Page 42 of Enigma (Pros and Cons Mysteries #6)

T he silence in the Tahoe felt heavy as Jason pulled away from Patterson’s house.

Olive stared out the passenger window at the Texas Hill Country landscape—gentle slopes covered with live oak and cedar, rocky limestone bluffs catching the morning light, and winding creek beds lined with cypress trees.

“So my father might not have been in this alone,” she finally said. “Maybe my father and your father were actually working together. Oh, and this whole town might be compromised.”

“That’s a lot to digest.” Jason’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “The question is whether Patterson is right about Dr. Schmitt and someone in the police department.”

“You don’t think . . . ?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Dean’s name, to put Jason in that position.

“That my brother-in-law is involved?” He sighed and shook his head. “I want to say no, but I don’t know who to trust right now, to be honest.”

Several seconds of silence passed.

Olive turned to face him. “Jason, what if Simon was telling the truth? What if my mother really is alive?”

She’d been holding onto that question since last night.

“How would that even be possible?” Jason quickly glanced at her before turning back to the road. “You saw her body.”

“I saw a body.” Olive’s voice was barely above a whisper. “But I was seventeen, traumatized, and it was . . . it was a crime scene. There was blood everywhere, and I don’t know.”

She paused, forcing herself to think through the facts rather than the emotion.

“The police identified everyone,” she finally continued, her voice hoarse. “But what if Simon was right? What if someone helped stage the scene? What if they used a body from a morgue or someone who had died of natural causes? Does that sound crazy?”

“Considering everything that’s happened, nothing sounds crazy.” Jason went quiet as he seemed to think through the situation. “Your mother would have had to disappear completely. Start a new life with a new identity. She would have had to let you believe she was dead the past eight years.”

Olive crossed her arms as she tried to keep her emotions in check. “Which brings us back to the same question—what kind of person could do that to their own child?”

Jason reached over and squeezed her hand, lowering his voice as he said, “Maybe someone who thought it was the only way to keep you safe.”

“Or someone who thought I was a liability. Unless she was someone who chose her criminal empire over her daughter.” Her voice cracked at the words.

“We don’t know that’s what happened.”

“We don’t know anything for certain. That’s the problem. Every answer we find just leads to more questions.”

More silence passed before Jason cleared his throat. “Olive . . . I just want to say that I’m sorry if I was harsh with you last night.”

“It was deserved.”

“No, it wasn’t. And I’m sorry that I let my emotions get the best of me.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded, touched by the sincerity in his voice. “Thank you.”

Jason slowed the Tahoe as they approached an intersection. “Where do you want to go next? Back to the hotel?”

Olive looked around, gathering her bearings. They were only a few miles from her old neighborhood, from the house where her family had lived during their time in Oasis.

“Actually,” she said slowly, “I’d like to visit my old house.”

Jason’s eyebrows rose. “The one where you were attacked a few months ago?”

Olive had gone to the house while she was working another case. Someone must have been following her and had seized the opportunity to attack her. They’d left a note reading, “Like Father, Like Daughter.”

Did someone think she was like her father? That she was following in his footsteps? Did the person who’d left that note not know about her mom, that Mom might be the real mastermind?

So much still didn’t make sense.

Maybe her mom—if she was involved—had everyone fooled.

Including Olive.

The truth was, Olive had tried to take every trick she’d learned from her dad and use it for good instead of evil.

He’d taught her how to read micro-expressions and body language, how to mirror people’s speech patterns and posture to make them feel comfortable and trusted, and how to direct someone’s attention away from what she was really doing while noticing what others missed.

Skills that had once been used to identify marks and run cons now helped her spot when witnesses were lying, helped her get reluctant sources to open up during interviews, and how to conduct surveillance without being detected.

She’d transformed her father’s morally questionable lessons into legitimate investigative tools, though sometimes she wondered if the line between manipulation and persuasion was thinner than she wanted to admit.

She remembered Jason’s question. The one where you were attacked a few months ago?

“Yes, the same one. I know it’s probably empty, but . . . if my mother is alive, if she’s been orchestrating all of this, then that house means something. It’s connected to Lloyd through that shell company, and it’s where our family lived when my dad was in the middle of one of his schemes.”

“What are you hoping to find there?”

“I have no idea.” Olive shrugged. “But it feels like I keep dancing around the edges of this mystery. Maybe it’s time to go straight to the center.”

The old house on Maple Street looked exactly as Olive remembered from her last visit—a modest two-story Colonial with beige siding and black shutters and a small front porch.

The yard was overgrown, and a “No Trespassing” sign had been posted near the rusted mailbox.

Jason parked across the street, and they both stared at the house in silence.

“Might as well get this over with.” Olive opened her door.

They walked up the cracked sidewalk together. The front door was secured with a heavy padlock, but Jason was already pulling out his lock-picking kit.

The lock clicked open, and Jason pushed the door inward. The house was dark and smelled of dust. Their footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors as they moved through the familiar rooms.

The living room still had its navy-blue couch and beige chairs. The kitchen still had the dark wood cabinets and deep-green countertops.

So many memories hit Olive—making sourdough bread with her mom, eating spaghetti together on Friday nights, and chasing her sisters around the stairway.

As tears tried to prick her eyes, she pushed the memories aside—for now.

She had to stay focused.

They searched each room downstairs, checking for hidden panels, loose floorboards, or anything else that might contain evidence or answers.

But they found nothing of note.

Olive wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. She’d just hoped there was something .

Next, they headed upstairs to the bedrooms.

They paused inside her parents’ old bedroom, and Olive leaned against the wall near her mother’s dresser.

“I don’t know if I ever told you much about my mom,” Olive started. “But the memories have been hitting me a lot lately—the memories of our time together and everything she taught me.”

Jason crossed his arms. “Like what?”

“I keep thinking about the flower-arranging lessons she gave me once. She was really good at making these floral arrangements. And in the middle of the practical lesson, she taught me some life lessons also. For example, when arranging flowers she taught me to hide the damaged parts, to create the illusion of perfection.”

Jason glanced around the dim bedroom. “Maybe that’s what this whole house was. An illusion of a normal family life.”

“But for whose benefit? The neighbors? Us kids? Or was it just another cover for their real work?”

Jason didn’t have an answer, and Olive didn’t expect him to.

They were about to step out of the room when something on the floor poking out from underneath her mother’s dresser caught Olive’s eye.

She leaned down and pulled it out.

It was a white envelope.

Her breath caught as she saw her name written across the front.

Jason moved beside her and stared at her discovery. “Someone’s been here. Recently.”

Olive held the envelope with trembling fingers as her gaze met Jason’s. “Someone who wanted me to find this.”