Page 83 of No More Hiding
“Maybe I’ve opened my eyes more,” he said, tapping her nose.
That was a move he’d never thought he’d make either. Yeah, he needed to get out of there.
Almost two hours later, he’d gotten Vivian’s computer up and running. He ran some diagnostics on it to see if she had a virus, which she did.
He found the source and was shocked it was a tabloid article and laughed. She was totally not the type to read gossip on people. How many times had she said it bothered her how nosy so many could be?
He cleaned that virus up and ran a few more things on her computer to see if something was lurking behind the scenes. What he found were many things coming back to articles on Christian Carmichael. He knew the name. It was hard not to even though it was when he was in college.
He wasn’t one for following stuff like that, but he got the gist of it. The guy swindled many out of close to a billion with some investment Ponzi schemes.
Brent finished with Vivian’s computer and then called her.
“Hey,” she said, “did you miss me?”
“Of course,” he said. “But I fixed your computer.”
There was silence on the other end. “I didn’t know you took it.”
“Yeah. You told me I couldn’t do it on Friday night. I figured I’d do it since I was only sitting around anyway. I needed my computer to get it going again. You had a virus on it.”
“Oh,” she said. “I had no idea.”
He wasn’t going to embarrass her and mention where it came from. She obviously didn’t want him to know she had that guilty pleasure. It wasn’t like it was only Christian Carmichael that was in the search but other celebrities too. He found it endearing that she had that little secret.
“Yeah. It’s all good to go. Do you want to get it on your way to work tomorrow?”
“I’ll get it now if you don’t mind?”
“Sure, I’m here. I can’t go without a computer either.”
It was hard for him to be away from them when he was with her, but he tried his hardest to separate the two and give Vivian his attention since they weren’t together that much.
It wasn’t ten minutes later she was knocking on his door, then opening it. “Thanks,” she said reaching for it.
“That was fast. Got some online shopping to do?”
“Always,” she said, winking, then kissed him and left.
That was odd, but he wasn’t one to talk when it came to odd behaviors.
After flipping through the channels, he gave up and turned the TV off, picked up his computer and started to do a brief internet search on Christian Carmichael.
The more he read about it, the more he wondered why Vivian was so interested.
But then he found an article that said Christian’s wife committed suicide thirteen years ago.
Hmm. Okay, some more digging and he found that Amelia Carmichael didn’t believe her husband was guilty. More articles he read that Christian got caught trying to flee the country, his wife was later suspected of aiding him.
There were a few mentions she might be tried for that but nothing came about it.
A week after Christian was found guilty, she committed suicide leaving no note behind. Those closest to Amelia Carmichael had said she would never be able to live without him and they felt the most sympathy for their daughter.
A daughter. He did a search on any children they might have had and found nothing.
Something wasn’t sitting right with him.
It was wrong, he knew it, but his gut said there was more going on that he had to find out.