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Connor frowned. “Crawford gave Evans the vase right after Devon told him that she didn’t know about the coins. That Crawford specifically asked Devon meant that he knew that she knew. How? How did he know that Devon had seen them?”
“That’s a good question. It’s possible that Evans lied about that, and she did tell Crawford that Devon knew. But just about everything she said in her interview checks out. She placed the vase in the room, but she didn’t go back to get it, at least not with a key card that could be traced to her.”
“So she either had one of the fake key cards or someone else was involved, because Crawford himself isn’t on any of the camera feeds inside the residence areas. So maybe Crawford had another accomplice on the staff?”
Kit scanned the key-card log for what felt like the millionth time that day. “Nobody entered Benny’s room except for the nursing staff until the night the coins were stolen, and that entry could have been Crawford.”
The camera hadn’t been working that night, so they had no feed from the corridor.
Connor made a groaning sound. “And his killer still could have taken the collection from his hotel room.”
“Unless Crawford went straight to his storage unit from Shady Oaks,” Kit said. “He could have done that and still made it back to his motel in time to have sex with the mystery woman and then get murdered.” She placed a call to the forensics team that had taken custody of the contents of Crawford’s storage unit. “Hey, this is McKittrick. You didn’t happen to find any coins in that storage unit of Crawford’s, did you?”
“Sorry, Detective,” the team leader told her. “No coins. But we did find a second set of key cards, one for each current employee and a few from former employees.”
“Like Devon Jones?” she asked.
“No, hers isn’t in there.”
No, it wouldn’t be, she thought. “Because Benny’s killer used it. You’ll call if you find anything else important?” They promised they would, and she ended the call and scowled. “Still no coins, so Crawford didn’t put them in his storage unit. Crawford’s killer has to have them, and chances are that Crawford’s killer also killed Benny Dreyfus.”
“Let’s go back to the videos, then.” Connor reran the video of the figure entering Benny’s room the morning of his death, then brought up the video of the coin thief leaving Shady Oaks early Friday morning, running the two side by side. “They could be the same person,” he said.
Kit blinked hard and viewed the videos again. “The gait is a little different because of the platform shoes the person wore into Benny’s apartment.” Or she might be seeing things after viewing the videos so many times. “But you could be right.”
“And if I am,” Connor said heavily, “if they are the same person, Crawford didn’t take the coins, either, because he was long dead by Tuesday morning.”
“Then we’re back to looking at a staff member,” Kit said, rubbing her forehead. “We don’t have video from the night Frankie was murdered, just from the night Benny died. It has to be one of the nurses or nursing assistants who went into Benny’s room, because we know that no one else did.” They’d viewed all the videos and could at least be sure of that fact. “We can eliminate anyone under about five-four.” She culled out those nurses. “Crossreferencing these names with the key-card log shows four possibilities: Janice Lenski, Roxanne Beaton, Amy Norwood, and Kaley Cross. One of them used Devon’s key card to enter Benny’s room, but we know that Devon was in the ER with her daughter the whole night Benny died, so it couldn’t have been her, even if she weren’t only five-two. We need to get the movements of the other four. We also need complete background checks on these four nurses to see if any of them had a pressing motive for the theft, but I’m going to do that after we take a break.”
“Oh, thank God,” Connor muttered. “I’ve needed a break for an hour, but I was trying to keep up with you.”
She frowned at him. “If you need a break, call for one. Is the cafeteria all right?”
“It is, but we have incoming,” Connor said, holding up his phone. “Check your phone. Goddard just texted us. He’s got something to share and is on his way up.” He opened the door to the conference room and a minute later Goddard walked in.
From the huge grin on his face, he’d had better luck than they’d had.
“You found the coins?” Connor asked.
“Not yet, but remember I said yesterday that we watch the online chatter about the sale of stolen antiquities and other treasures? Online fences use code. Not all are the same, but there are recognizable phrases. Today one of our guys saw a listing for ‘old money.’ ”
“Coins,” Kit murmured. “Are you sure they’re the coins we’re looking for?”
“Not one hundred percent, but reasonably sure. There was talk of previous owners like ‘Julius,’ ‘Aristotle,’ and ‘George Washington,’ which we assumed meant Greek, Roman, and early American, which are the most valuable coins in Dreyfus’s collection.”
“Where will they be sold?” Connor asked. “At an auction?”
Goddard shook his head. “No, they seemed to be in a hurry to sell. One of our undercover operators has a collector persona online. We’ve planted high-value items in the past and have had him purchase them, giving him a good rating.”
Connor grimaced. “Like Amazon Marketplace on the dark web?”
“Pretty much. Our operative has an appointment to view the coins tomorrow evening at six p.m. in San Ysidro.”
The suburb of San Diego was about twenty miles away and right on the border with Mexico. “Quick hop-skip into Mexico if things go wrong?” Kit asked.
“Basically, but we’ve done this before and we know how to block the escape routes. We even had one thief try to escape in a helicopter. It was very James Bond. But we caught him.” But he frowned, just slightly enough that she knew she’d irked him. “We know what we’re doing, Kit.”
“I know. I’m sorry. This case has my head spinning in circles. What can we do to help?”
