The interviews went about as Evie had expected. “Ann, do you get the feeling the last person these people want to remember is Jenna Greenhill?” she asked, walking away from an automotive garage where Benjamin Reece worked.
“It’s certainly less cooperation than we get from her friends.”
“At least it confirms we’ve got the right names.” Evie marked off number five. They weren’t going to get a confession out of someone, but she would settle for hearing a lie and seeing acute nerves kick in. She was mostly hearing stress and anger that cops were out asking questions again.
“Who’s next?” Ann asked.
Evie had lined them up in order of geography to limit drive time. “The ex-girlfriend of Steve Hamilton, Candy Trefford. Has a temper and a jealous streak, and in the last nine years has had three restraining orders filed against her.”
“I like the idea of it being a woman,” Ann remarked, opening the car door. “Gender bias aside, Jenna doesn’t see it coming if it’s a woman, and when cops did interviews, asking if people saw anything out of place that night, those questioned are going to be thinking male, not female.”
Evie, behind the wheel, entered the address for directions. “Exactly. I’m thinking Candy viewed her first name as something to live down, let herself get a temper, had a ‘you’d better take me seriously’ attitude toward guys.”
“Makes sense. We’ve both seen it. Live against type, be aggressive with the world.”
Evie nodded. “Steve was a nice guy. Candy didn’t like him moving on. And Jenna is the target of that anger. It’s plausible, if I could figure out how it played out. The easiest was to get Jenna in Candy’s car, hit her, dump the body somewhere. The text message to Jenna’s mom throws the timing off, but it’s possible Candy sent the text, then returned Jenna’s keys, phone and purse to her apartment, walked out.”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“I’ve had that text anchoring me to the apartment because the phone was there. But Jenna’s phone could have been anywhere when that text message was sent. No one looked at Jenna’s apartment until Monday. That gives a lot of time to return those items without being seen. Wait till it’s absolutely clear, deliver them to the apartment. That’s pretty easy to do if you’ve got forty-eight hours to figure out when to walk up those stairs.”
“We’ve been looking too closely at her apartment as the location for this,” Ann confirmed.
Evie nodded. “I think Jenna went for a walk that night, and then trouble happened. The things put back in her apartment, the text to her a mom, are probably simple cover-your-tracks steps to throw off the original investigation—and now me. I’d be better off looking at the person with the strongest motive to kill Jenna, then just back into how they accomplish the crime to fit the facts I have.”
Ann smiled. “You’ve got your hands around this case now.”
“Hopefully I do. Saturating myself with the facts seems to have put it all into better order in my head. I need to ask Steve if Candy ever tried to make up with him after Jenna disappeared. He didn’t offer that information in our first conversation, but jog his memory a little and maybe it’s there—he’d brushed off Candy’s overture as not going to happen so had forgotten it.”
Evie scanned house numbers as they entered the right subdivision. “According to my researcher, Candy’s working as a hostess at a restaurant three nights a week, does sales work at a car dealership on weekends. She drives a red Toyota. There.” She spotted the car and house and slid into a place at the curb.
They walked up the sidewalk, and Evie knocked. The door opened within a minute.
Candy Trefford was a beautiful woman, significantly more stunning than her driver’s license photo suggested, and thin as a rail. Evie had her badge out and showed it as she spoke. “Ms. Trefford, I’m Lieutenant Evie Blackwell. I have a few questions for you regarding Jenna Greenhill.” The blank look lasted a few seconds before the name clicked. Disgust was the emotion that passed across Candy’s face first, Evie noted, surprised.
“She’s finally been found, that boyfriend-stealing cheater?”
“I gather you weren’t friends,” Evie dryly responded.
“She shows up freshman year, hangs over my guy like a piece of gum on your shoe, and manages to poach him when I’m out of town seeing my folks. She wasn’t anybody’s friend if they happened to have something she wanted.”
