“I guess that’s why I became a cop. I can just pull my badge and figure out who’s trying to screw with me.”
“But you can’t be a cop anymore, can you?” This came out as a clear taunt.
“Not until I figure out who set me up.”
Dana rolled her heavily made-up eyes. “Do you really think that’s going to happen?”
“I don’t think. I know it will.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d work very hard for your little college professor. Because I see ‘assistant’ as being as good as it gets for you from here on.”
“Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll see myself out.”
But her mother followed her as far as the front door. As Mace strapped on her helmet, Dana said, “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused for your sister?”
“Yeah, actually I do.”
“And of course you don’t care at all, do you?”
“If I told you otherwise would you believe me?”
“You make me sick with your selfish ways.”
“Well, I learned from the master, didn’t I?”
“I spent the best years of my life with your father. We never had any money. Never went anywhere. Never did a damn thing. And we never would.”
“Yeah, punishing the wicked and making the world a better place for all was just the pits, wasn’t it?”
“You were only a child. You had no idea.”
“Oh, I had more than an idea. Talk about me? You’ll never have it nearly as good ever again. I don’t care how many rich Timothys you marry.”
“Oh, you think so?”
Mace lifted her visor. “Yeah, because Dad was the only man you ever really loved.”
“Just please go away!”
Mace noticed the slight tremble in her mother’s right hand. “Do you know how lucky you were to have a man that good so in love with you? Beth never had that privilege. And I sure as hell haven’t.”
She thought she saw her mother’s eyes turn glassy before the door slammed shut.
Mace mangled the Ducati’s gears in her sudden panic to get out of this place. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she would never be a cop again. Maybe this was as good as it would ever get for her.
CHAPTER 25
BETH READ THROUGH the report on her computer screen three times. This was something her father had taught her. Read through once for general conceptualization and then a second time for the nitty-gritty details. And then read it a final time, at least an hour after the first reading, but do so out of order, which forced your mind and your eyes from their comfort zones.
Beth refocused. They had scrubbed Diane Tolliver’s computer at work and at her home without revealing any surprises. The work computer had yielded a mass of legal documents and research items and correspondence on dozens of complicated deals. The woman’s town house in Old Town Alexandria had yielded no clues or leads. They would work outward now, from her job and personal life. Murders were almost never random occurrences. Family, friends, acquaintances, rivals, spurned lovers—those were the categories from which the takers of human life were most often spawned.
She looked down at the one interesting item on Diane Tolliver’s work computer. The e-mail she’d sent to Roy Kingman Friday night. The missive was cryptic and she was hoping that Kingman could explain it, but when interviewed by her detectives over the phone he claimed to have no idea what it meant or why it had been sent to him.
They also knew from the electronic records from the garage that Tolliver had left the office Friday night at two minutes before seven and returned at a little before ten, leaving again around ten-forty. The cleaning crew had come in at seven-thirty and left around nine-thirty. They had seen nothing unusual.
What did people do for a few hours on a Friday evening? They had dinner. The fact that she had driven showed it was too far to walk. They were accessing the woman’s credit card records to see what restaurant she’d gone to. That would only work if she had paid the bill, of course, but it was a viable lead.
Need to focus in on A-
That was the message she’d sent to Kingman that he claimed not to understand. Was that the whole message or had it been cut off? She might have been interrupted. If so, by whom at that late hour? But she’d been alive on Monday morning. Beth frowned as she thought about her sister hanging around Kingman.