Harper and DJ exchanged a glance.
‘Do you remember his name?’ Harper asked.
Rosanna shook her head regretfully. ‘He never actually came in to ask for Marie. He always stood outside and called her on his cell phone.’
‘That’s fine, Rosanna,’ DJ said. ‘Did you tell the police about this?’
‘No.’ She sounded surprised. ‘They never asked.’
Harper had a sudden thought.
‘Rosanna, when the police searched Marie’s office, was that man – the one you saw outside – with them?’
‘No.’ Her answer was definite. ‘In fact, I can tell you exactly who came.’
Opening a drawer, she dug around for a second, before pulling out a business card.
‘It was this guy,’ she said, handing it over. ‘He said to call him if we thought of anything.’
The card read: ‘Sergeant Frank Ledbetter, Savannah PD.’
Turning the card over in her hand, Harper frowned.
It was routine for detectives to divide the work on any case, but it didn’t make sense that Blazer wouldn’t personally oversee the search of the victim’s place of work.
Why would he not want to be here?
Maybe because he knew his face might be recognized.
Handing the card back, she said, ‘I know you’ve told us already, but would you mind describing the man again – the one Marie dated?’
‘He was a big guy,’ Rosanna said slowly. ‘Tall. And, I think he had light hair, or maybe gray …’ Her voice trailed off and she gave an apologetic wince. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t be certain now. It was months ago.’
Tall. Light hair. That described Blazer. But big? Blazer was tall and thin. Still, she could be misremembering. Or using the wrong word to describe him – some people use ‘big’ to mean tall.
‘Are there any pictures of him?’ Harper asked. ‘Or is there CCTV here?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Rosanna said.
‘Is there anything you can tell me about her other boyfriends?’ Harper asked. ‘Anyone you can remember?’
Rosanna bit her lip, thinking.
‘She always had dates,’ she said after a moment. ‘She often changed here at work and then went straight out. But she didn’t invite them to the office. It was like she kept them secret. That’s why I remembered the cop. It was unusual for her to meet them here. There must have been something special about him, for her to let him come to the office.’
Harper was going to have to look elsewhere to find out more about Marie’s ex-boyfriends.
She glanced at DJ, who gave an infinitesimal shrug. There was nothing more to get right now.
DJ smiled. ‘Thank you so much, Rosanna.’
While he turned on the charm, Harper walked across the room to look at the black-and-white photos again. In each shot, everything looked so glamorous – long, silky dresses, sleek tuxedoes, crystal chandeliers, champagne flutes.
They could have been perfume ads for all the polish and glitz, except, occasionally she came across a face she recognized.
The town’s former mayor was at the center of one, grinning broadly. In another, she spotted a well-known local business executive who starred in his own hilariously bad TV ads.
The face in the third picture on the wall, stopped her in her tracks.
‘Hey,’ she said, forgetting, in her excitement, to keep her voice down. ‘Isn’t that Marie?’
She pointed at an image of a beautiful blonde woman in a long white dress. The woman was slim, her shoulders pale and narrow. She was with a man who had his back to the camera.
Rosanna had to stand up to see the picture.
‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s her. I forgot that picture was there.’
After a second, she and DJ resumed their conversation. Harper stayed where she was, staring at Marie Whitney’s beautiful face.
Her hair glimmered in the light of the chandelier. Her smile was open and engaging, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Those were dark and dangerous. And full of secrets.
Harper would have given anything to ask her one question.
The only person in the world who could tell her what happened that day, was in that picture. And she would never reveal her story to anyone.
Harper had never worked on a case where it was so hard to pin down even the most basic facts. Every clue she found slipped from her fingers before she could grasp it.
Once again, she thought about Camille Whitney and wondered if she was OK. If her mother had been kind to her. Or if she’d been as cruel to her daughter as she had been to everyone else.
It was as if there were multiple Marie Whitneys, and none of them could be trusted. Marie Whitney the single mother. Marie Whitney the victim. Marie Whitney the manipulative liar. And none of those women had any connection to Harper’s mother. Except for how they died.
It felt like Whitney was playing her from the grave.
Harper was risking everything for this. Everything.
She had to find something tangible. Something real.
And she needed it soon.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The next morning, sitting at her kitchen table with her laptop and mug of coffee, Harper began working her way through the list of Marie Whitney’s known ex-lovers. Without more to go on, it made sense to identify any potential suspects from the names they had already.
To start, she divided the list up into likely and unlikely.
The artists and grad-students she put in the unlikely column. There was almost no chance that they would know how to forensically clean a crime scene, as the murderer had done.
Of the names DJ had given her, that left the CEO, a prominent local lawyer, and a state senator.
She left vague messages for all of them with their offices, not mentioning the true reason for her call. They weren’t the kind of men you got on the phone at the first try, or the kind to call you back if they knew for a second you suspected them of a crime.
Then she waited.
The lawyer called her first.
After a quick round of pleasantries, Harper got to the point.
