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Twenty-One

Madison’s nerves were frayed by the time she reached the station. Navigating the treacherous roads were stressful enough, but she wanted some answers instead of just unearthing more questions. One thing was clear, though, there had to be something in Steven’s office that Lorene didn’t want anyone to find. Madison hoped that whatever it was would graciously reveal itself, but she wasn’t naive enough to believe that would really happen. Things rarely worked out that easily with a murder investigation.

Lorene’s phone records were on Madison’s desk in a one-inch-thick file folder. She couldn’t believe that was just for one month. She’d figured it would be most prudent to start with recent activity. After all, it would make sense that if someone close to Lorene had targeted her, it would be a person she was in contact with more recently. Madison had also assumed—obviously falsely—that the list would be short.

There was a sticky note on the front of the folder that read, I am still working on accessing her social media accounts and email, Sam.

Madison left the note where it was and separated the stack, giving Terry the slightly larger half. “You start scanning, see if you find any recurring numbers,” she told him.

Madison flipped through the sheets she had in her hand and quickly discovered the stack she had contained the most recent activity. She went to Monday evening and found an outgoing call just after five o’clock.

Madison read off the number in her head and scanned across the page to the duration. Twenty minutes.

“I think I found that call that Mrs. Beaulieu told us about.” She sat down and keyed in a reverse search for the number. The result came on her screen, and her blood ran cold. “Ah, Terry?”

“Yeah.” He sounded groggy, like she’d just stirred him from sleep.

“Kimberly said that she talked to her mother for a few minutes on Monday night, right?”

“Sounds right, off the top of my head.”

“Check your notes.”

He rolled his eyes and pulled out his notepad, flipped pages. “She said, ‘We spoke briefly on the phone yesterday.’”

“Do you consider twenty minutes brief?”

“Not really.”

“According to this—” she held up the report “—Lorene called Kimberly, and they were on together for twenty minutes last night at five o’clock. Did the length of time just slip Kimberly’s mind, or did she hold it back on purpose?”

Terry straightened in his chair. “Kimberly could have been who Lorene had been arguing with when the cook showed up. Well, you thought she was hiding something, but why lie about a phone conversation with her mother? It doesn’t make much sense.”

“Nope, unless it ties into the murders somehow.”

“Whoa. Let’s not take that leap just yet. It could have just slipped her mind.”

“Convenient,” she tossed back. “We’ve got to talk to her.”

“We need more than something like this to interrupt her in the middle of the night. Even if she did leave it out, it might not have any bearing on the case.”

“And it might.” Madison wasn’t going to let this go.

Terry shook his head. “It’s not enough to justify our going over there right now. Tomorrow, sure, if we find it’s still an avenue worth exploring.” He buried his face in his part of the phone records.

“Fine, but I’m not forgetting this,” Madison said. “We’ll ask her tomorrow.”

Terry didn’t say anything, and Madison looked down at the sheets she had. She proceeded to highlight repeating numbers of which there were several. She’d do reverse searches for all of them, find out how they knew Lorene Malone, and go from there. The task might be something they’d need help with, especially if Terry was finding a lot of repeating numbers like she was. Then again, a clue might exist in the rarities.

She sat back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights were buzzing, and the sound wormed into her head. Worse than Chinese water torture. During the day, with the station being a blur of activity, she never heard them. It must have been because she was tired that they even hit her ears now. The cappuccino was letting her down.

She took a different color highlighter and marked the numbers that didn’t recur. After twenty minutes, the colors were blurring together. She looked back at Kimberly’s number and committed it to memory. Revisiting the report, she noticed that Kimberly and her mother didn’t talk that often.

“Terry.”

He lifted his head, and she gave him Kimberly’s number.

“Do you see that number on the pages you have?” she asked.

He shuffled through them, a few pages, a few more, the entire pile. “I skimmed rather quickly, but, no, I didn’t see it.”

There was something there. She felt it through to her core. At the very least, it would seem mother and daughter hadn’t been close. Yet they did yoga twice a week together? Maybe that negated the need to talk on the phone. “So, the only time Kimberly spoke to her mother was for twenty minutes on Monday, the night that she died, the call that Kimberly said only lasted ‘briefly.’ Now do you think we have enough reason to go over?”

Terry sighed deeply. “Let’s leave her until the morning. Please.”

He was just worried about Sergeant Winston; it was written all over his face and in his desperate plea.

She had little patience most of the time, but when she wanted an explanation on something, she was even worse. “Fine, but first thing.”

She opened her email program and watched as a few new messages filtered in. One was from the sketch artist, and the subject line cited the case number for John Doe. She opened the message and clicked on the attachment. Staring back at her was the face of their John Doe.

Madison forwarded a copy to her phone and Terry’s and told him they had Doe’s sketch. She added, “It looks like I have another reason to pay Kimberly Olson-Malone a visit.”

“You know what?” Terry lifted his hands in a gesture of giving up. “If you think now is the best time—”

“If she knows him, we could be on the way to solving this case.”

“Are you forgetting that she’s the one who found him with her mother? She saw the man.”

“Under traumatic circumstances. She might not have seen him close enough. She was probably more concentrated on having found her mother.”

“Fine, you can go over there, but I’m staying put. I’ll keep on the phone records.”

“Okay.” Madison stood and grabbed her coat. “Let me know if Sam comes back with anything on Lorene’s social media or email.”

“If she’s smart, she’ll be at home asleep already.” Terry yawned as if on cue. “Just promise me one thing.”

Madison tilted her head.

“You won’t knock if the lights aren’t on—and no doorbells.”

Madison lifted one hand as if making a pledge. “Scout’s honor.”

She had her fingers crossed behind her back.