Chapter Nine
The rest of the day passed with agonizing slowness—on all fronts. Wyatt tried his best to refrain from grumbling about the antiquated internet service running to the house, but programs and scans he could run at high speed in Little Rock seemed to be caught in some old sci-fi movie’s vision of a wormhole. Whenever he could, he switched to using his phone as a hot spot. It seemed counterintuitive to be able to get better mobile reception than satellite internet. When he mentioned as much to James Beckett on their afternoon ride around the property, the older man simply pointed to the flashing beacon on a tower poised atop the nearest hill and muttered something about Betsy’s boyfriend opting for improved cell service instead.
When they returned to the house in time for Jim to fire up his propane grill, they found the fridge restocked and the two women sitting on the back deck sipping white wine.
Betsy Beckett countered her husband’s raised eyebrow with a smug smirk. “I thought pork tenderloin would be nice for a change. Cara has some vegetables in there she’d like you to grill too. Oh, and I bought you boys some beer.”
“Sounds good,” Jim said. He leaned down and kissed his wife’s cheek on his way to the door. “You pick up ice cream for dessert?”
Her lips curved into a serene smile. “You know I did.”
“Perfect. I’ll get things ready, then be out to get things fired up.”
“I chopped and seasoned some veggies and threw them in the grill basket. Would you cook them up for me, Daddy? You’re so good at grilling,” Cara called after him.
Her father simply raised a hand in acknowledgment of her shameless flattery. Wyatt smiled at Cara. She looked a thousand times more relaxed than she had when he left with her father after lunch. Whether it was the wine or the nap she’d planned to take while he was out, he wasn’t sure. Either way, it looked good on her. An afternoon in the fresh air had done him a world of good. Wyatt decided he was going to do his best to be sure the rest of the evening remained mellow. They all needed a bit of a breather.
“All quiet on my end,” he assured her. “I’m gonna go help your dad.”
She toasted him with her wine. “We expect great things from you,” she called as he followed her dad into the house.
In the kitchen he found Cara’s father rooting around in the back of the refrigerator. When he surfaced, he held up a package of microwavable mashed potatoes and fixed him with a challenging stare. “Life lesson—there’s no need to peel, chop, boil and mash when you can have these hot and tasty in less than five minutes. Don’t judge me.”
“I grew up eating instant rice.”
“We both believe in working smarter,” Jim said with a conspiratorial nod. “Let’s get this going. I’m starved.”
When they sat down to dinner, her mother picked up the platter of sliced tenderloin and offered it to Wyatt as she addressed the table in general.
“Did I tell you I ran into Delia Raitt in town?” He helped himself to a piece of the meat, but before anyone could answer, she pushed the platter back at him. “Take two. Y’all look famished and you know Cara isn’t going to have any.”
His attention caught on how Cara stiffened at the name, he did as she asked with a murmured “Thank you,” then relinquished the fork. When no one commented on Betsy’s conversational gambit, he asked, “Delia Raitt? Is she someone you went to school with?”
“Mrs. Raitt was the principal’s secretary when I was in school,” Cara answered stiffly. “Liked to stick her nose in everyone’s business.”
“Well, the school district has consolidated and she’s working for the superintendent now. The school system is all different now, but Delia is the same.”
Jim Beckett ate steadily, oblivious to his daughter’s unease. “Still nosy.”
Betsy didn’t seem to notice Cara’s discomfiture, because she continued on without further encouragement.
“So nosy I’m surprised she doesn’t trip over the end of it,” Betsy said with a tinkling laugh. “Anyhoo, Dee said they’ve been getting calls about you.”
“What kind of calls?” Wyatt asked, working to keep his tone neutral.
“Reporters, mainly. She said people have been calling and asking about your big business deal in New York,” she reported, blasting Cara with a wide, proud smile. “I didn’t say anything before because I wanted your daddy to hear too, but she said they’re all real proud of you around there. Apparently, all sorts of fancy technological magazines have been calling and asking whether you’d come home to talk to the kids about working in big tech and what it’s like to build a business from the ground up and all.” She waved her fork in an all-encompassing circle before using it to stab a hunk of grilled squash.
Jim Beckett dropped his fork and stared at his wife with the open disbelief Wyatt wished he could show. “Are you kiddin’ me with this?”
