Eve gave the room another once-over, seeing if there was any other clutter she had to stuff into the trash, a drawer, or a suitcase, didn’t see anything, and reached for the script beside the laptop. Her gaze flicked over Clayton’s list, and her eye caught a name beside one of the license plates.
Green’s Greenery.
That struck her as odd for two reasons. She didn’t recall seeing a Green’s Greenery truck enter or leave the community on the security gate video from Tuesday and Michael Green had told her himself that he wasn’t there that day.
She sat down, opened her laptop, and booted it up. She clicked the link to the Oakdale security camera videos for Tuesday and scrubbed to the time code by the vehicle license plate number.
But it wasn’t a Green’s Greenery box truck in the image. It was an Amazon delivery van.
That didn’t make sense.
She double-checked the license plate on the Amazon van against the one on the list. The plates matched.
The maid knocked at Eve’s door. Eve got up, opened the door, and smiled politely at the woman.
“Can you please come back in an hour? Or put it off until tomorrow? There’s work I have to do.”
The maid nodded, and even seemed a bit relieved, and Eve went back to her computer.
She opened her file directory for the home invasion case and checked the license plate against the list of vehicle owners that were at each of the communities when robberies took place.
Green’s Greenery and Amazon delivery were on the list.
That, in and of itself, wasn’t suspicious. But she still felt a chill.
She called up the Vista Grande footage from Monday and fast-forwarded through it until she found a Green’s Greenery box truck entering the community. A few minutes later, an Amazon van came in. She checked the plate on the Amazon van against the one on Clayton’s list. It didn’t match. She fast-forwarded some more. Another Amazon van came in. She checked Clayton’s list.
It had Green’s plate.
Now she knew how the home invaders got into and out of the gated communities, and that Michael Green was their ringleader.
What she didn’t have yet was anything tying Green to Dalander, Colter, and Nagy, the three dead robbers.
Eve fired up Safari and browsed Green’s website. It showed off his fleet of trucks, featured the faces of his happy workers, and talked about his community involvement. His office was in Calabasas and he proudly supported Bay Laurel Elementary School, A. C. Stelle Middle School, and Calabasas High School activities and events. There were pictures of his booths at school fairs and his logo on team uniforms. He’d also sponsored and coached a soccer team in a valley youth league.
She felt a jolt of excitement, picked up her phone, and scrolled through her photos until she found the ones from their search of Paul Colter’s room.
And found what she was looking for: the soccer trophy Colter won for just participating in the sport. She zoomed in on the team name and the date.
It was the team that Green sponsored and coached.
Now she could tie Green to Colter. But what about Dalander and Nagy?
Eve opened up the virtual drive of Nagy’s computer, went to his library of thousands of personal photos, and began scrolling through the ones taken during the school year listed on the trophy.
While she scrolled through the pictures, her phone buzzed multiple times, all calls from reporters, undoubtedly seeking a quote from her about Anna McCaig and the investigation. They wouldn’t be getting one from her, not today, not ever. She ignored her phone and kept searching the pictures for soccer balls, soccer fields, or soccer uniforms or any familiar faces besides Nagy and his family.
After forty minutes, just when she was beginning to think she’d hit a dead end, she found a picture of Nagy at soccer practice. She slowed her scroll. There were more pictures of Nagy and his team at practices and games. She enlarged a few of them.
And there they were. They were younger, ganglier, and geekier, but still instantly recognizable. Dalander and Colter, on the same team as Nagy. Green was there, too, with a big Tom Selleck mustache that he no longer had.
They weren’t the only faces she recognized in the photos and it changed her perspective on the whole investigation.
Eve called Duncan.
“Did you just wake up?” Duncan asked. It was late afternoon.
“I’ve been up for hours.”
“I hope you’re taking it easy.”
Eve stared at the team photo, at those young faces, and thought about the fate they’d met and her part in it. And the part she still might play. “I’ve barely left my room.”