If Emily was surprised to see us heading her way again, she didn’t show it; her smile was just as friendly as ever.
I didn’t want to raise her hackles by being insensitive, so I said, “We were just wondering if Janice had any friends that you forgot about when we were last talking to you.”
Emily shook her head. “Janice wasn’t the friendliest of people. She was more the rude, snarky type.”
“And you never saw her talking to anyone who worked at the stores nearby?”
“Not that I can remember,” Emily said without missing a beat.
“How about your brother, Eric?” I said. “Janice must’ve talked to him once in a while, since apparently you two would get to work at the same time.”
The friendliness in Emily’s eyes died a little, and she looked at me seriously. “Janice might have said hello to Eric sometimes, but it wasn’t anything worth mentioning.”
“So you did see them talking to each other?”
Emily shrugged. “Janice would make small talk sometimes, asking Eric how he was, things like that. She was probably just being polite.”
“But from what I hear, she wasn’t polite with most people. She was mean and rude to everyone. Why would she go out of her way to be polite to your brother?”
Emily shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Perhaps the two of them were dating in secret.”
Emily burst out laughing. “No way! Eric and I share an apartment, and I would have known if he was dating anyone. As far as I can tell, Eric’s had no social life for the last three months. But maybe Janice had a crush on him or something, so she was trying to be polite to him.”
I didn’t quite buy the story that Janice had a crush on Eric, but Emily’s amusement at the idea that Janice might have been secretly dating her brother seemed genuine. “So why didn’t you tell us earlier that Janice would talk to Eric sometimes?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “It didn’t seem important. And like I said, she barely said a couple of words to him.”
“Your brother works next door at the bank, right?”
Emily’s face became drawn, and I could tell that she didn’t like the idea of us prying into Eric’s private life. “Yes, he’s a security guard there. I hope you’re not going to waste his time with inane questions. I really don’t think he can tell you anything new about Janice.”
I smiled apologetically. “I’m sure you’re right, but it’s my job to go around asking these questions.”
The bank next door was a tiny branch of the Western US Bank, a large corporation with branches throughout the country.
There were two ATMs just outside the entrance, and Ian and I stepped through wide sliding doors onto plush gray carpets that our feet sunk right into. To our right was a small reception desk, which wasn’t manned at the moment.
A uniformed security guard who I assumed was Eric stood on our left, watching us carefully. He was about my height, average build, brown hair. He fit the description of Janice’s boyfriend to a T, and although Bob had insisted that the boyfriend was taller than Eric, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Bob’s memory was infallible.
Beyond Eric to the left were small glass–walled offices for the managers and senior bank officers, and past the offices I could see a door marked Staff, which I assumed led to a break room, kitchen, and possibly restrooms. A row of tellers’ windows covered the wall at the far end, but there were only two tellers working at the moment.
Ian and I stood just inside the bank, looking around as though we were lost. There was only one customer at that time, and she was talking to the teller about something.
The uniformed guard approached us politely. “May I help you?”
I turned to him and smiled. “You must be Eric.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Do I know you?”
“Not really.” I introduced myself and explained that my friend and I were looking Janice’s death at the store next door.
“That was a terrible business,” said Eric politely.
“It was,” I said. “Which is why we’re looking into it.”
Eric nodded. “I’d be happy to help out if I could, but I didn’t really know Janice. She used to work with my sister, of course.”
“Did you ever talk to her?”
Eric nodded. “Once in a while. My sister and I share an apartment, so we drive in to work together. Sometimes Janice would come over to say hi and make a bit of polite chitchat, nothing too serious.”
I watched carefully, but his eyes revealed nothing. “Do you think Janice might’ve had a crush on you?”
Eric smiled modestly and shook his head. “No, I’m sure she was just being polite.”
“Hmm.” It didn’t add up, and I couldn’t see why the normally grouchy Janice would be polite and friendly toward Eric. “Did you ever talk about anything else, anything more serious?”
Eric shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Are you sure? Anything you might recall about Janice at all?”
“Nope, we barely talked and I didn’t really know her.”
Ian and I exchanged a glance. It was obvious that Eric wasn’t able to—or wasn’t interested in—telling us anything more about Janice. So I asked him a few questions about his work—how long had he been working there, and did he like it?
He’d been a security guard at the bank for six months, Eric told us, and work was a bit boring, but not too bad; the manager, Jarrett, was a pretty nice guy, as were the tellers. He didn’t really know the employees over at Betta Furniture too well, and he couldn’t imagine who might’ve wanted to hurt Janice.
I couldn’t think of much else to ask him, so I said, “And where were you on Sunday night?”
“At home,” he said, “watching TV with my sister.”
“Right. Do you remember what you were watching?”
Eric frowned and shook his head. “No, not really.”
“Do you remember if it was a TV show, sports, or a movie?”
He started to shake his head again, and just then, his cell phone buzzed.
