Except I wasn’t in the business of doing preliminary scans. I went through every single page with a fine-tooth comb, searching for any random connection or red flag that might have been missed. That was when I discovered a single line in the police report that practically jumped off the paper: “Machine was rented for the purpose of fixing a roof.”
Charlie might have been many things, but roofer wasn’t one of them. Why would he have actually rented the cherry picker, and why did he lie on the original form?
Another fact that jumped out at me: the accident happened on an abandoned road, with the closest house being the sheriff’s. Normally that wouldn’t mean much, but when one of the sheriff’s daughters was Charlie’s scorned ex, then my sketch-alarm started to ring. Not that I thought Charlie was creeping on Michelle—I knew he’d never do something like that—but there had to be some kind of link there. Something caused Charlie to get up on that machine, and something caused him to come crashing down from it.
Or someone.
A knock on my door pulled my attention. Darien opened up and popped his head inside. “Hey, boss, I’ve got Ms. Yuen here to see you.”
“Perfect, thanks, Darien.”
He stepped aside and let Annie Yuen into my cramped office.
“Sorry for the mess,” I said, standing up and moving around a couple of boxes that were still unpacked. “We’re still moving in.”
“Not a problem at all,” she said, smiling and offering a hand to shake. “You should see my garage. And I moved in five years ago, so I’ve got zero excuses.”
Annie Yuen, a woman with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and green eyes warm enough to melt it, was the reporter who worked on the article Charlie told me about. I was only able to find a few excerpts online since it had been retracted and seemingly scrubbed from every corner of the Internet, which made this interview all the more important.
Annie took a seat in a much more comfortable chair than mine. We kept the leather chairs for the clients and interviewees, leaving me and Darien with the doll furniture.
Thankfully, my oak desk was human-sized. I gathered all the loose papers into a pile and set them in a manilla folder.
“Cool place,” Annie commented, eyes darting around the bare pale-green walls. “Never heard of a detective agency in a pet store’s attic.”
I huffed a laugh. “Blue Creek isn’t exactly overflowing with new office space.”
“True. I like it, though. Plus, you get to go downstairs and hold a hamster or grab a beer during your lunch break.”
“There’s definitely perks to having Barks, Birds, and Booze downstairs.”
Annie twisted in the chair, looking out the open door. “I think the bird followed me up here, though. Scared the tits off me.” She shivered, turning back to me. “I fucking hate birds.”
“Oh, you mean Houston? Yeah, that cockatoo is starting to like being up here more than downstairs. He’s been hanging out with Darien these last few days.” I could see Darien’s desk from here, and sure enough, the white-feathered parrot was perched on a shelf, preening himself while keeping an eye on his new favorite friend.
“Creepy things,” Annie said. I had to disagree with her but kept that to myself, deciding to steer away from birds and back to the topic at hand.
“Thanks for coming in on such short notice,” I said. “This case is an interesting one, to say the least.”
“Not a problem. I’m here to help however I can.”
I nodded, happy to hear she was so enthusiastic about helping. “Great. I’m going to need that article you retracted, the one about Charlie’s accident.”
Annie scrunched her face. “Oh no, can’t help with that.”
“What? Why? You’ve got to have it on a flash drive somewhere? An email?”
“I have it,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “The issue is the ironclad gag order the paper put me under. I don’t know who threatened who, but whatever happened had my bosses pissing in their khakis. They hired an outside company to scrub the Internet and erase any mention of it. They made me sign a contract stating that I’d never share the article, and if I did, I would be liable for a million in damages. A million. I’m never seeing that amount of money in my life—no way I’m risking it over a fifteen-hundred-word article.”
That was actually an interesting piece of information. Whoever was behind this—and I was strongly coming to the belief that there was someone behind this— then they clearly had a vested interest in burying the article, and they had the power to do it.
“Fine,” I said, leaning back so that the chair almost tipped over. I recovered effortlessly. “You don’t have to give me the article, but you can describe it to me. Maybe how you wrote it, your inspiration for the article, who you interviewed for it.”