Chapter Sixteen
With her pale complexion and skinny frame, Jenny Blake might be taken for an anemic. But there was nothing anemic about her—as a teen, she’d engaged child molesters online. Then when they showed up at her foster parents’ house, she would call the cops. She’d done this on her own, and after a few times, law enforcement had stopped scolding her and hired her.
So Harrow telling her to keep digging into the background of Wendi Erskine had been entirely unnecessary; she figured he probably knew as much, but bosses liked to give orders to make them feel they were in charge.
Since facial recognition software had matched the victim’s face to DMV records, Jenny started there.
Twenty-five-year-old Wendi Erskine had blonde hair, blue eyes, weighed one hundred eighteen pounds and owned a silver 2007 Honda CRX. She
had a couple of parking tickets (paid), but no moving violations. Her address was in Pomona. She was an organ donor.
There had been only one red flag, but it was very, very red….
Harrow came through her open door. “Tell me what you’ve found.”
She liked that, him assuming she’d found something. She gave him the DMV info.
“Any employment?”
Nodding, Jenny said, “Actress—a few indies, a little TV, quite a few infomercials.”
“You don’t go to Julliard hoping to work in infomercials.”
“I don’t have anything saying she went to Julliard—”
“I just meant—little girls don’t dream of growing up and starring in a Juice Master spot.”
“Probably not,” she admitted, “but Wendi was making better money at it than you’d think.”
“Why, is that significant?”
She hesitated.
The straight line of his mouth curved faintly into a smile. “Okay, Jen—who’d you hack?”
“Her money was in a small savings and loan in Pomona. Their security isn’t exactly … secure.”
“So?”
“So Wendi had a checking account with a little over two hundred dollars, a savings account with just under twelve thousand, and a Roth IRA she started last summer. Less than three thousand in that.”
Looking thoughtful, Harrow leaned a palm on her desktop. “Wendi wasn’t rich, but she was doing pretty well for a kid only twenty-five.”
“Yeah,” Jenny said with a few nods. “Plus, she’d been doing infomercials since she was eighteen, and the TV and independent film stuff I mentioned. And she didn’t spend much.”
“Okay. What aren’t you telling me?”
“The Roth is fine, but the other two accounts aren’t.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re empty.”
“As in … somebody emptied them?”
“Yup.”
Harrow’s eyes narrowed. “Somebody was stealing from our victim. But was that part of why she was killed?”
“Yes.”
“You sound confident.”
“She was murdered over the weekend and the accounts weren’t emptied until Monday morning.”
Harrow’s eyes widened. “Holy … you’re saying Don Juan did it? He wiped her out?”
“We have no evidence that says that,” she admitted. “Everything else does, though.”
He half sat on the edge of her desk. “Okay, Jen. Now you’re going to tell me how he did it.”
She was loving this. “Sure. Easy. He went online as Wendi, then just wire-transferred it all to an off-shore account. He had her passwords and everything.”
“How the hell did he get her passwords?”
“There are a couple of ways,” she said. “First, he could have sent her a Trojan horse e-mail that allowed him to capture her log-ons, keystrokes, basically everything that she did with her computer.”
“Well, that’s scary. And second?”
“He found a way to get her to give them up while he held her.”
“That’s scarier.” Harrow thought for a few moments. “Of course, there were no signs of torture….”
She said nothing. Harrow had emphasized the word “signs,” she knew, because there were lots of ways to inflict pain and instill fear that didn’t show.
Harrow asked, “Can you trace the computer activity?”
“This guy knows his stuff, boss. I followed the video he sent us through seventeen countries and fifty-two remailers, then the trail died. I’ll try. Gonna be tough, savvy as Don Juan seems.”
“You’re saying you can’t do it?”
She cocked her head and gave him a look. “You’re just trying to push my buttons now, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Let me know when you have something more. Get some sleep, though—tomorrow is show day, remember.”
“Watch me sparkle,” she said deadpan.
They both knew she’d likely work most of the night.
From the doorway, he said, “One other thing?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you please get a visitor’s chair? Guy my age likes to take a load off, now and then.”
“We’ll see.”
Jenny got back to it. Hacking the credit union had been hard, even for someone with her skills. The off-shore account in the Caymans was maybe a hundred times worse, and after two more hours, she was barely any closer to her goal.
A knock at the door frame made her jump, and she looked up to see Chris Anderson standing there in a pale yellow polo and chinos.
“Sorry, Jen—didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s okay. Kinda woke me up.” She rubbed her eyes, then stretched in her chair as he strolled in.
“Gonna be much longer?”
The bottom right of her computer screen told her it was just shy of midnight. Suddenly she realized her back ached, her eyes were sore, a dull headache was going, and here stood her cute chemist, in whose arms she could curl up …
… when she got her work done.
“A while,” she said at last. “You shouldn’t wait.”
He came around the desk, gave her a quick, awkward hug, then a little kiss.
“Get a room,” said a voice from the doorway.
Anderson jerked away and Jenny backed up in her chair.
