“Um…” said Dooley, looking from me to Milo and back. “She’s not perfect,” he said finally. “She does have her faults. For one thing…” He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“You can’t come up with a single flaw, can you?” said Milo, chuckling. “Of course you can’t. I’m telling you, Odelia is perfect and I love her to bits. And so do you, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, desperately trying to salvage something from this wreck. “Though I don’t like it when she snores. And sometimes when she thinks we’re not looking she picks her nose.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Dooley cried. “She totally does!”
“Every human picks their nose, you guys,” said Milo. “Now you’re just nitpicking.”
“Sometimes she smells funny,” I said.
“That’s okay. All humans smell funny.”
“She sometimes uses the same shirt two days in a row.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“She eats with her mouth open.”
“We all do, right? I mean, I know I do.”
“She burps! She totally burps,” said Dooley, now getting into the swing of things. “Especially when she drinks Coke.”
“Oh, heck, I wish I could burp,” said Milo. “That’s one of those human habits I’d love to try sometime.”
“She-she breaks wind!” I said, desperate now.
Milo yawned. “Look, I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been a long day. I think I’ll take a nap before I head out again. I’ve got cat choir tonight and I told Shanille I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
And without waiting for a reply, he made himself comfortable on the couch and promptly dozed off.
I stole over to the phone, switched off the recording app, and stole back to the couch, to stare at Milo as he slept. Oh, he was clever. Too clever. But sooner or later he’d slip up. And then I had him.
Dooley was staring at me staring at Milo, shook his head, and walked out.
I had a feeling I was very quickly losing my wingman’s trust and admiration.
Chapter 44
Odelia parked her old Ford pickup in front of a nice little rancher.
“Far cry from Dickerson’s mansion,” said Chase.
“I guess the National Star really does sell a lot more copies than the Daily Inquirer.”
“Or maybe Mr. Brettin likes to live in modesty.”
They got out and walked up to the front door. Chase, in his capacity as police officer, took it upon himself to ring the bell. Moments later, shuffling sounds on the other side of the door announced that they were in luck, and then Olaf Brettin appeared. He was casually dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. “Oh, hey, Miss Poole. So we meet again.”
“We do. This is Detective Kingsley, who is with the Hampton Cove Police Department. Can we step in for a moment?”
If the presence of a cop on his doorstep caused the tabloid editor concern he hid it well. “Oh, sure. Come on in. Is this about the Dickerson investigation?”
“It is,” Odelia confirmed, as they followed Brettin through a cozily appointed hallway—with a nice painting of a man on a horse—and into the living room, where more paintings of horses adorned the walls. There was also a white Stetson hanging from a peg, a clear sign Olaf Brettin was into the Old West.
“That yours?” asked Chase, admiring the hat.
“Yup. I like to wear it when I go riding,” said Brettin. “I got the boots, the vest and the belt buckle, too, if you’d like to see. I even got the neckerchief.”
“You got the gun, too?” asked Chase, cocking an eyebrow.
Brettin laughed. “Now that I don’t got, Chief.”
“We have a question for you, Mr. Brettin,” said Odelia.
“Please call me Olaf,” said Brettin.
“The thing is, remember I asked you about the picture of a rose that was found near Dickerson’s body?”
“Uh-huh. And I told you that doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Your daughter… died a couple of years ago, didn’t she?”
She was studying a painting on the wall that depicted a beautiful young woman.
“She did,” said Brettin, his joviality slightly diminished now.
“I watched a video of the eulogy you gave at her funeral. You called her your rose.”
Brettin’s smile had completely dimmed. “Lavinia was my rose. The light of my life. When she died I thought I’d die, too. I didn’t, even though a part of me did die that day.”
“What happened?” asked Chase, a softness to his voice Odelia appreciated.
“She… took her own life, Detective. A, um, video was made—silly thing.” He was staring off now. “She was young, and in love, I guess. And you know how young people are. They’re into making these… selfies and things.” He swallowed. “So she made one of those sex tapes. Nothing unusual about that. She and this boy she was seeing, they were really into each other. There was even talk of an engagement. She’d introduced him to us—me and Abbey. That’s my wife Abbey over there,” he said, indicating another portrait, this one depicting a strikingly handsome woman with clear blue eyes.
“So she made the tape,” prompted Chase when Brettin stopped talking.
“Yes, she did. And somehow that tape got out. Someone hacked Lavinia’s phone, found the tape, and a bunch of pictures, and threatened to post everything online.”
“That’s horrible,” said Odelia.
“Yes, it was,” said Brettin. “Lavinia, of course, was shattered.”
“Was this a blackmail thing?” asked Chase.
“Yes. But not aimed at Lavinia. Aimed at me. You see, I was making inroads in markets that had previously mainly been Dickerson’s province. The Midwest, for one. And he didn’t like it. And Dickerson being who he was, he decided to play dirty. So he had someone hack my phone but probably didn’t find the kind of dirt he was looking for so he extended the hacker’s scope to my family, my wife and daughter. He must have been over the moon when he discovered that private video and pictures. Pay dirt,” he scoffed bitterly.
“Are you sure this was Dickerson?” asked Odelia.
“Oh, yes. He called me. This was the day after Lavinia had gotten the message about the video being posted online. Dickerson said a little birdie had dropped that same video into his mailbox, and how he wanted to express his concern from one family man to another.”
“He actually threatened you?”
“No, of course not. Dickerson was too smart for that. He just wanted me to know that he had the video, and that if I didn’t back off, he was going to have it posted online.”
“That’s… criminal,” said Chase, shaking his head.
“You should have reported him to the police,” said Odelia.
Brettin looked sad. “What was there to report? That Dickerson had received an anonymous message from the creep who’d hacked my daughter’s phone? I get anonymous tips every day. Pictures, videos—heck, it’s part of the tabloid business model. ‘We pay cash for videos.’ Dickerson would have made damn sure nothing connected him to the hacker.”
“But you knew he was behind the hack.”
“Oh, yes. And he knew I knew. That was his whole spiel.” His expression softened. “One week later Lavinia took her own life. She couldn’t live with the knowledge that that video was out there. I told her I’d take care of it. That no one would ever see it. She must not have believed me. And seeing the line of work I’m in, maybe she was right not to trust me.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Odelia. She felt for the man. This was a horrible story. And showed what a ruthless crook Dickerson had been.
“I blame myself, you know,” said Brettin. “I was Dickerson’s target, and my beautiful flower got caught in the crossfire. And so did my wife. Abbey never recovered. She died six months later. Her heart simply gave up. They say you can’t die from a broken heart but I can assure you that you can. The only reason my own heart is still beating is probably because I’m too stubborn to die. But a big part of me died the day I buried my daughter—my rose.”