by Gerri Hill
“So? What else?”
“Why just one store? Why not spread it out among all of them?”
“Maybe he did. As we said, the pizza business was very lucrative.”
“You’ve got to check out all the vendors, everyone he pays money to. You’ll find some bogus ones. There’s your money trail.”
“And that money trail will have changed hands so many times, it’ll be a maze.”
Finn nodded. “So you’ve already found it.”
“We found three vendors that aren’t legit. The money is long gone from those accounts as well.”
“Any names?”
“About as useful as Michael Drake. But we’re still digging around.”
Finn stood up, pacing behind the bar. “Connie Frazier was tortured. Who has the stomach for that? Not an amateur, that’s for sure.”
“No. Professional all the way around. No prints left at any of the scenes. Nothing. Not even a stray fiber.”
“Was the same gun used on Connie?”
“Don’t have ballistics back yet on her. Same gun killed Daniel Frazier and Sammy, yes.” She frowned. “I thought I’d told you that.”
Finn shook her head. “No.” Then she smiled a little. “You don’t discuss open cases with me, remember?”
“I suppose I’ve broken that rule.”
Finn sat down again. “So Joel…your partner, you’re not close?”
“Not really, no. I haven’t been able to connect with him. And I do try,” she added, reaching for another slice of the loaded pizza. “We don’t make a good team, but Mabanks refuses to see it.”
“He likes the way you operate and wants you to teach young Joel, huh?”
“I am usually very much by the book, yes. Having you at the scene today notwithstanding. I’d do much better with a female partner.”
Finn laughed. “Wouldn’t we all?” She leaned her elbows on the bar. “Speaking of that, I’ve…I’ve hired someone.”
“Huh?”
“At the office,” she clarified. “A receptionist. Well, more like she hired me.”
“What do you mean?”
Finn shrugged. “She showed up one day, looking for a job. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Showed back up…next thing I know, she’s working for me.”
“A receptionist? Well, I thought it was odd that you didn’t have one.”
“Yeah…she wants to be an apprentice, but no, a receptionist. She prefers I call her my assistant.” Then Finn smiled. “Although she did catch a client today.”
“Are you sure she’s…you know, real?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if she showed up like you said, out of the blue when all of this is happening—the Fraziers…Sammy—is she for real?”
Finn stared at her for a moment, then shook her head. “She’s real. I mean, even though I practically hired her off the street…she’s real.”
It was Dee’s turn to stare. “You did do a background check on her, right?”
Finn shook her head. “No. It never even crossed my mind, actually.” Finn tilted her head thoughtfully. “I’m a private investigator and I didn’t do a background check,” she said almost to herself. “No…but she’s legit. Hell, she’s just a kid, innocent…looking for a job.”
“A kid?”
Finn smiled wryly. “Well, now that I’m forty, twenty-nine seems like a kid to me.”
Dee laughed. “When you said ‘kid,’ I thought you were talking eighteen, twenty.” Her smile faded. “But seriously, you didn’t check her out? At all?”
“No. I guess I was preoccupied.” Finn stole a pepperoni from one of the remaining slices in the box. “But she’s harmless. She came looking for a job. Said she’d hit up all the other agencies already. Then she came back…Friday, after Thanksgiving.”
“Okay, not to be a paranoid old cop or anything, but you really do need to run a check on her. I mean, she could be involved. She could be over there right now—”
“Doing what? Looking for what? There’s nothing left,” Finn reminded her.
“What about upstairs?”
“What about it?”
“The apartment. Sammy’s place.”
“There’s nothing up there. Besides, we cleaned it out. She helped me. Had it painted today. Getting new furniture. There’s nothing up there.”
“It still seems strange that she popped up while all of this is going on.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. I should run a check on her,” Finn conceded. “I’ve just been…I don’t know, out of sorts.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Amarillo. She moved down here this…this summer.”
Dee elbowed her. “Is she cute?” She was surprised by the blush on Finn’s face.
“She’s a kid.”
“Is she cute?” Dee asked again with a smile.
Finn gave a quick laugh. “Yeah…she’s pretty cute. Blond. Blue eyes.” Finn surprised her by the lingering blush. “Young.”
“Twenty-nine is no kid, Finn.”
“She barely looks twenty-five.”
Dee nudged her again with her elbow. “Well, lucky you. And I’m stuck with Joel.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get lucky. He might request a transfer.”
“I’m pretty sure he already has. And I’m still stuck with him.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“How did you get down here?”
Rylee smiled as the kitten rubbed against her legs. She picked it up and held her to her chest, listening to the constant purring. Well, it was not so much a kitten, but she doubted she was much older than six months.
She held the cat in one arm as she added sugar to her coffee. She supposed they needed to come up with a name for her sooner or later. Finn had said they would keep her here at the office—upstairs—until someone came to claim her. Rylee hadn’t said anything at the time, but from what she’d learned from Finn and the newspapers, she doubted the Fraziers’ two college-age children would be clamoring to adopt the cat. Their parents had been murdered only a few weeks apart. This cat, most likely, had not even crossed their minds.
