Chapter 9
It didn’t take a genius to realize that there was absolutely no benefit to pacing back and forth down the hallway reading and re-reading the numbers over and over again, but that did not help Abigail feel any better about it when Cleo pointed it out from her irritatingly calm seat at the kitchen counter. She had, however, seen the wisdom in not mentioning it again since she had first suggested Abigail take a seat. Even Abigail, though, had to admit that after nearly an hour, it was starting to get tiring.
"How ironic would it be if the thing that finally got me in shape was anxiety?" Abigail commented as she finally gave in and sat down next to Cleo, who smirked.
"Depends how much of your anxiety used to be about not being in shape," Cleo said.
Abigail’s phone pinged with a notification from her fitness app congratulating her on her automatically detected workout. The women met each other’s gaze after they’d each read the notification in a glance, bursting into laughter.
"Well, at least I know the length of my hallway," Abigail said.
"The length, sure," Cleo said, "but what about the width?"
"Do you mean how wide the hallway is?"
"Yes, as in the distance between the walls..." Cleo glared at Abigail sarcastically.
"Uh…no?"
Cleo let out a sigh and glared at the piece of paper in her hand.
"Why?"
Her friend gestured to the piece of paper she was holding, "More than one of these businesses worked in construction, home security, or renovation work.”
"And you think they narrowed my hallway?"
"Well, kind of. I doubt that the house was originally built with a reinforced door to the office."
Abigail had to admit that Cleo was probably right. Unless the people who actually built the house were jewelers or bankers, it seemed unlikely that anybody would install what had to be an incredibly expensive door in a mid-range house in Newport, Rhode Island.
"So… Let me get this straight, as far as we can figure out, my father—the man who felt it was unethical to return meat to the grocery store on the same day that it was bought after opening it and smelling that it was off—was involved in a complex money-laundering scheme that helped financial scammers steal money from our friends and neighbors? And that this far-reaching criminal network used one of the fake companies in their business structure to renovate my father’s hallway. To protect him against… The criminal network?"
Pulling a face, Cleo shrugged awkwardly, "I know it sounds just a tiny bit insane. Maybe it was more along the lines of your father being concerned and asking whoever he was involved with to help him secure his house?"
Begrudgingly, Abigail nodded, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing on her lids with her fingertips until she saw stars.
“And I suppose a dodgy building company installed your security and would explain why the installation job is so shoddy.”
"I didn’t want to point that out, but it kind of would explain it, huh?"
Abigail looked at Cleo carefully. Her friend was staring at the flowchart intensely, and she wondered what else her friend had been holding back.
"I want you to tell me what you’ve been thinking," Abigail said, watching for a reaction.
Cleo glanced at her a little nervously, "what do you mean?"
"I mean, you clearly have thoughts and ideas about what’s going on here, but you don’t want to say them because you think it will upset me."
"Well, I mean, won’t they upset you?"
A twinge of annoyance, anxiety, and something else that she couldn’t quite put a finger on made her stomach twist. Did Cleo have an idea that was really that bad? Something that would make Abigail upset with her?
“I’m torn between two things," Abigail said, unable to resist the joke, "on the one hand, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that my father was so completely different from everything I ever believed about him and hearing theories around the details about how he probably was a criminal is upsetting. However, on the other hand, acknowledging that he probably was involved at least tangentially means he lied to me my entire life. I care about what happened to Jacob, I care about what happened to me, and I care about finding out what really happened the night of the crash… If I’m totally honest, I’m starting to wonder if Jacob actually took his own life."
The blank stare Cleo gave her wasn’t guarded or shocked as she had expected it to be, but genuinely completely blank.
“You think he might have been murdered by the people who are running the scam?"
Cleo’s face was still blank, except for the intensity and her eyes, which confirmed to Abigail that she was right in thinking her friend had been having these thoughts and not telling her.
“Maybe,” Abigail said quietly, barely able to make her voice heard.
It was only a tiny inclination of her head, but Cleo nodded and swallowed hard.
“That scares me."
Reaching across the table, Abigail placed her hand over Cleo’s and squeezed her fingers.
"Me too, but I do think that it’s important…"
Abigail noticed that she looked tired. It wasn’t uncommon for her friend to be tired or even exhausted—she was a nurse, after all, who worked more shifts than she was probably supposed to because the hospital seemed to always be understaffed. But this seemed a little different. There were bags under her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and she looked thinner.
“I do too, Abby," Cleo said, "I just don’t want anyone to get hurt."
As she said the word hurt, Cleo’s voice wavered and broke. Tears welled up in her eyes and she swiped them away angrily.
“Hey, hey, hey! What’s wrong? Who’s getting hurt?"
“I don’t know, probably no one. She probably just hates me now…"
Abigail stared at Cleo confused: who was she talking about?
“Wait, what? Who hates you?"
Cleo shook her head with a wail that turned into a laugh, "No one, you know what, I’m being stupid. I’m just tired. Please forget I said anything."
"Absolutely not! You’re crying in my kitchen over someone who could be hurt or hates you! Not even one of those things is okay. Come on, Cleo… You can talk to me."
After a few deep breaths and blowing her nose on a tissue Abigail offered her, Cleo nodded and took a deep breath.
"I... may have tried a little harder to get in touch with Bee than I let on," she said, "she’s really ignoring me. Or... What if one of these people she recognized... I don’t know, what if she reported what we found, the photos, and they found out somehow? Or, and somehow I think this is more likely, she went and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, and they hurt her!"
As Cleo spoke, the pieces fell into place for Abigail. It didn’t help that Cleo was probably right about the likelihood that Bee would do a bit of her own investigation rather than report something to the police, especially without telling them first. Actually, Abigail realized, she didn’t have any real material reason to think that Bee would tell them or consult them before going to the police. She wondered what it was about the woman that had made her assume she could trust her. At first, they hadn’t gotten on at all… Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw that Cleo was crying again.
“She was annoyed,” Abigail said, hoping it would come across as comforting rather than as an accusation. “You know she can be prickly. She is probably just giving you the cold shoulder…"
Clea looked up at her, her eyes shining bright behind wet lashes, "I don’t think so. I don’t think she would do that to me…"
The intensity in her eyes and the way she said that made Abigail pause before she replied. She had been about to say that Bee absolutely would treat people like that, but Cleo sounded both genuinely upset and convinced of what she was saying. Had Abigail missed something?
“She would definitely do it to other people, though…"
To Abigail’s surprise, Cleo laughed.
“Well, yeah actually, she would," Cleo said, "but I really am kind of worried… I know it sounds dramatic, but I can just see her figuring something out and deciding to look into it on her own."
Cleo let her sentence trail off, and Abigail was left imagining what might have followed if she really had gone poking around in the business of the people she had recognized. She knew what she wanted to say but was not entirely sure that she should...
"Maybe we should talk to Byron," Abigail said, watching for Cleo’s reaction.
She looked puzzled but not shocked, much to Abigail’s dismay. She had been hoping that Cleo had already known about Byron’s law enforcement past and saved her from the risk of breaking Byron’s trust.
"Okay," Cleo said softly, "call him."