Everafter (Kissed by an Angel) (18 page)

“Talk about finding a needle in a haystack!” Tristan remarked.

“Yeah,” Will replied, “except there’s a useful subset in here. Most of Corinne’s files are JPEGs. You’d expect that from a photographer. But when you click on Details, you also see Photoshop files. The interesting thing about Photoshop files is that they contain layers of images. Let me show you.”

He clicked on a photo of Corinne’s grandmother sitting in her sewing alcove with her spools of thread and her button jar. On the right side of the computer screen was a box that listed layers with names like “filter 1,” “filter 2,” “glow,” “shadow,” “window pane,” “wallpaper,” and “jar.”

Will pointed to the boxed list. “These layers come together to make the final picture. The artist can turn
layers on and off to create different effects. But she can do more than that. She can order the layers so that some layers will hide others. And she can use color to mask things.

“See the letter
T
on this layer? It means the layer contains text, rather than an image. I found two Photoshop files with text in them, which seemed a little unusual. The text layer’s off right now, but I’m going to turn it on.” He clicked, and the symbol for a closed eye became open.

“I still don’t see anything,” said Tristan.

“Right. Because she adjusted the font color, and it’s blending in. So, now I’m going to change the font color for our layer of text.”

Ivy leaned forward. “I see letters. They look like hieroglyphics!”

“Hard to read,” Will agreed. “So, let’s change the color of the background layer, to create a better contrast, then turn all the other layers off, and simplify the font.” Will made a few clicks.

Ivy gasped. A clear list appeared on the computer screen: Typed in columns were names, dates, and numbers—amounts of money, she guessed.

“Bryan S,” Tristan read aloud, “June 10, July 10, September 12—looks like he missed August.”

“What’s ‘Seneca Hall 436’?” Ivy asked, reading along with Tristan. The words were typed next to “September 12.”

“A dorm room,” Will replied. “I googled a campus map. Corinne must have lost track of Bryan when he first moved to college, but she caught up with him again.”

“He’s resisting her pressure,” Tristan observed. “The pay dates get later and later. She doesn’t get December’s payment till New Year’s Eve.”

“And in March, the month before she dies, she doesn’t get the full amount,” Ivy noted.

Will pointed at the screen. “Look at the different amounts for the victims, not only different amounts but different schedules. From Tony M., she collected every other month.”

“Tony Millwood,” Ivy guessed. “I bet she was blackmailing the guy with the body shop.”

“Corinne was sharp,” Tristan said. “She figured out what she could get from her different victims without pushing them over the edge, guaranteeing herself a steady income. The only person she seemed to have misjudged was Bryan.”

“Several hundred a month. Even when you’re on scholarship, that’s a lot,” Ivy reasoned.

Tristan grimaced. “Especially for a guy who murders people when they become inconvenient.”

“Since a photo of Corinne’s grandmother masked the blackmail list, I searched for other photos of her, figuring they might hide something, which this one did.” He clicked on it.

“The cufflink!” Ivy said happily.

“I’ve got something else to show you. Let me switch folders. Corinne did a fabulous shoot at a body shop—the one belonging to Tony?”

Ivy nodded.

“Well, her least interesting photo has a very interesting Photoshop file. The top two layers are photos of a dark sedan.”

“Hank’s,” Ivy and Will said at the same time, recognizing the vehicle belonging to Corinne’s stepfather.

“A completely different car is photographed in the layers beneath it, a car with front-end damage.”

Ivy and Tristan exchanged glances. “Bryan’s?”

Will kept clicking on layers. “She took the trouble to snap a clear photo of its license plate.”

“ ‘HATTRIK,’ ” Tristan read. “
Hat trick
is a term used in hockey.”

“And this.”

Ivy leaned forward, squinting at the long number.

“It’s a VIN,” Will told her. “Vehicle identification number. Each car has its own, engraved when the car’s built.”

“So even if you claimed stolen tags, it would be proof of the car’s ownership,” Tristan said.

To Ivy it felt as if a mountain had been lifted off her shoulders. Even in the dim light created by the laptop, she
could see the difference in Tristan. He seemed to stand taller, the same burden lifted from him.

“You’re going to be free, Tristan!” she said, hugging him, then Will. “Will, I’ll need you to go with me to the police and show them what you’ve found. Once we’ve convinced them, I’ll take them to the safe-deposit box where I have Corinne’s note, flash drive, and the envelope they came in.”

