According to Klamm, there had been only one car registered to Leila Donnelly—a navy-blue Ford Taurus. And at the time the body was found, it was in her garage with a full tank. “We would have noticed a convertible Porsche,” he told me.
He walked me back around the garage. I asked for his phone number and he gave me a card. I gave him mine. I said goodbye to Klamm and Hanson. Hanson just glared at me. He must have been very sensitive about his appetite size. I didn’t bother getting his phone number.
When I got back to my car, I slipped Gleason’s card out of my wallet and called him. He picked up right away. “Detective Gleason,” he said. No first name.
“Hi, George, it’s Sunny Randall.”
“Yes, I knew that from the caller ID.”
Jokingly, I complimented him on his detecting skills. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t laugh.
I decided to cut to the chase. “I’m wondering if anyone in your investigation has mentioned a black Porsche 911 Carrera convertible.”
“No,” he said.
“Okay, well, I think there’s a possibility that the person who killed Leila may have driven that type of car.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I saw one parked outside Leila Donnelly’s house yesterday, when Melanie Joan and I spoke to her. I assumed it was her car, but apparently it’s not.”
“So, when you stopped by,” he said, “there may have been someone else in the house besides the child you said you heard.”
“I would assume there was.”
“That’s really interesting.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been trying to find friends of hers, an agent, a nanny, even. Anybody who might have visited her house around the time of her murder. She didn’t seem to associate with anyone. Closest we’ve been able to find is a DoorDash driver who goes up there pretty frequently. Not in a Porsche, though. And anyway, he was delivering in a different town that day.”
“What about her mom?”
“The only people to visit her house that day were you and Melanie Joan Hall.”
“And the killer.”
He said nothing.
“What I’m trying to get at is, maybe her mother knows of someone else. Maybe she’s worth talking to about that.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” he said.
“You’re sure of this?”
“She doesn’t want to talk.”
“Doesn’t want to talk at all? Or doesn’t want to talk to you?”
He didn’t answer the question. “Did you get the Porsche’s license plate?”
“No,” I said. “It was parked next to the garage, on the grass. The license plate wasn’t fully visible, and anyway, like I said—”
“You assumed it belonged to the homeowner.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the information,” Gleason said. He didn’t sound thankful.
