“I doubt that. The Army taught you well.”
He looked over her shoulder at the stack of books. “How’s the studying coming?”
“It’s coming. Torts are easy. Criminal law is harder.”
“That’s what all the criminals say,” quipped Devine.
“I’ve seen the news. Jennifer Stamos is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Was she the one who came here to visit you the other night?”
“Yes.”
“And you told me she was having an affair with Brad Cowl and you had proof of it.”
“Yes.”
“That does not look good, Travis. For you.”
“I didn’t kill Stamos, Helen. Why would I?”
“You keep lobbing legal softballs at me. Your motive is she decided to call your blackmail bluff and threatened to expose you. So you silenced her. Do you have an alibi?”
“No, but I found out that Cowl got called out at just around the time she died. And now he’s pulled a disappearing act. So either he killed her, or else he found the body, called the police, and went into hiding.”
Speers said, “Maybe he killed her and called the police.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Guilt, or thinking it might help him somehow. People under stress do strange things.”
He looked over her shoulder at the pile of books again. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it.”
As he walked off he had a brand-new problem. And that problem was Helen Speers.
Because those books and study guides hadn’t been touched since the last time he’d seen them. They were all in the exact same position.
She wasn’t studying for the bar. She might not have graduated from law school. Her name might not even be Helen Speers. He had had no reason to check before.
Now he did.
CHAPTER
54
THE 6:20 WAS DELAYED FOR five minutes by some problem at the station; then it lumbered on its way.
Later, the train slowed and then stopped. Devine looked out at Cowl’s pool area. It was empty this morning. No meditation for Montgomery in a bathing suit. And Cowl might have already fled the country, if he had indeed killed Stamos.
As the train remained motionless, Devine once more checked the video feed on his phone. Area 51 was still dead as a doornail. What the hell had happened between his looking at the feed the previous morning on the train ride in to find everything firing away, to his checking the feed as he arrived in the city only to find Area 51 shut down?
Devine decided to call Montgomery to check on her.
She answered on the fourth ring, sounding groggy.
“Sorry it’s so early,” he said apologetically.
“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”
“I passed by Cowl’s house this morning. And you weren’t out by the pool. But it made me think of you. Just wanted to touch base with you to make sure everything was okay. And whether you’d heard back from Cowl.”
“I haven’t heard from Brad. And I’m fine. I stayed in the city last night.”
“I was surprised that you were out by the pool yesterday after everything that had happened the night before. I forgot to ask you about that when we had lunch yesterday. But Stamos’s murder sucked up all the oxygen.”
“Well, that wasn’t my call.”
“Come again?” Devine said sharply.
“Brad texted me at like three in the morning and told me to be out by the pool before six forty-five. Luckily I wasn’t really sleeping and heard the text come in. I texted him back and told him I’d do it.”
“Wait a minute, he wanted you out by the pool in time for my train to come by?”
“I don’t know about that, he just told me the time.”
“Michelle, why didn’t you tell me about this at lunch yesterday?”
“With everything else going on, it didn’t seem important.” She yawned. “It still doesn’t, at least to me.”
“Not important! I told you that he might have murdered Stamos, or at least found her body.”
“I know that,” she shot back. “But how can that be connected to him texting me about going out by the pool? I mean, what would that matter? And he didn’t tell me where he was, so I had nothing to tell you on that score.”
“But didn’t that make you suspicious? That after maybe finding a body, or killing a woman, he took the time to text and tell you to be out by the pool by a certain time the next morning?”
“Look, if you want the truth, Brad has a voyeur fetish. He wanted guys checking me out. I lied to you about that train. I knew about the gap, that people could see me. Some men get off on that, and Brad is one of them. So I parade around in my bikini when Brad tells me to, and he pays me well for it. And it’s not like he asks me to do it all the time. It’s actually pretty rare, although it has been more often lately.”