was looking like one of her most promising suspects almost certainly had to be removed from the list.
“Okay,” she said. “What other bad news have you got for me?”
“I actually have one bit of good news I can toss in to shake things up.”
“Please,” Jessie replied. “I’ll take what I can get.”
“You asked me to check on the security footage from Beto Estrada’s house and let you know if I found anything unusual. I did. All the cameras cut out from nine fourteen a.m. to ten twenty-two a.m. For over an hour, it was just static. Then they magically turned on again.”
He was looking at her hopefully, as if he might have brightened her day with news that actually confirmed her concerns about Estrada’s house being tapped. She didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble.
“Great job, Jamil,” she told him reassuringly. “Now you can go back to the bad news.”
Jamil looked over cautiously at Karen, who shrugged.
“Just tell her,” she said. “Remember, we’re in Band-Aid ripping mode here.”
Jamil still seemed wary, but gulped and went for it anyway.
“You know those other big names you wanted me to check into, the senator, the actor, and the sultan?”
“Yeah,” Jessie replied.
“It looks like you may have to cross them off the list too.”
“Why is that?”
“Senator Johnson was in Washington, D.C., last weekend. Paul Gilliard is shooting a movie on location in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And the sultan, whose full name is Omar Abdul Salah and appears to be worth over a billion dollars based on my research, was on a flight home from Paris on Saturday.”
Jessie nodded quietly. Jamil was exploding every potential option in her tiny bucket of remaining suspects. As she sat swiveling in the chair in the darkened research room, she allowed the complete failure of their investigation to settle in.
Almost all of their suspects had airtight alibis. Even Jasper Otis, who Jessie still liked for this, had multiple witnesses who’d offered statements on his behalf. Without formal evidence to contradict their claims, he would skate, just like he’d skated on all the sexual allegations made against him. It was infuriating to know that her most credible suspect kept slipping just out of her grasp.
The only person without a solid alibi was the Humbert Humbert roadie, Davey Pasternak. Jessie was actually surprised that Karen hadn’t already suggested they leave to pick him up. She guessed that it was just a polite delay, so as not to rub salt in the wound.
She closed her eyes as she swiveled. Something was still eating at her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was poking at her, teasing her, taunting her. It came down to this: She couldn’t get past the idea that Milly’s killer felt comfortable enough to carefully remove her blouse, then place her in a shower and turn on the water.
Who other than Otis would feel comfortable in the residential wing, as if they owned the place? And who knew Milly Estrada well enough that she’d let down her guard? Jessie opened her eyes.
“Do we have visual evidence of all three of those men being elsewhere or is that just what their schedules say?” she asked.
Jamil looked taken aback, then slightly embarrassed.
“Just schedules,” he admitted. “After I found those, I stopped looking.”
“That’s okay,” Jessie told him, not wanting to be too harsh. “But we should look now.”
“What are you thinking?” Karen asked.
Jessie smiled at her even though she had no credible reason to.
“I’d be willing to bet that we won’t find a single photo of one of them in the location his schedule says he was supposed to be.”
“Why not?” Karen asked.
“Because I think Milly’s killer is still in that house.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Jessie’s eyes were blurry from studying screens so intently.
They’d spent the last half hour reviewing alibis and she decided it was time for everyone to give an update on the suspect they’d been looking into. Karen was investigating Paul Hilliard because she had the most insight into the Hollywood community. Jamil was following up Sultan Salah because it involved technical understanding of flight patterns and airport footage. That left Jessie with Senator Johnson, who had the most public schedule. She started first.
“I think we can officially rule the senator out,” she said. “He didn’t have any formal events over the weekend. But an ‘on the town’ item for the Post mentions a brunch sighting of him on Saturday afternoon in D.C., and he posted footage of himself from his kid’s soccer game on Sunday