Chapter 11
Kate sat across from Rodney. “Did you source out who that phone number was?”
He shook his head. “No. All I can tell you is, it’s not local.”
“But all three of the men had that same number in their phone records?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a spam call or somebody upset at the insurance payout.”
She frowned, while nodding her head. “That’s an interesting proposition too.”
He asked, “What?”
“The insurance payout part,” she noted, “although this seems particularly personal.”
“Oh, I would say it’s personal,” he confirmed, turning to her. “I’m not sure if it’s just sexual though.”
“I’m not either,” she noted, pondering it, “but it does have that intimate feel. I mean, wrapping them up as if a gift for somebody else? I don’t know about you, but, if I was pissed off at somebody because he was having an affair with somebody else, I might leave them a gift too.”
He glanced at her, then added, “I hadn’t considered that, but you’re right. Thinking about these men and their lifestyles, the murderer could very well have been a jealous lover.”
“It could be,” she agreed, “and the idea of poison is getting to me. I don’t want to say it’s always a woman’s method of killing, but, as we well know, it’s the most popular method of killing that women resort to.”
Rodney nodded. “It’s also easy—easy to administer, easy to get, right off the shelves at the garden store or grocery store or wherever. The internet’s got all kinds of them. You just pour it into a drink.”
“All these men drink too,” she noted, pointing her finger at him.
“But more men drink than don’t drink,” he stated.
“Sure, but would all those drinking men give women access to their drinks, unless they were shagging them?”
Rodney’s lips kicked up, and he chuckled at the term. “Where did you pick that up?”
“From some British guy.” She laughed and added, “I mean, there’re a lot of ways to put it, but, if these three guys were screwing around or having affairs with all these women, maybe somebody decided it was time for them to stop, but they wouldn’t. However, none of that fits the believe thing.”
“Maybe the believe thing is nothing, a distraction,” he suggested. “Maybe she offered to take him on a holiday. Maybe he tells her it’ll never happen because she couldn’t get the money or whatever. Maybe she was like, believe, as in manifesting it or whatever.”
“Or praying, some church thing.” She pondered that for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t know how that one could fit,” she muttered, “and it pisses me off because everything needs to fit.”
“Of course it does,” Rodney confirmed. laughing, “especially with you. You’re all about the whys.”
She frowned at him and asked, “Do you think I focus too much on it?”
“Nope,” he replied. “It’s just your way of working through things. So, if somebody has done this believe thing, then you’ll be a whole lot more geared to sort out why they would do it.”
She nodded. “I think the why has to be the domineering point,” she noted.
“I mean, if there’s no why, then you just have a random killing, and that is not what this is.
A why could just be because the people in front of him were in his way, and he was having a pissy day.
I mean, … there’s always a why, whether we think it’s a big-enough reason to kill somebody or not. ”
“The trouble is, when you get that why, it still doesn’t always make sense.”
She nodded at that. “Yep, you’re right. It doesn’t always make sense to us, but it does to them. So, what possible motive would anybody have for killing these three guys? And how long were those phone calls?”
“Short.”
“And how close to the days that they died were the calls made?”
He looked at her in surprise. “That I haven’t checked.” He immediately picked up the paperwork that he had printed off and grimaced. “Shit, they were the same day.”
She smiled. “Bingo. We need to know whose number that is.”
“It’s not registered anywhere, so it’s probably a burner phone.”
“And that would imply motivation,” she muttered, “pre-planning, and somebody who was really pissed off over something.”
“So, what do you think the calls were about?”
“Maybe to see what they were up to.”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Yeah, confirming they were home so they could get the job done or just checking in to see if he was busy with a side piece.”
“It could be anything and everything,” Kate noted. “I mean, it could even be a phone call to ask to see them that night. It might be totally innocent. And it could even be somebody who’s not even connected to the murders who is being asked to make that phone call.”
He nodded. “You could be right about that. … That won’t make it any easier to sort this out.”
“No, but I want to know. … I’ll call Caroline back, and I’ll talk to the woman I spoke to at the office as well.”
“Mary? Lanny? Which one?”
“Probably both of them, and I want to see if they belong to any women’s groups,” she added.
“What’s the connection to the women’s groups?”
