The Perfect Show (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Thirty-Three)

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Jessie didn’t love how things were going.

She would have liked to have gone straight to the apartment of their next suspect, private tutor Danielle Robertson, immediately after they questioned personal trainer Landon Powers, but Captain Parker had made that impossible.

She insisted they delay that interview to give her an update on how things had progressed so far. It wasn’t an unreasonable demand, as they hadn’t fully briefed her since last night. The problem was that they didn’t have much new to offer.

They couldn’t say whether Landon Powers could be excluded as a suspect for the same reason they were having trouble eliminating anyone: the timers and motion sensors on the poison canisters meant that they could have been placed in these women’s homes hours, days, or potentially even weeks before they went off.

Parker also seemed hung up on the fact that Clarissa Langley’s marketing firm had worked for Naomi Hackett’s tech company. Even after Ryan patiently explained that Jamil and Beth couldn’t find anything to link Tabitha Reynolds to the other women professionally, the captain remained fixated on the possibility.

“Listen,” Parker told them, wrapping up, “Despite all our efforts to put a lid on the nature of these murders to avoid creating a citywide panic, word is starting to get out. No media outlet has reported on the connection between Langley and Hackett so far because we haven’t released the victims’ names yet. No one wants to be the first to go public with that and face potential blowback. But once that’s out, those companies are going to be swarmed with press and amateur sleuths trying to uncover a connection. Unless you find another theory that’s more compelling in the interim, things are going to get messy.”

“That’s what we’re hoping to do right now,” Ryan told her, not fully masking his irritation. “We have a private tutor with connections to all three victims. Maybe she’ll be the break we were looking for.”

”Keep me apprised,” Parker instructed. ”In the meantime, I”ll brief Chief Decker on where we”re at.”

As was her custom, she hung up before either of them could respond. Jessie didn’t think Parker meant it to be rude. She was probably just busy. But the abruptness always rubbed her the wrong way, and she knew Ryan felt even more strongly.

“So she made us sit around for a half hour discussing leads and evidence when we could have been out there pursuing them,” he grumbled as they arrived on Danielle Robertson’s street. “We could have already questioned this tutor by now and maybe even arrested her.”

I know Parker can be challenging,” Jessie acknowledged before making an attempt at diplomacy, “but don’t forget the pressure you felt all the time when you were captain of Central Station. Sometimes it makes investigations secondary to public perception.”

Ryan didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure if that meant he agreed or was too annoyed to get into it any deeper. It was moot anyway, as they pulled up to the curb in front of Robertson’s building right at 10:30.

Even though the community of Westchester was adjacent to Playa del Rey to the west, Playa Vista just to the north, and abutted Loyola Marymount University, it didn’t have quite the cache of those communities. It felt older and more suburban.

The apartment complex, like many in the neighborhood, looked like something out of another era. It was in the Dingbat style, popular in in the 1950s and 60s, with retro, cursive lettering and an overhang to shield the cars parked at the front of the complex from the elements. There appeared to be about a dozen units over two floors. Despite all that, Jessie doubted that it was cheap.

They approached the locked main door to the complex. Ryan was just pulling out a credit card to jimmy the lock when a young man dashed out, apparently late for something. He was holding a suit jacket on a hangar, and his shirttails were out of his slacks. He never even looked at them. Ryan shoved the card back in his wallet as he held the door open for Jessie.

“Let’s hope the rest of this is that easy,” he said.

They walked around the sad little pool in the central courtyard toward the back of the building where they found Danielle Robertson’s unit, #105. There was no doorbell to ring, so Ryan knocked.

“Watch,” he mumbled, “we come all the way over here and she’s probably off tutoring some preschooler in finger painting.”

“Hey buddy,” Jessie teased disapprovingly, “do you think you can set aside the grumbling for the next little bit? This woman is a potential suspect. And even if she doesn’t pan out, she might have useful information about these women that could lead us in the right direction. But if she feels like you’re looking your nose down at her, she might just clam up.”

He was about to reply when someone called out from the other side of the door.

“Who is it?” the female-sounding voice asked.

Ryan held out his badge so it was visible in the peephole.

“LAPD,” he answered. “We have a few questions for you about some of your tutoring clients.”

“Hold on,” the woman said before opening a series of locks including what sounded like a chain lock and a deadbolt. “What’s this about?”

Jessie studied the young woman in front of them. From Jamil and Beth’s research, they already knew that Danielle Robertson was twenty-six and that she had graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in Child Development.

Robertson stood about five foot five and weighed about 125 pounds, with wet, curly, sandy blonde hair and glasses that made her startled blue eyes look unusually big. She was barefoot and dressed in faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt with her college’s logo on the front. She wasn’t a physically imposing presence, but for the crime they were investigating, that wasn’t important. She offered them a nervous, thin-lipped smile as she held the door open for them.