She took the coffee and the cat and went back into the hallway, finding the door to the upstairs apartment ajar. She flipped on the light with her elbow as she took the stairs up. The door up there was ajar too.
She paused before pushing it open, wondering if she should be concerned. When she heard movement inside, she immediately turned, intending to head back downstairs. A familiar voice, however, stopped her.
“It’s just me.”
She turned back around, finding Finn standing in the doorway. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Good.”
She put the cat down. “Good?”
“Yes. You need to learn not to be so trusting.” Finn scooped up the cat. “I see you escaped, hmm. Did I leave the door open again?”
“Either that or she’s gotten very clever at opening them.” She leaned against the wall, sipping from her coffee. “What are you doing up here anyway?” Finn arched an eyebrow and Rylee quickly smiled. “Sorry. I don’t suppose that’s any of my business.”
Finn stroked the cat’s head a couple of more times, then gently tossed it into the apartment and closed the door.
“How long have you been here?”
“First cup,” Rylee said, holding up her coffee. “You?”
Finn walked past her, heading down. “Hour or so.” She looked back over her shoulder. “You coming? I thought we’d work on your client this morning.”
Rylee’s face broke out into a grin. “You’re going to let me do it?”
“I suppose. You’ve got to learn some time.”
* * *
“So how do you get access to these databases?”
“I pay for them,” Finn said as she logged into one. “I subscribe.”
“So anyone—”
“No. You have to have a license to get a subscription. Some have a monthly fee, some have a fee per se
arch. So don’t go crazy,” she said as she turned her laptop to face Rylee, who was sitting beside her.
“This is TLO. This is the one you’ll use most often for background checks. When we find out where all he’s lived, then we’ll check the courts, see if there’s been any warrants, any arrests, any DWIs, that sort of thing.”
“Social media?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s always fun,” Finn said dryly, causing Rylee to laugh.
“I take it that’s not your favorite thing to do?”
“I hate it. People are mostly idiots and I have to sort through all the crap they put out there.” She motioned to the laptop. “Search away.”
“But I don’t even know if Johnny is his real name.”
“You’ve got his phone number. We’ll do a skip-trace from there.”
Finn sat back as Rylee typed in the info she had. Rylee hesitated only a second or two before hitting the “search” tab. Finn had hesitated herself not two hours earlier. She had put in Rylee Moore’s information, deciding that she did indeed need to do a background check on her after all. However, at the last second, she changed her mind. She didn’t want to invade Rylee’s privacy, for some reason. She decided to go with her gut and her gut told her that Rylee Moore was as harmless as a child.
That wasn’t the only reason she’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to delve into her background because she didn’t want to be disappointed. She didn’t want to stumble across something that might suggest Rylee made a habit of picking up women in bars.
“Oh, my God! Look at all this stuff,” Rylee said excitedly.
Finn glanced at the screen and nodded. “A lot of it will be duplicated, but yeah, you should get an idea of what kind of guy your Johnny is.”
“Jonathan,” Rylee corrected. “I can even check out his parents and siblings.” She looked at Finn. “Should I do that?”
“Only if you get red flags somewhere else. If he appears to be a model citizen, then no. You give your client the basic information she asked for. If she wants us to go deeper, then that’ll cost her more.”
“Do you get these kinds of requests often?”
“What? Women checking up on potential husbands? I’ve had a few. Hanson probably gets many more. I think I even saw an ad of theirs one time that suggested this was the latest thing in dating.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean, that’s part of dating, isn’t it? Getting to know the other person.” Rylee leaned back in her chair and their shoulders were nearly touching. “Can you imagine how it would go? The other person tells you something from their past and you’re like, oh, yeah, I already knew that. I did a background check.” She made a face. “That would kill any romance right there for me.”
“I tend to agree,” Finn admitted, suddenly feeling crowded by Rylee’s presence.
“You do? As a private investigator, I would have thought you’d be all into that.”
Finn shoved her chair away and stood up, putting some space between them. “I am not into it for personal affairs and apparently, I’m not into it professionally either. Which should probably concern me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You. I should have done a background check on you, but I didn’t.”
“Oh, my God! You didn’t? I assumed you had.”
Finn shrugged. “Dee told me I was crazy for not doing it. I’m usually a good judge of character. I hope I’m not wrong.”
“Dee is your detective friend?” Rylee folded her hands together. “What do you want to know? I don’t have anything to hide. Except maybe my grades from a couple of college courses.”
Finn shook her head. “Whatever I want to know, I’m not going to ask you,” she said pointedly.
“Look, I’m an open book. Ask me whatever you want to ask me.”
Finn tilted her head, looking at her. “Why did you leave your previous position?”
“Oh, please. That’s where you want to start? I was a security guard, as you know. It was my father’s company.”
“Falling out with him?”
Rylee paused. “Um, not really, no. It was time to move on. Past time.”
