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In the breakroom, Dela read the names on the lockers and found Mattie’s. It had a key padlock on it. She pulled a pocket-sized lock pick set out of her slacks pocket and tickled the tumblers in the lock. It popped open and she swung the door wide.
“I’m glad you work on the side of law enforcement,” Quinn said, as she slid the picks back in her pocket.
“These came in handy when we were looking for contraband in barracks.” She pointed to the photo of Mattie and Luke taped to the inside of the door. “Think that’s the photo he was talking about?”
“Guess we can ask him if he’s still there when we get back.” Quinn pulled the photo off the door.
Dela pulled out everything in the locker. There were lots of candy wrappers and scraps of paper. She placed it all on the table and sat down to go through it. The candy wrappers were trash. She put them in a pile. The scraps of paper appeared to be random. Some had numbers, mostly from the configuration they appeared to be phone numbers. “Think these are people she knew?”
“I can have them run through the database and find out who they belong to.” Quinn started writing down the numbers.
“Why would she have so many phone numbers on slips of paper?” She stared at Quinn. “And why keep them?”
“Maybe she found them in robe pockets in the laundry. Or she collected them from people she wanted to contact? It’s hard to say. The only thing consistent about the woman is she wanted out of here and to go to California.”
Dela nodded. “Let’s go. There is nothing else in here of interest.” She picked up the photo and carried it back to the security offices. It didn’t surprise her that Luke had left. She wouldn’t have wanted a photo that reminded her of a man who was going to leave without her.
“I’m going to send these numbers to Shaffer. You want me to go with you to check out that property?” Quinn asked.
“No. Molly is going with me.” She noticed the flicker of dejection in his eyes before he grinned. “Good idea, she can tell you if it’s a good fit for that moose of a dog.”
“He’s not a moose. But that would be a good name if it ended in an o t.”
“What do you mean?”
She explained to Quinn about the name change being easier if it rhymed with the name he already had.
“What is his name?”
“Eats a Lot.”
Quinn broke into a deep hearty belly laugh. When he caught his breath, he said, “That is the perfect name for him.”
“No, it isn’t. Don’t you have numbers to send to Shaffer?”
He pulled out his phone and started inputting the phone numbers.
Dela glanced at her watch. She had a couple hours before she had to meet Molly. She really wanted to find out more about Paula’s whereabouts. She was the perfect suspect for both murders. Her husband’s death left her better off with his insurance claim and his little black book with the Cayman Islands account. And if Mattie was the woman who visited Paula the night before her death, then Paula more than likely killed her to get the book. For all they knew, she could be on her way to the Islands to collect the money and live out an unburdened life.
“What was the name of the place where Paula works?” Dela asked Quinn when he’d finished his message to the other special agent.
“Dobbs Western Wear. It’s closed today.” He glanced back at his phone. “Here’s your answer about the corkscrew from forensics.”
“What does it say?” She walked over to his side and stared at the phone in his hand.
“They said, the tearing of the skin and damage to the neck muscle corresponds to a wound made by a corkscrew.” He glanced up. “I think it’s time I wrote up a warrant to search Paula Pomroy’s house.”
“But she gave it as a gift to Ronald Edmond. Shouldn’t you also write up a warrant to search his house and business?” She had a feeling they would come up empty at both places. There was something about the first death that wasn’t matching up with the second. “Have they had a chance to see if the wound on Mattie matches the one on Tristan?”
Quinn typed on his phone. The phone vibrated in his hand. “They’re checking the photos.”
Dela sat down. Her stub was still raw from being on it so long the last couple of days. She rubbed her thigh to ease the tension she felt building in her lower leg. Margie had seen her do this before. She hoped Quinn was too busy to see. More probing from him wasn’t on her agenda today.