Betsy blinked, her smile slipping as she cast a glance at Cara, then back to her husband. “No, I’m not kidding. I told her we were proud of her too.” She reached over and gave Cara’s hand an encouraging pat. “And we are. Even if we don’t understand it all. Aren’t we, James?”
Cara’s father blinked, then stared at her with such naked incredulity Wyatt cringed inwardly. “Were you drinking before you went to town?” he demanded.
“What?” Betsy asked on a sharp inhale. “No. Of course not.”
“Don’t you get it?” Jim shook his head. “The people callin’ the school might not be reporters. They could be the people behind this whole mess.” He threw his hands in the air. “Criminy, Elizabeth, we’re not supposed to let anyone know she’s here.”
“I didn’t tell anyone she’s here,” she retorted, shoving her chair away from the table. “I’m not a fool, and I won’t be spoken to like one in my own home.”
“Okay, okay,” Cara interjected. “Let’s all...take a breath.”
Her father rolled his eyes. “Take a breath,” he muttered under his. “Same mumbo jumbo for the folks willin’ to pay for it.”
“Fine,” Cara snapped. “Let’s all calm down and talk rationally,” she demanded, sounding about as far from calm and rational as a modern-day guru could. “Do you think we can manage to get through one meal without bickering or picking at each other?”
Wyatt held his tongue as the older man nodded then ducked his head, reapplying himself to his plate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk,” Jim said quietly.
“You were a jerk, but your apology is accepted,” his wife responded, punctuating her largesse with a prim sniff.
“People are calling the local school asking questions about Cara?” Wyatt asked, rephrasing the gist of the conversation.
“Yes,” Betsy said, her tone markedly more subdued. She twiddled her fork, routing out a divot in the mashed potatoes he’d so painstakingly nuked. “I didn’t think it sounded threatening. At least, Delia Raitt didn’t make it come across like it was. She was goin’ on about what a big deal Cara was now, and how proud we must be, and how she never thought little Cara Beckett would turn out to be a fancy big shot.” She turned to look at her daughter. “Her words, not mine.”
“Did she happen to name any of the publications they said they were calling from? Did you recognize any of them?”
Betsy shrugged, then shook her head, her smile turning rueful. “She said a couple of names, but they sounded computer-y to me.” Jim snorted and her eyes lit with fire. “Like you know any better, James Beckett. You tell me the name of one of those tech blog thingies,” she challenged.
“Doesn’t hafta be one of those. It’s been all over Forbes , the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times ,” Jim said quietly. When they all turned to look at him, he glanced up from under lowered eyebrows. “What? I don’t live under a rock.”
Cara ducked her head, and Wyatt couldn’t help but stare as a peach-pink flush crept up her neck to her cheeks. The woman practically glowed with pleasure at this small concession from a man Wyatt himself had reclassified from remote and disinterested to quiet and observant over the course of an afternoon in his company.
“There are dozens of legitimate publications interested in profiling your daughter,” Wyatt said, gently breaking the spell. “I know to those of us back here at home it may seem like she has put herself out there with LYYF, but in truth, Cara is kind of an enigma in tech circles. Aside from her work published on the app and the social media connected to it, she has stayed out of the media. If there are interviews to be given, it’s usually one of her partners in the spotlight.”
“Usually Chris,” her mother said with a nod. “He loves to be the one doing the talking. Always was the slick one. I remember from the time we came out there to visit.”
“Chris is a talker,” Cara conceded.
Wyatt jumped back in before they strayed too far off track. “From everything I can find, and believe me I have looked through all accounts connected to her, Cara doesn’t put much of herself out there. Which is why she found it such a shock to have people on the internet taking such an, uh, intense interest in her personal life.”
“I don’t even take pictures of my food,” she said with a wry smile.
“And here I thought all people put on those sites were pictures of their plates,” her father said gruffly.
Cara flashed him a grateful smile and Wyatt felt his shoulders drop as the tension in the room dissipated.
“I can’t,” Cara said, her tone turning serious again. “I learned early on. The second I post something, a yummy dinner or a pretty blue sky, people crawl all over themselves trying to interpret the hidden meaning behind my post.”
“Some people can’t accept the appreciation of a pretty blue sky at face value,” Wyatt said, nodding his understanding.
“Exactly. People say I’m making a statement about climate change, or take the opportunity to lecture other community members about the proper use of sunscreen. I have to be very careful about everything I post online. You never know how people will interpret it, and there’s always someone waiting to pounce.”