Carmen Garcia came in, laughing gently, looking typically professional in a silk pale blue blouse and navy skirt.
“Good Lord,” she said, “but are you two jumpy.”
An embarrassed Anderson was heading for the door. “Night, Carmen. Jenny. See y’all in the morning.”
The California sun had baked most of Anderson’s southern drawl out, but it still turned up now and then. Usually that made Jenny smile. Right now she was giving Carmen a dirty look.
Carmen caught it, and called after Chris, “Hey! Don’t go away mad! Chris….”
From the hall, he gave them both his shy grin. “No, really, girls, I should go. Jenny here’s got work to do.”
And he was vapor.
Carmen made an “jeesh” face and said to Jen, “I’m sorry, honey. Spoiled things, huh? Boy, is he touchy.”
“It’s the paparazzi thing,” Jenny said. “They’ve made us both gun-shy.”
“I’ve been pretty lucky, I suppose,” Carmen said.
Jenny’s guest sat on the edge of the desk, crossing and exposing her enviably shapely legs. Jenny decided maybe she did need a visitor’s chair at that.
Carmen was saying, “I was getting some of that tabloid attention, right after we got back from Kansas.”
Jenny had noticed that any reference Carmen made to a madman holding her hostage was always simply coded “Kansas.” After the hell Carmen had gone through, Jenny wondered, could the woman really be as together as she seemed?
“Something I can do for you?” Jenny asked.
That came out colder than she meant it to.
“I was stopping by to say hi. Nothing about work. There is something I want to … but if you’re busy, it can wait….”
Jenny glanced at the dead trail on her monitor and decided it could keep. “Actually, a break from this would be nice. What’s up?”
Desk-perched Carmen leaned in confidentially. “This is kinda personal, and hardly worth chasing that cute boyfriend of yours away, but …”
“But?”
“But I just wanted to know … how did you know Chris was … the one?”
“The one what?”
“The one! Prince Charming, Mr. Right … don’t pretend you don’t get what I’m talking about.”
“Well … I don’t know that Chris is ‘Mr. Right.’ If there is such a thing.”
“So then, what? He’s Mr. Right Now?”
“No. I just really like him.”
“He’s cute. He’s shy. Nice buns. I get all that. But what else attracted you?”
“Chemistry.”
“That—special connection, you mean?”
“No. Chemistry. He’s a chemist. I like people who have a scientific bent.”
Carmen just looked at her.
“Why are you asking me this, Carmen? I mean, you know this is the last thing I’m an expert on.”
“I just frankly … envy what you and Chris have. And, with Vince, I mean I like Vince….”
Jenny said, “I like Vince too. He seemed really nice at lunch.”
“He’s very nice,” Carmen said. “It’s just … it’s been so long since I’ve been in a relationship. Anyway, a relationship that worked….”
“Relationships are hard,” Jenny said.
She didn’t mean her and Chris, really. More, her and every other human in the world.
Carmen was studying her, as if Jenny were an interesting but bewildering lab specimen. “Even hounded by the media, you and Chris seem to do fine. How do you pull that off?”
“Well, he makes me feel … comfortable.”
“That’s the way I feel with Vince,” Carmen said, looking off wistfully. “Comfortable. But I don’t know if there’s the right … chemistry. And I don’t mean in the test-tube way.”
How, Jenny wondered, had this confident career woman managed to reduce herself to a teenage girl with boy trouble?
“What is this really about, Carmen?”
Carmen drew in a breath, let it out, then leaned close again and whispered: “Did you two start doing it, you know, right away?”
“It?” Jenny asked.
“Stop! Sex, you high-IQ airhead. How long before you two jumped into bed?”
Jenny laughed. “Oh, we haven’t had sex.”
Carmen’s eyes popped. “But … but you guys have been together for like … what … six months?” “Eight.”
“And you haven’t … done the deed?”
“If by deed, you mean had sexual intercourse, that would be no.”
“Well … why not?”
“We aren’t rushing it.”
“Eight months. Not rushing it.”
”Yes. What about you and Vince?”
Carmen didn’t answer. Her face took on a melancholy cast.
“You okay?” Jenny asked.
“Well, I was kind of worried,” Carmen said, and laughed just a little, “but now that I hear you and Chris haven’t been intimate. … You see, I guess because of Kansas, well, Vince has been very … gentlemanly.”
“That’s good, right? He respects you?”
“It’s sweet. It’s just that sometimes I feel like he’s afraid to touch me. Like I might … break.”
“You went through a lot, Carmen. Everybody knows that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. It was on TV.”
Jenny had to smile. Shake her head. “So of all the people in the world, how was it you came to choose me for relationship advice?”
That made Carmen smile, too. Even laugh.
“Shows you how messed up I am,” she said.
Carmen reached over, squeezed Jenny’s hand, climbed off the desk, and went out.
Jenny thought about switching off her computer.
Then got back to work.
Maybe Don Juan could afford to rest, but she couldn’t.