I continued to shuffle through the file as I ate. The meal was rubbery but decent as far as microwaveable dinners were concerned. I washed it down with canned beer from my fridge.
I’d practically memorized the Hollands’ file by then. Neither Chester nor Ashley had so much as a speck on their record, not even so much as a parking ticket.
At first, this was just further proof to me of their status as criminal masterminds, as related to me by the gangbangers we’d busted in the Keys. Then I realized that such a spotless criminal record was pretty much impossible, even for high-class types like the Hollands.
They were both in their early fifties, though they looked young for their age, no doubt the result of their money and regular fancy skin treatments, by the look of them. There was no way someone of that age had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket in their lives. No, there was something else going on here.
The problem was, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
There was a lot of information in the thick file, to be sure. Every real estate deal that the Hollands had ever made—or at least every legal one—was detailed in its pages. Years and years of taxes were there, too, and other dealings with banks and foreign investors. There was a lot there, and some of it shady. But it was all technically above board, according to our financial advisors and the other agencies.
The problem was that clearly, it wasn’t all above board. This meant that the Hollands had somehow found an excellent way to hide what they were really up to in plain sight, as evidenced by the fact that their purchase of Melody Key was nowhere to be found in that file, or any file for that matter.
Holm and I had spent a good chunk of the past few weeks looking into that deal, to no avail. The former reality star confirmed that it was, in fact, the Hollands who purchased the island from him, but they’d called themselves the Shaws when they talked to him. There was no record of them as the Shaws that we could find anywhere either, including relating to the purchase of Melody Key.
It was virtually as if the deal had never happened, except for the cash they’d given the reality star and the title that was now in their fake names. Their fake names that didn’t show up anywhere else on the record.
And then I kept coming back to those records under their real names, or what we thought were their real names, at least. It occurred to me as I finished off the last of my steak that Chester and Ashley Holland might not be their real names, either. Why else wouldn’t they have at least a measly speeding ticket to their names?
Even I had gotten a ticket or two in my time, mostly for parking somewhere too long. I’d gone ahead and looked myself up just to make sure they showed up on my record, and they did. I found it somewhere between highly unlikely and impossible that neither Chester nor Ashley had ever been pulled over, even for something mundane.
I finished off my beer and crushed the can in my fist, taking my eyes off the file for what felt like the first time in hours. I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head.
Maybe Diane was right, and I did need a vacation. She and Holm weren’t wrong about my more obsessive tendencies, and those tendencies had come out in full force recently, both with my search for Grendel’s journal and with the Hollands. Or the Shaws, or whatever their real names were.
Right when I was about to throw in the towel and maybe message Diane to tell her that I was going to go off and lounge on a beach somewhere for a few days, my phone started buzzing where I left it on the other side of my kitchen table in the houseboat that I called home. The table vibrated from the movement.
I anxiously picked it up to find that Tessa was on the caller ID. Suddenly, I found myself nervous. I hadn’t talked to her for quite some time, and I realized that it had gotten to the point where I’d built our next conversation up in my head a bit.
And so that’s how I found myself staring down at my phone as it rang, unable to bring myself to answer it.
Finally, when I realized that it was on its last ring before going to voicemail, I panicked and flipped it open, pressing the receiver to my ear.
“Hello,” I said, gulping down my anxiety and trying to sound cool and collected.
“Ethan!” Tessa cried, her voice bubbly and full of infectious joy at hearing from me again. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch sooner. I just got your email today.”
I had to wrack my brain to remember what email she was talking about since it had been so long since I sent it, nearly a month at that point. I remembered that before leaving for the Keys with Holm, I had given up on trying to catch Tessa by phone and sent her a long email detailing everything I had learned about Grendel’s journal in New Orleans, namely, that the one sent to me from the mysterious PO box in Virginia had been a fake.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said, clearing my throat and shifting in my seat to regain my senses. “I figured you were out of Wi-Fi range or something, and you’d get back to me when you could.”
“Yes, well, you won’t believe what I’ve been up to,” she said excitedly. “Though it sounds like you’ve got more than a few stories of your own to tell. Why don’t you start? So you’re sure that guy