‘I’m writing a story for the newspaper about a woman named Marie Whitney,’ she began.
The second the words were out of her mouth, he combusted.
‘I know nothing about her. I haven’t seen her in nearly a year,’ he said, his voice rising an octave. ‘I don’t understand why you’re even talking to me about her.’
‘It’s a routine call,’ Harper said calmly. ‘I’m trying to understand what your relationship was with her.’
‘I had no relationship with her,’ he insisted. ‘Who told you I did?’
‘A source,’ she said.
‘A source?’ He half-shouted the word. ‘You want to damage my reputation because of an unnamed source? That would be a very bad idea, I promise you. You do not want to mess with me, Miss McClain. I will slap your paper with an injunction so fast your head spins. Just try me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, desperate to get something useful from him. ‘Please, if I could have two minutes – I promise I won’t use your name. If you could just tell me where you were the day she died.’
That set him off again. But somewhere, amid his rant, he managed to tell her he’d been in court that day – all day – and had the records to prove it. But he would not tell her anything about Whitney.
‘There is no way I will talk to you about Marie Whitney. I have nothing to say about her. As I said, I’ve had no interaction with her in a long time, thank God. I suggest you find someone else to talk to. And leave me out of it.’
With that, he hung up.
Harper sat at her kitchen table, staring at the phone. The man had been furious but, it was more than that. He was scared – she could hear it in his voice.
Scared of what?
After that, she didn’t expect to hear from the others at all.
To her surprise, though, the state senator returned her call within an ho
ur. She’d expected to have to chase him for days. When she told him she was calling about the Whitney case, he sounded as nervous as a cat in a room full of pitbulls.
‘I … I don’t see why you called me,’ he said anxiously. ‘I haven’t seen Marie Whitney in more than a year.’ He paused. ‘God. I can’t believe what happened to her. I’m still in shock.’
‘I’m only calling because I want to remove your name from my list.’ After her experience with the lawyer, Harper kept her tone soothing. ‘It would help me tremendously if you could account for your time.’
‘How … How could I do that?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Where were you the afternoon Marie Whitney died?’
His voice grew high-pitched. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to her? My God, Miss McClain. I swear …’
‘Not at all,’ she assured him. ‘I simply have to take you off my list. I’m doing this with everyone she knew. This is in no way an allegation and I will not put your name in my article. Please. Tell me where you were. It’s that simple.’
‘Oh God. This is a nightmare,’ he said, unhappily. ‘I don’t … What day was … did it happen?’
Patiently, she gave him the day and the estimated time of the crime.
There was a pause – she heard the clicking of computer keys, presumably as he checked his calendar.
When he spoke again, the relief in his voice was palpable.
‘The legislature was in session that day. I spoke on the floor at three o’clock precisely. I was there until seven that night.’
Harper made a note to check this, but she was inclined to believe him. He didn’t seem smart enough or cold enough to commit such a perfect crime. At least he was calmer than the lawyer, though. She decided to push it further – see how much she could get.
‘Senator,’ she said, ‘now that we’ve cleared that up, is there anything you can tell me about Whitney? I’m hearing that she was a … complicated woman.’
‘That’s a polite way of putting it.’ There was a bitter edge to his voice. ‘She tried to ruin me. She had no morals. No heart. She—’
He stopped suddenly, as if realizing who he was talking to.
‘None of this is for attribution,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll sue you if you print a single word.’
That was the second time someone had threatened to sue Harper that day.
‘Senator, please,’ she said, pressing her fingertips against her forehead. ‘I won’t mention any of this in print. Under any circumstances. This is deep background. Anything you can tell me would help me understand what I’m dealing with.’
This seemed to mollify him to a certain extent.
‘There’s not much to say. No one deserves to die like she did,’ he said. ‘But Marie Whitney came close. And that is all I’ll tell you. I’ve got my career to think about.’
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘isn’t there something more you can tell me? Anything. People seemed afraid of her. Were you afraid of her?’
There was a long pause.
‘I can’t,’ he said, and she could hear the conflict in his voice. He wanted to tell her something but wouldn’t let himself take the risk. ‘It’s not possible. But I will say this: keep digging, Miss McClain. Someone braver than me will tell you the truth. I know I wasn’t the only one.’
With that, he hung up.
Harper listened to the silence on the line for a long moment before setting the phone down.
I know I wasn’t the only one.
What did that mean?
She felt increasingly confounded.
Why did the people in Whitney’s life hate her so much? They all still sounded terrified.
She was dead. What could she do to them now?
The CEO was the last to respond to her call. He didn’t get in touch with her for several days. She called every day, leaving polite messages that went unreturned.
Finally, late in the evening on the fourth day, she received a short, succinct email from him. It appeared to have been written personally, no secretary signed it.
I suggest you stop calling my office. I know what you’re working on, and I want no part of it. This is your final warning.
