Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“I think I found something interesting,” Daisy said.
“I was talking to Damien, who owns the café down by the docks, and he said that one of his waitresses was being harassed by a guy who just wouldn’t leave her alone.
Then one day, a few months ago, this guy showed up and was giving her a hard time on her shift when, out of nowhere, a six-foot-something, ice blonde steps between them and makes it extremely clear that he needs to leave. ”
Roma blinked and looked up at Daisy with bleary eyes, her gaze still on the book she had been reading, and the sounds of the coffee shop faded back in as she returned to reality.
“What?” she asked. “When?”
Daisy rolled her eyes and sat down at the table, pulling her phone out of her pocket and sliding it toward her.
Still confused, Roma picked it up and looked at the picture, which had clearly been taken from a CCTV screen.
It didn’t matter how blurry the image was, she recognized the woman in the picture as the same person she had seen that night talking to Shar and Detective Isaac.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ve seen her before.”
“Me too,” Daisy said. “She’s friends with Shar. What’s more interesting, though, is she arrived the same day Matthias did.”
Roma’s mind was racing. “Wait, how do you know that?”
“Because in the footage Damien showed me, you can see Matthias walk in with his bags, grab a coffee, and sit in the corner; then, on the very edge of the frame, you see her do the same, but at the café next to Damien’s.
When he gets up to leave, she waits about thirty seconds before following him.
But when she goes past the table where this guy is literally holding on to Damien’s waitress’s wrist, she stops and talks to him.
He squares up to her, right? Even though she’s at least a foot taller than he is, she leans in real close, puts her hand on his shoulder, and squeezes.
I actually think she’s holding him upright at that point, and she whispers something in his ear.
Next minute, he’s bolting across the harbor.
He hasn’t been a problem at the café since. ”
Over the past few months, Roma hadn’t seen Daisy look so lively and engaged. Even though the story itself was a bit uneven, Daisy told it so well.
“Do you know what she said?” Roma asked, eyes wide.
Daisy grinned but shook her head. “No, the waitress says she didn’t hear, but she did tell Damien that she was pretty sure the woman had a gun in her pocket.”
“Sorry, wait a second,” Roma snapped back to reality. “What?”
Daisy held up her hands. “Look, I’m just the messenger.”
The Deja Brew waitress arrived at their table with the small brunch platter Roma had ordered and set it down between them, making Daisy look uncomfortable as she suddenly stopped talking.
“Have some,” Roma said, pushing it toward her, then returned to their conversation. “Okay, so she arrived at the same time as Matthias, but that doesn’t mean?—”
“No, lots of people arrived on that boat.” Daisy huffed. “But no one else abandoned their suitcase at the café next door to catch up with him when they got distracted saving a young girl from a creepy jerk.”
Stuffing a raspberry into her mouth, Daisy leaned over and flicked the screen showing a series of photographs taken from CCTV monitors.
“I used the time stamp and went shop to shop, told them I was trying to find someone who had left something valuable in one of the cafés, and wanted to see if they went to a car or got on a bus. As you can see, she follows Matthias down the row of shops, but at the end, he gets into a car, and she flags a taxi. Then the taxi follows Matthias’s car. ”
“Which taxi?” Roma asked, already reaching for her phone to text Frank.
“Frank, and I’ve already spoken to him,” Daisy answered.
Roma felt a pang of something unpleasant. For someone who only a few days ago had been almost aggressively against her meddling in the investigation, it seemed like Daisy had made more progress in one morning than she had in weeks.
“And did he solve it?” she asked, not liking the petty edge to her voice.
If Daisy noticed it, she didn’t say anything, though; she just shook her head and pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. “He told me that she paid in cash, which these days makes you stand out.”
“He remembered her? That was months ago.” That rotten edge hadn’t quite gone away, so she bit into a mini egg to keep herself busy in case something mean slipped out of her mouth next.
“His words to me were, ‘Are you asking if I remember the Valkyrie woman in leather pants barging into my taxi and offering me a hundred-dollar tip to follow the guy in the car in front of me? No, she’s just been haunting my dreams to remind me of my lost youth, so I feel like she left an impression,’” Daisy said, laughing.
