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Quinn’s phone rang as they parked at the bank. He answered the call.
“Detective Jones, what a surprise.” He rolled his eyes and Dela chuckled. “Yes, we are following multiple leads.” He listened. “Really? I would have thought your office would have come up with the murder weapon by now.” Quinn grinned. “Oh, forensics hasn’t told you the murder weapon. That could be because they haven’t sent out a report yet. No, I haven’t received one.” He nodded. “Yes, when I get the report, I will let you know what they concluded could be the murder weapon.” He pressed end and slid the phone back in his pocket.
“I do believe your favorite tribal detective was trying to see if I, or should I say we, he did mention you, know more than he does.”
Dela narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure we do. He hasn’t been interviewing anyone that I know of.”
“He said, he’d talked to people at the casino. The ones who would talk to him, but until he knows the weapon, he can’t really send out men to look for it.”
Dela made a noise deep in her throat. “That’s a lie. Anything that had blood on it could be the murder weapon.” She thought a moment. “You know, it would have made sense for the murderer to shove it into the chute along with the body.”
“But that would have been something the laundry room would have notified you about. A bloody weapon mixed in with the sheets.”
“True. It has to be somewhere on the tenth floor if not in the supply room.” She pulled out her phone and dialed security.
“Spotted Pony Casino Security, this is Marie,” answered the guard in the office.
“Marie, send two guards on floor security to the housekeeping supply room on ten to see if they can find the weapon from yesterday’s murder.”
“Didn’t you search it yesterday?” she asked.
“No. I figured Detective Dick would. I have a feeling he didn’t.”
The woman laughed. “That sounds about right. I’ll send Bruce and Ross.”
“Good choice.” She thought a second. “Have them check the stairway as well. I should be back by noon. Let Kenny know when you see him.”
“Will do.”
Dela ended the call and noticed Quinn watching her.
“That’s why everyone likes you,” he said.
Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “Why?”
“Because you don’t order them around, you treat them like equals. I would have thought after so many years in the army you would have been ordering everyone around. Like you do me.”
If he hadn’t said the last sentence with a smile on his face, she would have laid into him about he needed to learn to follow orders. Instead, it started a small flicker of happiness in her chest. “Thanks, I think. The army taught me that you get more help when you treat everyone equal. Well, except the major and generals. They don’t like that.”
He laughed.
She liked the deep sound.
He finished and opened his door. “Do you really think the weapon is still in the hotel?”
“Not really. It would make more sense for whoever killed him to take it with them.”
“I agree.” They walked up to the bank and entered.
The bank manager was more than willing to help once Quinn handed him the warrant for Tristan and Paula Pomroy’s bank records. With the photocopied pages in her hand, Dela settled into the passenger seat of Quinn’s car.
“There isn’t any out of the ordinary deposits or withdraws.” She glanced over at Quinn. “If he was blackmailing people, he must have been keeping it away from his wife.”
Quinn started the car. “Still want to go ask her about her trip to the casino the night her husband was murdered?”
Dela shook her head. “Let’s go talk to Mattie first. The little black book might have the information we need.”
“Where does she live?”
She picked up the folder Quinn brought with him that morning and read the address out loud. Shoving the bank statements into the folder, Dela studied the photo of the man the FBI wanted. Why did he look familiar? He was bald, no facial hair, and had wrinkles at the back of his neck. Granted it was a rendering from witnesses but the eyes...
The car stopped in front of a smaller home on the edge of town. A dented older compact car sat in the driveway.
“Do you think she’s here?” Quinn asked as they exited.
“I hope so. If she is nosing around about what she found in the book, she could be in trouble.” Dela walked up to the porch, climbed the two steps, and knocked on the door.
There wasn’t a sound from inside.
Quinn glanced around. “No one’s home.”
Dela glanced at the window to the right of the door. The lace curtain jiggled. “Why would the curtain move?”
“Mattie, this is Dela. Answer the door,” she called out.
Quinn walked over to look through the window.
A flash of white and red appeared in the window.
Quinn jumped back.
A white fluffy cat with what looked like blood on its fur sat on the windowsill staring at them.
Dela tried the door knob. It turned.
She didn’t carry a weapon but her hand automatically went to where she had carried her Sig M11. Quinn’s breath was warm on her neck as he squeezed by her and shoved the door open all the way. He stepped in front of her with his Glock raised.
“FBI,” he announced and began a room-by-room search.
Dela noted the knocked over furniture and sliced cushions. Someone was looking for something.
“Dela!” Quinn called.
She followed the sound of his voice and stopped inside a bedroom door. The white cat sat beside Mattie. The young woman’s eyes were open, staring up at the dingy ceiling.
“Double frickin’ shit.” They should have questioned her last night. Dela knelt next to the body as Quinn called it in.
She’d seen similar bodies in Iraq. Mattie had been tortured. “She must have hid the book or gave it to someone. But why let herself be tortured if she knew where it was?” Dela glanced up at Quinn.
He stared down at the body, remorse showing in his eyes. “Whoever wanted the book would have killed her as soon as she told him. Damn!” He spun away and exited the bedroom.
It appeared he was feeling just as guilty for this woman’s death as Dela. She stood and followed him into the living room. “Do you think the person found the book?”
“We won’t know until forensics goes through here. I called in the state police team.”
Dela pulled on the latex gloves Quinn handed her. She righted a photo. It was of Mattie and another young woman. “I wonder where her roommate is.”
Quinn pulled out his phone. “Shaffer, find out where Mattie Collier’s cousin works. We’re at the house they rented. The cousin isn’t here.” He listened. “Go over there and bring her to the house. We have some questions for her.” He shoved his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Shaffer is going to bring her over here.”
