kidney to persuade a girl in the secretary of state’s office to try to dig out the incorporation paperwork for us. She said she’d try, but I’m not holding my breath after all these years.”
“You say the company was incorporated twenty-five years ago?”
“A little more. May of 1985 to be precise.”
“And how old do you think our vic could’ve been?” Shannon asked, holding up a crime scene photo of the body.
“Granted now, death has a tendency to age a person, but I’d say forty. Tops.”
“Bringing us back to the mysterious older owner whom the lovely Miss Humphrey says she never met.” Shannon tapped the ashen face in the photograph. “I put a rush on the fingerprints, but so far, this guy’s a ghost.”
Chapter Twenty-One
M orhart was at Linwood High School for the second day in a row, feeling nearly like a regular when Coach DeCicco threw him a wave as Morhart passed the oblong window of his classroom door. A dimpled smile and a flash of his badge to the secretary posted outside the principal’s office earned him directions to the Algebra II class on Ashleigh Reynolds’s schedule. Only five minutes until classes changed, so he waited in the hallway for the bell.
Ashleigh sprung from the classroom clustered together with two other girls, the three of them chattering too furiously over each other to possibly be listening. One of them caught his eye and gave him a look he was uncomfortable receiving from a teenage girl.
“I need to have a word with Ashleigh, girls, if you don’t mind.”
They were still eyeballing him from their lockers like he was the head of the football team extending an invitation to prom, but he could tell from Ashleigh’s dark expression that she already knew who he was.
“My father told you I don’t know anything about that Becca girl.”
“I know what your father said, Ashleigh, but you’re a big girl. I wanted to hear what you had to say for yourself.” Morhart knew he’d be hearing later from an angry Mr. Reynolds, but the law didn’t allow a parent to invoke a child’s right to silence on her behalf. Ashleigh would have to do that on her own.
But she didn’t, just as Morhart had predicted.
“What do you want to know? It’s not like she’s my friend or anything.”
“No. But she’s Dan’s friend. Or at least she was.”
She hugged her books closer to her chest. “I don’t know much about that. We took a break. He was just trying to make me jealous.”
“Based on the comment you posted on Facebook, I’d say it worked.”
Her gaze moved in the direction of her girlfriends. He wanted to smack the relishing smirk off her face but instead took a step to his left to block the line of sight.
“Look. Maybe I was a little harsh. But I knew me and Dan would get back together. The last thing I need is for people thinking we’re somehow the same.”
“And what’s so wrong with being the same as Becca Stevenson?”
She shook her head as if he’d asked how to boil water. “She’s, I don’t know- She stares at Dan all the time but then kind of acts like she’s better than everyone, like too good to go to games or parties. She’s just
“You called her a
“That wasn’t the picture I was talking about.”
He could tell she regretted the words the instant they left her mouth.
“What picture?”
He watched her gaze move once again, but this time to a chubby girl peering out from behind her locker door.
“What picture are you referring to, Ashleigh?”
“Why don’t you go ask Becca? Oh, yeah, that’s right. She’s a head case who ran away to get the whole school’s attention. My father told you not to talk to me, Detective. I better go to class now.”
The bell rang as a classroom door closed behind Ashleigh, but the girl tucked behind her locker door remained.
“How you doing, Sophie?”
Sophie Ferrin was by all accounts Becca’s best friend. Morhart had already interviewed her for more than an hour when he’d first caught Becca’s case.
“You were talking to Ashleigh Reynolds.”
“I’m aware of that. I saw you watching us. You knew about this Dan Hunter situation?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“About Dan and Ashleigh? There’s nothing to say. They were pretty awful to her, but Becca was totally over it.”
“What do you mean by awful?”
“At first it was just Ashleigh and her stupid friends. They heard about Dan and Becca hanging out and started saying she was a slut and that Dan was only hooking up with her because she was willing to do all kinds of freaky stuff Ashleigh would never do.”
“Was that true?”
She shrugged. “I assume not.”
“But you don’t know?”
“Becca was pretty into Dan. I gave her hell about it. I feel so horrible now.” She sniffed back a sob.
“You said at first it was Ashleigh and her friends spreading rumors. Then what happened?”
“I’m not sure on all the details. I thought Dan actually liked Becca, but Ashleigh was just relentless. I think she wore him down, and the only way he could make things right with her was to bring down Becca. He arranged to meet Becca down at Hudson Park, you know, it’s where we hang out.” Morhart nodded. As a cop, he’d broken up more than a few fights and drinking parties at the park over the years. “When Becca met him there, he was with Ashleigh and all their friends. He said something like, ‘You haven’t figured this out yet? This whole thing with you and me has been a joke
He wanted to believe that kids hadn’t been so cruel when he was the one meeting his friends at Hudson Park, but maybe that was how he preferred to remember the past. “Why didn’t you tell any of this to me or Mrs. Stevenson?”
“Honestly? Because around here, what Becca went through wasn’t even that bad. Last year, Luke Green pretended to ask some nobody girl to homecoming. She was waiting on her porch in her new dress and up-do when that whole clique cruised by in their limo jeering at her. Supposedly one of them beaned her from the sunroof with a half-eaten Big Mac. They’re assholes, and they’re brutal, but they’re pretty much a way of life at Linwood.”
“Ashleigh called Becca a slut after she posted a photograph taken in the city on Facebook. When I asked her about it today, she said that wasn’t the picture she was talking about. Do you know anything about that?”
“Jesus, I knew this was going to get out.”
“This is not a time for keeping secrets, Sophie. Becca’s mom believes in you. She nearly fell to her knees in her living room begging me to search my hardest for her girl. And she swore up and down that she knew something untoward has happened to her daughter, because she’s relying on your word. She says she knows you in your heart and that you would not hold back on her. Not now. Not under these circumstances.”
Her eyes scanned the empty hallways for potential eavesdroppers. “Dan had a nude picture of Becca. One of Ashleigh’s stupid friends borrowed his phone and saw it. She forwarded it to Ashleigh, and that’s when they really started to pile on. Not that many people know about the picture. Becca was worried they’d forward it all over the school, but Ashleigh must have her reasons for holding on to it. Knowing her, she was going to torment Becca down the road with it. So, Joann said that? That she knew me in my heart and that I wouldn’t keep anything from
