Chapter 5 #2
“Not even in the slightest.” Dana’s mouth flattened.
“Wade came back to the desk after and told me not to worry about it. Said the man had a temper problem and that his wife knew how to handle him.” She looked at a car passing by.
“The wife came in for her next class an hour later. I don’t know what she knew or didn’t know, but she wasn’t upset, and she flirted with Wade like nothing had happened. ”
“Flirted? You think there was substance to the man’s accusations?”
She shrugged and said, “Who knows? All the women flirt with Wade. I can’t imagine he sleeps with them all. It wouldn’t be good for business, and Wade always did what was best for business. Besides, as far as I know he’s got a girlfriend.”
“Do you know the woman’s name? The one whose husband came in?”
“Sloane Ferriday. I don’t know his name. He didn’t exactly introduce himself.” She looked at Jack. “Wade thought the whole thing was funny. He was never one to shy away from attention.”
“We’re going to need to search the studio and his office,” Jack said. “I’ve got a warrant to take any of his electronics. We haven’t found his cell phone yet.”
She seemed surprised by that. “Really? Wade was glued to that thing. He had one of those watches too. Said it was to monitor his heart rate and his health, but he was always checking texts and emails too.”
I looked at Jack. We didn’t find a watch either. Someone was trying very hard to make sure Wade’s communications weren’t found.
“Can you pull the full membership roster for us, including past members for the past four months? We’ll start in the office.”
“Class is going to end in the next twenty minutes. I’ll send out a mass text to cancel the rest of the day. You can follow me back to his office.”
“One more thing,” Jack said as she stood. “Did you ever see Wade act inappropriate with any members or staff? Or did he have any sexual relationships with them that you were aware of?”
She hesitated for a moment. “About a year ago we had an instructor, Sheri Downs. She was really great. And things got pretty hot and heavy between her and Wade for a while. At least a couple of months. Then all of a sudden she calls in her resignation and we never see her again. I just figured they broke up and she didn’t want to work with him anymore.
” Her Botoxed face was as expressive as it could be.
“Which is why it’s not good to sleep with your employees. I told him so too.”
She led us back inside and past the bamboo partition and a room full of women with their legs in straps above their head. Wade’s office door was a thick frosted glass so you couldn’t see inside, and she unlocked it with a key from a ring that she’d picked up from behind the front counter.
“It’s not much,” she said, flipping on the lights. “I’ll print the membership roll while you look around. It’ll take a few minutes.” She stepped out and pulled the door closed behind her.
The desk was white oak with a matte finish, clean lined and spare, the same natural aesthetic as the rest of the studio.
Nothing on the surface except a monitor, a desk organizer, and a small framed photograph of the studio’s exterior taken at what looked like opening day.
Wade was standing in front of the door in a navy polo, arms crossed, looking like a man who had exactly what he wanted.
I handed Jack a pair of gloves from my bag and then took some for myself.
“Over four hundred members,” I said. “That’s a lot of people who had access to Wade Rivers.”
Jack surveyed the room. “You take the walls and the shelves. I’ll start on the file cabinet.”
The office wasn’t big. There was a desk, a two-drawer filing cabinet against the far wall, a small bookshelf with training manuals stacked on it, three framed certifications on the wall, and a narrow closet in the corner. I started with the certifications.
“Check the backs of those frames,” Jack said without looking up from the filing cabinet. “People hide things in weird places sometimes.”
“Like where?”
“Besides various body cavities?” he asked.
I could hear the smile in his voice.
“I worked a homicide in DC once. Eighty-year-old woman in a bad neighborhood got robbed and murdered by a junkie. When I worked the scene we found ten thousand dollars in the urn of her dead husband beneath his ashes.”
“That’s a good hiding spot,” I said. “I just keep extra cash in my underwear drawer.”
“I know,” he said.
“You can’t trust the banks,” I told him.
I lifted each of the frames off the wall and turned them over. There was nothing taped to the backs. I rehung each one and moved to the bookshelf. I ran my hand along the underside of each shelf, checked between the manuals, opened books upside down, and looked at the shelf wall behind them.
“Anything?” Jack asked.
“Nothing.”
“I’m not finding anything either,” he said. “Wade’s filing system is much like his home organization. Everything has a place and is in alphabetical order with a coinciding color. The IRS would love this man.”
I moved to the closet next. It was narrow, but obsessively arranged.
A rod on one side held four spare Form and Flow Pilates polos, evenly spaced, and below them was a pair of clean trainers in a plastic box.
On an upper shelf sat a stack of folded grip socks and three pairs of athletic pants.
On another shelf sat a small mirror propped against the back and a brown leather toiletry bag.
I unzipped it and found cologne, travel-sized mouthwash, toothpaste and toothbrush, a tin of breath mints, and a strip of condoms.
“Wade was a real Boy Scout,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s always prepared,” I said, holding up the condoms. “And worried about bad breath apparently.”
“We’ll have CSI sweep for any DNA in here.”
“Well that’s a gross thought.”
I set the toiletry bag aside and pushed the polos to one end of the rod to get a look at the back corner of the closet. A small black fireproof safe with a combination dial on the front sat on the floor.
“Jack.”
He closed the file cabinet drawer and joined me in the closet, crouching beside the safe. “Combination lock.”
“Maybe he’s got the code written down somewhere.”
Jack stood and moved to the desk. He pulled the top drawer out and emptied it on top of the desk—pens, a stapler, business cards, and a Form and Flow Pilates credit card in Wade’s name. Then he turned the drawer over and checked the back side.
“If you put on your psychology hat how would you profile our victim?” I asked.
Jack had a master’s degree in psychology. It came in handy when we were working various cases. It wasn’t so handy when we were having a marital disagreement.
“Narcissistic personality, almost certainly.” He moved to the second drawer.
“Classic profile. Charming on the surface, very controlled underneath. The OCD isn’t random—it’s about power.
Everything in its place, everything on his terms. The women, the schedule, the safe hidden in the closet.
I guarantee he didn’t just sleep with random women.
He was precise in his choices. Each one served a purpose.
And he didn’t worry about them coinciding because he managed them to the same degree he managed everything else in his life. ”
He checked the underside of the next drawer and then reached inside the cavity to run his hands along the back and sides.
“He was arrogant,” I said. “He thought he’d never get caught. He probably underestimated the women he was juggling. You and I both know scorned women are some of the best detectives out there. What they can track down online is pretty impressive.”
Jack grunted in agreement.