Page 35 of Accidental Murder
Kayla draped a patchwork quilt over him. “Good night.”
He clutched her wrist. “Stay with me awhile. I”—his voice caught—“miss her so much.”
“Sure.” Kayla sat in the rocking chair by his bed and remained until his eyes closed.
When he fell asleep, she went to the desk to retrieve Ashley’s phone, intent on calling Margaret and cancelling. She pushed the files bearing names like Ionizing Radiation, Early Detection Systems, and Brain Freeze to the side. The latter made her think of Jacob’s Brain Juice project. Did people think adding the wordbrainmade their research sound smarter?Brain Freeze. The term reminded her of a pain she got in her head whenever she ate ice cream too fast.
Beneath the heap, she retrieved the phone and searched the contacts. Thornton Modeling had an entry, but Margaret’s personal number was not listed.
“You win, Fate,” she rasped. She would have to pretend to be a model for a day. She could pull it off. She’d visited Ashley on a couple of shoots. The routine was exactly what it sounded like, a routine. Makeup, hair, pose, smile, and pose some more.
Unless she wanted to confess and abandon her investigation, she had to rise to the task.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A sliverof moon in the cloudless sky buoyed Kayla as she climbed the steps to Ashley’s townhouse. A sliver, her father had told her, represented new beginnings. Represented hoped. Maybe tonight’s investigation would bear results. On the way home from her uncle’s, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the smashed computer monitor in her townhouse had been significant. The killer must have believed vital information resided on her hard drive. Over the years, Kayla had memorized the Internet URL connections to more than half of her clients. From the comfort of her home office, she’d repaired dozens of problems. She could have seen any number of secret files.
Once she got to Ashley’s, she intended to review all of her clients’ data. She would start with the files for those clients she considered the most logical suspects—Nolan Trask and Jacob Feinstein.
“I’m home,” she announced when she stepped inside.
Java galloped to her and yowled at the top of his lungs.
She set the new laptop and bag of supplies on the floor of the foyer and scooped him up. “What’s the matter, fella?”
Java’s pulse was racing.
Was there an intruder? Kayla listened but didn’t sense movement. To ease her concern, she locked the door, slid the collar from the cat’s neck, placed it on the doorknob to serve as a makeshift alert, and made a sweep of the unit. She looked in every closet. Behind every door. In the bathroom. Empty.
Calmer, she headed to the bedroom and set the new computer on the bed. She plugged it in and turned it on. Java jumped up beside it and nestled down.
While the computer booted up, Kayla took off the cable-knit sweater and tossed it on the laundry pile to the left. Watching it land, sadness swept over her. Ashley always kept dry cleaning and laundry separate. Kayla bunched it together and sorted it when necessary.
She lifted a blue Donna Karan blouse from the dry cleaning pile, the one Ashley had worn to their last dinner together, and inhaled the scent of Chanel lingering on the silk. Fresh tears threatened to fall.
Stop. Focus.
She tossed the blouse aside, shrugged into Ashley’s bathrobe, fetched the thumb drives from beneath Ashley’s intimate apparel in the dresser, and sat on the bed.
Once she’d set up the computer, she slid the thumb drive for Nolan Trask into the USB slot. A list of folders came into view. The day she’d met him, he told her he was writing a book. She’d assumed the book would involve his life as a CIA undercover agent. Jokingly, she’d asked if she would wind up dead in a gutter if she took the job. He hadn’t laughed.
The other day, she met with him to update his computer and back up his information on a fresh thumb drive. In the course of her work for him, she’d never read any of his personal files. Never felt the need to. She clicked on theWritingfolder, opened the file calledMyLife, and inspected a few pages. After a few minutes of reading sexually explicit details about his marriage,Kayla closed the file. Despite the nature of the information, she couldn’t imagine those memories would have given Trask a reason to want her dead.
Move on.
In the same folder, she found a file entitledNotes. She opened it and found more fodder for his book, including a list of significant dates when he’d traveled with his wife. The other folders contained money management data, family photographs, and a ton of innocuous downloads. Nothing looked covert.
She spanked the keyboard in frustration. She would need hours—days—to do a deep dive on all of her client’s files. When she reined in her anger and was thinking clearly again, she wondered whether the Internet could provide answers. She clicked on the browser and logged onto Ashley’s Facebook account. Many of Kayla’s clients hadlikedit. Some, she decided, had clicked theLikebutton because they’d felt it was the polite thing to do. After all, Ashley was a celebrity. She switched to her own account and saw the inbox filled with recent messages. From Mary Dorman. Nolan Trask. Timothy Jenkins. She spied Sara Simmons’s name and thought of her husband Taylor. When would he bury Sara? Would he invite Ashley to the funeral? She considered reaching out but nixed the idea. He deserved privacy.
She spotted Cindy Norton’s name and worried again about Cindy’s disconnected telephone. Was she in danger? Kayla deliberated writing a private message, but vetoed the idea. She didn’t want any of their communications to trigger Cindy’s husband’s rage.
Returning to Ashley’s Facebook homepage, she paused when she saw a message pop up from Jacob Feinstein. Their conversation at the memorial service had felt off kilter. Why had he asked her, Ashley, whether Kayla had told her any secrets about him?
Breathing high in her chest, she bounded off the bed, hands raised defensively. “Secrets. I don’t know any secrets!”
She paced the room and paused when she realized she did know a few. Mary Dorman hoarded boxes of Ghirardelli mint bars beneath her stuffed animals. Trask had a predilection for porn. Jacob told his mother he’d quit smoking when he hadn’t. Each secret was harmless and not worth killing over.
But Cindy’s secret or rather her husband’s secret of being an abuser was bad. Had he killed Ashley, thinking she was Kayla, in retaliation for encouraging Cindy to slap him with a restraining order? Had he hurt Cindy and disconnected her home phone? Maybe, Kayla hoped against hope, Cindy had found her spine, packed up, and moved in with her mother.
