Seventy-five

“I know Carol Lynn didn’t kill that man. I’m certain of it.” Tucker spoke while gazing morosely through our French doors at the darkening streets.

It was Sunday evening, and though the gloom of night had descended over the city, our coffeehouse glowed like a lightship beacon. Filled to capacity with human souls, our shop’s rejuvenated business continued to overflow onto the sidewalks.

At this hour, Vicki and Dante were working the counter, while Nancy bused tables and Esther MC’d karaoke and comedic trivia games in our Shot Down Lounge.

Now on our evening break, Tuck and I pondered Carol Lynn’s plight, and what to do about it.

“Where did she get a gun?” he asked. “It’s not like you can have an Amazon drone drop one at your doorstep. And, last I checked, there is no ‘Guns and Ammo’ aisle at Whole Foods.”

He set his empty demitasse aside. “She’s innocent, and we’ve got to prove it.”

I understood Tucker’s feelings, but the evidence against his friend seemed overwhelmingly conclusive—

“Maybe a little too conclusive,” I said, thinking aloud. “It’s possible the person who cooked up this scheme put a little too much icing on the cake.”

Tuck blinked. “Icing? Cake? Are you thinking about your wedding plans again?”

“No. I’m thinking about that coffee cup with Carol Lynn’s fingerprints on it. It’s been bothering me since I saw it on the DOT video. It feels like one clue too many—one that doesn’t fit. You see, despite what the police think they know, I know my business . . .”

I reminded Tuck that Carol Lynn said she came to our coffeehouse during last night’s big event. “She told us that she stopped in to apologize, but couldn’t find me in that paid mob, and she left early.”

“So?”

“So if Carol Lynn bought a coffee early in the evening, then she got our standard blue cup with our logo. What if someone grabbed her cup after she disposed of it, fully intending to frame her for murder later that night?”

Tuck’s face brightened for the first time since his friend’s arrest. Then almost immediately, he frowned. “Who could hate Richard Crest enough to dress up like an innocent woman, kill him, and then frame that same woman? I mean, seriously? How much can a girl hate a guy?”

I let that question lie, to focus on another.

“The victim’s name isn’t Crest,” I pointed out. “It’s Robert Crenshaw, and he may have a history that can give us a few leads. I say we look him up right now.”

I brought my laptop to the table and did a quick Internet search. There were a dozen Robert Crenshaws on Facebook and Twitter, and a “Top 25 Robert Crenshaw Profiles on LinkedIn.” But when I narrowed the search from All to News, I struck gold.

The man lying dead at the city morgue turned out to be the infamous founder of Hookster, the discredited and defunct dating app shut down by a class action suit.

I skimmed the Wall Street Journal article Matt had mentioned, and then hit a Wired piece that told the whole ugly story of the rise and fall of Hookster.

“Remind me,” Tuck said. “What is Hookster?”

“It’s a hookup app, dreamed up by Crenshaw when he was in college. He created it with the help of a frat house pal named Tommy Finkle. Both were named in the subsequent class action lawsuit . . .”

I then recounted for Tuck the smarmy saga of Hookster’s history, which billed itself as the swipe-to-meet app with the “hottest” and “horniest” women. Only they weren’t real women. The programming buried profiles of real girls, while promoting matches with fantasy profiles of girls who didn’t exist.

When a man “matched” with one of these “hotties,” only three messages were allowed before the app required payment for further communication. Payment was needed because Hookster was really the equivalent of a 1-900 phone sex line posing as a legit dating app.

Crenshaw and his buddy could have gotten away with their scam, too—except that Robert Crenshaw hooked up professionally and romantically with a young marketing genius named Cindy Webber. It was Webber who took Hookster to new heights, and made the company millions of dollars.

Things went smoothly until Webber and Crenshaw had a falling-out.

Cindy Webber was forced to resign. But she didn’t go quietly. In a webzine interview that went viral, Webber publicly blew the whistle on Hookster’s internal culture of sexually harassing female employees. She also revealed that the app’s creators intended to mislead their customers through false claims, which led to the lawsuit that closed the app down.

During a criminal discovery phase, Cindy was given immunity for her testimony. But the fine print in Hookster’s terms of service, which laid out its “paid entertainment” model, absolved them from criminal conviction. Generous payoffs took care of the sexual harassment charges. But the class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of duped customers, finished their business.

After digesting that history, I wasn’t surprised Robert Crenshaw—the renegade web designer who Wired magazine gushed over as “Captain Hookster Sailing on Success”—turned into a chameleon using false IDs like Richard Crest and Harry Krinkle.

Meanwhile, Cindy Webber, with her new married name, became Sydney Webber-Rhodes, founder and CEO of Cinder, which she promoted with a passionate vow to make real happy endings come true for couples, especially women. Women she now lamented were so badly objectified in the Hookster app.

“It’s possible that Sydney could be the killer,” I said. “Or one of her loyal Tinkerbells. I don’t have any proof, but it sure looks like Crenshaw had a motive to sabotage Cinder, the shiny new business started by the woman who destroyed his. And if Haley helped him, and Sydney found out, well . . .”

“You think Sydney murdered Haley, too?”

“It’s possible. From what I overheard in our alley, she knew Haley had put a backdoor in the Cinder programming. Maybe she suspected it for a while and contacted Haley to wring the truth out of her.”

Tuck nodded. “Then Sydney smacked Haley upside her head and killed her.” He paused. “I don’t know. For a genius marketing mind, murder in a public park doesn’t seem like a very good plan.”

“No, it doesn’t. And that’s why I believe Haley’s death wasn’t planned. I think Haley met her killer at Habitat Garden and an argument went too far. If it was Sydney who exploded and struck Haley when she realized how deeply she’d been betrayed, she probably called her watchdog Cody to help her get rid of the body.”

I recalled Cody’s dead-eyed stare at the Equator gym.

“Yes, Cody seems just the type to have ‘fixed’ her boss’s problem by dumping Haley in the Hudson River—after cleaning out her pockets and valuables to make it look like a mugging gone bad.”

“That could be it,” Tuck agreed. “It sure looks like Sydney had motive—”

I closed the laptop. “There’s a walking, talking hole in my theory, however.”

“What’s that?”

“More like who’s that. The superintendent at Carol Lynn’s apartment house told the police he saw her disposing of clothes and a gun in the Dumpster behind their building.”

“He could be mistaken,” Tuck said.

“Or maybe the police coached that statement out of him, in which case this witness could be as phony as the planted coffee cup appears to be.”

“What do we do now?” Tuck asked. “Should we talk to the Fish Squad?”

“Eventually. But first, let’s pay a visit to that building superintendent, and find out what he really saw.”