Chapter 15
IT’S NOT RAY WITH THE lint roller, but the nervous woman standing on her porch with a tray of coffees from the Green Bean isn’t a bad consolation prize. Barb rarely speaks to Alice Chu in person anymore since they entered into their “arrangement” a few months ago, and now she remembers why.
“Uh, can I come in?” her Seaside PD contact asks, glancing furtively over her shoulder. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”
Barb gives her the once-over. Alice is dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans tucked into rubber boots, and she’s wearing a trucker’s hat that was clearly designed for someone else’s much larger head. The outfit swallows her, making her look about twelve years old.
“They wouldn’t recognize you if they did,” Barb says, holding back a laugh. “Where are you going dressed like that? And whose hat are you wearing?”
“It’s Owen’s.” Alice looks offended. “Come on, Barb, let me in.”
Amused, Barb steps aside, but Alice doesn’t need to worry. There isn’t a single person on the street; no kids are riding their bikes, nobody’s walking their dog. Even Ray’s house, which has seen a crew of workmen coming and going all week, is quiet.
Alice hands her the tray of coffees and kicks off her boots. Then, lifting her shirt slightly, she pulls out a letter-size envelope she had tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
“I know I should have called first, but I was in a hurry and your house is on the way to Owen’s.
Hey, did you always have a cat? I’m kind of allergic.
” Eyeing Dexter, she steps gingerly around the Maine coon who’s planted himself in the middle of the foyer with no apparent desire to get out of her way. “Jeez, he’s huge.”
“Dexter’s just visiting.” Barb leads her into the living room and sets the coffees down on the sofa table. “Is that envelope what I think it is?” She reaches for it, but Alice moves her hand away.
“Yeah, about that . . .” Noticing the fur-covered sofa, Alice remains standing.
“Barb, look. This whole getting you information thing is stressing me out. So much so that my doctor actually prescribed me Lexapro. But Owen thinks it makes more sense to reduce the situations that make me anxious, rather than take medication for the anxiety.”
“Who’s Owen again?”
“My boyfriend?” Alice gives her a look. “The only reason I agreed to work with you is that I needed the extra cash to buy the new construction house. But now Owen and I have decided to buy it together. This is hard for me to say, but . . . you’ll need to find someone else to help you.”
Barb frowns. “Didn’t you just meet Owen?”
“It’s been a few months.” Alice crosses her arms. “But when you know, you know.”
Wow. Here was Alice buying a house with her brand-new boyfriend, while Barb had panicked when Cameron Wallace invited her to a family party. Clearly, she was doing relationships all wrong. It was so depressing.
“Please don’t quit,” Barb says to her. “I know I’ve been pushy and that we need to figure out some boundaries.”
“And I know I’m a little squeamish, but I actually like working for PD; it’s interesting and the benefits are good.” Alice takes a breath. “Barb, things are going really well for me right now. I can’t risk getting caught and screwing it all up.”
“Of course not.” Barb hides her disappointment by taking a sip of the coffee Alice brought. “This wasn’t supposed to make your life harder.”
“Thanks.” Alice exhales and finally hands over the envelope. “Parting gift. It’s the official ID and autopsy report of the Legacy Sands vic. I didn’t want to email it. I’ll save you the angst—it’s definitely not Kylie Kahl. But wait until I leave to open it.”
Barb is dying to look inside, but she restrains herself. “It was always a long shot that it was Kylie. What are the chances a missing reality star would wash up on the shores of a retirement community’s private beach? Which, now that I’ve said it out loud again, sounds ridiculous.”
“Not as ridiculous as you might think.” Alice has a funny look on her face. “But you should know there won’t be a press conference for a few more days.”
“They haven’t notified the family yet?”
“They did, but they’re going to wait until after Wonderland’s grand reopening to make an announcement,” Alice says. “They do not want any leaks. So you can’t write about this.”
It’s the same thing Cameron Wallace had said; the pressure to keep this under wraps is clearly intense. But Barb needs to get something in the paper before anyone else does.
“What if I wrote something like, ‘Sources say Seaside PD has identified the body found at Legacy Sands, but they won’t be releasing a name until the family has been notified’?
” Barb asks. “Even though we both know the family has been notified? It would reassure the public that the police has made progress on the case without sharing any details.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s okay,” Alice says. “Everyone at PD knows she’s been ID’d, so your info really could have come from anyone.”
She sneezes suddenly into the crook of her arm, and then twice more in rapid succession. When she looks up at Barb, her eyes are watery. “That’s my cue,” she says, sounding stuffed up. “I’m amazed I lasted this long. Whose cat is this, anyway?”
