nothing to indicate whether it had been Jerry’s.
Marco looked up at me. “Okay. It’s go time.”
“We only get so many shots at this before it locks us out, right?”
“If I remember right, we get ten tries.”
I wasn’t sure that was enough. “Okay. I say we go with the obvious. One, two, three, four.”
“Jerry was a simple man. That seems logical.” He opened the screen to input the passcode and cursed. “We need six numbers.”
“Then add five, six.”
He nodded and tapped them in, then got an error.
“This just got a whole lot harder,” I said.
We tried putting in the numbers that coordinated with the letters of his last name and then his first name and the first letter of his last name. For lack of a better option, we tried a simple 000000. Of course that didn’t work. Then in exasperation, we tried the numbers one to six in reverse order. All five attempts struck out.
“Try his birthdate,” I said, feeling like a fool. “I know it from the funeral.” I recited it for him, using double digits for the month and the date and the last two of the year.
He grimaced. “And now we’re locked out for a minute.”
I spent a few seconds mentally combing through everything in Jerry’s box. Which was when it hit me. “I think we’re onto something with the birthdate. We just had the wrong one.”
“Obviously.”
I shot him a dry look. “He had two framed photos of his daughter. I bet it’s her birthdate. I’d have said the numbers tied to her name might have worked, but it has too many letters.”
His eyes widened. “Jerry had a daughter?”
“I’m pretty sure she died when she was a little girl, but he still had lots of photos of her as well as a locket with her name. It’s got to be her birthdate.”
“So we go to the courthouse and look for a death certificate? I can probably find it at the station.”
“No,” I said softly. “It was engraved on the locket. July 2, 1979.”
“Okay,” he said, grabbing my hand and linking our fingers. “We’ll try that next.”
We watched the timer count down, and when it reached zero, he kissed the back of my hand.
“For luck,” he said, smiling up at me. Then he entered the number.
Both of us released loud exhales when it worked.
“Now what?” I asked, looking at him.
“Now we start diggin’ around.”
But it didn’t take him long to find out why the phone was so important. He pulled up the open apps, and the icon for photos was on top. Marco clicked through.
“There are three videos,” he said. “Are you ready?”
I nodded.
Marco played the video that had been recorded first. It was dated the day before Jerry’s death, 9:23 p.m.
The screen was dark at the start of the video. I could barely make out a figure slipping into a house. Then I realized it was the Drummond house, and a woman had gone in through the side door.
Whoever was holding the phone, presumably Jerry, crossed the driveway and went around to the back of the house, entering that way. He crept down a hall I recognized from my visit with Bart and then stopped next to a partially closed door. Bart’s office. I could hear a man and a woman conversing inside.
“I’ve got information that will end you,” Louise said. “All you have to do is pay me a million dollars, and I’ll make it all go away.”
“You’re bluffing,” Bart said.
“Am I? Remember that kid from fifteen years ago? I sure do.”
Bart was quiet for a moment. “If you remember it so well, then why did you tell me about Lula?”
“It was worth the risk,” Louise said. “And if you’d killed her, well . . . I figured I’d have one less thing dependin’ on me.”
I gasped at her callous disregard for her daughter. But then, I knew she was a monster. Why did the proof of it still surprise me?
“And if I don’t pay the one million?” Bart asked on the video.
“I think it goes without sayin’ that I’ll have to share what I know with the world,” Louise said in a smug tone.
“I don’t believe you have proof,” he sneered.
“Oh, I got it all right. Right next to my golden ticket out of this shit town.” She released a raspy laugh. “Literally.”
The video ended, and Marco turned to me. “In all your research on Bart’s favors, did you come across anything about a kid being murdered fifteen years ago?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Are you