“Excuse me,” he muttered. He read the text, smiled to himself, and then put the phone away before looking at Ian and me again. “What were we talking about?”
“What you were watching on Sunday night,” I prompted.
“Right.” Eric looked at me and suddenly brightened up. “I remember now—we were watching Friends, back–to–back episodes on Netflix.”
“Oh.”
I nodded my head, unable to think of anything else to ask him, so I handed him my card, thanked him for his time, and asked him to call me if he thought of anything else.
In my experience, people never call, but I keep handing out my business card, just in case I meet the one person who breaks the mold.
Chapter Fifteen
When we left Betta Furniture, Ian announced that he had a craving for fries. As soon as he said it, I realized that fries didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.
So we found ourselves heading over to the nearest McDonald’s, where we both ordered fries and burgers and settled in to devour our delicious, fat–and–cholesterol–laden meals. As I chewed on my perfect, salty fries, I thought back to our conversations with Emily and Eric.
“What did you think of the people we’ve talked to so far?” I asked Ian.
Ian scrunched up his face, clearly making an effort to act like a woman, and said, in the squeakiest, highest–pitched voice I’d ever heard, “It’s really interesting if you think about it.”
I smiled. “There’s no one nearby. You can talk normally.”
A wave of relief washed over Ian’s face. “Phew. It’s hard doing that all the time.”
“Although the makeup does suit you,” I said, unable to help myself.
Ian scowled. “I never thought I’d do this kind of thing unless I had to join a frat or something.”
“Emily gives off the impression that she might have been the kind of girl to join a sorority. She seemed really smooth
and confident.”
“Plus, she’s pretty.”
I rolled my eyes. “She is, kind of. But you need to be more careful around women.”
Ian groaned. “I think I’m pretty careful. It’s just that the crazies always find me.”
“You’ve met too many crazy women for it to be a coincidence.” For a moment, I had a fleeting vision of Ian dating one crazy woman after another, until someone finally managed to get ahold of his trust fund and ruined him.
I didn’t think the loss of his money would affect Ian much; it was more the misery he went through each time he met someone who was out to use him.
“Irene’s the opposite of Emily,” said Ian. “She’s really mousy and timid. And she doesn’t even have an alibi for when Janice died.”
For some odd reason, I felt protective toward Irene. It was her timidity that got to me. “Not having an alibi doesn’t really mean anything.”
“And her eyes got all wide and she looked scared when we talked about that night.”
“Some people are just naturally shy and scared of everything.”
“You might be right,” admitted Ian.
“It was Eric who really bothered me. There’s something about him…”
“I know what you mean. And I know he and Emily are each other’s alibi, but something just seems off.”
“Maybe one of them’s protecting the other,” I mused out loud. “Maybe Eric was the one who was having an affair with Janice after all, and he killed her. Emily’s just protecting him.”
“Or maybe Emily killed her,” said Ian. “And Eric’s protecting her.”
I shook my head. “Either way, we should look into their alibi.”
We’d finished our meals by now, so I called Harry and asked him to find Emily’s address from me. I stayed on the line until he found it, and when he asked how the investigation was going, I murmured noncommittally and hung up.
“We might not be able to find anything by canvassing their neighbors,” I said. “But it’s worth a shot.”
Emily and Eric’s apartment turned out to be a ten–minute drive north of Betta Furniture, and Ian used the drive to wipe off his makeup, remove his wig, and slip into a pair of tennis shoes he’d brought along, transforming back into his regular self.
Their apartment was housed in an old–looking brick building, three stories high and U–shaped, with a small concrete courtyard. I estimated there would be about fifteen to thirty apartments in the building, and Ian and I decided to divide and conquer. He started from the first floor, and I started from the top.
An hour and a half later, we had covered all the apartments in the building between us, and we headed back to my car.
“I didn’t have any luck,” said Ian. “I knocked on about a dozen doors, and half of them were out. The people who were home never really noticed Emily and Eric, and they definitely didn’t see them on Sunday night. So there’s no way to know if Emily and Eric were home that night.”
“I didn’t have much luck either,” I said. “I talked to about eight people, and nobody saw Emily and Eric that night. However, one woman did say that she got home just before midnight, and when she walked past Emily and Eric’s apartment, she heard the TV playing really loudly.”
“That’s something,” said Ian. “Although it doesn’t really prove anything. Maybe Emily was home watching TV alone, or Eric was watching the TV.”
“Unless somebody actually went inside their apartment that night and saw both Emily and Eric, it’s hard to prove that they really were watching TV all night.”
“And we know that nobody else saw them, because if they did, Emily and Eric would have told us.”
“We could’ve disproved their alibi, if anyone saw them leaving their apartment. But nobody saw them. Which doesn’t mean anything; maybe Emily and Eric managed to leave without being seen.”
Ian shrugged. “Oh, well. At least we tried. And now I need you to put my makeup back on again.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Nobody wants to tell us anything,” I said on the drive home. “It’s time to do some old–fashioned detective work on everyone who was close to Janice.”
