is Jamie Knox, my new security officer. Today is his first day on board.”
Reese reluctantly moved her gaze to him. Immediate smoldering attraction swept over her. “Mr. Knox.” She sounded all breathy again.
His mouth rose with a hint of licentiousness and his incredibly blue eyes reacted in kind. “Please—Jamie. What brings you to DAI? You said it was something personal?”
She’d said that to get Kadin’s attention. She hadn’t lied. She had a whopper of a personal reason for being here. “A murder. Isn’t that what brings everyone here?” She laughed at her attempt to be funny, wondering if she sounded as nervous as she thought.
While Kadin eyed her with some suspicion, Jamie’s smile expanded ever so slightly. “Why don’t we have a seat?”
Having to pass him to sit down, she fed on the sight of his muscled chest and felt tingly as she sat on the sofa.
Eyeing Jamie, Kadin sat on a chair across from her. Jamie boldly lowered his big, sexy body next to her, eyes still glinting.
“What about this murder that brought you all the way here, Ms. Harlow?” Kadin asked.
“You can call me Reese,” she said. “I learned of your agency and, given the length of time that’s passed in my case, I thought you’d be able to help me more than anyone else.” She placed the binder containing copies of everything on the Neville case on the coffee table. “That’s why I’ve taken a personal interest.”
Kadin slid the binder toward him and began flipping through pages.
She didn’t have to read along with him. She knew what it said. The coroner’s report stated the inspector arrived at the scene and noted the time. The weather was indicated as sixty-one degrees, along with the humidity and position, location and condition of the body. Lifeless. Female in her twenties. Injuries on the body indicated the victim had died prior to her tumble down the embankment. Fully clothed in a big-collared, long-sleeved, sapphire-blue, knee-length shirtwaist dress with big white buttons up the front. Dirt collected from the fibers had come from the slope. Ligature marks on the neck indicated strangulation as the cause of death. Rigor mortis had been established throughout the body. Estimated time of death was twelve to fourteen hours prior to the coroner’s examination.
Notes on the crime scene indicated tire tracks on the side of the road—both from a driver with a flat tire and another vehicle. The tires may have been from a 1973 Volkswagen Passat. Photos were taken of the body and the surrounding area, including the slope up to the road.
The first sheriff’s follow-up report said he hadn’t done any extra testing on the evidence. The second sheriff in office looked into the case and questioned more residents, particularly hotel and motel staff. One witness had reported seeing a blue Passat but couldn’t identify the driver, including whether it was a man or woman. The second sheriff had looked into the case again in the early 1990s and that had been the last time anyone had paid any attention to Ella Neville’s murder.
While Kadin read, she stole a look at Jamie, catching his eyes doing a roam up her legs and slowly lifting to her chest and then finally her face. He grinned ever so slightly and made her feel a fresh burst of delighted tingles.
When she turned back to Kadin, she saw he’d finished and now observed them.
She cleared her throat. “As I’m sure you’ve ascertained from the report, no one knows what became of Ella after she closed the library. She never showed up to her husband’s work-related dinner party. Less than twenty-four hours later, a man with a flat tire saw her body and called the police. The evidence is limited. There were tire tracks and not much else. Lots of pictures. Her clothes and shoes were bagged correctly, each labeled Dress, Underwear, Pantyhose and Bra.”
“How were they rebagged?” Kadin asked.
Relieved that he’d dismissed her and Jamie’s steamy moment, she said, “Not taken out of their original packaging, just sealed better from what I can tell. I sent the clothes to a lab.”
“Good thinking. Can you stop them from going to your lab?” Kadin asked.
Taken aback, she recalled her conversation with Margaret. “I think so, our office manager said she’d take them Monday when she runs her other errands.”
“Send them to me. I have a lab that will do the best job. If there’s trace evidence, they’ll find it, and if anything has been contaminated, they’ll know how to handle it.”
“All right.” But Reese felt suddenly cornered. This could be the beginning of a connection and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Plus, he had a take-charge attitude. Would giving him her evidence be wise? Yes, for the case, but maybe not so much for her.
“This case is very cold,” Kadin said, probably picking up on her hesitation. “You need all the expert help you can get if you want to solve it.”
She did want to solve it. How badly began to take over. If she had to have an extended relationship with Kadin to do that, she would. But why did he offer to help? Was it passion for what he did—avenge victims of heinous crimes? Or did he sense something in her? Her personal reason for coming...?
He looked over more of the pages, coming to the pictures and taking special time to go through those. In the lapse in talk, she slid a glance toward Jamie and caught him checking her out again, sending more delicious tingles fluttering through her. He looked younger than Kadin but not by much. Kadin had to be well into his forties. She’d put Jamie at around thirty-one. Of all the things she imagined would happen while she was here, meeting a hunk wasn’t one of them.
“Have you talked with any neighbors or family and friends—if any are still alive?”
Reese turned back to Kadin. “There is no family.” Jeffrey had no living relatives and the report said Ella had no family, either. That had come from talking to neighbors and friends, who’d claimed Ella had told them she had none.
“Pay particular attention to the husband. Nine times out of ten, they’re the killer.”
“Not Jeffrey.” She couldn’t even picture him holding a rope around someone’s neck. “He was the most harmless man I’ve ever met.”
“The most demented ones usually seem that way,” Jamie said. “They’re good at blending into society, even to the point of being likable. Take human traffickers for example. They lure innocent foreigners to the US with the promise of honest work and force them into slave labor, or worse.”
He seemed to have firsthand experience with that kind of person. “But...what if he’s as innocent as he seems?”
“You said his wife was supposed to meet him at a dinner party,” Kadin said.
“Yes.”
“Sounds like a perfect alibi to me.”
Too perfect. What he implied hit her. No one had considered Jeffrey had gone to the dinner party on purpose, knowing his wife would close the library alone, knowing she’d never show up for dinner.
“Forget what a quiet, nice man Jeffrey appeared to be and look into any motive he may have had to kill her.”
Reese thought of the hidden money. “My God.”
“Already
