setting up private email accounts for my Lonely Hearts personas, just using the site for communicating, but now I create a brand new email address for Denise Reynolds and type a quick message to [email protected]. Hey Chris, it’s me! Thought you should have my email address! Thinking of you! D
I press send.
Ten seconds later, a new message appears in my inbox: Message Not Delivered. Email address does not exist on this server.
I’m not shocked, but whatever bubble of hope was hovering in my chest shrinks considerably. I try again, just in case: [email protected].
Same message.
Same error.
I close the website and type Chris Sherwood into a search engine. Not surprisingly, it generates 14,800,000 results. I try to narrow it down with Montana, then Holden City, then investigator, then asshole, but it doesn’t help. I might have nothing but time on my hands, but I’m not sifting through fourteen million anything.
My eyes flit to the business card resting on the desk. It could be a total coincidence that Chris was using a card from Doug’s business as a bookmark when he sat next to us at the restaurant, just like it could be an oversight that he’s not on the school website. Like it was just bad luck that my dad got arrested and my brother died and I became me.
Before everything fell apart, I never would have thought twice about any of this. Things happen for a reason. Life goes on. Live and let live. I was so consumed by my own personal dramas that I didn’t bother to pay attention to the things that didn’t add up until it was too late and the world imploded.
Well, now I’m not distracted by anything. Now, I stand and go to the maps on the wall, retrieving my red dart from Madagascar and backing up a few paces. This time I aim at the Holden map. I already know where I’m going, but I throw the dart anyway. I like the sound it makes when it pierces the paper.
I’M DENISE AGAIN. I missed her. The auburn wig is clipped back neatly at my nape, and I’m wearing a simple black dress and flats, along with a strand of pearls left over from Alex’s costume collection, and my favorite Birkin bag. No matter the business—restaurant, boutique, bank—the first thing everyone in Holden does is judge your shoes and your handbag. If they’re expensive enough, you’re in. If not, good luck getting a hostess to take you seriously, never mind a banker.
Emerald Isle Investors is located on the second floor of a mid-level building at the edge of the downtown core, just close enough to boast the coveted Holden zip code. The lobby is decorated in muted beiges and grays, with spots of red for color. There’s a vase of fresh flowers only just starting to wilt. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was fancy.
The receptionist who greeted me slides yet another look my way, and I shift in my seat so she can’t see my face. I don’t think she recognizes me; I know she recognizes the bag. What she can’t figure out is what someone with this bag would be doing in this office and not one of the bigger, better firms in the city.
I shift in my seat and try to keep my expression pleasantly neutral, though inside I’m seething. This is day two of my investigation, and yesterday hadn’t gone well. I’d made the two-hour trip out to the Holden School of Agriculture with a kernel of naïve hope in my heart, praying that Chris did work there, that maybe his email address just wasn’t set up yet, that the website hadn’t been updated in a while. He doesn’t work there, of course. He doesn’t have an email. The website is current. I left with a twenty-page information packet and an application form, but no answers.
It doesn’t matter how much time has passed, people are still obsessed with the idea of the missing money. It’s the one thing in my life that won’t die. From time to time a “journalist” will try to check in for an anniversary piece. Or someone working in their backyard will hit something in the ground and swear it’s a trunk of stolen money my dad must have buried there when we owned the land. The first half-dozen times it happened people got incredibly excited, and each time it was just a piece of old machinery, churned under the earth when the land was