Back in my apartment, I fired up my computer, Ian brought his laptop over, and I sent Harry a text, asking him to email me all his employees’ resumes.
“We’re going to poke around in all the social media sites,” I said. “But before that, I’m going to run all the employee names through my database and find out where they went to high school. Our goal is to find some high school friends of theirs and find out what their friends think of them.”
“But we might be calling people who weren’t very close to them in high school.”
“The first person you call, you ask for a list of Irene, Emily or Eric’s close friends. Then after that, we just call up the close friends.”
“What about John, Bob and Jonas?”
“All of them have pretty solid alibis. They couldn’t have been anywhere else on Sunday night.”
“What if they made up those alibis?”
“In that case, we’ll check them out. But I’ve only got a few hours tonight before I have to head off to my shift, so we’ll start with the three people who don’t have real alibis.”
Ian nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
He used the social media sites to find a couple of friends each of Irene, Emily, and Eric, and I pulled up details of their high schools. Next, I ran the names Ian gave me through my database and found out who had gone to high school with each of the three Betta Furniture employees.
The work was tedious and boring, and by the time I was done, Harry had emailed me the resumes of everyone who worked at Betta Furniture. We pulled out the information for Irene, Eric, and Emily’s past work history, and then Ian and I got to work.
We decided to start with Emily and Eric; Ian called the various nightclubs and bars were Eric had worked previously, and I called Emily’s previous employers, a string of high–end boutiques.
Over an hour later, Ian and I had learned very little that was new, and we both had sore throats from talking nonstop.
“Everyone at the places I called pretty much had only nice things to say about Eric,” said Ian. “They said he was a reasonably hard worker, he showed up to his shifts on time, and he was never overly aggressive or rude. He got along well with his coworkers, and everyone I talked to thought he was pretty smart and hard–working.”
I nodded. “I’ve been hearing similar things about Emily for the past hour. That she was nice and polite. And apparently, she liked to make good use of her employee discount, and she’d spend a fair bit of money buying designer clothes.”
“I don’t know if Eric liked to spend on clothes,” said Ian, “but I heard he had a thing for nice cars. I was told he leased a Jaguar for a year, before they cut back on his hours at work, and he had to end the lease. Plus, he’d spend money on frequent trips down to Vegas.”
“That’s what they said about Emily, too. That she used to fly down to Vegas a lot.”
“It makes sense; they probably liked Vegas so much they decided to move here in the end. Jobs in Wichita probably started to get scarce, and they figured they might as well move somewhere with better prospects and fun casinos.”
I glanced at the clock. “I need to head out for my shift soon, so there’s no time left for me to call up Irene’s references or the friends—are you okay with calling everyone?”
Ian nodded enthusiastically. “Sure, work references shouldn’t be a problem. And everyone’s curious about their old high school classmates, so they’ll be happy to talk. It shouldn’t be any trouble at all.”
That’s exactly what I was thinking, and I felt a moment’s relief that I could count on Ian’s help when it mattered. Once Ian headed back to his apartment, I started to get ready for my shift and wondered if anything interesting would happen tonight.
Chapter Seventeen
That night, as I stood behind a blackjack table in the Treasur
y Casino, I let my thoughts drift over to the various people we’d talked to about Janice’s death.
This had been a relatively easy shift for me so far, and it was one of those days when I really appreciated working at the Treasury. The bright lights of the casino surrounded me, the jingle of the slot machines rang out every now and then, and the gamblers all seemed to be in a good mood. I hadn’t needed to deal with more than two drunken game disruptors throughout the night, and the happy, bustling casino was a nice break from the stark bright lights of Betta Furniture and the bank, where Ian and I had spent most of the day.
Once in a while, a vision of Cecilia clinging to Ian like a barnacle popped into my mind, but I tried to push those thoughts away. Cecilia was an annoyance, but she would be gone after a few days; perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised that Ian managed to attract such strange women, given that he was a rather strange young man himself.
I had drifted into a happy, slightly zoned–out mood as I dealt cards, joked with the players, and occasionally thought about the people we’d talked to today. I was so engrossed in my work and my thoughts that I barely registered when a familiar figure appeared in the corner of my eye. But a few seconds later, something made me look in his direction again, and when I realized who it was, I almost gasped out loud.
Pearce’s gaze met mine, and he smiled and nodded before directing his attention back to the craps table he was standing next to. Perhaps it was a coincidence that he had come into the Treasury Casino during my shift. I tried to tell myself that was all it was, and focused on dealing out the cards.
But after a few minutes, the gamblers at my table chose to move over to the roulette wheel. I stood waiting at the empty table for a few long seconds, hoping that Pearce wouldn’t realize I was unoccupied.
No such luck.
Pearce sauntered up to my table, sat down as though he owned the place, and smirked annoyingly. “Hey, Tiffany. Bet you’re glad to see me.”
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