Review to a Kill

by Laura Durham

  I joined Kate on the couch, moving a stack of Inside Weddings magazines onto the floor to make space. “Actually, she’s staking out the neighbor Madeleine told us about. The one who had a feud going with Tricia and Dave.”

  “I’m assuming Reese knows nothing of this?”

  “You assume correctly,” I told her.

  I pulled my plastic salad bowl out of the bag and leaned back on the couch cushions, resting the bowl on my lap. I’d insisted we stop for food before Richard dropped Kate and me off at my apartment, and Richard had insisted it be healthy, which eliminated most of my favorite spots. I took the lid off my Santa Fe salad with grilled chicken. It wasn’t a box of doughnuts but the chipotle dressing did smell good.

  Kate kicked off her nude heels and opened her shrimp Caesar, handing me a plastic fork. “So that makes how many things you’re keeping from him at the moment?”

  I made a face at her. “You make it sound like I do it on purpose.”

  “You don’t?” She arched an eyebrow at me.

  I swallowed a bite of salad, making a mental note to always get the tangy chipotle dressing. “Of course not.”

  “Don’t worry.” She waved a forkful of lettuce at me. “I get it. You’re the boss lady. The big kahuna. You’re used to being in charge. He’s used to being in charge. It’s hard for you to let go and let anyone help you. He’s used to being the guy who helps people. It’s oil and water.”

  I speared a piece of chicken. “You think we’re like oil and water?”

  “Well. The two of you have been arguing since you met. I mean, it’s cute arguing. Like Sam and Diane.”

  “From Cheers? How do you know about Cheers, Miss Millennial?”

  Kate winked at me. “Miss Millennial has Netflix.”

  I mulled this over while we ate in silence. Sam and Diane from Cheers may have been funny on a sitcom, but I doubted Reese found any of this amusing. I felt bad that my overwhelming instinct to save my business and my neck, and admittedly my reluctance to trust other people to do things for me, meant I ended up running a secret investigation behind his back. I knew Reese wanted me to trust him to find the real culprit and clear my name, but I found it almost impossible to let go.

  My phone buzzed in my purse and snapped me out of my mental musing. I leaned over to where I’d dropped my bag on the floor, pulled out my phone, and glanced at the name on the screen. I pushed the button to accept the call.

  “Hey, Leatrice. How’s it going?”

  “Not bad,” Leatrice whispered.

  “I don’t think anyone can hear you from outside the car.”

  “I’m trying not to wake up Fern,” she said.

  “He’s still with you?” I asked.

  Kate sat up and mouthed, “Who?”

  “Fern,” I mouthed back.

  “He dashed over to his salon for a couple of appointments this morning then came back,” Leatrice said.

  I wondered what his tony Georgetown hairstyling clients thought about his black cat suit. Not that it was even close to the strangest outfit he’d worn. That was a toss-up between his geisha girl phase and the summer he dressed like Jackie Kennedy, complete with pillbox hats for every outfit.

  “Any movement inside the house?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You know you don’t have to stay there. It may be a dead end.” I felt bad that Kate and I were relaxing in my living room, eating lunch while Leatrice sat in her car next to a sleeping hairstylist dressed like a cat burglar.

  “No trouble at all, dear. I’m happy to do it.”

  “Can Kate and I bring you some fresh coffee?” Kate frowned at me, but I ignored her.

  “No. Fern and I decided to slow down on the coffee since the closest available bathroom is three blocks away in a bakery.” Leatrice paused, and I heard some mumbling. “And we have to buy a muffin every time we use it, so Fern’s afraid it’s ruining his waistline.”

  Not surprising. Fern was so slim we could probably share clothes. Not that I had the moxie to pull off his ensembles.

  “I called you because Dagger Dan narrowed down the IP address from that email you gave me,” Leatrice said.

  I didn’t consider myself a computer whiz by any means, but I did know that an IP address was a computer’s unique identifying code. “Dagger Dan?”

