“So you think whoever killed Daphne had access to one of her cards?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe Daphne woke up and left the room for a specific reason. Maybe she wanted ice … or something from the vending machine … or even confused herself enough to take a walk. She could’ve let herself back in the room and brought a guest with her when it happened.”
“Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“I think it is.” Quinn bobbed his head. “If she let herself out of the room and came back in, she could’ve run into someone in the hallway. Perhaps it was a man and he wanted sex. He could’ve been equally drunk and tried to force himself on her.
“Maybe Daphne turned him down and he lost his temper and he strangled her from behind,” he continued. “Then, after realizing what he did, he might’ve panicked and fled. He could very well not remember what he did, think it’s a bad memory or something.”
“I know that scenario fits the facts we have so far, but I don’t believe that,” Rowan argued. “Daphne said a woman approached her on the deck that night. She smelled perfume.”
“What if it was cheap aftershave?”
“She runs a cosmetics company. She should know the difference.”
“Yeah, even though I’ve worked hard putting together that scenario, I don’t believe it either,” Quinn conceded. “That doesn’t change the fact that she could’ve run into someone else in the hallway, perhaps it was one of her sales representatives.”
“That’s a possibility,” Rowan agreed. “She was drunk so she could’ve said something ugly. Perhaps the woman she met was drunk, too. Things might’ve gotten out of control and … strangle city.”
It was a serious situation, but Quinn couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “Strangle city?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. That’s not the only thing I found, though. We uncovered two sets of prints that we can’t match.”
Rowan pursed her lips. “Is that uncommon? Hundreds of people have been in that room. Has this ship always been used for international ports?”
“For the past five years.”
“Oh, so all of the fingerprints should’ve been traceable. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
Quinn nodded. “Exactly. I ran both sets of prints through an external search system, meaning law enforcement avenues and a few other databases that I have access to through my contacts. I got hits on both.”
Rowan widened her eyes. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“Because they don’t solve the case. They add more questions than answers to the equation.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Do you remember our first date?” Quinn asked, leaning back in his chair.
“I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to forget that night.”
“Me either. When we were leaving, though, we saw all of those cops on the beach. Do you remember that? Well, it turns out they were there fishing a body out of the water. I did some checking after the fingerprints hit. The woman who died was named Jenny Lassiter. She was a Cara G Cosmetics representative and she was supposed to be on this ship but never checked in.”
Rowan tilted her head to the side, considering. “Was she murdered?”
“She was strangled and dropped in the ocean,” Quinn replied. “Fingerprints were discovered on her body, too. The same fingerprints we just collected off Daphne’s body.”
“Holy crap!” Rowan hopped to her feet. “How is that possible, though? That suggests a serial killer.”
“Or at least a mission-based killer,” Quinn clarified.
“Still, all of the guests were fingerprinted as part of the intake process,” Rowan pressed. “Whoever killed Daphne should be on record unless … well … unless we’re not dealing with a guest. That means it has to be an employee, right?”
Quinn didn’t immediately answer the question. Instead he posed one of his own. “When you were hired, what was the first thing they did?”
“They made me take a drug test, asked me if I had any kinky sexual hang-ups that would make guests uncomfortable, and then they … oh.”
“Yeah, they fingerprinted you,” Quinn finished. “All of the workers are fingerprinted no matter what job they’re taking on. That includes maids and janitors.”
“So how did someone who wasn’t fingerprinted get on the ship?”
“That is the question of the day. I don’t have an answer for you. That’s hardly the most important thing I discovered, though.”
“There’s more?” Rowan couldn’t help but be impressed. “What else did you find?”
“When I ran the second set of prints that didn’t match with anything in our database, I found they belonged to a Minnesota woman with a record sheet longer than Michael’s tongue when he sees a woman in a bikini.”
Rowan snorted at the visual. “Nice.”
“I do my best.”
“Who is this woman?”
“Her name is Claire Fisher. She was born in 1975 and has been arrested no less than twenty times.”
“On what charges?”
“Drunk driving, theft, fraud. She’s a grifter. She runs scams and tries to bilk old people out of money.”
“And she’s on this ship?” Rowan was understandably confused. “How did she get past the security protocol?”
“I have no idea. I do know that Claire Fisher was going under an assumed name on this ship, though.”
“She was? Do you know her other name?”
Quinn nodded. “It’s Daphne DuBois.”
All of the oxygen she’d been holding inside her lungs leaked out as Rowan visibly deflated. “What? But … how?”
“It’s taken some time to put things together, but it seems that five years ago Claire Fisher fell off the map,” Quinn volunteered. “She was arrested in Minnesota as part of some real estate scheme and she never showed up for her court date. She’s technically a fugitive.
“Also five years ago, Daphne DuBois was a cosmetics dynamo who ran her business strictly on the internet,” he continued. “She came out of nowhere and launched one of the most lucrative cosmetic companies in the world. It all stemmed from some line she ran for teenagers. One of those insipid Kardashian girls wore the lipstick and that was all she wrote. It was fame, fortune, and never-ending lipstick after that.”
