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“If you don’t do it, and with Ava’s parents dead and her having no siblings, then her assistant, Melinda, will probably have to,” she said. “Do you really want to make a twenty-three-year-old kid just out of college do something that is your obligation? Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Buhner?”
The question was intended to unsettle him, but she genuinely wanted to know: was he reluctant to go identify his wife out of heartache, cowardice, or perhaps guilt?
“I didn’t think of it that way.” he said quietly. “I assumed I could send a recent photo or something. I had no idea they would make Melinda do it if I didn’t. Of course I’ll go.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Jessie said, intentionally keeping her tone neutral so Buhner couldn’t be sure if she was being sarcastic, “especially since you must be devastated.”
“Yes,” he agreed, latching onto her seeming sympathy, “and emotionally exhausted. I feel like I need to sleep but know I won’t be able to.”
“Well, as long as you’re awake,” Ryan replied, “why don’t you tell us about your last twenty-four hours? Maybe it will help us find out what happened to Ava.”
“Okay,” Buhner said, standing up and walking over to the loveseat in the corner of his office, where he plopped down again, “but there’s not really much to tell. I went to Las Vegas on Sunday for a big meeting of our company executives. It ran through today. I hadn’t seen Ava since I left town on Sunday afternoon.”
“You didn’t interact with her at all in the time you were gone?” Jessie pressed, not commenting on the fact that he had carefully avoided being specific about when he was actually in Las Vegas.
“I didn’t say that,” Buhner corrected. “I called her last night to see how she was doing and to let her know I’d be back this afternoon.”
“From Las Vegas?” Ryan confirmed, helping Buhner dig an even deeper hole for himself.
“Uh-huh,” Buhner said, avoiding eye contact.
“So to be clear, you spoke to Ava yesterday evening when you called her from your work conference in Las Vegas?” Ryan asked turning the screws.
“Mm-hmm.”
“And what was she doing?” Ryan wondered.
“She said she had to go out and meet someone, but she wasn’t specific about the details,” Buhner said.
“This was when again?” Jessie asked.
Buhner pulled out his phone and looked at his call log.
“We talked at 5:16 p.m. for four minutes,” he said. “She told me she was getting set to head out in a few.”
“And she didn’t say who she was meeting or where?” Ryan wanted to know.
“No.”
“Did that seem odd to you?” Jessie asked.
Buhner looked apprehensive, likely either due to his ongoing deception or because he was starting to wonder if he should have been more suspicious of Ava.
“No,” he said cautiously. “She has evening meetings all the time for her work. It’s pretty standard.”
“She wasn’t evasive about it?” Ryan pushed.
As they peppered him with questions Buhner’s head was bouncing between them like he was watching a ping-pong match.
“Not that I recall,” he said. “Why? Did this meeting have anything to do with her death?”
Jessie looked at Ryan, not to see whether he thought they should answer Buhner’s question, but to make sure he was on board with what she planned to do next. His subtle nod let her know he was. She smiled slightly, relieved and excited by how easily they fell back into their investigative repartee after months of not working together.
“Mr. Buhner,” she asked in a friendly lilt, setting him up for what was to come,” if you were in Las Vegas until today, why do we have a record of you returning to L.A. on a flight last night and of you paying to retrieve your car from a long-term parking garage a quarter mile from the airport? Can you explain that discrepancy?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Buhner’s jaw went slack. For a good five seconds, he was silent. When he spoke, his voice was unnaturally confident.
