Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

“And I was fighting an evil canine for the safety of black boots everywhere. We all have our problems.”

Phil smiled. He was used to D.D. in this mood, was probably one of the only detectives who could handle her, which is why she liked him so much. And missed her original investigative squad terribly. Managing sergeant her ass. Who wanted to sit at a desk all day anyway?

“Wait, there’s more,” Phil said now, in his best TV infomercial voice.

“Should I be sitting down?”

“You’d only pop back up and pace. Before moving to Mass, Conrad lived in …” Phil dragged it out.

D.D. closed her eyes, already seeing the answer. “Florida.”

“Yep.”

“Same state as Jacob Ness and where Jacob kidnapped Flora.”

“Yep.”

“Jacob and Conrad could’ve known each other prior to meeting with Flora at the bar.”

“It’s possible,” Phil agreed.

D.D. shook her head. She could not believe this case was spinning so far out of hand. “Okay, what do we know of Conrad? Don’t suppose techs have anything back on the computer?”

Phil gave her a droll look.

“Cell phone?” she tried.

“Can’t find it.”

“Can’t find it? What does that mean? Everyone has a cell phone, especially a guy in sales.”

“Agreed. Except we don’t know where his is.”

“You ping it?”

“No, we were waiting for it to walk home on its own.” Phil gave her that look again. Sometimes, his mood matched her own. “Of course we pinged it. Nothing, nada. Wherever it is, it’s shut off. Carol contacted the mobile carrier. Working on getting their copies of texts, voice messages now.”

D.D. studied Phil. “You think Conrad hid his own phone? Turned it off, stuck it somewhere before his wife shot him?”

Phil shook his head. “Guy didn’t even get his hands up.”

“Someone took it,” D.D. said.

“That’d be my guess.”

“The wife? She hides his phone, shoots up the computer? What exactly is she trying to hide?”

Phil shrugged. “You heard her lawyer. We have an eight-minute gap. It’s possible someone else shot him, that person grabbed the phone, that person ran away.”

“Please. One shooter runs away just in time for the wife to return home—”

“Or her arrival is what scared him away—”

“At which point, Evelyn enters her own home, discovers her husband’s murdered body and … doesn’t dial nine-one-one, doesn’t run to the neighbors for help, doesn’t scream for the police. No, she picks up the same gun and fires a dozen rounds into the laptop?”

“The mysterious-first-shooter theory loses something right around this point,” Phil agreed.

“We need to know everything there is to know about this couple,” D.D. repeated.

Phil shrugged, yawned again. He probably had been up all night. Welcome to homicide.

“Old-school,” D.D. announced. “If we can’t trace Conrad through electronics, then what about personal files, credit card receipts, banking info?”

“Neil’s digging through it now,” Phil reported. The youngest member of their original three-person squad, Neil had joined the force after serving years as an EMT. He used to be the one in charge of autopsies, but lately he’d been expanding his wings. With D.D.’s promotion out of the unit, and Carol Manley’s entry into the squad, he was also no longer the rookie, which seemed to suit him.

“Nothing extravagant has jumped out yet, Neil said. Lotta charges to Lowe’s, as you might expect from a couple with a fixer-upper. Between Conrad’s sales job and Evelyn’s teaching assignment, they pulled in low six figures. Not bad. ’Course, Boston’s an expensive town. Two cars, taxes, mortgage, cable, cell phones. They weren’t drowning, nor were they living in the lap of luxury.”

“Life insurance policy on the husband?” D.D. asked.

“Hundred grand. That we know of. People have killed for less.”

D.D. nodded, but she also registered Phil’s lack of enthusiasm on the subject. A hundred grand might be a lot of money to some people, but for Evelyn Conrad, who’d grown up in a multimillion-dollar home in Cambridge while attending the finest private schools and socializing with the city’s best and brightest, a hundred thousand wasn’t enough.

“What was her father insured for?” D.D. thought out loud.

“Half a mill.” Phil spoke up. “Thought you might ask.”

“Better motive for shooting him.”

“If you’re Mrs. Hopkins, sure. You thinking Evelyn didn’t do it after all? Her father’s death wasn’t her fault?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” D.D. gave up on pacing, leaned against the doorjamb. “There are too many strange coincidences here. A woman who may or may not have been involved in two fatal shootings in the past sixteen years. A victim who may or may not have had ties with an infamous serial rapist. It’s like this giant Gordian knot. I can’t figure out which string to pull first.”

“Conrad Carter doesn’t have significant ties to this community. No coworkers, no family, no electronic devices. Until the computer geeks can make some progress, there’s not enough string there to pull.”

“Which leaves us with Evelyn Carter. The quiet one, according to the neighbors.”

“She has a mom,” Phil said.

“Who just paid half a million cash to get her daughter out of jail. Good luck with that interview.”

“Evelyn has a job.”

D.D. nodded slowly. “Coworkers. Principal, fellow teachers. All right, let’s start there.”

“Let’s?” Phil asked, arching a brow at her use of the plural.

“Let’s,” D.D. repeated firmly. “I already worked one shooting case involving this woman. Like hell I’m missing something the second time around.”

Phil sighed. “Let’s,” he agreed.

• • •

THE PRINCIPAL OF Evelyn Carter’s school was more than happy to speak with them. Unfortunately, Principal Ahearn had nothing useful to say. She’d hired Evie four years ago. The woman was an excellent math teacher—did they know who her father was? The school was lucky to have her; the kids were lucky to have her. Evie was notoriously shy, of course. Pleasant but reserved. Some teachers—especially of the advanced math variety—could be like that.

Yes, Principal Ahearn knew Evie had been expecting. Best she could tell, Evie was very happy. Never in a million years would Principal Ahearn have expected last night’s incident. They were making counselors available for the students. Everyone was in a state of shock. There had to be some kind of logical explanation. Or maybe it’d been a terrible accident—

Principal Ahearn caught herself, flushed slightly.

“You mean the way Evie’s father died?” D.D. asked helpfully.

The woman turned redder. “Evie’s never mentioned it. But of course I had to run a background check before hiring her.”

D.D. found this interesting. “She was never charged in her father’s death. There wouldn’t have been anything in her background reports.”

“Well, not hers …”

D.D. got it. “Her father. You Googled her father. A famous mathematician, you’re looking to hire his daughter. Makes sense. You check out his Wikipedia profile, ending with how he died, accidentally shot by his teenage daughter in his own home.”

“Not many Harvard professors come to violent ends. And Earl Hopkins was considered to be one of the best minds in his field.”

“Did Evie know you knew?” Phil asked.

Principal Ahearn nodded. “It was one of those things. None of us ever spoke of it, but in this day and age of immediate access to information, how could you not? Every now and then, one of the students would figure it out and rumors would start flying. Evie herself … She never spoke of it. She showed up. She did her job. And she gave the best of herself as a teacher to her kids. Again, never in a million years …”