  “One of my hacker friends. Boots helped him, though.”

  Boots? Dagger Dan? “Should you be hanging out with these guys, Leatrice?”

  She giggled. “Don’t be silly, dear. We don’t hang out in person. Only online. I’ve never actually met them, but I think they live on the West Coast. And they’re lovely boys.”

  I was pretty sure lovely boys didn’t hack into police departments, but since I was the beneficiary of their illegal actions, I decided to keep quiet.

  “They were able to get me an address of where the email originated from. It’s a networked computer in an office building in Virginia.”

  I dug in my purse for a pen and found a black one from the Hotel Monaco. My bad habit of pocketing hotel pens had its benefits. “Can you give it to me?”

  She read the street address to me, and I wrote it on my palm.

  “This is great, Leatrice. Kate and I will go check it out now.”

  Kate frowned at me but slipped her feet into her shoes as I hung up with my neighbor.

  “Let me guess?” she asked. “Something else we don’t want Reese to find out?”

  I explained to her about the threatening email the groom had shown me and then, at my suggestion, had shown the police. “The police have the same information we have.”

  “They probably don’t have a team of sketchy hackers working on it, though.”

  “We aren’t hiding anything from them,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

  Kate shook her head at me. “Talk about following the better of the law and not the spirit.”

  Kate’s mangling of expressions had improved over years of being corrected by me and by Richard, but sometimes she slipped up. I grabbed my purse and keys by the door. “In this case, I think I like the way you say it.”

  Chapter 31

  The drive to the nearby Virginia suburb of Falls Church hadn’t taken long as the early afternoon traffic was light, and Kate directed me through some back streets using the Waze app on her phone. Spring seemed to arrive earlier each year, and the neighborhoods we wound through were a riot of blooming cherry blossom trees, dogwoods, and tulip beds. I’d rolled down my car windows to breathe in the cool air that hadn’t yet become humid and oppressive as it soon would. Summer came earlier each year, as well, and the sticky heat stayed longer, making driving with the windows down unpleasant if not impossible, so I reveled in these few days of perfect temperature and fresh, breathable air.

  I rapped my fingers on the steering wheel and hummed along to a pop song by a singer I’d never heard of who was probably half my age and couldn’t legally drink. I’d let Kate select the radio station because she hated listening to the news station that gave traffic and weather updates. If it wasn’t a wedding day, she didn’t pay much attention to either. The drive was so pleasant I almost forgot our mission.

  “The entrance should be up here on the right,” she said, pointing to an office building that rose about six stories and was covered with mirrored panels.

  I slowed and pulled into the parking lot, reading the large silver sign for Cogent Technologies as we passed. This seemed vaguely familiar, and I tried to remember if I’d ever met a client here or just passed the building before. The lot was filled with cars since it was a workday so I circled until I found a spot at the end of one of the closer rows.

  Kate leaned forward and peered up at the building. “An email was sent to our clients from someone in this building?”

  “According to Dagger Dan and Boots.”

  “But there must be hundreds of people in there. How do we narrow it down?”

  “I don’t know” I’d never expected the address Leatri
ce had given me would be to an enormous office building. “I don’t know if the guys can narrow it down further without being in the building.”

  “I wonder what they do here.”

  “Something to do with technology.”

  Kate gave me a withering look. “I got that much from the sign. But that could mean just about anything.”

  Kate was right. Technology was a word that could encompass anything from software to telecommunications to biomedical.

  I pulled out my phone, and tried to search for the company name. “Ugh. The signal here is awful. I guess we’ll have to go inside and find out.” I rolled up the car windows with a flick of my finger then turned off the car.

  “What’s the strategy?” Kate asked when she’d joined me outside.

  “I’m not sure. I think we’ll have to play this by ear when we get inside.”

