for November, but Joanna’s birthday was in August, which makes her gemstone a lime green peridot.
She’s also missing her wedding ring.
It’s true, I might be overthinking both things. Someone could have given her the necklace, and maybe she kept it for sentimental reasons.
And it’s quite possible she removed her diamond wedding ring after leaving her husband. But where is it now? It wasn’t on her corpse when we dug it up.
Since there aren’t any pawnshops in Point Reina, I make a note to check ones located between Ravenwood and the city.
Our investigation is far from finished. I’m just digging my hooks in.
I’ve fired off calls to Dean Lewis, the Harris’s chef, and Samara Graves, their housekeeper, along with the groundskeeper. We need to get formal statements from them as soon as possible. In all my years on the force, I’ve learned one thing from hired help: they know more about what’s going on in a home than the people who live within its walls. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, they know about marital troubles, too. I’m banking on the fact that the staff will be able to shed some light on the dynamic between Harris and his late wife.
Especially considering the most troubling puzzle piece in the case.
Joanna wasn’t pregnant at the time of her death.
We’re assuming she was pregnant at some point, since Harris seems to adamantly believe that she was, but we don’t even know that for certain. Dates given by her doctor—who refuses to say much, citing patient privacy under the HIPAA laws—reveal she was due in for her next appointment at the beginning of June, the start of her second trimester. She never showed. If she’d had a late-term miscarriage, there should be a record of Joanna Harris checking into a hospital to give birth, even if the fetus was stillborn. We’re looking into hospitals and doctors’ offices in the area, though thus far, no luck.
We’ve also considered the possibility that Joanna might have gone back to using Buchanan, her maiden name. No luck there, either.
Had Joanna miscarried much earlier in the pregnancy and not said anything to her husband? If that’s the case, how had he not noticed that her stomach wasn’t growing?
“What do you think?” Patel asks me in the break room at the station, when we stop to get some coffee.
“About Harris? I think he looked genuinely shocked.”
“He could be acting,” he says. Michael is sitting at Patel’s desk, his long body slumped and miserable. “Or the trauma could’ve blocked the murder from his mind. We’ve dealt with dissociative amnesia before.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Damn, I wish I could pick Karen’s brain. Every so often, I’d consult her on difficult cases. She always had a gift for separating the guilty from the innocent. I relied on the cut-and-dried facts—sometimes to a fault—but she would follow her gut, and it never led her astray.
“What do you make of the new girlfriend?” Patel fills two mugs of coffee.
“Not sure.” I take one of the mugs from his hand. “I’ll take her. You take the grieving husband.”
I escort Colleen through to the room in back, while Patel keeps Harris at his desk near the front. Closing the door behind her, I motion for her to take a seat at a table, and she obeys, thanking me as I offer her the coffee. She’s very pretty. Without makeup, she’s very pale.
“Do you have decaf?” she asks, and my attention instinctively shifts to her stomach. Baggy sweater. Stretch pants.
I wonder if she’s pregnant.
“Sure,” I say, and get her what she’s requested.
And then, as is routine, I click on the recorder to document our conversation. Patel will be recording the one with Harris. First, I note the time and date. “What’s your full name?” I ask, getting the basics out of the way.