“You know I am,” Magnolia said, the sultriness obvious. “How can I serve you, Jack?”
Jack looked at me with laughter dancing in his eyes. “Can you run a search for students who graduated from Newcastle high school? Everything you have from twenty, twenty-five years ago.”
“Of course,” Magnolia said. “If it’s anywhere digitally I’ll have access to it. Just give me a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” Jack said.
“She does not make me want to live in the future,” Chen said. “I need more coffee.” And then she walked to the kitchen.
“Really?” Martinez said. “Because I can’t wait. I wish I had a Magnolia at my place. She’s so sexy.”
“Ooh, thank you, Detective Martinez,” Magnolia said. “I’m flattered. I can give you my number if you like. We can…chat later.”
“You’re a perv, Martinez,” Cole said, shaking his head.
“Any news from the Burkett crime scene?” Jack asked.
Cole leaned against the back of one of the overstuffed leather chairs in front of the fireplace and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I haven’t filled you in since we finished the exterior. Guess what we found in Jody Burkett’s SUV?”
Jack raised his eyebrows, waiting for the answer.
“Dark, curly wig,” Cole said. “It matches the description from the still shot Doug was able to capture from the camera. It’s on its way to the crime lab to see if they can pull any real hairs or DNA from it. The tires of her SUV were caked with mud. It had to be her SUV that was waiting for him when he dumped the yellow Ford out on Cromwell Road.”
“The yellow Ford was reported stolen Sunday morning,” I said. “I wonder where he kept it until he was ready to use it.”
“I bet it was parked across the street at the Burkett house,” Jack said.
“That’s a negative,” Doug said, chiming in. “Your gate cam caught the SUV coming and going from the Burkett house several times Sunday and Monday. But no yellow Ford. He must have stashed it somewhere else.”
“He could’ve left it on Cromwell and most likely no one would notice,” I said. “Cromwell has all those off roads where kids go out to drink. He’s lucky he didn’t get stuck in the mud though with the way the weather has been.”
“He was coming and going while he had her bound and gagged and then after she was dead,” Cole said.
“Because he still needed her house so he could watch,” Jack said. “He said it in his letters. He’s the one writing the script. He’s not only working behind the scenes, he’s the star of the show—a participant and an observer.”
“He’s looney tunes,” Martinez said.
“Which is why he’ll be watching the six o’clock news to see if he gets any screen time,” Jack said. “That’s why he sent the letter to Carrie and asked how many people he has to kill to get recognition. He knows she’ll feature the story after that video he sent.”
“Is there any way to trace that?” Cole asked. “See what kind of device it was taken on? Or see if it’s even from the same time period. The first clip of her laughing could’ve been taken a long time ago.”
“I can see if Mackenzie can separate the clips,” Doug said. “She should be able to tell if they were taken from the same device by analyzing the quality. Not sure how much more she can tell you after that.”
“Oh, so you remembered I’m here finally,” Mackenzie said, clearly put out. “All I’ve heard for the last five hours is about Magnolia, and how amazing Magnolia is, and how sexy. I have a mind to just shut down and go home. I’ve got other things I could be doing, you know. I met this nice man on Instagram. He’s a comedian and he makes me laugh. Maybe I’ll leave you and hook up with my comedian. I’ve always wanted to see Nebraska.”
I pressed my lips together. “No robots,” I mouthed again to Jack.
“No you haven’t,” Doug said. “Stop being dramatic. You know you’re my best girl.”
“Dramatic?” she asked, her voice pitching higher.
Cole slapped his hand to his forehead. “You know nothing, young Skywalker. Stop digging the hole. Mackenzie, sweetheart. You have every right to be mad at Doug. He hasn’t thought about your feelings at all, and that’s just selfish.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Detective Cole,” he said.
“Ooh, I love detectives,” she said. “I watch all the crime shows. Maybe we could watch together some time.”
“I’d love that,” Cole said, his drawl more pronounced as his voice changed seductively.
“The master at work,” Martinez said softly. “Take notes, kid.”
“We’re in a little bit of a rush right now,” Cole said. “There’s a killer on the loose. Just like on TV, and I need your help so we can catch him. We can’t do it without you.”
“It’s nice to be needed,” she said. “Do you have a girlfriend, Detective Cole?”
Cole looked a little bit panicked, as if he was figuring out what to tell her so she didn’t get mad, but just as quickly he came up with a response. “I have to confess,” he said. “I’m a scoundrel. I love all women, and I always leave them with a smile.”
It must have been the right thing to say because she purred and said, “I can’t wait. Send me the video you’d like analyzed.”
When Cole walked back over to us, his grin indicating success, I said, “You know she’s going to come alive and stab you in your sleep if she finds out you’re lying to her.”
“One battle at a time,” Cole said.
Jack ran a hand over the top of his head. “My life is so weird. Let’s start back at the beginning,” he said to the room at large. “Let’s put everything we’ve got on Juliet on the screen.”
Faces popped onto the screen—a tangled web of relationships—and it included everyone from her husband to the different men she’d amused herself with.
“See if any of Juliet’s lovers has a wife with the name of Brenda or Brynlee,” Jack said. “She made threats a couple of years ago.”
“The killer isn’t a woman,” Martinez said.
“No, but maybe she hired someone,” Jack countered. “Women tend to have long memories over things like that. We’ll check her financials too if we get a hit.”
“That was easy enough,” Doug said, and another photograph popped onto the screen next to Cameron Blanchard. “Brenda Blanchard, though public record shows her and Cameron’s divorce was finalized a year and a half ago.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Dig a little deeper and see if Magnolia…” he hesitated and then added, “…or Mackenzie can dig into her bank accounts. We’d be looking for any large payments made.”
“It’s my duty to advise you that you don’t have a warrant for this information,” Magnolia said sweetly.
“Is that a problem?” Jack asked.