“He belongs to Ray,” Barb says as they walk back to the front door. When Alice gives her a blank looks, she says, “Ray Montes? He owns the tattoo studio on Main Street, Killer Ink? He’s also my neighbor.”
“Wait, what?” Alice stops. “Ray Montes, as in Cole Lennox’s brother? He lives here, in Seaside?”
“You didn’t know that? I thought you were a superfan.” Barb opens her front door and points across the road toward the rambler nearly identical to hers, but with a big steel construction bin sitting in the driveway. “That’s where they grew up, right across the street.”
“I can’t believe this.” Alice looks stunned as she puts her boots back on. “How have I lived in Seaside for a year and nobody’s mentioned this? Does Cole ever come back to visit?”
“Never,” Barb says. “She won’t even say publicly that she’s from Seaside. She always tells people she’s from Seattle. It bothers folks here. A lot of them refuse to watch her show for that reason.”
“But why would she hide it? Is she ashamed of it?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I can’t believe you’re actually friends with the brother of the biggest reality star on TV.” Alice looks dazed. “This means I’m only two degrees of separation from Cole Lennox herself.”
“If that blows your mind, consider this,” Barb says as Alice steps out onto the porch. “It’s actually one degree. Once upon a time, she and I were best friends.”
“What happened?”
“She left me,” Barb answers, because it’s the simplest and most honest thing she can say. “She went off into the world to live her dream life. And between you and me, I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive her.”
* * *
Alone again in her living room, Barb practically tears open the envelope. The first things she sees is the victim’s name at the top of the report, and she blinks.
“Why do I know this name?” she says out loud, and from the end of the sofa, Dexter lifts his head.
She reaches for her phone and googles it. When the first image pops up, her breath catches in her throat.
“Holy shit,” she says again, scarcely able to believe what she’s seeing.
She thought the Legacy Sands woman looked familiar, but then assumed it was only because she resembled Kylie.
She understands now why Alice had that strange look on her face when Barb said a reality star washing up on a beach in Seaside was a long a shot.
Turns out, it isn’t. Because while the woman found at Legacy Sands isn’t Kylie Kahl, she is—or at least was—a reality star.
Compared to Kylie, though, Ingrid Larsen wasn’t nearly as famous.
She wasn’t a popular TikToker with millions of followers, and her show wasn’t anything like Trophy Wives.
Ingrid Larsen appeared on one season of a truly terrible competition dating show called Happily Ever After.
The premise was a bit similar to The Bachelor, featuring a dozen single women competing to win the affections of one man, who was actual royalty.
But not a prince or a duke, mind you; he was an earl or a viscount from some small European country most of the contestants had never even heard of.
Still, the entire season was filmed in a real castle, and at the end, Ingrid Larsen and her royal fiancé rode off in a horse-drawn carriage. Because she won.
As Barb scrolls through the handful of articles about Ingrid and the show—including a general season recap on Reality Bitch written by one of Glynnis’s other freelancers—Barb is reminded that the couple never did live happily ever after.
The fact that the castle was only a rental should have been the first clue—photos published in Us Weekly showed how three-quarters of it was actually in disrepair and completely unlivable.
But the nail in the coffin was when Ingrid learned her royal fiancé wasn’t royal at all, and was also dead-ass broke.
Turning back to the autopsy report, Barb scans through it and discovers that Ingrid ultimately wasn’t identified by the usual methods—it wasn’t through fingerprints or DNA or even a matched missing person report.
Just as Barb thought, the police learned who she was because of the serial number on her breast implants.
Inside the envelope, Alice has also included a copy of the missing person report that was filed in Oregon two months earlier by Ingrid’s mother. After her engagement ended, Ingrid had moved back to her hometown of Cold Creek to live with her parents.
That uncomfortable feeling hits Barb again.
The niggle. The thing that signals she’s missing something.
Could Ingrid Larsen’s disappearance somehow be related to Kylie Kahl’s?
They were both on a reality show and resemble each other physically, though Ingrid’s black hair color was natural.
Both were in their mid-twenties at the time they disappeared.
Kylie was last seen on a hiking trail on the outskirts of Seaside; Ingrid’s body turned up on a beach in Seaside.
It can’t be a coincidence.
She and Cameron Wallace are on better terms now; it might not hurt to float some of these similarities past him to see what he thinks.
Maybe he’ll tell her she’s reaching for a connection that isn’t there; maybe he’ll say that she lacks objectivity because she’s too obsessed with these reality TV women and their lives.
It’s not like it’s personal, Glynnis Glenn had said to her earlier.
Except it is. Especially when your childhood best friend Nicolette Montes reinvents herself as Cole Lennox and becomes the biggest reality star on television.