“So you’re saying that Claire Fisher was leading a double life,” Rowan mused. “She was grifting while running this cosmetics company and somehow got lucky. What are the odds of that?”
“Not good. That’s not what happened. At least, that’s not what I think happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Daphne DuBois wasn’t a household name,” Quinn explained. “She also wasn’t a household face. No one knew what she looked like. She wouldn’t do interviews and basically hid herself behind a website as she sold makeup by the bushel.”
“So … .” Rowan was having trouble grasping the bigger picture.
“So I think Claire Fisher tracked down Daphne DuBois, killed her, and took over her identity so she could run Cara G Cosmetics,” Quinn supplied. “The real Daphne DuBois had no family that I can find, no one to report her missing. She had no husband or boyfriend. She had no children. She was a virtual recluse who just happened to know something about makeup.”
“And you think Claire Fisher figured that out and killed her? But … that’s unbelievable.”
“And yet it seems to fit the facts,” Quinn offered. “You said the wig was sewn in. To me that indicates the Daphne we knew was in the middle of a very long con.”
“So whoever killed her probably figured that out,” Rowan mused. “Maybe it was even someone from Claire Fisher’s past. What does that have to do with the dead woman in Florida, though?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’ve waded through a lot of this, but we still have more to go. I’m not sure how every piece fits the puzzle, but I’m confident I’ll get there eventually.�
��
“I’m confident, too.” Rowan was lost in thought as she settled back on the corner of Quinn’s desk. “There’s one other thing we have to factor in.”
“What’s that?”
“Penny Parker,” Rowan answered without hesitation. “She was a potential victim at one time. We need to know why … and we need to figure out what changed to put Daphne back in a killer’s sites.”
“So we have a lot to do,” Quinn prodded. “I guess I’d better get to it.”
“We,” Rowan automatically corrected. “We’re going to get to it. You can’t cut me out of this. I’m here until we figure everything out.”
Quinn grabbed her hand and gave it a good squeeze. “Thank you. I’m not sure I could do it without you.”
“I don’t want you to have to try. Where do you want me to start?”
14
Fourteen
Quinn was calm when he ushered Penny into his office shortly after lunch. He was unsure how to proceed – giving Penny too much information could prove to be detrimental if she was the killer, but holding too much of it back would lessen the drama of the reveal. Quinn desperately wanted to know how Penny would take the information, and as Daphne’s personal assistant, he could think of no one who was closer to the dead woman – or held the potential to know the secrets she held.
“Try to get comfortable,” Quinn suggested when Penny caught her breath on a sob and rolled over into a fresh crying jag.
“How about some tea?” Rowan offered, taking a step forward. “I have a Keurig in my office, which is right around the corner, and some chamomile tea might make you feel better.”
She initially wondered if it was wise for her to be present for the interview – she wasn’t with the security team, after all – but Quinn insisted he wanted Rowan close. She had good instincts when it came to people and motives, and he wanted more than one set of ears on the interview.
“Tea sounds nice,” Penny said, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy. “Thank you.”
Rowan exchanged a quick look with Quinn before exiting the office. Quinn decided he might as well start with some softball questions to get the ball rolling. The key was to make Penny comfortable with him without tipping her off to exactly how big the stakes really were.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Quinn intoned, flashing a sympathetic smile as he sat in his desk chair. “This must’ve come as quite the shock to you.”
“Oh, not really.” Penny dabbed at her eyes, thankfully missing the incredulous look on Quinn’s face.
“Not really?” Quinn wasn’t quite sure what to make of the answer. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” Penny mustered a watery smile when Rowan returned with her tea. “Thank you.”
“Do you know something we don’t know, Penny?” Quinn queried. He worked overtime to appear grave but not demanding. “We’re trying to figure out who would have cause to kill your boss, but we’re still floundering a bit this early in the investigation.”
“I think the majority of the people on this ship wanted to kill Daphne,” Penny admitted ruefully. “You see, I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet, but Daphne wasn’t a very nice person.”
Quinn pressed his lips together to refrain from saying something stupid like “oh, we noticed” or “tell me something I don’t know.” Instead he rested his hands on the glossy desktop and flashed an encouraging look in Penny’s direction. “Can you give me some examples?”
Penny nodded. “Well, take Andrea Gunderson,” she suggested. “She’s one of our one percenters – that’s what we call the top one percent of sales women, by the way – and she’s gotten a lot of attention since her arrival on the ship. Anyway, she was on the list, which means she earned a car in the next prize cycle, but Daphne said she wasn’t going to allow Andrea to stay on the list because she felt Andrea cheated to get her numbers. She went to a beauty pageant and got half the women drunk before selling out her entire stock one day and it totally inflated her numbers. That’s frowned upon.”
“I see.” Quinn fought the mad urge to laugh as he glanced at Rowan. She looked equally baffled. “Did Andrea threaten Daphne?”
Penny nodded. “She said she was going to yank out Daphne’s fake hair and make her eat it. Daphne said she didn’t have fake hair and to shove it, but Andrea insisted she would sue if she didn’t get her car.”
