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Margot nodded and sat down in the comfortable chair facing his desk. While he worked on the computer, she checked her phone and found her sister had forwarded her the email from Stick. Margo
t went ahead and forwarded it to Radcliff and Ames.
Shaw finished what he was doing and looked at Margot. She handed him her phone. Shaw read the message.
“Not much there,” he said.
“Those numbers mean anything to you?”
“No. In fact, it’s weird. Why would he send you a bunch of random numbers? With that X there, it looks like half of a really hard math problem.”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I wish I could. Is this the only communication?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you pass it on to the cops?”
“Yeah, just did.”
“Good, it’ll save me the trouble.”
“You talked to him about the case?”
“Not really.”
“You knew he sent an email.”
“Stick had a way of doing things and one of them was sending daily reports even if he didn’t have much to say. Or in this case, all he had to say was something cryptic and vague. He was onto something. Too bad he didn’t say what.”
“Was he always like that?”
“You mean cryptic? No, but if he did playthings close to the vest, especially if he hadn’t figured everything out. He took the confidential part seriously and didn’t like to talk out of school.”
“Even to his partner?”
“Yeah, even to his partner. I used to think it was a good quality, but now I wished he talked more. We might have some idea who killed him beyond ‘locals’.”
Margot nodded.
“Are you going to take up where Stick left off? I take it your sister's friend is still missing.”
“He is, but I’m out of it. What are you going to do?”
“About Stick? I don’t know. He was my partner and my friend. We were like a family over here: Stick, Ms. Collins, and I. But I don’t know what I can do that the homicide cops can’t. Ames is good and the kid he’s partnered up with seems sharp too. It sucks, but the best thing to do is to sit back and let them handle it. All I’d do is get in the way.”
“I figured I’d do the same,” Margot told him. “If what happened to Randy and his mother doesn’t come out during the investigation, I suppose I might need to take up where Stick left off, but I’m going to worry about that when it happens.”
“It sounds like this Randy character isn’t exactly a prize. Stick was on the job and the job has risks, but this asshole Randy doesn’t seem worth risking your life for.”
“Stick tell you about Randy?” Margot asked.
She might have let something slip during her interview, her contempt for Randy was hard to hide, but she thought she had made a point to leave out Randy’s history with both her and Melanie. Stick was an investigator, so it wasn’t impossible he had learned about Randy without Margot’s help.
“Not really, just some broad strokes. Like I said, he kept things close to the vest.”
Margot nodded. She stood up and said, “If you hear anything, can you let me know? I feel like shit getting Stick involved in this and I think I’m going to feel worse if they don’t catch the piece of shit who did this.”
