“We all do,” Kate noted, “so please be careful. I don’t know if there’s any association with this company, with the people she worked with or anything. Just be super vigilant about your own safety.”
The woman looked at her, clearly horrified, then snatched her card and replied, “I will.” And started to cry again.
When Kate walked toward the front desk, Rodney was talking with the receptionist. He looked over at Kate, smiled, and asked, “Ready to go?”
She nodded. “Yes, let’s go upstairs.”
And, with that, they headed out of the company’s entrance door toward the elevators. As they got onto the empty elevator, she asked, “What did you stay and talk to the boss about?”
He sighed. “Pictures of his family were all around his office. I wanted to know if he really had made that decision to go with the girlfriend versus the wife, and, as it turns out, he hadn’t.”
“So he lied,” she stated, as she turned and looked at him.
“I think he thought that you were sympathetic to the victim and that it would look better if he sided with her.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” she snapped.
“Well, that’s the problem. He couldn’t make a decision regarding Cherry, which was the problem.”
“But not making a decisionismaking a decision,” she snapped.
“It is, but he wasn’t brave enough to tell our poor victim that it wouldn’t be her.”
“Of course not, and, after the fight with her, that would have just cemented the fact that he wouldn’t leave his wife. So, did he actually drive around and spend time at the Hotel Vancouver or did he go home to his wife?”
“He did spend time at the Hotel Vancouver apparently, and he did go home to his wife at the time that he said he did, supposedly anyway. We’ll still have to confirm the story and see if it holds up.”
“Right. Well, a quick phone call to the Hotel Vancouver should confirm that part at least.”
“We’ll probably need to stop there in person anyway though, to get copies of records and to have a look at the camera footage and all, right?”
She groaned. “At least maybe we can cross another suspect off the list.”
“Yeah,” Rodney agreed, “though it would be nicer if we found one viable suspect because, right now, we don’t have much. Though we still need to see our model parolee.”
“I know,” she noted, “but first the ex-boyfriend, since we’re right here.”
As they took the elevator up to the day-trading office, Kate looked over at Rodney. “You know what? It would be revenge served cold if this one came back and killed Cherry after all this time.”
“Unless he only just found out she was having an affair with the boss.”
“So, would it be the affair with the boss because it’s the boss or just the fact that she found somebody else?”
“Probably just because she found anybody else,” Rodney suggested. “Unless this Tyler guy was the super jealous type and would assume that she’d been seeing the boss all along or something.”
When they identified themselves at this day-trading office and asked to speak to Tyler Bjornsson, the receptionist immediately picked up the phone and dialed his extension, saying that he was just about to leave.
“Well, hopefully he’s still here.”
She nodded. “He is.”
When a tall, handsome, thirtysomething man, his hair slicked back, wearing an expensive three-piece suit, stepped forward and looked at Kate, she could have pinpointed his type right off the bat. She walked over, shook his hand, and identified herself. “We need to speak with you privately.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he shrugged. “Sure.”
Just something was a little too smooth, a little too slick about him for her peace of mind. But then he was never her kind of person. As they walked into his office, she took a seat and then asked him when he’d last seen Cherry Blackwell.
He looked at her in surprise. “I don’t know. I haven’t had a relationship with her in over a year.”