Chapter Twenty
“Now what?” Nicki propped her chin in both hands, elbows on the table, cheeks smooshed.
“You rest?” Olivia suggested, though she had to admit Nicki looked much better.
“I’m bored.”
“Already?”
“Yeah.” Nicki nodded. “I feel pretty good after the food. What are we doing today?”
“We?” Olivia asked. “Don’t you have work?”
Nicki sighed. “Work is boring. I’d rather help you.”
“Don’t you need to make money?”
Nicki huffed. “I make enough to pay the bills. What you do is more interesting.”
But Olivia did not vocalize her actual plan—watching Nicki all day—because mother-henning from Olivia would annoy her niece.
Ironically, Nicki would accept unlimited fussing from Lincoln without bristling.
Whether that was due to his personality or Nicki and Olivia’s shared history didn’t matter.
Nicki needed rest. If Olivia had to be sneaky about how she got it, as Nicki would say, whatever.
They were no closer to finding Zoe, so taking a step back and doing more research was the most logical move anyway.
“Reviewing the information we have so far and making a plan to find Zoe.”
“Good. I’ll help.” Nicki brightened. “Where do we start?”
“Our leads so far.” Olivia consulted her list. “First up: Dylan.”
Nicki wrinkled her nose. “I could see him as the reason she left. After last night, I could believe he cheated.”
“His temper seems very short lately.”
“Yes,” Nicki said. “Could Zoe be teaching him a lesson? Paying him back for an affair?”
“I don’t know.” Olivia considered it. “Is Zoe that manipulative?”
Nicki frowned. “Did she catch him cheating? Because that might make her angry enough to lash out at him.”
“That would sting,” Olivia admitted. Was it possible that Dylan only stayed with Zoe because he was financially dependent on her?
“She’s self-conscious about their age gap.”
“She recently started dyeing her hair, and apparently, she tried Botox too,” Olivia said.
“Most women dye their hair, at least for a while.”
“But Zoe never wanted to before. If she thought Dylan was losing interest, that might have changed her mind. And if she caught him cheating, especially with someone significantly younger . . .”
“She must’ve been shook,” Nicki said. “Not much we can do if she left to punish him.”
“That doesn’t explain the text she received telling her to run or the fact that she didn’t let anyone know that she’s OK. I also can’t see her abandoning the podcast she’s spent years developing even if she’s angry.”
“No,” Nicki agreed. “We can still find her.”
Olivia had to know what happened to her friend. “I won’t let this go. She must be somewhere.”
“Agreed.”
“Anyway, Lincoln is following up on Dylan, so that leaves us with the two cases we think Zoe was investigating, plus whatever Wendy was up to.” Olivia rubbed her temples.
“Wendy gave Zoe’s research on the Evan Brown murder to Zoe’s competitor, and Wendy admitted to being unhappy with Zoe as a boss.”
“But would she harm her?” Olivia asked.
“Maybe she just wanted to scare her,” Nicki suggested. “Wendy strikes me as a manipulative person. She handed Zoe’s research to the competition.”
“So, Wendy frightened Zoe with a text so she’d leave? What does that do for Wendy?”
“I dunno.” Nicki’s lips pursed in concentration. “Maybe to get this other job, Wendy needs to do significant damage to Zoe’s podcast.”
“We only have Wendy’s word for what happened at the studio Saturday night.” Olivia rubbed her forehead. “Maybe Wendy arranged for that creeper to call in to the show. Maybe she did something else to scare Zoe.” But what?
“Zoe heavily promoted your upcoming interview on social media. She’s using your interview and story as the material for the next three or four weeks of her show.
If she doesn’t make the episodes or do any shows at all, where does that leave her podcast?
She’d have to replay old episodes, a huge disappointment to her fans who’ve been waiting for the show. ”
“Losing ratings, losing listeners.”
Nicki nodded. “Downgrading Zoe’s podcast helps Melissa MacGuiness’s show. Aaaand if Melissa picks up the Evan Brown case that Zoe was going to use for next season and Melissa produces a show on that case and airs it ahead of Zoe . . .”
Olivia dropped her hand to the table. “Then Zoe wastes all her work and doesn’t have a show for next season. I mean, she couldn’t air the same murder case that another podcaster just covered.”
“Zoe would have no way of knowing that Melissa was stealing her content. She’d just keep working her case and writing her show copy thinking she had the next season in the bag,” Nicki said.
