Chapter 17 #2
Kinsley studied him in return, noting the controlled interest in his expression.
Where Richard managed confrontation with composure and social polish, Paul Fisher radiated something sharper.
There was a directness to him that bordered on combative, the bearing of a man who preferred to address problems head-on and who didn’t waste energy on pleasantries when substance was available.
She decided to meet that energy with her own.
“Why did you cover for Richard Bell during his affair with Shannon Utgoff, and what was Iris attempting to blackmail you for?”
The two questions landed with a visible impact.
Paul’s eyebrows rose, and his jawline tightened, the muscles along the hinge of his jaw flexing once before settling. His surprise was genuine but brief, giving way within seconds to what Kinsley read as a grudging respect for the tactical choice of skipping the warm-up entirely.
“I can appreciate dispensing with the pleasantries,” Paul replied as he leaned back in his chair.
He reached for a ceramic coffee mug emblazoned with the firm’s logo.
“To address your first question, I didn’t actively provide Richard with an alibi.
I simply didn’t contradict his story about business dinners. ”
“Which amounts to the same thing,” Kinsley pointed out, settling deeper into her chair. “Lying by omission is still lying, Mr. Fisher.”
She should know. The thought surfaced unbidden, sharp and unwelcome, and she pushed it to the side while Paul took a slow, deliberate sip from his mug.
“Richard’s private life was his business.
We were partners professionally, but I wasn’t his keeper.
” Paul set the mug down and met her gaze with a steadiness that suggested he’d anticipated this conversation and had already decided where his boundaries would be.
“And don’t let Eden fool you. She knew about Richard’s affair with Shannon, and she chose to look the other way.
Eden Bell is a lot of things, Detective, but oblivious is not one of them. ”
Kinsley considered following up on the claim, pressing for specifics about how Eden had demonstrated her knowledge and what, if anything, she’d done with it.
But Kinsley could sense that Paul’s patience for this meeting had a defined shelf life, and she didn’t want to spend it on questions she could answer through other channels.
She moved to her second inquiry.
“And your dealings with Iris?”
“I had no dealings with Iris,” Paul responded dryly. “She was a teenager, and I wasn’t going to waste my time indulging her immature antics.”
“So, you deny giving Iris Bell ten thousand dollars in cash?”
“Emphatically,” Paul replied without missing a beat. He tilted his head slightly as he studied her. “I’m curious, Detective. Do any of these recovered tapes actually feature me?”
Kinsley offered a slow, calculated smile.
The question told her more than any answer could have.
If Paul Fisher were genuinely unconcerned about the tapes, he wouldn’t need to ask whether he appeared on them.
The fact that he did suggested he wasn’t certain of the answer, which meant one of two things.
Either Iris had recorded him, and he didn’t know whether that recording had survived, or he’d taken steps to ensure it hadn’t and wasn’t confident those steps had been sufficient.
Based on his confident nature and Amelia’s account of him calling Iris’s bluff, Kinsley suspected he’d somehow gotten Iris to surrender the tape.
Perhaps not through payment, given his emphatic denial about the cash, but through the kind of influence that a man in his position could apply to a teenager who was ultimately still a child operating in an adult’s world.
Had the tape featured a conversation between Paul and Richard?
Something that would have damaged the firm, not just Fisher personally?
“I’m not at liberty to say, Mr. Fisher.”
Her non-answer provoked exactly the reaction she’d hoped for. Paul’s posture shifted subtly, his shoulders squaring by a fraction and his fingers lacing together on the desk that betrayed the effort of maintaining his composure.
“Hypothetically,” Paul began, “if a seventeen-year-old with a tape recorder thought she had leverage, any recorded conversation she might have had access to would have been damaging to the business, not just to me personally. And had such alleged details come to light, the fallout would have dragged everyone with it. Richard, myself, our clients, the firm’s reputation. Everything.”
Everything.
The word encompassed a great deal, and Paul Fisher had chosen it intentionally.
He was drawing a perimeter around the damage radius, making it clear that whatever Iris had captured would have been a bomb that took out more than one person.
It was simultaneously a defense and a warning.
Pursuing this line of questioning would lead to collateral damage that extended beyond a single suspect.
“Did you kill Iris Bell, Mr. Fisher?”
The directness of the question seemed to catch him off guard, despite the fact that the entire conversation had been building toward it.
He blinked twice before a humorless smile spread across his face, the kind of smile that contained no warmth and served no purpose beyond signaling that the person wearing it had decided to stop cooperating.
“No, Detective Aspen, I did not kill Iris Bell.” Paul pushed his chair back slightly.
The gesture was small but unmistakable. The interview was over on his end.
“As far as I’m concerned, Grant Tatlock killed her.
He was found at the scene, convicted by a jury, and died in prison. Is there anything else?”
Kinsley rose slowly, understanding that her window had closed. He didn’t need to add that any further questions should be directed through his attorney. The implication was embedded in his posture, his tone, and the careful distance he’d established between his chair and the desk.
She was satisfied, though, with what she was taking away from the conversation.
She’d caught a glimpse of the contempt Paul held for Iris, a contempt that ran deeper than irritation at a teenager’s antics.
She’d also learned that whatever information Iris had possessed would have damaged the firm, which meant it would have hurt Richard, which meant it would have given him an additional motive beyond the affair to want those tapes silenced.
And she’d confirmed, through Paul’s careful hypothetical framing, that the recorded conversation involved something substantial enough to threaten the entire business.
As she reached the door, she turned back with one final question. She’d been saving it, holding it in reserve.
“Why did Richard end things with Shannon a week after Iris’s funeral?”
Paul’s eyes narrowed, but the expression was speculative rather than irritated. He leaned his left forearm on the desk and studied her with renewed interest, as though reassessing the detective standing in his doorway.
“I don’t know where you got your information, but Richard didn’t break things off with Shannon.
” Paul picked up a pen from the desk and tapped it against the leather inlay twice, a rhythmic gesture that bought him a moment to decide how much more he was willing to share.
“It was the other way around. Shannon ended the affair, not Richard. And she wasn’t fired from the firm, either. She handed in her resignation.”
Kinsley held his gaze for a beat, letting the implications settle.
Shannon Utgoff hadn’t been a passive participant, discarded by a powerful man after a tragedy made the relationship inconvenient.
She had made a choice. She had ended the affair and walked away from her job in the same stroke, within a week of his daughter’s funeral.
People didn’t make decisions that drastic without a reason, and the proximity to Iris’s death made the timing impossible to dismiss as a coincidence.
Shannon Utgoff had been in the neighborhood the night Iris died. She had ended her relationship with Richard and quit her job within days of the funeral. And she had moved to Arizona, putting over a thousand miles between herself and Fallbrook.
Kinsley thanked Paul Fisher for his time, stepped into the corridor, and pulled the door closed behind her. Her mind was already composing the questions she intended to ask Shannon Utgoff, and none of them were going to be easy to answer.