Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [91]
“Hailey, for Christ’s sake! Grant has nothing to do with your mother. He’s lived in Boston his whole life.”
“Right. Right. How old is he again?”
“Midfifties, I guess. Can we move on?”
“One more question. Where did you tell me he worked?”
“I didn’t tell you, but now that you’re asking, he works for Renley & Associates, the business consulting firm. He’s been there for over twenty years, okay?”
“All right. Sorry.”
I got Maddy onto another topic, but as we talked, I reached over and grabbed a small pad of paper from the nightstand.
Grant Mercer, I wrote. Renley & Associates. Boston.
The next morning on my way to the McKnight headquarters, I called the Boston office of Renley & Associates, and asked for Human Resources. Posing as a mortgage officer who needed to confirm employment, I gave the woman Grant’s name.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We have no employee by the name of Grant Mercer.”
“Can you check to see if he was employed there in the past? Maybe I’m reading his application wrong.”
She hummed while she worked. I could hear her fingers ticking against the keys of her computer. “Sorry,” she said. “Grant Mercer has never worked for Renley & Associates.”
22
As soon as I hung up I called Maddy. She would be annoyed at my meddling, and I couldn’t say what it meant that Grant didn’t work for Renley, but I had to tell her.
It was an hour ahead on the East Coast, already after eight o’clock there, so I tried her office. She was at a deposition, her secretary said, she’d be gone the rest of the day. I tried her cell phone, but I could tell it wasn’t switched on from the way it went right to voice mail. I left her a message telling her to call me as soon as she could.
Feeling jittery and anxious, I reached the McKnight office and was shown into a different conference room than last time, a smaller one. Beth Halverson and I were having a simple catch-up meeting about the status of our case and what needed to be done before trial. There were a million things, it seemed, and I felt exhaustion blanket my anxiety.
Beth came into the room, looking more rested than me in a spring peach suit. “Hailey, how are you? Can I get you some coffee or something?”
“Coffee would be fantastic.”
I got up and paced the room while Beth and I talked, waiting for the coffee to be delivered. I had the feeling that if I allowed myself to slow down, I might shut off completely. The image of that ring on Maddy’s nightstand kept flickering in my mind, along with the fact that Grant Mercer had never worked for Renley & Associates.
Finally, the refreshments were delivered. As Beth cleared a place for the tray, I glanced at the photos hanging on the back wall of the conference room—a series of black-and-white landscapes. A windswept beach was pictured in one, a lake surrounded by tall dunes in the next. It was Lake Michigan, I could tell, probably taken on the other side of the lake, somewhere away from Chicago. I studied them a little closer, moving to look at the next picture in the series, which showed a square, white, monolithic house with a wall of glass.
“Hailey,” Beth said from behind me. “Coffee’s ready.”
“Right. Thanks.” But I remained motionless. I knew that house. “Who took these pictures?”
“Sean McKnight had them commissioned years ago, I think. Some kind of ego stroke.”
“Ego stroke?” I kept staring at the photo of the house, mentally filling in the picture with a figure standing at the corner of the deck. A baseball hat, an orange windbreaker, binoculars held up to the person’s face. And the binoculars pointed toward the lake, toward the beach, right at me.
“That’s Sean’s summerhouse,” Beth said. I heard the tinkling of a spoon against a china cup.
“And this house is where?” I said. I knew the answer, yet I needed to hear it.
“Woodland Dunes.”
I swung around to face her, my hands clasped behind my back to stop them from trembling. “Why did you hire me, Beth?”
She looked up at me over her coffee cup, surprised. “Because you were supposed to be the best in terms of cyber law.”
“Well, how did you find