Then, at 10:05, a white guy with a sprout of pale dreadlocks came in. The shopkeeper hit Play.
“This is the guy,” he said, pointing at the screen. His fingernail was lined with grime, but his hands were otherwise clean. “I’ve got his ID information on file too. William Murphy, twenty-four years old. He signed the paperwork ‘Willie.’ Real twitchy kid—I assumed he was jonesing. Talked non-fucking-stop.”
“What’d he talk about?”
“Oh, he had a big long story about where he’d gotten it. His sister’s best friend’s cousin sent him to see what he could get for it, because she needed milk for her sick infant son or some crap like that. Basically didn’t want me to think he’d stolen it.”
“Which of course you believed, because buying and reselling stolen goods is a crime.” Veronica gave a tight smile. The man gestured as if to say, Sure, whatever.
She leaned closer to the screen, trying to get a glimpse of his face. Something about Willie Murphy was familiar to her. She’d seen him somewhere around town—or maybe he was just one of the handful of trustafarians who came to Neptune for spring break. He was twitchy—there was no sound, but she could tell by the quick, birdlike movements of his hands that he was talking excitedly. He kept looking behind him, like he thought someone might be sneaking up on him.
When he turned to leave, stuffing the bills into his wallet, he looked up for a split second, right at the camera. “There. Can you rewind and pause it when he looks up?”
The shopkeeper did.
And that was when she recognized him.
He’d been in the background in one of the pictures Hayley’s friends had given her, nursing a beer while Hayley Dewalt fed Rico Gutiérrez a strawberry. And he’d been at the party the night Aurora went missing—she’d seen him jumping into the pool.
She turned away from the shopkeeper, pulling her phone out of her purse. As she dialed, she put the necklace into her wallet.
“Hey, you gonna buy that?” the shopkeeper demanded. She snorted, covering the microphone to reply.
“You mean this stolen necklace that you illegally purchased? I don’t think so. This is evidence.” She uncovered the microphone. “Hi, Mac, sorry about that. Yeah, I need you to run another background check for me and e-mail the results, ASAP.”
“Sure,” Mac answered. “What’s the name?”
“William Murphy.”
She paused. For a split second she thought about telling Mac what she was planning to do. But then she remembered how Mac and Wallace had looked at her that night in Mac’s apartment, after they’d discovered just who owned the house on Manzanita.
Well, what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. And if she wanted to find Willie Murphy, she didn’t have a choice.
She was going to have to go back to the party.