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“I should be the one apologizing,” Avery said. “I barged into your life and started asking questions about a very delicate subject. Like you said, mixing wine with emotions is never a good idea.”
“Except when it works.”
“Except then, yes,” Avery said with a chuckle.
“Let’s talk out back,” Emma said. “Coffee?”
“Sure, thanks. Two creams, two sugars.”
It was a beautiful, clear morning in the mountains and the birds were in full chorus as Avery and Emma sat on the patio.
“I’m going to do the best I can on this story about Victoria,” Avery said. “If you feel embarrassed about purging your emotions, I feel just as embarrassed about my alcohol-induced confidence that I could prove Victoria’s innocence. Now, reality is sinking in. I spoke with Walt Jenkins, the detective who ran the investigation.”
“Detective Jenkins. I remember him.”
“Yes. He’s moved on from the police force and is no longer a detective, but remembers the case well. He’s agreed to help me, and has worked his contacts at the New York State Police to gather all the information he can about the case. I’m meeting with him later today to go through it all.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It will at least provide unfettered access to the details about the investigation. But . . . Walt Jenkins may no longer be a detective, but he still thinks like one. He was steadfast in his opinion that the case against Victoria was strong. According to Jenkins, the circumstantial evidence was powerful. But the hard evidence was overwhelming.”
“I’m no detective, Avery. I’m a sixty-year-old retired elementary school teacher who’s starting to gray. Many would claim I’m still a grieving sibling whose views are clouded by unconditional love and loyalty. And maybe this many years later I should just move on. But there was something in Victoria’s voice when she left those messages on 9/11. A conviction that I’ll never be able to get past. So I don’t care about the evidence. I don’t care how strong a case Detective Jenkins claims he had. Something about the investigation is wrong, and I know Victoria is innocent. I need you to believe that.”
“I’m not sure what I believe at the moment. And you don’t want me to start a re-investigation of the case believing one thing or another. For me to do my job properly I have to stay neutral and unbiased. I have to collect all the information I can find, analyze it, and then come to my own conclusion. If there is anything that suggests Victoria is innocent, I’ll pursue it. I promise. But what I need to do first is learn all I can about your sister, and I need your help on that. I need to figure out who Victoria was so I can form an impression about her and better describe her to my audience. I’ve already talked with Natalie Ratcliff and she’s working on a chronology of her friendship with Victoria, starting with their college days. Together with your testimony, it will go a long way to showing the audience who Victoria was. But I was hoping to dig deeper, even before Victoria’s college days. I want to get into her childhood, start from the beginning.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know about our childhoods. And I have boxes and boxes of things in the attic that will help. Victoria’s baby albums, school photos, high school yearbooks, her wedding album. Lord, there’s so much up there. I packed it all away after she died and haven’t looked at any of it for years.”
“Would you share those things with me?”
“Of course. It’ll take me a little bit to find those boxes. I haven’t been up in the attic for some time.”
“I’m happy to help.”
An hour later, Avery set three old, dusty plastic bins into the cargo area of the Range Rover.
“When are you going to look through the case file?” Emma asked.
“Later today,” Avery said. “I’ve got the entire weekend reserved to review the case and find out as much about the investigation as I can. In my down time, I’ll look through all of this and start creating a full history on Victoria.”
“Will you keep me posted if you find anything when you review the case?”
“Of course,” Avery said as she closed the hatch on the Range Rover. “If I come across anything at all, I’ll call you.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a great Fourth of July, Emma.”
A few minutes later, Avery was headed back to the city with a trunk full of bins containing Victoria Ford’s childhood and history. Avery had no idea that they would create far more questions than answers.
CHAPTER 36
Manhattan, NY Saturday, July 3, 2021
AFTER HAULING THE BINS TO HER HOTEL ROOM, AVERY MADE A RUN to Starbucks. She was amazed by the quiet of the city. For a Saturday afternoon, the streets were empty. Traffic lights rotated through their timers, changing from green to yellow to red, sometimes without a single car passing through the intersection. This was, in fact, the first time Avery could remember being in Manhattan around the Fourth of July. Her childhood summers were spent in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. And her adult years had been spent at her family’s house in the Hamptons. Staying in the city for the Fourth was something that never occurred to her. It was simply not something people did. Everyone she knew headed to the country or the beach. But now, as she walked the empty streets, she noticed an elegance to the city she had never appreciated before—as if the city were an antique chest that had been stripped of its peeling paint and coarse primer to reveal the true masterpiece underneath.
She relished the feeling that she had the city to herself, tons of work to do, and very little to distract her. At least, she tried to convince herself as much. As she walked the vacant sidewalks, her thoughts drifted back to Walt Jenkins and the foreign sense of excitement she felt about seeing him later today. With so much to do, she couldn’t afford these tangential thoughts to distract or confuse her. But the more she analyzed these feelings of excitement, the more Avery realized they were her mind’s attempt to shift her focus to something exponentially more thrilling than what waited for her on the other side of the weekend. Her attraction to Walt Jenkins had distracted her, if just momentarily, from the percolating anxiety about heading back to Brooklyn next week to see if Mr. André—she didn’t even know his last name—had come through with the falsified passport. If he did, Avery knew the real—and dangerous—work would then begin. As she entered the Starbucks, she realized that even in a near empty city she could find clutter and garbage. She was a Montgomery, after all.
Twenty minutes later she sipped a venti dark roast—two creams, two sugars—while she sat at the small desk in the corner of her hotel room. The dusty bins Emma had pulled from her attic were now empty, the contents spewed across the room covering the bed, coffee table, and floor. Pictures and yearbooks, photo albums and diaries. Avery had spent some time browsing through the pages of Victoria’s childhood diary and reading the hopes and dreams of an adolescent girl. The entries were sweet and charming, and covered the crushes Victoria had on grade-school boys, teachers she hated, and her dreams of writing novels when she grew up. Avery felt guilty for reading the private thoughts of a teenaged girl and after a while put the journal aside.
