Chapter 22. Isabel, the Assistant
Isabel, the Assistant
PRESENT DAY
At midnight, Brooks cracked the door to his Brentwood town house, a sliver of light illuminating his stoop. “Quickly,” he whispered. “Before anyone sees you.”
As we hurried inside, Scout gazed around. “So this is an FBI agent’s house. Huh.” She shrugged. “They’re bigger on TV.”
Brooks rolled his eyes. “So glad to have that sense of humor back in my life.”
I was glad Scout was doing the talking, because I couldn’t.
Walking into Brooks’s adult home, seeing pictures of his family over the years, the art he’d chosen—hazy lines and ocean colors—and his simple, relaxed furniture, the same style I’d chosen for myself, was a stark reminder that I did know him, that even if ten years had passed, once upon a time we’d been as close as I’d ever been to anyone.
We’d been real, the two of us. The proof was all around me, in how familiar his home felt.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Brentwood guy,” Scout mused, still carrying the brunt of the conversation. “You’re in the market for a good school district?”
“It’s close to work.” Brooks already sounded exasperated.
I paused at the doorway to his bedroom. He still made his bed every day.
I’d thought it was such a conscientious habit for a college boy.
He had a plain, soft-looking blue duvet.
I remembered how we used to lie in bed together on the weekends, limbs tangled, for hours, and it suddenly occurred to me that those might’ve been the happiest days of my life.
“Iz?” Brooks stood at the end of the hall, watching me.
I cleared my throat and jerked away. “Sorry. Where do you want us? The kitchen?”
We settled around his small kitchen table, Scout still in her elaborate Chanel dress and me in my understated black Dior. It was just like the old days, except we were here to talk about murder. I reached down and unstrapped the Louboutins, kicking them off with a near-pornographic groan.
Brooks cleared his throat. “You didn’t want to change out of your ball gowns before coming over?”
“Ball gowns?” Scout snorted. “You said to come as soon as we could after the party. Why are we meeting at your house, anyway? As charming as suburbia is.”
“It’s the one place I can control. Guaranteed no surveillance, and no one around to recognize you.
” Brooks pulled out his phone. “Listen, both of you. I need you to take what I’m saying seriously.
The things I’m about to show you are part of an official FBI investigation.
If you tell anyone, I’ll get fired, and you’ll be fucked. ”
I met his eyes. “You’re helping us.” He’d changed his mind.
Brooks dropped his gaze. “Against my better judgment. You know who Rosie Wright is, right?”
“The New York Times reporter,” Scout said. “The one who wrote the hit piece on me.”
“Exactly. And because she has a national profile, the FBI was tapped to work with the LAPD.”
Scout frowned. “Wait a second. Why are you breaking the rules for us?”
Brooks cleared his throat. “It’s my professional duty to help solve Wright’s murder. And although I think you’re capable of a hell of a lot of things—”
Scout raised an eyebrow. For a moment, the old tensions resurfaced: all those fights between Brooks and me before we broke up, escalating in intensity until they spilled out to include Scout, until all three of us were enemies.
Feelings I thought I’d buried long ago reawakened in my chest.
“But,” Brooks finished, “I don’t think you’re a killer.”
“Kindest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Scout drawled, and the moment was over.
He sank back against his chair. “Which means no one’s looking for the real killer because they’re all too busy looking at you. I figure, sometimes, it’s okay to do a little wrong in service of a bigger right.”
“Trust me,” Scout said. “We’re familiar with the concept.”
I couldn’t look at her, but I heard the smirk in her voice.
Brooks opened the photos on his phone. “Rosie was found bludgeoned to death in her living room.”
And just like that, all the humor was sucked out of the room.
Another woman, killed like Georgia. The memory of that gaping wound—
“Unfortunately,” Brooks continued, “her apartment complex is old and doesn’t have security cameras. She was found next to this.” He held up the phone. When I flinched, his eyes softened. “I won’t show you the body, Iz. I just want you to see what was written on her wall.”
Scout and I peered at the photo. Next to a small TV, words were scribbled in capital letters, written in something light, like pencil. “You plunged your mighty pen into my back,” I read aloud.
Scout paled. “I wrote that. The lyric, I mean. Years ago, a musician wrote a terrible song about me after we broke up, and I wrote that in retaliation.”
“Any idea what it could mean in this context?” Brooks asked.
She shook her head. I frowned at the photo. “Do you still think the messages are meant for Scout, not the victim?”
“It’s one theory,” he said. “We need a hell of a lot more information, though, which is why you’re here.
” He flipped to the next picture. “Rosie’s colleagues said she wrote on a laptop, but we couldn’t locate one in the apartment.
There’s a chance the killer took it. We’re waiting for permission to access her cloud storage, but in the meantime, we collected her notebooks and planner.
I took pictures of as much as I could. Obviously, I can’t smuggle out the evidence, because I’d go to prison. Pictures will have to do.”
“It’s great,” I assured him. “We’re grateful.”