Marty and Godfrey had been the only two people in the casino that had ever seen her weep from the pain and frustration of her amputated leg. They had both walked in on her at the end of shift when she’d been in the little room they’d used for questioning. She’d had a busy night and had moved wrong twice, making her stub sit awkwardly in the sleeve of the prosthesis. But she hadn’t had time to fix things. That morning she’d spent the last half hour of her shift, in the room, massaging and cursing her leg. Ike had been at the podium that night and must have called the two to tell them she was closed up in the room. After that time, she’d learned to make time to fix any abnormality that happened to her prosthesis.
“Forensics says that while they are both wounds with a serrated edge and trauma to the muscle, they can’t be conclusive that it was the same weapon.” Quinn glanced at her. “Which means, there could be two weapons or there could be two killers.”
As soon as Quinn’s head moved, Dela stopped massaging her leg. “But they both wanted their hands on the black book. Have you had anyone check it to see if there were more than the few people we saw being blackmailed? Or that maybe it held more answers?” She thought it took someone desperate to kill twice to get the book. But who would have known about the book? They were back to the names they’d found written in it.
“Did you ever figure out if the R.E. in the book was Ronald Edmond?” Dela pulled a paper out of a drawer and wrote down the initials and names they knew that corresponded. “After seeing the exchange between Tristan and Van Branson , I’m not sure he is the V.B. in the book.” She looked up from writing and peered at Quinn. “Any thoughts?”
“We are working on a connection between Edmond and Pomroy besides the wife. I agree. Branson didn’t seem threatened by Pomroy in the video. But, there must have been a reason the casino blackmailer was talking to him.”
“Van will be in to work tonight. It’s his Friday. I say we show him the video and see what he has to say.” Dela liked having a plan rather than running around looking for answers. “I think we should talk to Edmond some more if he’s still around.”
“I can have him down here for questioning when you get back from looking at the house. About three?” Quinn asked, standing.
“That should be plenty of time. But I keep thinking that if Tristan was stashing money in an account in the Caymans, he would have had to have had a mark who paid more than the people working at this casino.” She studied the names. “These people...” she tapped each name. “Would have little left over to pay a blackmailer after their living expenses.”
“Unless V.B. has money and is the one paying the most.” Quinn walked to the door. “In which case, that person would have the most to gain from Pomroy’s death.” He opened the door. “I’m getting something to eat, want to join me?”
If she didn’t eat now who knew when she’d get the chance. “Yeah.”
They walked in companionable silence over to the coffee shop.
Once seated in the booth and had ordered, Dela asked, “Don’t you have other cases you need to split your time with?”
Quinn sipped his iced tea and grinned. “This is my priority. Shaffer will handle anything else that comes along. This is a normally quiet corner of Oregon. That’s why I asked for this field office.”
“You were looking to ease up on your workload?” she asked, picking up her glass of iced tea.
“Yeah. Between the special task force and then going into high profile cases in the FBI, I’m ready to relax in between cases, not rush from one to the next.”
She laughed. “You aren’t that old. What maybe a few years over forty?”
He studied her. “It’s not old, but it is if a person is thinking about family life.”
Dela stared at him. He was being sincere. He wanted a wife, kids, dog, and a house. He had the house. Was he planning on settling down in Pendleton? “I never thought of you as a family man. You were always so intense. Didn’t seem like a good fit for a father.”
He cringed. “Yeah. I had a lot of lives to keep safe when I was in Iraq. The information I gathered saved our troops.”
“I understand, but I still don’t forgive you.” She peered into his eyes. She witnessed hurt quickly replaced with nonchalance. Her forgiveness meant something to him. Pondering that would only get her sucked in deeper. She wanted him to have a wonderful life. At one time, she had dreamed of being included in that life. Even though they had never dated or even had a moment, he was the one person in her adult life that she could see herself with. But not anymore. She knew to get close enough to a man to be intimate and marry, they’d have to accept she wasn’t a whole woman. And she was still working on the acceptance herself.
The waitress arrived with their lunches.
They set to eating and didn’t talk until Quinn was finished and she was picking at her fries.
“You want help naming your dog?” he asked.
Dela studied him. He was full of surprises today. “Have you come up with something that isn’t dumb?”