  “Do you want me to provide a distraction while you sneak in?” Kate asked, taking long strides next to me as we walked toward the glass front doors. “You know I do some killer accents.”

  It was true that Kate could do a very distracting Russian accent that both captivated and confused people. She’d used it to great advantage previously so I could sneak past gatekeepers.

  “Not this time,” I said. “I’m afraid someone might recognize us. I could swear that I’ve been here before.”

  Kate pulled on the long metallic door handle when we reached the building and held the door open for me. “Then you came here without me because I’ve never set foot in this place before.”

  Our shoes clicked on the gleaming white tile as we walked across the expansive lobby to a black desk guarding a line of elevators. An older man in a blue uniform looked up as we approached.

  “Can I help you?”

  I looked around the minimalist lobby for anything that could give me a clue about the company. Aside from a grouping of black leather chairs arranged in front of a large portrait of a man I could only assume was the company founder, there was nothing to go on.

  Kate leaned forward against the high desk and gave the security guard a dazzling smile. “We’ve got an appointment.”

  He handed her a clipboard. “All guests need to sign in.”

  Kate took the clipboard and nudged me. I leaned over it and scanned the names of the visitors who had come before us as Kate wrote down a fake name and contact number. I knew she had an arsenal of made-up names and phone numbers in her head. She claimed it was the fastest way to get rid of an unappealing man at a bar. I glanced at the fake name she’d scratched on the list and wondered just how many drinks a man had to have to not question a name like “Poppy C. Muffin.”

  The guard held up two guest badges but paused before handing them over. “Who did you say you were here to see again?”

  Kate and I looked at each other. Here was where a fake name didn’t work so well since the guard no doubt had an employee list at the ready.

  “The CEO.” I gestured to the painting on the wall. “We’re meeting him about a charity gala he’s sponsoring.”

  “The CEO?” The security guard raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “We’re event planners.”

  That, at least, was the truth.

  The guard gestured toward the portrait on the white wall. “You don’t have a meeting with him. He’s dead.”

  Well, this was a problem.

  Kate put a hand to her heart and gasped. “This is so shocking. We must have made our meeting before he died.”

  I nodded, deciding to go all in with Kate. “I wonder why no one called to tell us before we drove all the way out here.”

  “Listen, ladies.” The man sighed. “I don’t know who you’re here to meet but it’s not Mr. Toker. He died well over a year ago.”

  Kate opened her mouth then shut it, and I felt her stiffen next to me. My eyes flew to the portrait of the old man. Mr. Toker? That’s why something seemed so familiar. Cogent Technologies was the name of the company Tricia’s father owned. The one her mother had taken over. I felt lightheaded as it hit me that someone inside Cogent Technologies had threatened the bride and groom before they were shot.

  Chapter 32

  “We’ve got to tell Detective Reese,” Kate said as we drove back into the city.

  “Agreed.” I squeezed the steering wheel as we sped along the wooded GW Parkway, which skirted the Potomac River. I was still processing the information we’d learned and trying to fit it in with what we already knew, but nothing seemed to match up. I tried to calm my mind by letting my eyes wander below us to the kayaks and crew teams that cut across the water, leaving ripples behind them. I reached behind me with one hand and dug my phone out of my purse, handing it to Kate. “Can you text him for me?”

  “Should I look in Contacts or Recent?”

  I ignored her smirk. “Contacts.”

  She tapped at my phone. “Is he under ‘Detective Reese’ or ‘Mike Reese’ or ‘Hot Detective?’”

  I gave her a side-eye glance. “Should I do it?”

  “No, no.” She waved me off. “I’ll find him. There we go. You have him as ‘Detective Mike Reese.’ Very thorough.”

  “Tell him that the threatening email the groom showed him was sent by someone at the Toker company. Be sure to tell him that we don’t know who in the company, though.”

  Kate tapped some more. “Okay. It’s sent.” She put my phone next to hers on her lap.

  I turned the radio up and flipped to the news station before Kate could complain.

