traced about forty thousand through bank records so far. The rest is —" she
smiled thinly — "creative."
Rachel Simmons leaned back in her chair. "When does Doug get charged?"
"He was picked up this morning," Joan said. "Embezzlement, fraud,
conspiracy. His lawyer's already called the DA about a deal."
Tom thought about Diane's face at the board meeting she hadn't attended,
about the windbreaker and the undone hair at dawn, and he felt something
complicated that wasn't quite satisfaction.
"What about Paul?" he asked. "The husband."
"Paul Holloway?" Joan shook her head. "Realtor. Clean books, as far as I can
tell. Either he didn't know, or he's very good at not knowing. My money's on
the second one — willful blindness is the spouse's oldest profession in these
cases. But I can't prove it, and neither can the DA, so he's out of it."
That evening, Tom found Chloe in her room, editing photos. On her screen:
the pool, the fence, the towel on the lounge chair — her evidence photos, the
ones the police had copied. She'd been going through them again.
"Joan says your photos cracked the money part," Tom said from the
doorway.
Chloe didn't look up. "I know. She told me. She said I have a good eye for
inconsistencies."
"Do you?"
"I have a good eye for grass." She finally looked at him, and she was smiling,
but it was the tired smile she'd been wearing since the arrest. "Dad, are we
the reason the neighborhood is falling apart?"
55
Tom came in and sat on the edge of her bed. "The neighborhood was already
falling apart. We just took pictures of it."
"Gary Lindqvist says —"
"Gary Lindqvist forwards emails about property values from 2011. His
opinions are not load-bearing."
That got a real smile. "Was that a construction joke?"
"I'm a cybersecurity consultant. My jokes are about firewalls. Be grateful."
She turned back to her screen. After a moment she said, quietly, "The money
stuff is worse than the syringe, isn't it?"
Tom considered. "The syringe was about hurting one family. The money was
about stealing from all of them. Different kinds of worse."
"Which one will she go to jail for?"
"Both, if Rachel and the DA do their jobs."
Chloe nodded, and went back to her editing, and Tom sat there a while
longer watching his daughter turn the worst summer of her life into
something with composition and light.
Doug Raines was arrested at his shop on a Tuesday, in front of his crew,
which was either a tactical choice by the detectives or just how Tuesdays
worked out. By Wednesday, his lawyer had him in a conference room with
the DA, and by Thursday the siblings were no longer speaking.
Tom heard about it the way everyone in Oakmont heard about everything
now — through the group chat, which had become a kind of municipal wire
service with worse grammar. Someone's cousin worked at the courthouse.
Someone else had seen Doug's truck at the DA's office.
56
Rachel filled in the rest over coffee. "Doug's flipping. He's giving them
everything — the invoices, the kickback structure, Diane's instructions. His
lawyer's painting him as the dumb muscle. Which, to be fair —" she glanced
at Tom — "he kind of is."
"What did Diane say?"
"According to Doug, she called him a traitor and a coward and said he'd
never have had the business without her. According to Diane's lawyer, Doug
is a liar trying to save himself." Rachel stirred her coffee. "Families are
great."
"And Diane?"
"Made bail. Two hundred fifty thousand, secured against the house. Paul put
it up." Rachel's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "GPS ankle
monitor, surrendered passport, no contact with witnesses. The judge wasn't
feeling generous — she fled the scene of the original incident, which the
judge remembered."
Tom thought about the ankle monitor — Diane Holloway, who had once
measured everyone's grass with a ruler, now measured herself in the radius
she was allowed to travel. He didn't feel good about it. He told himself he
didn't feel bad about it either, and almost believed himself.
Diane Holloway's lawyer held a press conference on the courthouse steps
nine days after the arrest, and Tom watched it live because Rachel told him
to — "know what they're saying before the jury pool does."
The lawyer's name was Grant Porter. He was sixty, silver-haired, tan in the
way of men who golf through other people's tragedies, and he spoke with the
practiced sorrow of a man reading a eulogy for someone he never liked.
57
"My client is a dedicated community servant," Porter said, "who has given
six years to the Oakmont Estates Homeowners Association. What happened
at Mr. Beckett's home was a misunderstanding that has been grotesquely
distorted."
He laid out the story with the confidence of a man who had never once been
contradicted by video evidence. Diane had received a report of a disturbance
at the Beckett property. Concerned for the welfare of a child home alone —
Chloe, twelve — she had entered the yard to check. She had found a syringe
near the pool. Startled, frightened, acting in the heat of the moment, she had
moved it, panicked, and then — confronted by an aggressive homeowner —
fled.
"And the fence?" a reporter asked. "She climbed a seven-foot fence?"
"Ms. Holloway believed the side gate might be locked and that time was of
the essence where a child's safety was concerned."
"And the swimsuit?"
Porter didn't blink. "Ms. Holloway had been at her lake house that morning.
She came directly from there upon receiving the report."
"Who made the report?"
"We are still establishing that."
Tom muted the television. Chloe was at school. The house was quiet except
for the pool filter humming, and Tom stood in his kitchen and thought about
the word establishing, and how it sounded like something you did with a
fence post.
Rachel called twenty minutes later. "You watched."
"Every word."
58
"Good. Now forget every word. Here's what matters: they're going with