Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
Vero and I hovered over her laptop in the kitchen an hour later. The YouTube logo framed Riley and Max’s faces on the screen. We had watched every episode we could find related to the Dupree murder, including the most recent one in which Riley and Max revealed the details of Mrs. Dupree’s secret affair with the “newest suspect in the case.”
“We can’t just post a comment under their video asking them who their anonymous source is,” I pointed out.
Vero drummed her nails. “I say we show up at that little shit’s dorm, tie him to a chair, and beat the answer out of him.” She turned to look at me. When I didn’t outright reject the idea, she bolted out of her seat. “I’ll get the duct tape. You figure out where he lives.”
“Sit,” I said, pushing her back down into her chair. I glanced at the living room, where Cam and Mrs. Haggerty were engrossed in their game, careful to keep my voice down. “I’m not suggesting we resort to violence, but maybe the threat of violence isn’t the worst idea.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Riley and Max aren’t going to reveal their source without the right motivation. What would motivate two podcasters who are desperate to become famous?”
“The promise of two black eyes and several broken teeth?”
“A lead for a story that no one else has reported on.” I pointed out a phone number at the bottom of the screen. “Do you still have the burner phone you bought when we were at the police academy?” Vero nodded. “I think it’s time we phone in an anonymous tip.”
“What are you going to do? Make up a crime?”
I shook my head. “It needs to be a real one. If Riley and Max have connections within the police department, they might vet the lead. If they suspect it was a crank call, they won’t bother showing up.”
“What about those warehouse murders last year? No one was convicted.”
“Only because the guy who did it got off on a technicality. We need a cold case. Something that promises a big payoff if these two can solve it.”
Vero’s eyes locked on mine. A familiar spark lit inside them.
“No,” I said, slapping my laptop closed. “I know what you’re thinking,” I whispered, “and we are not calling Riley and Max with a lead on Ike Grindley’s case.”
“Why not? They were obsessed with it! They’ll jump at the chance to investigate the missing nephew of a dead loan shark from New Jersey. And the investigation here has already gone cold. The police in New Jersey are taking the lead on it now. What do we have to lose?”
“You really need me to answer that? We watched the man get crushed by a car, Vero!”
“He was trying to murder us!” she hissed over the squeal of tires coming from the television.
“That doesn’t negate the fact that we asked the Russian mob to get rid of his body!”
“Exactly! We can tell Riley and Max anything we want because no one’s ever going to find him. Think about it,” she whispered. “We know things about Ike’s case that were never revealed to the public. Riley and Max will definitely fall for it. It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”
I chewed on that as I gnawed on my thumbnail. On one hand, I could see this playing out exactly as Vero had described it. On the other, given our intimate knowledge of Ike Grindley’s death, it felt like too much of a risk to take.
“This could actually work in our favor, Finlay. If we come up with the lead, we control the narrative. And if we wear disguises, Riley and Max will never know who they’re dealing with. We’ll make them surrender their phones as a security measure, copy the data, feed them a false lead, and send them on a wild goose chase to New Jersey. At the very least, it gets them out of our hair.”
I threw up my hands. “Fine.”
Vero leapt out of her chair and raced to her bedroom. She hurried back down with her burner phone in her hand. She typed the podcast’s tip number into a text message and handed me the phone. My fingers hovered over the keys as I considered what to say.
“Where should we meet them?” I asked. It couldn’t be anyplace we could be tied to. Or anywhere someone might accidentally stumble upon us. A remote farm in a distant county seemed like the safest option.
I started typing.
There’s more to the Grindley case than the feds are letting on. Meet me where they found his car if you want to know more. Tonight. 10pm.
Vero looked down her nose at me. “Ten o’clock?”
“What’s wrong with ten o’clock?”
“It screams, I’m a tired middle-aged mom who needs to be in bed at a reasonable hour . Real criminals schedule secret meetings in the middle of the night.”
“And you know this how?”
“Give me that,” she said, snatching the phone and deleting the last part of my text. Tonight. 1am .
“Technically, that’s tomorrow,” I pointed out.
Vero rolled her eyes at me, then added: Turn your phones off and come alone. If I even smell a cop, we’re done.
Vero and I left Cam and Mrs. Haggerty in front of the TV with firm instructions to stay inside the house and keep the doors locked. I gave Cam twenty dollars in cash and asked him to keep an eye on the house until we got back.