“You mind if we have this conversation inside?” Evie asked. The woman was a talker, and to Evie’s view of things, that could make her a gold mine of an interview.
Candy pushed the door wider and stepped back. “You didn’t answer my question. Did she finally show up? And who’s this with you?”
“Ann Falcon is working with the task force looking at the case. Jenna’s not been found, Ms. Trefford. We’re talking with those who knew her.”
“I knew her. Didn’t like her. And those who saw under the surface mostly steered clear too.”
The house was a basic floor plan, maybe twelve hundred square feet, but it had been carefully decorated, modern in style, furnished more for looks than comfort, Evie thought. They weren’t asked to sit, thankfully, as they stepped into the living room. “Besides your boyfriend, what else did Jenna acquire?”
“Grades, for one. She was tight with the TAs. You’d see her back in the professors’ offices, the labs where grad students worked. She was getting inside help to make those grades. Steve was so enamored with how smart she was, but truth be told, she was mostly a cheat.”
“Any particular TA she hung out with more than others?”
“Jacob something. A grad student who ran the lab area. I know she was two-timing Steve with Jacob—I saw them kissing.”
Evie’s attention sharpened at the remark. Candy stalking Jenna was like a camera clicking nine years ago. She might be the murderer, but if not, she had made herself the reporter on the scene. “Jenna have any other guys hanging around?”
“The drummer Kyle Lee with the school performance band would be around her place, and the guy who manages the music shop, Tyler something, she’d be out with him for coffee.”
“Were you around the campus that weekend Jenna went missing?”
“Steve was reporting on an away game. I went to the game, which is what a girl should do when her guy is there.”
“Did you speak with Steve?”
“He was hanging with the guys, avoiding me in public so he wouldn’t have a scene with Jenna when he got back. She was friends with the stats guy, would ask who Steve had been with on road trips, checking up on him. The guys were laughing about the leash she had him on. We talked some at his room Friday night, but I didn’t stay over with him if that’s what you want to ask next.”
“When did you get back to campus?”
“Sunday afternoon? I like to shop. I heard all the hubbub Monday night when I was leaving class—one of those tuition-money theft requirements you have to take to graduate, postmodern interpretation of the English classics or some such stupidity. Still burns me the name was the most interesting thing about the class.”
“What do you think happened to Jenna?”
“How should I know? She probably charmed some other guy, and he got tired of being played. With Steve out of town, Jenna was doing whatever she wanted to do that weekend, probably ran herself into trouble.”
“You ever see her at a bar drinking? Doing drugs?”
“That I can’t say she ever did. She was straitlaced, that one, made a face at people having a good time. Nagged Steve off even a beer, poor man.”
Evie closed her notebook. “I appreciate your time.”
“That’s all you want to ask?”
“Did you cause her harm or know who did?”
Candy made a face. “Wasn’t me. And I’d thank whoever did rather than tell you their name.”
“I can see why cops on the original case liked to talk with you, Candy. Why don’t you give me the names of your friends from back then, someone who
might remember you were at that away game, shopping that weekend?”
“I hung out with Nancy and Iris, sometimes with Lisa.” She dug a phone out of her pocket and read off full names and numbers. Ann jotted them down. “They’ll tell you the same as I did.”
“I expect so,” Evie agreed. “Thanks again for your time.”
Evie scanned the photos on the walls as they walked out, finding Candy in casual shots with a range of different guys. Candy had the looks that would have made guys come calling, but none appeared to have stuck. Losing a boyfriend to someone else had become a sharp sting that didn’t get forgotten. A sad fact for Candy, and a useful one for Evie. It had kept those memories alive.
“That was enlightening,” Ann remarked as they got back into the car. “So which picture is more accurate, the one drawn by those who liked Jenna or by someone who didn’t?”