She didn’t reply, and Rodney didn’t press his question either. Kate was wondering about Simon’s connection in all this too.
So Rodney asked another question. “Do you think these women will be honest with you?”
“If they aren’t, and we find out afterward, it’ll be another nail in their coffin.”
“And why women’s groups?” he asked again.
She turned to him and began, “I know this probably sounds far-fetched.”
He snorted. “With you, it always sounds far-fetched.”
“I’m just thinking about the whole traditional wife thing, settling down, having kids.”
“But I think we’re way past the traditional wife in these cases,” Lilliana interjected, walking over to join the conversation.
“I think the traditional wife thing is literally staying home, producing the kids, looking after the house, not working, no higher education or training, and certainly not scrolling social media online dating sites. So, I’m not sure how that fits. ”
Kate clarified, “I’m not sure that traditional wife is the phrase I want to attach to this anyway.
I’m just considering a whole group of people who want to have a family, but our three guys very specifically did not want that.
So where does the whole believe thing enter this mess?
” She turned to Rodney, who just raised both hands.
“I don’t know.”
She glanced at Lilliana, and she did the same.
Kate admitted, “I think we are looking in the wrong direction. …Yet I don’t know what the right direction is. That’s the challenge.” She frowned. “Did forensics find any feminine item of any kind which identified who could have been in John’s apartment that night?”
“No,” Lilliana replied, “but we have John’s diary, courtesy of you, not forensics. However, it’s more of a planner that he started to keep, then gave up. No recent entries were in it, so not very helpful. Also we have his phone records, with tons of call to various women.”
Rodney nodded. “Plus, we have Robert’s physical address book, and we have his huge Contacts list from his phone. Again tied to women.”
Kate nodded. “Good. Let’s start contacting these women in those two guys’ records.
Let’s start with phone calls. However, if you get a hit off anybody as being difficult or avoiding your questions, not particularly happy to talk to you, let’s lean in on them and see if we can get some more information on them and their chats with these Romeos. ”
“And just what is it that I’m looking for, when making these calls?” Rodney asked, turning to her.
“Maybe ask each one if they know any of our three dead guys. If so, ask them what each guy’s mood was like, whether anybody was pressuring any of them to get married,” she replied, “or to settle down or to change their lifestyle, those kinds of things.”
“And would they know?” Rodney asked. “These guys were playboys, with no long-term plans in the dating world.”
“A regular side piece might,” Kate noted, with a snort.
“Somebody in a friends with benefits deal with these guys would know that the men didn’t want to make any changes.
And, if so, ask each woman if they know somebody who might object?
Maybe our three guys complained about somebody causing them trouble or putting on the pressure? ”
“Okay, I’ll get at it,” Rodney said.
Lilliana added, “I’ll help for as long as I can. What will you do, Kate?”
“I’ll ruffle some feathers.”
“How so?” Lilliana asked, amusement in her tone.
“I’ll contact the detective handling the case out of Coquitlam, see if we can get a copy of Kurt’s phone records, and do the same thing with his.
Somewhere, somebody has to be showing up consistently in these calls.
For John’s death, somebody must have had access to his place, must have known when he was home, so it’s likely that one person made calls to all three men accordingly. ”
Rodney turned to her. “Are you thinking it’s the same killer?”
“I’m just covering all the bases until we know more. I don’t know anything at this point,” she conceded. “It’s possible, but that’s an awful lot of kills, particularly when there’s a good chance these were all done by a woman.”
“Or by a jealous boyfriend,” Lilliana added.
“Or by a jealous boyfriend,” Kate repeated, nodding. “In a way that makes more sense, but I don’t think we can cross anybody off right now.”
And, with that, they each got to work. When she reached out to the detective from the older case, she introduced herself.
He gave her his name, Nick Forbes. Thankfully he was willing to share info as long as she returned the favor.
With that agreement in place, she waited for the list to come through and then printed it off.
She shook her head as she saw the pages and pages of phone numbers on this one guy’s Contact list.
Rodney looked up when he heard the printer, then whistled at the number of pages being spit out. “These guys are incredibly active.”
Kate quipped, “Nothing else for them to do, I guess.”
Rodney chuckled.