She could barely imagine those words coming from Frank, and she shook her head in amusement. “Oh Lord, why do I have deeply concerning suspicions about Frank’s younger days? Did he say where Matthias went, or where he dropped Valkyrie off?”
“Don’t ever make me imagine Frank and leather pants in the same sentence again,” Daisy replied, using a breadstick to point accusingly at her.
“And yes, he said that they followed Matthias to a hotel down by Brideshead Beach, and then Valkyrie asked if there was anywhere nearby to stay, so he took her to the smaller bed-and-breakfast across the street, The Whalers.”
The Whalers was a very nice bed-and-breakfast, although it was actually owned by the same company that owned the hotel. Both were Cynthia’s favorites for booking clients when they came for interviews. In just the last few months, she had charged over fifteen thousand dollars to the company account.
“I wonder if Lynn at the front desk will do some snooping for us,” she mused before catching Daisy’s eye. “You said you knew her from being friends with Shar. Do you know her name?”
“Cali Harper. She’s always been totally cold to everyone other than Shar, but that’s not uncommon when it comes to Shar’s out-of-town friends.”
Daisy hadn’t finished talking before Roma started searching her phone.
There wasn’t much on the full name, but when an image of Petria Hall exiting a courthouse from about a year earlier appeared, with the platinum blonde looming five steps behind and to the side, Roma paused and stared at the article preview.
“What?” Daisy asked, still picking berries off Roma’s plate.
“Her name isn’t Cali Harper,” she said, catching Daisy’s eye and pointing to her screen as she read the news story’s headline.
“Harper Callahan and Petria Hall exit victorious with all charges dropped, as the judge rules a mistrial due to evidentiary irregularities just three days before the trial.”
“Oh, juicy,” Daisy said. “What did they do? Or, I suppose, what did they, technically speaking, cannot be proved to have done?”
She knew that Daisy was being intentionally light-hearted, but she couldn’t bring herself to match her friend’s tone after just scanning the article.
“It’s alleged that Ms. Callahan operated a widespread and intricate extortion scheme in which she supposedly collected over three hundred million dollars from fifteen families over the past nine years, with only two of these victims willing to testify after three of the primary victims of this alleged extortion scheme were found dead late last year. ”
Daisy gasped, but Roma didn’t stop reading.
“Within eight days of each other, an alleged victim was found dead by apparent suicide in his garage, a second died after a bar fight broke out following a sporting event, and the third victim, along with her husband and two children, was killed when their home in Washington was set on fire. As Ms. Callahan was in custody awaiting trial at the time of these deaths, authorities have stated they do not suspect her involvement.”
The two friends looked at one another.
Daisy slowly lowered the mini muffin. “And her two kids?”
“Six and four,” Roma said, her voice straining. “And that’s not all.”
“Oh Lord above, what?”
“A source inside the courthouse told the reporter that the evidentiary irregularities cited by the judge appeared after a meeting in chambers with a police officer who had found several key pieces of evidence linking Ms. Callahan to the extortion. No official statement was issued, but the officer involved was placed on administrative leave, and his family was put in protective custody.”
After a few moments of silence, Daisy leaned back in her seat and sighed. “So remember how I said this was dumb, stupid, and dangerous to get involved with?”
Roma nodded. “And I don’t want you putting yourself in danger on my behalf, okay?”
“Don’t you do that, either!” she retorted as she stood. “I vote we just go talk to Jerry—Detective Isaac—and tell him what we found and pretend we never did any of this. But I’ll stand behind you, whatever you choose.”
As Daisy left, Roma opened a new tab and spent the next half an hour researching the supposedly criminal and demonstrably violent past of Ms. Harper Callahan.
She had been in foster care since age four, moved through nine families in seven years, and then had no record until a juvenile conviction for grand theft auto and aggravated robbery.
During that time, she received an additional year added to her sentence for injuring another inmate in a fight so badly that the other person sustained permanent brain damage.
After turning eighteen and being released, Harper became close friends with Petria Hall, and nothing seemed to stick.
She had been linked to several murders over the years, but no charges were ever filed.
Roma then switched to her home delivery app and searched for a home alarm system that included both CCTV and the ability to call 9-1-1 in case of emergencies.