Sarah opened the door of Fenway’s office. “Haley Sinclair just arrived at the sheriff’s office. They’re putting her in the interview room.”
“Great,” Fenway said, glancing at the clock on her PC. “Redmond Northwall arrive from L.A. yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Probably a good thing. We don’t want Haley and him to coordinate their stories.”
Sarah gave Fenway a wry smile. “As if they haven’t already.”
Fenway put on her jacket and picked up her purse. “We’ll see.”
The walk across the street was short but surprisingly chilly. It hadn’t rained, but the fog that had settled over Estancia on the late January day made the concrete walkways slick with mist.
Dez was already in the interview room, a manila folder in front of her. A young woman with pale skin and strawberry-blonde hair sat across from her. The woman turned her head to look at Fenway with her large hazel eyes.
Fenway had seen Haley in McVie’s investigation photos, but the picture hadn’t captured the intensity of the young woman’s gaze. No wonder Emma Northwall was so agitated by Haley’s presence in her husband’s life.
“Did I miss anything?” Fenway said.
“Just keeping Miss Sinclair company until you arrived,” Dez said.
“I have class in an hour,” Haley said, still staring at Fenway.
Fenway moved out of Haley’s glare, and sat in the metal chair next to Dez. “Honestly, Miss Sinclair, I think you’d better plan on getting notes from a classmate. We’ve got a murder to solve, and your name keeps coming up.”
“My name?”
“That’s right.”
Haley turned her attention to Dez. “I don’t know anything about a murder.”
Dez didn’t meet Haley’s eyes, instead opening the folder in front of her and pulling out a photo of Frank Mortimer.
The photo was of the face of a supine Mortimer, eyes closed, skin pale, the backdrop a metal table.
Haley recoiled.
Dez placed another photo on top of the face of the dead Frank Mortimer: the photo from the Phillips-Holsen hotel of Haley in the white dress, embracing Frank.
Haley glanced up at Dez, then looked over at Fenway.
Dez took out a piece of paper from the folder: a copy of the hotel receipt.
“Frank Mortimer met you in a hotel two weeks ago,” Fenway said. “We have more photos of the two of you getting in the elevator together. Anyone can see that his intentions were, well, amorous, shall we say? The embrace in the hotel lobby seems to suggest that the feeling was mutual.”
Haley stared down at the table.
“Sergeant,” Fenway asked, trying to inject as much curiosity into her voice as possible, “Do you have the picture of the car that dropped off Miss Sinclair?”
Dez pulled another photo out of the folder: it was another snapshot from McVie, this one of Redmond Northwall’s Tesla, with Haley’s face behind the passenger window.
“Last night,” Fenway said, “the driver of this car was arrested at LAX, getting on a plane to Central America with the dead man’s passport.”
“I don’t—” Haley stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t see what that has to do with me. Those pictures were taken two weeks ago. We’re both consenting adults. If his wife had anything to—”
“The thing is,” Fenway said, “there was a ticket for the seat next to him under your name.”
Haley was silent. Then, cautiously, she said, “I didn’t know that he’d bought a ticket for me.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.” Haley looked Fenway in the eyes. “I wouldn’t have said yes if he’d invited me, and I wouldn’t have showed up even if I did know about it.”
Fenway sat back in the chair and watched Haley closely. The young woman dropped her eyes to the table. Fenway ran a hand over the stubble on her scalp, then leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table.
“I need the truth, Miss Sinclair.”
“I am telling the—”
“The whole truth. The things coming out of your mouth are technically true, but you’re intentionally misleading us.”
Haley leaned back and bit her lip.
“Maybe you didn’t know for a fact that he’d purchased a ticket for you, but you suspected he had a seat reserved for you next to him. Maybe you never said ‘yes’ to his invitation to run away with him, but you made him think you’d be there. And maybe you didn’t have any intention for him to wind up dead, but you know a lot more than you’re letting on.”
Haley raised her head and stuck her jaw out. “Maybe I need to talk to a lawyer.”
Fenway looked at Dez. “With what we have right now, could we charge Miss Sinclair with anything?”
“Obstruction,” Dez said.
The color drained from Haley’s face. “But—I haven’t done anything.”
“You can sort that out with your lawyer.”
“Wait,” Haley said. “I—I need to be in class.”
Dez stood up quickly and smacked her hand on the table—the loud thwack made Haley jump. “Miss Sinclair, this is a murder investigation. A man is dead. The owner of the car who dropped you off? They arrested him for stealing our murder victim’s identity. You better start talking, or you’ll be missing a lot more out of your life than just one class.”
