The Apple of My Eye Page 14

  While I whipped up some scrambled eggs Mom made toast, and we chatted about average, everyday things. It had a feeling of normalcy to it and began to calm my worried mind. We were almost done eating when Dad came down the stairs with a little boy in his arms.

  Noah was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but when he saw me, he smiled and put his hands out, chattering, “Mm, mm, mm.” I gladly took him into my arms.

  “I’m not doing anything special at the moment. I’ll get his breakfast for him, Dad.”

  “Thanks,” Dad mumbled, still a little tired himself. He left us to go turn on the morning news.

  Mom turned to go upstairs with, “I think I’ll go grab a shower.”

  Noah was delighted to have me feed him his breakfast. It looked like returning to our old routines was important for him too. He was still a big fan of rice cereal, which I would mix together with fruit of some kind. This morning it was bananas. While more ended up like glue in his hair, it was a moment we were both enjoying.

  Eventually, I handed Noah off to Dad. I wanted to go upstairs to search through Paul’s computer for anything out of the ordinary. It would be tedious, but maybe there were files that might give me some hints as to what I was looking for. I could also look at his browser history, bookmarks, and emails. It was doubtful to me that I would find anything. Paul had shared with me all his passwords since the moment we were married. I didn’t think that whatever he was hiding would be right there under my nose, but at least I had to look.

  Even though I had talked myself into believing Paul would hide nothing in plain sight, I found as I searched that I was expecting to find some astounding revelation every time I opened a file. After several hours of tedium, I disappointedly admitted there was nothing to find. It was a huge let down, only mitigated by the prospect of speaking to the man who had previously bought Paul’s apps.

  Dejected, I started to get ready to meet Amy for our scheduled afternoon meeting. The ominous feeling from the middle of the night began to prey upon my mind, and I questioned its meaning while at the same time trying to dispel it.

  I was ready early, but rather than wait around and stew, I decided to head over to Amy’s apartment. I arrived a little bit early, but Amy was ready for me; so we took off for the university with the windows down and the radio blasting. I was learning to have fun again, even in the midst of my inner turmoil.

  The plan was to meet Taylor Argent in Professor Haynesworth’s office, so being early just meant we could visit with Haynesworth while we waited. He had us both smiling and laughing so much that before we knew it, Mr. Argent was knocking on his door.

  He was a tall, well-dressed man who gave off an unmistakable scent of money. “Hi, I’m Taylor Argent,” he said, while extending his hand to each of us in turn. When we introduced ourselves, he paused while looking at me. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. He quickly grabbed an extra chair from the edge of Haynesworth’s office and turned to face me. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Cass?”

  I felt a bit uncomfortable, as if he were coming on to me, or more accurately, kissing up to me, only I wasn’t sure why. I threw a questioning glance at Amy to see if she had picked up on it as well, but I could read nothing on her face other than impatience for me to start asking questions. I turned back to Mr. Argent. “Yes, I was wondering if you remembered Paul Cass. He was a student a few years back and, as part of a contest, sold a couple of apps to you.”

  “Of course I remember Paul. I was sorry to hear of his passing.” Then he got a rather beguiling smile on his face, “But any friend of Paul’s is a friend of mine.”

  “Why?” I bluntly asked, tired of whatever game he was playing.

  My question surprised Taylor Argent, but he composed himself quickly, responding with, “Because Paul sold us a couple of very profitable apps.” He looked at me as if I were the clueless one, which actually seemed to fit at the moment.

  “I’m sorry. That all happened before we were married. Could you tell me a little more about it?”

  He smiled. “Absolutely. There was a bidding war over that first one, but we won out I’m happy to say. We paid him a half a million dollars for that app and the second one together, but it was well worth it. I’ve stayed in contact over the years, you know, just a phone call every six months or so. I practically begged him to come up with more apps for us.” Then his face fell as dawning came. “You didn’t want to meet with me to sell me one of his apps, did you?” It was more statement than question, but I now understood his eager behavior from before.

  “No, I’m afraid not.” His face was completely crestfallen now. “But,” I said, and his eyes perked up expectantly, “he was working on something when he died. Had he talked to you about it?”

  Almost breathlessly he replied, “No, but I had told him I would buy just about anything he could produce for me. So, if you are interested in selling it ...”

  “I’m afraid we’re jumping the gun here. I’m just looking for information right now. I’m not interested in selling anything at this point.”

  . . .

  By the time we were done talking a little while later, it was clear that Mr. Argent knew nothing more that could help me, but it was also apparent he would do practically anything to secure a deal for whatever Paul had produced. I never let on that it was only a partial app or anything about what it did. I was interested in receiving information, but I wasn’t ready to give any yet, even if that came off as self-serving. I viewed it more as being cautious.

  During the course of our conversation, my sense of concern and worry had begun to escalate. I was now confident that the break-in at our house had had nothing to do with me after all. The fact that Paul had sold apps before for a large sum of money, coupled with the fact that he had felt the need to place his flash drive in our safe, made it clear that the burglars were after Paul’s computer, not mine.

