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CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Hannah had to wake her up.
Through a mix of physical and mental exhaustion, Jessie had slept through both her main and backup alarms. When Hannah shook her gently and noted that it was almost 8 a.m., the time Jessie usually got to work, she nearly pulled a muscle bounding out of bed.
“Whoa,” Hannah said. “Slow down there, slugger. I think you’ve earned the right to go in an hour late. When did you finally crash?”
“I think around three,” Jessie said, not certain herself.
Her eyes darted over to the dresser, where she could see the edge of the manila envelope under the jacket she’d sloppily draped across it. Then she quickly returned her attention to her half-sister, who was already dressed and had her backpack slung over her shoulder.
“You were going to tell me where you were going,” Hannah reminded her. “That is, assuming you won’t have to kill me afterward.”
“Yeah,” Jessie said, motioning for the girl to follow her into the bathroom, where she grabbed a brush and began dragging it through the bird’s nest that was her hair. “I went to Mick’s apartment, looking for a journal or something similar. I didn’t find one but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea. I did find some other potential leads that I missed the first time around. So thanks for the suggestion.”
“Sure,” Hannah said, trying to hide the slight smile forming at the corners of her mouth.
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready to take you to school,” Jessie promised before swigging some mouthwash and gargling.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hannah told her. “I was going to take a Lyft anyway. Not to be rude, but it looks like you could use a few minutes to regroup a little. That’ll be easier without me up in your business.”
“Are you sure?” Jessie asked after spitting out the mouthwash, wondering who this thoughtful, understanding young woman was but keeping that question to herself.
“No problem. Just keep in touch to let me know how the day shakes out for you.”
Jessie stared at her, unable to hide her amazement.
“Do we have some kind of Freaky Friday situation going on here? I feel like you’ve suddenly become the guardian around here.”
Hannah offered something close to a genuine smile.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she warned as she walked out of the bedroom. “All I’m saying is that a person who goes to bed at three ought to be able to sleep until at least eight. Hopefully you’ll return the favor.”
“Are you planning to be up until three sometime soon?” Jessie asked.
“Gotta go,” Hannah replied chipperly as she headed toward the front door.
Before Jessie could follow up, the door slammed shut.
*
After a quick shower and text to Ryan saying she’d be in a bit late, Jessie sat down on her bed and studied the manila envelope. She’d wanted to look at it last night but she was so bleary-eyed, she worried that she’d inadvertently miss something important.
She snapped on a pair of gloves and looked inside the envelope again. Then she took out one wad of bills and counted them. There were a hundred of them, most of which were twenties, though there were a few fifties and hundreds sprinkled in. They totaled $3,250.
She dumped out all the other bundles out on the bed and realized she’d vastly underestimated how many there were last night. She’d thought there were a dozen but all told, there were twenty-eight. Assuming all of them were in the $3,000 range, that meant that Michaela had collected in the neighborhood of $85,000.
That was quite a chunk of change to have amassed in less than six months, especially considering that the films she’d done were mostly low budget, bottom of the barrel stuff. More suspicious, despite the sketchy nature of the business Michaela was in, even Lenny Lander wouldn’t pay his staff, porn actors or not, in cash. He might want to, but after meeting his mother, Jessie was sure payment was made via check or direct deposit.
In that case, why did Michaela have nearly $100,000 in cash hidden in an envelope behind a painting in her apartment? Even in her shady world, something about the decision felt off. It didn’t take a massive deductive leap to guess the reason.
Clearly the girl didn’t want to answer questions about where the money came from. And while the bank might not ask, it could still conceivably come to the attention of some other law enforcement or regulatory agency.
Jessie remembered what Hannah had said last night about girls from her school doing private dates in addition to the actual films. The likelihood that Michaela had done the same thing seemed high. Also plausible: the chance that a date had gone badly, ending in her death.
But if all her dating transactions were done in cash, how could her clients possibly be traced? The tech team could eventually get the GPS data for her phone from the wireless company and look at her credit card statements. But that might not prove anything.
If she was seeing these people at her place, when her roommate was off at school, there wouldn’t be any credit card records and her location data would be useless. She muddled through the challenge in her head as she started to put the bundles back in the envelope. There was another problem: what to do with all this money.
She couldn’t keep it at her place. And she definitely couldn’t turn it in to Valley Bureau. If she did that, she was sure it would disappear, whether by graft or simply to prevent it being used as evidence in the case. Even Central Station was a concern, considering the tentacles that Sergeant Costabile and his superiors seemed to have throughout the department.
That left only one realistic option, someone she hadn’t spoken to in months and wasn’t sure would accept her call. She was about to look up the phone number when she noticed something attached to one of the currency straps. It was a Post-it.
She pulled it off and looked at it. At first she thought a grocery checklist had inadvertently gotten stuck to a wad of bills. But when she peered more closely she discovered that the letters on the note, written in light, hard-to-read pencil, were what appeared to be initials. The first said “D.K.” The next was “M.B.” That was followed by “A.R.” The last row had two sets: “M.Z. + H.Z.” That set had a line through them, as if they had been crossed off.
Jessie stared at the letters, as if looking at them long enough would suddenly unlock some secret code within. But after several minutes, she came to the conclusion that these were almost certainly exactly what they seemed to be, the initials of people Michaela had either “dated” or planned to.
Considering the fact that she had nothing else to go on, she couldn’t dismiss this lead entirely. But it felt borderline worthless. Even for the crossed-out dual initials, “M.Z. + H.Z.,” the odds of narrowing them down to something useful were minute. Still, it was more than she had five minutes ago. So she copied the initials into her phone, tossed everything back in the envelope, threw on some clothes, and headed out the door to follow any path that might get justice for Michaela Penn.