Haley gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white. “I was just trying to get his money back.”
“Whose money?” Dez pressed.
“Redmond’s,” Haley blurted. “I mean—Redmond’s company. Frank had been stealing money from Radical Familiar for years. At least—at least that’s what Redmond said.”
“So,” Dez said, “you and Redmond hatched a plan to get his money back? You seduced Frank as part of the plan?”
“Not exactly,” Haley said, her ears turning red.
“Then what, exactly?”
Haley covered her face with her hands, then lowered them to the table, her eyes unfocused. “I do some cosplay work on the side—dress up as superheroes, villains, anime characters, that kind of thing. I did a shoot for a Radical Familiar ad campaign in costume, and Redmond came up to me after the shoot. At first, I thought he was just another old guy hitting on me, but he tells me he has a business opportunity he wants me to get in on.”
“Which was?” Dez asked.
“He told me Frank had stolen millions of dollars over the years from the company. He found out it was being siphoned into a bank account in, uh, Panama or Guatamala or something.”
“Belize,” Fenway said.
“Right—that’s it. Belize.” Haley ran her hands through her strawberry-blonde hair. “So I was supposed to meet Frank at a dinner party. Flirt, get his number, pretend I’m interested.”
“That was all? No information gathering?”
“No. I just needed to get him alone.”
“Why the hotel?” Dez said. “Was that your idea?”
“No, Frank suggested the hotel.” Haley shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
“So Redmond drops you off for your hotel rendezvous?”
“Right. I insisted he come right from work. That way, he’d have his laptop with him.” She stared down at the table. “We went up to his room and we had a drink. And—uh, he fell asleep.”
“You put something in his drink?”
“Some people just can’t handle their alcohol,” Haley said quietly.
“Fine.” Slipping drugs into Frank’s drink wasn’t important anyway—at least not right now. “So, what did you do when Frank was unconscious?”
“I got into his laptop.”
“How did you break in? Did you have his password?”
Haley held up a finger. “I had his fingerprint right there. And he was out cold.”
Fenway nodded. “What did you do once you were on his laptop?”
“I opened his browser and logged into his account in—uh, did you say Belize?”
“Right.”
“Yeah. I went to his transaction history and copied everything—all the information of the money transferred into his account.”
“Was this on your own?”
Haley’s eyes went wide. “No, no—this was all at Redmond’s direction.”
Fenway nodded. “And Redmond paid you to do this?”
“Yes. A lot more than I usually get from a cosplay appearance, I’ll tell you that. It made a nice dent in my tuition payment this semester.”
“How did you obtain Mortimer’s bank account information?”
“A program I ran from a USB drive,” Haley said. “Redmond said it was all the info they’d need to catch him and fire him.”
“You got the program from Redmond Northwall?”
Haley looked down at the table and studied her fingernails.
“So why the plane ticket?”
“Well—uh, Frank woke up a little later.”
“You didn’t just leave?”
“Redmond didn’t want Frank to suspect anything. So Frank woke up. I—I’d taken his clothes off and put him into bed, and when he woke up, I made it seem like we’d had sex. I, uh, you know, complemented him a lot. Told him he knew how to make a girl feel like a real woman.”
Fenway rolled her eyes.
Haley chuckled. “Yeah, it was cringe, but he loved it. I told him I had to get back to campus, but that I’d like to see him again.”
“And did you?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Haley said, “but Redmond said he wasn’t sure they had everything. I went to dinner with Frank a couple of times after that. He asked me—” Haley paused, squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “He asked me if I wanted to go to the Caribbean with him.”
“After a week?”
Haley nodded but looked worried. “I was laying it on thick. Wasn’t the first time an older guy asked me to run away with him.”
“And what did you say?”
“Uh, well, to be honest, I panicked. I didn’t tell him no, but I didn’t tell him yes, either.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I loved the Caribbean, and I might have said something like ‘why go to college and work all your life to retire to the beach if I can just live on the beach right now?’”
“So he thought it was a yes. Even though you didn’t technically say yes.”
Haley squeezed her eyes shut. “I guess so.”
Dez looked at Fenway, and they both stood up. “Hang tight, Haley.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Haley said. “I helped stop someone from stealing money.”
They walked out of the room, into the hallway, and closed the door. “What do you think?” Fenway asked.
