CHAPTER9
Despite not wanting to think about Wallace, I found myself unable to avoid it once I got home, thanks in no small part to the billowing vase of white roses and lilies on my doorstep. I plucked the card from the prongs buried between the blossoms and got a face full of floral fragrance.
We are so sorry for your loss. Our thoughts are with you—Melanie, Jana, & Sandra
I looked over my shoulder as if the moms might have been watching, but only saw the quiet street. It was early afternoon by now, and most everyone must have been inside for nap time.
My fake date with Bray lasted another round of coffee while we discussed our plan to approach Brittany Condor. Since her break with the Browning family, Brittany had taken a position at a local bookstore. I would stop in for a visit the next day during Brittany’s shift. A simple phone call to the store, Sweet Briar Books, asking for Brittany was enough to learn her schedule. I took the easy win and chalked it up to people being either way too friendly or way too trusting in Del Rio, and decided it was likely both.
The flower vase was not light when I lifted it, and it hardlyfit through my doorway. The moms must have spent a fortune to have something so extravagant delivered on short notice. I nearly sneezed from the dusting of lily pollen, which brushed my nose as I squeezed inside with it. I set it on the dining table and gave it a quick once-over, looking between the blooms for any hidden cameras or listening devices. A hazard of the job, surely, but also, knowing we were dealing with actual criminals and not some figment of Bray’s imagination, the chance was not zero the gesture held an ulterior motive. When I didn’t find anything nefarious, I chalked the delivery up to the moms simply being thoughtful.
I stepped back from the table and removed the envelope protruding from my hoodie’s pocket.
Before we had left the café and I called a rideshare to get home, Bray handed me an envelope of cash.
“Your allowance,” he’d said as awkwardly as he possibly could. He had blushed like he was paying me for sex, and I almost laughed at his embarrassment.
Wallace had been handing me envelopes, bags, cases, sometimes straight wads of cash as payment over the years. I needed money to live, and that was part of our deal: I did their dirty work, and they paid me a modest living stipend. Whether the money was tax dollars, skimmed funds, or perhaps reappropriated evidence, I never knew. I did know it was never enough to skip town though. Wallace doled it out in carefully measured amounts and at specific times to keep me dependent. I tried saving it up once, back in my early twenties when I thought escape was possible, but Wallace kept close enough tabs to notice.
I didn’t have a personal bank account, obviously, and usually kept my allowance split between my person, my sock drawer, and a plastic bag in the toilet tank, just in case. For the time being, I left it on the table and untucked from under my arm the folder Bray had given me.
I needed to do my homework if I was fully diving into the case, first by getting to know everything I could about the moms, and then by talking to Brittany. Bray had handed over copies of his files on the moms and everything he knew about their operation, which he admitted wasn’t much.
I sat at the dining table and started with Melanie.
Melanie had a business degree from an elite school, which made sense if she was running a covert smuggling operation—especially one which the DSA couldn’t trace; she was good enough not to get caught. She had married Scott Browning eight years ago, and their two children were born within the past five years. Scott worked for a tech giant, and Melanie stayed home with the kids. She had held a job outside of the house before the kids were born, working for a wholesale shipping company. Again, something I noted made sense.
Melanie had the necessary experience and connections, and she knew how to run a business.
I flipped next to a series of photos obviously shot with a telephoto lens, and pictured Bray leaning out of his sedan’s window, clicking a shutter. My lips involuntarily moved into a smile at the thought of him, and how he probably took several shots with the lens cap on before he noticed. In the photos, Melanie stood behind her SUV with the back hatch open and the inside filled to the brim with rows of identical boxes. I pulled the photo closer to see the boxes were holding those rainbow-colored stackable rings for babies. I counted a dozen versions of the same thing—and that was only what I could see in the photo. Given the size of the SUV, there had to be upward of fifty boxes inside.
I flipped to the next photo. This one showed Melanie outside of her SUV again, this time with a pile of collapsed strollers jammed into the back.Do you know how much a quality stroller costs?Bray had said when he first told me about thecase. I didn’t know, but just like the rainbow rings, I doubted anyone needed, from what I could tell, eight identical strollers.
I placed the two photos side by side to study the background in each, and recognized the driveway where I had stood the night before. The photos were of the front of Melanie’s house, and given the angle, I had a strong suspicion I knew where they had been taken from.
Wanting to confirm, and feeling a little creeped out, I carried the photos and my phone with me into my bedroom. I marched to the window facing the street and held up each print. My stomach dropped in realization when the angle matched perfectly.
I pulled out my phone and texted Bray.
Have you been in my bedroom?
His bouncing dots appeared right away.
I assume you’re looking at
the photos in the file?
Yes. You didn’t answer my question.
I looked at the area where I stood while I waited for his response, checking for evidence someone had been in the exact spot to spy on the neighbors: a footprint in the carpet, a smudge on the window. I saw nothing of the sort.
Yes, I have. But it wasn’t
your bedroom at the time.
The thought of him in my space filled me with a strange but pleasant warmth and also a feeling of vulnerability. I quicklyscanned the room looking for any blinking red lights I may have missed as discomfort washed over me.
There’s not surveillance
