She let the door swing closed behind her and stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. Then she navigated her way to the desk she’d sat at earlier, picked up the phone and dialed Zoe’s number.
“Ab?” Zoe picked up right away.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“I’m so glad you called back.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’ve just been doing detective work all day and I want to show off about it.”
“You found him?”
“I think I found him, but I can’t be sure. His name’s not Scott Baumgart. I’m pretty sure it’s Eric Newman.”
“How’d you find him?”
“Well, first I did a ton of searches for a Scott Baumgart and nothing really came up, nothing that made me think it was him, anyway. And so then I just started doing searches based on everything we know about him. Carpentry. The theater. San Francisco. And I found this one article from about five years ago that was in a local newspaper. It was about this theater north of San Francisco. The Lagunitas Community Theater.”
“Yeah, he said he acted in community theater,” Abigail said.
“The article was basically about how all the actors at the theater did double duty. Like the lead actress worked in the box office and one of the actors designed all the programs. And there was this one line that said that the actor Eric Newman was an accomplished carpenter and helped build the stage. So I looked up Eric Newman and there wasn’t a ton, but he has a website for a freelance carpentry company, and he has a few credits from being in plays, but not for a while. Not for a few years.”
“Did you find a picture of him?”
“Just one. It looks like a professional headshot, and it’s really pixelated, but he looks like the guy from the bar that night. I mean, I didn’t get a good close-up look at him like you did, but I kind of remember what he looked like.”
“Brown beard, blue eyes.”
“He has a beard in the picture, but it’s black-and-white so I can’t tell anything about his eyes. He’s your type, though.”
“Cheekbones and squinty eyes?”
“Yes, definitely,” Zoe said.
“I think that’s him.”
“I do, too. I think we totally nailed him. So, here’s the thing I haven’t told you yet.”
“Okay,” Abigail said, and something about Zoe’s tone of voice made her stomach flip a little.
“You said he was married, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what he told me. That he was married, and that he was unhappy.”
“So, I found an article from about two years ago. There was an Eric Newman who was on a honeymoon with his wife down in Baja California, and she drowned. The wife drowned.”
“Do you think it’s him?” Abigail asked, thinking there were probably many Eric Newmans.
“Here, I’ll read it to you. ‘Eric Newman, the groom, runs his own carpentry business in San Francisco. He met Madeleine Cartwright when she hired him to put molding up on the ceilings of her recently purchased Victorian.’”
“Jesus,” Abigail said. All she’d heard was the name of the bride.
“It’s him, don’t you think? It has to be.”
“Yeah, it has to be,” Abigail said, then added, “Zoe?”
“Yeah.”
“So, we gave each other fake names at the vineyard. Like, it was a game we were playing, each of us deciding what to call one another, and he decided to call me Madeleine.”
“What? That’s nuts. Ab, you need to report this guy for following you there. Seriously, right now. It doesn’t matter if Bruce finds out.
If he truly loves you, he’ll forgive you. This guy’s probably a total psychopath.”
“I think maybe he’s just obsessed with me. I don’t know. Maybe I reminded him of his wife and he kind of cracked.”
“He also could have killed his wife.”
“What do you mean? What did the article say?”
“Well, it didn’t say anything like that. But I don’t know, maybe he drowned her and got away with it.”
“Okay. You’re freaking me out.”
“You should be freaked out,” Zoe said. “Seriously, you need to tell Bruce about this. You need to get off that island.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it. I’ll deal with it. Zoe, sorry, but I told people I was going to the bathroom and we’ve been on the phone forever.”