Her father shook his head in disgust. “People have nothing better to do.”
“Everyone has to share their opinion,” Wyatt commiserated.
“My daddy used to say opinions were like belly buttons—everyone has one, but you don’t need to go around flaunting it,” Betsy chimed in.
“I heard it using a different body part,” her husband said under his breath.
Betsy frowned. “What body part?”
Wyatt chuckled at their byplay but refused to further the conversation. Instead, he turned to Cara. “I’m assuming the company has a publicist or PR firm they work with?”
She nodded. “All official media requests are supposed to go through a woman named Amanda Pierce. She has a boutique firm out of Palo Alto. It’s called APPR,” she added. “But it’s not unusual for people to try to work around the process. We all get requests. Zarah fields them for me every day.”
“But the bigger outlets will go through the publicist,” he asserted. “I can see individual vloggers trying to get around the gatekeeper, but there’d be no reason for the Times or the Journal to do an end-around. Publications like WIRED , TechCrunch , CNET ...they’d want everything on the record, and they’d want to be able to follow up on anything newsworthy.”
“You think these people calling the school district were only pretending to be reporters?” Betsy asked, fear warring with incredulity in her voice.
Wyatt flashed an apologetic smile. “It’s possible. You’re sure you didn’t give any hint of Cara being here?”
A deep crease of concern appeared between Betsy’s brows, and she bit her lip as she closed her eyes, no doubt scouring her memory for any innocuous little comment. “I’m sure,” she said at last. “She asked when we were going to California to visit again, and I said something vague about maybe over the holidays.”
She flashed a wince of a smile, and Cara reached over to squeeze her hand. “You know I’d love to have you out anytime you can get away.”
Both women looked at Jim, who’d remained laser focused on his food through this whole exchange. Without looking up from his plate, he mumbled, “I did like fresh-squeezed orange juice in the mornings.”
Judging from the radiant smiles breaking across the women’s faces, his confession was as good as a promise. “My lemon tree has started producing too,” Cara informed him.
“No need to gild the lily, sweetheart,” Betsy admonished softly. “We’ll make arrangements for one of the Ford boys to come look after things while we’re gone.”
The ladies spent the rest of the meal extolling the many virtues of California living, only requiring the occasional “Huh” from him and grunts of affirmation from Jim. By the time Cara jumped up to retrieve the ice cream and bowls, the mood was considerably lighter. But the supercomputer in Wyatt’s head hadn’t stopped running probabilities and turning over possibilities.
After they were through eating, Jim said something about needing to make some calls. Wyatt escaped to the dining room and his laptop. A few quick queries gave him the lowdown on the newly consolidated school district and its administration. If he’d grown up anywhere else, he might have marveled at the odds of a cold caller actually connecting with a person who knew Cara and her family, but he was an Arkansan. He knew better. People born and raised in the Natural State either stuck close to home or ran far away.
He’d stuck close.
Cara had gone about as far as she could go, shy of buying a boat.
Grabbing his phone, he fired off a quick text to Emma to let her know about the calls to the school administrator’s office. It wasn’t critical information, but at this stage they were massing every bit of data they could and sifting through them like the tourists who spent days sieving dirt at Crater of Diamonds State Park. At this point they were hoping one of the bits of nothing they unearthed turned out to be a precious gem.
Next, he ran a general search on Cara’s name. Scrolling past results for her website, links to LYYF, a Wikipedia entry and optimized entries for some of the more popular pages on the LYYF website and blog, he found an article in a respected tech journal about the company’s upcoming stock option and the buzz surrounding one of the world’s most popular apps. He skimmed nearly halfway through it before he realized her name had not appeared in the text. He hit the Control and F keys and typed “Beckett” into the pop-up search box.
One result returned.
Holding the arrow-down key, he scanned the screen until he found the highlighted name.
When he spotted it, he stared at his screen in disbelief. Cara, the face and voice of the LYYF app, and her 33 percent ownership, didn’t garner a single mention in the body of the post. He’d found her tagged in the article’s keywords, but nowhere in the lengthy, and somewhat fawning, narrative about the company’s inception and astounding growth.
Skipping back to the top of the article, he checked the byline. The author was someone named Nate Astor.
