Page 136 of Making a Killing

CC:[email protected],

[email protected]

Subject: Robin Tierney

I just had a call from Mackenzie Stirling, and am now in touch with Santa Monica PD: one of Tierney’s neighbours has reported seeing someone entering her apartment about a week ago, who appeared to be her and used her keys.

I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything more.

TB

***

Adam Fawley

2 August 2024

16.25

Alex was in London all day, so I got to leave early and have the treat of picking Lily up from the activity centre. A treat for me, at least, and Lily was beaming when I got there too, but I suspect that was mostly because I was her means of escape. I understand why she dislikes the place so much – they won’t let her sit quietly with a book because the ethos is all about ‘Participation’ and ‘Explorative Play’ and ‘Team Fun’, which is my idea of Hell too, but I can’t afford to agree with her or she’ll turn her mother’s lawyer mind on me and ask why she has to go at all when I have that nice office with a chair where she could read and she’d be very quiet and wouldn’t be any trouble. I know – she’s tried it on with me before.

She tells me they’ve been doing ‘Expression Through Art’ today, and the children are taking their pictures home, though she doesn’t seem especially interested in hers.

‘What were you painting today?’ I ask, after I’ve strapped her into the car seat.

‘Fairy tales. But mine isn’t very good.’

I manoeuvre past someone who’s reversing without apparently bothering to look and join the queue to turn on to the main road.

‘Let me see?’

She holds it up and I squint at it in the rear-view mirror.

‘Looks fine to me. More than fine, actually.’

Positive affirmation is, of course, on the parental must-do list, but Alex has a rule that we don’t overdo it – she says Lily will see through that in five minutes, so the price of serious praise for special things is that we don’t over-egg the mediocre. Or words to that effect. Only this isn’t. Mediocre, I mean. There’s something interesting going on with how she’s arranged the two figures. On the other hand, I don’t have a clue who either of them are supposed to be.

‘Which fairy tale is it?’

She’s looking at it again, frowning slightly. ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’

The car ahead of us turns left and I follow. As usual at this time of the day, the Headington Road is nose to tail.

I glance at Lily in the mirror again. ‘Which bit ofRed Riding Hood?’

She looks up at me. ‘The end.’

‘Is your version a happy ending or a sad ending?’

Because there’s one where she’s eaten and one where she escapes. I have a hunch which Lily will go for, but I’m letting her tell me.

‘I don’t like happy endings,’ she says. ‘They aren’t interesting.’

Bingo. And that tells you quite a lot about my daughter.

‘Show me again? OK, so that’s Red Riding Hood, is it? In the middle?’

Though that doesn’t take much by way of detective skills, given she has a red hat.

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