Page 104 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Coach Neely said, “I think you need to stop whatever this is until Tina has talked with a lawyer.”

“I agree,” Coach Leclerc said.

Tina looked over at them in disgust. “I don’t need a lawyer. All they do is take your money and run. I repeat: I had no idea she had money and I do not care.”

Bree sighed. “The first week of school, you sold Kerrie Mountain and Iliana Meadows and I’m betting many more a device designed to improve their Wi-Fi.”

For the first time, Bree saw Tina’s eyes twitch with desperation. “They work,” Tina said. “The Wi-Fi sucks in the dorms and they boost reception. I got them online from a wholesaler. I saw a need and I met it and made a little money. Again, what is wrong with that?”

Bree smiled at her. “What’s wrong is that those devices are more than boosters — if they are even boosters at all. At the very least, they are keystroke loggers.”

Tina’s nostrils flared. Creighton said, “They record everything someone using the computer types in and calls up. You knew all about Iliana’s money. And you knew about something else.”

Bree said, “You found e-mails and texts from Iliana to her former coach. He told her he’d made a sex tape of the two of them. A perfect wedge for someone wanting to pry some of that money out of Iliana’s hands, money that would be at least a little payback, some balance when it came to her father’s and family’s worth.”

Creighton said, “And it worked. Using an encrypted messaging system, you told them you had the tape and demanded fifty thousand dollars from each of them payable in cryptocurrency. Iliana paid. Her old coach mortgaged his house to pay.”

Tina just stood there looking evenly at them all, steely. “No. Never.”

Bree said, “But then Iliana balked when you asked for anotherhundred thousand dollars. And then there you were at her Airbnb, her supposed friend, listening to her problems, telling her before she went out on her run that she should pay, that the tape coming out would destroy her reputation.”

Tina shook her head in disgust. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And remember, I got to the Airbnb after you and Jannie did.”

“Because you’d already been there and gone,” Creighton said. “We found blood evidence in the shower drain in the second bedroom.”

Bree said, “Probably came off your skin and clothes when you climbed in there. The blood spatter made by the sharp rock you hit her with got all over you and landed in a trap in the drain. Along with your DNA.”

Tina’s jaw trembled. Suddenly, she spun around and bolted.

Creighton and Bree took off after her, chasing her up the track. Tina might not have been a sprinter, but she quickly opened up a gap.

Bree was ahead of Creighton but still fifty yards from Tina when she veered off the track and vaulted over the low chain-link fence that surrounded the field.

“There’s a road below there!” Creighton gasped.

Bree sped up, reached the fence, looked down a steep embankment, and saw Tina was slipping and sliding near the bottom. She heard the grinding roar of a semitruck as it rounded a close corner. “Tina!” Bree yelled. “Don’t!”

But Tina had already seen the Mack truck, and in the second that followed, Tina Dawson, gifted athlete, envious blackmailer, and cold-blooded murderer, stepped off the embankment and into the road and was hit before the driver could even touch the brakes.

CHAPTER 87

BREE CAME HOME LATEthat evening, traumatized and depressed after seeing Tina Dawson commit suicide by semitruck rather than face arrest and prison for Iliana Meadows’s murder. Jannie was equally shaken when Bree called to tell her the person and reasons behind her friend’s death.

“That’s so sad,” Jannie said after hearing of Tina’s end.

“It’s crazy what people will do for love and money.”

When she hung up, Bree sat across the kitchen table from me, looked at her beer, and said, “I already feel punch-drunk.”

“I felt the same way when I woke up today.”

“Get anything done since?”

“A little. I sent Ali’s photos and the video to Keith Karl Rawlins. He’s going to run biometrics on the old guy with the weird earlobe.”

“So wait and see.”

“Story of a detective’s life sometimes.” Indeed, I’d found that during big investigations, the days were long and grinding, and the results seemed to seep in. But every once in a while, especially when we were getting close, a sudden torrent of information would flood in and change the entire course of the case.

---