Chapter 7
ACCORDING TO BARB’S CONTACT AT Seaside PD, the police aren’t withholding information. They really do not know the identity of the body found at Legacy Sands, which means one thing: The victim is from out of town.
Barb pauses her reality show and turns up the volume on her phone.
Alice Chu is speaking so quietly she may as well be whispering, and Barb can picture the skittish woman hunched over her desk at the police station, looking furtively over her shoulder to ensure nobody is eavesdropping.
Alice would never do this if she didn’t need the money.
“There was no ID found on the body, and she doesn’t match any local missing person reports.” The younger woman sounds more nervous than usual, and that’s saying something. “They’re running prints and DNA, and checking with Portland and Seattle, but no hits yet.”
“Then she’s not from around here,” Barb says. “If she was local, they’d have a name by now.”
The process of running prints and DNA is incredibly slow.
And even once they have a name, protocol dictates that Seaside PD can’t release any information to the public until after they’ve contacted law enforcement from the victim’s home city, who are then tasked with the terrible job of notifying the victim’s family.
The family then has to send a representative to identify the body in person and sign off on the required paperwork.
The whole process can sometimes take weeks to complete, and that’s assuming they’re able to ID the body at all.
But if the victim was from Seaside, someone would know someone who knows something. The ID would be quick, because that’s how things work in a small town.
The show on pause suddenly jumps back to life at full volume. “Sorry, one sec,” she tells Alice, scrambling with the remote. She didn’t realize she’d sat on it. “I accidentally unpaused my TV.”
“What the heck are you watching?” Alice asks. “I thought I heard screaming.”
“Just . . . some horror movie.” Barb isn’t willing to admit that she’s watching the much-anticipated season seven finale of Trophy Wives.
She jabs the remote, and the screen freezes once again on two women at a charity gala who are indeed screaming at each other.
Dripping in diamonds with their teeth bared, they look like the world’s most bedazzled feral cats.
“No, you’re not,” Alice says, her tone a mix of amusement and mock accusation. “You’re totally watching Trophy Wives. I know you are, because I just watched that hot mess of a finale myself.”
Barb’s mouth drops open. “You watch Trophy Wives?”
“A trashy reality show about rich women being petty? Hell yeah. I watch every episode the night it drops so I don’t risk reading spoilers on Reality Bitch.
” Alice’s voice is back up to normal volume.
“You know that blog? I love it, it’s so snarky.
It’s like the writer knows exactly what I’m thinking, and then says it in the funniest, bitchiest way possible. ”
Barb can’t help but smile. Yes, she knows Reality Bitch. And she knows exactly which Trophy Wives recaps Alice is referring to because Barb is the one who writes them.
“You remember when Kylie Kahl went missing?” Alice asks. “I must have binge-watched that first season five times searching for any clues as to what might have happened to her.”
Barb lets out a laugh. “Alice, how am I just finding out now that you’re a Trophy Wives fan?
“I probably didn’t tell you for the same reason you didn’t tell me. It’s embarrassing to confess how much we love it. My boyfriend’s a fan, too, though he’d never admit it.”
“Wait. You have a boyfriend?”
“For a few months now. So far, it’s going well.” Barb can practically hear Alice blushing. “We met online.”
“Was it on Sugar Sugar?” Barb can’t resist teasing her.
Any Trophy Wives superfan knows that Sugar Sugar is the dating app created by Kylie Kahl’s husband, Freddie.
It matches single, rich, not necessarily attractive people with not-so-rich, extremely attractive people, which is actually how Kylie and Freddie met.
“Stop it,” Alice says with a laugh. “It wasn’t through a dating app.
Owen and I actually met years ago on Reddit, on a sub for—don’t laugh—jigsaw puzzle lovers.
But we didn’t meet in real life until we both showed up at the same puzzle swap meet about a year ago.
It was more like a friend connection at first, but once we really got to know each other, we fell in love.
I know what you’re thinking. Nerdiest love story ever.
But we’re happy. I think . . . I think he’s my person. ”
Barb can’t help but feel a twinge of envy. It must be nice to be with someone who’s into the same niche thing you are, and just know.
“So anyway, what’s your theory on what happened to Kylie?” Alice asks. “I’ve been low-key obsessed with her disappearance for six years now.”