“If you can give me another twenty-four hours, I may be able to find more material—like photos that were used for blackmailing the others. You want to put enough pressure on the blackmail victims for them to come clean to the police, so you have a solid case that Corinne was blackmailing Bryan.”

Ivy and Tristan agreed. A few minutes later, they walked Will to the front door.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Tristan said.

“If we keep thanking and apologizing to each other,” Will replied, “we’ll never get on to just being friends. Let’s call it even and done.”

Tristan smiled. “Even and done.”

After Will left, Ivy turned to Tristan. “You know I can’t stay here tonight.”

“I know I can’t make you do something you don’t want to.”

“Tristan! It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s like what you said earlier: I can’t just hide out here and do nothing.
Gregory’s desire to hurt me has already hurt enough other people. I need to be at the cottage for Dhanya, Kelsey, and Beth.”

He nodded.

“I’ll come as soon as I finish work tomorrow,” she promised.

“I want to go to the cemetery where Michael Steadman’s buried.”

Ivy looked at Tristan with surprise.

“I think a lot about him. His things are still in this house, his clothes, his trophies—swimming trophies like I had. I feel a connection with him. I want to see where he’s buried and pay my respects.” Tristan looked a little self-conscious. “I sound like my father, don’t I?”

Ivy smiled. “You sound like the guy I’m in love with. We’ll go there tomorrow.” She held his face in her hands. “Tristan, we’ll be together soon. Soon there will be nothing separating us.”

He kissed her and let her go very slowly, as if, in releasing Ivy, every centimeter that he opened his arms and spread his fingers made him ache.

“Love you, Tristan.”

“Love you, Ivy.”

She slipped out the front door and through the shadows of the yard, making her way silently to her car. Fifteen minutes later, when she pulled into the inn’s parking lot,
Chase’s car was pulling out. Beth waited for her.

“How’s it going?” Ivy greeted her friend.

“Okay.”

“Did you stay for dinner?” Ivy asked, remembering that Beth was supposed to have returned for an evening bike ride with Will.

“I called Will. Twice.” Beth sounded hurt. “He didn’t answer.”

“He was pretty involved with something,” Ivy replied, but she wanted Will to be the one to tell Beth what he’d discovered. They found him sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, staring at the garden, lost in thought. Hearing their footsteps on the grass, he looked up.

“Hey.” His slight smile was for Ivy, not Beth.

“I tried to call you, Will.”

“Yeah, I saw.”

Ivy looked from one to the other, then sat on the swing and pulled Beth down with her.

“So, how was Chase?” Will asked.

“Okay. He didn’t want to listen to me, but he didn’t want me to leave, either. You know Chase.”

“I know Chase,” Will replied dryly.

Beth pushed the swing back and forth with one foot. “I think I can help him.”

“I’m sure you can.” The moment Beth looked away, Will grimaced.

“I just have to be patient.”

“You’ve always been good that way,” Will said. “So, I guess you’ll be spending a lot of time with him . . . ?”

Beth shrugged. “Whatever he needs.”

“That’s really nice,” Will told her. “You’re the nicest friend a guy could have, Beth.”

Beth stiffened. Ivy guessed it wasn’t what she wanted to hear from him. Poor Will, attempting to be the perfect, understanding male friend—he should have memorized one of the impassioned lines from Beth’s stories and tried that instead.

“If you don’t watch out, Beth,” Will said, “Chase will fall in love with you.” As soon as he’d spoken, he looked as if he wished he hadn’t.

Beth stared at him.

Will backpedaled quickly. “Unless of course you want Chase to. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you and Chase falling in love.”

Beth blinked.

“In fact,
visually—
you know, if I was looking for a pair of models—I’d have to say you’d make a really great couple.”

Hoo-boy!
thought Ivy.

Beth frowned. “Just shut up, Will!”

Close to tears, she walked quickly through the garden and around the side of the inn.

“What’d I say wrong?” Will asked, throwing up his hands. “I don’t get it! It’s like all of a sudden I can’t talk to her right. It was the model part, wasn’t it,” he guessed. “I thought I was being supportive.”

“Sometimes you can support the wrong cause.”

“Ivy, I can’t be her friend and watch her fall in love with him. He could be the greatest guy in the world, and I still couldn’t!”

“Did it ever occur to you that’s what she’s hoping to hear?”

