Green Tea Page 8

  While I mashed the potatoes, Teagan paraded around in her new shoes and we talked murder. She listened intently when I listed all the steps I’d been through trying to figure all this out.

  Once at the table, we moved onto the subject of Morgan, and what we were going to do to celebrate her upcoming nuptials since she wasn’t going to allow us to throw her a shower. We decided that sometimes you just have to allow people their own decisions no matter how un-O’Flynn-like that is. We would have the good grace to do nothing. Until after the wedding, cause after the wedding she will be an O’Flynn, and then we will be her family, and we will all show up to her post-wedding shower. It will be great.

  We were about two minutes into the planning of the post-wedding shower when Teagan said, “I have a question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If those girls have all been dead for a while, but you still found them on that networking site, why are they still there? Are people still leaving comments? Can we see them? Maybe our weirdo is leaving comments on their pages. They say a sociopath will show up at the crime scene and even ask if he can help the cops, maybe our crazy guy is on the web.”

  “Wouldn’t that be spooky? I said I was going to find the killer of Mrs. Ivy-Rosenbloom on the web, maybe I was just off on the victim, not on the process.”

  “That’s a hell of a leap.”

  “Some of us can land a leap, we aren’t prancing around in five-inch heels.”

  “Don’t you love ‘em? Eat. As soon as we’re done, let’s take another look at those pages, at least the ones we can access.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, some of them must be set to private. Not everyone on a networking site wants the world to see into their private life. I have mine set so that only family can get into it.”

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  “That’s because you still use a computer like it’s going to blow up on you or something. You act like it’s your enemy. I don’t even know why you bother to have one.”

  “I don’t either. Most days I don’t even turn it on.”

  “That tells you everything you need to know. I never turn mine off.”

  “All of them had active pages, open to the public. Is that really weird or just a coincidence?”

  “That’s pretty weird. I bet if you check ten women our age, at least half of them will be private.”

  “Maybe someone changed them to public when they died.”

  “That’s another thing. They’re password protected, so who would have the password to change it to public, if they would want to, which, why would you?”

  “So that people can leave their condolences?”

  “A friend would start a separate page for that.”

  “Then I guess it’s weird.”

  “Cara, I’ll bet whoever killed them found them on that site.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound too convinced.”

  “I’ve heard of that, they had a couple of cases where women were found on that list thing, and were killed, but doesn’t that seem just a little pat? If that were the case, some cop certainly would have figured it out. They probably check on networking sites first thing.”

  “True.”

  “So we’re back to square one.”

  “Well, just because it would be a little cliché, doesn’t mean it isn’t what happened, and since when did you start taking everything at face value?”

  “You’re right.”

  “See, you are being weird. You, admitting I’m right without even putting up a little fight? This isn’t good.”

  We finished our dinner. Teagan, convinced that her shoes were everything she could want in a five-inch heel, didn’t even change them before she ran out to her car to get her laptop. She wanted to sit next to me, open two windows on her computer and two on mine so we could compare and contrast the victim’s pages.

  Seemed like a good idea.

  We couldn’t find anything they had in common with each other, as far as what they liked, or their listed interests, or the comments they made.

  I was about to give up when something caught my eye.

  One of the friends mentioned near the bottom of one girl’s page, was on another girls page.

  We did a search of her name, nothing.

  Teagan’s voice was all weird as she stared at her screen, “Maybe she deleted her account, or maybe she is laying somewhere with her legs all akimbo.”

  She started typing away and within a few minutes she explained to me that deleting yourself from the site was a little trickier than you would think, and although it has been improved, it isn’t straightforward.

  She read from something online and said that there’s a chance that the person that we’d found had tried to delete all their comments and everything connected to them, and had simply missed a few.

  While Teagan searched for more answers, I went through and read the comments more carefully.

  I was shocked to find that same name sprinkled on another girl’s page, another girl from my list.

  Teagan was convinced that we were onto something.

  I was convinced that if it was that simple, the cops would have found it long ago.

  Teagan explained that when people try to erase themselves, their information was gone for a while, and then comes back. She said that once you put yourself out there on the Internet, the information really never goes away; sometimes it’s just hidden for a while. Then you log back onto the account for some reason, or sometimes you can even go to a whole other site and don’t realize that it is linked to the social networking site through cookies or something and all that stuff you thought went away, is right back where it was.