“I’m not even low-key.” Barb wouldn’t be surprised if Alice is one of the anonymous Redditors she trades conspiracy theories with in the Trophy Wives sub. “I’m actually wondering if the Legacy Sands body might be her.”
Alice inhales sharply, and then Barb catches the sound of typing in the background. “Okay, I’m in the case file,” she says, back to whispering. “The Legacy Sands vic is definitely Caucasian, black hair, blue eyes, five-seven, one twenty. And, uh . . . it says here she’s had some work done.”
“Work? Like plastic surgery?”
“A breast augmentation.” Alice’s voice increases a decibel. “Wow. What if this is Kylie? It doesn’t not fit.”
On Trophy Wives, Kylie had been very transparent about all her cosmetic procedures.
But she’s not unique—hundreds of thousands of women get breast augmentations every year in the US alone.
Still, Alice is right. It doesn’t not fit.
If the Legacy Sands body had no breast implants, it would have immediately ruled Kylie out.
“There are serial numbers on breast implants,” Barb says. “They can ID the body from that.”
“Except they haven’t removed them yet,” Alice says. “They haven’t even started the autopsy.”
“What does it say about the cause of death?” Barb asks.
“Possible strangulation, but obviously they won’t know until they . . . oh god . . . the crime scene photos . . .” Alice’s voice cracks, and she doesn’t finish her sentence.
“And what about the foot?” Barb presses. “Why was it detached?”
“Doesn’t say. But apparently she was in the water for a while. Her skin is . . .” Another pause. “She looks really bad.”
Alice has only worked for the police department for a little over a year, one of three people whose job it is to keep the computers running and the servers from crashing.
She’s a techie, not a cop or a forensics expert, which is probably why talking about death makes her so uncomfortable.
It would be easier if Barb could see the crime scene photos for herself.
“Can you forward the photos to me?”
“No way.” Alice sounds horrified.
“No because you don’t want to, or no because you don’t know how to access those files?”
“I know how to access every file,” Alice says, her voice sharp. “But I’m not doing it.”
“Alice, come on. It’ll take you thirty seconds. I’ll pay you double if you can get me crime scene photos and a copy of the autopsy report as soon as it’s ready.”
There’s a long pause. One of the things Barb learned early on as a journalist is that anyone can be motivated to give up information for the right price.
Money works 99 percent of the time. It’s the 1 percent that gets tricky.
When Alice got the job at Seaside PD, she put down a deposit on a preconstruction house being built in one of the new planned subdivisions.
She’s mentioned a few times that renting a place while building another is financially challenging, and every little bit helps.
The Chronicle has a very unofficial “slush fund” for expenses like this, though Greg gets irritated if Barb dips into it too much.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Alice sounds reluctant. “But you do not have permission to use the info until they make a formal announcement. And they’re not going to do that until after the weekend. Because of the park opening and all that,” she adds.
“Yes, I’m aware.” Barb hears the doorbell ring. “Someone’s here. Let me know when you have something.”
They disconnect, and Barb pads down the hallway toward the front door, pausing to pluck a used dryer sheet that must have fallen to the floor when she was doing laundry earlier.
The man standing on her porch is six foot two with a shaved head and scruffy beard, his muscular arms covered in tattoos from shoulders to wrists.
In one hand, he’s holding a pet carrier, and in the other, a stuffed grocery bag.
She shoves the used dryer sheet into her pocket and stares at him. She’s eye level with his chest, where his black T-shirt reads killer ink.
“This is still okay, right?” Ray Montes asks, alarmed.
She claps herself on the forehead. She’d completely forgotten that she’d agreed to take in her neighbor’s cat for the next couple of weeks while he was having work done in his house.
“Yes, of course.” Barb steps aside so he can enter. “Hey, Dexter,” she says to the cat, who’s somewhere inside the pet carrier. She gets a small meow in return.
“What are you wearing?” Bemused, Ray gives her the once-over as he sets the carrier on the foyer tile.
“Huh?”
Her confusion lasts only as long as it takes for her catch a glimpse of herself in the entryway mirror.
Instantly Barb is dismayed. When she did laundry earlier, she threw on the only clean clothes she had, which were saggy sweatpants and an old Garfield T-shirt that says big fat hairy deal.
To make matters worse, she pulled her hair up into a messy bun using a cheetah-print scrunchie, another decidedly poor choice.
“Megan at the pet store did say you were the cat whisperer,” Ray says.