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“You know something I don’t?”
She took a few beats before sharing her thinking.
Trent was swiveling in his chair by the time she’d finished. “Someone Felicity saw the day of her murder…”
“What I suspect anyway. Hard to ignore she went into her safe deposit box upon her return from the champagne lunch.”
“So, it could have been anyone she saw in the building—I get it now. Active employees. And we’d also speculated she saw someone wearing the jewelry.”
“Yep.” Talking it through out loud had her more confident this theory was right. “You get those backgrounds?”
“Consider it done.”
“Just before you do, please pop out the drive. I’m going to look at it some more on my computer.”
“Just a thought on that…” He handed over the drive. “You might want to read what she had written so far in her book. She might have named the killer.”
“In that case, I’ll skip right to the end.” Although she highly doubted Felicity Kelley would have given the real killer’s name to her fictional one.
“I’ll be busy for a bit here. There are fifteen names.”
“Well, hop to it.” She rolled her chair out and went to her cubicle. Once there, she skimmed more articles about beauty affecting wealth. Study after study concluded it determined a person’s bottom financial line. Such a sad reflection on the world.
An hour passed, two, maybe more. Her stomach was rumbling. Trent had finished pulling the backgrounds. None of them showed a criminal record. He was now working to see if he could link any of them to Felicity Kelley beyond working for her publisher. After all, it had to be someone who had reason to cross paths with her.
Amanda started on Felicity’s book and, according to the word count, it was sitting around eighty-five thousand. That sounded like a lot, and she figured it was complete. She skipped to the end and scanned it, looking to see if she could decipher the killer’s identity. She found the name. “Hey, Trent, anyone on that list named Isaiah Miller?”
“Nope.”
“There goes your idea. That’s the name of the killer in Felicity’s latest book. Assuming by the file date of earlier last week, it was the latest version. But all right, back to the drawing board.” She opened a Word document entitled “Author Letter” and proceeded to read.
Felicity was thanking and acknowledging everyone who helped with the book. Amanda stopped when she came across the following:
I can’t express my gratitude enough to those in law enforcement who answered my questions about procedure. Though you requested to go unnamed, your personal investment in this project meant the world to me and helped me see things from a different perspective.
No names or initials, but there was one word that had Amanda tingling with an epiphany. Personal. “Trent.” After he looked over the divider, she said, “I stumbled on something here. I think whoever this cop is who helped Felicity knew her personally.” She took out her phone and selected Celeste Sweeney’s contact. “It never occurred to us to check with Felicity’s best friend for the identity of her contact within— Well, you know.” She didn’t want to say the PWCPD for prying ears. The line stopped ringing, and she was sent to Celeste’s voicemail. She begrudgingly left a message and ended the call.
“I’m going to need a little more information to go on here,” Trent told her, and she directed him to read the text on her screen. He came around to read it. “Personal.”
“That’s the word that stuck out to me.”
“Hence, the best friend. Let’s hope she knows and can tell us who this person is.” He returned to his cubicle, and her mind drifted. Her gaze did too, but it landed on the printed photo with the circled face.
Who are you?
She lifted it closer and narrowed her eyes, concentrated. There was a hint of familiarity, just a vague one. She shuffled through the photos she got from Victoria Eaton and searched for the man among them. Two had him in the frame. In the group shot, he was smiling but appeared self-conscious. He was quite overweight, his teeth were crooked and slightly yellow, and he had a problem with acne.
But as she studied the one photo, his right hand was wrapped around a beer glass. There was a gold band on his pinkie.
With that, everything slipped into place. Why he looked vaguely familiar, why Felicity Kelley had been interested in the effects of beauty on advancement, even why she’d named her killer Isaiah Miller. “Trent, I know who our killer is.”
FORTY-FOUR
Amanda didn’t get a chance to lay it all out for Trent before Malone came scurrying over with a printout in his hand.
“I just got the video from Benji’s Taxi,” Malone said. “The owner there is a great guy, Terrence Phillips.”
“Yeah, I spoke with him in the past,” Trent said.
