I whirl around at Henry and point a finger at him. He nearly crashes into me. “I’m not fucking him,” I say. “Ness Wilde is exactly who I thought he was. His family stands for everything wrong in this world, and he sits on his private estate where everything is fake, nothing is real, and he sits in the middle of these… these shells within shells, and he is working on something awful. I’ve seen a glimpse of it. I mean—Henry, he has these trees that don’t belong there. Palm trees. Thousands of them. He’s totally messed up. His driveway is a freaking fortune in crushed shells.”
“That’s why we have to run these stories, Maya. The one on his grandfather is brilliant. It sounds just like him. Living alone, buying up land that he knows will be beachfront one day—”
I shake my head. “No. I told you, you can’t run that piece. Promise me. We skip to his father.”
Henry crosses his arms. I place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to bring you the piece of our lifetimes, Henry. I swear. I can feel it. You’re the one always saying that real journalism is dead. Dead as the seven seas. Well, this is the kind of story that will bring it back to life.”
“I need more than that, Maya. C’mon. Give me something. A hint. A headline.”
I hesitate. If I had the shells, I would show him those. And then I remember I have something a fraction as good. I dig my phone out of my bag and bring up the image gallery, sort through the recent pics. I find the one of the three lace murexes sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s the pic I sent to my sister as a gag.
When I show Henry the picture, his eyes widen. “So he bought you,” he whispers, his voice dripping with disappointment.
“They’re fake,” I tell him.
Henry pinches the picture to zoom in. Studies the image closely. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure.” I lower my voice. “Henry, he cracked these open in front of me and tried to convince me they’re real. The feds are investigating where they came from. I’m telling you, they’re fakes, but they’re good fakes. They could crash the shelling market. Or send it skyrocketing. Hell, I don’t know.”
“So why are you going back up there?” Henry asks.
“Because I think he wants to come clean. He said he wants to show me his secrets. The guy is losing it, Henry. The feds say he never leaves his property. I think he trusts me, and he wants to let me in on something. I think he wants to confess. But Henry, you have to promise to keep this between us. He insisted on no leaks for a week. No stories. He made me promise.”
Henry nods. Slowly. I have to pull the phone away from him. I slip it into my bag.
“I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” I say.
I leave Henry rooted in place and hit the elevator call button. Dawn is standing a few paces away, getting a cup of water from the cooler. She smiles at me. As I step inside the elevator and ride down to the lobby, I wonder how long she’d been standing there. I wonder how much she heard.
13
The drive up to Ness’s estate is different this time. At first, it’s hard to say why. I stop at the same service station in Massachusetts to quick-charge the car. I see the same scenery as before. The trip takes the same five hours on the expressway. But then I realize that no journey is ever truly the same the second time around. What felt interminable the first time now passes with a quickness borne of familiarity. It makes me wonder if life seems to accelerate as we get older simply because our days and our experiences become routine. The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.
As I cross into Maine, I remember to call my sister. I haven’t told her about this trip, partly because life has been hectic the past few days, partly because I know she’ll worry about me. Which is a bad sign that I’m making some kind of mistake.
She picks up after three rings. Her greeting is a half-whisper, like I’ve caught her in a meeting. “Hey,” she says. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry if it’s a bad time. Just wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town for a week in case you don’t hear from me.”
“Assignment?”
My sister works for an investment bank and lives vicariously through what she calls my “abnormal life.” Of course, my life feels perfectly normal to me. I did have to admit to her the day before that the Ness interview was a little out there, which she called a colossal understatement. I brace now for what she’ll make of this.
“It’s kind of an assignment. I’m in Maine again.”
“Shut up,” my sister hisses. I can hear movement on the other side, like she’s trying to get some place where she can scream. “I thought you weren’t going back.”
“I changed my mind.”
“What’s gotten into you? I thought you loathed this guy.”
I flash back to a couple years’ worth of phone conversations while I was hip-deep in research for my piece. I may have cursed the Wilde family name a time or two.
“I’m not up here to date him,” I say. “It’s for the piece I’ve been working on about him.”
“Good, because you know how you hate men with better shell collections than yours.”
“I do not.”
My sister laughs. “You totally do. But I’m single. Put in a word, okay? Is he still gorgeous?”
“Sarah, stop.”
“He is, isn’t he? Oh, God, are you falling for him? Tell me you aren’t falling for him.”
“No—of course not. He’s got issues, Sarah.”
“So why are you up there?”
“Because… it’s complicated. Let’s just say the FBI is involved.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Seriously.”
“Your life is bizarro. I’m undergoing death by PowerPoint over here and you’re… I don’t even understand what you’re doing.”
I laugh. “I just called to tell you I love you and not to worry if I don’t get in touch for a few days. Talk to you next week if not sooner.”
“So jealous,” Sarah says. “Love you, you lucky ass.”
She hangs up, and I have one more person to call before I reach the estate. I find Agent Cooper’s number in my call log and dial it. I met with him yesterday and handed over the wire. What I didn’t tell him was that I’d already decided to take Ness up on his offer. As far as I’m concerned, my story and his investigation are two separate things. He promised me the scoop if they turn up anything, and I promised to sit on what I already know.
“Hello?” he says.
“Agent Cooper. It’s Maya Walsh.”
“Stan,” he reminds me. As if I could ever call him that.
“Just wanted to let you know that… I took Ness up on his offer. If I learn anything that might help you, I’ll fill you in.”
“Where are you now?” he asks.
“I’m in Maine. About half an hour away.”
“You should have told me. This is a bad idea, Maya.”
“Maybe. But it’ll be good for my piece. And he promised to show me where the shells came from, so if I learn anything, I’ll pass it along.”
“I appreciate that. But please be careful.” I hear him take a deep breath. “I wish you’d told me. I would’ve talked you out of it.”
“Seriously? You talked me into coming the last time.” The truth is, I knew he would’ve objected. Probably why I didn’t say anything. “Look, I’ll check in when I get back into town—”
“Oh, Maya?”
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking about the marks last night. Inside the shells. One way they could do that is to move a non-extinct species in after they cast the shell. We’re thinking here that it would be cheaper than unique molds.”