“I don’t blame you for not wanting to tongue tangle with bignsassy,” Kurt said, pulling Quinn’s thoughts away from kissing Lucy. “After listening to the most recent tape, I’m convinced you’re right. She’s as dumb as a doorknob. I don’t understand how the woman can keep a job.”
“Maureen works for the government,” Quinn explained. There was no confusing the quick hug and kiss on the cheek he’d given Maureen for the DNA transfer he’d exchanged with Lucy. He’d always been able to tell if a woman would be any good in bed by the way she kissed. Lucy’s kiss had knocked him on his ass.
Anita Landers entered the briefing room, followed by Sergeant Mitchell. They went over the latest reports from the print lab. Quinn wasn’t surprised to hear that neither of the sets of prints from Lucy and Maureen matched any of the prints found at the three crime scenes. None of the prints at the scenes matched each other. Long blonde hairs found on all three victims had matched each other but were synthetic. They still had nothing solid.
The discussion moved from prints to the latest tapes. “Tell me anything new that you got the other night,” the sergeant said.
Quinn flipped a few pages to the notes he’d taken while listening to the last tape. “Lucy Rothschild is still claiming to be a nurse. She admits that she hasn’t been out of town in the past few months and said she quit dating because she was becoming bitter and jaded. She lied about knowing any of the murdered men, and she seems to know that we don’t have a lot of evidence.” Although he couldn’t say why, he felt compelled to add, “All of that is completely circumstantial.”
“True, but we know she met Lawrence Craig. Why would she lie about that if she didn’t have something to hide?” Mitchell asked.
Quinn shrugged. She was a habitual liar, but that didn’t prove she killed anyone. “We could always bring her in and question her,” he reminded the sergeant.
Mitchell thought about it, then shook his head. “Not yet.”
Next, they discussed Maureen Dempsey. Quinn thought they should concentrate less effort on Maureen, if not cross her off the list completely.
“She believes those stories printed in that Weekly News of the World,” Kurt pointed out. “She’s crazy as all hell.”
“Crazy enough to kill three men?”
“Maybe crazy enough,” Quinn pointed out. “But I doubt she’s smart enough.” Maureen had been so easy to lead. She’d admitted having met all three victims and that she’d been sorry to hear about their deaths. She’d told Quinn she’d prayed for their families and made donations to various religious organizations in their names. She’d said she lived in the grip of grace and danced with Jesus. Quinn had been educated in Catholic schools, but he hadn’t had a real clue what she’d meant.
Mitchell scratched the top of his crew cut. “When are you seeing her again?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“If we can’t eliminate her completely, she stays on the list.” The sergeant rocked back on the heels of his wingtips and asked, “What do you have, Kurt?”
They talked about the other suspects Kurt had set up for dates and about pulling in more resources so that Quinn and Kurt could concentrate on the top four or five. After the meeting broke up, the sergeant asked, “What do you two have going today?”
“After we finish here, I’m going to follow up with the victims’ families,” Quinn informed him. “Later we’re heading over to Barnes and Noble again. We need to talk to some of the workers who were off the last time we were there.” He flipped a few pages in his notes. “Two of them will be working this afternoon.”
A few minutes later, Quinn headed to his office. He had two other investigations he was working besides the Breathless case. Wednesday he had to testify in United States v. Raymond Deluca, an arson case involving a gasoline accelerant, resulting in the deaths of Mr. Deluca’s wife and her three children from a previous marriage. The toxicology report indicated that all four victims had ingested large amounts of phenobarbital, the medication Mrs. Deluca took to control her epilepsy. Raymond claimed his wife had been depressed and must have waited for him to go out of town to kill herself and her children. He had a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Salt Lake for the night of the fire, but as Quinn had discovered, there was also a debit card transaction at 2:35 a.m. for five gallons of gas purchased at the Shell station a few minutes from the Deluca house off Maple Grove. A half hour later, a neighbor had smelled smoke and called 911.
The prosecution would present a new woman and an insurance policy as motive for the crime. Raymond Deluca’s attorney would try and disprove the motive as he worked to shred Quinn’s time line. Quinn needed to reread his notes before he entered the courtroom Wednesday.
Quinn spent the rest of the morning chasing down leads and searching for information about Lucy on the Internet. He visited her website again to see if it had been updated in the past few days. It hadn’t. At noon, he and Kurt jumped in an unmarked car and headed to Barnes and Noble. They met with the two employees in a room filled with boxes of books.
Jan Bright was short with long, kinky eighties hair. She wore some kind of plaid dress that she’d buttoned around her throat. Cynthia Pool’s platinum blonde hair was cut close to her head, and her white blouse had an embroidered Mickey Mouse climbing out of the pocket. Both women were very thin and in their mid to late forties.
Quinn pulled a piece of paper out of his notebook. On it were the photos of Charles Wilson, Dave Anderson, and Lawrence Craig. He handed it to Jan Bright. “Do you recall seeing any of these men?”
She shook her head and passed the paper to Cynthia Pool.
“Yeah, they look familiar. Especially him,” Cynthia said and pointed to the second murder victim, Dave Anderson. “I think he used to come in quite a bit on Friday nights.” She looked back up, and her nose scrunched. “He was one of those.”
“One of those?”
“Those single guys who come in looking for single women,” Cynthia explained. “Bookstores are the new singles bars. Men and women come in here on Friday and Saturday nights to hook up.”
Quinn and Kurt glanced at each other. They’d known each other long enough, worked enough cases together, to know what the other was thinking. Men and women hooking up in bookstores was not only news to both of them but it was also a valuable piece of information.
Kurt asked, “Did you ever see any of these men meet with women or leave with anyone?”
“I don’t recall. Do you remember, Jan?”
“No. I really don’t pay attention to who’s hooking up with whom in the aisles.” She folded her arms across her chest and looked at a point somewhere above Quinn’s left shoulder. “I think it’s disturbing.”
Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and handed over the paper. “So, those are the men who were murdered?”
“Yes.” Quinn slid the photographs into his leather notebook. He and Kurt pulled out their business cards. “If either of you ladies remember anything else, give one of us a call.” Cynthia took the cards, while they practically had to slap them in Jan’s hand.
As the two detectives passed the café on their way out, they spotted a poster with Lucy’s name on it. The green-and-beige sign sat on an easel beside a table stacked with her books. The sign advertised a meeting of the Women of Mystery, with guest speaker, mystery writer Lucy Rothschild.
Kurt pointed at the poster. “That’s this Saturday.”
“Wonder what goes on in a Women of Mystery meeting?”