“Mugshot.”
Laughter burst out of her. When she caught her breath, Dela asked, “What made you think of that?”
“It has the same sound as lot and kind of fits your job. You may not be a cop, but what you do is a lot like what a cop does. And from the way you found him, he could have been a convict on the run.” He winked. “He was running away for a reason.”
“Mugshot.” Dela thought about Quinn’s reasoning and tumbled the word over in her mind a few times. “You know. I like it. Mugshot he is. Unless he doesn’t like the name.”
“You can’t ask him if he likes the name,” Quinn said, laughingly.
“No. But if he doesn’t respond to it, when I call him, then he doesn’t like it.” She finished her iced tea and tossed her napkin on the plate. “I need to go meet Molly in the parking lot. I’ll meet you at the security offices at three.”
“I’ll have Edmond there.” Quinn rose when she did.
“I can take care of the bill on my way out,” she said, wanting to take a step back to not have to tilt her head to look up at him and compromise her balance. But her legs didn’t seem to want to move.
“I’ve got the bill. I invited you to lunch.” Quinn grinned at her, showing a dimple, and headed to the register.
She inhaled and stilled her beating heart. She really needed to get over whatever it was he did to her. He wanted a family and she wasn’t sure she could handle domestic life.
♠ ♣ ♥ ♦
On the drive to Tutuilla, Dela told Molly about the name she’d settled on for the dog.
“Mugshot? Really?” Molly laughed. “I guess it is better than Eats a Lot.”
“It’s growing on me the more I think about it.” She didn’t add so was the man who’d suggested the name.
She’d slid into Molly’s car when the woman had pulled up to the casino entrance. Now she directed her friend to the house.
“This is a nice place. Your neighbors wouldn’t be too close.” Molly parked the car and they both exited the vehicle. “How do you plan to take care of one and a half acres?”
“I’m hoping there is a young person in the neighborhood who mows lawns.”
“That much land is more than a lawn. It would need animals to keep the grass down.”
“Really? You think I would need animals. I couldn’t just landscape it and have someone mow?” Dela walked up to the front window and looked in. The place would need paint and some other work done to it before she could think about moving in. Did she have the time to fix it up?
They walked around to the back.
“Look! A nice big sliding door. That would make it easy for Mugshot to wander in and out without you having to get up and open the door for him.” Molly cupped her hands on either side of her face and looked through the glass doors. “Oh man! This place is going to need a lot of work.”
Dela stood beside her friend, cupping her hands and peering into the darkness of the house. A lump landed in her gut. Was she up for making over this house? And that wasn’t the hard part. What about the large parcel of land?
She turned and stared at Cabbage Hill and the pine trees. The sight made her heart soar. She loved this view. Always had, even as a child. There was something comforting about seeing the edge of the Blue Mountains.
Tires crunched on the driveway on the other side of the house.
“Let’s go see what the realtor has to say.” Dela walked around the end of the house with Molly in tow. She caught her first glimpse of Cathryn Wright. The woman was tall and stout with reddish hair that was dyed, guessing from the steak of gray at the roots, and a sun-weathered complexion.
“Ms. Alvaro?” the woman questioned, holding out a hand.
Dela grasped the woman’s hand and shook. “Dela, please. This is my friend Molly.”
Cathryn smiled at Molly. “Aren’t you the vet at Riverside?”
“Yes, I am.”
“My son brought his dog to you last year. The Rottweiler who tangled with a porcupine?”
“Oh! I remember. Poor Max had a face full of quills. He was so good, I almost didn’t have to sedate him. But after the first hour he wasn’t looking forward to more plucking and I had to.” Molly shook hands. “I hope Max is staying away from porcupines.”
“He is.” Cathryn held out papers for Dela. “This has been on the market for so long, the owner wants to sell. Let’s take a look around and then you tell me what you are willing to spend.”
Dela glanced over at Molly and grinned. If she could get it cheap enough, she could do a lot to fix it up.