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Twenty-Five

Madison and Terry found Cynthia in the lab at her desk. She swiveled to face them. Cynthia’s eyes were red and underscored by dark circles.

“Whoa, and I thought I looked rough,” Madison said.

Cynthia grimaced and pointed at Madison’s face. “Looks like we have matching luggage. You’re not sick, though, right? Tell me you’re not—”

Madison put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’m completely healthy.” A white lie.

“Good, I don’t need any bad news.” Cynthia popped to her feet. “The wedding is in three days.”

“I’m fine,” Madison assured her again.

“Uh-oh, it never is when you say ‘fine.’” Cynthia stared in Madison’s eyes.

“Okay, I’m not one hundred percent, but I will be.”

“Oh, no,” Cynthia groaned. “The pictures are going to be ruined. You’ll have puffy eyes and a red nose—”

“I’m sure I can take a pill or something.” Madison looked at Terry for help, but he was smirking and shaking his head. So much for her partner backing her up.

Cynthia’s brows drew down, and she fixed her bead on Terry. “You let her get sick.”

“Hey, what? No.” Terry’s smirk was gone.

“You’re my maid of honor. I’ve told you that you can’t be getting sick,” Cynthia whined.

Madison loved her friend, but she was starting to lose it. “It could blow off. Let’s just focus on the case. You have some findings for us?”

Cynthia didn’t move, didn’t say a word, just peered into Madison’s eyes. “Sam got into Lorene’s social media accounts. She only had Facebook and Twitter accounts. Had a significant following. Mostly tweeted about human rights and charity movements.”

“The daughter said she volunteered at Meals for You,” Terry squeezed in.

Cynthia glanced at him. “The name is familiar. I recall seeing some retweets from them on her feed.”

“What about on Facebook?” Madison asked.

“She shared community events and photos from them. Her posts always received a number of reactions and comments. She didn’t post often, though.”

“Did she share anything for other charities?” Madison was curious, as Kimberly had said her mother was involved in a few of them.

Cynthia shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

“Any luck finding our John Doe among her friend list?” Madison asked.

“If we had, I’d be a little more hyper than I am now.”

Madison sighed. “Fair enough.”

“Now, Sam got into Lorene’s main email account, too. She logged right onto the hosting server and was able to recover some deleted emails. Two of interest,” Cynthia paused. “You listening closely?”

“On the edge of my seat,” Terry said, and that got Cynthia laughing.

“Ready?” Cynthia looked at Madison.

“Yes,” she rushed out, not handling suspense well.

Cynthia smiled at Madison’s impatience. “They were deleted yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Madison blinked slowly. “You’re sure. Lorene was—”

“Dead? Yeah, I know, but someone must have access to her email and deleted those two.”

“What were they?” Madison asked.

Cynthia snatched a couple pieces of paper off the printer and extended them to Madison. “Here’s one.”

Terry leaned in next to Madison, his elbow hitting her stomach.

“A little personal space might be nice,” she said.

He moved a fraction of an inch.

Madison looked at the printout. Page one was the email message, complete with the sender’s information. The subject read, Your Invoice, and the body read, Please find your invoice attached. There was no salutation and no signature.

Page two of the printout was the attachment. It was an invoice and didn’t provide much in the way of details. The description was, For services rendered. The letterhead just had a name and a tax ID, no phone number or address.

Madison looked up from the page. “Did you look them up?”

“Haven’t gotten there yet,” Cynthia confessed.

“Well, it must be important,” Madison said, tension knotting between her shoulder blades and burrowing into the back of her neck. “Important enough that someone saw fit to delete the email. They weren’t counting on it being recovered.”

“I agree that it could be important, and trust me, it’s a priority—along with a lot of other things. We also have the Malones’ financials to review.”

Progress was being made, but Madison wished for more just a little faster. “Please. As soon as possible.”

“Yes, Maddy, I promise.”

Terry raised his brows toward Cynthia. “You said there were two emails.”

“The second.” Cynthia handed them a third piece of paper.

“The sender was Kimberly Olson-Malone?” Madison gasped and searched for Cynthia’s reaction.

Cynthia butted her head toward the printout, directing Madison’s attention back to it.

Madison read the brief message aloud. “‘You have the proof! Now do the right thing or I will.’” Madison looked up. “What’s that mean? And proof of what?” She paced a few steps. “Kimberly and her mother were in a disagreement about something. I eventually dragged that out of her. Did that lead her to killing her mother and John Doe?” She faced her partner as doubts snaked in and coiled around her chest.

“What do you think the chances are Kimberly was the one to delete the emails?” Cynthia theorized.

“Quite good.” Madison looked at Terry. “We’ve got to bring her in right away.”

“Hold up. There’s no need to jump on this so quickly,” he replied, holding up a hand. “It could have been the killer who deleted these messages for some reason, someone other than Kimberly who had access to Lorene’s email. And may I remind you that we don’t even know if she has access.”

“Then we ask her.” Madison was halfway to the door.

“Oh, God. Here we go.” Terry hustled after her.

“Wait, guys,” Cynthia called out and drew them back to her. “I haven’t even told you everything yet. I see you’re in a hurry, so I’ll email the list of evidence that we’ve collected thus far.”

“Cyn, you’re killing me.” Madison jacked a thumb toward the door. “We’ve got to bring Kimberly in for questioning, and she needs to start talking.”

“Before I arm you with more ammo against Kimberly, let me just tell you that both Kimberly and her father were negative for gunshot residue.”

Madison couldn’t say the results surprised her, but she latched on to Cynthia’s promise of “more ammo against Kimberly. “What else do you have?”

“We checked out the home office like you’d asked me to,” Cynthia began, a smirk on her lips. “It’s hard to find something when one doesn’t really know what they’re looking for.”

Madison tapped a foot.

“We did collect a few USB sticks, along with the home computer, thinking there might be something electronic that would give us something useful. We still need to work through all that, but we lifted fingerprints from the desk drawer.” Cynthia let a pregnant pause play out, and Madison was about ready to throttle her friend when she resumed, “They were Kimberly’s.”

“Kimberly said she hadn’t been in the office for years.” That part might be true, as there was no way to date prints, but if the housekeeper typically cleaned the office, as they were told she did, it would be assumed she’d wiped down the desk, including the handles. “What was in the drawer?”

“The USB sticks I mentioned, among other things.”

Had Kimberly gone into that drawer in search of one of the drives or something else, and had she found it?

“Let me know what’s on them as soon as possible,” Madison said, then hit the door running.