AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You lucky dog, you. She’s the best cook in Badger’s Drift. Maybe now that I can spend what I want, I’ll steal her away from you.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“She’ll never leave you,” said Ginnie with a sigh. “Well, a girl can dream.” She turned to Thorn. “What can I do for you?”
“Would you mind telling me where you were between 5 AM and 10 AM this morning?” asked Thorn.
Ginnie laughed. “I suppose I ought to take offense to that, but I don’t. I was on a plane on my way back from a meeting with a financial planner in Portland.” She searched through her purse. “Here’s my ticket; I’m sure they can verify it for you.”
“Thank you. We’d also like permission to search the house as well as his office. I understand it’s on Main Street.”
Ginnie nodded. “It is. Let me get you the keys. And you’re welcome to search to your heart’s content. I’ve got nothing to hide.” Ginnie walked back to the foyer and returned with the keys. “Any chance you found his phone with the body?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but when we do, we’re going to need to hold it for evidence. Can I ask why you want to know?”
“My lawyer thinks there could be all kinds of damning evidence about what he spent on his hussy as well as hidden assets we’ll want to make sure I get. If you find it, can we get a cloned copy?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“That would be great,” said Ginnie. “I have an appointment with my lawyer to talk over how badly I can screw up dear Delilah’s comfy little life. You don’t mind if I leave, do you?”
“Not at all. We’ll be sure to lock up if we get done before you get back.”
Ginnie waved over her head to them as she walked out the door.
“No love lost there,” said Thorn.
“Trust me, if half the things they say about Thompson are true, no one’s going to begrudge her feeling the way she does. ‘Prick’ and ‘bastard’ are apt descriptions. Come to think of it, I never saw Thompson without his phone. Do you think that’s significant as far as the murder goes?”
“Could be. Certainly, hearing her say she thinks there’s information he was keeping on it he didn’t want seeing the light of day and you saying he always had it with him, it’s worth looking for. I’ll text Kenny and ask that he and his team keep a sharp eye out for it.”
They searched the house and found little other than the normal things one would keep in their home. Thorn didn’t seem to feel it was enough to warrant having the forensics team do a more invasive search—at least not at the moment.
After locking up, they got in the Range Rover and made their way back to Main Street and to Thompson’s office—Promontory Development. Thorn raised his eyebrow at the sign.
“Thompson liked to think he was on the cutting edge of development and that he was, as he liked to say, above the rest.”
They unlocked the door, and Thorn opened it for her to go in. Nothing looked like it had been disturbed.
“Hopefully, we’ll have better luck here than we had at the house,” said Thorn.
There were all kinds of files with drawings, proposals, correspondence and the like. One of the top drawers on one of the lateral files seemed stuck. After fighting with it for a few minutes, Thorn couldn’t get it to open all the way.
“I’ll get Randy to come down here to see if he can’t get it opened,” he said.
Jessica spun around, looked at it and smiled. “I don’t know that we’ll need Randy. I read about these and used it as a plot device in a book.” She pulled the drawer open as far as it would go. “See how the files in this top drawer are all facing outward, but in all the other drawers, they face to one side or the other?”
He nodded as Jessica reached under the inside of the top of the filing cabinet, grinning when she pushed something and there was an audible click as a mechanism released and she pulled out the drawer the rest of the way, revealing another section of files.
“You’re really good at this.”
Inside the drawer they found more files filled with correspondence. But instead of names to identify the senders or recipients, there were only numbers. Thorn groaned. “Why is everybody and their brother into secret coding everything? Can just one case have a note in neon that proclaims who the killer is?” Jessica laughed. “What? It gets frustrating. You think you’ve found it only to have to decode it. There at least ought to be a standard code and cops should get decoder rings.”
“I get it, but my guess is you have techs with algorithms that can decode that stuff pretty quickly. Besides which, I think some of them will be fairly easy to guess.”
Thorn took the file she handed him—his eyes widening in surprise. Next to the columns of numbers were listed a great many sexual positions and acts, some of which were illegal. There were even a few pictures. All were racy and graphic, but all had the faces obscured.
“Do you think one set of numbers is identities and the other is for different sex acts?”
