“Well, it is helpful,” said Chase. “Since we now have a better picture of what happened. Hailey Harper, that’s Cipriana’s roommate, left the flat at a quarter to two to do some shopping. She said a client was arriving at three, and she was planning to be back before then, since the two girls always made sure they were both in the flat when a client stopped by. So a couple of minutes after she left, this tall man must have arrived and drugged Cipriana with the GBH, which was administered with coffee, according to Cipriana’s stomach contents, then waited for Jeff to arrive. At whichpoint he must have forced him at gunpoint to lie down on the bed and then proceeded to shoot and kill him, before shooting Cipriana with the same gun, and arranging the bodies to make it look like a murder-suicide scenario. At least that’s the theory we’re working from now.”
“So who was the intended victim?” asked Uncle Alec. “Cipriana or Jeff?”
Chase glanced at Odelia, who said,“We think that Jeff was lured there under false pretenses. His wife says he was meeting a work colleague in town. One Clive Balcerak. But we called Mr. Balcerak and he claims he never sent that message. And the address in the message was Cipriana’s, so Jeff must have thought he was meeting his colleague, when in actual fact he was meeting Cipriana.”
“Who was already unconscious at this point,” said Uncle Alec, nodding.
“Exactly. So the person who let him in was most likely his killer.”
The Chief looked thoughtful.“So you’re saying Jeff Felfan was the intended victim? And not Cipriana?”
“As far as Hailey knows Cipriana didn’t have any enemies. The girls were self-employed and didn’t have a pimp, and they never got in trouble with anyone.”
“A disgruntled client?”
“Hailey says not,” said Chase. “Jeff, on the other hand, was almost killed yesterday, when his car was forced off the road in an aggressive maneuver by Edmundo Crowley. We talked to Mr. Crowley and he claims it was just a coincidence that he would have been involved in the incident. But Crowley and Jeff’s wife have a history.” He explained how Crowley and Steph had been in competition for the same job, until a campaign of slanderous emails and pictures had made Crowley come out on top, with Steph’s reputation in tatters.
“Edmundo Crowley is not a mobster, though, is he?” asked the Chief.
“No, but he could have bought the gun on the black market. Or the internet. It’s not that hard, Chief, to acquire an illegal gun. You just have to know where to look. And if he was behind that smear campaign, he knows his way around a computer.”
“Okay, fine. You better have another chat with this Crowley fellow. Though there’s a big difference between organizing a smear campaign to get rid of the competition, and actually going out and murdering a person. And besides,” he added with a frown, “if Crowley was targeting Steph, why kill her husband?”
“To further destroy her life?” Odelia suggested.
“But why? He got the job, didn’t he? Why go on? What does he have against the Felfans anyway?”
“That’s what we’re hoping to find out,” said Chase as he got up.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
“We should have asked Clarice whereabouts in the woods Father Reilly was holed up,” said Brutus. They’d been searching the woods for going on two hours now, and still nothing. His paws were hurting, and if the rumbling sensation in his stomach was any indication, he was starving, too.
“It’s very hard to give exact directions in a place this vast,” said Harriet. “It’s not like ‘Go left by the big tree, then take a right at the smaller tree,’ is it now?”
“No, I guess not,” he said, carefully eyeing a suspicious-looking branch. “Is that a snake? Cause if it’s a snake, we better don’t go near it.”
“I think it’s a branch, Brutus,” said Harriet. “Now don’t be a baby and let’s keep going. We’re intrepid detectives, remember? And when has a little snake ever stopped you from getting where you wanted to go?”
“It’s not a little snake, it’s a pretty big one,” he muttered darkly. This whole ‘Let’s find Shanille and save her from a perilous fate’ gag had sounded like a good idea at the time. If he’d known it would include having to talk to dozens of pets and having to traipse through miles of woods he would never have agreed to join the search. And besides, why was it so important they found the missing pair anyway? Clearly they had left under their own steam, and of their own volition. No crime had been committed. Nobody was dying or in danger. So why bother?
“Poor Shanille,” said Harriet. “Being reduced to living in a filthy old shack like some beggar. And to think she’s such a cultured creature. And now this.”
“I’ll bet she’s fine,” said Brutus. “I’ll bet she’s having the time of her life.”
“No, she is not,” said Harriet sharply. “I can feel it in my bones. She’s not fine.”