The 6:20 Man(80)

“I can’t help you there. I have no clue.”

He looked over at her, his own suspicions ratcheting up. “When did you leave the penthouse last night? I saw you by the pool from the train.”

“Around one in the morning. I couldn’t sleep after, well . . . that. And Brad got woken up by a call from someone. And he said he had to go out. But that I could stay the night if I wanted, which I didn’t, not after what happened. We went down together in his private elevator and then he called a car service for me. I decided to go out to his place in the suburbs. I didn’t want to be in the city at all last night.”

“Did he take his Bugatti?”

“No, he called a car service, too.”

“Did he say who called him or where he was going?”

“No, why?”

He eyed her nervously. “Because Jennifer Stamos, a woman he was having a sexual relationship with at the office, was murdered last night at her home between midnight and three.”

Montgomery had taken a sip of her Coke and almost spit it out. “What!”

“And we had a big meeting of everyone at the firm this morning. With two people murdered, folks are getting edgy. Only Cowl wasn’t there. Some other guy filled in for him.”

“You asked me before if I knew Jennifer Stamos.”

“I did, yes. Because I knew she and Cowl were a thing.” He eyed her closely.

She flinched and said, “Wait a minute, you’re not . . . are you suggesting that Brad . . . killed her?”

“I don’t know. It would make sense that she would call him late at night. Even if he didn’t kill her, he might have found the body. The guy this morning didn’t say who had notified the police or who had found her.”

“Do you think Brad might be dead, too?”

“I think we would have heard about that if he was.”

“Unless they haven’t found his body,” countered Montgomery.

“He also might have called the police anonymously and then run for it. If he found her dead, he’d probably think, like I did, that people would believe that he had killed her. And others might know of their relationship. I gave him a lot to ponder last night—and a murder on top of it, with a woman he was screwing around with? The press would have a field day with that. And the cops would be all over him.” He paused and said, “Did you have any idea he was seeing somebody else?”

“With Brad it was pretty much a given. And our relationship wasn’t going to be permanent. And I asked you over to swim in the pool. I was ready to go to bed with you the other night. So I have no problem with him sleeping around when I’m willing to do the same. Fair is fair.”

“Okay.”

She shook her head. “And I thought I had a shitty night. That poor woman.”

“I have something else to tell you.”

“What?”

“I got a message from her killer.”

“Travis!”

He explained about the email he’d gotten that morning, and about the previous one he’d received after Sara Ewes had been killed. And about both messages being untraceable.

“Why would the killer be contacting you?”

“I don’t know, Michelle. I knew both women. That’s the only connection I see. But so did lots of other people.”

“But you and Sara had a thing. You slept together.”

“That’s true,” he conceded.

“And there’s no way to find out who sent the messages?”

“I had a world-class hacker try. And fail. I have someone else trying.”

“This is beyond bizarre.”

“Agreed, but we have to keep pushing forward.” He paused, took a sip of his iced tea, and said quietly, “Look, can you contact Cowl and tell him that I want to talk to him about Stamos’s murder?”

“That’s a little vague, isn’t it?” she replied.

“It’s meant to be.”

She pulled out her phone and texted the message to Cowl. She set her phone down and fingered her Coke. “Where did you go after you left there last night?”

“I went home and started going over the stuff I found. Let me know if you hear back from him.”

“Do you really think he killed Stamos?” she asked.

“Someone sure as hell did, and it wasn’t me.”





CHAPTER





53


EIGHT P.M.

Devine was standing across the street from where Jennifer Stamos had lived in Hamilton Heights, near Harlem. And where she had now died. He had found her home address on a database at work. He had read the cryptic message a dozen times. You can only love one person. That might be significant. Stamos had loved Ewes. Had Ewes loved someone else before? And because her love had moved on to Stamos, she had lost? And so had Stamos? And what did the sender mean by it not being pretty? Or fun?

Stamos’s apartment was on the ground floor of a walk-up like Michelle Montgomery’s, only situated in Upper Manhattan. She would have to traverse nearly the entire island north to south to get to work each day. While not as tony as where Sara Ewes had lived, it was a diverse and thriving working-class community. Police cars were parked outside, and he figured detectives and forensics people were inside trying to find out who had killed her.