Read Ring of Truth for Free Online Page B

She would have to check in with her mom whenever she was out late at night, and once a day all of the rest of the time, and her father would need to install security locks and an alarm system in the new residence.
    “She was only barely eighteen,” Lucy says in defense of her concern, which in hindsight seems almost prescient rather than overprotective. “And a shy eighteen, at that. She had a couple of nice friends, but no circle that she hung around with, like some of those girls who get in trouble do. I wouldn't have that, no mall rats for my child. I always told her she had plenty to keep her busy, with schoolwork and piano practice, and a little soccer whenshe was younger, and helping me around the house. There was no need for her to be gallivanting around the town without her dad or me. Why, she'd never even taken a trip out of town without us, and here she wanted to go off and live by herself.”
    They didn't have any other children; they wanted to shelter their one.
    Lucy Tobias secretly hoped that Allie wouldn't be able to find a place that met the criteria; theirs was a single-family residential neighborhood for the most part, with nearby rental space at a premium, it being so rare. But find it Allie did, though she had to keep checking the FOR RENT notices everyday for three months before she finally stepped into what seemed the perfect one, at 22 Hibiscus Avenue. It was a mere three blocks away, walkable even for Lucy. The only thing left from her mother's original conditions was for Ben to install enough security to fortify a Fort Knox, or a beloved daughter.
    The Hibiscus address was a house, larger than its neighbors, with two upper floors that were always rented out, mostly to young, single working people and to students. Allison Tobias would have the sunny studio unit at the back of the second floor; directly across from her was a law student who was more often at the library than at home, and on the other side of the shared bathroom was a kitchenette/bedroom that was rented by a young tax accountant whose entire income was derived from freelance accounts, and who was also home a lot. The third floor was one large, self-contained apartment that was rented by a pair of self-described computer nerds who galloped up and down the stairs at the odd hours when they left for work and came home again. The owners of the house, a retired couple from Michigan, lived on the first floor and never kept a noisy tenant around long. They made an exception for the clatter of the “computer boys,” up and down thestairs, because they had such an exemplary work ethic. Down in the basement apartment, where few people would have wanted to live, an elementary school custodian kept three rooms as neat and tidy as he maintained the halls and classrooms of the Briarwood Academy, a private school for privileged and scholarship children of the beachfront town of Lauderdale Pines.
    Lucy Tobias had a brother who was a narcotics detective for the neighboring Bahia Beach Police Department, and she got him to look up the backgrounds of all of Allie's new neighbors on his police computer.
    “Lucy, you know this is illegal,” he told her.
    “So is double-parking,” his sister said tartly, “but I'll bet you do it now and then, and so do I. You can't tell me that you cops don't look up people you meet. If this were Marilyn”—his daughter, Allie's cousin—“you'd check them out.”
    He had to admit that was true.
    “Clean,” he reported back to her.
    There wasn't a mark against the owners of the house or any of their tenants in any of the criminal records databases that Detective Lyle Karnacki—Uncle Lyle—checked for his sister.
    That made her feel better, although she still would have much preferred for Allison to stay home. “Think how much money you could save that way,” she argued with the girl. But her daughter, who had been so easy to get along with all of her life, seemed to have become uncharacteristically stubborn,