This morning, though, she couldn’t get William’s parking ticket out of her head. She wanted him to explain why he was at Lindy’s house; if it wasn’t him, then who borrowed his car and why hadn’t William told the police? She debated how to discuss the ticket with her cousin. There was no question that she would.
And then there was Andy’s visit to the hotel bar. The visit that had kept her up half the night in knots, even after taking a hot bath and drinking a third glass of wine. He was clearly angry—and Max wasn’t positive it was solely directed at her, even though she was certain she was part of his frustration. It was his questions and deflection that had her concerned.
She pushed her suspicions aside; she walked into the hotel’s restaurant and asked for coffee, then glanced through her notes and put her head firmly into the Jason Hoffman murder investigation. She’d promised to listen to the Hoffmans and they deserved her undivided attention.
The research she’d gathered yesterday was limited. An online search of newspaper archives identified Detective Nick Santini out of Menlo Park as the lead investigator. That was at least more than she’d gotten from Corbett. She decided to postpone calling him until after she met with the grandparents. She needed more information about Jason Hoffman’s murder so she could ask Santini the important questions. One thing she’d learned early on was that cops would give you the basics anytime you asked, then dismiss the more probing questions. If you already had the basics covered, they were more willing to answer the tough questions. Research was key.
She’d also dug into Santini’s past when she couldn’t sleep the night before and learned that he’d been in Menlo Park for only two years, coming north after a decade with the Los Angeles Police Department, the last three years there as detective. Prior to his twelve years as a cop, he’d spent six years in the Marines, right out of high school. All that information was posted on a public relations site in L.A.; she could find little on him here in Menlo Park. But that didn’t surprise Max. Most people in law enforcement guarded their private lives. Max wished she could do the same, but her career required her to open up more than she was comfortable with.
The only information she had on Jason Hoffman’s murder was what was in the newspapers immediately after his death and his obituary. The news never said what had been stolen at the Evergreen construction site, if anything, just that Jason Hoffman had been shot in an “apparent” robbery. There had been no follow-up articles, no public police interviews, and no editorials on the investigation.
Max switched gears and looked at the family. His sister, Jessica Hoffman, was three years older than Jason, a graduate of UCLA who’d returned home and worked in local government for the Board of Supervisors. It was unclear what she did, but she worked in the government center. Depending on who she knew and what she did, Jessica could be a help or a hindrance in getting information about Evergreen or working with the police.
Her fiancé was a corporate attorney for a dot-com company in Santa Clara—not good. Attorneys as a rule didn’t like anyone talking to reporters or cops, even if they didn’t practice criminal law. Max would have to work around him if at all possible.
By all appearances, the Hoffmans were an average middle-class family in the San Francisco Bay Area—meaning, if they lived most anyplace else outside of here or New York City, they would be wealthy. But here they were typical of their friends and neighbors. The parents had two kids, raised them in a small house in San Carlos that had more than quadrupled in value since they purchased it twenty years ago, and didn’t appear to live above their means. Jason’s father, Michael, was an accountant for a major San Francisco firm, but not a partner. The mother, Sara, owned the construction company with her brother and managed the books. They were in their early fifties, they had a small mortgage on their home, and didn’t appear to have extensive debt.
Typical, normal, common.
Jason’s murder could have been a robbery, but what had thieves been after at a construction site that had no equipment yet? She supposed she couldn’t be certain of that—she’d need to talk to Detective Santini or Evergreen. Or it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the thieves had been after something at the school, and Jason’s presence surprised them.
His family deserved to know what happened, and the killer deserved to be in prison. Just like whoever killed Lindy should be in prison.
She shifted in her seat as the waitress refilled her coffee. She wasn’t here to investigate Lindy’s murder, but the more she kept telling herself that the more she realized she couldn’t get Lindy and Kevin out of her head. Kevin’s messages, aimed at her, were both troublesome and thought-provoking. Memories, the good and bad, crept in. It didn’t help that everyone thought that’s what she was doing in town. Maybe she should just do it. Shake things up because it was expected of her.
Max thought of their first real fight, when she and Lindy were in seventh grade, when they still considered each other best friends and Max spent as much time at Lindy’s house as her own. It was the kind of fight that could have destroyed their friendship. It hadn’t, but it had changed it.
*
Like she did nearly every day after school, Max rode her bike over to Lindy’s house. She bypassed the grand main house and made her way straight to the tree house.
Tree house was a misnomer—the stately, three-story clubhouse had been built around two old trees. Lindy’s father originally had it built for her older brother, Jerry, but Lindy had taken it over when she was eight, marking her territory by painting the inside pink.
The pink had long ago been replaced by a pale green that her mother said spurred creativity. But the house was all Lindy’s. It’s where they talked, where they played, where they shared. And today, Max had something big to share with Lindy:
She’d gotten a birthday card from her mother.