“And how did they leave things?” Rowan prodded.
“Angry.”
“Uh-huh.” Quinn rubbed his chin, his expression thoughtful. “Anyone else?”
“Everyone else,” Penny replied without hesitation. “Sandy Petrelli said she wanted to kill Daphne for putting her in the blue sales group instead of the pink. She said Daphne was fudging the numbers and didn’t want to reward her because she was fat and everyone knew Daphne didn’t like fat sales representatives.
“Alexis Graham said she wanted to poke out Daphne’s eyeballs and feed them to her because when Alexis’ husband dropped her off at the ship, Daphne hit on him and offered him a spot in her cabin for the duration,” she continued.
“Lauren Bishop said she was trying to figure out a way to trip Daphne when she was close to the railing because Daphne pulled her up in front of everyone at the conference and said she had ‘man hands,’” she explained. “Lauren’s hands are definitely manly, but she doesn’t like having that pointed out.
“Oh, and there’s this one,” Penny added, jerking her thumb in Rowan’s direction. “Daphne was laughing about going after her boyfriend – which I guess would be you. She said she was going to steal you from her and she couldn’t wait to see if Rowan cried. She picked a fight with Rowan the other day and laughed when she upset her. She thought Rowan looked as if she was going to cry.”
“Yes, well, Ms. Gray has been cleared,” Quinn said, shooting a sympathetic look in Rowan’s direction.
“By who?” Penny was legitimately curious as she glanced between faces.
“She was with me at the time of the murder,” Quinn explained.
“You were in the same bed?” Penny seemed surprised. “Huh.”
Rowan didn’t know what to make of the reaction, but she was mildly insulted. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Penny answered hurriedly, recovering. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just … Daphne said you two were just pretending to be together. She generally knew how to read people so I assumed she was right. I guess she was wrong this time, though, because you guys are really a couple, right?”
Quinn narrowed his eyes. Something felt off about Penny’s reactions, but he couldn’t put a name to what he was feeling. “We’re definitely together,” he said after a beat, changing course quickly as he picked a new direction to lead the interview. “How close were you to Ms. DuBois?”
Penny seemed taken aback by the question. “I … well … we communicated with each other every single day.”
“That’s not really what I asked.”
“What did you ask?”
Rowan tilted her head to the side as she looked Penny Parker up and down. The woman was more than she appeared on initial glance. She knew how to play a room – and distract people when necessary. She also knew how to deflect. It probably worked well in cosmetic circles. She was in an entirely new arena now, though.
“How close were you with Ms. DuBois?” Quinn repeated.
“We communicated every single day.” Penny looked almost smug when she parroted back the answer.
“Here, let me try,” Rowan suggested, drawing Penny’s gaze to her. “Did you ever talk to Ms. DuBois about things that didn’t involve work?”
Penny perfunctorily bobbed her head. “Yes.”
“What things? Oh, and be specific.”
The light in Penny’s eyes dimmed a bit, but she didn’t crumble. “We talked about some of the other sales representatives – Daphne loved to gossip – and we talked about which colors washed people out. You, for example, should not wear orange,
Ms. Gray. The color is too rich for your skin tone. It will make you look like a deranged pumpkin.”
Rowan remained impassive while Quinn leaned forward.
“Don’t talk to her that way,” Quinn warned. “I know what you’re doing and I don’t like it. You might not think we have any jurisdiction because we’re ship security rather than sworn police officers, but you’d be wrong. As far as you’re concerned, we’re the freaking FBI.”
Penny swallowed hard at the words, shifting in her chair. She clearly thought Quinn was going to be a pushover and his response was somehow jarring. “I didn’t mean to be insulting.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” Rowan countered. “It’s fine, though. You learned it from Daphne. We made the mistake of believing you were under Daphne’s thumb. You were using her as much as she was using you, though. It’s good to know that tidbit moving forward.”
Penny balked, surprised. “I … that’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s true.” Quinn silently patted himself on the back for insisting on having Rowan present for the interview. “It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing you can say is going to affect Ms. Gray because she’s not insecure and you’re used to preying on insecure individuals. Besides, she looks marvelous in orange.”
Penny wrinkled her nose. “I wasn’t trying to upset her.”
“That’s exactly what you were trying to do,” Quinn argued. “It doesn’t matter, though. Your petty glee at being mean is hardly the most important thing we’re going to be dealing with today. Ms. Parker, I need your whereabouts for the early morning hours – let’s say between ten and four in the morning.”
Penny’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t seriously think I’m a suspect.”
“I seriously think you’ve been acting odd since you entered this office,” Quinn countered. “If you weren’t a suspect before, you definitely are now. Where were you?”
“I was in my cabin.”
“The entire time?”
“Well, no,” Penny hedged. “I was in the main dining room with some of the representatives until about ten or so. Then we went to the tiki bar on the deck until about two in the morning. I went to my room after that.”
Murky Seas (A Rowan Gray Mystery Book 2) Page 12