“There’s no maybe about it. You do work too hard. But you clearly love it, so maybe you don’t really work a day in your life. Isn’t that how the old saying goes?”
She smiled and then her expression turned serious. “You haven’t seemed yourself lately, Travis. Is everything okay?”
“A woman was killed at my office.”
“What!”
“They thought it was a suicide, but turns out someone murdered her.”
“Oh my God. Why would someone do that?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
“Helen told me the police were questioning you but she didn’t say what about.”
“I think they believe I had something to do with it.”
“Did you know the woman?”
“I did.”
“What was her name?”
“Sara Ewes.”
Tapshaw slowly put down her shot glass, looking like she might be ill. “Sara Ewes? That’s her name?”
“Yeah. Wait a minute, did you know her?”
“No, but I know the name.”
“How?”
“A woman named Sara Ewes was one of my very first subscribers on Hummingbird.”
CHAPTER
36
IT WAS THE SAME SARA Ewes. Devine was in his room staring at her picture on Hummingbird. He’d gone over her dating file. She’d had matches with three men. All had been right around the time she had signed up on the site, years earlier.
Ewes looked younger and carefree, though she would have already pulled time at the max prison otherwise known as Cowl and Comely. She had obviously been looking for someone to share her life with. And hadn’t found him. And perhaps she had grown disenchanted, because, after these three tries, there had been no more activity on the site for her.
She was smiling, her hair was set just so, grazing her shoulders. He knew she had a nice laugh, an easygoing manner. Nothing pretentious about the woman.
He had liked her. He could have maybe come to love her, given time.
And now her body had been autopsied, with the remains to be handed over to her crushed parents. At age twenty-eight. Nothing could be more tragic.
He looked up at his open doorway as Tapshaw appeared there. “Is . . . is it her?”
He nodded slowly.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You have a good memory for names.”
She walked over and stood beside him. “My first hundred subscribers were the only ones I had for a long time. I studied them every minute of every day, figuring out how to get more just like them. I knew them in some ways better than I knew my own family.”
“I can see that.”
She glanced at the image. “Was she nice? I mean, in person?”
“Yeah, she was very nice.”
“Did you two . . . were you dating?”
He looked away for a moment. “Maybe I would have wanted that.”
“I sense a but coming.”
“But she apparently didn’t.”
“Did you two . . . ?”
“TMI, Jill.”
“Right, sorry,” she said, her face reddening. “It’s just the matchmaker in me.” She looked at the screen again. “Will this help find who hurt her?”
“Maybe. I looked at her profile. There were three men she had matches with. But I don’t know more than that.” He glanced at her. “Can you help?”
“Get up.”
Tapshaw sat in the chair in front of the screen, cracked her knuckles, and her long, slender fingers flew over the keyboard so fast he could barely follow the movements.
“Here are the three men,” she said.
Devine looked at the photos of a trio of handsome gents with refined features. They all looked remarkably similar.
“And here are their backgrounds.”
More key slashes and another screen came up with the bios.
“One in the theater, one in finance, and one in medicine,” he said, reading off the information. “Do you know what happened to them?”
Her fingers flashed again and multiple screens came up.
“Okay, the one in the theater posted that he’s in London working in the West End. I guess that can be verified. The businessman met his beloved on Hummingbird and is married with a newborn in Boston. Again, that can be checked. Now, the doctor.” She studied the screen, brought up still more screens, studied them, shook her head and said, “Let me try something.”
The keyboard rattled again as she attacked it. Then an obituary popped up with a picture.
“That’s him!” said Devine. “He’s dead? What happened? He was around my age.”