Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Uncertain,” Raye replied softly. “But that would track.”
“Do you think Javi knows about this crap with his brother?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Jessie said glumly.
The screen changed again, and it was the picture of a massive house, and beside it, the address.
“Austin Atherton’s home,” Luna said.
And oh yeah, my blood was boiling.
Javi didn’t even have an armchair (yet), he was thirty-three and only allowed himself to buy new stuff very recently, and this man lived in that house?
Luna went on, “The soon-to-be ex, her name is Tiffany…” Of course it was. No shade to the cool Tiffanys out there, but…ugh. “…now lives in a luxury high-rise. Unsurprisingly, Patrick, who’s thirty-four, is unemployed and lives with his mom. But when you’re ready, we know where Austin lives, Arthur says he can tap into his security system so he’ll know when he’s home, and we can plan our intervention.”
I nodded, picked up a tender, shoved it in Cane’s awesome special sauce, then shoved it in my mouth and chewed angrily.
Once I swallowed, I said, “Let’s get into the other stuff so we know when that will fit into the schedule.”
The screen went blank and then a picture of what looked like a bank statement came up. This clicked to another one. Onward to a third.
On each, one line item was highlighted.
It was a deposit of ten thousand dollars.
“Trevor Clampitt’s bank statements,” Raye said.
A new image, and it was an enlargement of the highlighted line.
The place where the deposit came from was called Sun Dial LLC.
“Shell company,” Raye informed us. “Arthur’s digging into it, but he reports that wherever this leads, they did a good job in covering their tracks. It’s going to take him some time.”
This was a surprise. Arthur seemed to be able to get his hands on stuff pretty quickly, case in point, the bank statements.
“At the time of his death, Trevor had been unemployed for three months,” Luna called from behind us.
“Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Shanti noted.
“Smacks of payouts to me,” Jessie put in. “Blackmail?”
“Unknown,” Raye answered, and the image changed. “Police log of evidence taken from Trev’s. They did not get either a laptop or a cellphone.”
And again, Arthur could get his hands on anything.
But…
Interesting.
“So whoever did him and wrecked his place took both,” Shanti shared my thoughts.
“More than likely,” Luna said. “Which means, if they did, they either can’t get into them, or they didn’t get what they want out of them.”
As I bit into my toast, a picture came on screen of Trevor.
“We keep forgetting the basics of an investigation,” Raye began. “That is, learn all you can about the victim first. So, twenty-nine years old at the time of his death. Second oldest son. Older brother, younger sister. Parents divorced when he was in middle school. Washed out of Arizona State in the middle of the first semester of his junior year. Longest he held down a job was for thirteen months. He sold solar panels. He was good at it but was fired after the second woman he worked with filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.”
“And again, that tracks,” Willow mumbled.
The image on the screen changed, it was obviously a police report, and Luna started talking.
“According to notes from police interviews, not only had that one friend distanced himself from Trev, pretty much all of them thought he was a mooch. He’d made a play on one of his friends’ fiancées, and the friend didn’t like it, the fiancée liked it a lot less. Quite a few of them shared Trev had pretty much run through them all. The only one he remained tight with is Kevin.”
“Shot in the dark since it’s obvious this seems bigger, but did any of them dislike him so much they’d kill him?” Shanti asked.
“That’s kinda extreme, but the police have been thorough, and they’ve cleared them all,” Raye said.
“What about his family?” Jessie asked.
“Prodigal son,” Luna answered. “Mom and dad, brother and sister were wrecked he was murdered, but they shared with the cops that they worried about him and the life he was leading. He didn’t seem to have any direction. And when you don’t have any direction, you end up heading down the wrong path.”
Somehow, we just didn’t know how, outside the dating app scam, he definitely did that.
“None of them know about those deposits,” Raye said. “Except the dad reported Trevor told him he’d landed a good job that paid ‘five figures a month,’ and he seemed flush. But the dad also reported Trevor was cagey about where he worked and what he was doing.”
“I don’t think you can accept a gift of more than ten K before the IRS wants their cut,” Shanti remarked. “So maybe this Sun Dial deposit was payroll.”
“At exactly ten K each month?” Raye asked.
“It’s thin, but the payroll thing could be a cover so he could deposit it in order to pay bills and escape paying taxes,” Shanti replied.