CHAPTER SIX

Jessie was getting frustrated with Ryan.

They were back at the station, sitting at their desks, rifling through confusing financial documents while they waited for the tech team to untangle the origins of “City Logistics” and where it got its resources. Captain Decker was at a meeting at headquarters, meaning Jessie had still managed to avoid the sit-down where he would inevitably warn her away from Hannah’s case.

In the meantime, Ryan had floated the idea that Margo Maines was faking—that she had uncovered her husband’s dalliance and hired a hit woman to take him out, either for revenge, the life insurance, or both. In fact, he seemed fixated on it.

“She just didn’t seem credible to me,” he insisted. “I don’t buy her claim that Gordon had to be drugged to go up to a hotel room with another woman. You saw that footage from the bar. He was all in. Margo had to at least have a hint about his lecherousness.”

“I’m sure she did,” Jessie agreed, despite her agitation. “But that doesn’t mean she took a hit out on him. Maybe she just wasn’t comfortable acknowledging to two people she’d just met that she’d been looking the other way when it came to his bad behavior. Wives have been known to do that.”

Jessie kept her voice steady so he wouldn’t pick up on how raw this discussion still was for her. Her own ex-husband, Kyle, had cheated on her for months. And though the signs were all around her, Jessie had somehow managed to miss them.

In her more honest moments, she acknowledged that she might have intentionally ignored them because confronting them would have blown up her marriage and her life. Of course, that happened anyway when Kyle murdered his mistress, framed Jessie for it, and then tried to kill her too. But that wasn’t the point here.

“Maybe she wasn’t comfortable revealing she knew he cheated because she was embarrassed,” Ryan conceded. “Or maybe she knew that admitting it would give her a motive.”

Jessie didn’t want to dismiss his theory. It wasn’t crazy. And he’d been at this a lot longer than she had. But he seemed to be ignoring some other relevant details.

“Let me ask you this,” she offered. “If this was a paid hit, why not go with the double tap to the head? It’s much quicker and more surefire.”

“Maybe Margo Maines knew the details would eventually come out. Her husband would be shamed and she’d be the martyred wife. She’d get sympathy galore and no suspicion.”

“That explains it from her end but not the killer’s,” Jessie countered. “The woman who killed him took her sweet time. Even if she’d been tasked to make the scene look tawdry, she could have been in and out in less than fifteen minutes. She was there twice that long. She lingered. That’s not the work of a professional. And she could have just drugged him and left it at that. A dead, naked, drugged-up politician found in a hotel room is embarrassing enough. Why the strangling too? No. This feels personal.”

Ryan sat with that for a while. The argument seemed to make an impact. Jessie’s frustration level dropped a notch.

“That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of it from the killer’s perspective.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the profiler,” she said, tweaking him slightly.

He flicked her off playfully. But a sudden flash in his eyes told her he had a new theory.

“What about this?” he began. “Maybe the woman was his mistress. It could be she didn’t know he was married or maybe he’d promised he’d leave his wife for her. Either way, by last night she’s discovered that he’s stringing her along and she’s pissed. So she decides to get a little revenge for herself. She kills him up close and personal. Then she gets everything: vengeance on the guy who used her, a chance to destroy his reputation and as a lucky strike extra, the wife loses her big-time important husband.”

“I like that idea better than the other one,” Jessie allowed.

Just then, Camille Guadino from the tech team walked over with some paperwork and a rueful smile. Fresh out of school, she was the rookie of the unit, assigned to the most mundane tasks.

“Uh-oh,” Ryan said, looking at her. “Don’t tell me you’re going to give us actual evidence we’ll have to follow up on instead of just spinning endless webs of theories.”

“Sorry, Detective, but yeah,” she said as she dropped a folder on his desk. “Real, fresh-brewed evidence coming your way.”

“What have you got, Guadino?” Jessie asked.

“It took a while but we finally figured out what City Logistics is all about.”

“Urban planning enthusiasts?” Jessie quipped.

“So close,” Guadino replied. “It’s a consulting firm that ‘offers feedback and recommendations on urban improvement issues.’”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ryan asked.

“It means it’s pretty much what you guys suspected. It’s a shell company run by a lawyer owned by a shell company also run by a lawyer who’s a partner in the same firm that represents a consulting agency that has done work for a strategist associated with—you guessed it—Gordon Maines.”

“What does all that gobbledygook mean to us?’ Ryan sked.

“It means that, via multiple cutouts, Maines had access to a corporate account with over two hundred eighty grand in it. And it looks like someone at an ATM located in the Bonaventure Hotel withdrew two grand in cash from that account at the time Maines was there.”

Jessie and Ryan exchanged a look that acknowledged the theories they’d been discussing for the last ten minutes were now likely moot.

“What?” Guadino asked, sensing she was missing something. “Did I screw up somehow?”

“No, you’re good,” Jessie assured her. “Go on.”

“Okay. We’ve been tracking all of his credit cards and haven’t gotten any hits. I’m starting to doubt we will. Usually, these cards get used in the first hours after a robbery, before the victim discovers they’re gone. Or in this case, before the body is found.”

“Was that a joke?” Ryan asked. “Did you just make fun of a man’s death for cheap laughs?”

“Uhhh…” Guadino started to sputter.

