Spedick, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Absolutely. Come on in, Mr. Hofmann. I was expecting someone from the family to come by eventually.” Spedick was in his early sixties, a slight peppering of gray in his dusty blond hair. His suit was unremarkable, his smile genuine. “We are all feeling the loss of your sister. I can’t tell you how sorry we are.” He took a seat behind his desk and encouraged AJ to sit.
“The funeral was a blur, but I do remember a large presence of her coworkers.”
“Amelia was one of our more motivated younger employees. She had no problem influencing people. I don’t think I knew one person who didn’t say kind things about her.”
AJ lifted both hands in the air. “Which is one of the reasons I’m here. If my sister was so well loved, why did someone murder her?”
“I’m sure the police can answer that better than we can.”
“Except they aren’t.”
“What are you suggesting?” Spedick leaned forward on his desk.
“Nothing . . . I’m grasping at air. I need to exhaust everything I can find out on my own in order to move on, Mr. Spedick. So I’m here to see if maybe someone here says something that gives me a clue.”
“If she was my sister . . . I would do the same thing.”
“Then I can count on your help.”
“Of course,” he said, sitting back.
“I’m not entirely sure what Amelia did for your office, Mr. Spedick, or if anything was sensitive in nature.”
“Amelia wasn’t cleared for anything classified. If she had been, we would have started our own investigation.”
“Is it possible that she came across something she wasn’t supposed to see?”
“The local police asked the same thing at the time of her death. The answer is simple. There isn’t anything to see. Our IT guys did a search of her computer, more to find out where she was on her research for our current work in South Africa than anything else. If they found anything, it would have been flagged. I can assure you nothing was there that shouldn’t have been.”
AJ considered telling the man that his sister had some serious hacking skills but thought better of revealing that.
“My sister didn’t seem to have many friends outside work. It might help us find some closure if I could talk to some of them. Maybe she had a boyfriend or something that we didn’t know anything about.” AJ was stalling. He needed at least a half an hour in the building before Sasha finished at the condo and met him outside.
“She worked with Nina and Frank.” He looked at his watch. “If we go now, we might catch them before they leave for lunch.”
AJ followed Spedick down the hall and stopped at a grouping of desks. One had been stripped of any character, left only with a monitor and keyboard.
Spedick introduced AJ to the duo. “Please answer anything you can. I already told Mr. Hofmann we have no secrets in this department.”
Nina pushed her chair back and stood while Frank shook his hand.
“If you stay through lunch, just let my secretary know. Feel free to take off early.”
AJ thanked the man and shook his hand. “I appreciate your help.”
“Anything we can do. Like I said, your sister was well loved. I’m very sorry for your loss.” He walked back toward his office.
AJ pulled what he assumed was Amelia’s old desk chair over and sat down.
“We really miss your sister. I look over and can’t believe she’s gone,” Nina said, her eyes drifting to the empty desk.
“She was good people,” Frank offered.
AJ had heard it all before. He cut straight to the chase. “Yeah, but someone wanted her dead and now she is. I’d really like to know if you guys have seen anything she was doing here that was worth dying for.”
Frank actually laughed. “Not even the office birthday donuts.”
Nina shook her head. “Most of our job is looking stuff up and working on reports. Yeah, Amelia had taken on the analyst role and was doing a decent amount of traveling, but that was a given since she spoke three languages.”
“How much traveling?” AJ asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Every three weeks or so. Depended.”
“What about when she was here. After work? Happy hour? Did she have a boyfriend?”
Frank laughed. “Not that I know of.”
Nina and he shared a smile and then looked at AJ.
Nina’s grin slowly faded. “She never talked about anyone.”
“What about close friends? Anyone from the office?”
She shook her