Page 37 of Murder Notes

Her phone buzzes again and she glances at her screen, then at me. “I need to go. Call me if you need me.”

I give a nod and she slides out of the booth. I follow her progress as I had Eddie’s, wondering how anyone in the business this long, as she’d noted, could make a statement as wrong as the one she just made. I know from experience that just because you don’t pull the trigger the first time doesn’t mean you won’t pull it the next. Kevin Woods interests me. Her defense of him interests me. But Eddie’s desire to make him the catalyst that gets me out of town interests me the most. Too bad for him, and me both, that I have reasons to stay. My potentially corrupt family. Junior. And the fact that no one who masterfully killed four people without a trace of evidence would implicate themselves in a personal scandal that connects them to murder. Kevin Woods is not the killer I’m hunting. And the idea that my family would let an innocent man take the fall for a crime for political or personal reasons doesn’t even sound like my family. Maybe I don’t know them any more than they know me. But I will before I leave. Of that, I am certain.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I grab my phone and dial Tic Tac, who is actually Jeff Landers. And right now, it’s Jeff that I’m looking for, not Tic Tac.

“You do know it’s only been a few hours, right?” is his greeting.

“I need everything you can give me on Kevin Woods of East Hampton,” I say, my tone all business, another side of Lilah Love those who work with me know and know well. “He’s the suspect for the murder I’m investigating here.”

“Meaning he’s the suspect for all the cases.”

“No. The locals are trying to isolate this case, which ends our opportunity for jurisdiction. Supposedly Woods was dating the victim. I’m not buying it.”

“Hold on,” Jeff says, and proving he’s learned a few things about me in the years we’ve worked together, his tone is no-nonsense, the sound of a keyboard clacking in the background. “Thirty-two. Born and raised in Manhattan.”

Which could represent a connection to the first New York victim, but it feels wrong. “What else?”

“He inherited a construction business from his father,” he continues. “The focus being on high-end, custom-built houses, then and now, but once Kevin took over—”

“When was that?”

“Three years ago,” he says. “That’s when Kevin managed to land a job for a Hollywood type, and the business took off from there.”

“What does Hollywood type mean?”

“Keith Miller.”

A powerful film director who worked with my mother. “Where does Keith Miller own property?”

His fingers click on the keyboard. “LA, Southampton, and New York City. But hold on.” More clicking of the keyboard before he says, “Woods has had five Hollywood-type clients in the past five years. Two with homes in the Hamptons and Los Angeles. Three with places in New York City and LA. They all have a link to both states.”

“And the locations of similar murders,” I state, any hope that Miller is my singular connection now gone. “I need—”

“A full list of everyone in the Hamptons with that crossover. You told me.”

“I actually think I e-mailed it to you.”

“All right, smart-ass. Whatever the case. It’s a big list. You need information. I need time.”

“Fine,” I concede. “What about Woods’s arrest last year sometime?”

“There’s no record of an arrest.”

“Huh. Dig deeper on that.” I move on. “I need to know if the newest victim connects to any of the previous victims.”

“No. I checked.”

“What about a connection to one of Woods’s clients? Look there and look fast. Like I said, Woods is a—”

“Jurisdiction issue. I’ll get you what I can by bedtime.”

“That works. Does Woods have living family?”

More clacking of keys before he says, “None.”

“Send me everything you can find on him. And I mean everything, no matter how insignificant. I want to know who the man’s hairdresser is.”