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“Of course. Nothing happens to a penny of Triple-B money without her knowing about it.”
“She said Janelle handled the disbursements, and she just signed off.”
Julia choked out a laugh, and some color returned to her face. “You think with only ten eligible clients she wasn’t aware of every single application and every single approval? She could spout off everything each of our clients have been approved for and how much of our funding was involved, probably with exact dates attached.”
There was a ring of truth to her words. “Why would she allow you to steal?”
Without a word, Julia stood up and left the room. Jo shot a look at Arnett—should they follow her?—but the footsteps U-turned before Jo could start down the hall.
Julia thrust a folder of papers at them. Jo took it and opened it—receipts and reimbursement requests.
“She was padding her expense account. Submitting requests with supposedly lost and altered receipts. And while Rhea signed off on everyone else’s requests, for obvious reasons, Naomie was supposed to sign off on Rhea’s—but Rhea was forging the signatures. I found out by accident, when I borrowed one of her legal pads to write a quick note. I noticed there was ghosting from the last thing she wrote, and I could see enough to see some sort of repeating pattern. So I did that thing, you know, where you shade the paper with pencil to make the indentation stand out? It was Naomie’s signature, over and over and over.”
“So you blackmailed her,” Jo said.
“Blackmailis strong,” she said, mimicking Jo’s earlier wording. “She begged me not to tell. Claimed that with the current inflation she was struggling, especially because her mother is on a fixed income. Claimed she’d pay it back when she could. I told her that was fine, but that I needed money right now, too, and that if it was okay for her in the short term, it needed to be okay for me, too.”
“And she agreed to look the other way on the applications you sent through,” Jo said.
Julia stared down at the floor, and nodded. “And she removed the initial applications from the files.”
“So when Naomie called you about the fraud, what did you say?”
She continued to stare at the floor, and her voice came out as a whisper. “I had no idea what to say. Looking back, I wish I’d just come clean to her. But since Madison was already dead…”
“You told her Madison must have been stealing the money,” Jo finished for her. “And then you warned Rhea that Naomie was looking into it all.”
Julia’s head snapped up, and her eyes pleaded with Jo. “I know how it sounds. Yes, I cheated on my husband, and, yes, I took money that wasn’t mine. But I would never, ever kill anyone over any of it. Naomie was closer to me than anyone in the world except Rick—like my best friend, my sister, and my daughter rolled into one.” Tears overflowed her eyes, and she dissolved into jerks of fierce sobs. “She and that baby were the only family I had left.”
* * *
Above Julia’s sobbing head, Jo signaled to Arnett that she needed to talk to him outside.
“What’s up?” Arnett asked once out of earshot. “I’m surprised you don’t want to just bring her in.”
“I’m not sure there’s any point right now, since an attorney will have her out on bail within hours for the embezzlement. If she’s our killer, that’s not going to stop her.”
“So you like her for it?”
“I’m not sure.” Jo’s hand flew to her necklace. “Her emotions seemed genuine, and I wasn’t picking up that same sense that she was lying at the end. But she did lie to us right up until we shoved proof of the forgery right under her nose, and that sort of liar only admits what they have to.”
“Agreed. And if she’s our killer, that answers a lot of questions. All of the women would have trusted her, not one would’ve thought twice about following her into the forest for whatever reason she made up. And she has the medical knowledge to kill them quickly and efficiently.”
That reminded Jo of the satchel Julia was carrying. “Don’t certified nurse midwives administer pain medications and such during home births? That would explain how she knocked them out.”
“She’d have access to them, at least.” Arnett scratched his chin. “Nice call you made about Helen’s murder being a distraction, by the way. Makes sense why it was so hurried and incomplete.”
Jo nodded acknowledgment. “So if her only alibi is a boyfriend, she doesn’t have a solid alibi for any of the three murders. And it wouldn’t have been hard to kill Helen and be back at Triple-B in an hour if she followed her after class.”
“Easy enough to make some excuse to get her over behind the buildings,” Arnett said. “Claim her car was broken down or something, then push her over into the ravine.”
“Two issues. One, I have no problem picturing her killing an adult, but I do struggle to imagine her killing a baby. Or even stabbing one that’s already dead, frankly,” Jo said. “Second, we don’t have any proof. We should be able to get a search warrant based on the embezzling evidence, but I’m not convinced we’ll find anything. That may be why Helen’s scene was so different—she may not have anticipated needing the candles and such if it was a last-minute decision.”
“No reason not to try,” Arnett said.
“Absolutely. But I also think we should hedge our bets. I think the best shot we have at connecting her to the murders is to put her under surveillance. I think given the sensitive nature of the victims and all the pressure Hayes is getting from Barbieri and the public, she shouldn’t have a problem approving it given the embezzlement evidence.”
“Agreed. I’ll call right now.”