He searched the site for other articles by the same author and discovered Astor was one of their main contributors. Scrolling through his previous articles, he found two more related to LYYF.
One was a one-on-one interview with Chris Sharpe published the previous spring, and the other was an opinion piece in which he debated the value of creation versus content. About two-thirds of the way through the article, he spotted Cara’s name. Biting the inside of his cheek, he read and reread the man’s hot take. Wyatt found it ironic the reporter, whose job it was to create content for an online magazine, dared to question Cara’s contribution to the LYYF app’s success.
“So much for solidarity, huh, Nate?” he muttered, clicking back to look through more of the man’s work.
Not surprisingly, he found more than one post concerning GamerGate. He grimaced. He’d been in school when a band of misogynist jerks claimed to be on a quest to fight “political correctness” in the online gaming world by harassing, doxing and threatening female media critics and game developers with bodily harm.
“Finding anything good?”
He jumped, reflexively tipping the cover of his laptop down to shield her from his discoveries.
Cara blinked, then let out a bitter huff of a laugh. “Wow. I was kidding, but I guess you did. Was it about me, or were you looking at X-rated websites in front of my mother’s Precious Moments?”
“What?” He glanced over his shoulder when she gestured to the collection of figurines on display in a corner curio cabinet. “Oh. No. You startled me is all.”
“Reading something good?” She sank into the chair adjacent to his, her stare unflinching.
“Went down the GamerGate rabbit hole,” he confessed.
She made an exaggeratedly horrified face. “I didn’t peg you for a misogynist, so you must lean toward masochist.”
“The guy who wrote the article has also done a couple on LYYF,” he explained. Then, angling to face her, he asked, “Does it bother you when they leave you out of the press coverage?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. He could almost see her swallowing whatever flip answer she kept on hand for this type of question. Rolling her shoulders back, she met his eyes directly. “Yes.”
“Do you ever say anything about it to them?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“Why?”
She pointed to his laptop. “Ironically enough, GamerGate.” Folding her hands in front of her, she let her gaze slide down to the computer. “Whenever Chris or Tom even mentioned my name in connection to the business end of things, the trolls came swarming out. So we stopped.” She dropped her eyes to her clasped hands, a rueful smile curving her lips. “I contented myself with the idea of being the face of LYYF, and for the most part, I like it better this way too. I get to be the star without the freaky hero worship Tom hides from, or the constant pandering Chris loves and loathes.”
“But in serious publications where they’re discussing the future of the business...” He trailed off, unsure he wanted to push too hard on a point that was glaringly obvious to him but may not have occurred to her.
“The lack of attribution may make people think my contributions have not been commensurate with full partnership,” she concluded.
“Or give the impression your partners feel they are not,” he said, fixing her with a pointed stare.
Cara unwound her tightly knotted fingers, splaying her hands open wide and flat on the tabletop to stretch them. “At first, I was happy to have what I thought would be a shield from the vitriol,” she said, nodding toward the laptop again. “But after things took off there were times I felt credit wasn’t being given where credit was due.”
“Did you speak to them about it?” he prompted again.
“I did. On more than a few occasions,” she said flatly. “To be fair, most of the requests for interviews have been fielded by Chris. He enjoys the spotlight more than Tom.”
“Enjoys it to the point of hogging it. In most of the articles I read, Tom is relegated to nothing more than a couple lines. Even then, he’s spoken of as some kind of tech wizard hiding behind the green velvet curtain. You’re barely mentioned at all.”
“None of us got into this to be famous,” she pointed out.
“But I have to assume the guys, at least, got into it to get rich,” he retorted. “It was basically a run-of-the-mill personal finance app until your posts started taking off.” He tapped on his phone to wake it, then opened the application. Within seconds, the Cara Beckett who’d calmed his anxieties and gently lulled him to sleep appeared. He turned the phone to face her. “You made this app what it is. Everything they built...it’s all scaffolding for your genius, not theirs.” He leaned in, his stare searching. “Are you trying to tell me it doesn’t bother them?” When she didn’t answer, he gentled his tone. “Why haven’t they called, Cara?”
She shook her head. “You don’t get it. Things are complicated—”
“No, I don’t get it.” He interrupted whatever excuse she was planning to employ to excuse the shortcomings of the men she still called friends. “And I don’t see it as complicated. If my friend was being attacked from all sides, I’d be there. If my friend had been abducted at gunpoint, I’d do more than text her assistant for updates. But then, my friends aren’t about to increase their wealth exponentially by taking a share of the money I may or may not believe to be rightfully mine.”