Dez shook her head. “The girl’s putting on an innocent act—and mark my words, it is an act.” She walked to the vending machine along the hallway and held her card up to the scanner, a bottle of water dropping. “The things she’s done are morally questionable. Some of them might be illegal—using Mortimer’s fingerprint to access an account that isn’t hers, for example.”
“But if it’s not an account at a U.S. bank, can we even arrest her?”
Dez shook her head. “We’ll have to talk to ADA Pondicherry. I think the way she accessed the account is against a federal statute, but if her intent was to return stolen money from a foreign bank account, I’m not sure the U.S. Attorney will agree to charge her.”
“I’d rather not involve the Feds more than we have to.” Fenway bit her thumbnail in thought. “What about an obstruction charge?”
Dez chuckled. “It’ll never stick. And she seems like the kind of person who’d know a lawyer competent enough to sue the department for wrongful arrest.”
“We just let her go?”
Dez shrugged. “She’s not the one who was traveling on someone else’s passport.”
“At least we have Redmond Northwall on the hook for that—even if it’s only a federal crime.”
Dez made a low growling noise in the back of her throat. “I looked into that statute—it’s not clear if it’ll be enforced. Usually for illegal entry into the States, and this isn’t an INS issue.” She crossed her arms. “I’m afraid Northwall’s lawyers will negotiate a big fine and a watered-down sentence. He’ll get sixty days in a country club facility and then be back to running his company.”
“So we need to get him on the murder. That’s our jurisdiction. And we can make sure he goes to prison for a long time.” Fenway shook her head. “But I still don’t feel like that’s justice—the money’s gone. It’s already in an account in Belize. People at Radical Familiar will lose their jobs—they’ll lose everything.”
“We’re not going to take it out on Haley Sinclair,” Dez said. “I suspect beneath that innocent act, she has a cruel streak. I know she enjoyed toying with the rich white-collar criminal, but she’s not who we’re after.” Dez opened the bottle of water and took a drink. “Doesn’t mean we can’t put a uniform on her, though. See if she goes back to her apartment, or if she meets with anyone.”
Fenway tapped her foot. “Should we bring Redmond Northwall through while we’re taking Haley out?”
Dez pursed her lips. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“It’ll let us see how involved Haley is. If he thinks she was supposed to meet him at LAX, for one. He might say something. Give her a look, even. It might give us something to go on.”
“As long as we don’t do anything to put her in danger. He’s a powerful man—and our top suspect for killing Frank Mortimer. You don’t think he’d do the same for a woman he thinks betrayed him?”
Fenway nodded. “All the more reason to put a uniform on her.”
Ten minutes later, Fenway waited in the hallway while two sheriff’s deputies walked past the vending machine, one on either side of Redmond Northwall.
The door to the interview room opened, and Haley Sinclair walked out, followed by Dez.
Northwall’s eyes narrowed. “You!”
Haley’s eyes widened, then she looked down at the ground.
“Where were you?” His voice rose and echoed down the hall.
Haley stepped behind Dez as they passed Northwall and the deputies.
“You can’t hide,” Northwall shouted, turning to glimpse Haley as the deputies walked him into the interview room. “This is on you!”
The deputies pushed Northwall into the chair facing the one-way mirror.
“I’m not done with you!” he shouted after her.
One of the deputies locked Northwall’s handcuffs to the rail on the table in front of him and walked out of the room.
“It was her!” Northwall yelled. “It was her—not me!”
The deputy closed the door.
Fenway sighed and walked into the observation room. On the other side of the one-way mirror, Northwall stared straight ahead, a furious look on his face, then after a moment, his murderous gaze softened, and he buried his face in his hands.
Dez opened the door of the observation room and walked in, carrying a folder, and stared at Northwall through the one-way mirror. “On one hand, that worked better than expected. On the other hand, we’ve definitely got to put her under protective custody. Who knows what he’ll do to her?”
“It’s good that we know that now,” Fenway said. “I’d bet he started having thoughts about her being at fault as soon as he realized she wasn’t showing up at the airport.”
Voices outside in the hallway. Then the interview room door opened and a familiar—if unwelcome—face walked in: Lynn Hayes, the lawyer who’d arrived at the Monument Brotherhood Temple.
She set her briefcase on the table, took a seat next to Redmond Northwall, leaned in and spoke in low tones. He nodded once, then after listening for another moment, nodded again.
Ms. Hayes glanced up at the one-way mirror. “Ready when you are,” she said in a confident, controlled voice.
“This should be entertaining,” Fenway said.