“Doesn’t look like Joanna contacted anyone after leaving her husband. Not her sister in Los Angeles, or the people at Harris Financial,” I say, though I don’t know if Patel’s really listening. I sip my coffee. “Michael Harris’s phone has a record of receiving the text. But he didn’t respond.”
“At least not through a device,” Patel says glumly.
“You think he responded by killing her.”
He shrugs. “You know what I think about the guy.”
“Joanna’s cell service has been left on all this time,” I argue. “If Harris killed her, it’s strange that he continued paying for service for two lines, don’t you think?”
Patel groans as a surfer takes a hard fall, and then he levels a humorless stare at me. “And you don’t think it’s strange that he continued paying for service for a woman who’d cheated on him, got pregnant by someone else, and broke up with him via text message?”
The man has a point.
After that final text to her husband was sent, Joanna seemed to disappear from the face of the earth.
“They’ve only had two successful wave rides so far,” Patel grumbles. “Unbelievable. I bet they’re going to call it. They do that, you know. Cancel the whole thing if the waves are too rough. Don’t want another death on their hands.”
My thoughts veer straight to Joanna, the way her body was found in the shallow grave. I feel a spike of rage, remembering that her murderer is still at large.
Sifting through the Harrises’ call and text logs is a tedious process, and by the time I finish going over the texts from Joanna’s phone, Patel is on his third cup of coffee. The distillery erupts in cheers when someone tries to challenge the rising mountain of water. But it’s followed closely by a collective moan when the surfer takes too heavy a drop and succumbs to the power of the wave.
“Look at this,” I say, drawing Patel’s attention from the television to my laptop screen. “There are a number of texts from Travis to Joanna and vice versa between February and the middle of July.”
I slide the screen over to him.
Would you and Michael like to come over next weekend?
Are you and Michael planning on attending the conference in Seattle?
Has Rachael called you about dinner plans?
Patel finishes his cup and reluctantly declines a refill from the waitress. “We already know Travis and Joanna were having an affair. The fact that they were communicating shouldn’t be a surprise.”
“But look.” I point to Joanna’s responses as I scroll through the list. “Each time, she only texted back a single word: yes or no.”
“So she wasn’t much of a talker.”
And just like that, he’s sucked back into the competition.
But there has to be something more, something beneath their informal conversations. After each initial question was asked and answered, it appears they went radio silent for a few days. But they’d always chat again, repeating impersonal questions followed by terse replies.
“On July fifteenth,” I go on, “Travis texted, ‘Has Michael talked to you about the Lennox account?’ Joanna responded quickly with ‘yes.’ That was the second to last communication she had with anyone.”
“So what does the Lennox account have to do with—oh, look, here he goes!” Patel is enthralled, pointing at the screen. “You know, it’s crucial that these surfers focus not only on the wave they choose, but on the ones after it. They have to keep their eyes on the lineup because it’s the ones behind them that might be fatal.”
Keep their eyes on the lineup.
Frowning, I scan the texts again.
“He’s going to make it.” Patel lets out a loud whooping sound as the surfer—a professional from Santa Cruz—pops up on his board and drops into what the announcer calls “the barrel.” “That’s amazing.”