at Otis Estate when questions started getting asked, the consequences would be bad for everyone, especially him.
So instead of going back to his wing to ponder, he went to see Paul.
*
Jessie had never been a Paul Gilliard fan.
Of course she’d seen some of his movies. He was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. She knew she was in the minority, but she always thought he projected a slightly smarmy vibe that was reinforced by his over-tanned skin, over-sculpted hair, and over-ripped muscles.
But she’d never had cause to think of him beyond that surface level. Now that she was diving deeper, she discovered that her instincts had been right on. The guy had never formally been charged with any crimes but he’d come close several times.
“When I worked West L.A. division,” Karen said, “I heard multiple stories from patrol officers about neighbors calling, concerned about screaming fights coming from his place. They never found any obvious evidence of violence when they did welfare checks, and none of his girlfriends ever filed complaints. But I was told that sometimes they looked scared. It was never enough to act on. And it was so long ago that I forgot about it until now.”
Jessie had been studying a suspicious file of her own.
“Not enough to go on seems to be a pattern,” she said. “Do you know about his wife?”
“I thought that was an accident,” Karen said.
“What was?” asked Jamil, who’d been focused on his own task. “I think that was before my time.”
Karen filled him in.
“Seven years ago, he and his wife were skiing. The ski lift safety bar was defective and she fell out of the chair, hundreds of feet to the ground. She died on impact. Gilliard almost fell too. They found him clinging to the chair. At least that was the official story.”
“Right,” Jessie confirmed. “Conveniently, that was exactly the time that Millicent Estrada became his primary criminal lawyer. According to everything I’ve found, she pushed hard for the case to be closed quickly. It was ruled an accident. He was never formally investigated. Gilliard even filed suit against the ski lodge, though Milly didn’t represent him on that case. But he eventually dropped it, saying going to court would be too painful.”
“That’s convenient,” Jamil noted. “If it had gone to trial, there would have been all kinds of discovery that might have revealed new evidence.”
“So he got to look like the angry widower, fighting for justice for his wife,” Karen said, “before becoming the widower too grief-stricken to pursue it. I remember the whole country mourned for him. But why does that matter now?”
Jessie smiled. This was what she’d been waiting for.
“Maybe because the two of them hadn’t seen each other in years,” she said. “According to my source, Milly had only bumped into Gilliard in the last few months, once she started getting back on the social circuit after her divorce.”
“Why is that significant?” Jamil asked.
This was usually the moment where Jessie got chastised by Ryan for letting her intuition trump the evidence at hand. But he wasn’t here and she got the sense that her audience was ready to take the ride with her, so she launched in.
“I have a theory. What if Paul Gilliard killed his wife? What if he pushed her off that lift, maybe in a moment of anger, maybe for some other reason? What if Milly Estrada knew that and helped him cover it up, shut down the investigation? She wasn’t as established back then. Getting him as a client was major coup. What if she let her ambition trump her ethics? The whole mess is taken care of and she doesn’t have to think about it for years afterward. She’s still his criminal lawyer but he keeps his nose clean so she is able to move on with her life.”
“But that changed,” Karen suggested.
“Exactly,” Jessie said. “A few months ago, she gets divorced, starts going to parties, traveling in the same circles as Gilliard. She can’t avoid him. And she can’t avoid the memory of what she did—whatever that may have been—to help him escape justice. She starts to feel guilty. And then, according to her phone logs, she has several calls with him last week. What if she was feeling guilty enough that she was considering coming clean? What if she was trying to convince Gilliard to do the same? Maybe he agrees to confess and says he wants to come up with a plan, but not in