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“Are you suggesting Jessica would kill for Ellen?”
He blinked, appeared to catch himself. “I don’t know about that.” He seemed to sink into the sofa. “You’ve come at a bad time, Ms.O’Sullivan. I’m seriously angry with Jessica right now. I wouldn’t take anything I say to the bank. Check back with me when I’ve had more time to lick my wounds.”
Finley offered an understanding smile. “I’m sure the two of you will work it all out tonight.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. She took a bag.”
“She’s probably planning to stay with a friend.”
He laughed a bitter sound. “You mean one of her coworkers, right? Because Jessica doesn’t have any friends outside that tight little group.”
“Have you tried calling her?”
“She’s not picking up.” He stood, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Like I said, this is not a good time for me to talk about this.”
Finley pushed to her feet. “I apologize for intruding, but I do appreciate your time.”
He walked her to the door, opened it, but she paused before leaving. “When she comes home, you should tell her I stopped by.” No need for the visit to come back to bite Finley in the butt with Winthrop.
“I don’t think she’ll be back.”
Finley opened her mouth to say something conciliatory, but he cut her off. “She took her passport. Ask yourself, Ms.O’Sullivan, if she planned to come back, why take her passport?”
The Finnegan Firm
Tenth Avenue, Nashville, 2:20 p.m.
“Nita made a fresh pot of coffee.” Jack gestured to the carafe and cups on his desk.
“Great. I definitely need coffee.” Finley poured a cup and collapsed into a chair. The frustration and anticipation had calmed to some degree, leaving her wrung out.
“You had lunch?”
Finley downed a slug of coffee and set her mug aside. “No time. I need to catch you up and bounce some ideas off you.”
As if Nita had been standing at the door listening, she waltzed in and handed Finley a pack of snack crackers. “Eat,” she said. To Jack, she warned, “You have a three o’clock.” Then she promptly left, closing the door behind her.
Jack shrugged. “You heard the boss.”
Knee bouncing the tiniest bit with renewed impatience, Finley opened the package and crammed a cracker into her mouth. As soon as she’d chewed and washed it down with coffee, she launched into the details of her interview with Nora Duncan’s former neighbor Betty Rantz.
Jack listened intently. He didn’t ask questions until Finley had come to the end of her story and had finished off the cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers. Maybe because she barely took a breath as she spoke. There hadn’t really been a good opening.
“You’re suggesting,” Jack offered, “based on seventy-odd-year-old Rantz’s statement, that Lena Marsh likely murdered Nora Duncan.”
Finley nodded eagerly, needing him to get this the way she did. “Yes.”
“Why?” He sat up straighter in his chair. “The game was over. They had her money. No one had gone to the police.”
“Because,” Finley said, the scenario fully formed now, “Duncan wouldn’t let go. She kept calling him. Showing up at his place—wherever that was. She wouldn’t stop. Rantz said so herself. How else were they going to get rid of her? If Duncan kept it up, they could end up outed.”
“Valid point.” Jack reached for his coffee, taking his time, as if there was something on his mind, before he met Finley’s gaze once more.
“Then there’s Jessica Lauder,” Finley went on. She walked him through her visit with Wendy at the spy shop and then the chat with Lauder’s husband. “He thinks his wife is in the wind.”
Jack nodded slowly, absorbing the new information.
She wanted to shake him. He had to see what she did.