Harper stared at the email in stunned disbelief. She’d never told his secretary the reason for her call. Never mentioned Marie Whitney at all.
How did he know? And what if he didn’t? He could be wrong.
Also, This is your final warning? That sounded like a threat.
She began to write a furious reply. But when she looked closer, she saw that he’d cc’d in another man – James Cohen, of Barrington Associates.
Barrington Associates was a local corporate law firm, specializing in protecting the privacy of high-wealth individuals. They were known to be vicious.
Harper let out a quick breath. And closed the email.
She couldn’t take on a CEO and a prominent lawyer without Baxter and Dells finding out what she was up to. Those guys wouldn’t sue her alone. They’d sue the paper, too.
And Baxter had strictly forbidden her to work on this story.
But there were other things she could do. If he thought he could scare her away, he was wrong. She wouldn’t give up this easily.
Clearing her screen, she began to search for information about Sterling Robinson. Hundreds of articles appeared.
Frowning, she narrowed her search down to profiles, immediately honing in on a recent article from The Wall Street Journal.
Robinson was forty-six years old, the CEO of a media conglomerate called Sterling Enterprises. It owned websites, television stations and publishing houses throughout the world. Most of its websites were the click-bait kind, with pictures of beautiful movie stars and ‘You’ll never believe what they look like now!’ as the link. Some, though, were thoroughly legitimate news sites, respected for their reporting.
In the photo at the top of the article, Robinson looked younger than his years, narrowly built, with thick dark hair and wire-framed glasses. The article said he was divorced, with no children. He lived in New York most of the year, but also had houses in San Francisco and Martha’s Vineyard.
The only mention of Savannah, she noted, was that his company had opened an office in the city five years ago.
Most interesting, though, was the nugget that, along with the corporation, he ran a charitable foundation that gave millions of dollars to groups that supported the arts, and to universities for medical research.
Harper opened her notebook and wrote down the foundation’s name, adding, ‘This could be how he met Marie Whitney.’
She underlined the sentence three times.
She wondered if Robinson was in one of those pictures in Whitney’s office. She would never have noticed – he would have been one more man in a tuxedo, smiling for the camera.
She couldn’t see any obvious connection between him and her mother. Fifteen years earlier, he’d been building his company in New York. It seemed unlikely they’d ever have met. There was no indication he’d spent time in Savannah until recently.
Still, the possibility of a Whitney connection was enough to keep him interesting.
His charity work seemed to indicate he was not completely without merit, but his business enterprises showed clear ruthlessness. A few years ago, he’d intentionally put a newspaper in Tennessee out of business to boost the hits on his local news website. Hundreds of people lost their jobs.
The more she learned, the more Harper considered Robinson intriguing.
The fact was, someone as rich as him wouldn’t have to kill Whitney himself. A man like Robinson could hire a hitman to do his dirty work for him.
A professional.
The thought chilled her.
All along she’d been convinced any suggestion that someone would have taken out a hit on a woman like Whitney was ridiculous.
Suddenly it was no longer absurd.
On the drive home that night, Harper’s mind was tangled up in the case. The realiza
tion that Robinson was a potential suspect changed everything.
Luke’s absolute conviction that Blazer couldn’t be the killer had made her doubt her own judgment on the case. Now Robinson seemed a perfectly viable candidate, and she wasn’t sure what to think.
But then, who was the man with a badge who visited Whitney at work? Was it Blazer?
If only she could find one person who really knew Whitney and was willing to talk.
As she turned off of brightly lit Bay Street, she found herself thinking about Camille Whitney. And wondering what she knew.
She must be with a relative now – probably her father. But where? And what had she told the police? Did she know who her mother was dating?
What had she seen that day?
Lost in thought, she barely noticed the black Mercedes as it pulled into traffic behind her.
When she turned onto Habersham Street, the black Mercedes turned, too.
Harper had eaten the last of the bread that afternoon, so she stopped in front of a 24-hour corner shop, and hurried in for bread, milk and eggs.
It was only when she pulled out into traffic again, and saw the Mercedes do the same, that warning signals went off in her mind.
There were no other cars on the street. It was always three car lengths behind her – never more, never less. She sped up, it sped up. She slowed down, it slowed down.
And she couldn’t remember when it had first appeared.
She took a couple of unnecessary turns, making the block before heading back to Habersham. The Mercedes was always there – three car lengths behind – steady and purposeful.
The first tentacles of fear wrapped around Harper’s chest.
She’d never seen the undercover cops drive a Mercedes – it was always sports cars and SUVs with them – and detectives used only American-made cars.
So, who was that?
Briefly, she considered driving straight to the police station. But then told herself she was being ridiculous.
If she was being followed, she wanted to know by whom.
Steeling herself, she turned onto Jones. A few seconds later, the Mercedes followed.
Harper flinched as its lights flashed across her rearview mirror.
‘OK, you bastard,’ she muttered, downshifting. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got planned.’
The Echo Killing Page 24