Evie thought Ann’s question was right on point. “Candy was watching Jenna in a way no one else was. Didn’t like her, but paid super close attention to her. Others who didn’t like her mostly ignored her. The guys we’ve interviewed mostly look at her picture, shrug and say, ‘Yeah, I saw her around. I saw a lot of girls around. Nothing particularly special about Jenna. Until you said her name, I wouldn’t have remembered it.’ Doesn’t mean one of them wasn’t the one who did Jenna harm, but across the board she wasn’t a fixation. They weren’t eyes-locked-onto-the-photo when I showed it, remembering an obsession with her. They mostly didn’t know her. Candy Trefford—she knew Jenna, in her own warped-interpretation way.”
“So what do you do with it?”
Evie was wondering the same thing. “For starters, how about we look for more people like Candy who didn’t like Jenna? To begin with, others with the same major. Let’s find out what was going on with the TAs—if there was some inside favoritism. Or this is simply a bright student with a shared focus on an obscure subject, already making friends among the grad students she hoped to work alongside one day.”
They called the interviews done at four p.m. Ann had a standing Friday-night date with husband Paul. Evie turned in and parked beside Ann’s car. “Thanks for the help, friend.”
“It made for an interesting Friday. Paul will enjoy the highlights,” Ann said with a smile and handed over the notebook filled with her own observations. “I remember now why I often went home with a headache . . . interviews with people who have something to hide or who are being hostile just for the sake of giving cops a bad day.”
“We caught our fair share of both today,” Evie agreed. “I did think Joe Mueller was going to run when he saw the badge. For an instant I hoped we’d caught a lucky break and stumbled onto the right guy.”
Ann smiled. “I saw that too. He was the only one who looked relieved when he heard we were there to ask about Jenna Greenhill.”
“Yeah,” Evie said with a chuckle. “I’d care about what he’s got going that makes him nervous around cops, but that would take more energy than I have left. Did we learn anything today that felt substantive to you?”
“We met a few interesting people like Candy, several bad guys, but not, I think, anybody who directly caused Jenna problems.”
“Regretfully, same conclusion,” Evie said.
“But your list of twenty-seven is slimming down. Same time tomorrow?”
Evie gave a nod. “I’m not going to turn down that offer.”
“I figure if you’re going to be working on your weekend, I’ll at least keep you company.”
“I’m getting more coffee,” Evie announced, stopping at the conference room door. “And whatever I can find to toss in the microwave. I saw popcorn packages in the vending machine. Want your own bag?”
David turned from his laptop. “Sure.”
She nodded and left. He’s had a good day, she thought. He’d been humming before he realized she was at the door.
Back with bags of popcorn for both of them and a full mug of coffee of her own, she decided the warmth was worth the slightly stale taste indicating too long in the pot.
“My timeline narrowed,” David said casually, only underscoring his relief. He saved the page and closed the document. “I’ve confirmed Saul’s movements for part of Saturday. Around four p.m. he was talking with a Neil Wallinsky, spelled with a y, who lived over in River Glen, a good two hours west. The age was right, but it wasn’t the Neil he wanted. From there I have him back in Chicago just after eight p.m., talking to a guy in Arlington Heights about the location of a card game maybe happening in Englewood.”
Evie glanced over the whiteboard’s list of Saul’s active cases, spotted the one she remembered. “The husband thought to have returned to his gambling problem.”
David nodded. “Sounds like it. The guy died in a car accident about a year after Saul disappeared, so I can’t ask him if he was playing a game in Englewood that night. But it fits why Saul would be asking about a game.”
“Tell me about the guy who remembers this nugget.”
“Okay. That’s Brad Olmer,” David replied, satisfaction in his voice. “The guy was in Saul’s book as an occasional source—he worked security at clubs, after-hours parties, and the occasional off-the-books card game. Saul paid him fifty bucks for solid answers to his information needs. Brad heard there was a game going on, but didn’t know where, didn’t have any solid info for Saul. He remembers the date from when he told Saul it was his sister’s birthday. Saul peeled off a hundred, said to make it a nice birthday gift, and Brad was feeling guilty about that.”