  I pointed out that was all the more reason for me not to get all computer-involved.

  Teagan stood up so fast her chair went flying. “What’s Jerkface’s name?”

  “Joe.”

  “I know that Dingleberry. What is his last name?”

  “Brandon, no wait, Branden, why?”

  “The girl, the one that shows up on the different pages of the murdered girls, her maiden name is Branden.”

  “Where did you find that?”

  “I did a search for the name, and that came back with all kinds of listings, and one of the listings was local, so I chose it, and if you do a search on that, then it comes back with the maiden name Branden.”

  “Talk about a leap. I did a search of my name once and there are a bunch of us. I always assumed Cara Siobhan O’Flynn would be rare, but it isn’t.”

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Well, one of the sites will give us all her background information for less than fifty dollars.”

  “I’m not spending fifty dollars to run a background check on a compete stranger, that’s just creepy.”

  “You have any other ideas on how to find out if Jerkface even has a sister?”

  “Oh, he has a sister. He said that it was her that was at the cemetery that day he was following me. He said he borrowed her truck so that he could move something and that she was driving his car.”

  “A girl with a truck?”

  “Some girls drive trucks Teagan.”

  “I know that Dingleberry.”

  “I thought when you did your research on serial murderers you said that women kill their husbands and boyfriends but not random strangers.”

  “If she’s on their sites she isn’t a stranger.”

  “Good point.”

  “You have to believe that if she was on their site, people knew about her, and that she would have come to the investigator’s attention. We’re getting ourselves all whacked out about nothing. Remember the whole thing with the tag numbers. They matched, or at least some of the letters did, but it didn’t mean anything. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “Agreed, but we would be stupid not to at least tell Steph and have her investigator check it out.”

 
“Better him than us.”

  “True.”

  “You want to call or you want me to?”

  Teagan smiled, “You can.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that right now.”

  “I think we should lock the journals up again. You want me to drop them off to Steph on my way home?”

  “You live right down the street it isn’t exactly on your way home.”

  “It would have been more accurate to say on my way to Jessie’s home.”

  “I thought he left town.”

  “The meeting was delayed. He leaves tomorrow.”

  “Then what are you doing here instead of being with him?”

  “He’s at work. I’m going to meet with him later.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind dropping this stuff off to Steph? I haven’t told anyone who she is, so as far as I know we aren’t putting her in any danger.”

  “I’ll drop ‘em off on my way. You give her a call. Make sure that she’s going to be home, or at the office, text me, and I’ll know where to dump them. Don’t forget to tell her what we found so that she can have her investigator check it out.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything else we can do?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I’m going to take off. You want cash for the shoes I can give it to you tomorrow, or I can write a check right now.”

  “I don’t care which, I’m just gonna put it to my credit card anyway.”

  She sat down and wrote out a check, stuffed her old shoes in the new shoebox, stuffed the box in one bag, the journals in another, and headed for the door.

  She didn’t even ask to see my dress on me, or my shoes with it, or anything.

  Weird.

  “You want to take the roast? You can make sandwiches.”

  “You better save it for AJ.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Time to worry. Teagan turning down food is unprecedented.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just have a lot to think about.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “Nope.”

  With that, she was out the door.

  I called Steph, she said she was still at the office and she’d wait for Teagan.

  I love my phone, I can text and talk at the same time. I texted Teagan while I told Steph all about our discoveries of the night. She said she would have her investigator on it in minutes.

  I really don’t think that what we found means anything, but Steph seems to.

  I got a text from AJ saying he was on his way home and was wondering if and how he would be able to get in the door. I assured him I wasn’t leaving and would let him in.

  I straightened up the kitchen, thought about taking a bath, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. What if Jerkface showed up again?

  I called and checked in with my mother, nothing outrageous going on on the O’Flynn front, which is kind of weird, there is usually something to report.

  Steph texted me to let me know that she was in contact with her investigator. His name is Carmine. He might be calling me tonight, but would definitely call me tomorrow to set up a meeting and get a statement from me.

  Great.