“She was writing about you,” he said, “so look for names you recognize, possible threats, anything that could suggest why someone would kill her.”
It was a painstaking process, poring over each picture.
Brooks had managed to take over a hundred snapshots of Rosie’s notebook and planner pages, and the problem wasn’t that we couldn’t find things we recognized in her notes—it was that we recognized everything.
Before she died, Rosie Wright had developed one hell of an obsession—with us.
“This is insane,” I said, scanning a page of her neat, careful handwriting. “It’s like reading about fictional characters, but it’s us.”
“This woman stalked us,” Scout said. “Everyone’s in here—Cybele, Miranda, Cara, that girl I had coffee with that one time who wanted us to—” Scout cut herself off, glancing at Brooks. “Anyway, it’s creepy. She tracked us like a hunter.”
“Some of this stuff dates really far back, too.”
“She was thorough.” Brooks sounded almost admiring. “A good reporter. No offense,” he added, after Scout gave him an indignant look. “From what I can tell, her notes divide into two stories. One was on Gabriel Knox, that politician who just announced he’s running for president.”
Scout jabbed at the notes she was taking. “Did you see she got the scoop on that announcement but chose not to publish it? Apparently, when it came to some subjects she was capable of discretion.”
“It seems like she hated Knox almost as much as she hated Scout,” I added. “That journal page a few minutes back was one long rant about all the crazy shit she thinks he’ll do if he’s elected.”
“She said he’s friends with Easton Banks and Reese Griffin,” Scout said. “I wonder if he was there the night of the Christmas party.”
Brooks spoke quietly, as if testing the subject. “It’s strange to think we were in the same room with Reese Griffin, after everything that came out about him.”
“Remember how badly we wanted to meet him?” I shivered. “Thank god we didn’t.”
Scout crossed her arms tight over her chest. “The Rat Pack. That’s what Dakota called them.”
For a moment we sat in silence, lost in memories of a night we seemed destined to never escape.
“Which brings us to the other story Rosie was obsessed with,” Brooks said finally. “Alden’s death.” He swiped to another photo. “Look at this.”
“Not a single source I’ve encountered,” I read aloud from her notes, “including the police report, witness accounts, and Alden’s USC friends—” I paused. “What USC friends? Georgia was the only person who liked him.”
“Convinces me that Alden killed Georgia,” Scout finished reading. She snorted. “Well, Rosie got that ass-backward.” She swiped violently to the next photo.
I went to zoom in and my fingers brushed Brooks’s. Electricity zinged between us. He dropped the phone on the table.
“Look at these character notes,” said Scout, ignoring us and scooping up the phone.
“Cybele Laurent: source from her French management company claims she was abused by a photog when she was young—motive for joining Murder Club? Source not willing to go on record. By all accounts, CL’s a bitch on wheels.
” Scout grinned. “Okay, that last part’s pretty accurate.
Scout Sage. Oh, here we go. Nice-girl performance masks true ruthlessness.
In some pap photos the mask slips, you can see her real self.
Multiple personalities—one a cunt. Could definitely kill. Now that’s just rude.”
“Look, she did me, too,” I said. “Isabel Cruz: a mystery. Why so…” My voice faltered. “Meek. Why give up her own dreams to…” I stopped reading. “Never mind. This is stupid.”
Why give up her own dreams to play servant to Scout? Am I missing something? Does Scout have something on her?
I made the mistake of glancing at Brooks. He was watching me, the expression on his face searing, as if he were on the verge of asking something we’d both regret.
“Enough with Rosie’s stupid notes,” Scout said, saving me once again. “Show us her planner.”
For a moment, Brooks didn’t respond. I could feel his desire to press me. Then, with effort, he schooled his expression and navigated to Rosie’s calendar. “It starts in January of this year. Have at it.” He slid the phone toward us, and leaned back in his chair, arms folded.
Scout and I scanned from week to week, zooming in to read Rosie’s jotted appointments. It was bizarrely intimate, seeing her doctor appointments and scheduled calls with her mom. Was this what Rosie had felt, studying us?
“Well, that was pointless,” Scout announced, slumping back in her seat. “We got all the way to the day she died, and there’s nothing interesting.”
Brooks sank his face into his hands. “I was really hoping.”
Idly, I kept flipping to the last few photos. Suddenly, a name caught my eye. “Guys.” I shoved the phone into the center of the table. “Look who Rosie was scheduled to meet tomorrow.”
“Eleven AM, Dakota B., her house. Claims new lead,” Scout read. “Does that mean Dakota Banks?”
“We know Rosie was working to clear Alden’s name,” I said. “And that’s all Dakota and her dad have wanted for years. Except no one’s ever taken them seriously.”
“Maybe Rosie did,” Brooks said. “Maybe she was going to give Dakota the platform of a lifetime in the New York Times.”
Scout gripped the screen until her knuckles turned white. “Then we need to find out what new lead Dakota’s offering reporters. Rosie might not be making this appointment, but we sure as hell are.”