| |
Molly dropped Dela off at the casino parking lot. “Come by tonight and see Mugshot and stay for dinner. We’ll celebrate you signing papers on your new place tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. I could use a night off. And you can help me make a list of the first things to fix to make the house livable.” She already knew where the painting from the gift shop would go. Instead of her bedroom, it would go in the living room.
“It’s a deal. I’ll also give you Travis to help with the remodeling.”
“Thanks! See you later.” Dela entered the casino smiling. There was a lot of work to do to the place, but she was getting it at half the market value for a house and acreage of that size.
She walked over to the deli and grabbed a cup of coffee before heading to the security offices. It was Rosie’s day off. She wished the woman had been there. She had some questions for her about Tristan Pomroy, Mattie, and Van Branson .
The door to the security office opened as she approached. Kenny exited. He stopped, closed the door, and waited for her. She could tell by his wrinkled forehead and the way his hand clenched and unclenched he wasn’t happy.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping in front of him.
“First, why are you here on a Sunday? And second, why does that Fed have the run of the casino?”
Quinn must have pushed his FBI status around. She needed to have a talk with him if he wished to get help from the casino staff. Especially the Umatilla members.
“I can’t take a day off until we find out who killed Tristan and Mattie. With you here doing the job of assistant head of security, I can work on finding the killer.” She nodded toward the office door. “What did he do?”
“He took Benji off the floor to go up and insist a guest come down to the security office. He didn’t go through me or tell me what was going on.” Kenny narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care if he is a Fed, he doesn’t work here and doesn’t have the right to tell us what to do.”
“I’ll have a talk with Special Agent Pierce.” She patted the big man’s arm. “I’m trying to get this solved and get him out of here.”
“Thanks.” Kenny’s radio crackled and he headed off talking on his mic.
Dela had turned her radio off and left it in Molly’s car while looking over the property. Now it was back on her person, but she’d not turned it on. No sense when she wasn’t working the floor.
She opened the security door and walked in.
Margie nodded toward the interview room. “That full of himself FBI is in there with one of the guests.”
“Thank you. I know. We both agreed the man needed to be questioned.” She picked up the file she’d gathered on the two murders, walked across the room, and opened the door. Ronald and Quinn sat across the table from one another, glaring. Hopefully, this didn’t turn into a pissing match.
“Mr. Edmond, thank you for coming down to talk to us,” she said, taking a seat next to Quinn.
“I didn’t have much of a choice.” The man scowled at the FBI agent.
“I’m sorry to hear that. We just had a few more questions about your acquaintance with the Pomroys.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Quinn pull out his notepad.
“Pomroys? I don’t know anything about them.” The man straightened and stared her square in the eyes.
“You had a discussion with Tristan in the deli the day of his death. And you met his wife in your guest room before the man was killed. You slipped out of your room before the time of death, and he was killed with the gift Paula gave you.”
Ronald sputtered. “W-what do you mean the gift she gave me?”
Dela shared a glance with Quinn. Did she dare mention the corkscrew? “The little bag that was hanging on the door handle when you and Paula returned to the room after meeting in the bar.”
His face turned as red as her mother’s roses. “Unless he was strangled, I’m pretty sure the underwear she had in that bag weren’t used to kill him.”
She swung her face toward Quinn so fast her neck popped. “Who switched the contents in the bag?”
Quinn glared at the man. “Why did you slip out of the room without being seen that night?”
Ronald huffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I walked out of that room at one-thirty after waiting for Paula to come back with ice. She didn’t return so I left.”
“The video camera in that hall didn’t catch you leaving.” Dela studied the man. “What was Paula wearing when she left the room?”
“A robe and that’s all.”
“Nothing underneath?” She glanced over at Quinn. She could have taken the robe off, killed her husband, washed the blood from her, the weapon, and the room, then put the robe on to go back out into the hall. If she had done all of that, she was one cold-blooded woman.
Someone in security had blanked out the camera on ten and she had a feeling had also blanked out the camera on eight. Which explained them not seeing Ronald leave the room or Paula returning. But if Paula killed her husband, why didn’t she take the book? How had it ended up on the pile of laundry at the bottom of the chute and in the hands of the one person who would use it to get what she wanted? This conversation had brought up too many questions.
