Dammit. I’d forgotten that I’d leave an imprint. I decided to be ultra conservative when deciding what other docs to open. That ruled out most of the ones I’d earmarked. The last two, labeled KOSTAS and VALENTINE, were both password protected. In the Finder, I sorted all the files to put the most recently opened on top. Nothing stood out. I scrolled to the previous summer and found nothing had been opened at all between April and October, which made sense since that was when he’d evacuated the house for renovations.
His email, I decided, would be more helpful since it traveled with him. Plus, the messages wouldn’t date stamp when they’d last been looked at. There were only a handful of unread messages, all business related. The rest were archived in folders. Dozens of folders. And in the folders were more folders. I didn’t have enough time to sort through them like I wanted, so I searched for terms I was interested in first. Vilanakis brought up nothing. Michelis had the same result. Missy brought up several but nothing of value. Nothing that said, “I killed her.”
Honestly, what was I expecting?
I hesitated before typing in the next term to take a deep breath and prepare. When I was ready, I put in Amber.
Four messages turned up.
I started with the oldest from October of the year that Amber and Reeve must have met. It was from a private investigator and included an attached file, basically a background report listing all her basic information. I assumed it was standard procedure for him to obtain one when seeking out a new girlfriend.
The next email was an application for a rush passport for Amber, from June of last year. Probably just before they’d gone to Wyoming. It was approved. So why had she needed a passport? And did she use it?
The message that followed was even more intriguing. It was dated November 1 and included a single attachment and only a simple line of text. “I’m enjoying her immensely. Thank you much. M.” I opened the file and my heart nearly stopped. It was the picture of Michelis and Amber from the Colorado casino that Joe had shown me. The one that had been sent to him anonymously. Except, in this one, Michelis wasn’t cut off, and I could see it was he who was taking the shot with his phone.
The email had come from [email protected], a third-party service, it seemed. But I guessed it was Michelis who sent it, that he was the “M” in the signature. Was it he who had sent the picture to Joe, then? If so, why? And the message – didn’t that suggest that Reeve had given Amber to his relative as a gift?
Don’t read into it, I told myself. It could mean something else. I didn’t know what, but I was still defending Reeve, even to myself.
The last email was from the same address, dated the day before Thanksgiving, and was just as upsetting. It read, “Thought you’d be interested. M.” Attached was the Jane Doe autopsy report that Joe had shown me.
I hadn’t thought there was any more in me to deflate, but apparently there was. Because what further proof did I need that Reeve had been involved in Amber’s death?
Except, I still didn’t know that for sure. It didn’t mean that Reeve had wanted her dead. He might have shared Amber, as he’d told me he’d done with women before, and then maybe it had been Michelis alone who had decided to end her life. Maybe Reeve had thought that his relative would take care of her, love her even. Maybe Reeve had been just as upset about this turn of events as I was.
Though, that was unlikely.
Either way, I knew I should send both of the last two emails to Joe. But I still wasn’t ready to subject Reeve to further investigation. Not yet, anyway.
Instead I forwarded both the messages to myself, and then deleted the evidence.
I was exhausted now, too drained to handle any more revelations. I closed out of Reeve’s email and clicked the icon for the solitaire game, but accidentally hit the system’s photo displayer instead. A string of pictures popped up, filling the screen, all of them featuring the same two people – Reeve and Amber. They seemed to have been taken in the backyard by the pool, one after another, so that if I flipped through them quickly, they appeared animated. In them, Amber sat on Reeve’s lap on a deck chair. Both were laughing in the first pictures, kissing in the last few. In stark contrast to the emails I’d read, they told a story of a couple that appeared very much in love.
Was it really also the tale of a man who would give her away to a murderer? It didn’t seem possible, but how many times did pictures really tell the whole story? I’d seen only that afternoon how angry Reeve could get when provoked. If he could be like that with me, there was no telling what he could have been like with her.
Whether they were honest or not, I studied the images for long minutes, trying to find a clue that something was wrong, that something was off. They were hard to look at, for many reasons. Because I missed her. Because she was happy in them. Because she’d never be happy like that again. Because the man that was the cause of her happiness in these pictures was the same man who’d sent her to her death.
Because that man had never looked at me the way he was looking at her.
It was all I could take. I shut down the photos, turned off the light, and crept back to Reeve’s bedroom. I undressed quickly, got under the sheets, and buried my face in the pillow where, finally, the dam broke and I grieved the loss of my best friend.
I awoke with a start, the room dark except for the nightlight. Reeve stood above me, wearing only his jeans, the corner of the bed sheet in his hand.
“Fuck,” I said, rubbing an eye with the butt of my hand. “I fell asleep. I’m sorry. What time is it?”