The wallet and knapsack are an expensive designer brand. There’s a large amount of cash inside, and I run my thumb through the crisp hundred-dollar bills. What must be thousands of dollars, and it’s consistent with the story of Gwen’s paying three months’ rent in cash.
“Where’s she getting all her money?” Fruge wants to know. “I didn’t count what’s in there when I looked for her license but obviously it’s a lot. Who walks around with that much cash? What does she make as a scientist? Because my mom’s sure not gotten rich from being one.”
“We don’t know what Gwen was earning,” I reply. “I doubt it’s a fortune, and paying cash for most things certainly raises questions.”
“Well, it looks like she was getting mail-order food, and you can’t pay cash when you’re ordering off the Internet.”
“She doesn’t have much in the way of credit cards.” I return the wallet to the table. “Amex, a debit card, assuming nothing’s missing. She might have resorted to an online payment service if the point was to stay below the radar. Like PayPal, Google Pay, there’s a number of them.”
“It’s obvious that she’s involved in some sort of dirty business. Maybe spying like you said.”
“What’s apparent is robbery wasn’t a motive for whoever targeted her,” I reply. “Her money, her laptops weren’t taken. It would seem they were of no interest.”
CHAPTER 8
HER DRIVER’S LICENSE WAS renewed four years ago, apparently while she was living in Boston, based on the address. In the photo, she’s heavier, her short hair dyed platinum blond, exactly as August described when he called me earlier.
At a glance she’s not recognizable as the murdered woman. Although on closer inspection there are similarities in bone structure, the shapes of the ears, the slope of the nose. Their heights aren’t the same, the Department of Motor Vehicles listing Gwen Hainey as five-foot-five.
I happen to know from measuring the body that she was an inch shorter than that, assuming the victim in my cooler is who I believe she is. The inconsistencies don’t necessarily mean much. I’m used to lies about personal details such as dental work, plastic surgery, health habits, various implants, and all sorts of secret vices.
The truth comes out if your last visit to the doctor is with a medical examiner, and I ask Fruge if it’s all right to check what’s inside the kitchen cupboards.
“Help yourself.”
Shelves are bare except for two Thor Laboratory coffee mugs like the broken one in the living room, and a box of surgical masks. Unopened, they’re the same brand we use at home, and Dorothy enters my thoughts again. Since the pandemic, she hands out masks to anybody who thinks it’s fine not to wear one under any circumstances.
I check the pantry next, and there are plenty of paper plates, napkins, aluminum foil, paper towels, baggies, plastic silverware. Gwen was well stocked with cans of soup, energy bars, and there are bottles of water in the refrigerator, and protein smoothies. Also, ketchup, mustard, and what looks like chicken noodle soup in a lid-covered pot.
Inside the dishwasher, I find the spoon used to stir it, and she must have poured what she wanted into the mug now shattered inside the living room. The rest of the soup she placed inside the refrigerator, not bothering to transfer it into a proper container.
Sliding the trash out from under the sink, I find it full of paper napkins and plates, soup cans, prepared food wrappers. There are plastic water and protein smoothie bottles that should be recycled, I add to the list of infractions.
“The garbage hasn’t been emptied in several days at least.” I’m reminded of the wastepaper basket spilling over in the master bathroom. “The freezer is full of prepared foods one can order off the Internet. Fried chicken tenders, pizza, burgers.”
“Sounds like she should have been getting a fair number of packages on a regular basis,” Fruge decides. “In other words, she’s been living the way a lot of people are ever since the start of the pandemic. I still avoid going to the store, and get a lot of stuff shipped to me.”
“I don’t think the way she’s been living is because of the pandemic,” I reply. “And I assume whatever she’s been ordering has been delivered directly to the manager’s office.”
“He sure has his nose in everything around here. I’d be looking into him pretty carefully if it was up to me,” Fruge says. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence but he’s been in Old Town not even a year. And not long after he moved into the management office, that woman jogger turned up dead on Daingerfield Island.”