We drove Vero’s Charger to the meeting. It was more reliable than my minivan, faster if we needed to make a quick getaway, and Riley and Max weren’t likely to recognize it since they hadn’t seen it before.
The farm where police had found Ike Grindley’s burned car was nearly an hour from South Riding—far enough from both Loudoun and Fairfax’s jurisdictions to seem removed from the Dupree case and remote enough that we wouldn’t have to worry about being spotted. Vero avoided the highways, sticking to the lesser-traveled county roads, until we eventually turned down a long gravel drive between two neglected farm fields.
Vero took the rutted road slowly in the dark. She turned off the headlights, navigating the bends by moonlight. It reflected off a ramshackle barn in the distance, and she parked in the shadows behind it.
She killed the engine and looked around before grabbing her backpack and getting out of the car. We closed the Charger’s doors as softly as possible, but the sound was drowned out by the rustle of wind through acres of high, brown grass. The sky above us was coal black and spattered with stars. It would have been beautiful if I hadn’t been so terrified of being caught there.
Vero turned on her phone light and scanned the overgrown field, pausing over a patch of scorched earth at the center of it. “This is definitely the place. That must be where the police found Ike’s car.”
“Should we be talking to Riley and Max in the open like this?” The rural location had seemed perfect a few hours ago, but now that we were standing in the middle of it, it felt too exposed.
Vero’s light cut a path through the weeds and we followed it to the front of the barn. It was a rustic, wooden shed-like structure. No locks, no lights. The massive door screeched on its hinges as she hauled it open and peeked inside. We both shrieked and ducked, covering our heads as a flurry of bats flew out.
The inside smelled like damp metal and moldering hay. Vero aimed her phone into the cavernous spaces, grabbing my hand when something scurried to avoid the light. A length of rotting rope hung ominously from the rafters and a disconcerting assortment of rusted tools had been left leaning against the splintered walls. Vero nodded a little too rigorously and swallowed when her light landed on a desiccated pile of fur and bones that I was pretty sure had once been a rabbit. “Yep, this is exactly how I pictured it.”
“Pictured what?”
“Our untimely demise. Maybe you were right. This was probably a bad idea.”
We backed slowly out of the barn, freezing at the sound of tires on gravel.
“Shit, they’re early,” Vero whispered. “What do we do?”
“Turn off the light!”
We scurried around the barn just as headlights fanned over the landscape. Vero dumped out the contents of her backpack, and we crouched in the weeds, scrambling to put on our wigs, ski masks, and gloves. Vero fluffed the ends of the blond nylon waves that protruded from the bottom of her mask, then she turned to me and fidgeted with my thick, dark curls. The wigs had been purchased from a novelty store in an Atlantic City casino. We looked like Cher and Farrah Fawcett preparing to rob a convenience store. I slapped her hand away. An electric engine hummed somewhere close before finally falling silent.
The headlights cut off. A car door opened, then another.
Vero and I peeked around the side of the barn. Riley’s tiny green Prius was parked at the edge of the field, its mud-spattered hubcaps glinting in the moonlight. Riley held his cell phone in the air. We ducked back behind the barn as a bright white light shot past the side of it.
“Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone here?”
“The barn is open,” Max said. “Maybe they’re inside.”
Their footsteps rustled through the grass. The barn door creaked.
“Hello?” Max’s voice echoed from the rafters as she shined her phone light through the opening. The beam sliced through the structure, then the walls, penetrating the aged wooden slats and casting daggers of light around us. “Come out where we can see you. We want to hear your story.”
Vero and I peeped through the cracks as Riley followed Max into the barn.
“We must have beat them here,” Max said.
“It was a good call, coming early. We can record the intro while we wait for them. I can edit it when we get back to the dorm. Turn off your light and stand over there.” Riley kept close to the door, aiming his phone light at the center of the barn, directing Max deeper inside it.
“This place gives me the creeps,” she said, turning in a slow circle before switching off her light. She positioned herself in the center of his spotlight. Dust motes stirred around her. Riley’s beam caught the cobwebs that dangled from the rafters above her. Max shielded her eyes against the glare. “Hurry up, let’s get this over with.”
He tapped his screen and held it in front of him. “Three, two, one, aaaaand… we’re recording.”
“This is Riley Bernbaum and Max Sievers, and you’re listening to In Your Backyard , a true-crime podcast where everyday civilians like you and me investigate unsolved crimes and bring justice to victims in our local community.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Vero whispered. “I told them no phones!”