A long and thoughtful silence followed, then Ivy’s phone sounded at the same time as Will’s.

“It’s Suzanne,” Ivy said. “A text.”

WHO JUST BROKE BETH’S HEART?

WHY WON’T SHE SAY WHO THIS MYSTERY GUY IS?

SHE’S SENT ENOUGH LOVE POEMS

TO WALLPAPER MY ROOM.

Ivy peeked up at Will to see if he was reading the message. “Does yours begin ‘Who just broke Beth’s heart’?”

“Yes.” He studied the text as if he was translating it. Amazement lit his face.

“So,” said Ivy, “shall I tell Suzanne that you’ll get back to her after you’ve talked to Beth?”

He looked at Ivy with a smile that would melt all the stars in the Northern Hemisphere. “Yeah, you tell her that.” He turned toward the inn.

“I’d try the stairway to the beach,” Ivy advised, and laughed when he set off at a run.

WILL AND BETH, IVY THOUGHT HAPPILY AS SHE AND
Tristan walked together late Monday afternoon. Sometimes love started with bewildering passion and then grew deeper through friendship; sometimes it started with deep friendship and surprised everybody—especially the two “best friends”—with its sudden romantic fire. Either way, love seemed both meant to be and a miracle.

Ivy glanced behind her. Tristan was crouching down, reading an epitaph on an old stone. The day was unusually hot for the Cape, and they had decided to visit Michael
Steadman’s grave before the evening thunderstorms rolled in. It was a chance worth taking, Tristan being out in the open. Tomorrow, she and Will had an appointment with Rosemary Donovan, the officer most familiar with the case, a meeting to which they would bring their evidence. Soon Tristan would be able to walk anywhere.

Ivy glanced up at the sky. The clouds had gathered earlier than predicted. The glossy white of summer cumulus, rising with the heat, had become towering thunderheads, their underbellies darkening. With the sun masked, the grass faded and the trees turned a foreboding olive color, the undersides of their leaves twisting up in the breeze.

Ivy didn’t remember there being so many trees when she had been there two weeks ago. She glanced over her shoulder to call to Tristan and discovered she had walked around a bend and could no longer see him. Despite the warmth of the day, a cold uneasiness settled in the pit of her stomach. Her arms, damp with sweat, got goose bumps. She could smell the approaching storm, but the smell was different from the salty humidity of the Cape; it was green—verdant—mossy.

Ivy turned slowly, surveying the leaning stones. The rain had cried away some of the names and sentiments, but the statues spoke through the silence: a stone dog guarding his master, a wistful-looking youth holding a wreath of flowers, a lamb asleep on a tiny grave. Perhaps it was the
dream that Gregory had seeded that made her notice two angel statues she hadn’t seen before.

The road climbed higher, then dipped down again. Ivy entered an area in which a family’s name became important, blazoned on tall obelisks and the lintels of private mausoleums. The row of stone buildings was sunk into a hillside. Styled like miniature Greek temples, some had no windows; others had windows that had been broken or removed, and replaced with iron bars. She shivered at the thought of being left inside one of these dismal houses of bones.

The Baines family was buried across from such a row of tombs, along Ravine Way. She remembered the plot . . . then she saw it: graves with individual headstones laid out around a tall monument, the land rising behind it. She gasped, recognizing the statue. Fifteen feet above the ground an angel stood, her left hand resting on an anchor, her right arm raised and hand pointing upward. A large tree grew at the far corner of the plot. The old copper beech, perhaps fifty feet wide and nearly as tall, dominated the landscape, its heavy limbs shading a quadrant of the tombstones, its reddish leaves forever weeping onto the family’s graves.

Ivy walked slowly toward the massive tree, stepping around the family graves, and stopped beneath its dark canopy.
Gregory Thomas Baines,
she read from the surface of his shiny stone.
At Peace.
It was Ivy’s mother
who had suggested the epitaph, who had made that vain wish.

Ivy gazed down at the soft swelling of earth where Gregory was supposed to be at rest, listening to the wind gathering in the trees. It moved from grove to grove in the cemetery, and yet the leaves of the beech tree hung lifeless. Then the leaves on the lowest limbs began to tremble, and the trembling moved from the lowest twigs upward. Ivy heard a groaning from beneath the earth. The ground at her feet broke open. Gregory, in his own body, rose up like a dark angel.