“Not his sister’s birthday.”
“Not by a couple months. It was the last time they spoke.”
“According to Saul’s sister,” Evie remembered, “Saul was flush with cash, had been getting some things repaired for her, and the spontaneous gesture fits him.”
“Feels that way,” David agreed. “Let’s say Saul persists in trying to track down the card game, drives around Englewood, spots his gambler’s car, maybe stakes out the game to get a photo of the guy leaving. That puts him in the area until two a.m. or later Sunday morning.”
“Could Saul get himself in trouble simply watching till the game breaks up?” Evie asked. “Guys leaving a location . . . it’s hard to jam someone up over that kind of photo. The husband is in trouble only because the wife already suspects what’s going on.”
“Security on a card game maybe is going to rough him up if they think he’s there to bother the game. But kill him? Not for sitting in a car watching a parking lot.”
“Crimes in the area at that time? He saw something else and took a photo of it, or someone thought he had?”
David nodded. “That’s where I’ll look next. Saul’s neighbors didn’t see him coming or going that weekend, didn’t see lights on at his place. He missed watching the Sunday football game with the usuals at the neighborhood pub. That suggests he didn’t make it home from Englewood Saturday night.”
“He works odd hours, maybe neighbors simply missed it.”
“True. In which case he got home early Sunday morning, maybe went out later with his marked newspaper looking for a new place to rent, and walked into trouble. Unfortunately, the newspaper that would tell me that is probably in the front seat of his car, wherever that is.”
Evie laughed at his dry tone. “Been there. Solve the crime first, and you can have all the evidence you need for what and how. Any more sources like Brad Olmer in Saul’s notebooks?”
“Thirty or so,” David replied. “Cops talked to them, but I’m making the full rounds again. Time gets people more willing to talk about facts safely in the past.” He gestured to the numbered list on the whiteboard. “Another five names also got crossed off the possible list. They’re glad Saul disappeared, but I didn’t get vibes that any of them had been involved.” David took a handful of popcorn. “Anyway, that was pretty much my day. Yours go anywhere interesting?”
“Candy was fascinating.” Evie gave him a thumbnail sketch of the interview.
David smiled. “Jea
lousy with an extremely good memory.”
“It’s the contrast of how she views Jenna and the descriptions from other friends that has me curious. I need to find a few more Candys, those in Jenna’s world who didn’t like her. It could be a long step toward solving this mystery.”
“Use whatever works. About ready to call it a night?”
“I need an hour to enter notes, but then I’m out of here.”
“I was going to order in a pizza and do some more database work. I’ll make it a large if you want.”
“Anything without onions. Thanks.”
Phone tag with Rob about dinner arrangements hadn’t connected yet, and it wasn’t going to come together tonight. It was a rare week they didn’t share a meal, but he was working on something that had left his message sounding particularly upbeat, and she no doubt had sounded similar.
Evie settled at her desk with her notebook and Ann’s, focused on getting the notes of their interviews organized into the laptop.
It felt as if the case had moved forward today, though it wasn’t quite clear yet what precisely she was reacting to—maybe the broadened perspective about the victim. Candy had gone from a person of interest to someone shining a light from a different angle on Jenna. The seeming clarity of the original interviews had gone out of focus. That was the interesting shift. Rather than be bothered by it, Evie thought it might be the key that took her toward her answer. Get the whole truth about Jenna to bring her back into focus again, and the task of finding who would want to cause Jenna trouble would likely solve itself.
She liked days that had movement. This indeed had been a good day.
“More possibles?” David asked. Evie glanced over as David joined her, pulling on his coat. He nodded to the whiteboard. “You’ve put up a couple more pictures.”
She turned to consider the photos and names. “Missing college women. Nothing exact to Jenna, but in the ballpark. I’ve been avoiding this direction, but it feels necessary.”
“It’s been nine years. If he’s not been caught, what else has he been doing? It’s logical, Evie.”
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