  I wasn’t sure yet what to do with that knowledge, but the whole idea of it made me extremely nervous. And what in the world had he done with the five hundred thousand dollars he had earned from his app sales? I suppose he could have spent it before he met me, but that didn’t seem likely. He wasn’t driving around in a fast car or living in a fancy place. It was one more mystery, one more point of confusion.

  . . .

  The drive home was quieter and more subdued than the outgoing trip had been. We talked little as Amy sensed my need to process what I had learned. After returning Amy to her apartment, I headed for home.

  As I pulled the car into the garage, my phone buzzed in my purse. I turned off the ignition and fumbled to pull my phone out. The caller ID said it was Summerhill Police Department. My stomach dropped. I hoped I wasn’t in trouble for asking around.

  “Yes, this is Brea.”

  The voice of Detective Lentus sounded in my ear. “Mrs. Cass, we just wanted to let you know that the phone calls made to you the night of the break-in traced back to a burner phone.”

  “A burner phone?”

  “Yeah, you know, those disposable phones you can buy anywhere. They aren’t registered to a name or address, so they’re basically untraceable. They’re popular with drug dealers and criminals in general. Sorry, but it’s a dead end.”

  I may have been mistaken, but his voice sounded a little excited, as if a burner phone added intrigue to the whole situation, as if my troubles were entertainment to him. But, I had to remind myself, he had called to inform me when he didn’t have to. He was extending me a courtesy.

  “Thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll let you know if we have any other leads.”

  While we talked, I had made my way out of the car and into the house. By the time he hung up, I was s
itting at my desk. I pulled over a pad of paper and absent-mindedly doodled “burner phone, BURNER PHONE, Burner phone,” like I used to doodle my future married name when I was newly engaged. Is this what I’ve been reduced to? I wondered to myself.

  I retraced my writing, emphasizing the B and P as if they would suddenly help answer my questions. I let out a squeal. Mom, not far away, came running.

  “Mom! B P stands for Burner phone. Paul was calling a burner phone the night he died.” With a gasp, my excitement at this discovery sharply died. Why would he call a burner phone, let alone enter it as such in his cell? I could think of no good reason.

  What did I know about his calls to B P, the burner phone? About all I knew was what Mr. Walker had overheard. Under my earlier writing I wrote, “The truth is I left the light on.” As I stared at those words, I wondered again why they sounded familiar to me.

  I gasped as two words stood out to me – “truth” and “light.” It was the phrase that Paul commonly used before he met me! He would tell people they could call him Apollo, the god of truth and light. And Apollo’s last word was “ON.” Paul was involved in the robbery!

  With clarity like a clear yet jagged piece of glass, I knew without a doubt that Paul was being his old self, the arrogant, self-assured Apollo. He had visited the store earlier to case the joint. Then the night of the robbery, his phone call was the final go-ahead signal to his accomplices. He was saying, “This is Apollo, and it’s on.”

  I tried to look at it another way, tried to excuse away the hidden meaning I could not deny, but to no avail. His words were like a puzzle, one of Paul’s favorite things. I soon had to accept that my efforts to undo my conclusions were pointless.

  I didn’t know why they killed him. Maybe it was an accident. But Paul brought this on himself. Paul did this to us.

  I sank to the floor unable to speak further. My breath started to come in rapid gasps as it had in my nighttime dreams. This was what the night warned me of, told me was coming. Yet despite the warning, I could do little to stop the torrent of truth that was drowning me, engulfing me in darkness and filling my lungs with the dirty floodwaters of my life.

  I believe at some point Mom got an inkling of what my pale face indicated. But insightfully she simply backed away, shutting the door and leaving me to conquer the demons she no doubt knew I wanted and needed to face alone.

  DECISION

  Dad brought me dinner at 7:00, when it was clear I wouldn’t be coming out. He said nothing, just opened the door and set down a plate of food on my desk where my computer was supposed to be. Before I even looked up, he had slipped out the door, shutting it behind him.

  The food grew cold, but my heart felt colder. Why, oh why? I kept asking. Paul had a good career. We had plenty of money. He didn’t need to turn to criminal activity. I realized “need” wasn’t really the right word; it was always a choice. But Paul wasn’t in some desperate financial situation, where he might feel driven to illegal activity. He had a job, at least before he walked away from it.

  In all the scenarios I had thought of for what Paul was up to, I had never considered that he was involved in the crime that ultimately took his life. Everything made even less sense now, now that I understood more about what was going on.

  I thought about what I knew of Paul. He was so charismatic. He could get anyone to do anything. People would follow him wherever he led. With an ever-sickening feeling, I understood. Paul was not only involved; he was the ringleader. That was the only thing that would be consistent with what little of him I still felt I knew. This had all been his idea.