“We’re reporting on location in Culpeper County,” Max said, “where we’re pursuing a promising new lead in a developing case. Less than a month ago, Riley and I attended a citizen’s police academy where we worked side by side with law enforcement. Now, we’re back, armed with new skills and new technology. And, thanks to our sponsor…” Max paused, as if she was looking up a name, “… Donut Bliss in Bristow, Virginia, we enjoyed some steaming hot coffee on our way to solve this ice-cold case. We can’t wait to dive into the box of glazed crullers that’s waiting for us in the car—”
“They get free donuts for this?” Vero whispered.
“—but first we have a missing persons case to crack.”
“Forget the donuts,” I whispered. “What do we do about their phones?”
“At least they’re not live streaming.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“I have an idea.” Vero nudged me back toward her Charger as Riley and Max continued recording. Silently, she opened her trunk, retrieving two canvas grocery totes and a roll of duct tape.
“You have duct tape in the trunk of your car?”
“I thought we could try using it to keep Zach from taking his pants off. What?” she asked at my mortified look. “Do you have a better suggestion?” She slung the tape around her wrist and handed me a grocery bag, signaling for me to follow her lead before she tiptoed back to the barn.
Riley and Max were still recording inside.
“… The vehicle was discovered, burned beyond recognition, mere feet from where we’re standing,” Max said. “While the driver of the car has yet to be found, local police were able to trace the VIN and registration to a man from Pleasantville, New Jersey. Ignacious Grindley’s wife reported him missing only hours before—”
“Now!” Vero launched herself at Riley, surprising him from behind. She pulled her grocery tote over his head, knocked him to the ground, and yanked his wrists behind him. His phone slipped from his hands and tumbled to the dirt, the beam shining into the rafters.
Max blinked as the light shifted away from her. She gasped as I rushed her, her sneakers slipping in the hay as she scrambled away from me. “What are you doing!” she shouted as I pulled my grocery tote over her face. It took all my weight to hold her down until Vero could get to us and tape Max’s hands together.
“What do you want?” Max shouted through the tote.
Vero and I grabbed her under her armpits and hauled her through the hay, dropping her on her butt beside Riley. I retrieved his phone from the ground as he cried and sputtered. The screen was cracked, but it was still recording, and I quickly erased the footage.
I turned on his phone light, shining the beam at the green canvas grocery totes covering their heads. Riley screeched, thrashing wildly as a field mouse scampered over his ankle. “Oh, god! Did you feel that? Something was crawling on my leg!”
“Why are you doing this?” Max cried.
Vero pitched her voice deep, giving it a harsh rasp to disguise it. “We told you, no phones.”
Max’s grocery tote tipped curiously to the side. “Wait, are you doing Batman?”
“I am Batman,” Vero rasped. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I’ve always wanted to say that.” Vero searched Max’s pockets for her cell phone. Max kicked out blindly as Vero took it and tapped the screen. She held it up to me, pointing at the security prompt.
“Give me the code to your phone,” Vero demanded.
“Your Batman voice is pointless,” Max said. “It isn’t even scary.”
“Are you kidding?” Riley cried. “It’s terrifying! Give them your freaking passcode before they kill us, Max!”
“No!” The grocery tote rose with the stubborn lift of her chin.
Vero ripped the bag off Max’s head and held the phone in front of her face, waiting for the facial recognition technology to unlock the home screen. Max crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, refusing to cooperate.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Vero hissed through the hole in her ski mask.
Max screwed up her face and twisted away. “I’m not giving you the code to my phone.”
Riley screamed, “It’s 0–9–1–1! Please don’t murder us!”
Vero secured the tote back over Max’s head. She typed in the code, flashing me a thumbs-up as the home screen opened. She worked fast, skimming through apps and messages on both of their devices.
“I swear on Max’s life, we didn’t tell anyone we were coming!” Riley said.
“Shut up, Riley!”
“There’s a noose in the ceiling, Max! And I’m still a virgin!”
“I think I know why,” Vero said, momentarily forgetting her Batman voice. She squinted at his phone with a look of disgust. I jabbed her in the ribs. She cleared her throat and rasped, “You sent all of these dick pics to these women?”
Riley sniffled. “Too many?”
“One would have been too many. But twenty?”
“I thought it would increase my odds.”
“So would a few inches.”
