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Palmer must not have had a place to call home to wind up here. It also seemed he’d had immediate plans to stick around Dumfries, so that was a point against suicide. That manner of death also didn’t fit a man who’d just regained his freedom, though some ex-cons had a terrible time adapting to life on the outside again. So, really, it was too soon to conclude anything. She keyed into her app Suicide? then looked up at Flynn. “How much money are we talking here?”
“Fifteen hundred.”
She whistled. “Never would have expected that.”
Flynn glared. “I know it’s not the Ritz, but we’ve got bills to pay.”
She held up a hand in surrender to calm Flynn, but she was more interested in how Palmer had that much cash. It was more walking-around money than most people had, but Palmer had been a part-owner of a pawnshop, so maybe it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Still, she added Source of cash? into her app.
“And he, what, had this cash in his jacket pocket or…?” she asked.
“His bag.”
With that admission, something flicked across Flynn’s eyes and his mouth twitched like he couldn’t quite settle on an expression. The topic of the bag made him uncomfortable, possibly fearful. A weapon inside it, perhaps?
“Did he make you feel threatened?”
His gaze snapped to hers. “No.”
A bald-faced lie. “No weapon in his bag then, or anything else that had you spooked?”
“I didn’t really get a good look,” he rushed out.
“Okay,” she said, backing off just a tad, but his lack of a denial confirmed that Palmer’s presence had caused him anxiety. “You do realize, though, that we’re trained to read people and tell when they’re lying to us?”
Flynn worried his bottom lip.
“You’re not going to tell us,” she concluded. “But it’s not like he can hurt you.”
Flynn’s gaze hardened and he ground his teeth. “There was nothing else in the bag, okay. Just the cash he paid with.”
“You’re sure about that?” Amanda pressed, curious why he was getting defensive.
“Yes,” he seethed.
“Besides the bag, did he have anything else with him?” Trent interjected, and she could have smacked her new partner upside the head. He’d given Flynn exactly what he’d wanted: a shift in direction.
“Not that I recall.”
Amanda glared at Trent. “You’re doing good; this is very helpful,” she praised Flynn, certainly undeserved, but she had to do something to salvage the situation and get Flynn talking. “What you probably didn’t know is Mr. Palmer just finished serving time in prison.” She was trying to feel out Flynn and get a sense of what had him clamming up about the bag.
Flynn swallowed roughly. “I didn’t know that.”
“And if he had a weapon on his person, it would be helpful to know that.” She tossed this out nonchalantly, trying to gauge what could have been in the bag that had him so worked up.
Flynn held up his hands. “None that I saw.”
She nodded, finally assuaged that it wasn’t Palmer himself or the contents of the bag that had Flynn worked up. That left one other possibility she could think of. Maybe the fear originated from someone Palmer had been with or who had visited him. “When Mr. Palmer checked in, was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you happen to see if Mr. Palmer had any visitors or left with anyone between his checking in and last night?” She resisted the urge to say checking out even if it was accurate.
“No, I didn’t.”
Again, she got the sense Flynn was withholding, but there was only so much she could do. The military would waterboard people to extract information, but that method was a little extreme for this situation. “Does that mean you didn’t see anyone or you’re just not saying?”
“I don’t know when the guy died, but I’m not the only one who works here,” Flynn huffed out.
