the truth, to learn the fate of her mother and the twins, to put the whole mystery of her past behind her. “I just want to find out what happened to Didi. And what happened after she left. Was the dead guy in the car that burned really the twins’ father, and who was he?” She could feel her long-simmering anger burn brighter.
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to Ariel? I saw my mother hand my sister over to the man she swore was the twins’ father, Noah, but the police insist they didn’t find any evidence of a baby in the burned-out car. So, is she alive? Where? How’d she survive?” Remmi couldn’t stop the dozens of unanswered questions that had piled up in her mind from rushing out, faster and faster. “And what the hell happened to Seneca and Adam, huh? Why did she take him away? To be with Didi?” She tossed back the last of her wine and set her glass down on the coffee table. “It just seems the more we learn, the less we know.”
“Sometimes that’s the way it works,” he admitted. “A case seems to get murkier before it finally clears.”
“It’s been two damned decades. How much murkier can it get? I’m tired of living my life not knowing, maybe never knowing. And now . . . and now all that’s happening: the book, the suicide, the murder . . . there’s a reason, Noah. And the way we were going to find out was by talking to Ned and Trudie.”
“Maybe,” he interjected.
“Not maybe. She was Maryanne Osgoode.”
“You don’t know that she was killed because she wrote the book.”
“It’s a good bet. And they took her out before anyone had a chance to talk to her.”
“To shut her up,” he said.
“Yes!”
“But the book is already out there, the damage done.”
“Maybe they had something in their notes, something they didn’t realize was dangerous or whatever. Or they were going to write a sequel, or promote the book and then it might come out. I don’t know.” She let out her breath and stood, unable to sit a second longer. “Then there’s the money. What about the payment she got for the book? There has to be some money involved. If Trudie as Maryanne Osgoode is the author of the book, then she gets paid for it, right?”
He nodded. “But how much are we talking about? It couldn’t be a lot. A small Oregon press that no one’s really heard of?”
“But the book is taking off. There’s a buzz around it. All weird, I know, but some people are into that true mystery thing, possible crime, a little glitz thrown in. I don’t know. There’s money there.”
He nodded again, thinking over her words.
“But what about after she dies, like now?” Remmi pressed. “Who gets the money that the book earns?”
“Ned, probably.”
“And if he dies?”
“Her heirs, I suppose. Or whatever the agreement, the contract with her publisher, says.”
Remmi was pacing, walking from one end of the living room to the other. From the windows and bookcase to the archway leading to the interior stairs. “As near as I can tell, she doesn’t have any heirs, if Ned doesn’t survive. She didn’t have kids, I don’t think, but I suppose there could be a sister or brother, maybe even parents still alive.”
“You’re saying you think the killer’s after the book’s royalties
.”
“Yes, I . . . I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just thinking aloud.”
