“The prosecutor will want to know why you left those straight razors within easy reach if you really thought Jimmy’s memory loss was becoming a problem.” Sonny stares at her. “It makes you look … indifferent. Which fits the image of you Salazar is trying to create, that you didn’t really care about Jimmy at all.”
“Of course I did.” Paris looks over at Elsie, feeling helpless, and then back at Sonny. “But I can’t argue with what you’re saying. I have no excuse. I missed it.” I had other things on my mind.
“We all missed it,” Elsie says firmly, squeezing her arm. “But what does that matter if she has an alibi? Let’s not forget, if we can find proof that Paris was nowhere near the house at the time Jimmy died, this all goes away.”
Sonny stares at Paris a little longer, and then finally shifts his gaze to Elsie. “Where is US Border Patrol at with sending us the time-stamped footage of when she crossed back into the country?”
“They had technical issues that night,” Elsie says. “The system crashed, and they lost an hour’s worth of border crossing information. At this point, there’s no way to know if they’ll be able to recover it. The person I spoke to suggested it’s happened before. It never matters until … it does.”
“And the officer at the booth doesn’t remember her?”
“There were two of them when I pulled up,” Paris says. “They were talking to each other, trying to sort out the system.”
“So all we have is your word that you crossed at about…” Sonny consults the police report in front of him. “Midnight. Which means you got home at around two.”
“There was a lineup at the border when I got there,” Paris says. “It took about a half hour to cross.”
“Okay, so then you’re home at two thirty. Jimmy had a charity gig that night at the Grand Hyatt, which he left around nine, and got home at, say, nine thirty. The medical examiner estimates that Jimmy died somewhere between then and midnight, but Salazar will make sure the jury knows that’s an approximation.” Sonny looks up. “You have smart wiring for the house, right? An app that can open and close the garage door, set the security alarm, adjust the heat and air-conditioning, see who’s at the front door?”
“Yes, it does all of that,” Paris says. “But it hasn’t been working the last few days. I think it needs to be reset. Zoe was supposed to take care of that.”
“Was it working over the weekend?”
“I don’t know for sure. I do know that the alarm wasn’t set when I got home, but Jimmy often didn’t bother. That, or he forgot. Both are equally likely.”
“I have the same system at home,” Elsie says. “It’s not hard to deactivate. Jimmy might have done it by mistake.”
“Let me see your phone,” Sonny says to Paris.
She unlocks it and hands it over. It looks like a toy in Sonny’s huge hands. Tapping on her screen, he frowns.
“What happened to all the usage reports?”
“I have no idea,” Paris says. “Maybe they got deleted when the system disconnected.”
“Where does the data save?”
“What do you mean by ‘save’？”
Sonny sighs. “The app tracks usage, right? The reports are then stored—archived—somewhere else, like iCloud or Dropbox, so it doesn’t take up space in your phone. Where does the app archive its data?”
“I don’t know,” Paris says. “Like I said, Zoe was the one who originally set it all up.”
“You’ve said that name twice now. Zoe Moffatt is Jimmy’s assistant, right?” Sonny holds up her phone. “Whose email address is this?”
“That’s Jimmy’s,” Paris says. “But Zoe has access to it because she set up his email, too.”
“Were you aware that you’re not an administrator of the account?” Sonny asks. “Only Jimmy was. Which really means Zoe. Which means she has the ability to delete anything she wants. You’re just a user. You couldn’t deactivate your own system if you wanted to.”
Paris looks at Elsie, and then back at Sonny. “So Zoe deleted the reports and the archived data using Jimmy’s login?”
“Bingo.”
It’s the second time he’s said that word. She restrains herself from rolling her eyes.
“But why would Zoe do that?” Elsie asks with a frown. “To set Paris up?”