Chapter 7 #2
That was the question he’d been asking himself for years. “One day she just stopped calling. It was as if she vaporized. No money trail, no social media presence, no contact with her friends, no nothing.”
“Do you think…could it be that someone hurt her?”
“Maybe. But there’s information to indicate that two years ago she was involved in this group, some kind of communal farm that was off the grid in New Mexico. As far as I can tell it doesn’t exist anymore. And that’s where the trail ends.”
“Was she close to your family? I mean, why wouldn’t she call?”
“We were close. That’s why none of it makes sense.”
She pulled the baked ziti out of the oven and served them both before joining him at the counter. “What about that communal farm? I mean, not to judge, but it sounds kind of sketchy. Especially because it’s the last place she wound up.”
You think? “Yup. Angie has always been attracted to weird shit. Normally, I wouldn’t find a communal farm all that weird, or sketchy, just a bad remnant of the seventies.
But I’m with you on this one. I just spent the last two days digging around Taos and there’s nothing on these people.
Not so much as a footprint. They were either ghosts or shady as hell. ”
“That’s where you were, huh? Maybe you and your family should hire a private investigator.”
“We have. At least a dozen of them. The last one came up with the Taos lead. I confirmed it with a former resident of the commune, who had a picture of Angie. But she’s not saying much.”
“What about the police? Can’t they get this woman to talk?”
He shook his head. “There’s no law that says she has to speak with us.”
He took a bite of his ziti and another one after that. Maybe somewhere an Italian grandmother made it better, but it was the best ziti he’d ever had. For all her nutty insecurities, Gina DeRose could cook.
“This”—he stabbed his fork at his plate while he chewed the rest of his mouthful—“is incredible.”
“It’s in my frozen food line.” She ladled a second helping onto his plate. “Back to your sister. I think we should make another trip to New Mexico.”
He swiveled to the side to look at her. “We?” He was unaware that they’d suddenly become a team.
“Yes. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on sabbatical from life. I’ve got time for this.”
“Gina, this isn’t a cozy mystery novel where the celebrity chef moonlights as a detective. The best investigators in the business, including me, have failed to find Angie. This is my baby sister, not some game to keep you amused while you deal with the fallout of your affair.”
“There was no affair,” she blurted.
He stopped eating and put his fork down. “What are you talking about?” In his line of work, people liked to manipulate the facts by twisting words. Maybe a blow job or tantric sex wasn’t an affair in her book.
It damned well was in his.
“I’m saying I never slept with Danny Clay.”
“Well, your texts say differently.”
“I know what they say. The problem is, I never wrote them. In fact, I’ve never texted Danny in my life.
We’re barely acquaintances, let alone sex-starved love bunnies.
I’ve maybe met him three times at most—once on set of the FoodFlicks’ Junior Chef Competition and twice at Tyler Florence’s annual Feed the First Responders event. That’s it.”
“What about the picture of you two on the beach?”
She squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know. But I’ve never been on a beach with Danny Clay. Not ever.”
Sawyer didn’t know what to think. The evidence spoke for itself. “Did you tell my mother this?”
“Of course I did. She believes me.”
His mother believed whatever the client paid her to believe. “Yet, she hasn’t launched this as a defense, has she?”
Gina pinned him with a look. “It’s pretty hard to prove a negative.”
Or an out-and-out lie, especially when there was proof to the contrary. Photos. Texts. “Why would someone set you up like this? Or him?” It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to. And what was the motive?
“I don’t know.” She began rewrapping the baked ziti. Sawyer got the impression it was an excuse to keep busy and not to have to look him in the eye. “I certainly know people who don’t like me. Television is a cutthroat business. But this is extreme.”
“Yep. And methodically planned. What about Clay? Does he have enemies?”
“Like I said, I barely know him. All I know is that he and Candace used to own a catering company, shopped a pilot about entertaining to FoodFlicks in the early days, when the network was just starting. And it’s been a runaway hit ever since.”
Sawyer took another bite of his ziti, weighing the credibility of Gina’s story. The texts could easily have been manufactured. But the photo of her and Danny Clay together? He supposed it could’ve been photoshopped. But it seemed pretty far-fetched.
Then again, her defense was so implausible that it just might be true.
At the start of his journalism career, when he covered the night crime beat at the New York Times, he’d quickly learned that liars typically went with believable stories.
It was the crazy stories, the ones that were stranger than fiction, which almost always turned out to be true. And Gina’s bordered on nuts.
“So someone randomly decided to blow up your life?”
“That’s what it looks like.” She put the casserole dish in the refrigerator. “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.”
“What’s the strategy, then?” He got up and tossed his empty beer bottles in the recycling bin.
“Your mom says we should wait it out. That going on the defensive will only call more attention to the situation.” When he pulled a face, she said, “What? You think we’re doing the wrong thing?”
“No, not without proof that you’ve been set up.” It bothered him, however, that if this really was a frame job the person responsible would get away with it.
“You’re the investigative reporter; how do I get proof?” She stood with her back pressed against the counter, looking determined.
“I would start by making a list of people who would stand to gain from your fall or from hurting the Clays.” There was the possibility that Danny and Candace had been the intended targets and Gina was merely collateral damage.
“That would be a very short list,” she said. “I don’t have partners and even if I did, the business’s success rides on the Gina DeRose brand. If I go down, the business goes down. It’s that simple.”
Sawyer agreed. That’s why her story didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Unless, of course, someone was exacting a personal vendetta. “Then who has an ax to grind?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “No one off the top of my head. But who knows? I run a multimillion-dollar enterprise; there’s bound to be people I’ve pissed off along the way.”
“There you go. Those are the names that should go on your list.”
She nodded, but her expression told Sawyer she thought a list was a waste of time. “When are we going to New Mexico?”
Her intentions were genuine. She was high-maintenance, but at her core she was a good person. If nothing else, he’d learned that about her over the last couple of weeks. But this was his cross to bear, no one else’s.
“You and me?” He shook his head. “Try never.”