  Then why did he focus his energies on a grocery store robbery? That seemed beneath him. I was beginning to wonder if I even wanted to know any more. So far, knowledge had only brought me more heartache. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  Paul had always been a good husband and father. He played with Noah. He helped around the house. He encouraged me to pursue my interests and use my intelligence. Why was this the way he had chosen to use his intelligence? That came off as sounding oxymoronic, that he was so intelligent that he planned something that in the end killed him. I think I would have taken a little less brainpower and a little more life. It appeared it was a bit too late for that.

  It felt like Paul kept dying over and over again, and each time was worse than the last. What kind of daddy would he have been if he had lived? Would he have gone from being a father who played with his son to one that taught him to follow in his footsteps? I was becoming more and more cynical the later the hour, and with that cynicism came an increasing sense of separation. I imagined that I was watching my life on a big screen, as if it wasn’t me, as if the recent events were just part of some fictional play merely dancing before me for my perverse amusement. Paul was becoming more of an enigma to me, as if I had never known him at all.

  I started to think over the events of the last few days. Maybe I could capitalize on that out-of-body feeling and sort through things without emotion. What loose ends did I still have?

  Trying to figure that out, I thought of places I had been in the last week. I had been to the hotel where Paul used to work, Harper’s Mart, Mr. Walker’s house, the police station, the bank, outside Alex’s house on multiple occasions, Professor Haynesworth’s office twice, and home. I didn’t think I was missing anywhere.

  I began with the place I thought was easiest to dispense with, the bank. However, the bank, in a strange way, with the absence of any change to our accounts, was a loose end. If Paul was involved in criminal activity, why hadn’t our bank accounts increased? The answer to that may simply have been that he was just getting started. That would explain the reason no money had come in. Although such little money was stolen from Harper’s Mart, nothing probably would have changed anyway. For that matter, did criminals deposit their money in a bank? I didn’t know. It’s not something I had sat around thinking about before. I snickered to myself; if someone robbed a bank, would he then deposit his take in another bank? It was getting late, and I was clearly getting slaphappy. Putting myself back on track, I realized the bank was a dead end.

  What else could I glean? What about Alex? I was willing to bet about now that Alex had been Paul’s accomplice, probably along with the other man I had seen him with at the funeral.

  It was small comfort to put to rest any idea of another woman. That scenario didn’t fit with any of this, but that realization didn’t help me any. I still had to grapple with how to move forward with my life, a life that I had willingly joined to someone as seemingly dishonest as I was honest. There were simply no answers for that right now. Ignoring what I could not solve, I turned my thoughts to the problems at hand.

  In trying to put things together piece by piece, I thought back to Paul’s phone again. The calls that went back and forth between Paul and Alex were the reason I investigated Alex in the first place. They had occurred regularly, I recalled, up until a few days before Paul’s death. I gasped. The calls to B P started after that. They had probably just switched to the burner phone. It was starting to click into place. My heart started to beat faster with each new piece of understanding. I took a deep breath and focused again.

  If it was the case that Alex had been Paul’s accomplice, I had been half-right about the break-in all along. It must have been triggered when Alex saw me outside his house. I’ll bet he was wondering what I knew about their activities. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was what Paul’s app had to do with any of this, or if it was even related. Although answers were starting to come together in my mind, some things still had yet to make sense.

  What were they looking for in particular when they broke in? Probably anything that would connect them to Paul, that’s why they took the phone. They were just trying to cover their tracks. I imagine the computer would be
an obvious choice whether they were looking for the app or not, and then for good measure they went through all the papers. I was attempting to think this through, but I wasn’t sure if any of my assumptions about the break in were actually correct.

  I paused from my musings and gazed out my office window. It was dead night outside. A chill passed through me. I seemed to be up in the night a lot lately. Somehow, it was appropriate. Paul’s illicit activities took place at night, but even more than that everything just felt dark and was getting darker by the minute, if that was possible. I was still searching for the light, for the hope that all was not lost.

  It was a sobering moment. All my determination to look at things in a clinical and detached manner disappeared into the blackness around me. The vacuum of emptiness seemed to pull the life out of me and draw moisture out of my eyes. Before I knew what was happening, tears were flowing freely down my face. All attempts at control disappeared in the ebony of the night.

  I cried silently as I watched the night outside my window. I reached over and opened the window, willingly allowing, even welcoming, the dark inside, letting it flood my soul. Unlike the night when Paul died and all the times since, I didn’t fight it, no gasping or struggling for breath. Instead, collapsing to the ground, I gave in and let myself drown in the cold black waters of hell.

  . . .

  I lay passed out on the floor when images, dreams I imagine, came into my mind. Paul stood before me with tears that he must have stolen from me, for my face was dry, hot and dry. He looked at me with sadness. It wasn’t the pity I had garnered from others. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew it was sadness for what he had done and what he was putting me through. He said nothing, just shook his head and looked down. It was the most sincere apology I had ever experienced, especially since Paul didn’t normally back down, didn’t apologize.