“Would you please just tell us what you know about Ike Grindley?” Max snapped. “You said you had an anonymous tip!”
Vero pulled me outside the barn as Riley and Max began to argue. “I checked both their phones,” Vero whispered. “There’s nothing here. We’ll have to try something else.”
“We can’t ask them for the name of their source. They might figure out who we are. We’ll have to make them think it was their idea to give it to us.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Follow my lead,” I said, heading back into the barn.
Riley and Max were still bickering through their totes when we came inside.
I cleared my throat and lowered my voice to the deepest register I could manage. “Okay, you two. Listen up.” I kicked their feet to get their attention. “I’ve conferred with my associate. We had planned to give you the tip about the Grindley case, but you broke our trust when you brought your phones, so you’ll have to earn it back or we’ll take our information somewhere else.”
“How?” Max asked bluntly.
“Quid pro quo,” I said. “You trust us with your secrets, and we’ll trust you with ours.”
“My penis wasn’t enough?” Riley cried.
“You really want me to answer that?” Vero rasped.
“Those pictures are hardly secrets after you texted them to all those women,” I pointed out. “Tell us something you haven’t revealed to anyone.”
“Like what?” Max asked.
“How about one of your sources? Give us the name of the anonymous caller who told you about the Dupree affair.”
“And a donut,” Vero added. I shot her a death glare. “What? You can have one, too.”
“We’re not giving up our source,” Max said firmly. “If we reveal their identity and people find out, no one will take us seriously. Riley and I will get canceled.”
“Would you rather get dead?” Vero asked.
“No!” Riley shouted. “We definitely don’t want that!”
“They’re not going to kill us,” Max scoffed. “Batman’s bluffing.”
“That’s it,” Vero said, rolling up her sleeves and shoring up her gloves. She marched to the corner of the barn and picked up the rotting rabbit corpse by its ears.
“Ew. Seriously?” I whispered.
“It worked for Glenn Close.” She grabbed a rusty hay hook in her other hand and stood in front of Riley, the fraying rope hanging within reach above her head. She jerked her chin at me and rasped. “Take off his bag, Robin.”
“Robin?” I protested.
“You’re not exactly Wonder Woman. Hurry up. I’m hungry.”
I yanked the grocery tote off of Riley’s head. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and sweat poured down his temples.
“Open your eyes,” Vero snapped.
He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I don’t want to see your face!” he cried. “You’ll have one more reason to kill me, and I don’t want to die!”
“Open your damn eyes, or I’ll have Robin gouge them out and feed them to the mouse!”
Riley’s eyes flashed open. They widened into black holes of terror as Vero held the rabbit’s corpse inches from his face, its mouth stretched into a Munch-like scream. Riley shrieked loud enough to wake the dead. “The keys are in my pocket! Take all the donuts you want!”
“Tell me your source!” Vero bellowed.
“Don’t do it!” Max shouted through her tote. “They’re only trying to scare you!”
Vero dropped the rabbit and reached for the rope. Riley’s eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out cold. He fell over sideways and slumped against Max’s shoulder.
“Riley?” she said in a small quaking voice. “Riley! What did you do to him?” she cried.
“Tell us your source.”
“We don’t know! She never told us her name!”
She. The anonymous caller was a woman. “But you know who she is,” I pushed. If Max didn’t know who the source was, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep it a secret.
“I don’t know for sure,” she sputtered. “It’s only a suspicion.”
“Spill it,” Vero said in her Batman voice.
I could hear Max’s swallow through the canvas. “I’m pretty sure the caller was Penelope Dupree.”
Vero and I locked eyes through our ski masks.
Vero dropped the rusted farm hook. Riley stirred when she ripped the duct tape from his wrists. She dug around in his pocket for his car keys, pressed a button to unlock his car, then tossed his key ring into the hay.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, laryngitis wearing at the edges of her Batman voice. “We’ll grab the donuts on the way.”
“What about our anonymous tip! You promised us a story!” Max cried.
Vero shrugged at me, as if to say What the hell ? We’d be long gone by the time Riley woke up, freed Max, and they managed to find his car keys anyway. Might as well toss them a bone. If we threw it far enough, maybe they’d chase it out of the state.
I cleared my throat and affected my Robin voice. “You’ll have to ask the Pleasantville police. The cops found a piece of evidence at Ike’s house. The investigation has moved to New Jersey.”