  “Police are still investigating the death of a woman who fell off the top of the Hay-Adams Hotel yesterday,” the voice from the radio announced in nasal tones. “Police have not said whether it is being investigated as a homicide, suicide, or an accident.”

  “Well, we know it wasn’t a suicide,” Kate said.

  I turned off the radio. “They probably aren’t announcing that it’s a homicide because they have no leads.”

  “It’s not going to take long before the media connects Tricia’s murder with her mother’s rooftop death.”

  I knew Kate was right, and I dreaded the thought of the media connecting us with the second death. If we were lucky, our names wouldn’t come close to the news reports on Mrs. Toker’s fall. If we weren’t lucky, we could kiss our careers good-bye.

  I drove over Key Bridge and veered right onto M Street, thanking the traffic gods that it wasn’t gridlocked. Sometimes I had to wait through multiple cycles of the traffic light at the end of the bridge before I could actually merge onto M. I sped up to make the left turn signal at the Georgetown Cupcake corner and shook my head at the line of customers that snaked out their door and almost a block down the street. I liked cupcakes as much as the next girl, but hour-long waits struck me as excessive.

  “I thought we were going back to your place.” Kate looked over her shoulder at the street I’d driven past which led to my apartment building.

  “I want to drive by and check on Leatrice. I think it’s time to pull her off the stakeout.”

  Kate shook her head. “I still don’t understand why she’s there. If this guy had anything to do with shooting Tricia and Dave, I’m sure he’s long gone by now.”

  “Maybe. But it’s kept her out of my hair for over twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re right. Maybe we should send her on stakeouts more often.”

  I wove my way through the residential streets of Georgetown, passing blocks of elegant row houses broken up by the occasional patch of green park, and passed into the Glover Park neighborhood, where the houses went from ritzy to cozy. When we reached Tricia and Dave’s street I slowed down to look for parking. I spotted Leatrice’s tank-sized yellow Ford still taking up two parallel parking spaces in the middle of the block. The closest thing to a legal space was half a spot at the very end of the street. I pulled as close as I could to the car in front of me and hoped that the back end of my car didn’t protrude too far past the No Parking sign.

  “Nice,” Kate said as
she got out and inspected the distance between my car and the one in front. “You could barely fit a sheet of paper between these two. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  We walked the slight incline up to Leatrice’s car, and I rapped on the driver’s side window. I could see a blur of electric maroon as Leatrice jerked her head toward the noise. Then she rolled down her window a crack.

  “Hop in, girls.”

  The door to the back seat creaked as I opened it, got in, and slid over so Kate could join me. I noticed Leatrice was alone in the front seat. “Where’s Fern?”

  “He had some appointments so he left about an hour ago,” Leatrice motioned to the open laptop on the passenger’s seat. “I’ve been surfing online since then.”

  Kate looked around her at the dated interior of the car. “You have Wi-Fi?”

  Leatrice winked. “Dagger Dan has me piggybacking on a signal from one of these houses.”

  Kate grinned. “In the real world we call that stealing wifi.”

  “How’s it been going?” I asked. “Any movement in the house?”

  She shook her head and looked dejected. “Nothing. I think this may be a dead end.”

  I leaned forward and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I was going to suggest pulling the plug anyway.”

  “What have you two girls been up to?” Leatrice asked.

  “Do you want this morning’s news or this afternoon’s news?” Kate said.

  Leatrice’s eyes lit up. “What happened this morning?”

  I groaned to myself. So much for keeping it a secret from her. “The bride’s mother was pushed off the roof of the Hay-Adams Hotel. We saw it happen.” I hoped my voice sounded nonchalant.

  Leatrice looked at me like Christmas had just come early.

  Kate leaned forward. “And Mrs. Toker was acting very suspicious before she died.”

  Leatrice sucked in a reverent breath. “You saw her before she died? Were you following her?”