“I’m just screwing with you. That was a good one. Anything else?’

“Yes,” Guadino said, dispensing with the humor and sticking to the facts. “The damage to his phone turned out to be minimal. We were able to get all his recent texts and a call log. It’s in the folder. But he didn’t make any calls or text anyone in the hour prior to withdrawing the cash.”

“Thanks, Guadino,” Jessie said. “We’ll take it from here. You can go ahead and get back to working on your stand-up routine.”

Guadino smiled sheepishly and left. When she was gone, Jessie looked over at Ryan.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“That you could really go for a pastrami on rye right about now?”

“That too,” she said, happy to embrace his attempts at levity, “but also that this woman isn’t looking like a mistress at all. It sounds like Gordon was paying for his evening. I think we’re dealing with a pro.”

“I agree,” he said. “That would explain her hanging out at a fancy hotel bar.”

“Women sometimes hang out at bars, Ryan,” Jessie chided. “It doesn’t always mean they’re prostitutes.”

“I didn’t mean it like th—”

“I’m just screwing with you,” she said, grinning. “You’re not the only one who can play that game. It does fit the profile. But it doesn’t explain why there was no phone communication prior to their meet-up. If this was a first-time date, they’d need to nail down the particulars of when and where. But there’s none of that.”

“Right,” Ryan said. “And he didn’t look surprised to see her, which makes me think this wasn’t the first time they’d met up.”

“But if this was a regular thing, why did she wait until now to kill him? And why rob him if he was willing to pay upwards of two grand anyway?”

“Maybe she wanted to make sure he really had deep pockets and wasn’t just fronting. Of course, once she knew, one would expect her to use those cards ASAP after she left him in that room. She had to know they’d be cancelled by the morning. But there’s not a single purchase.”

“I get the sense that this woman is too smart to use those cards,” Jessie said. “She wore gloves the whole night. The scene was clean. She knew how to avoid the hotel cameras. Remember how there was no footage of her when he nodded at her in the lobby? She wouldn’t be so sloppy as to risk using the cards and getting busted after the fact.”

“Then why take them?” Ryan asked. “What’s the point?”

“Maybe to make it harder to identify him? She took his license too and that doesn’t make much sense. Or maybe just to humiliate him even more—to add insult to injury. I’m thinking that might be why she took the Rolex too. Not because it’s worth so much money but because of the inscription. It had personal meaning and value to Maines. Taking it might have been a way of taking away the power that came with his identity.”

“So you don’t think she’d pawn it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jessie said. “A pawned watch would take a lot longer to track down than credit cards. If there was anything she might sell, that would be it. It’s a long shot but I think we should reach out to shops in the area.”

“I’ll have Dunlop look into it. He’s on good terms with almost every downtown broker. If she tried to pawn that watch anywhere east of the 405 freeway, he’ll know about it.”

“Sounds good,” Jessie said. “While you reach out to him, I need to check on something.”

“You’re not going to butt into the Crutchfield thing, are you?’ he asked warily. “Just because Decker hasn’t officially warned you off it yet doesn’t mean he won’t.”

“No, Ryan,” she snapped as she stood up. “I am not going to butt into the case. Have a little faith, why don’t you?”

He raised his eyebrow skeptically as she got up and headed for the second floor. She gave him a mock offended scowl before turning toward the stairs.

I’m not butting into the case. I’m just going to ask a few questions.

She refused to address the question of whether there was any real difference.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jessie was surprised at how nervous she felt.

She rarely visited the second floor of the station, which was used mostly for storage and administrative offices. In fact, as she walked down the long hallway, she didn’t pass a single soul.

She stopped at the door to the tiny office marked with the simple nameplate “G. Moses” and knocked quietly. She heard a bit of paper shuffling from the other side and then what sounded like the crack of elderly kneecaps stretching out. The noise sent a shiver down her spine. A moment later Garland Moses opened the door.

“I lost,” he said in his familiar rasp when he saw her.

“Lost what?” she asked, her blood pressure suddenly rising.

“I had the over in the over/under bet on whether you would pester me for the first time before or after noon. It’s eleven fifty-six a.m. so I lost. I owe myself ten bucks.”

Jessie was relieved that he was only mocking her and allowed herself a moment to breathe before responding.

“Well, hopefully you pay up quick. I hear your methods of collecting late payments can be rough. “

“You have no idea,” Garland said, his mouth breaking into something close to a smile. “Let’s just say there’s forced Metamucil involved.”

“Nice,” Jessie said, gagging slightly. “So how much longer do I have to politely talk about your senior health routine before you fill me in on the situation?”

Garland half-smiled again. It seemed to be turning into a habit.

“Come in,” he said, moving aside.

She took one step into the office before realizing she couldn’t take another without bumping into his desk.

“I thought people were being sarcastic but this really did used to be a closet, didn’t it?”

“I don’t need a lot of room,” he replied, closing the door and squeezing past her to get to the chair on the other side of his small desk. Other than that, a single chair for guests, a desk lamp, and a half-sized file cabinet, the room was empty.

“I guess when you only take on a few cases each year, you don’t get drowned in paperwork.”

“I liked to keep the paperwork to a minimum even back in my busier days. A cluttered desk means a cluttered mind.”