  I got online and did some research for the trip to Alaska.

  I’d have to find out if Teagan wanted to explore Seattle before we did the cruise, that’s where the boat takes off, maybe she would want to see the Space Needle and it turns out they have an exotic meat market where Teagan could try anything from yak to kangaroo.

  Oh, please Lord, don’t let her do that. I’d be queasy for the rest of the trip.

  I even found a local whale watching thing, so we could go from there instead of fighting all the people on the ship for a reservation, or we could go twice, doubling our chances of having a whale blow whale snot on us.

  What other kind of snot could he blow?

  We could always rent a car in Seattle and drive around for a while and maybe go up into Canada.

  Wonder how much time Teagan can get off work. Last I heard she still had a gazillion hours of comp time left. If my budget can take it, maybe we should spend some time on a road trip.

  There was a light knock on the door.

  AJ came in, dumped his stuff in the extra room, funny how it has turned from his room to the extra room, an unofficial declaration of us actually living together instead of technically living together.

  I gave him enough time to enjoy his nice hot shower then joined him; which meant that he’d have to cool the water down, but since I was willing to warm him up, he didn’t complain.

  A couple of hours later we were sitting at the dining room table, eating, when AJ asked what had happened lately that I hadn’t told him about. I guess that’s going to be his new thing until he gets over the fact that I didn’t tell him Jerkface got into the apartment.

  I told him about Teagan coming over and that she was pretty convinced that Jerkface’s sister had something to do with the girls with their legs akimbo. I explained that it doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve never heard of a female serial killer killing a bunch of women. Of course, maybe I’d just never heard of it and there are a bunch of them out there, or maybe I’ve never heard of them because even though there are a bunch of them out there nobody ever thinks that way so they don’t get caught. Still doesn’t feel right.

  Maybe she’s a perturbed lesbian? That didn’t make sense to me either.

  “Cara, tell me that you aren’t trying to track this down yourself.”

  “I’m not trying to track this down myself.”

  “Funny.”

  “No, I’m serious. Teagan’s lawyer Steph has a private investigator who’s trying to track it down. His name is Carmine. His name is right out of central casting so of course he’s going to figure it all out and as soon as he does we’re out of this mess.”

  “Good. Promise me you’ll keep your distance. I can’t worry about you, and Suzi and Nana all at the same time.”

  “Is Nana okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t even ask.”

  “You were busy.” He actually blushed. “She’s good. Back to her normal self. I worry about her living alone, but she doesn’t like any of the alternatives.”

  “She could live with us.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me, but to be honest, I already made the offer. I was sure you would be okay with it, but she said no. She won’t even think about it and when Nana makes up her mind, there’s no changing it.”

  “What about friends? Could she and one of her friends share a place?”

  “She doesn’t have a lot of friends, which is another reason I worry. It was all about her and my grandfather. They spent all their time together. They didn’t need anyone else.”

  “They needed you and Suzi.”

  “More like we needed them.”

  “So now she needs you. We’ll figure something out.”

  AJ stared at the table for a while. He was quite. I didn’t want to step all over his thoughts about his grandparents, so I just sat there.

  When he was ready, he said, “So, here’s a question. If Jerkface’s sister is the killer, is Jerkface trying to protect his sister? Is he cleaning up her mess? Is he helping her? A brother-sister serial murderer team is just more than I can wrap my brain around.”

  Whiplash. I was sure his question would be about Nana. “I know. I always say I’d do anything for Teagan and the rest of my brothers and sisters, but serial murder of a non-O’Flynn persuasion, I don’t think so. I’d never actually kill an O’Flynn, but every once in a while, it’s fun to make a plan, especially if Liam or Sinead are involved.”

  I’d actually done a really quick search online and although I found some serial killers that posed as brother and sister, I didn’t see any that actually were brother and sister. My search was far from scientific, or thorough, and just because they might be the first, didn’t mean they weren’t doing this together, but the fact that it was as
outrageous as I thought it was, brought some comfort.

  We sat on the couch and snuggled, seems like it’s been forever since we did that.

  When we finally got to bed, I slept better than I’ve slept in forever and I had a much better morning than I’ve had in a long time, but that almost made AJ late for a shoot.