Finn leaned against her desk, the search on Johnny Arnold forgotten for the moment. Rylee’s hesitation had piqued her curiosity. “Threw a dart at a map and picked Corpus?”
“The beach. I picked the beach.”
Finn eyed her suspiciously. “And?”
Rylee pushed her chair away from the desk a little and stretched her legs out, looking up at Finn. It took all of Finn’s willpower not to run her gaze along Rylee’s legs, covered in jeans now. It wouldn’t take much for her mind’s eye to picture them as she remembered…bare, wrapped tightly around her.
“I didn’t grow up wanting to be a security guard. I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do. I have a criminal justice degree, but I didn’t really want to be a cop. While I was in college, I thought being a game warden sounded fun, so I focused on that. Only I couldn’t find a job there.”
“In Amarillo?”
“Right,” she said with a nod. “And at the time, I wasn’t ready to move away. So I thought I’d work for my father a year or two, then venture out.”
“So you still lived at home?”
“I lived at home until I was twenty-two. Then I didn’t.”
Finn raised her eyebrows questioningly and Rylee sighed.
“My relationship with my father is kinda strained. I couldn’t live at home anymore.”
“But not so strained that you didn’t have a job?”
“He couldn’t very well fire his only daughter.” Rylee gave a quick shake of her head. “Although I’m sure he considered it at the time.”
Finn studied her, wondering what all she was leaving out. She tapped the top of her desk with her index finger.
“What is it you’re not telling me?”
Rylee stared at her. “What? You want all the gory details?”
“Yes.”
Rylee blew out her breath. “Okay. My relationship with my father deteriorated because, well…when I came out to them, he pretty much blew a gasket.”
Finn wondered if she should feign surprise at the news. It’s not like they’d talked about that night. It’s not like she would assume Rylee was gay if she met her on the street. She let her eyes move over her…the blond hair that was tucked behind one ear, minimal makeup, no lipstick. No earrings, at least not in the ear that was visible to her. No rings. A watch…a black sports watch on her left wrist. One of those exercise things—a Fitbit?—on her right wrist. As she’d told Dee…Rylee was cute. Pretty. Lovely, in fact.
“And your mother? How did she take the news?”
“I’m their only child. While she wasn’t crazy about having a gay daughter, she didn’t shun me or anything.” Rylee still held her gaze and Finn found she couldn’t look away. “She’s not really speaking to me right now.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Because I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, she’s upset. She gets great joy from playing the guilt card.”
“Well, at least she wanted you there,” Finn said, thinking briefly about her own mother. Did Finn even cross her mind over the holiday?
“I suppose. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Thanksgiving? Family?”
“No,” she said abruptly. She pointed at the laptop. “Your session will time out if you’re not careful.”
Rylee turned back to it. “So what should I do?”
“Download your search results. Read through it. Pull out whatever you think is pertinent. Make me a report.”
“What if I do it wrong?”
“I’m going to do one on him too. We’ll compare.”
“But…I’ve never seen one of these reports before. How do you want it?”
Finn shrugged. “Whatever. Spreadsheet. Bullet items on a document. Whatever you feel comfortable with. Don’t make it wordy. You’re not doing a book report.”
Finn nodded. “That’s how I would start. How old is the guy?”
Rylee looked at his date of birth. “Twenty-four.”
“Go back to high school, then work through college to present day.”
“Okay. I’m on it.” She paused. “Thank you, Finn. For letting me do this.”
“Yeah, well, don’t go changing your title just yet, kid.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dee rubbed her tired eyes, then finally clicked out of the report she’d been reading. A report about nothing, basically. They’d identified six bogus vendors from the Pizza Jamboree’s books. Five of the vendors did business with all four of the pizza joints. Only one did business exclusively with the pizza parlor across the Causeway—Jamboree Number One. So yes, Daniel Frazier was moving money through all of his restaurants. All of the vendors’ accounts were so neat and tidy, though, they’d lost the money trail after three transactions.
“You still here?”
She turned, finding Captain Mabanks watching her. His shiny bald head was covered with the fedora he normally wore when he was going out. He had a long raincoat draped over his arm.
“Raining again?”
“Off and on all day. I guess you haven’t been out.” He walked closer and sat down in the visitor’s chair that was shoved close to her desk. “Anything pop up?”
“No. Dead end,” she said with a heavy breath. “Everything about these murders is a dead end.”
“I could bring in—”
“A fresh set of eyes won’t do any good. There’s no evidence to look at. Nothing. We have three dead bodies. That’s it.”
“What about Finley Knight? She’s linked somehow. Have you found it?”
She shook her head. “Nothing in her background suggests she had any dealings with Daniel Frazier, other than he hired her right before he was killed.”
“I don’t guess you’ve considered she might be the killer.”
Dee’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “Don’t arbitrarily dismiss anyone as a suspect, Detective. You know the old saying…when you have no suspects, everyone is a suspect.”
“The man who was killed at her office, Sammy Walker, was like family to her. I was there. I saw it.” She shook her head. “She’s not the killer.”