”I”m sorry,” she said. ”I only just got out of the shower a few minutes ago, and I”ve never had the police knock on my door before, so I”m a little thrown. I”m not sure what I”m supposed to do here. Should I invite you in?”

“We certainly wouldn’t reject an invitation,” Ryan said, making sure that his words didn’t come across as a demand.

“Then please,” she said, waving them in. “What can I do for you?”

Jessie stepped inside and looked around the living room. The place had a definite post-grad feel, with framed Ansel Adams photos and prints of famous paintings. It was as if Robertson hadn’t yet determined what her personal adult style was and was clinging to the one from college until she figured it out.

It reminded her of the apartment they’d visited yesterday, belonging to Raylene Florence, the young woman who worked for Clarissa Langley. Jessie wondered if all L.A. women in their mid-twenties decorated their places the same way now. Did they have meetings about it? She decided that was a topic she could broach another time.

“We understand that you’re a private tutor, is that correct?” she asked even though she knew it was. She stopped by the breakfast bar connected to the small kitchen and turned around to face the woman.

“Yes,” Robertson said. “I’m planning to get my teaching credential and eventually my master’s in education, but for now I was hoping to build up a little nest egg to pay for that, plus pay off some student debt.”

“We saw a list of some of your clients,” Jessie told her. “How did you manage to get in with such wealthy families?”

”Oh,” Robertson said, running her fingers through her hair. ”I was working at an upscale tutoring center in Venice and one of the moms there said she”d hire me on the side to work with her son at her home. I took her up on it, and she was happy with me, so she told some of her friends. Within a year, I had a whole network of Westside families that I worked with.”

“Do you like the work?” Jessie asked, looking deeply into the young woman’s eyes.

“I do,” Robertson said without hesitation. “I work almost exclusively with younger children, kindergarten to fifth grade—that’s the age group I want to eventually teach. It’s really rewarding to help these kids when they’re just starting to grasp concepts. I feel like I’m making a real difference. And I’ll admit that the pay is good too.”

“What subjects do you teach?” Jessie continued to probe.

”Pretty much everything: reading, writing, math.”

“Science?” Ryan wondered pointedly.

“Sure,” Robertson said. “But I mean, this is all general knowledge stuff. We’re not doing calculus or physics or anything like that. There’s a reason I want to teach younger grades. I’m not exactly a whiz in those STEM subjects once we get past the basics. Can I ask you a question, if that’s not inappropriate?”

“Of course,” Jessie told her.

“You’re the police and you’re in my apartment,” she noted. “You said you had some questions about my clients, but you haven’t asked anything about them yet. I’m starting to get worried that something is majorly wrong.”

They had delayed the inevitable as long as they could, hoping to glean as much information as they could about Robertson before the dynamic inevitably changed. Jessie looked over at Ryan slightly, letting him know that she was ready if he was. He picked up on it and fixed his attention on the tutor.

“Your clients include Clarissa Langley, Tabitha Reynolds, and Naomi Hacket, correct?” he asked.

“I like to think that their kids are my clients,” she replied with a sheepish smile, “but yes. Why?”

“All three of them have been murdered in the last forty-eight hours,” he said bluntly.

Robertson, who had been playing with a strand of her hair, froze in place. Her eyes turned into saucers as her jaw dropped open. It took her a few seconds to find words.

“What?” she finally said.

“They’ve all been killed, Ms. Robertson,” he repeated, “so we’re speaking to everyone who had connections to all of them. You’re one of those people.”

“Um, okay,” she said, not seeming to fully process the situation. “Would it be all right if I sat down?”

He nodded that it was, and she shuffled over to her couch. She took a seat, her eyes fixed on her bare feet. Jessie and Ryan followed her but remained standing. Ryan was about to continue when the young woman looked up.

“Are the kids okay?” she asked plaintively.

“They’re all fine,” Jessie told her. “When is the last time you worked with any of them?”

“I’m sorry,” Robertson said, looking flustered. “Normally my memory is pretty good, but everything’s just swimming around my head right now. Would it be okay if I consult my phone calendar?”

“Of course,” Jessie said.

Robertson pulled out her phone and began scrolling. After reviewing things, she looked up.

“Okay, I last worked with Lansing Langley this last Monday, the 19th,” she said, her voice less tenuous now that she was focused on her area of expertise.

“But don’t most kids have winter break this week?” Jessie asked, perplexed.

Robertson sighed heavily before replying.

“That’s true,” she said, “but a lot of these parents are pretty intense. They want to take advantage of every opportunity for their children. They view any setback as putting their child at risk of not getting into their preferred college. Lansing got a bad grade on his last math test before break, and Mrs. Langley wanted me to drill him on the concepts.”