“That would be devious on Wendy’s part.”
“We already know Wendy is devious. She tried to sabotage Zoe.”
“Good thing Melissa didn’t actually get that file,” Olivia said.
“I wonder what she did when she discovered it was missing,” Nicki said. “Will she assume she dropped it? Ask for another copy? That could be awkward.”
“That might depend on the actual content and if Melissa thinks the Brown case is worth investigating.”
“Zoe did.”
Olivia fished the folder she’d stolen from Melissa MacGuinness’s bag from a pile of papers and waved it. “Lincoln and I didn’t have much chance to dig into it yet.”
Nicki gestured toward the computer. “What do we know about this Brown case?”
Olivia opened the computer folder and the physical file. “Evan Brown and his brother, Tim, were burglars.” She repeated the case basics. “Tim went to prison. Evan disappeared. At the time, the police assumed he ran and left his brother to deal with the fallout.”
“But he was dead the whole time,” Nicki finished. “That is an interesting twist to the case.”
Olivia said, “Yes. I can understand the appeal to study and/or solve the case for the podcast.”
“Do they know if Evan was murdered?”
“There were four possibilities for manner of death: accident, suicide, homicide, or natural. Unfortunately, the medical examiner was unable to determine which one applied because of the condition of the remains.”
“Did the Me rule any of them out?” Nicki asked.
Olivia skimmed Zoe’s notes. “Natural seems unlikely, unless he had a stroke or heart attack while driving.”
Nicki tapped her chin. “Could he have driven off the road by accident? He could have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He could have fallen asleep at the wheel.”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t know. The lake has a steep bank and is far enough from the road that there isn’t a guardrail. There’s a photo.” She pushed a photograph across the island.
Nicki studied it. “He would have had to drive across all this weedy ground and right into the lake without stopping. It would have been a rough ride. Unless he’d been unconscious, the bumps would have jarred him awake. Maybe he did it intentionally.”
“Suicide?” Olivia frowned. “They found a backpack in the trunk. It was full of jewelry. They haven’t been able to trace all the pieces, but a few of the items were reported stolen before Evan disappeared. The bag of loot supports the idea that he ran.”
“He could have felt guilty,” Nicki suggested, then shook her head. “Nah. The kind of person who repeatedly burglarizes homes for a living isn’t generally the remorseful type.”
“Agreed. It seems Evan and his brother were career criminals.”
“Manner of death is different from cause of death, right?” Nicki asked.
“Correct. Again, since the remains were skeletal, the cause of death was also undetermined on autopsy. He had some skull fractures that occurred at or around the time of death. The Me suggests that the head trauma could have resulted from the impact with the lake, but he cannot certify that.”
Nicki pulled the photo closer to her face. “It looks as if the drop to the water is only about ten feet. Is that enough impact to break bones?”
Olivia shrugged. “He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and the car didn’t have airbags.
” She paused. “I’d like to get a look at the entire autopsy report.
” She pointed to the computer. “All that’s here are Zoe’s notes from phone calls with the detective.
Evan’s case is officially still open, but it doesn’t appear as if anyone is actively trying to solve it.
We’ll see if the detective in charge is still feeling cooperative, and if he’s willing to talk to yet another true crime writer. ”
Autopsy reports were considered medical records and were not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Access was usually restricted to next of kin and officers of the court: lawyers, police officers, judges, the DA, et cetera.
But Olivia had been able to talk her way into restricted files before.
It all depended on the detective. With a case this old, on which there had been no progress, she had a shot.
“The detective currently assigned to the case is Deputy Ted Arnold of the Loon County Sheriff’s Department.
” She shuffled papers. “But the original detective was a Deputy Robert Jones. He probably retired or left the department. I’ll call Deputy Arnold and see if he’s feeling friendly.
” Olivia crossed her fingers. In her experience, the detectives who handled a murder case from the beginning tended to have more emotions attached to it.
They knew the victims’ families and sometimes took a personal interest. When a case changed hands over the years, the emotional attachment naturally ebbed.
Sometimes, long-cold cases were handed down multiple times, and the current officer in charge had never cracked the file.
Nicki held a copy of a report in both hands. “I don’t see why he’d object. In this case, the victim was a criminal who likely committed second-degree murder. His next of kin was also a criminal. This is not the kind of case I’d expect a cop to be overly attached to.”