Fool Me Once(25)

His voice was low. “Since the funeral.”

“Right. And when did you find Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen and get confirmation I was in Kuwait?”

“Late last night.”

Maya nodded—just as she had thought.

“Come on, Maya, don’t be na?ve. Like I said, we looked hard at your brother-in-law when your sister was murdered. Here’s one time when there’s no sexism. Think about it. You’re the spouse. You’re alone in a park. If you were me, who would be your number one suspect?”

“Especially,” Maya added, “when that spouse served in the military and is, in your eyes, a gun nut?”

He didn’t bother defending himself. Then again, he didn’t have to. He was right. You always suspect the spouse.

“So now that we got all that out of the way,” Maya said, “what do we do now?”

“We look for connections,” Kierce said, “between your sister and your husband.”

“The biggest being me.”

“Yes. But there are more.”

Maya nodded. “They worked together.”

“Exactly. Joe hired your sister for his equities firm. Why?”

“Because Claire was smart.” Just saying her name stung. “Because Joe knew that she was hardworking and reliable and trustworthy.”

“And because Claire was family?”

Maya considered this. “Yes, but not in a nepotistic way.”

“What way then?”

“The Burketts are big on family. It’s old-world clan-like.”

“They don’t trust outsiders?”

“They don’t want to trust outsiders.”

“Okay, I get that,” Kierce said, “but if I had to work every day with my sister-in-law . . . ugh, shudder. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Of course my sister-in-law’s a world-class, Olympic-sized pain the ass. I’m sure your sister—” He caught himself now, cleared his throat. “So their working together, Joe and Claire—did it cause any tension?”

“I worried about that,” Maya said. “My uncle, he had a business. Very successful. But then other family members wanted in and he let them and it all went to hell. Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.”

“But that didn’t happen here?”

“Just the opposite. Claire and Joe had this fun new connection. Work. They’d talk business all the time. She would call with ideas. He would remember something that needed to be done the next day and text it to her.” She shrugged. “But then again . . .”

“Then again?”

Maya looked up at him. “I wasn’t around a whole lot.”

“You were deployed overseas.”

“Right.”

“Still,” Kierce said, “none of it adds up. What would make someone kill Claire, hold on to the gun for four months, and then give it to this Katen guy to kill Joe?”

“Yo, Kierce?”

It was another cop in the station. The younger man stood across the room and beckoned for Kierce to come toward him.

“Excuse me a moment.”

Kierce headed over to the cop. The young cop leaned in, and the two men started whispering. Maya watched. Her head was still spinning, but her thoughts kept returning to something that didn’t seem to concern Kierce in the least.

The nanny cam video.

That was natural, she supposed. He hadn’t seen the actual images. He was preoccupied with the facts, and while he didn’t completely dismiss what she said as the ravings of a delusional nutbag, he probably figured that it was the work of an overactive imagination or something in that realm. To be fair, even Maya had to consider that possibility.

Kierce finished up the conversation and came toward her.

“What’s wrong?”

He grabbed his suit coat and threw it over his shoulder like Sinatra playing the Sands. “I’ll drive you home,” he said. “We can finish this conversation on the way.”


*

Ten minutes into the ride, Kierce said, “So you saw me talking to that cop before we left, right?”

“Yes.”

“That was about your, uh, situation.” He kept his eyes on the road. “I mean, what you said about the nanny cam and the pepper spray and all that.”

So he hadn’t forgotten. “What about it?”

“Well, look, I’m going to ignore for now what you said about the contents, okay? Until I see and we can both analyze the video, there’s no reason to discredit or, uh, confirm what may be on that . . . What was it again, a USB drive?”

“An SD card.”

“Right, the SD card. There is no reason yet to deal with intangibles. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do.”

“I’m not following.”

“You were assaulted. That’s a fact. Check that: You were clearly hit with pepper spray or some agent in that family. Your eyes are still red. I can see that you are still dealing with the residual aftereffects. So whatever else we want to believe, clearly something happened to you.”

He made a turn, sneaking a glance at her as he did.

“You said that it was your nanny, Isabella, who assaulted you, right?”