“You think that’s a good thing?” Dela asked, picking her way through the mess, keeping her gaze locked on the floor. There had to be something in this house that would tell them who had been here.
“I think seeing her cousin dead might scare her into telling us everything she knows.” Quinn was shaking magazines by the spine and looking into everything that had an opening.
“Or she could go into shock.” Dela had seen many hardened soldiers go into shock after witnessing a buddy get killed.
“We’ll only have her see the body if she stonewalls us.”
“I don’t understand. Who even knew she had the book? I mean, we only found out yesterday it even existed. How could anyone else have determined she had it?” Dela straightened and headed to the bedroom. “Maybe her phone will show who she called.”
In the bedroom, she wandered around looking for a phone or a purse. She found one empty purse on the floor of the closet in the pile of clothes. From the mess, it was pretty clear the killer hadn’t found what they were after. She wondered if the cousin’s room had been torn up as well. She stepped across the hall and opened that door. The room was a mess. She felt sorry for the cousin and their family. Grief was something she’d learned about growing up as well as in the military. She had lost one friend in grade school to cancer and then her other friend in high school to violence. But her “rez family” had helped her through and continued to help her as she learned how to manage a job and living with one foot.
She closed the door on that bedroom as a short man in a suit stepped into the house with a young woman. Her facial features and the photo of the two young women revealed it was Mattie’s cousin. She walked down the hall to them.
“Oh my god! What happened to our house?” The young woman shrieked and started to drop to her knees.
The man who had to be FBI Special Agent Shaffer, grabbed her arm and kept her on her feet. “Don’t touch. This is a crime scene.”
“I’ll say! Who the hell would want to vandalize our place?” Her head snapped up from staring at the floor and her gaze landed on Dela. “Where’s Mattie? Was she here?”
“I’m sorry to say, yes, Mattie was here. She-she’s no longer with us.” Dela never liked telling anyone they had lost a loved one. She knew the sorrow and guilt that came with a death. Especially one, you could have stopped.
The young woman’s face scrunched up and tears ran down her face. “No! Not Mattie. She was taking classes to get her G.E.D.”
“Miss Sommers, can you tell us what your cousin was doing when you left for work?” Quinn asked, righting a slashed cushion and motioning for her to take a seat.
Dela wandered into the kitchen and came back out with a glass of water. She handed it to the woman and sat on the edge of the chair next to the couch without bothering to replace the cushion.
Miss Sommers swallowed several gulps of water. “I can’t believe. Oh God! What am I going to tell her parents? My parents?” She started crying.
Reaching out, Dela touched the young woman’s knee. “We need to know all you can tell us about why Mattie didn’t go to work last night and anything she said or did after coming home from work Friday morning.”
She nodded, gulped more water, and stared at Dela. “She was excited when she came home Friday morning. She said something about not having to work at the casino anymore. When I asked her if she got fired, she said no. But didn’t say anything more. I went to work and I figured she went to bed. That was what usually happened with us working different shifts.”
Dela nodded. “When you came home? Was she awake?”
“Yeah. She said she’d found a way to get to California and see if she could get a modeling gig.” The cousin shook her head. “I kept telling her she was too short to model, but she had it in her head that she could get a job, if she could just get there.”
“How did she plan to get to California?” Quinn asked.
Dela shifted her gaze to him, and Shaffer, standing behind him taking notes. She returned her gaze to the young woman.
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. But she said she was meeting with someone who would pay her lots of money for something she’d found.” Miss Sommers studied each of them. “Is that what got her killed? Whatever it was she found?”
“We think so. Did she show you a little book?” Dela asked.
The woman shook her head. “No. But she had something shaped like that in her back pocket when she left the house last night.”
“Were you up when she returned?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah. She was only gone about an hour. She wanted to party. I told her I couldn’t, I had to work.”
“Would she have called anyone else to party with her?” Dela asked.
“I don’t think she did. When I went to bed, she was sitting in her room looking up the route to L.A.”
“Did you notice the book after she’d returned?” Dela glanced at Quinn. He’d been ready to ask the same question.
“I don’t remember seeing it. But I wasn’t looking for it.”
“Close your eyes and tell me what you saw in Mattie’s room when you looked in on her before going to bed.” Dela leaned forward. “Put yourself in the door, take a deep breath, and scan the room.”
Miss Sommers did as she was asked. Closing her eyes, her head slowly rotated to first one side, “Her suitcase was sitting on the small dresser. Clothes piled in it.” Her nose pointed straight in front of her. “Mattie lay on her bed, her laptop in front of her. No shoes on.” Slowly, her head turned to the right. “Her piggy bank was sitting on top of money. She must have pulled it all out.”
“Do you see the little book anywhere?” Dela asked in a soft voice.
The woman shook her head. “No. It’s not in her back pocket anymore. Not on the dresser or the desk.”
That meant her cousin must have stashed it somewhere else. They were going to have to figure out where she’d gone when she left the house with the book in her pocket. Dela sighed. That was not going to be an easy thing to do.
“Thank you.”
Commotion on the porch announced the arrival of a forensic team and a county deputy.
Quinn took over, explaining what to look for and sent the deputy and a medical examiner into Mattie’s bedroom. “Thank you for talking with us,” he said to Miss Sommers. “Do you have some place you can stay? It’s going to take some time to go through all of this.”
“Can I get some clothes from my room and take Snowball?” she asked.
Dela nodded toward the white cat the forensic team was taking bloody hair samples from. “Do you mean the cat?”
“Yes.” The young woman’s eyes flicked away from the bloody animal.
“Dela will escort you to your room. Once the techs get a sample of her fur, you may take the cat,” Quinn said, making eye contact with Dela.
She nodded and followed the woman down the hall. Luckily the two men in her cousin’s room, prevented Miss Sommers from seeing her tortured cousin.