“She tossed on that robe and said she was going for ice. I waited until it seemed unlikely that’s where she went. I dressed and left to look for her. Couldn’t find her anywhere so I went down and gambled.” He leaned back. “For all I know, she could have killed her husband and planned to pin it on me.”
Quinn leaned forward. “What were you and Mr. Pomroy talking about in the deli that afternoon?”
The man snapped his mouth shut like the lid of an ammo box. Apparently, his visit with Tristan was more incriminating than him bouncing the bed with the wife.
“I guess we’ll just have to get some lip readers in here to watch the video,” Quinn said. “You know only half the time they pick up the correct words. I bet there are lots of words that look like kill when you’re lip reading.”
Ronald flicked his gaze over to Quinn. “What we said had nothing to do with his death.”
“How can you be sure?” Quinn asked.
The bounty hunter stared at both of them. “It had to do with my business.”
Quinn leaned forward. “How?”
“I’d learned that Pomroy had sent in a sighting of a suspect on a wanted poster. Same guy I’ve been tracking. I suggested he tell me what he knew. He refused. Said he wasn’t splitting the reward with anyone.”
Dela thought that made sense given what they’d seen of the conversation. “Which fugitive were you both following?”
Ronald looked away.
“We need to know this. We have two homicides that we believe are linked.” She opened the file and slid out the photo of the man wanted by the FBI for the show airing before Tristan started acting secretive and telling people he was going to come into some money.
Ronald stared at the photo.
“Is this who you were arguing about?” she asked.
“How did you know that?” Ronald leaned back, but his gaze remained on the photo.
“Process of elimination,” Quinn said. “Is this man here? In the area?”
“What I’d uncovered said he was in NE Oregon. Then my friend, who keeps an eye on the incoming claims, saw Pomroy had called in. I discovered he lived in Pendleton. I did surveillance on his house, met his wife, and set up meeting her here to see what I could get out of her and her husband. He wasn’t about to give up anything, and she didn’t have a clue.”
“Is there any way this person of interest could have known Pomroy had spotted him?” Quinn asked.
The man shook his head. “I don’t know. I have ways of keeping tabs on the tips that come in on the people I’m after. This fugitive might have ways of knowing who sends in sightings.”
Dela studied the man. The last couple of minutes seemed like the first honest words they’d obtained from the man. She turned to Quinn. “Is there a way to see if someone is getting into that information?”
“It would have to be someone in the FBI.” Quinn stared at Ronald. “Do you have an informant in the FBI?”
“I’m not saying anything more.” Ronald snapped his lips shut again and from the defiance in his eyes, Dela could tell Quinn wouldn’t learn anything about his informant.
Quinn closed his notepad and stood. “Thank you for talking with us.”
“That’s it? You pulled me down here and now it’s ‘thank you, good-bye?’”
“Would you rather have us still think you are a suspect in the murders?” Dela asked, standing.
“Then I can leave here? The casino, go home?” Ronald asked.
“It’s fine by us.” She stopped at the door. “But you might want to ask Detective Jones if it’s okay with him.” Dela walked out of the room with a grin on her face. She wondered how far Detective Dick was with the first murder? He probably didn’t even know there was a second one connected.
Once Ronald had left the security offices, Dela sat and wrote all the questions that had popped into her head while they were talking with the bounty hunter.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked, pulling a chair up beside her.
“Writing down what we don’t know.”
He started reading it off. “Where did the corkscrew go? I think that will be figured out when we find out who blanked out the hallway on eight as well as ten.”
She tapped the comment she’d written about the camera down on eight.
“I agree, if Paula killed her husband, why didn’t she take the book? That would have been her number one reason to kill him. To get her hands on the information that would make her rich.”
She wrote the last one. Is there a fugitive working at the casino?
Quinn tapped the last question with his finger. “If so, he had a good reason to want Pomroy dead but what about Mattie?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. Who would want them both dead? That brings us back to Paula.” Dela glanced at her watch. “I promised Molly I’d come over for dinner. But I’ll be back at ten to question Van.”
Quinn leaned back in his chair. “Are you buying the place?”
She smiled. “I am.” And walked out of the room without waiting for any comments.