Page 44 of Fallen

“Productive,” he tells me. “Division of Police and BCI went through the house where Schwartz lived with Matson. We went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. Dusted for prints. We took her laptop to the lab. Email. Hard drive. Techs are looking at her browsing history.”

“Anything interesting?” I ask.

“A couple of things stand out. According to one of her friends I talked to, Rachael was regularly intimate with two men, in addition to Moskowski.”

I sit up straighter. “Did you—”

“Both have alibis for the night of the murder, but we’re taking a good hard look at both of them in case this was a murder-for-hire or jealous-lover kind of thing.”

Not for the first time, I’m reminded that Rachael Schwartz lived her life full bore. She was impulsive with a predilection for risky behavior and damn anyone who didn’t like it.

Bending, he pulls a couple of items from the box. “You have chain of custody on this.” He tosses a brown envelope on my desk. “Old photos.”

I open it. The photos inside are faded and stained. Poor quality. There are four of a spotted horse that means nothing. I shuffle through, come to the last photo. It’s a picture of Rachael Schwartz and Loretta Bontrager when they were barely into their teens. Loretta has a kind, ordinary face mottled with freckles, and the guileless eyes of a child. Rachael was a lovely girl with a not-quite-innocent smile and eyes that, even then, were a little too direct.

He places a manila folder on my desk and slides it over to me. “This is one of the more interesting finds.”

I replace the photos, open the folder, and find myself looking at copies of Schwartz’s banking and financial statements. Checking account. Savings. A small investment account.

“Not much in the way of savings,” I murmur as I skim. “Investment account is almost dry.”

“According to her accountant, The Keyhole didn’t always turn a profit. Some weeks she barely made payroll.”

“She was living above her means.”

Leaning forward, he reaches out and flips the page. “Checking account has been in the red several times in the last couple of years. Look at the balance now.”

My eyes widen. “Almost twenty thousand dollars.” I look at Tomasetti. “Any idea where the money came from?”

He runs his finger down the page and taps on a figure highlighted in yellow. I slide my reading glasses onto my nose. Sure enough, there was a deposit made two months ago in the amount of fourteen thousand dollars.

I look at Tomasetti. “That’s a lot of money. Royalty payment?”

“Cash,” he tells me.

“That’s odd.”

“It’s been my experience that when people deal in cash like that, they usually have something to hide or else they don’t want it traced.”

“Is there any way we can figure out who it came from?” I ask.

“I’m working on getting landline records,” he says. “Might take a day or two.”

“Cell phone?” I ask.

“We went through the one found on scene,” he tells me. “We identified every number, but they gave us nothing. According to the friend I talked to, Rachael had two cell phones. Only one has been accounted for.”

I think of the cell phone found at the scene. I remember thinking there should have been at least one call to someone in Painters Mill. For the first time, that there wasn’t such a call makes sense.

“She didn’t drive down to Painters Mill to ogle the Amish,” I tell him. “No one I’ve talked to knew she was here or even knew she was coming.”

“Someone did,” he says. “We both know this wasn’t random.”

My mind spins through possibilities. “Her killer knew about the second cell phone and took it.”

“Because they’d been communicating with it.”

“Burner?” I ask.