Reputation(63)
“And how did Raina deal, after all of it was over?” I ask.
Mrs. Hammond shrugs. “You mean did she seem to understand that what she’d done was wrong? I don’t know. She seemed angry, mostly. Probably that she got found out. I’m not sure she really learned her lesson, though.”
Paul leans forward. “What makes you say that?”
Mrs. Hammond twists the hem of her T-shirt. “This January, not long after Christmas, we got some gifts from her. No return address, but fancy things. Too fancy, actually.” She glances plaintively at us. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because you know something? Because she’s doing it again?”
I look at Paul, feeling uneasy. “We don’t know. Not for sure.”
“Do you know her address? Where we can find her?”
I lick my lips. Do we have the right to tell? But then I realize that I could give a hint without actually spelling it out: “The school’s e-mail system has been hacked. Have you heard?” Mrs. Hammond shakes her head. “I can give you the website where all the e-mails were dumped. You can search Raina’s name on there. Some of her e-mails list her new address.”
Paul stands. “You’ve been really helpful. We appreciate your candor.”
Judy Hammond gets to her feet, too. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and she touches my hand before I leave. The skin on her palms is cold, papery. “When I found out she’d run away, I thought she’d go somewhere far, like Florida. But only forty miles into the city? That almost makes it worse.”
“People don’t have to run away far to escape their problems,” I say, a lump in my throat. “It’s more about changing who you are. More about inventing a new life.”
When we step outside, the air smells like exhaust fumes. Back in the car, we stare at each other for a long beat before exhaling. My mind is whipping fast. “Could she have been doing this with Greg?” Paul asks. “Doing things with him sexually, then flipping the script? Saying she’d tell on him, ruin his reputation? Making him pay her?”
I drum on the steering wheel. “And what if, the night of the benefit, he decided he didn’t want to pay her anymore? He already knew his marriage to my sister was over because of the Lolita e-mails. Raina had nothing to hold over his head anymore. So he tells her the game is over, and Raina gets mad. That cash is affording her a brand-new life at Aldrich. It’s not like she wants to go home to this.” I point to the tired street.
“It could make sense,” Paul says.
“Except it’s all speculation right now. It’s not like we have anything concrete to prove she was running a scam.”
I get a thought and pull out my phone. I tap the app for the hack database, recalling that I’ve seen a few bank notifications in Greg’s inbox. I click on the first few. His bank alerted him whenever he’d made purchases of five hundred dollars or more—there are receipts for fancy dinners, a Nordstrom shopping trip, car maintenance. I don’t see anything suspicious. Certainly nothing to Raina.
Paul leans over to look, too. He’s so close, his chin is almost touching my shoulder. I can feel his minty breath on my skin. It makes me go a little still. “These bank alerts don’t say if Greg wrote any big checks. Or if he took out withdrawals in cash.”
“There’d be no way for us to trace that unless we subpoenaed Greg’s bank accounts.” I chew on my lip. “Except . . . would he write her a big check? Kit told me that she and Greg share a bank account. She would notice something like that. She’d see a big chunk of cash missing, too.”
“Did Greg have a secret account?”
“Not that the cops have found.” I shift my weight. “Is there another way to siphon off nine grand—or more—in such a way that Kit didn’t detect it?”
“Could Raina have set up a shell company?” Paul’s tone is joking. “Maybe she’s posing as Nordstrom-dot-com?”
“Or maybe he just gave her a few twenties or hundreds at a time?” I speculate. “Except I doubt they’d want to be seen together too often . . .”
Paul wrinkles his nose and stares out the windshield for a while. Then he turns back to me. “Did I mention that my ex-wife was thirteen years younger than we are?”
I stare at him, shocked. “She was twenty-four?” I can’t hide my revulsion. “That’s a child!”
“Anyway.” Paul tugs on his collar. “One of the reasons we broke up was because we seemed on two different planets when it came to a lot of things. She didn’t even have a checking account. Barely knew what to do if someone wrote her a check. She was always saying that no one her age had a checkbook—they all paid their bills online. She never carried cash. Never even had a credit card, half the time.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” I say acidly. The last thing I want right now is to hear about Paul’s prepubescent wife. “And that has to do with this . . . why?”
“Well, one of the financial things my wife did know about—which I didn’t—was paying people through an app.”
I frown. “What, like Paypal?”
“Yes. One of those.”
I click back to Greg’s e-mail in the hack. “I’ve heard of the apps, but I’ve never used them. I’m super old-fashioned when it comes to money—I still enter charges in a check register.”