Chapter 80
“You look nice,” Vaughn said.
“Better than last time you saw me, that’s for sure.”
Ivy hugged him.
“Neither of us were at our best,” Vaughn admitted.
They entered the small restaurant. A sushi joint, Ivy’s choice. Dark. Intimate.
They ordered drinks. Vaughn was quiet.
“So they promoted me to interim department head.”
“Really? That was fast.”
“No kidding. I think they just want to keep me happy. Squashed that bullshit breach of code of conduct case. It’s only temporary, but the higher-ups said that it would likely become permanent at the start of next year, if . . .” Ivy trailed off.
“If?”
“If I keep my mouth shut.”
“And will you?”
“Never liked to gossip.”
“Congrats, then.”
Vaughn raised his glass of beer. Ivy clinked hers against his. No Guinness this time. A lager.
They didn’t talk much. And when their trays of sushi arrived, they talked even less.
Ivy was beginning to think that this was a mistake. She knew the odds. Relationships born during times of high stress had a low probability of success. Nothing ever lived up to the intensity of the initial interactions.
This seemed different, though. Ivy didn’t know all that much about the handsome detective, but she was good at reading people.
There was something on the man’s mind.
“Vaughn?”
He swallowed a piece of tuna sashimi.
“Yeah?”
“You wanna ask me something?”
Vaughn screwed up his face. Opened his mouth, closed it again.
“Vaughn . . .”
“Actually, yes.”
The man’s phone had remained in his pocket up to this point—a good sign on a first date—but now he pulled it out.
Flicked his thumb across the screen, held it up for her to see.
“You recognize this man?”
Of course she did.
“Yeah, that’s Blake. The guy from the bar.”
Vaughn shook his head.
“It’s not. I mean, we’re pretty sure it’s him—your friend Abby confirmed it—but his name isn’t Blake.”
“Really?”
Ivy wasn’t terribly surprised; “Blake” wouldn’t be the first man to make up a persona to try and pick up a woman at a bar. She was confused why Vaughn was telling her this, however.
“Really. His name is Henry Lane. Hard as hell to track down, but we found him.”
Ivy shrugged, not sure where this was going.
“He works for Devon Godfrey.”
“Okay. And?”
“And Devon’s son, Zeke, who you are familiar with, was being blackmailed by Tristan to do his bidding.”
Ivy pressed her chin to her chest.
“What?”
Vaughn nodded.
“Yep. Just not sure how Henry Lane fits into all of this.”
Ivy was still stuck on the idea of Tristan blackmailing Zeke.
She relived the moment when Zeke had been threatening her in the hall and Tristan had approached.
Zeke had immediately backed down. He’d done the same thing when Blake—no, not Blake, Henry—had saved her at the club. But Henry was much bigger than Zeke.
Tristan wasn’t.
Something had felt off about the interaction, but Ivy had been too preoccupied to put much thought into it.
Now she realized why: Zeke had been terrified of her TA, a hundred-fifty-pound math graduate student because he had dirt on him.
The cheating. It had to be the cheating. Tristan knew about it before he told Ivy. Blackmailing Zeke for what, though?
“Henry’s not saying anything,” Vaughn continued.
Ivy was only half listening now, trying to put this all together.
“I guess it could be a coincidence, but I just don’t like coincidences.
It did get me thinking . . . Tristan was staying in a home owned by Impact Investing, which is, in turn, owned by Devon.
What if Devon wanted the laptop, too? Which, by the way, we never found.
It’s possible that Devon was also working with Tristan. ”
Two murderous psychopaths working together, financed by a third—maybe unfair to Devon, but Ivy had read once that all major business leaders had at least some psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies.
What were the odds?
“Anyway, food for thought. And all of this,” Vaughn swirled his finger in a small circle, “for a laptop.” He swiped his finger across his phone screen. “Speaking of which, do you know this picture, Ivy?”
She expected to see “Blake’s” friend Tony, perhaps with an accompanying comment about how he was a registered sex offender or had some other equally nefarious past, but instead, she was surprised to recognize the image.
“Of course, that’s Steve and my dad. They’d just jointly won the B?cher Memorial Prize. Why?”
“That’s your dad signing the paper, right?”
“The acceptance—yeah.”
Ivy had no idea why Vaughn was showing her this photo, either.
“With his left hand. Your dad, he was—sorry, is—a lefty, right?”
Ivy clammed up. This wasn’t trending in the right direction.
Vaughn nodded to himself, put the phone away. Ate another piece of sushi.
“So . . . I did a little research in my spare time.”
Nope, not trending well at all.
“Found out that after the fire, the ME used two things to identify the body of the unfortunate man who died. One was your claim that you recognized your father from his wedding band—Steve didn’t wear one, his wife died years ago—and you dragged him out of the fire.
Saved his life. The second was dental records for the deceased. A positive match to Steve Neely.”
Ivy pressed her lips together so tightly that small vertical creases formed in her upper lip.
“I got to wondering, how difficult would it be for someone who was pretty good with computers—good enough to, say, delete all applicants but one for a TA position—to switch the dental records of two individuals? I mean, you wouldn’t have to even copy or paste the images.
You could just change the names in the main database.
” Vaughn swirled his glass. The beer spun a miniature vortex—exactly what Ivy’s life suddenly felt like.
“You know, this whole time, I thought that Tristan deleted the other applications to get close to you. But that wasn’t right, was it?
It was you who made sure he became your TA so that you could get close to him. ”
Ivy felt sweat break out on her forehead.
Vaughn drank the rest of his beer. Then he surprised her by raising his hand and calling the waitress over.
“Can I get another, please?”
“Sure. And for you?”
Ivy hesitated. She still had three-quarters of a pint left. She downed it all, but her throat remained parched.
“Please.”
The drinks came a few minutes later. Ivy hadn’t touched her food in the interim. She took a heavy gulp. Set her glass down. Stared at the condensation on the side.
“And then,” Vaughn finally continued after what seemed like an age, “I went to Dr. Reeves’s room at the DAL residence.
Found it strange that you visited him every week, but never put up a single photo of your father on the walls.
Not of you and him, not of him at work. Definitely not the .
. . what did you call it? Boucher Award signing? ”
“B?cher Memorial Prize,” Ivy said dryly.
“Right. The one where he’s signing with his left hand. The thing is, Ivy, when I saw your dad the first time, he was fiddling with this chest piece—the rook. And he was using his right hand.”
Ivy lowered her eyes. Her own hand was burning. No, not her hand—not exactly.
Her thumb and right index finger.