“What is it?” Vero asked, watching me like I’d lost my mind as I powered on my computer.
“Aimee was the name on one of the files in Harris’s phone. I’m sure of it.”
I opened a browser and found Harris Mickler’s networking group. Clicking on the membership page, I scrolled through its roster, past Theresa’s thumbnail, pausing at a screen name—Aimee R. The thumbnail was a blank placeholder. I clicked on it, but her profile was empty. Aside from her screen name, her details had been wiped clean.
The links to her other social media pages all led to dead ends, her accounts all deleted or closed. Aimee R was a ghost.
This had to be her. The spelling of Aimee’s name was unusual, and she fit the profile of Harris’s victims. And it would make sense that she and Theresa would have been in the same social networking group. They did everything together.
“This is her. I’m sure of it,” I said. “The date of her last post to the networking group was a little over a year ago. That would have been around the same time Nick said a woman had called the police to register an anonymous complaint.” A scene was slowly unfolding in my head. “Two people killed Harris. What if Nick’s hunch about Theresa is right? What if Theresa and Aimee were waiting for Harris outside The Lush?”
“You think they were stalking him?”
“They would have known he was going to be there. They might have seen me walk him out to my van.” In the dark, they might have assumed I was the one who was staggering. Under Harris’s weight, we were both unsteady on our feet. “Maybe they got the wrong idea and thought I was his next victim. Theresa could have recognized my van and followed us here. Maybe she hadn’t intended to kill him. Maybe she only intended to stop him. But then I ran inside the house and left them a perfect opportunity.” I showed Vero the note from Steven. Her dark eyes narrowed as she read it. “They already knew how to close the door without using the motor. They’d done it together before.”
Vero’s face paled. “No wonder Theresa didn’t want to tell Nick where she was that night. You really think Theresa and Aimee could have murdered Harris Mickler?”
“I don’t know. But Nick said all he needed to bring her in was a motive.” Theresa had a big one. And I had given her the means and opportunity to act on it.
But if I told Nick his suspicions were right … If I told him about Aimee and gave him just enough information to find her and make the connection himself, regardless of whether or not Aimee and Theresa were guilty, that trail of bread crumbs would lead Nick straight back to my garage. Suddenly, the possibility that Nick might find out about Feliks didn’t seem quite as terrible.
I grabbed Nick’s business card from my purse.
“What are you doing?” Vero’s voice was tinged with panic. “You can’t tell Nick about this!”
“I’m not,” I said as I typed. “I’m giving Theresa an alibi.”
Vero leaned over my shoulder, reading the carefully worded text I’d just sent to Nick: I think Theresa is having an affair.
CHAPTER 28
My fingers itched as I walked past my office. I’d felt stuck after I’d written the scene in the garage. I’d had no idea what was supposed to happen next until this new revelation about Theresa’s involvement had opened a door to the next chapter of the story. This plot line made sense. All the pieces seemed to fit. And I had less than a month to finish this book without implicating myself in the process.
Even if I changed their names, Theresa and Aimee couldn’t be the murderers in my story. It would be foolish to skirt so close to the truth. No, the story had to lead somewhere else. Somewhere less believable. The killer had to be some larger-than-life character, some archetypical villain people could believe I had made up because they’d already seen him play out on a TV or a movie screen. And the only other person I could picture playing the part was the real-life villain I planned to feed to Detective Anthony.
Feliks Zhirov was virtually untouchable. According to Georgia, he’d never spent a day in jail even though he was guilty as sin. If Feliks smelled an investigation—even one he wasn’t directly involved in—I was pretty sure he’d bring the case crashing to a dead end. He was my safest option. And maybe the only person capable of keeping me and Theresa out of jail.
I sat down at my desk and opened the draft of my story, skimming the scenes I had written so far: A seasoned contract killer takes a job to kill a problem husband. She vets the target, stalks him in a bar, drugs him, and takes him to the dump site in an abandoned underground garage.