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Amanda sat back in her chair and cradled her coffee cup. She took a few sips, thought it all out. “Well, it’s not like we’ve uncovered anyone who had motive to want Felicity dead within her circle.”
“Unless you’re forgetting Sheldon Lowe.”
“I’m not, but his motive? He loved Felicity.”
“You could say he worshipped her.”
“But we haven’t gotten any concrete evidence against him yet. Means and opportunity seem to be missing. There’s no connection between him and Chapman that we’ve been able to find. That’s assuming the cold case has any tie.” She massaged her forehead. Her mind was a tangled mess of thoughts. And there was all that awaited her in the files.
“I really think we need to stick to our first instinct with this. The cold case matters. We already know that Felicity spoke to different people connected to Chapman.”
“No disputing that, but how did she find them? Through her police contact with the loose lips?”
“Not sure if we’ll be able to answer that one or not, but I can scour the call history on her phone again. This time with an eye for anyone she might have called that could be connected in some way to Chapman.”
“It wouldn’t hurt, and take time to follow up on the warrant to access her storage cloud too, please. I’m going to keep going with this for a while longer with focus on interviews and suspects. You finish up sooner, come join the fun.”
Trent stood and pushed in his chair. “A tag-team approach—I like it.”
“I imagine you do.” After all, he wouldn’t be holed up in this room with files upon files to wade through.
He grinned and left, closing the door behind him.
As soon as he was gone, a sense of overwhelm blanketed her shoulders and sat heavy on her chest. But she pushed it aside along with any doubts that mocked her decision to pursue this avenue. She knew in her gut there was something in this, she just had to find out what that was.
THIRTY-FOUR
Amanda was going cross-eyed when Trent knocked on the door and came into the room. She squinted to make out the time on her phone. No wonder her eyes were sore. She’d been poring over the files, analyzing every word, for over two hours. But she didn’t want to miss any possible clue or link that Felicity might have followed. Not that she believed Felicity would have had access to all of this. Still, something in the mess of the boxes could have made it to her attention by another route.
“Tell me you have something,” Amanda said as Trent dropped into a chair across from her.
“I do.”
Finally, good news! “Fantastic. Hit me.”
“If we needed any more evidence of how deeply Felicity Kelley investigated the case, we have it. A closer look at her call history confirms she had been in contact with Edmond McCormick, the previous owner of Between the Pages, Chapman’s parents, and a woman by the name of Victoria Eaton. Any of these names ring any bells for you?”
“Yep.” She put her hand on a piece of paper she had set aside to revisit. “Eaton was Chapman’s best friend. She was interviewed and gave Chapman glowing praise, saying that she beat out six other interns for the paid job—who go unnamed in the file.”
“Bishop must not have seen collecting their names to be of importance. He was looking at Chapman’s murder as a fatal home robbery, not as being personally motivated.”
“Except, what’s to say it wasn’t both? Now, apparently, Eaton was at Chapman’s promotion celebration at Taps and Cocktails. She told Dennis that Chapman’s fellow interns smiled to her face but badmouthed her behind her back.”
“That shouldn’t come as a surprise. They all wanted the job she got.”
“And it’s not just that. They could have been jealous of Chapman already. She had a rich father who gave her advantages in life. The promotion was just a cherry on top.”
“Sounds like she had a golden horseshoe up her ass.” Trent smiled at his turn of phrase.
“Until she didn’t.”
“Right. Well, this is a list of numbers and associated names that were on Felicity’s call history for the last month.” He held up a printout and added, “I figured if anyone Felicity contacted factors in, it would be due to more recent contact.”
“Because of her choosing to make a last-minute revision to her plot? Though that was only two weeks ago. What led to that change? I think we should speak with everyone on your list.” The page looked rather full. “How many are we talking about?”
“It looks worse than it is. Whittled down, I say we’re just looking at the people I mentioned a moment ago.”
“Did you pull a general background on all of them?”