“Now, wait a minute—” she began, but he held up a hand to halt her protest.
“I won’t say anything more. They are your friends and your partners. You know them a thousand times better than I do,” he conceded.
“I do.”
“But I want you to know, as far as I am concerned, no one is above suspicion. Because you and I both know there’s no enemy with better ammunition than a person’s best friends.”
“I understand.”
“And you mentioned something about Zarah having access to your accounts. Do you mind if I do a deeper dive into your financials?” He didn’t need to ask, really. He could probably hack his way into every account she’d ever opened without any trouble, but she was starting to trust him, and he didn’t want to risk compromising her trust.
“My financials?”
“I only want to be certain there are no...anomalies. If people have accessed everything else, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”
“Oh, wow. I never thought.” She cocked her head. “I hardly ever even look at bills or account balances anymore. Zarah has everything covered.”
“Just a cursory glance,” he assured her.
She nodded and looked to be about to say more when Betsy appeared in the dining room doorway.
“Come on, you two. Enough work for one day. Jim has time for one episode before he hits the hay and I want to see if you can solve the case before Detective Pemberton figures it out.” She made a shooing motion, then declared, “I’m making popcorn.”
With a sigh, Wyatt powered down his laptop and closed the lid. Cara showed no inclination to move. Placing his hands on the edge of the table, he pushed his chair back. “Come on. Your mom is right. We’ve done enough for one day.”
Wordlessly, Cara followed him into the family room, where her father had an episode of a murder mystery cued up and ready to go.
Wyatt smirked when he saw the show they’d selected. “You remember I’m not a homicide detective, right?”
“Neither am I,” Jim answered gruffly.
“But I bet you have a friend who’s one,” Cara said, petulance lacing her tone.
“I do, as a matter of fact.” He turned to look at her, but she stared straight at the screen. He’d hit a tender spot in questioning the quality of her friendships with her partners, but he couldn’t say he regretted doing so. If she spent even a few minutes thinking deep thoughts about her relationship with the men she’s helped make rich, maybe she’d reach the same conclusion he had.
Internet bullies were thick on the ground, for certain. But no one had better motive for wanting her out of the picture than Chris Sharpe and Tom Wasinski. Everything she’d told him about her life and the lives of the two men would suggest their friendship had become distant. A relationship bearing a label bestowed by nostalgia, but in truth boiled down to a business arrangement forged by people who were little more than kids.
But it wasn’t a real friendship.
“Hurry up. I have to be up in seven and a half hours,” Jim called to his wife.
“Hold your heifers,” she retorted as she bustled back into the room. She distributed bowls of microwaved popcorn to each of them.
“Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Hold your horses’?” Wyatt asked Cara, hoping to break the ice, but she remained silent.
“Not on a cattle ranch,” her parents replied in unison.
Jim pointed the remote at the screen as Betsy claimed her seat beside him. The opening theme music played and he darted another glance at Cara. She sat stone-faced, her jaw tight as she glared at the television screen. In the dim light, he thought he caught the faint shimmer of tears in her eyes and looked away.
They were less than five minutes into the show before he and Jim pointed to a slick-looking charmer on the screen and declared, “That one,” in unison.
“Oh, honestly,” Betsy muttered as she rolled her eyes. “My grandma could have seen him coming.” With a huff, she grabbed the remote away from her husband and clicked through the menu. “Go to bed, spoilsport.”
Chuckling, Jim kicked the footrest of his recliner back into place and rose with a groan. “Maybe I should become a homicide detective. What time do y’all have to be at work most days?”
“Long after you are,” Wyatt replied with a sympathetic smile.
“Night, all,” Jim called as he dumped the remainder of his popcorn into Betsy’s bowl. “Wire to stretch in the morning.”
“I’ll be along in a bit,” his wife promised as she scrolled through the options. She paused on one featuring characters in elaborate costumes. “Oooh. Wyatt, do you like Pride and Prejudice ? Cara and I love this one, don’t we, hon?”
Wyatt smiled and nodded, stuffing his cheeks with popcorn to avoid having to say more. If watching people who carried parasols and walking sticks was what it took to get back on Cara Beckett’s good side, he could take it. At least, he hoped he could.