I feel a renewed sense of hope as we drive to Malcolm’s. Maybe I can finally get a lead on this thing and prove to Emmett that I do care about what he’s going through. Originally, I’d wanted to find Bernadette so I could push Emmett out of my life again. But things changed quickly. Now I want us to find her so I can have more of him.
14
Chapter Fourteen
Malcolm’s mansion is nothing like Lily’s or Emmett’s. It’s clean and sleek. Nothing like the old-fashioned classical architecture I’ve seen everywhere else around here. And the inside is the same, with carpets and marble flooring so white I’m scared to walk on it, and bright white walls broken up by modern, abstract art pieces in bright colors that pop against the starkness.
“This place is exactly how I imagined it would be,” I marvel as I take in the clean, minimalist vibe, the big, open, almost too-empty rooms. He shoots me a discerning look. “I just mean…I envisioned it being really modern. With you and your dad being tech guys and all.”
“My place is actually around back,” he tells me as we walk through to the back doors. “I just wanted you to have a glance at the main house. My parents have great decorating taste.”
“You have your own place?”
“My dad already has me doing a lot of work for our company,” he explains. “Coding and developing. Things like that. So, they let me have the pool house so I’d have a quiet place to focus.”
“You’re really lucky,” I gape, wondering if the Hendersons are even wealthier than the Jamesons. It’s not too hard to imagine it by the looks of this place.
“I’m really busy,” he shrugs. “They know I stay focused on work and school and am getting ready to take over the company one day. I don’t fuck around. That’s why they trust me to have my own place like this.”
“Don’t you ever make any time for at least a little fun?” I tease as we walk out into the backyard of sprawling greens decorated with elaborate landscaping and lustrous fountains.
“I just took you to Ritzville tonight, didn’t I?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. You did and I ruined it.” I shrink in embarrassment. “I was a complete bummer and now I’m just dragging you into doing more work.”
“No, I love this kind of stuff,” he assures me. “It’s way more fun than my real work. I want to do work with investigations and the criminal justice system one day. This is right up my alley.”
“Oh…well, I guess I don’t feel so bad then.” He leads me past their glowing swimming pool to the house nestled behind it. The inside is a lot like his parents’ house, but darker and with a more eclectic vibe. “This place is almost more amazing than the main house. It’s so clean. Let me guess…maids? Everyone around here seems to have those.”
“No, actually,” he corrects me. “I clean it myself. It’s part of my routine. Helps me keep my head together.”
“Wow…new money really is different from old money,” I accidentally blurt out.
“How so?”
“Your work ethic and sense of responsibility,” I clarify, wishing I didn’t have such a big mouth.
“You mean old Emmett doesn’t have those kinds of things?” he chuckles back, making me feel terrible.
“No, he does. I’m sorry,” I wince, squeezing the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know why I said that. You seem to have that effect on me. I keep blurting out all sorts of things around you.”
“Well, here it is.” He waves his hands across the biggest desk I’ve ever seen, neatly organized with various screens and controls. “This is where I do all of my work.”
“It’s a lot more elaborate than my old laptop, that’s for sure.” I admire the setup, wondering what all of the different gadgets could possibly be for.
Malcolm sits down at his desk and goes to work. He babbles off a string of technical jargon that goes way beyond my understanding of computers. I try to keep up, but I mostly just try and stay out of his way. But I’m relieved he seems so knowledgeable and has so many tools at his disposal. Maybe I’ll leave here with something that’s actually useful for Emmett.
“Is this legal?” I ask hesitantly, as he outlines the process of hacking someone’s cell phone data.
“Not at all,” he answers smugly.
It makes me a little nervous, but if you can’t trust the cops around here…what else can you do?
“Okay, I’ve got all of her cell phone data from the past six months,” he tells me after a long string of typing and clicking and speaking to me in what might as well be a whole other language.
“Wow, just like that, huh?” I gasp. “Anything recent?”
“No, it looks like all activity stopped about two weeks ago,” he says as he clicks through pages of encrypted data.
“Sounds about right. Emmett said she had already been missing for a few days before he came to me. What about the last location?”
“It looks like the last traceable on the phone was the Jameson Mall,” he replies, still scrolling through. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the last place she was. The phone could have died there and never been recharged. Or it could have been dropped.”
“The mall? Huh.” Not a surprising spot, but knowing it’s the last place her phone was used feels important. “Well, that’s more than we knew before. Anything else useful?”
“I can pull up her calls and messages,” he trails off into more typing. “Looks like these were the last numbers she exchanged texts and calls with. The texts seem to indicate meeting up at the mall, which makes sense.”
“What are the numbers?” I ask impatiently. He angles the screen so I can see. He flips through the contacts in his phone, letting me look over his shoulder as he compares them to the ones on the screen. It doesn’t take us long to find a match. “Those are Lily and Vivian’s phone numbers. You don’t think…Do you think this means they have something to do with her disappearance?”
“Based on that alone, I’d be inclined to say no,” he speaks candidly, pursing his lips. “Though you shouldn’t rule it out. Whatever happened to Bernadette could have happened right after meeting up with them. But what’s strange is…if I pull up the records from their numbers…Look at the timestamps here.” He angles the screen in my direction again and points to a transcript between two phone numbers.
“That’s Lily and Vivian talking to each other, right?”
“Yeah…all the way past the meet up with Bernadette. The three of them were exchanging messages up until their locations were traced to the mall,” he explains. “Then Bernadette’s texts drop off. But Lily and Vivian’s continue.”
“So, Lily and Vivian kept using their phones to communicate with each other…” I try to follow along with him. “Even though the three of them were, in theory, all hanging out together in person?”
“It would appear so.”
“Well, what do the messages say?” I ask eagerly. Not only could this be a crack in the case, but, out of wild curiosity. I would love to know what those three talk about when no one else is around. “Vivian and Bernadette still had some tension between them after the investigation and everything. Could Lily and Vivian just have been talking shit about Bernadette through texts while they were hanging out with her?”
“The texts don’t look like anything out of the ordinary. But it’s still strange.” He makes a clicking sound against his teeth. “Makes it look like they were coordinating around something Bernadette didn’t know about. Something they didn’t want her to know about. Or maybe just one of them was hanging out with her while the other one kept tabs on them.”
“Like to plan an attack or something?” My eyes dart across the screens, wishing I could keep up with it all.
“Possibly. With this being Bernadette’s last known location and them being the last people she talked to…” he trails off, shaking his head. “It definitely doesn’t look good on their part. The police would definitely consider them their best suspects based on this information. Have you or Emmett confronted them about her disappearance yet?”
“No. Emmett’s been too convinced of their innocence this entire time,” I scoff. “Now he finally has decided to ask them about it…but I don’t know if that’s actually happened yet, or if anything has come of it.”
“Well, you should definitely tell Emmett about this,” he announces as he spins around from his desk to face me.
“Definitely.” I nod with my eyes still glued to the screens. “I want to tell him right away. Would you come with me to talk to him? He’s so paranoid that I’m just accusing them out of jealousy. If you’re there to explain the technical side of it, he might actually take it seriously.”
“I don’t know.” He frowns. “I’d be happy to…but you remember Emmett doesn’t exactly like me anymore.”
“You said the Elites had a lot to do with that,” I uphold optimistically. “I know things appear to be a little weird with him and Vivian right now…but hopefully that’s nothing. And if so, Emmett has changed a lot now that his father’s out of the picture. I know it’s hard to believe, but he’s really nothing like he used to be. Maybe he’s let go of whatever he had against you back then.”