Bingo. Max figured that someone as diligent about keeping a diary for years wouldn’t have just stopped writing after her mother burned it. She’d just become better in hiding it.
And she’d never told Max. Max tried not to let that truth sting, but it irritated her like sand in her shoe.
“It wasn’t part of the evidence,” Max said. “Her father doesn’t think she had one. Lindy and I—” She couldn’t explain how they argued about secrets, how they’d fought over whether to expose Brooks and Kimberly’s affair to the world. It was a cloud over Max, that she and her best friend had so many fundamental disagreements … but Max had never turned her back on her. Or, she hadn’t thought she did. But in the last months before Lindy was killed, they’d been estranged. Distant.
Max wished it could have been different.
“I never saw it,” Max said.
“She wrote in code. I never read it. She hid it. She told me some things—like how she was going to get back at the people who burned her.”
“Who?”
“I thought she meant Caitlin or her mother.”
“Why? She and Caitlin were best friends.”
“Lindy always believed that Caitlin was the one who left her diary in Mrs. Frauke’s classroom.”
When they were freshmen, Lindy had brought the diary to school to show a picture she’d taken of Mr. Bonner, the freshman English teacher, and Mrs. Frauke, the advanced French teacher. Back then, cell phones with cameras were rare for most of the world, but not the affluent in Atherton. Lindy would take pictures, print them out on her computer, and delete them so her mother—who was prone to going through her phone to see who was calling her—would never see them.
It was that scandal—with Mrs. Frauke finding the picture and going to the headmaster with the accusation that Lindy was blackmailing her—that had Lindy suspended for a week and Kimberly reading and burning her diary.
Max didn’t know whether Lindy had blackmailed Mrs. Frauke, though she wouldn’t have put it past her. Lindy had a cold streak, especially when things didn’t go her way. But Max had never heard that Caitlin had anything to do with the diary’s discovery.
“What was in this diary?”
“I said I don’t know!”
“But you have an idea.”
“I think,” she said, “she wrote everything she knew. Lindy Ames was Jekyll and Hyde. When Mrs. Ames burned her diary, she realized that her mother was scared that Lindy knew something about her. Lindy made it her mission to find out all of her mother’s secrets.”
Like her affair with Uncle Brooks.
Olivia smiled. “Everyone has secrets. I’d think you more than anyone would know that.”
Chapter Eighteen
Max changed her mind a half-dozen times about her next step after leaving Olivia’s house but decided to visit William at his law office. She sent Jasper a message that she would be thirty minutes late meeting him.
William practiced corporate law for one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. Probably the world. At thirty-one, he was a junior partner after only five years with the company, which he joined immediately after graduating from law school. He was the pillar of perfection in the eyes of most everyone: attractive, wealthy, intelligent, with an attractive, wealthy, and (marginally) intelligent wife. He had two perfect sons to carry the Revere name into posterity.
To see him rattled that she showed up at his office right before the lunch hour had Max wanting to laugh.
“Maxine.” He glanced around to see who else had seen her come in.
“I checked in with the guard. The Revere name opens doors, as I’m sure you know.”
“I—”
“I’m here as your cousin, not a reporter.”
He breathed easier. She felt bad about giving him that little white lie, but if anyone was eavesdropping, she didn’t want to start rumors.
“I have a lunch meeting,” he said, “but I’ll delay.” He turned to his secretary. “Minnie, can you call Josh and Doug and tell them I’ll be a little late?”
“Of course, Mr. Revere.”
Max saw a brief exchange, a special look, between Minnie and William. She might not like Caitlin, but she sure as hell hoped that William wasn’t sleeping with his secretary. How … common. How … typical. William had many attributes; fidelity had never been one of them. Like father, like son, Max thought. She was surprised that she was more disappointed than angry.
William’s office wasn’t as spacious or subtly rich as Gerald Ames’s, but it was grand nonetheless. Dark furniture, a complete set of law books in built-in bookshelves, immaculate desk. A conference table that could seat eight comfortably, along with a leather couch and two matching chairs “So, how long have you been sleeping with Minnie?” she said as soon as the door closed.
William blushed ten shades of red and Max swore under her breath. “It was a guess, cuz, and you reminded me again why I always beat you at poker.”
“What do you want?” he snapped. He crossed his arms and stared at her.
“Sit down,” she said.
“This is my office. You haven’t been home in two years, and after what you pulled at Grandmother’s house?”
“What did I pull? Confronting our grandmother and your father for obstruction of justice?”
“They did nothing—”
“I’m not here about that. I’m here about Lindy’s diary.”
He rubbed his face and sat down. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“The truth.”
“I told you exactly what happened. I didn’t know anyone knew about the ticket, or that Grandmother intervened. She told me everything after you left Saturday. She’s very upset, Maxine. She’s not young. She’ll be eighty this summer.”
“She’s upset because I called them on it.” Max was deviating from her plan. She hadn’t wanted to fight with William about the parking ticket or family. “William, I need to find Lindy’s diary.”
He stared at her as if he hadn’t heard her. When she stared back, he asked, “What diary?”