Her mom’s desk phone rang, as Tenley knew it would. Her mother answered.
“Yes,” Mom said. “Give me a minute, please.” Mom hung up, flapped open her computer, clicked the mouse. Narrowed her eyes at the screen. Then turned to Ward, still with that smile.
Tenley could hardly keep from smiling too. She felt powerful, for the first time.
“It’s the police,” Mom whispered to Ward.
“Shit,” he muttered. He glanced at Tenley, but she pretended to be looking at her fingernails.
“Yeah.” Mom pointed to the side door, conspiratorial. “Why don’t you wait in the greenroom? I’ll let you know the minute they’re gone.”
Before Jake could say a word, Catherine Siskel had opened the door and gestured him into her office. She put one finger to her lips, then pointed it to her desktop computer. Signaled him to follow her across the room.
Jake nodded, understanding. They’d stay quiet. Could her plan work?
Tenley uncurled herself from the sofa and joined her mother and Jake behind the desk. On the computer screen, Jake saw an unnaturally blue-tinted view of a flowered couch, two wing chairs, two end tables, an elaborate Oriental rug. A closed door in the back wall. And, pacing in front of the couch, a man in a pin-striped suit. Ward Dahlstrom. The “chief of surveillance.” Perfect.
Jake acknowledged Tenley’s skills with a thumbs-up. Tenley shrugged, accepting the approval. On the phone, Catherine had explained the girl had rigged up the greenroom laptop as a one-way computer video feed-like Skype or FaceTime. And this time Mr. Surveillance had no idea he was the one being secretly watched. And recorded.
Catherine had flapped a yellow legal pad to a clean page. Uncapped a felt-tip pen.
Tenley says he can hear us, she wrote.
“Hello, Detective,” Catherine’s voice was louder than normal. She looked at the screen, not at him. “What can I do for you?”
Jake matched her volume, also keeping his eyes on the screen. “We need to talk, ma’am. I need to see your…” Jake paused, made something up. “… calendar from the past week.”
On camera, Dahlstrom took three paces to the left, turned, and paced to the right. The man stopped, hands on hips, and looked up at somewhere on the wall in front and above him.
That’s where I found cam, Catherine wrote. Upper left, in smoke alarm.
Jake held his hand out for the pen. You touch it?
No.
“Let me look for that calendar, Detective,” Catherine said. “It’ll take a moment.”
The camera’s microphone made a barely audible buzz thorough the computer speaker. Dahlstrom, fidgeted, looked at his watch.
Jake and Catherine exchanged glances. Tenley stood, pulled out her cell phone, looked at her mom, then at Jake. Held up her phone, inquiring with her eyebrows.
Jake nodded, mouthed the words. “Do it.”
Tenley’s thumbs moved across the phone’s tiny keypad. Jake saw her hit Send, then smile.
On the screen, the light changed in the greenroom, the surveillance blue diffused by a fluorescent glare as, with a click, the door in the back wall opened.
Dahlstrom turned at the first sound, his back now to their clandestine computer. “What?” they heard him say.
And there, on camera, was Brileen.
Moment of truth, Catherine thought. Would Brileen be able to pull this off?
Catherine watched the video feed coming from the greenroom. An opaque wall separated them, but thanks to the laptop’s video camera, the layers of wallpaper and plaster and insulation might as well be nonexistent. They could see and hear everything.
“What are you doing here?” Brileen said. “I was in the bathroom.”
On the way back from the morgue, the three women, Catherine, Brileen, and Tenley, had plotted the trap to catch Ward Dahlstrom. They knew they couldn’t simply confront him with the Lanna video. He’d just insist he hadn’t known it was being taped.
They needed the police to clinch the trap. Now the three of them-mother, daughter, and cop-would watch the charade unfold.
Brileen had sworn she’d do anything to make up for what she’d done.
Now they’d see.
Brileen had positioned herself behind the couch. A barrier. Just in case.
Even with the inferior video quality, Catherine could see Dahlstrom’s posture change, his back straighten.
“What are you doing here?” Dahlstrom’s voice, wary, came through the speaker perfectly. He reached into his pocket. “I have no idea who you are.”
He took a step toward Brileen.
“Mom,” Tenley whispered.
Catherine saw Brogan move toward the door to the greenroom, hand to his waist. As they’d planned. If Brileen were in danger, he’d have to act.
But Dahlstrom had simply taken out a cell phone.
Catherine signaled the detective to come back to the screen. “Is this the calendar you wanted to see?” she said, keeping up their pretense. She hoped Dahlstrom was too distracted to eavesdrop.
“Let me look,” Brogan said. And he was looking. At the screen.
“My name is Brileen Finnerty,” they heard her say. Brileen planted both hands on the back of the flowered couch. Leaned toward Dahlstrom. “Mean anything to you?”
Dahlstrom didn’t budge, his back to the laptop’s eye. “Should it?”
“Wish we could see the guy’s face,” Catherine murmured.
Brileen shook her head, as if impatient. “Look. Don’t screw with me. I’m Tenley’s ‘friend’ now. As you well know. But Siskel’s got the police out there, I assume you know that, too.”
“Does she know you’re in here?”
“Are you kidding me? She sent me here. Just like she sent you! She’d do anything to protect her reputation. You of all people know that. She’s trying to keep us both out of the cop’s way because I know about the thumb drives, and you know about that murder video.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking abou-”
Catherine thought she detected a quaver in Dahlstrom’s voice. A hesitation. So frustrating not to be able to see his face.
“But they don’t know we know each other!” Brileen interrupted, insistent. “And they don’t know about Hugh. And that’s what makes this perfect.”
Who’s… Detective Brogan wrote.
“Don’t you see?” Brileen went on, persuading. “Catherine Siskel has the thumb drives. Both of them. They were in her dead husband’s pocket. The cops gave them to her. Both of them.”
Both? Not true, Brogan wrote.
Catherine nodded. Exactly.
“But here’s the thing,” Brileen went on. “The cops didn’t watch the videos. And Catherine didn’t either. But Lanna told me about you, Ward. All about you.”
“Lanna who?” Dahlstrom said.
“Lanna who?” Brileen voice was a mocking echo. She smoothed a hand along the back of the couch, then pointed at Dahlstrom. “Oh. I get it. You think I’m-”
Catherine held up crossed fingers. Brogan nodded.
“-wearing a wire?” Brileen stepped around the side of the couch, came toward him. Arms outstretched. Offering herself. “Are you kidding me? Please. Fine. You want to check?”
Dahlstrom turned away. And as he did, his glance flickered to the upper left, exactly where Catherine found the hidden camera.
He knows, Brogan wrote.
Yup. Catherine wrote. “Is there anything else you need, Detective?” she said out loud.