Swingin' in the Rain by Eileen Davidson Page A

said, passing it back. “You believe that office belonged to Randy or, at least, that Randy spent time there?”
      “Yes.”
      “I can check and see if Randy is listed as an owner of the club,” he said. “What else?”
      “Patti,” I said. “She’s gone.”
      “Gone where?”
      “I don’t know,” I said. “She ditched us at the club.”
      “Did she admit anything to you while she was there?”
      “No,” I said, “she was careful, except for the fact that she met Randy at the club.”
      “Well, I know Rockland spoke with her, but I don’t know if she’s a suspect or not. I’ll see what I can find out.”
      “Have you talked to any of Randy’s old clients?” I asked.
      “I met with two of them, talked with another on the phone.”
      “And?”
      “None of them seem to hold a grudge.”
      “That’s amazing,” I said. “He stole from them and they don’t care?”
      “They got their money back, Alex,” he said. “In business that’s pretty much all that matters.”
      “One of them might be lying.”
      “Hell, they all might be lying. But remember that’s pretty much what we found out a while back, when Randy was still alive.”
      “Maybe somebody was planning to kill him later, and finally did.”
      “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
      “So there are no suspects?”
      He hesitated.
      “Jakes?”
      “You’d be a suspect, but I can’t see that you’d be a serious one. But then . . .”
      “What?”
      “ . . . Rockland’s an asshole.”
      “Is he going to come after me?”
      “He’s probably going to want to talk to you again, at some point.”
      “If he doesn’t come up with somebody better, he’ll come after me, won’t he?”
      “Look, I’ll do what I can, Alex. But you have to stay out of trouble.”
      “I will,” I said, “but—

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     
     
      “Now, don’t get mad . . .” I said to him.
      “Oh, that’s never a good way to start a sentence,”
      he said. “What did you do?”
      “Well, while we waited for you, we looked around and . . .”
      I told him about searching the house, which is how we knew Patti had packed and left. I also told him about looking through the desk, finding the old phone book and taking photos of some of the pages. I was careful to tell him that we used rubber gloves when handling the book, and put it back where we found it.
      “Yeah, when you told me you left the place the way you found it I was afraid it was something like this,” he said. “You know, our Forensics people are very good, Alex. If they looked hard enough they’ll find some trace of you and George.”
      ”Well,” I said, lamely, “maybe they won’t look so hard.”
      He sat there, shaking his head.
      “Jakes?” I said. “You’re not going to yell?”
      “No,” he said, “I’m not gonna yell. Let me see the photos.”
      I took my cell phone from my purse and handed it to him. He scrolled through the photos.
      “How can you possibly see anything?  Each shot is so tiny.” I grabbed the phone from him.
      “Here. You just widen out the image with your fingers. See? Streeeetch the image and it gets bigger. Gee, Jakes, it is two thousand eleven!”
      He grabbed the phone back. After struggling with the screen for a minute, he managed to enlarge each one of the photos. “What did you say this mark is?”
      “A fleur-de-lis.”
      “And that’s a symbol the club uses?”
      “Yes.”
      He squinted at the pages the way George had done.
      “Maybe that’s a little blurry—“
      “No,” he said, cutting me off. “It really doesn’t matter what the symbol is. It’s there, and it must mean something.”
      “We can check with those people,” I said, anxiously, “see if they knew Randy—“
      “Whoa,” he said. “I think it’s time for you to settle into the background.”
      “But . . . I’m the one who found this