Googling luxury inns near Plymouth, New Hampshire yielded half a dozen likely candidates. Not bad, Jake thought. He started calling.
A cheery woman’s voice answered his first call and Jake said, “Good morning, this is Dr. Eric Prescott. I had a lovely stay with you back in June, but I have a problem I’m hoping you can help me with.”
“Of course, sir, I’ll be happy to try.”
“I’ve somehow misplaced my copy of the bill and I need it to claim my expenses. Could you send me a new copy?”
“Certainly, let me just pull it up. What dates were you here?”
“It was three or four days, around June twentieth.”
“Okay, let me put you on hold for just a minute.”
The woman sounded slightly less friendly when she came back on the line. “I’m sorry Dr. Prescott, but we don’t have any record of your having stayed with us.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jake said. “I must have you mixed up with another inn.”
• • •
The fourth call was a success.
“Yes Dr. Prescott,” the clerk said. “I have your bill right here. Would you like me to send you a copy?”
“That would be great. Could you send it to my personal email account? It’s eprescott12 at Gmail.”
“No problem, I’ll get it out right away.”
Jake ended the call and logged into the eprescott12 Gmail account he’d established an hour earlier. The clerk’s email with a copy of the bill was already there. Prescott had stayed at the inn the nights of June twentieth through the twenty-third. He’d registered for a single room and the only charges were for breakfasts and lunch for one, except for Tuesday the twenty-second. That night he charged a dinner for two at the inn’s restaurant. And the next morning he ordered breakfast for two from room service.
Jake didn’t have to check his notes to remember that Tuesday was the night Jane had said Holly didn’t return to their room.
• • •
Prescott’s home address was a luxury condominium in Harvard Square, about two miles from the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience. Jake pulled up a little before seven the next morning, armed with a large cup of coffee and two blueberry scones. He parked a block down from the entrance to the building’s underground garage and waited.
There was still one scone left when a red Mercedes sports car pulled out of the garage at five after eight. Jake couldn’t see the driver, so he jotted down the plate number and followed the car. It took a winding course through the back streets of Cambridge, then turned into another parking garage. Right next door to the building Prescott’s lab was in. Gotcha. He’d check the plate with the DMV later, but it was clear enough.
He ran through it again on the drive back to Gloucester. Prescott had started a relationship with Holly at the Gordon Conference in June and kept it going at least long enough to be with her the night the paper was published, two months later. Despite that, there were no records of communications between them beyond her first email.
Burner phones?