“How old is he?” Ryan asked.

“He’s seven,” Robertson replied, wincing. “He knew the material. He just gets nervous taking tests. I told Mrs. Langley that he’d be better off talking to someone about his anxiety than doing math problems over the holidays, but she felt differently.”

“What about Tabitha Reynolds?” Jessie asked.

”I work with her daughter, Samantha—Sammy,” Robertson said. ”I helped her last Thursday because she had a spelling test on Friday. I was actually planning to text Tabitha to see how it went, but I didn”t want to bother her over the holidays.”

“And what about Naomi Hackett?” Ryan asked. “When did you last work with her child?”

“I saw Olivia—she’s five—last Wednesday. She didn’t have any tests to study for or anything. She’s only in kindergarten, but Naomi thought it might be good to review the material from the last month or so, just to prevent any learning loss over the holidays.” Robertson suddenly gasped as she seemed to come to some realization. “Oh my god, I can’t believe that little girl is without her mother now.”

”Ms. Robertson,” Jessie said, not allowing herself to get sucked into that spiral of thoughts for fear it would overwhelm her. After all, this was a murder suspect, and she needed to view her as such.

“You can call me Danielle,” the tutor interrupted.

“Danielle,” Jessie said, “when you worked with Olivia, was that at the Hackett’s home in Pacific Palisades or Naomi’s apartment in Playa Vista?”

Danielle looked at her, confused for a second.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, “I only ever went to their house. She has a place in Playa too?”

“You didn’t know that?” Jessie asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that ever came up. I know she runs—ran—a tech company in the Silicon Beach area, but I didn’t know she had a place there too.”

Jessie felt her heart sink at that answer. Ryan must have sensed her deflate because he took over.

“She stayed there some weeknights rather than commute home,” Ryan told her.

“I guess that would explain why she wasn’t around most times I visited Olivia.”

“So you’ve never been to her apartment, even to pick up a check?” Jessie pressed, hoping to find some way to keep this lead alive. “It’s not that far from here.”

“I wouldn’t even know where it is,” Danielle explained, “and most of my clients pay via Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal anyway. In a lot of cases, with nannies around, me doing tutoring mostly in the afternoons, and parents working late at high-powered jobs, I’ll go weeks or even months without ever seeing them. In fact, in some instances, I’ve never spoken to the client in person other than during our initial hiring meeting.”

Jessie forced herself to keep her disappointment to herself as she responded.

“Would you be willing to let us review the GPS data from your phone and vehicle to confirm what you’ve told us?” she asked, more out of obligation than anything.

“Of course,” Danielle said. “I know you have to verify what I’m saying. I just wish there was something more I could do.”

“Maybe there is,” Ryan suggested. “Did you notice anything unusual when you were at any of their homes? Interpersonal conflicts? Or something as straightforward as other service providers like yourself who worked for all three women.”

Danielle thought for a second. Even before she replied, Jessie could tell from her expression that whatever she had to share would be of little use.

“Like I said, most of the time, the parents weren’t around,” she explained. “It was just me and the kids, so it’s not like I observed any fights or anything like that. As far as providers go, there were people in and out of those homes all the time. I always heard doorbells ringing and voices in other rooms.”

“You never saw these people?” Jessie questioned skeptically.

”Hardly ever,” Danielle replied. ”I would usually work with the child as far from all those distractions as I could, either in their rooms or somewhere else secluded. Even at Tabitha Reynolds”s, which was a loft apartment, we worked in Samantha”s curtained-off space and Tabitha”s housekeeper would deal with anyone who came by. No faces or names jump out at me right now. Still, I could try to go back through my appointments and see if that jogs my memory about anyone who I saw at all of their homes. It might take a while, though. Could I get back to you on that?”

“Sure,” Ryan said, handing over Jamil’s business card. “Call our head of research with what you remember. He’ll also send you a waiver to access your GPS data, so we don’t have to get a court order.”

He indicated to Jessie that they should head out. She followed behind him, trying to keep her frustration hidden and sensing that she was failing. Though Danielle Robertson could still end up being their killer, just like the personal trainer Landon Powers could, what they’d learned here wasn’t promising.

If Danielle’s story held up, she likely wouldn’t have had enough personal interaction to develop a motive for killing them. And if it was true that she’d never even been to Naomi Hackett’s apartment, planting a canister full of poison there was hard to explain.

As they walked out of the apartment and back to the car, Ryan kept silent. He was wise to do so. He knew better than to engage her when she was in this kind of mood. Barring a surprise, their two strongest suspects were dead ends.

Jessie wasn’t sure if she was more depressed or pissed. Either way, they were back to square one, which meant their killer was that much closer to finding another victim. They could be out there right now, hunting for one. Or worse, they might have already found one.