“Long story.”
“Can I hear it sometime in the very near future?”
She smiled. “How near?”
“I’m on backup duty tonight, so I have to stay in the area. What’s your schedule look like?”
“I’m in town.”
“Visiting Matthew and Laila?”
“Something else,” Hester said. “Business.”
“Oh. Are you free for dinner then? It won’t quite be last night, but I’m powerful enough to get us a table at Tony’s Pizza and Sub. I’ll even pay.”
“Thank you for that, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For letting me pay last night. For thanking me and not playing the macho card and insisting.”
“I was trying to be a modern, sensitive man. How did I do?”
“Very well.”
“I never understood that really.”
“What?”
“This will sound too politically correct.”
“Go on.”
“Let’s face it. You make a lot more money than I do. I’m not being all evolved here. Just the opposite. But I never get the guys who get all bent out of shape when the woman makes more money. The way I’ve always looked at it, if I’m lucky enough to be with a highly successful woman, that makes me look better. The more successful my girl is, the more I look good. Make sense?”
He said “my girl.” Swoon.
“So,” Hester said, “your being so evolved is really being self-involved?”
“Exactly.”
Hester realized again that she was smiling in a way she normally never smiled. “I like it.”
“That said, I got tonight’s check. Which will be less than the tip on last night’s dinner. Sevenish? Unless you’re heading back into the city tonight.”
Hester thought about it. She didn’t know what the status of this would be, but either way, she would need to stick around — and she would probably need to eat. They made the plans tentative and then they hung up.
Hester wandered back toward the house. The grounds were immense and held no appeal to Hester. The constant tranquillity grew unnerving.
Hester headed inside and found Delia on the phone in that library that was a little too Disneyesque. Delia spotted Hester and waved her in. She put a finger to her lips to signal silence and hit the button for the speakerphone, so Hester could listen too.
Delia said, “Thanks, Sutton, for getting back to me.”
“I would have called back sooner, Mrs. Maynard, but I was in class.” The girl sounded very much like a teenager. “Is Crash okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, he’s not in school today.”
“When did you last talk to him?”
“Crash? We texted last night.”
“What time, Sutton?” Delia asked.
There was a hesitation.
“He’s not in any trouble,” Delia said. “But he went out last night, and I haven’t heard from him today.”
“Can you hold on a second?” Sutton asked. “I can look up exactly on my phone.”
“Sure.”
There was a short delay and then Sutton said, “One forty-eight a.m.”
“What did he say?”
“He just said he had to go.”
“That’s it.”
“Yeah. ‘Gotta run.’ That was it.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“No, sorry. I’m sure it’s nothing. I can check with Trevor and Ryan and the guys.”
“That would be great, thanks.”
“The only thing is,” Sutton began.
“Yes?”
“I mean, I don’t want you to worry or anything. But he usually texts me. A lot. I mean, we all do. We have group chats and just regular texts and Snapchat and whatever else. I mean, I can’t remember the last time he didn’t text me in the morning.”
Delia put a hand to her neck. “Did you text him?”
“Just once. No reply. You want me to try again?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
Delia looked over at Hester. Hester mouthed the word “Naomi” at her. Delia nodded.
“Is Crash friendly with Naomi Pine?”
Silence.
“Sutton?”
“Why would you ask about Naomi?”
Delia looked over at Hester. Hester shrugged.
“Well, Naomi is missing—”
“And you think Crash is with her?”
The disbelief in her voice was palpable.
“I don’t know. I’m just asking. Are they friends?”
“No, Mrs. Maynard. I don’t want to be mean, but Naomi and Crash travel in very different circles.”
“And yet he encouraged her to play that Challenge game, right?”
“I have to go to class. If I hear from Crash, I’ll let you know right away.”
Sutton hung up.
Hester said, “Is that Crash’s girlfriend?”
“On and off. Sutton is probably the most popular girl in the school.”
“And Crash is one of the most popular boys,” Hester said.
“Yes.”
“So maybe the popular boy suddenly has a thing for the ostracized girl.”
“Sounds like a bad teen rom-com,” Delia said with a shrug. “Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Maybe even his bullying her—”
“My son didn’t bully her.”
“—or whatever you want to call it. Maybe it was like that little boy in the playground who pulls the girl’s pigtails because he likes her.”
Delia didn’t like that. “That little boy usually grows up to be a sociopath.”
“What’s on those tapes, Delia?”
The change of subject caught Delia Maynard off guard. That was the purpose, of course. Hester was studying her face, looking for the tell. She thought she saw one. Not one hundred percent sure. Hester had been questioning people for a very long time. More than most, she could see a lie, but those who claimed to be “foolproof” were, to quote half of the word, usually the fools.
“There’s nothing important,” Delia said.
“Then contact the FBI.”
“We can’t.”
“Which suggests that you have something to hide. Sorry, I’m not great with subtle, so let me get right to it: I think you’re lying. Worse, you’re lying to me. So let me make this clear. I don’t care what you’re hiding or what’s on those tapes. If I know about it and I’m your attorney? It stays secret.”
Delia smiled but there was no humor in it. “Always?”
“Always.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
Delia crossed the room and looked out the window. The view was spectacular, but it didn’t seem to be bringing Delia Maynard much peace or comfort or joy. “I told you I watched your show the other night. When Saul Strauss was on.”
“What about it?”
“Strauss started to raise the ‘if you could have stopped Hitler’ speculation. You cut him off.”
“Of course I did,” Hester said. “It’s utter nonsense on a thousand levels.”
“So let’s say hypothetically I knew something that could have stopped Hitler—”
“Oh please—”
“—and I confide it to you under attorney-client privilege.”
“Would I tell?” Hester said. “No.”
“Even if it means letting Hitler rise to power?”
“Yes, but it’s a dumb hypothetical,” Hester said. “I don’t want to get too deep into this, but have you read much on the Hitler paradox? In short, if you went back in time and killed baby Hitler, the changes may be so massive that everything would change, almost every birth thereafter, and so you and I wouldn’t be here. But that’s not why this is dumb. It’s dumb because I can’t read the future or go back in time. The future is all conjecture — none of us have a clue what it will be like. So I can tell you that whatever your grave secret is, I won’t tell. No matter what. Because I don’t know if it will really stop the next Hitler. I also don’t know if stopping the next Hitler is even desirable. Maybe if I stopped Hitler, a more competent psycho would have risen instead — after those German scientists developed a nuclear bomb. Maybe it would have gone even worse. Do you see what I’m saying?”