Catherine smiled and sipped her coffee. She had never seen the competent Vega look so flummoxed.
Warrick said, "What were you doing yesterday morning?"
She smiled sweetly at him. "Do you mean, do I have an alibi?"
"Uh…" Warrick shook his head, laughed. "Yeah, Mrs. Hinton. Do you have an alibi?"
"What time would that have been?"
Vega told her.
"Well, I know right where I was: home."
"You live alone?"
"Yes, but I wasn't alone. I was getting my reflexology."
Catherine said, "Excuse me?"
"I take reflexology once a week. It's not just for your feet, you know-it's the science of nerve endings that keeps a person's whole body healthy. Why, if Vivian had listened to me…she could be stubborn, you know…she might well be with us today. My reflexologist would have gladly gone to Sunny Day and given her the treatments! They're only ten dollars."
Warrick, frowning as he tried to grasp this, said, "Is that a kind of…foot massage?"
"Young man, it's a scientific application of pressure. My reflexologist uses a machine and a rubber-tipped hammer pounds my little tootsies ever so efficiently. And look at me! I don't look a day over sixty-eight."
"Indeed you don't," Warrick said, eyes wide.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," the little woman said, getting up and removing their empty coffee cups. "I will write down my reflexologist's name and address and phone number…I have the e-mail address, too, if you need that…and I will give you an exemplar of my signature. And then you will go off and be detectives, and I will finish my duties here for Vivian."
Minutes later, outside the Elliot home, Vega stood looking shell-shocked. "She's not our killer," he said.
"You think?" Warrick said.
"I hope she isn't," Catherine said.
Warrick half-grinned. "Why's that?"
"Because she would probably outsmart us."
They rode back to HQ and split up. Vega headed out to Sunny Day to talk to Whiting again and finally pick up that check-in page, with a signature that might not be Mabel Hinton's after all. Warrick returned to background checking Rene Fairmont, and Catherine made the reflexologist call (a woman in Henderson) and confirmed Mabel Hinton's story. Then she started poring over the files of patients in the last eight months who had checked into Sunny Day and never checked out.
All the bodies were gone, all the evidence, too-the only thing that the twenty-two people who had died in the last eight months at Sunny Day had in common was that fourteen of them had no families.
Of the other eight, two had been cremated when no one from the families claimed the bodies. Of the six remaining, four had been given autopsies ruling death by natural causes. The last two, whose families had claimed them, had not been autopsied, shredding Catherine's last hope of finding evidence of a serial killer and/or conspiracy of estate fraud; both had died slow agonizing deaths, one from terminal cancer, the other from dementia. Fourteen estates remained that she could look into. She wondered how many had left their property to D.S. Ward Worldwide.
That would take some digging.
Sitting at her desk, her head in her hands, exhaustion nagging at her, Catherine considered whether or not there might be an easier way to catch Vivian Elliot's killer. If Whiting didn't do it-and no one had seen him anywhere around Vivian's room before she coded-Vivian had been killed by someone else in that building…and the list of suspects was long.
Truly, anyone could have done it-they had no evidence to speak of and yet they still had a killer to find. There was nothing to do but keep poking around until she knocked something loose. For the next three hours, she never left her office, just plodded forward, record after record, lead after dead-end lead.
Finally, Vega walked in, sat on the edge of her desk. "Whiting's in the clear."
"How so?"
"The good doc was in a room with a patient and another Sunny Day administrator when Vivian coded. Rock-solid alibi."
"As is Mabel Hinton's-I spoke to her reflexologist, who confirmed Mabel was indeed getting her feet pummeled when Vivian was visited by somebody pretending to be her."
"On that subject, I picked up that check-in sheet. It's with the handwriting analyst now, along with the exemplar Mabel provided."
"What's your layman's opinion?"
"Actually, the signatures do look similar. Either the reflexologist is lying to back up Mabel, or somebody took the time to actually do a forgery."
"Interesting. So maybe Mabel isn't in the clear…."
"Well, Whiting definitely is."
Catherine's eyebrows went up. "Maybe so, but he didn't mention Vivian was going to sue him-did he have an explanation for that little omission?"
Vega smiled humorlessly and said, "He just didn't see how that particular tidbit was relevant."
Catherine could hardly believe it. "That's his excuse?"
"Doctor Whiting said that as far as he was concerned, he and Mrs. Elliot had worked out their differences, and no longer had any problems."
"Vivian just hadn't got round to telling her attorney as much."
Vega shrugged. "All I know is, Whiting was under the impression the Elliot woman was no longer contemplating that lawsuit."
"And do you really buy that, Sam?"
"Does it matter, with the alibi the doc's got? And we have no real evidence against him…."
"Or anybody else," Catherine muttered, "for that matter."
"How about you, Catherine? Found anything?"
She sighed. "Well…I've started working on the other people who died at Sunny Day. Fourteen had no family and, of those, four died intestate. That leaves ten…and here's where it gets interesting, perhaps even sinister…."
"Go on."
She leaned forward. "Every single one of those that I've studied so far…they all left part or all of their estate to some charity."
"D.S. Ward Worldwide?"
"Not that easy, Sam-fact, none of them are D.S. Ward Worldwide. And there's not a single repetition of a charity either."
"Somebody's being careful, you think?"
Catherine shrugged. "All I know is, no two charities repeat…and none of the charities check out."
"Check out in what way?"
She threw her hands up. "Any way-they're not registered anywhere, they're not on the Internet, no one at the Better Business Bureau has heard of one of 'em. In short, I can find nothing indicating that any of these charities actually exist."
Vega pulled up a chair. "Cath-that money had to go somewhere…."
"Well, we know a check went to a drop box in Des Moines; my CSI contact, Woodward, is looking into that. Personally I've started tracking down and talking to the lawyers who handled the estates. The addresses of these possibly-fake charities aren't the same. And the only clue I've got is a lawyer named Gary Masters-he did six of the wills."
"Interesting," Vega said.
"Him I haven't talked to-been getting his machine."
Warrick leaned into the office. "Hey. How are you two coming along?"
They filled him in, individually, then Catherine asked, "Anything on the Fairmont woman?"
In a chair next to Vega now, Warrick shook his head. "Her employee application, and the letters of reference, from her file at Sunny Day?…A child's garden of dead-ends."
"Falsified, you mean?"
"Can't say that, Cath-the seven nursing homes, over a fifteen-year period, where Rene Fairmont claimed to have worked…all existed."
"Existed-as in, no longer exist?"
"Right. They're defunct. All lucky seven."
Catherine's eyes tightened. "Pretty convenient. And the letters of reference?"
Warrick shrugged. "From doctors at those facilities on letterhead from those facilities, dated back when the nursing homes were still functioning. And no luck yet tracking these guys. I've already talked to the AMA and should have something in about a week."