Page 52 of Her Dark Lies
Elderfield:Mmm, at times. Sometimes, too fun. You know the legend of Icarus. Claire flew too close to the sun and it nearly killed her. After the scandal broke, she acted out. Started seeing this older guy from Hillsboro High School. Stopped painting, her grades dropped. Something was wrong, clearly, but we were kids, we didn’t have the same sort of overdeveloped radar we have on these things now. Looking back, I’d bet cash money he was abusing her, but I never saw any bruises, and she never said a word. I know he was providing her with drugs. He got her into all sorts of trouble.
Harris:You were a kid. No one expects you to know bad things are happening. She never confided in you?
Elderfield:No. Anyway, he was trouble on a stick, just that kind of kid who you know is going to end up in jail, at the very least, or the penitentiary. Claire went wild for a while. Drinking, drugs, tattoos, piercings. I helped with some of that.
Harris:Your tattoos are beautiful. Artwork.
Elderfield:Thanks. I planned everything, both sleeves. Claire drew a few of them for me. Anyway, she’d always had a nihilist streak, which was fun for me, but it really messed her up. She got expelled from Harpeth Hall for cheating our junior year, and that was the summer of the accident.
Harris:The accident?
Elderfield:You know about that, surely. She and Dr. Hunter were in a terrible car accident. He died, she was badly injured. Broke a vertebra in her back. They thought for a while she might be paralyzed. They did all kinds of surgeries and she got the use of her legs back. After that, she was a totally different person. The fire was...dimmed. Not gone, but she wasn’t the same girl. It was like the accident stripped her of all her defiance, and she turned into an obedient child again. She got back into her art, started teaching classes at an art studio downtown. The Before Claire was so dynamic, so alive, so intense and vivacious. The After, she really fell apart. She kind of turned into this seething bag of hatred. She and I weren’t really close for a while. She pushed everyone away.
Harris:You knew the boyfriend, right? What was his name?
Elderfield:Ugh, yes. Shane McGowan. He was such an asshole. I don’t know what she ever saw in him, outside of what drugs he could get. He wasn’t even that cute.
Karmen hits Stop. She pulls McGowan’s sheet from the FBI’s NCIC database. As a security professional, she is granted access. She’s seen this before, but goes through it again, just in case, flicking through page after page. McGowan was a frequent flier, with arrests in multiple states. Property crimes, possession, a gas station stop and rob. No sexual stuff, but plenty of bookings for assault. He was pled down on a manslaughter charge three years ago, then immediately picked up for possession with intent. Third strike.
Then the jails got overcrowded, and the laws changed, and Mr. McGowan was spit out into the world again.
So what happened between his release from SQ and his arrival at the house in Nashville? Was he plotting the break-in all along? Was he watching from afar? Was he smart enough, talented enough, and creepy enough to evade Karmen’s own security protocols and install over twenty micro cameras in Claire and Jack’s home?
She puts a pin in that question for the moment. Karmen is an excellent compartmentalizer. She’s not going to deal with the cameras, not yet. First, she needs to figure out something else. Something that’s been bothering her, that makes her senses come alive whenever her mind lands on the name for a moment.
Who is Ami Eister, the phantom art dealer who visited Claire’s studio?
Because it’s always her first step when investigating people, she plugs that name into the NCIC database. Might as well see if the woman is legit or not.
The computer whirs for a moment, and a file appears on the screen. Sure enough, Eister is a criminal. What luck.
Karmen congratulates herself for her smarts—she knew something was wrong with that story—then settles in to read.
Ami Rebecca Eister. Thirty-one, Caucasian female, black on blue, five nine, one-twenty. Several trespass violations, felonies, pled down to misdemeanors...ah, Eister was a member of PETA over a decade ago, the trespass charges were group things, trying to get animals out of labs. Nothing violent, just the actions of a young conscience.
She types the name into Google, and within moments, several entries come up. The first is an obituary notice.
This Ami Rebecca Eister is deceased. She died six months earlier, while on vacation in the Bahamas.
Karmen finishes off the last of the water and stands, stretching her back.
She’s missing something. She searches again. The name is common enough, but there is only one Ami Eister with ties to the arts scene. Perhaps Claire got the name wrong.
Karmen glances at her watch, it’s nearly 9:00 a.m. Surely the bride and groom are up. She grabs her notebook and her blazer, straps her Glock into its holster under her arm. She needs to run this down, now.
32
Rules for Life
Harper Hunter’s photography rule number one: never shoot family. She’d fought against it, albeit halfheartedly, when her sister called to break the news.
“Guess what? We’re getting married. In Italy! His family has a small island off the western coast of Italy. I’ve seen photos. It’s very romantic. There are ruins.”
“Nothing like the evidence of the decline of Western civilization to add a little ambiance.”
“Don’t grumble. I thought you’d be thrilled. You love to travel. Italy will give you tons of opportunities for sponsorships.”
Oh, the exasperation of a sister making sense.“I do love to travel. And yes, I will be able to make hay with it. When is this blessed event occurring?”
