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That seemed like the most likely explanation, meaning the computer must still be in his house or apartment…assuming, of course, that Henry Lewis hadn’t confiscated it as evidence. Maybe not; Jeffrey hadn’t died at his home, and that meant Chief Lewis might not have had probable cause to search the place.
But even if the laptop wasn’t tucked away in an evidence locker somewhere, it was still at Jeffrey Sellers’ residence, which meant I couldn’t easily gain access to it, either. I supposed I should just be glad that all the paperwork from the family court in Iowa had been just that — papers — and therefore he’d needed to store it somewhere.
So many questions crowded my mind — if NancyAnne Nielsen really had killed Jeffrey, was she still here in Arizona? Would she have left some kind of paper trail? — but I knew most, if not all, of them would probably be answered the next morning after Calvin got to work. The good thing was that he had to be on shift at 8 a.m., several hours before I was due at the shop. With any luck, he’d turn up the information then, and we’d be able to discuss it while I was here at home. Not that I didn’t trust Melanie, but most of this stuff was private, and not the kind of thing I wanted to talk about when there was a possibility of her overhearing me.
Because I knew I’d just have to wait to see what happened next, I smiled up at Calvin and said, “So…what do you want for dinner?”
To my infinite relief, he called me around nine-fifteen the next morning. “Hey, hon,” he said. “Ben was able to pull up some information.”
A little shiver of excitement went through me. “What’d he find?”
I was sitting on the bed when Calvin had called and just about to slide into a pair of flats, meaning this was the perfect time to pause and hear what he had to say. From her spot at the foot of the bed, Sadie looked at me expectantly, as though she’d heard her master’s voice coming through the tiny speaker of my iPhone.
“It looks like NancyAnne Nielsen is here in Arizona right now,” he told me. “She flew in to Phoenix the middle of last week.”
That little shiver of excitement turned into an outright surge. “So…she would have been here the day Jeffrey Sellers was murdered.”
“Yes, she got here two days before.” Calvin paused there, then added, “It looks as though she’s staying at a hotel near the airport.”
Which made sense, if she’d thought she would be confronting Jeffrey at his home or his business in Mesa. She probably hadn’t bargained on having to drive all the way out to Globe to do the dirty deed.
If, of course, she’d killed him at all. Right now, it was impossible to know for sure.
“Is her daughter with her?” Somehow, the thought of NancyAnne killing Jeffrey while she had their child in tow was even worse than the actual reality of his murder itself.
“It doesn’t look that way,” Calvin replied, and I let out a breath of relief. “That is, Ben says there was only a charge for one round-trip ticket on her credit card.”
You’d have thought she would have paid cash for her airline ticket, considering that sort of transaction would have left a pretty obvious paper trail. Then again, even without those credit card receipts, there would still have been a record of her on the flight’s manifest. Maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as I’d originally thought.
“She probably left the child with relatives in Iowa,” Calvin went on. “The little girl is pretty young, only around seven.”
I did some quick mental math. If NancyAnne’s daughter was only seven, then that meant she must have been born right before Jeffrey left Iowa and headed west toward greener pastures. That sounded like an awfully cold response to your child’s birth, but it was entirely possible the marriage had been on the rocks before she was even born. I’d definitely heard that sad story more than once.
Including my own case, although at least my parents had only been dating, not married. Still, my biological father had definitely made himself scarce once I appeared on the scene.
And although I’d long ago come to terms with my father’s absence in my life, telling myself this was just how things were supposed to work out and how I shouldn’t be bitter about any of it, I had to admit that Jeffrey Sellers’ abandonment of his daughter made me like him even less, if possible.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the inescapable truth that finding his actual killer would exonerate Victoria, I doubted I’d go to so much effort trying to find out who was responsible for his death.
“And she hasn’t checked out of her hotel?” I asked.
“No. Ben said the hotel reservation was from the fourth through the ninth, so she should still be there. Her flight home leaves at 2:20, so she’ll probably be checking out right at eleven and then heading to the airport after that.”
“We need to talk to her before she leaves, Calvin,” I told him, hoping the urgency of my words was apparent even over the phone.
A breathy little sound that I guessed was a sigh. “I can’t leave,” he replied at once. “Jacob’s wife went into labor this morning two weeks early, so we’re short-staffed today.”
Damn it. That is, I was happy for Jacob and his wife, but we just couldn’t let the opportunity to interview NancyAnne Nielsen slip past.
I blurted, “I’ll go talk to her.”
“Selena — ”
I knew that warning tone and chose to ignore it. “Calvin, I’ve got to talk to her. Even if she isn’t our suspect, she might be able to provide some valuable information about Jeffrey’s enemies, that kind of thing.”
“NancyAnne Nielsen and Jeffrey Sellers have been split up for years,” my husband pointed out. “Do you really think she has any idea what was going on with his life here in Arizona?”
Maybe not. What I did know was that it felt as if the universe was sending me a clear signal. NancyAnne was still here, only an hour and a half away. I knew I could make it before checkout time if I got moving right now.
